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Endnotes and Pertinent Quotes
1. Jesus also said (Matt. 21:21), “If you have faith and do not doubt, you will… say to this mountain”—this mountain. This mountain is Mt. Zion, and it did and does move. It’s actually where faith comes from—a tree on that mountain. Faith is a Word in us. It’s The One Word in us. Many persons, but one Faith—then we can all live in one world.
2. Did you catch that: “Every tree… for food”? If He meant that, he must have said it some “time” after Genesis 2:16, “…but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” This is the topic of a book to come, but for now ask yourself this question: Is there a tree of which eating the fruit will kill you, yet having eaten and died, you then eat and live? I believe there is. From that tree comes judgment: knowledge of the law and our sin. And from that tree comes Life, which is Grace—the life of God poured out—Blood. We die there and live there. The life from that tree, within us, is called Faith, Hope and Love. At that tree we are “finished” in the image of God.
This Hebrew word for “tree” is also translated “timber” or “gallows.” It is the Hebrew word for “cross.” Was there ever a greater evil, than taking the life of God on that tree? Was there ever a greater good, than God giving His life on that tree? In the New Jerusalem there is one tree (Rev. 22:2). The fruit is for the “healing of the nations.” “His body broken and His blood shed” is for the healing of the nations. It is food. It is the fruit of that tree. It contains a seed, an imperishable eternal seed, the Word of God.
3. Faith is a gift, not the result of human effort (Eph. 2:8). This was the glorious rediscovery of the Reformers, but we have forgotten it… we have even translated it out of our bibles. In Galatians Paul tells us that we are “justified” by the “faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ.” (2:16 KJV) Believing “in Jesus” is having the “faith of Jesus.” Modern translations often change “the faith of Jesus” to “faith in Jesus.” In which case, we’re not justified by Jesus’ faith, or God’s faith, but our faith. They do it in several places (Romans 3: 22, 26; Galatians 2:16, 20, 3:22; Phil. 3:9, Eph. 3:12) and violate the mystery: “Christ in us.”
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When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
~ John 19:30
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. . . . Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
~ Hebrews 4:11-13, 11:1-3
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
~ John 15:16-17
"We did not search you out, Padri," he said to me. "We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the planes, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages,
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into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.”
The lion is God. Of course. Goodness and kindness and holiness and grace and divine presence and creating power and salvation were here before I got here. Even the fuller understanding of God’s revelation to man, of the gospel, of the salvific act that had been accomplished once and for all for the human race was here before I got here. My role as a herald of that gospel, as a messenger of the news of what had already happened in the world, as the person whose task it was to point to “the one who had stood in their midst whom they did not recognize” was only a small part of the mission of God to the world. It was a mysterious part, a part barely understood. It was a necessary part, a demanded part— “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” It was a role that would require every talent and insight and skill and gift and strength I had, to be spent without question, without stint, and yet in the humbling knowledge that only that part of it would be made use of which fit into the immeasurably greater plan of the relentless pursuing God whose will on the world must not be thwarted. The lion is God.
~ Vincent J. Donovan, Rediscovering Christianity
And he said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” ~ Mark 16:15 (RSV)
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Appendix: