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Pure Identity: The Heart of Millennial Worship
“All flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord.” Isa. 66:23
The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." Jn 4:23-24
“So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Rom. 8:8
[Note: The following article is synopsized from the Addendum to The Body and the Beast Series entitled Pure Worship and the Dissolution of Adamic Nationality. Please consult that writing for a more in depth look at this fascinating subject.]
Worship has the power to purify. Worship also has the capacity to be corrupted. To understand how worship can be corrupted, we have to understand the dynamic purpose of worship.When we think of worship, we think of an activity, and we think of a relational heart interchange between men and God. All this is very, very true. When we worship, we sing, we dance, we shout, we fall prostrate, and we offer all our actions in life as obedient sacrifices. We also experience heart to heart interchange with the Father in that sacred place of hushed spiritual intimacy.
But worship is also an active energy whose purpose is to bring us into translated identity-conformity with the One we worship. As the One we worship is Holy, so is our worship of Him designed to make us Holy as well—conformed to His Nature. In short, worship changes us.
The whole of Scripture portrays two immense dynamics of which God is at the center. One is worship. The other is salvation. According to the Bible, all the universe is oriented to worship the Creator. And the Bible itself is all about the Plan that brings Creation into alignment with the nature of the Creator.
These dynamics are of one mind. The Plan of Salvation leads us to Worship. And Worship promotes the Plan of Salvation. Worship acts to energize our ongoing spiritual change out of darkness into light.
Consider this simple example: at the heart of salvation is repentance. Repentance is surrender. And surrender is an act of worship. So we see worship is found at the heart of salvation.In other writings, we’ve labored time and again to show that the core issue of salvation is identity change. Specifically, through salvation, we are changed out of and lay behind us forever an old identity in Adam to become a new, separated (i.e., holy) identity in Christ. This is what the new birth is about, and it is what discipleship is about.
New birth is our initial translation of identity. Discipleship is the ongoing process of identity purification, bringing the fleshly rest of us into subjection to that new spiritual identity—apart from all surrounding us that bears fleshly adamic identity—“the world”—including family and nations. Discipleship touches every natural adamic tie we have. All this is at the core of salvation.
If you can see this, then you can immediately see that worship, as a correlative of salvation, is geared to energizing this ongoing identity change, out of Adam, into Christ—out of Adam, into the Name of the Father.
Worship is a change agent of purified identity in Christ. When we associate the ideas of worship and holiness, we are not only acknowledging that God is holy, but that we are moving toward conformity in that same holiness. Thus worship itself is about identity conversion and the ongoing purifying thereof.
The Corrupting of Worship
Worship however becomes corrupted when it becomes divorced in our thinking from its active role in our salvation, specifically, its role in promoting ongoing identity change and purification.
In a general and more obvious way, we already have some concept of corrupt worship. Most people aligned with the worship movements understand that worship is corrupt or false when our heart and actions in life do not support what we offer from our lips and bodily actions on Sunday. We know you can’t lie and cheat on Saturday night and offer true worship Sunday morning. It’s easy to find this taught in any worship conference.
But our understanding of worship has not touched our thinking pertaining to our root identity in the earth as the Body of Christ—specifically, the separation of our identity as the Body of Christ from all other nation-based identities.
Rather, just the opposite. In today’s worship movement, worship is being used to fundamentally reinforce, retrench and re-align the Body of Christ back under our original adamic identities as nations, and to somehow sanctify or christen those identities throughout the world. An insidious misunderstood and misapplied concept of “all nations worship” is everywhere in the church, parading the flags and imagined virtues of nations before the Lord—beginning with America and Israel.
The concept runs something like this. The Bible prophesies a time when all nations will come and present offerings of worship to the Lord in Jerusalem/ Mt. Zion. The Scripture says every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. John says that multitudes from every nation and language will worship around the Throne of God. Isaiah says all flesh will come to worship before the Lord.
All this is then applied to a definition of worship stripped of the component of identity change. In other words, worship is defined only in terms of actions before the Lord and relational interchange of heart intimacy.
By combining such passages with this defective concept of worship, the Body of Christ has been suckered into using worship to reinforce in herself an unholy sense of identity with the nations—even to the place of actively supporting the fleshly policies of nations—and to sanctify that which at its root is contrary to the meaning of salvation.
This corrupted understanding of worship has infested not only the worship movements but naturally the prophetic and intercessory movements as well. Today, on the strength of the misapplied passages above, the prophetic movements declare all kinds of “wonderful, glorious” destinies for various nations and “revival” of their cultures in righteousness. The intercessory movements, meanwhile, are bogged down in the fruitless proposition “sanctifying” governmental systems of this world through altering their every flesh-born law.
It’s not far-fetched at all to say that, for all practical purposes, the Body of Christ has lost all sense of identity distinction from the world and its nations. Of course, this has been the issue of contest throughout the church age as it was with Israel, and the church at large has failed this contest in every generation. This failure has serviced the kingdoms of the anti-christ very well and is being brought to a harvest of evil soon to be reaped.
Future Worship and the True Destiny of the Nations
To set us free from this false concept of national worship, we have to dispel the darkness woven into the church’s application of kingdom age prophecies regarding the nations. We need to understand what is going to happen to the nations and what the context is for the worship they will be offering.
Here is what we must understand:
1. In the time of the Lord’s fully manifest reign, Scripture’s prophets keep a clear demarcation between the term “nations” and the terms “Israel-Zion-Jacob-Jerusalem.” They associate the concept of salvation (eternal life) exclusively with Israel, and applicable to the nations only as nationals “join themselves” to (i.e., become baptized into the saving holy and separated identity of) Israel.
The word nation comes from the Latin “natio” and simply means origins. It’s where we get our word nativity. It refers to origins in Adam, except where it is used to refer to origin in Christ, where it is called a “holy nation.” An adamic nation is a flesh nation, whereas the nation of God (i.e., the Christian nation) is a spirit nation.
Anything thus identified as a “nation” does not have eternal life. This is consistent with the distinction that exists now between the church and the world. That distinction will still exist after the Lord’s return.
2. Nothing of the flesh is ultimately pleasing to the Lord. This includes fleshly worship. And it is as true of the time after His return as it is of the time before His return.
It is true that Isaiah says all flesh will come and worship before the Lord. But we know from the New Covenant that the Father is ultimately seeking spiritual worship, not fleshly worship. That which is of the flesh cannot please God.
Because adamic nations are flesh nations only, they can only offer fleshly worship. This means that the kind of “worship” to be offered by those classed as “nations” at the time of the Lord’s fully visible reign falls short of the worship associated with eternal life. It must necessarily be of a different order and not of the caliber which ultimately pleases the Father.
Under these conditions, let’s look at the flesh-level worship to be offered by the nations.
Pure Worship vs. Compelled Worship
Isaiah makes abundantly clear that the worship of fleshly nations at the time of the Lord’s full take over will be a compelled worship, not one of free choice. For many it will be a worship based in dread resulting from the aftermath of the tribulation period with the near annihilation of mankind itself.
What few are left of unredeemed national peoples at the Lord’s appearance will be literally scared to death of Him after they see what He has done to the final beast system. Isaiah and others make clear that after it is all said and done, very few people will be left alive on the earth compared to the number that exist now. Whoever survives will be in a state of terror over what has happened.
More importantly, these nation survivors will not become instant converts to the faith! Their hearts will not have been “melted by the Lord’s tender gaze” as is being romantically believed now. They will still be at enmity with the Lord, and that enmity will have to eventually be broken either by their heart’s conversion or by their death, just as it is now.
But in between their intransigence and their conversion, they will be required to present themselves in the worship of servitude before the Lord and His People. Thus is the nature of their fleshly worship.
This truth is wholly consistent with the prophecy that all nations will worship the Lord but the overcoming Body of Christ will rule (“smite”) the nations with a rod of iron. Think about it. If all worship were the kind we associate with hearts in love with God, and all nations offered such worship, what possible need could there be for the earth to be ruled with a rod of iron?
Compelled Worship: Forced vs. Anointed
The ultimate goal of worship is to convert the heart and bring it into conformity to the nature of the one worshipped. This applies to forced worship as well.
Over time, under the ongoing influence of the Lord’s present reign and His People—immortal and otherwise—those still identified as “nations,” those still outside of identity in Christ and New Israel, will experience softening of heart on the way toward identity conversion into eternal life and the joining of New Israel. Under this influence, which we today call and still know as the anointing, the worship of such people prior to conversion will take on a more willing and joyful feel. Many nations will thus be tamed and will serve as more positive instruments of the Lord’s purposes.
There will actually be pleasure associated with this level of worship, even joy and gladness. This accounts for why in some places the prophets are able to tell “nation” people to “sing for joy.” Nevertheless, it will still be worship by the flesh, even if anointed flesh. It will not be the worship associated with salvation. As long as men are separated in heart from the Lord, their worship must ultimately be compelled and cannot ultimately please the Lord, even if it is tamed under the anointing. (Think about that long and hard.)
So within the realm of compelled fleshly worship will be a division between hard forced worship and softer anointed gladsome worship.
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This article has been dedicated to promoting fulfilment of that identity-pure worship destiny in your heart, and in the church at large. Remember, after it’s all over, everything in the earth will be worshipping the Lord. The only question is, at what level of identity will you appear to make your offering?
Selah.
Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, RI, USA
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org9/03
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