THE LIGHT OF GOD’S KNOWLEDGE
When Jesus said in John 8:12 that “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (NIV), He indicated that the ordinary life and living, the world as we see it every day, is covered in darkness. The “darkness” in question is irrespective of the presence of physical light including that of the sun, even at its brightest. “…darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the people” (Isaiah 60: 2, NIV).
The darkness of the worst forms is not the absence of physical light, but the result of the dearth of the knowledge of God which is the only ammunition with which life can be lived in a meaningful and successful manner. Ordinarily, human beings were not created to be able to live successfully without this knowledge, regardless of current evidence of career advancement and availability of money, in the case of an individual; and in a global context, the advances in science and technology and how these innovations have revolutionized the human life. The absence of God’s knowledge is poverty of the worst form, and it is the biggest affliction our world faces today. It is also indicative of the presence of the power and principle of death actively working in a system, or in the life of the one concerned. This death principle exists in degrees. Shallow knowledge and understanding, or better still, shallow experiential revelation of God means that the principle may still be at work to a certain extent. The more pervading the light and the life of God, the less the presence of darkness or death, in a life or a system. Understanding is light, ignorance is darkness.
Looked at from these very narrow confines therefore, it becomes very evident that a number of the people adjudged by the world as being success stories (and these include some very notable and celebrated business and corporate leaders around the world, statesmen of note, international civil servants and diplomats, intellectuals, world-famous scientists, inventors and innovators, literary icons, entertainment moguls, etc.) are utter failures as far as God is concerned.
As a man knows God, he discovers who he really is or is created to be. And he can face life with more assurance and confidence. Life and living will continue to confound those who are attempting to live it without the benefit of the divine compass of the light of God. Every other form of knowledge will fail those who possess it.
“Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise and skillful person
glory and boast in his wisdom and skill; let not the mighty
and powerful person glory and boast in his strength and
power, let not the person who is rich (in physical/material
endowments and earthly wealth) glory and boast in his
(temporal satisfactions and earthly) riches; but let him who
glories glory in this: that he understands and knows me
(personally and practically, directly discerning and recogni-
zing My character),…” “(Jeremiah 9:23-24, AMP).
As everyone who is alive now can testify, life continues to pose varying questions and challenges that are very, very difficult to answer. There is utter confusion everywhere about what meaning to truly attach to life and living. The reason why the world is currently a picture of chaos and confusion is because everyone is trying to answer those questions as s/he knows and deems fit. There is hardly any consensus on any issue, especially moral questions (i.e. what is right and what is wrong). The world is wallowing in increasing darkness as the boundary between right and wrong gets increasingly blurred in people’s minds.
Biblical Christianity is not about singing and dancing, the clapping of hands and the exhibition of miracles, as legitimate as some of these things may be. It is not about holding a series of colorful services, church events, and our unending big meetings or conferences and annual conventions. It has nothing still to do with being able to gather the largest crowds or to put up the most magnificent buildings or being able to build a mass choir, all of which pre-occupy the visible church today. Rather it is about first coming to realize that union with Christ, his Creator is not an option for man; thereafter going on to place the most premium on a life-transforming relationship with God the Holy Spirit; and in effect, getting equipped with the knowledge of God’s glory. This equipment occasions a definite change in the nature of the man elevates his humanity, transforms his priorities, overhauls his values, and makes him more creative in a way that no ordinary mortal, no matter the level of sophistication of his academic or moral training, can achieve. And through such a life, there is an outflow of this glory to attack and subjugate every contrary thing that is currently standing in contradiction to the life he represents.
One crucial realm in which the Lord is equipping us with His Knowledge to be able to rule and reign decisively is that of ideas. Ideas rule in this life and world. They are responsible for building physical realities and systems. The origins of the social, cultural, educational, political and economic systems of the world – all established practices and conventions used in running them – began as ideas in human hearts. The way and manner in which the entertainment and fashion industrial complexes of the world operate – the mannerisms of the practitioners, their behavioural modes, their ethos and all of the things they consider as standard practices and behavior, evolved first of all as ideas in the minds/souls of men.
It is also very important to state the obvious fact that the nature of ideas depends clearly on the spiritual state of the origin or source A spiritually regenerated mind will produce ideas after its kind and vice versa.
“By their fruit you will recognise them. Do you pick
grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?
Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a
bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear
bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”
(Matthew 7:16-19, NIV)
Jesus here narrows down existing sources of life to just two; there are no in-betweens. You either are a representative of one and you source all of your life and the ideas that sustain it from one or the other.
Tree is used to symbolize the very life source or nature that dwells in a person and which forms the taproot, origin and fountain of all of the notions he peddles and lives. Humans can only source their lives’ actions from either of the Tree of Life or the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Even the so-called good on the latter still results in death. It is the source of all human morality as distinct from the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus. Such notions of morality, including some of those well-meaning efforts of charity and public-spiritedness that we sometimes decorate with the name of the Lord, are actually an insult to God and an affront to the Cross. Some of the highest corporate and individual donors to the cause of humanity today prefer to maintain a kind of splendid distance from Christ, silently propagating the satanic notion that you can be or do well without having anything to do with God. We even applaud and celebrate them in churches. We are not wise. The actions of the one doing a deed must be inseparable from his personal identity. Who is He? What are his commitments and where is the source of his motivations? That is why a little further down the verse cited above, Jesus the Lord says:
“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the
Kingdom of heaven….Many will say…we…prophesy in
Your name, and in your name…perform many miracles.
Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from
Me, you evildoers! Mathew 7;21
The word knew as Jesus used it means the exchange of life for life. This is the sort of exchange that we see in intimate intercourse between a man and his wife. Note that those the Lord turned away actually used His name to accomplish certain feats. But He called them evildoers. In contemporary times too, we see where the principles revealed in the teachings of the Lord Jesus are being merely adapted to make things work although the ones involved have no relationship with Christ. The non-violent and Passive Resistance Movement which emanated from a certain famous figure of Asian origin around the turn of the 20th century and from which the Civil Rights Movement in America of the 1960s derived its inspiration falls into this category. Principles and/or of Christ’s teachings and life are being adapted to work for certain contingencies without any relationship with Christ. Hinduists, Buddhists, Eckanker, Rosicrucians, and Moslems all talk of their acceptance of Christ either as some master, guru, or prophet and they all claim to adhere in one form or the other and draw inspiration from them. But we must never be confused and seduced by these things.
Some of the vilest ideas that have held sway, a number of which are still subsisting, have emanated from the spiritually unregenerate minds of men. An international newsmagazine once reported an open agitation by a group of paedophiliacs in the US which called itself the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NMBLA), whose activities were devoted to among others the promotion of an early consenting age for male children to engage adult men in sexual activities. Another that went by the name of Rene Guyon Society of Los Angeles had a rather “crude” motto: “Sex by eight or else it’s too late.” Curiously, in the ranks of such groups were found such professionals as a neurologist, a physicist, and a bank manager. Their academic training never altered their essentially perverted nature. The atrocities visited on the world by Hitler certainly began as ideas in his reprobate mind. There exists a large amount of more subtle. Less manifestly evil but no less pernicious ideas being peddled in contemporary times perhaps that at any other time in human history. The battle for space between the forces of light and darkness in contention for the world is being fought in the minds or souls of humans.
God is reaching for our souls with His light. The “gods” of this earth have over the years, succeeded to a large extent, in dethroning God from men’s hearts and they are presently occupying the high grounds of every department of life with principles and ideas of existence and operation that are completely contrary to God’s intention and preference. These fortresses which we must recapture for our Lord are just like the “Jericho City” which the inspired written word of the Lord says was “tightly shut up because of the Israelites” (the ‘Israelites being a symbol of a rampaging and an advancing Church armed and equipped with a different culture and civilization of the Kingdom of God). That “no one went out and came in” (Joshua 6:1), is symbolic of the fact that the mentality of the people who operate and think within the limits and context of that system were denied the opportunity and robbed of the capacity to think or conceive of any ideas and thought patterns contrary to the defining patterns of life and living in that world or system. Such contrary thoughts are deemed to be unlawful! It was a fortress system and was a picture of our world or this present Age. Everyone’s mind has been completely blocked by the “god” of this age and any out-of-this-world thinking patterns are considered high treason as they capable of undermining the system in place.
Our victory will only be complete when we can fulfil, by the evidence of our operation in life, the prophecy in Revelation 11:15 that “the kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever.” A “kingdom” means a dominion or a territory of a controlling authority and power. In some sense, “kingdoms” of this world would refer to the strongholds of ideas, principles and notions of life or existence ruling the lives of men which have their roots in the realm of darkness, under the controlling powers of spiritual forces. These principles are built around the souls of men and in that way they gave birth to physical realities or are “earthed.” These are the fortresses for which we are being equipped with the truth of salvation to be able to retake.
One such prominent, big fortress in this life, for instance, is HUMANISM. This is the philosophical mindset that encourages man to go about trying to solve the problems and proffer solutions to the challenges confronting humanity without recourse to the preferred means of the Creator of the humanity – God. The
Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995) defines humanism as
“a belief system based on the principle that people’s
spiritual and emotional needs can be fulfilled without
following a religion (obviously a reference to God).”
The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (2000) defines it as
“a system of thought that considers that solving human
problems with the help of reason is more important
than religious (meaning God-centered) beliefs.
It emphasizes the fact that the basic nature of human
beings is good.”
And the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1987) defines it as
”a system of beliefs and standards concerned with
the needs of people and not with religious
(i.e. God-centered) ideas.” (Note that all comments
in brackets are personal additions of writer).
Humanism is a fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the end point of its “good” intentions is death. It is obviously a human-centred belief system which provides shelter for all those who think they understand what humanity’s problems are and how to solve them. And their solutions clearly always have nothing to do with God. It is also a carefully devised deceptive web woven to trap humanity itself and ensure that it will continue on a road of continual alienation with its Creator while deluding itself that it has any capacity for good. For as long as man does not learn to live by the truth that lasting, permanent solution to the challenges of living proceeds exclusively out of a spiritually determined relationship with His Creator, he will continue to wallow in self-deceit, live on the mere fringes of true life, fraternize with death and stand the risk of judgment. And no matter the level of his ingenuity, inventiveness and creativity, lasting and permanent solutions to the challenges of life and living will continually elude him. Nature, for instance will continue to confound and defy him.
The “good” and the “evil” from that Tree lead to the same end – death. This is because they are self-determined and self-generated by man Humanism tells man to decide for himself what is good and what is not, based on his very limited (as limited as himself and his equally limiting environment) knowledge, rather than take dictation from his all-knowing Creator. Man was created a limited being deliberately by God. He is not to be able to live life fully, competently and meaningfully in the context of the purpose carved for him by his Creator, except all of the contents of his life are the results of the divine intents and commandments of God (man shall live or come to or remain alive only by every word which proceeds from God’s mouth). Man can find, and has indeed found a different but obviously lesser and inferior purpose for himself since he lost touch, by choice with his Maker, since life has to go on until at least, he is redeemed and restored to his original position.
Everything that is currently standing now in the form of ideas and practices in the world which produced human institutions of governance, of economics, education, of social and cultural practices, of politics are actually the fruit of man’s personal, self-generated efforts at trying to solve the riddled of life and living. They are a monument to rebellion! How vastly the world would have been different if man had remained yoked to his Maker!
One of the greatest standing symbols/monuments to Humanism today is the United Nations System. It is the result of the collective efforts of man to make God look needless and irrelevant in the search for global peace and order. It has specialized agencies each of whose activities are entirely devoted to solving particular problems confronting humanity. The devised solution and their strategies of deployment are entirely fruit of human generated ideas. The premise of operation is obviously that the destiny of the human race lies entirely in man’s hand. He (man) is capable (his basic nature being good) of generating ideas from within himself that can provide adequate solutions and answers to his numerous problems. He does not need recourse to any external source (call it God or whatever).
Part of the reason for the training and equipping of believers is to be able to, with superior and stronger philosophy of existence, attack the basis of the existence of such an organisation (i.e. the idea underlying and justifying its continued relevance), undermine it from its roots and replace it with the knowledge of Christ (Jeremiah 1:10). Everything which exalts itself above the knowledge of Christ must be brought into subjection to the knowledge of God embodied by Christ (2Corinthians 10:5).
Darkness or the absence of the knowledge of God, crept into the heart of man when he “…sinned and came short of the glory of God” (i.e. he “fell”). The knowledge of God also carries or contains dimensions of His glory and the original intention of God for Creation and which still remains the reason for Redemption is that “… the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14), leaving no room at all for any contrary opinion or idea.
However, because this knowledge is personified by Christ who is God Himself, it is hidden from the spiritually dead. It is a secret and only those who come back to LIFE, i.e. resurrected into spiritual existence, can “know” and “see” it. David the King, writing under prophetic inspiration in Psalm 25:14, declares that “the secrets of the Lord belongs to those who fear Him” (KJV); “The Lord confides in those who fear Him; and He makes His covenant known to them” (NIV). Just earlier on, he says: “Who is the man that fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him. He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land.”
Paul the apostle, writing to the Ephesian church in 3:8-12, call this knowledge of God embodied in Christ “the unsearchable riches of Christ…this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” This is what our relationship with God must restore to us as cherished possession. This is the multifaceted wisdom of God which must be showcased through our lives. In Galatians 3:14, we were informed that this was the blessing promised through Abraham for the nations of the earth (Gen. 22:18) – the Promise of the Spirit.
When the Lord created the world of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:2, He had to command “light” into existence. Apart from the fact that this is commonly seen and known to be some great light to illuminate the physical space, it may also prophetically refer to the light of the knowledge of God without which man cannot fulfil his regency role of rulership and dominion on earth. As Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthian church 4:6, “For God who said ‘let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” The light of God or the knowledge of His ways, and of His purpose in Creation and Redemption, the personal experience of His nature and attributes – His spiritual essence, His power, His life, His wisdom, goodness, kindness, love, gentleness, self-control, humility, patience, purity, perfect sense of timing, of appropriateness and occasion, of good and bad, etc, and the use of these attributes to enforce the government of God in a rebellious world, is all man needs to be able to lay a valid claim to having lived a successful life. When the Lord Jesus was quoted in Matthew 5:8 that “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” the word “see” does not mean that God will be physically seen by such men, but it means that the light of the revelation of who God is will return to their hearts. Any life short of that is a lie. It is a failed life regardless of all its glamour and colour which the world can see and recognise. The devil at the head of the hierarchy of evil in the world has shortchanged such a fellow by giving him or her an utterly wrong self-identity and assignment in life. This is the story of the lives of most of the “successful” people in the world whether in the past, in the present or in the future.
