WHOM DO YOU WORSHIP?

False Worship and True

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This sermon was written to help those with a New Age or occultic background come to understand who the true Christ of the Bible is. The terminology used is therefore a little special and will be unfamiliar to those not knowledgeable in occultism. Present at this meeting were Free Masons and Mormons -- at the conclusion of the meeting, one prominent Free Mason said to the speaker: "What you have said tonight runs contrary to everything I believe in."

I have always maintained that there is no such thing as an atheist though for a time I remember calling myself one. The world is full of two kinds of people only -- those who believe in a God and those who aren't sure. There are therefore only believers and agnostics. Search out any man's soul and you will find that he believes in something that is greater than himself, whether it is a religious system, an ideology, a philosophy, or just himself. The person who has no belief in anything quickly dies in his soul; not long afterwards his body will follow suit and he will get ill and, if he still has no hope in anything, will physically die also.

There exist in the world several major religions: Christianity -- which broadly speaking is divided between Catholics and Protestants -- Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism. In the last century there has been an explosion of different interpretations of these religions as well as attempts to blend them in different ways. There are so many creeds and different formulas of worship that no single man could possibly, in one life time, come to know them all. I myself spent seven years just sifting through one branch of Christianity which itself has about 150 off-shoots, and before that I spent about five years working my way through other religions. If there is a God, why are there so many different interpretations of Him so many different rituals of worship, so many doctrines?

There have been several ways of approaching this problems: (1) The first is the way of the cynic and the unbeliever, who says that this commotion of many different voices is evidence that God is just a projection of the human mind and man has simply invented millions of gods in his own image; (2) The second is the way of the liberal who basically says that doctrine is not important so long as we are loving and joyful -- our systems of worship are simply traditions that are changeable and adaptable; (3) The third is the way of the conservative who basically says that there is only one way of worship, one set of true doctrines, one true tradition or church; and (4) there are all the different shades of interpretation inbetween, which we see in all world religions, from the ultra-orthodox to the liberals. But not only in religions, but in political doctrines as well, from Stalinism to fascism.

It is not my purpose to look into various religious traditions. I am a Christian and I belong to a Christian ministry, so I am committed to a belief in the Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Lord Jesus Christ). Having said that, I also realise that Yah'shua (Jesus) is seen or interpreted in a thousand different ways, He is worshipped or honoured in a thousand different ways, and there are thousands of different kinds of fellowships or churches which exist to promote His message or Gospel. What I do not propose to do today is give you a creed of the New Covenant, for in truth we do not have one; neither am I going to lecture you on a series of propositional doctrines which you can either take or leave. Before we understand Who Christ was, and is, we need first to understand ourselves, and our own projections or images of Him. For it is my belief that most people, far from worshipping God or Christ, actually worship projections of themselves, as the atheist (so-called) would claim.

Just How Many "Gods" Are There?

In Yah'shua's day it was a central belief of Judaism that God could only be worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem. In His famous dialogue with the Samaritan woman at the well, He said that the time was fast at hand when people would no longer worship Yahweh in temples of stone and wood but "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23). Though people were to continue to congregate for fellowship, instruction and worship in the Messianic Community He was establishing (Acts 20:7), there was never any sense that God could only be experienced or communed with in physical buildings. Throughout His ministry Yah'shua taught His disciples to make a sharp distinction between inner and outer, between spiritual life and religious liturgy. He wanted them to get to the heart of the Law of Moses which lay beyond animal sacrifices, the observance of special holidays and feasts, and into the reality of the infinite Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) (Matt.23:23). Judaism in His day, like the major world religions of our day, was factionalised into competing and jarring sects, each claiming the true interpretation of religion and the authority to administer it. Whilst He acknowledged that the outer forms of religion had a place, Yah'shua never recognised any single party or sect as having authority to represent His Father in Heaven, but constantly showed them all where they fell short in their understanding of the heart of true religion (Rom.3:23). And perhaps one of His most revolutionary teachings, at least for His time, was that the Kingdom of God is within a man's own soul (Luke 17:21). In our day, the Christian Church, and many other religions too, are looking inwards for experience of the divine. Some, like evangelical Protestants, have discarded all but a handful of rituals; others, like the Greek or Russian Orthodox Church, remain heavily ritualised. Yet others have sought after the rituals and techniques of the orient and have attempted to blend meditation, yoga, the ritual chanting of mantras, and Hindu doctrines with Christianity to form what is loosely called the "New Age Movement", itself as diverse as Christianity and the other world religions.

The scriptures of most religions agree that within the soul of man there is a spark of divinity, though they would interpret this somewhat differently, from the evangelical Christians who maintain that we are basically depraved to the Hindus who say we are all God Himself. In the Gospel of John we read that every man who is born into the world has the Light of Christ within him (John 1:9). This has been interpreted variously by Christians to be the seat of our moral conscience to being the seed of godhood. Whatever the final interpretation, with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed, it is very clear that every soul taking residence in a physical body possess the Light of Christ. What we do with that Light of Christ -- to follow its promptings to live a holy life (James 1:27), or deny it by turning to wickedness (Ps.84:10), does not change the reality that it is there. It is this that I want to principally talk about today, how we have denied it, and how we have invented our own gods.

Identifying the "gods"

I would like to conduct an experiemnent before I say a little more about the Light of Christ. It will not compromise your personal belief in God in any way. I would like you to close your eyes....and then go through the proces of thinking about God and, if you wish, to pray to Him and worship Him....(pause for 15-20 seconds). Now open your eyes. Now I want to ask you how you were thinking, praying, or worshipping, by asking you to put your hands up in response to the following questions: (1) How many people tried to visualise God as a picture?.....(2) How many tried to feel Him as a presence?..... (3) How many of you say or felt Him in your mind or head?.....(4) How many in your heart?.....(5) How many as someone external to you -- beyond your body, in the distance somewhere, for instance?.....(6) And how many were aware of Him without being aware of physical space at all?......

You will find that people experience God in all sorts of different ways -- He is seen, heard, felt, or none of these. Some people believe in God but claim that they don't experience Him at all, and this they find very frustrating sometimes.

It is the belief of New Covenant Christians that the Light of Christ within each soul is also to be found even in non-living matter, as well as plants and animals. Everything created by God is suffused with His nature in different degrees -- the Creator's signature is to be found everywhere. That Light of Christ is, we believe, a substance, an extension of the Creator in all things. In man, however, it has a special manifestation. Like a lump of yeast in the dough, if properly taken care of, can transform the soul into a Christ-like being (John 17:20-23), just as the yeast transforms the dough into a loaf of bread if heated up properly. Indeed, Yah'shua compares the Kingdom of God to a small lump of yeast which leavens the lump (Matt.13:33). If looked at with a spiritual eye (Matt.13:6), it is clear that God is already within us in Christ, who is within us because of the Light; that Light, also called the Kingdom of God, is that which can transform us if we will simply accept that it is there and recognise the giver of it. It means also that in order to cultivate the right environment for the Light to spread in our own souls, we must live the kind of life required by the giver of the light, namely a life of holiness (2 Cor.7:1).

I think it is true to say that most people are not conscious of the Light of Christ within them, or at least not very often. Little children live naturally in the Light -- they are usually whole, undivided personalitities (Matt.19:14). Few people are revolted by new-born babies because they sense the holiness, of wholeness, of them. Their eyes shine and there is something pure about them. It is only as they grow up that competing forces and loyalities in life begin to displace the Light within them so that it is not in the centre of their spiritual being. It is then that things often start to go wrong and inner conflicts arise.

A few minutes ago I asked you how you visualised God. Many people, if not most, tend to see Him as external to themselves, either in the distance, in the sky, in outer space, or on a planet or star system far, far away. But even if they don't think in such a way, they invariably see Him as being "outside" their physical space.

The Light of Christ is God within you. Your access to God isthrough this Light or Spirit, if you wish to call it that. In the discussion Yah'shua had with the Samaritan woman at the well, He likened the light to "living water" which wells up inside a man or a woman (John 4:10-11; 7:38) -- it is therefore within that the Spirit of God manifests itself -- it is within that we experience God.

But why do so few people experience these things? It is because they have placed God "outside" them. Now I do not mean that they reach inside their bodies with a hand and physically remove the Light of Christ, but I do mean just that in a spiritual way. People try to externalise God, and when they do so, they begin to loose their wholeness. Now there are thousands of ways of externalising God as I shall now attempt to explain.

Whenever you externalise God, you also externalise a part of your personality and create what I am going to call a "subpersonality", because you are also externalising a part of yourself. Psychologists call this a subconscious but really it is more than that, for a part of our real selves becomes detached from our normal awareness.

The moment you cease to believe that God is within you, you externalise God. The moment you start to believe in a God "out there" and (more importantly) worship Him "out there", you externalise the Light of Christ. Almost everyone does this, and that is why everyone has a different perception of God. And by a "perception of God", I mean a perception that is the result of our own individual experience, and not a "God" paper-packaged as a mandatory set of doctrines espoused by a particular Church or denomination.

Most people are born into one religious tradition or another and most people believe in One God who is external to themselves whom they worship and serve. This belief alone actually begins to externalise the Light, and therefore God, from within your being to outside of yourself; for the belief system maintains that God is not intimately a part of us but is somehow "out there". From a very young age, therefore, children brought up in a religious tradition start denying their own goodness, their own loveliness, their own purity, for God is all of these things. If we deny that God is within us, and intimately a part of us, how can we possibly not avoid looking upon ourselves in the worst possible terms?

Now I am not here saying that man is divine, as the Hindus teach, for I certainly believe that as a species we have inherited the fallen nature of our first parents, and we find ourselves doing things we do not want to, as Paul complained about in the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans. No, I would not wish to deny the reality of "original sin", or whatever you want to call it. But what I am saying is that by externalising God we also deny that part of us which is good, which is the gift of God to us, through Christ the Lord. And when we deny that goodness, by externalising it, is it any wonder that so many religious people have such terrible feelings about themselves? Is it surprising that so many Christians feel unworthy, impure, unlovable, and unloving? By denying God (for this is what externalisation is), we see only the fallen side of man, and that is not particularly inspiring.

People complain nowadays that there is little accountability, little responsibility. Everyone is after their own thing. But have they wondered why people have become so irresponsible? When a soul refuses to believe that God is within by externalising Him, they cease being a responsible person. God is the epitome of responsibility, and that responsibility is reflected in the greatest act of sacrifice ever, His giving of His Only Begotten Son to die at Calvary (John 3:16). Yah'shua Himself taught that the greatest act of love, and therefore of responsibility, was to lay down your life for your friend (John 15:13). When a person therefore refuses to act responsibly, he puts God outside himself, because the Light of Christ is also the spirit of responsibility. Every time we deny the pure and virtuous promptings of the Spirit, we externalise God, by saying: "I don't want to know you!" But in externalising God we also externalise a part of ourself, because the two are so intimately associated.

When you put yeast into dough and the leavening process starts, you cannot separate the two. Once the Light of Christ has begun to leaven our spirit, it is impossible to seperate the two. Thus when we try to "push out" Christ, we end up "pushing out" a part of ourselves too, and two personalities are born. Such a state of affairs is unnatural, of course, for God did not design us to be split up into different subpersonalities, but He designed us to be one. The great High Priestly Prayer of Yah'shua before His crucufixion was that His disciples be one, not only with each other but within themselves, just as He, Yah'shua, was one with His Heavenly Father, and was one within Himself (John 17:11,21). Throughout His ministry He emphasised the importance of this oneness, or wholeness; He taught that a Kingdom divided against itself must fall when His enemies accused Him of casting out evil spirits by the spirit of the devil (Matt.12:25). By the same token, a man who is divided against himself must fall (v.26).

This inner division expresses itself as various inner conflicts, great spiritual thirst, changing moods, and so on. Our subpersonalities -- parts of us that have been externalised -- are still trying to live as they did before they got shoved out, but can't because they themselves aren't whole. You meet these subpersonalities all the time in your dreams in various disguises, often as people you know in daily life. Often great wars and dramas are fought in our sleep which is the only time we relax our guard and the shattered parts of our personality are allowed to interact freely. If you want to be with someone when they are at their most pure, catch them as they are waking up -- you will invariably find them softer and more accessible, especially if they have had a deep dream in which they have been fighting with parts of themselves. But as the several "parts" separate so their mood changes. You will see from such experiences that what I am saying is true.

Your subpersonalities try to live through the perceptions of the rest of your spirit and your physical body. They are never entirely cut off otherwise they would become independent beings in their own rights. The nearest to this would be schizophrenia when people begin to think they are two or more people and shift their consciousness from one to the other. In this psychological condition the subpersonalities become so powerful that they rival the real self for control of the conscious state.

Thus you cannot 100% externalise the Light of Christ -- such would, in fact, result in physical death, for it is the power of God that holds everything together, our bodies included. But we can still pretend to put the Light outside. How can we do this? If we believe in an external God, we "put" God on the outside and start worshipping Him as though He were outside. Now I am not saying that God doesn't have a spacial location somewhere in the universe -- whether He does or not isn't the point, for we can only commune with Him within, because He is within, through the Light of Christ.

Now even though we "put" God outside ourselves, He is still conntected to our physical and spiritual reality within. I can pretend that my brain is down the road and live in that fantasy or illusion but it doesn't stop the fact that it is actually in my head. But my perception is clearly distorted, or abnormal. Whether or not I shove God outside myself doesn't change the reality, but the way I see him will be different. I will perceive and worship an image or God that is false. I will, in fact, be committing a kind of idolatry, even if ignorantly.

By worshipping a God external to ourselves our whole being -- body, spirit and soul -- must adjust to a whole new set of biological and spiritual reactions. In fact, nothing short of a total revolution takes place.

Let me illustrate. Suppose Norway is at peace and life is as it really is. Now I know of a person in Oslo who seriously believes that this country has been at war with Russia for years, and that the Russians are burried in tunnels underground in north Norway. He is convinced that we are in a war-time situation, and so his whole world is made up of spies, intrigue, sabotage, assassination, etc.. It is pure fantasy, of course, but in order to cater to the illusion that Norway is at war with Russia, he has had to totally reorganise his brain and heart to fit in with that belief. He is, of course, quite mad, but really his madness is merely a different degree of the madness that most people live in, which the world calls "normal". So much of modern therapy is, in fact, adjusting people from one kind of illusion to another. And the greatest illusion is either that there is no God or that He is external to oneself.

Thus every illusion we live -- every lie we believe in -- is followed by an adjustment of our whole personality, the world view that we have. Is it any wonder, then, that people are so hard to change? Is it any wonder that only a few ever respond to religious preachers? Most people accept the status quo, traditions, and so on, because to challenge them is often to upset their own fantasy world, to make them face a reality that is often very painful to face.

Look at the way people react emotionally to different situations. There are certain things in their lives which are sacred cows. If you touch that area, it can provoke all sorts of different responses, from anger, to coldness, to tears, or whatever. When the soul is forced to confront its subpersonalities face-to-face, it goes into a momentary crisis, and a series of pre-set reactions are set off to prevent the soul having to confront the awful truth. When our own personality is disjunctive with the Christ-personality into which we are supposed to be growing, then various mechanisms are set into motion to prevent "burn out"; for when we are so separated from our real selves and have spun so many webs of illusion around ourselves, we are like an unstable nuclear reactor that could explode if the outer conditions of our lives are threatened. We are enormously complicated creatures, though we have compounded that complication by our rebellion from God. We think we can run away from Him, even deny Him, but the reality remains the same, and the consequenece of maintaining our illusion is disasterous for us in the long run. The world is full of ruined people who have either been ruined by their own fantasies or by the fantasies of religions imposed upon them that lead to spiritual imbalance. Religion and atheism can be man's worst enemy.

Understanding the Subpersonalities

I take for granted that we all accept that God is more intelligent and wise than we are. It follows, then, that if we deny Him, or externalise Him through incorrest worship, that the subpersonalities we create will often be alot cleverer that "we" are.

The subpersonality you create, whatever it is (and I will consider different types in a moment), is not, of course, pure "God". It is the Light of Christ with a thick layer of anger, immorality, or whatever, and thus the "god" that it is is not the true "God" but our distorted version of Him. This "god", with a little "g", is, in a way, a "devil" -- not a literal devil (which is another subject) but a "devil" of our own creation, which we often mistake for real devils and try to cast them out, without success.

Since this distorted Light of Christ-cum-"you" or false "god" is so intelligent, it understands your body and your spirit better than you do. It understands your mind and your heart, your thinking and your feeling, and it uses this superior knowledge to keep you blind. Notice that it is not the Light of Christ per se that it is the demon (for it is the opposite) but the vice that parasitises its power. How is this possible? How can good -- the Light of Christ -- be used for evil? It is at this stage that we must understand the central role of the Cross, for the miracle of Yah'shua the Messiah was that He was willing to enter into our world and take upon Himself our vileness and wickedness for our salvation. God therefore entered our realm as a man, and this to effect an atonement. What many Christians don't realise is that the work of Christ is even more extensive than the work done on Calvary, for Christ has been in the world from the beginning -- and is still here -- as the Light of Christ in all things, even though He is no longer with us here in space as a physical Being. The Light of Christ suffers the indignities which our subpersonalities heap upon it, waiting patiently for the moment of our realisation and repentance so that our shattered personalities can be reintegrated with Christ properly enthroned in the centre -- in our hearts and minds.

The Light of Christ, then, is like a sweet core with a coating of poison in our subpersonalities. The core is constantly reaching out -- desperately sending signals of love to the soul that has cast it out so that it can be enthroned in its proper place. Often we need the help of others -- ministers of the Gospel -- to give us the nudge towards repentance and self-realisation. It is no wonder that in the New Testament that it says that many souls were saved through the "foolishness of preaching" (1 Cor.1:21). The Word of God can cause the heart to awaken to its own awful condition, provoke repentance and a desire to be healed. And depending on the souls's willingness to conform to the divine prescription for healing, healing will take place. But it must be on God's terms, with real understanding and a williness to change, for no tyrant voluntarily relinquishes his power. And the subpersonalities are just that -- tyrants.

Most people operate under many subpersonalities, not just one. Solving one particular problem is often not enough -- there are many "demons" to be dealt with, not just one. And when one "demon" sees one of his own kind defeated, he will redouble his efforts to survive. And it is often the case that old subpersonalities are recreated after they have been removed.

The first step to inner healing is accepting yourself for what you are and not trying to pretend that you don't have problems. Facing reality is the first step towards repentance and reformation. Pride plays a major part, but one must not underestimate the power of the subpersonalities themselves. Too many people think they can be healed just by going to a charismatic minister or making a simple profession of belief to be healed. But the way of Christ is much more demanding than that, not least because the powers of evil are themselves demanding and will resist defeat. When faced with extinction, evil will always struggle to the last breath. This is why Yah'shua said that demons, whether evil spirits living within people, or our own subpersolaities, are not easily removed without much "fasting and prayer" (Matt.17:21). Much will-power and faith in God is required.

When we create a subpersonality we do, in fact, end up with three "parts", not two. The first "part" is what remains after the subpersonality has become externalised; the second, is the particular vice which coats the third, which is the Light of Christ. To get to the Light you have to go through a middleman, as it were, the vice in question. That's why so many people fail to make real contact with God for they deny that their vice is in the way. Thus the Light remains hidden.

To draw close to Christ a soul must learn to confront his particular vice and re-incorporate it back into his spirit, otherwise the Light behind it will remain permanently hidden. It is this process of "reincorporation" that I want to now speak of.

The first reaction of a Christian -- and I speak from much experience myself in this regard -- when confronted by a vice, is to try to cast it out, supposing that in some way it is a live "demon possession". By doing this you end up by pushing the Light further and further away and this in turn can lead one to the erroneous conclusion that God is not interested and has given up on us. The truth is it is our ignorance of divine processes that has pushed God further away and our unwillgness to confront the truth, be it from pride, shame, or whatever.

When a person stands in judgment of a subpersonality, he makes it stronger and stronger. Because in disowning the vice surrounding the Light of Christ, we end up disowning Christ too.

Now don't misunderstand me. I am not saying we should love vice for you must remember that a vice is simply a state of consciousness that finds its manfestation in our spirit. It is that portion of our spirit which we have "cast out" -- the portion infested by vice, like a diseased part of our body -- that we must reclaim and reintegrate. If I have a disease, I do not go and throw my body away, but take especialy good care of my body so the disease will be overcome. Likewise, I cannot disown a part of my spirit that has been infested by a vice -- I must take that part of my soul back into myself and love it, however revolting it may look because of the vice, until the vice can no longer find a place to dwell. This is what I mean by reintegration.

It is when we do this that the Spirit of Christ can work. By reincorporating the vice, the Light is freed to act, and to return to its proper place within our soul, not as an "exile" banished from our sight.

This is, of course, the message of pure Christianity as Yah'shua taught it. Loving your neighbour as yourself (Matt.5:35), blessing those who curse you (Matt.5:44), and so on. The reason people find it so hard to do these things is because they hate themselves and repress themselves. They cast God out of themselves and so can find no love for others. Our inward life, and the way we behave towards others, are therefore seen to be intimately connected.

Now, let us all be honest here and now, and not postpone the day we have all desired. There are sides of ourselves that we don't like. But let's not congratulate ourselves at our honesty and leave it there, for recognition is only the first step towards becoming whole. For far too many people mental recognition of our dark side, which we call our sinful nature, doesn't result in any kind of reconciliation, reformation or restoration. We cannot afford to stop there.

Now I don't want you to focus on all this ugliness only but to recognise that there is an immensely beautiful side to you too. The ugliness we have in our natures is more often than not simply a failure to recognise that there is a part of us that is wonderful too. Like flies drawn to dirt, we tend to dwell too much on the negative and depressing without addressing all that is pure, virtuous, noble and praiseworthy. Of course, we must have a consciousness of both, but equally we must not forget that it is the Light which drives out the darkness in the end, for as John says in his Gospel, "darkness never understood light" (John 1:5).

There has never been a better remedy than love, but that is not enough. Love, used in the wrong way, can do more harm than good. Love is a power that can either exalt or overwhelm -- it must therefore be channeled in the right way.

Our first reaction to evil, or to something unpleasant, an irritating characteristic in someone, is often to criticise. And we criticise because we are afraid of that person contaminating us -- or it maybe that we see a reflection of ourselves and are expressing a loathing of the same sin or weakness in ourselves. We react to others in the same way we react to ourselves. We react because we can't accept them as human beings, and we can't accept them because we can't accept ourselves. When faced with the realisation of our own weakness we do the very thing we should not -- we try to "push it out" or externalise it, and may end up teaching others to do the same thing. The result is disasterous.

What is that result? We create a new god! Not the God of Heaven, not the God of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah, but a "god" with a small "g" -- a god that oppresses us and demands our worship.

Let's take a common illustration. Let's imagine you're one of those persons who has alot of anger within yourself. You don't like being angry because you know it's either not socially acceptable or because it's against the Christian commandments. Since it is not acceptable, you start to repress it. As you begin to repress it, you start saying to yourself: "I'm not really like that. So I can't be angry. I can't be hostile. I can't be violent. I won't accept this reality as part of my true nature." So you deny you are an angry person, you push it outside of yourself, and try to be better. But it doesn't work.

Life seems to be a long road of externalisations until we end up with a veritable army or subpersonalities. This is so often the fruit of lifeless religion which teaches the principles but lacks the substance. We externalise all the attributes about ourselves we don't like. It could be anger, it could be sexual obsession, a sense of worthlessness, or any of a whole host of ills. First we repress, then we try to utterly deny. As you repress and deny anger, for example, you take your whole angry self and push it out into the exact same as the Light of Christ. You therefore become an "angry Christ". And you perceive God to be angry also.

From this point on in time, your god, or subpersonality, begins to run your life. It is a subpersonality created out of your denial of your own anger and the Light of Christ which gives life to anything you are because it is you, and Christ is unconditional enough to be willing to accept the totality of you even if you aren't.

Through this process our perception of God becomes distorted. Now I am not saying that a man can believe whatever he wants so long as he is honest with himself and doesn't repress or deny himself. God accepts a person, the beautiful and the ugly, not because he wants us to remain that way, but to enable us to love ourselves enough to allow love to work in our lives. This love gives us the sense of worth we need to be really able to hand over ourselves to Christ for total transformation, for which we were intended in the first place. God desires to loose noone. His patience is long, His mercy far greater than His judgment. He does judge, and He is a strict judge, allowing for no immorality or evil in His Kingdom; and once a soul has entered the Kingdom of God, which is the Light of Christ, he will have no more disposition to be evil anyway.

Whenever you deny something that is real, you give it more life. Not only that, you actually give life to every other subpersonality too. Whatever you repress or deny will always bounce back and cause trouble. For many people, suicide seems the easiest solution, but it isn't, because a man's soul is not made pure by his own death. If it was, we would have no need of an atoning Christ, and there would be nothing to stop mankind committing mass suicide to find release. The soul must take responsibility for his own actions, for every subpersonality created, and deal with them. There are no short-cuts, no easy-way-out of personal accountability and responsibility. There is only one way, and Yah'shua the Messiah said that He was that way. He has not left us alone -- He has given a part of Himself to us, given us the free choice to do good or evil with it. Such a sacrifice is, in my opionion, to be rated almost as great as the sacrifice on the Cross which ensures our resurrection and immortality.

Let's deal now with another human problem -- fear. Let's say you are fearful about something -- it doesn't matter what. You try to repress it and say: "I am not afraid". Instead of dealing with the fear head-on, you simply state: "I am not fearful and I will deny that part of me." Disasterous! In this action, you have externalised fear to where your external god is. Now you have an external subpersonality that is a god essence of fear. In other words, it is part of your personality that is fearful, but because it also deals with the spirit realm, it is fearful spirit -- a subpersonality that you are going to deal with because it is going to run your life as the middle man between your real self and the Light of Christ, or God.

Does that sound a familiar scenario? In our western society there are many things we are taught to repress or not allow to be exhibited because they are not acceptable or proper. This could be anything from conduct to characteristics. This is not, of course, to deny that the public moral code is wrong, but it is to educate the soul in the wrong way. Instead of exclusively imposing standards outwardly, society should instead bring people to Christ so that these things can come naturally. And here we have a fundamental paradox in life, which we in the New Covenant call the Aaronic-Melchizedek Paradox, or the system of externally imposed morals versus internally realised and accepted morals. If we were all individuals disconnected from each other then we could, of course, behave how we wanted to until we came to realisation or illumination of the true Christian Way, but since the bad conduct of some can spoil the lives of the majority, external rules and regulations have to be made for the protection of society. Sometimes the rules are wrong, sometimes they are suffocating for those who need space to "breathe", as it were. But this material plane is a plane of paradoxes and contradictions which cannot be resolved finally for the race as a whole until all have come to peace and reconciliation with Christ. If a man has murderous tendencies it is in the interests of society to incarcerate him for its own protection (as well as for his).

Most people say they are continually fearful and they are fearful because at sometime in their lives they denied being fearful. In our western society where toughness is considered a virtue in men, it is not good to expose fear. Yet these "toughies" are probably the most fearful of all, for beneath the bravado lies a mountain of insecurity. To compensate for the fear which they feed by externalising it, they try to compensate by being tougher, and perhaps even becoming violent and criminal.

I remember reading the story of a leader of the Communist Party in one of the South American nations. She was tough, aggressive, angry and pitiless. She hated Christians. One day she went to the office of a Christian leader to give him a piece of her mind. After harranging him for about a quarter of an hour, without letting him get a word in edgeways, the minister looked straight into her eyes, and with love in his heart said to her: "Now, how can I help you?" The mask shattered and the woman broke down in tears, for for the first time in her life she had been exposed to love -- someone had accepted her as she was without attacking her and simply given love. She became a Christian, praise Yahweh! By an act of loving acceptance, the minister had enabled her to accept herself, reintegrate the subpersonalities that she had externalised as hatred, a lack of worth, etc., and been healed by the Light of Christ thus released to shine after years and years of confinement. Whether she was totally healed in that moment, or whether it was a process of which this was the first dramatic step, I don't know. But the healing was real enough. This healing or reconciliation with God we Christians sometimes call "salvation" or "sanctification", for Christ saves us from our selves and puts us into right relationship with Him through the Light within. He shatters the chains we put around ourselves through repression and denial, makes us feel of worth, and allows us to accept ourselves and other people.

We came into this life, this earth existence, to experience mortality. Our spirits constantly have this urge to experience and must deal with the structures that our souls have created. Thus if we are fragmented we experience life through our subpersonalities. Our spirits are restless, they need stimulation; they want to experience God but can't because of those subpersonalities -- therefore they choose the next best thing, life through the artificial and illusiory lenses of subpersonality.

But the honest searcher after truth, who is looking for real fulfilment and happiness, will, in the end, tire of these illusiory and distorted experiences. What must he do? He must start pulling those subpersonalities within himself. This can be particularly difficult, especially when it comes to religion, for those religious subpersonalities can be terribly powerful, especially if one of them is our view of "God". Since we naturally endow God with omnipotence, because He is certainly omnipotent, then we are going to look at that subpersonality as being omnipotent. That "God" is nothing more than a projection of the self into an image of God. In the end that "self" becomes "God" even though it isn't really "God" at all. We pray to it, worship it, and for a while derive a sort of perverse pleasure from it, until after a while we realise that it is giving us nothing in return -- it is simply a black-hole down which our spiritual life pours.

The smashing of such idols can cause major spiritual trauma especially when so much of one's soul is invested in it. That is why false religion is incredibly dangerous. That false "God"-self is going to put up a fight too and won't passively be pushed aside. This false "God"-self believes it is superior to everybody else and enjoys the patronage of the real self.

But there is another dimension to this problem that needs considering, and that is what might be called the "collective subpersonality" of the human race, or what psychologist Carl Jung called the "collective unconscious". These collective subpersonalities are immensely powerful, so powerful, in fact, that they can deceive even the very elect (Matt.24:24). For they are able to imitate many of the true qualities of God....up to a point.

Let me illustrate by taking the example of a pagan god like Baal who is mentioned in the Bible. This god held captive the belief of possibly millions of souls. Each soul that believed in him by externalising the Light of Christ in themselves and then putting on a spiritual robe of Baal on it created a subpersonality; this subpersonality, because it was nearly identical with the subpersonalities of thousands of other believers, took on the identity of a single giant subpersonality. Now these collective subpersonalities are not illusiary for they very much have life; and that life persits for as long as there are people who believe in a mythical character such as Baal. There is a part of the spirit world which borders on the material which is called, by some, the astral plane. This world is cluttered with the creations of man, with his subpersonalities. It is full of every imaginable creature and god you can think of, from Greek centaurs to Hindu deities such as Vishnu. They are the creations of human beings whose spirits have become dislocated through the process of the externalisation of fears, hatreds, superstitions, and every other kind of vice you can mention. Yes, there really is a Vishnu, a Brahma, a Baal, a Molech, but they are not the creations of Almighty God -- they are the creations of the diseased minds of men. Sometimes these images become so solid that evil spirits -- demons -- inhabit them and animate them even more spectacularly, appearing before religious devotees in visions and other kinds of manifestations. One Hindu guru, who later became a Christian, related in his book, Death of a Guru, how he saw all these Hindu gods and was convinced they were real. But in fact they were simply the projections of countless millions of Hindus, their collective subpersonalities, animated in many instances by evil spirits or demons.

The astral world is cluttered with the fantasies of men and often immature souls who start sensing an existence beyond the material world make contact with them and think they are dealing with objective reality. There are even false Christs who manifest to people and teach them false principles. I well remember being shown the account of a man who claimed "Christ" appeared before him in Tibet and taught him a typically Tibetan doctrine, teachings at total variance with those of the New Testament. There are many false pseudo-Christian gospels around that have been inspired by these imitation Christs, such as the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, the Gospel of Peace, the Gospel of the Holy Twelve, the Keys of Enoch, the Book of Urantia, and others. And most of the writers of these pseudo-gospels claim access to a mythical spiritual source called the "Akashic Record" on which is recorded the history of heaven and earth and all things therein. That such a record exists I have no doubt but I do not believe it records objective truth.

Yes, the spirit world is as polluted as our material world is -- it is full of astral shells, subpersonalities, collective subpersonalities, and much else besides. You'll find Sherlock Holmes there, numerous versions of Napoleon (one of the favourite fantasies of the mentally disturbed), and a whole host of pagan gods and goddesses who take on more life the more they are believed in.

Is it any wonder that the Bible says that when evil is finally banished there will not only be a new earth but a new heaven also (Rev.21:1)? There are many Christians -- the majority, I suspect, who seem to believe that heaven is just one place, and that hell is just one place. But Paul speaks of three heavens in one passage in the New Testament (2 Cor.12:2). You may be sure that Satan, the arch-enemy of God and of man, is not content to just despoil the earth -- the spirit worlds are just as open a target to him. And these worlds that he has invaded by demonic forces are busily active in creating mass deception amongst human beings, to prevent them from coming to the one and only Lord Yah'shua the Messiah, who alone can save.

We, who deny the true God and create our own images, are polluting heaven not just for ourselves but for others too, most especially our children who often come to believe in the same gods that we do. We are never going to be able to clear up this mess ourselves which is why the Bible speaks of divine intervention in the last days. Supernatural deliverance is available to us, but we must want to be delivered first. And having obtained that desire, we must come to a conscious recognition of the pits we have fallen into and be willing to climb out, often with a great deal of inner struggle.

So, let us assume that we come to a realisation that we have created a false god by by pushing the real one outside ourselves, what are we to do to be saved from this little tyrant who would hold us bound in its power, who is veiling the Light of Christ and the true God? First of all, we mustn't listen to him in our mind nor allow him to manipulate our feelings. One of the first things that little dictator will do is stir up fear, just as all earthly dictators do. They play on our insecurity and, just as they did to the children of Israel in Sinai, remind them of the "good old days" in Egypt where there was a kind of security, whilst conveniently forgetting to bring to memory the cruel oppression. To cross into the Promised Land of the Light of Christ we must first pass through a desert, a transition phase; the searing heat of that desert usually convinces the man who is a slave to his subpersonalities that the old way of life was better after all -- and it is here that faith must conquer fear and doubt.

The Christian life is pre-eminently one of faith -- faith in God's promises and in the atonement of Christ. As the patient trusts the medication of the physician, so we too must trust the omniscience of the Master Physician and be willing to take our medicine without murmuring. The trouble is, what if the subpersonality we are trying to re-integrate is trying to imitate that Master Physician and is doing such a good job about it that we don't know how to tell the real from the false?

It is in such circumstances that the written Word of God becomes indispensible. Whilst it is true that we must live by revelation -- by being in intimate contact with God through the Light of Christ -- we must also recognise that there are a host of Christ-impersonators both in the world of matter in which we live as well as the astral world which tries to pawn itself off as the pure realm of the Spirit of God the Father. I have seen so many people led astray by these imitation gods who might have spared themselves such a fate by simply relying on the written promises of God. The Word of God is, as the book of Proverbs tells us, a "lamp to our feet" (Ps.119:105) to guide us in those dark, foggy and murky days of wandering. There will always a time in the life of every Christian when his spiritual senses dessert him as he passes through the uncharted waters of his own mind and heart. "The heart," the Bible reminds us, can be "deceptive" (Jer.17:9). Though useful most of the time, there are times when it can be tricked by subtle speech and the wooing of invisible forces bent on destruction. Thus the written Word becomes indispensable, and it is for this reason (as well as for many others) that God has ensured the Scriptures have been preserved for us over the millennia. Though they are scorned and riddiculed by those who suppose themselves to be on a higher spiritual evolutionary plane to it, they will outlive every sceptic because their truths are timeless, and their promises eternal.

The written Word, the Scriptures, reveal the nature of the True God. It is by using the blue-print given to us by Christ that we can expose the false subpersonality "gods" and identify the True One. The first place to start is by dealing with our emotions. Does our picture of God, and the emotions we attach to it, correspond to the God revealed by Yah'shua the Messiah? Do we, when we think of God, find ourselves filled with peace and joy, love and generosity, discipline and hope, or any other characteristic portrayed in the New Testament, or do we feel fear, do we feel threatened, agitated, or some other negative reaction? If we do, we must be honest enough to say: "These feelings I have about God are inconsistent with the God portrayed in the New Testament by Christ -- therefore the chances are that this "god" I fear is in reality one of my subpersonalities. Now I must deal with it."

Such an approach is, I would maintain, the beginning of wisdom (Prov.9:19). The Scriptures teach us, for example, that God is love (1 John 4:8). They also teach that this perfect love casts out all fear 1 John 4:18). If we feel no love for our "god" and are afraid of "him" the chances are that this "God" is a being of our own creation. If a person is afraid of sex then the chances are he will look upon, and worship, a God who despises sex. Or the opposite is true -- if a man has an inordinate sexual drive the chances are he will see God in exaggerated sexual terms. Which ever extreme you choose, subpersonalities are created who pretend to be the True God. To challenge them because of the testimony of Scripture is going to set off internal tensions -- that is certain. The trouble is that many people nowadays espouse the false doctrine that whetever causes tension cannot be right and that we should just be "ourselves". Such is a dangerous half-truth, even a fatal one.

I often illustrate the falacy of this thinking with a true if somewhat incredible story of a man who thought he was a poached egg. He would always be restless and agitated unless someone gave him a piece of toast to sit on. Once seated on a piece of toast he bacame calm and, as the world would see it, "normal". But he was anything but normal! This is, of course, an extreme illustration but I hope it makes the point. What we may conceive as being "normal" may well be the very opposite. And doubtless you yourselves can think of many other examples.

Let me give you another illustration. We often meet other Christians who are very attached to certain ideas and doctrines which they are unwilling to reconsider if, for example, you show them Biblical passages contradicting their belief system. They will often react with hostility and behave quite irrationally, accuse you of being a heretic and use many other words of insult. Such a reaction is the typical response of a subpersonality, and probably one masquerading as the True God. Such a subpersonality is often layered with all kinds of insecurity because such persons have never actually encountered the True God but have, instead, been converted to a set of doctrines. It is actually remarkably easy to identify someone who has encountered the True God for they simply radiate the fruits of that encounter -- love, gentleness, kindness, patience, long, suffering, and so on (2 Cor.6:6, etc.). These people are usually inwardly secure. They have met the True God on a one-to-one basis and are growing in His grace day by day. They are not fanatics -- they have nothing to loose in debate or discussion for they are secure in True Love.

I once worshipped a subpersonality whom I thought was God. It was the "god" taught by one of the churches. When the Scriptures and that subpersonality turned out to be almost totally incompatible, I went through a severe mental crisis. The subpersonality, knowing that I was on to "him", used all its power to throw me into confusion and to create a drug-like dependancy on it. It lost, in the end, but only after an accute struggle. In my dreams I would be chased by this and related "subpersonalities" who were out to kill me. But once I had dealt with it, the chasing ended.

The power of God in Christ is greater than the power of any subpersonality. The subpersonalities can create a life of terror for only so long because the human body eventually wearies of them. That is why so many people turn away from religion after a bad religious experience. I don't blame them, yet at the same time I would encourage them not to give up but approach God in an entirely different way. Often a period of re-orientation is needed after a bad religious encounter and people should be given space to breathe and settle down. Sometimes the subpersonalities are so strong that some kind of outside intervention is required. More often than not people simply need a totally different spiritual climate, namely exposure to the True God.

Above all, I want you to know that there is no fear in God. Now it is true the Scriptures talk about "fearing God" (e.g. Ps.66:16) but this has nothing to do with terror -- the word fear here means a holy reverence. We do, unfortunately, find ourselves confronted with language problems and so I would encorage you not to prejudge a matter without thoroughly searching it out and getting to the true meaning. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the Bible has been attacked more out of ignorance -- sometimes willfull ingorance -- than out of a true understanding of its message.

I focus on fear for in my experience this is one of humanity's greatest problems. The true Spirit of God, as I have said, knows no fear. It does, however, know challenge, curiosity, and creativity. The True Spirit of God is incredibly alive. It is an energy, a power, a force -- call it whatever you will -- that is inexhaustible. It can be identified simply by the fact that it can do far more than an ordinary human being can. When human energy resourses exhaust themselves, spiritual ones continue on. That is not to say that a person living in Christ never gets tired in his body but it is to say that his spirit never wearies. Even though a Christian may get discouraged and depressed from time to time because of the burdens of the world he always enjoys a supernatural renewal of his strength.

Let us look st some typical fears. There is the fear of not acting properly. The fear of not doing things quite right. Fear of parents. Fear of your children. Fear of your employers. Fear of your creditors. Fear of sex. Fear of your outward appearance. Fear of looking a fool. There are hundreds of fears, and with each of these is a self-created subpersonality, an "incarnation", if you like, of that fear. Does your personality change when you with different kinds of people? Subpersonalities take over in different situations and give a totally false image of the false you. Outwardly you can be cheerful and smiling yet inwardly you are living in mortal terror! Outwardly you may appear warm and affectionate but when someone touches you you may turn to ice. You may appear frightened and uncommunicative whereas inwardly you are loving and caring. All of these are the symptoms of the existance of subpersonalities.

Now there are what might also be called positive subpersonalities. In your fantasy you may create the perfect man or the perfect woman, as you see him or her. You may even create an image of Christ that is close to the real thing. That "christ" may be warm and loving but perhaps is undisciplined and will allow you to do whatever you want, for example, indulge in free sex. How ever many correspondences there are between this pseudo-Christ and the real Christ, "He" is still just a subpersonality. This subpersonality may actually be able to achieve much good in your life and because of that you may come to believe that this is the True Christ. But you would be mistaken. And you can find out if this is the True Christ or not when you come to challenge "Him" with the True Christ of the New Testament. I even know people who, refusing to accept the testimony of the Bible, believe that their subpersonality-christ is the "true Christ" and the True Christ is a subpersonality!! But that is mercifully quite rare.

There are many false christs around, as Yah'shua Himself testified there would be. There is, for example, the "New Age Christ" who is a multi-faith "christ". Once "He" is believed in, a subpersonality is created. People encounter this "christ", see visions of "Him", experience many supernatural things through "Him", but "He" is false! All you have to do when confronted with a person who believes in this false christ is show Him what the True Christ taught in the New Testament, and if the morals and teachings are different, lo and behold, you have a false christ and a devious subpersonality! And you'll get a reaction too -- probably an angry one. Subpersonalities are easily offended because they are a part of YOU, and YOU are EGO or self-centred. But the True Christ is not offended because He knows and understands the minds and hearts of all men and women -- He will not strike back in anger.

This ministry of which I am a representitive today has many commissions. One is to bring agnostics and unbelievers to the True Christ. Another is to bring the True Christ to people who worship various subpersonality-christs who are, in reality, imposters even though they bring forth many of the fruits of the True Christ, for truth and error is fairly liberally blended together in them, to differing degrees.

We are a ministry of modern revelation and prophecy. Yahweh has restored numerous keys to help souls find the way back to the true Christ whom they have externalised and modified to suit their particular nature or circumstances. This ministry has been established to help people find the Kingdom of God within and, once they have found it, to organise them to teach it to others so that they too can find the new and everlasting peace and love of God. It is our sincere testimony that the Master Yah'shua the Messiah is alive and active and is waiting to reveal Himself to the heart that will open up in its turn. We want to invite you to seriously investigate this work, accept the Biblical Yah'shua the Messiah as your personal Saviour, and get to know Him through intimate acquaintance. He has given us a spiritual reference manual in the Scriptures but He has also given us far more -- He has given us a part of Himself, His Light, which resides in every living soul in this room, which is waiting to be freed from our various subpersonalities that control, dominate and enslave us. We would like to invite you to speak with the local Pastors afterwards who will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

May Yahweh bless you, in the Name of His Son, Yah'shua the Messiah. Amen.

Comments from Readers

"This was long reading but very good writing so it was worth it. Thank you! (EE, Norway, 30 January 2011)