HEART of the MATTER Short: Seven Separate Scenes

From the Mecca of Mormonism
Salt Lake City, Utah
This is HEART of the MATTERTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology. Short

Where we are learning together how to walk as Christians in the AGE OF FULFILLMENT
Show 8s Seven Separate Scenes
Taped Sunday November 15th 2020
Aired Monday November 16th 2020

Like many of you, when I was a young kid I would go to my parents kitchen table and take my army men out – those green plastic frozen in position guys – and there I would create all sorts of fantastic scenarios me on that empty flat surface. I want to borrow from this practice of setting up empty tables with scenarios tonight and use them to illustrate and explain what God has done to reconcile the world to himself once and for all through the victory of His Son over sinMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace. and deathSeparation from God—now overcome. Physical death remains, but it no longer separates us from life with God..

God's Creation and Human Fall

The first separate scene establishes what God did at the creation.

Garden of Eden

On this table God established a beautiful garden, and Man – called Adam and Eve – and he gave them the freedom to choose by placing one single forbidden fruit tree in the whole place. We also know that there was a tempter therein, commonly called Satan, who tempted Eve to disobey God. So, on this flat surface we have a Garden, animals, two human beings made in God’s image, free will, a tempter and a forbidden tree with fruit. God’s human beings could not handle that setting, and they helped to destroy it for the rest of us who might come along.

From Fall to Law

Afterward, we go to another table

SECOND TABLE – Fall to Law

Here we have God establishing things on a second table. We have tales of Noah, a man named Abraham and his wife Sarah, Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaac, Ishmael, and then Jacob, Isaacs son, who has twelve sons himself. A fascinating scenario is when God calls Abraham to be a “Father of the Nations, and makes a covenant with him. We watch all that unfold and grow until the time all of the tribes from Jacob are found in bondage to Egypt. What a scene! And its all in preparation to bring forth another scenario – our third table.

A Nation under the Law

The Third Table – A Nation under the Law

This table was set when Moses was called to go to Egypt to set the Nation of Israel free from bondage to Egypt. Once out in the wilderness, YHWH through Moses established the Law which commenced forward for about 1500 years! This table was the most elaborate (visually) as it contained the Law, the Prophets, the Poets, the Songs, temple, and prophecies about a coming Messiah. This table was a culture and there are numerous stories about God calling His people to be his bride – “but they were not willing.” The last book of the prophecies to these people warned them that the great and dreadful day of the Lord was on the way. And then there was a 400 year period of silence where the heavens were silent.

400 YEARS OF NO-TABLE DISPLAYS, then
The Fourth Table

The fourth Table the God set begins with the first and last prophet to come out of the Nation of Israel officially. John the Baptist who coming and warning the people that the axe (that Malachi 400 years earlier warned about) was laid at the root of the tree and they had better repent and prepare themselves for the coming Messiah. Who did, in fact, arrive. And he lived his life out fulfilling everything that was expected of the promised one according to scripture. This fourth table includes all the promises God gave that would occur through His Son, His calling and training his apostles, and then his death and resurrection, and victory over the grave, sin and death. And it wraps up with his ascension into the heavens with an angel promising the men, like he promised them, that he would return in the same way he left.

The Fifth Table

This table represents almost forty years time (or what is called a biblical Generation) and we read all about it in the book of Acts and the other New Testament Epistles. The major players on this table was the Holy Spirit, who arrived as promised and led the second major players, the apostles who were called to do three major things: To go and reach to all of the House of Israel that they could and call them to repent. To prepare and guide the Bride (of believers) for the coming destruction which would commence

The Return and Promise of the Messiah

At the return of the Messiah. And bring her forth pure and unblemished. And to, one by one, lose their lives in the process. We also have another major player enter the scene here named Paul who was called to also reach out to the Gentiles of that world and share the Good News and His promised return with them. On this table we read as the Holy Spirit was working abundantly through these chosen apostles all as a means to reach the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel and any Gentile interested in hearing the truth. Those who believed on them were under some direct apostolic authority on how to live and prepare for the Lord Jesus’ return.

The Sixth Table

Depicts the great trouble and woe that Jesus describes in Matthew 24, Luke 21 and Mark 13 as coming within a generation. The apostles were given the signs which would accompany this period and the Book of RevelationA symbolic prophecy fulfilled in 70 A.D.—not a prediction of future global events. (which was specifically given John to deliver to the seven actual churches that existed in Asia Minor) plainly details what was quickly coming upon them/then. The Revelation explains that Satan was roaming about like a lion because he knew his time was short (before The King of King would return to cast him into the Lake of Fire forevermore) and as a result he unleashed all sorts of horrors on the land and the people – believers too.

There are major players on this table including beasts and creatures (who represent Roman Emperors and Armies), plagues and signs, viles and horsemen and trumpets and woes – all of which were described by Jesus as coming within a generation and all of which are validated by secular historians like Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Josephus. The scenes on this table are the wrap-up of everything that was ever done to overcome the effects of the Fall spiritually as the Second Adam (Jesus) was about to bring total and complete victory over all things SPIRITUALLY to earth – including spiritual death, hell or sheol, Satan and material religionA fulfilled system of temples, rituals, and laws—replaced by direct spiritual relationship. – at his promised return.

Here he would take his apostolically led church-bride, who was pure and unblemished, and save her from the surrounding souls who rejected him by taking her to the New JerusalemThe spiritual reality of God's fulfilled presence with humanity—replacing Sheol after 70 A.D. which was established above. After that, everything related to material relationships with God and material religion – which were all established on tables 2-5 – was destroyed. All of it, as a sign and type to show that all people have access to God by faith on His Son, whose finished work reconciled the world to the father. And we are now ready to see how the last table was set by God, once and forever more.

The Seventh Table Scene

We might see the six tables as we see the six days of creation, where God labored to create the world. Only this time, over these six table periods, God was establishing his spiritual kingdom in heaven and earth. And once EVERYTHING necessary to reconcile the world to Himself was established and accomplished materially (through nations and people and wars and death) and ONCE His Son had absolute victory over sin, death, hell, the grave, Satan, and any other obstacle that stood in the way between God and Man, we enter into a period of rest and peace.

Not material rest and peace, that will never be on this earth, but spiritual peace and rest as the Kingdom of GodGod’s spiritual reign—fulfilled and present, not political or future. is within all those who now believe. Gone are all the material affectations of external religion found on the other tables – Jew and Jerusalem, Priesthoods, Genealogies, Temples, Rites and Rituals, Tithes, Apostles, Prophets, Brick and Mortar institutions, Authorities in Man, Deacons and Elders. All have been replaced in full by The Holy Spirit, The New Heaven and New Earth, The New Jerusalem (which is above), and Laws written on the hearts and minds of individuals.

The New Spiritual Order

We now thrive in direct unencumbered relationship with the true and living God, seen as the Lord God Almighty, the one who sits on the throne. He has gifted us with the written word to help us see what he has accomplished, and how he works, and who he is, and how to approach him in spirit and truth. And the principles He taught while on earth remain true and absolute, principles of FREEDOM and LIBERTY through FAITH, LOVE, and HOPE, principles of dying to self and choosing Him as our King. Table seven is what remains. All the rest of it are on the separated table scenes from before and anytime a person goes back and chooses to embrace elements on the first six tables.

A Spiritual Journey

They are moving in the opposite direction of what God has done for the world. Truly, what we are really experiencing on this seventh table is what was established on the first – except now it’s all spiritual. It’s a place where all believers are new creations (like Adam and Eve), where we are all members of a heavenly paradise and where we are in direct communication with the Living God, and free to live our lives unencumbered except to love – love God and love neighbor as self, principles embodied in the refusal to partake of the forbidden fruit, and thereby choosing life (over death).

The Table of Fulfillment

Religions all over the world try and establish themselves on one or more of these table scenes. My suggestion to you is to live in the table of fulfillment, which is a personal environment of peace, rest and ultimate liberty because the Kingdom of God is within you – all glory to God.

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