The Spiritual Christian Unity Prophecy

A Book of Prophecy of the Scripture

By Tim Warlick

EPILOGUE

God as Your Pilot vs. the Song of the Sirens : What's Love Got to Do with It?

A metaphor for how our unity in the foolishness of the cross overcomes the wisdom of man.

Set sail with God, and you immediately hear the sirens of humanly wisdom begin to call in the distance. In an unbroken chorus since the days of Adam, they continue to this day to harp on the oldest, lying vanity, how that men and women can, as gods knowing good and evil, steer the course of life for themselves which best ensures that, "…Ye shall not surely die:" (Ge 3:4 AV)

Sin never appears so much as a turning from God's wisdom, but ever a turning to man's.

From the very first moment, and for as long as you sojourn there onboard with Him, however many years it may be, you will still hear those distant, alluring voices appeal to your logic with songs of praise for the ways of man, ever reminding that you will never find lasting comfort in the vicissitudes of life's ocean that surrounds you unless you heed their call to let logical conscience be your guide. Yet, their warm intonations that sound so helpful are in fact callously feigned affection for your welfare, serving only to disguise their jealousy over the possibility of the true life they fear you may have found in God, which their own pride of life won't allow them to choose for themselves. To draw you away from Jesus, there are voices committed to sing of false, earthly wisdom, and there is evil in high places that orchestrates the lies, all of whom would be only too happy to see you drawn out onto that ocean alone, without Him, where your course would be as surely set on misery and ultimate destruction, as is their own.

Nor is there successful sailing or ease of passage to be found in following the seemingly sage advice of old salts who tell sea stories full of lies about how they found the real treasure of life when they safely "shipped 'round the horn" with others in the past; nor will such be found in the leadership of any mortal captains of other ships as you may chance to encounter, coursing this same, troubled, uncharted sea of life, all of whom are, truth be known, following maps of conjecture drawn by self-wise fools, blind and led by the blind. Rather, in His service, in the world but never of it; on life's ocean but never under it; tossed by tempest but never overturned; your eternal, constant Peace is on board with you in the Pilot, Himself, who calls you to take your station on His ship, and in turn, take your rest in Him below decks, at all times securely set apart by His word and sanctified from the world, in safety from the tribulation of it, set apart as well from the errors of the worldly-wise. Yet they never seem so very far away, do they?

It's a journey in which He promises, and is fully capable, to faithfully sustain us always in His vessel in constant peace, no matter how violently the storm rages around us. But, present storm or not, it's a journey we can make most exceedingly arduous for ourselves by our own misperceptions, simply by listening to the wrong voices.

Though you sail to the ends of the earth with Him, yet there they are, those ever-beckoning sirens, singing sweet and low in the distance. They're never quite out of earshot in this world, no matter how far He takes you, no matter how many straits He's safely seen you through, or how many times it was only His Right Arm that reached out and held your head above water, the Eternal Savior, hauling you, one more time, back on board to the safety and comfort of His loving arms. Even well along on so great and outwardly perilous a journey, so ably captained by One who has proven Himself, time and time again, the only Way…yet, even so, as soon as underway again in His protective ark, so soon commences to be heard again the lilting song of those sirens, however faint in the distance, ever seeking to draw the unwary sailor near, giving soft voice to the sweetest melodies imaginable, all as may most enticingly bear to the ear every line of seductive reasoning the mind of man might willingly entertain.

You cannot hope to silence them yourself. The sirens sing the mind's most favored tune of the moment, because man's own logic ultimately serves man's own desires and lusts, so that "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." (Jas 1:14 AV) In this world, the sirens of the logic of man will always hold forth to us in song extolling, "…a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." (Pr 14:12).

You can't drown out the sound of those songs with logic. Their song *is* your logic.

You can't even hope to always see the Pilot's wisdom, either in His every command to you, or in the direction He steers. You have to willingly choose to obey what the world calls "foolishness", over logic, because "…the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned." (1Co 2:14 AV) You can only choose to ignore logic, and give ear, instead, to the Pilot's own, sweet voice of command, as you "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." (Pr 3:5 AV)

You'll never hear Him because you've wisely learned to using anything the world calls wisdom. Your learning and logic in this world calls you to death and destruction on the shoals, along with the rest of unbelieving, faithless, ultimately-shipwrecked humanity.

You can only hear Him over the competing voices by constantly listening for the peculiar love that sounds in His voice, alone; and you can only hear His love, if you can always recall, and ever hear ringing in your ears His cry in agony, "Paid in Full", groaned forth as He long ago laid down full, bloody fare, for your passage into eternal life, with and in Him.

On this ship, your eternal peace is in constantly remembering the staggering price of love paid to get you on board by the same Pilot who says, "…All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." (Mt 28:18 AV) Signed on as wholly unskilled apprentices to His kind of love, our principal, assigned task, clearly spoken in the Pilot's one, new commandment, is to learn the knowledge beyond human wisdom in how much He loves us, whose apostle wrote, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." (1Jo 4:10-11 AV)

We can learn what He means when He says, "But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I [am] the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these [things] I delight, saith the LORD." (Jer 9:24 AV) We can learn how He revealed His glory to Moses thus, "And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin..." (Ex 34:6-7 AV)

Finally, we can learn how He reveals His glory today, as we unite in one with Him and with one another in His singular love for all believers, where we believers can behold His glory, and where the world can no longer ignore it, just as He said, "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." (Joh 17:22-24 AV); and again, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all [men] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." (Joh 13:34-35 AV)

One in His eternal love for every believer in Him, we're eternally one in what He did for us all on the cross to get us all into Him in the first place.

Learn the Love, and follow His leading to be with Him where He is, who gave the apostle to write, "Hereby perceive we the love [of God], because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down [our] lives for the brethren" (1Jo 3:16 AV); and who said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (Joh 15:13 AV); and in another place, "And he said to [them] all, If any [man] will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (Lu 9:23 AV); and yet again, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will [my] Father honour." (Joh 12:24-26 AV)

Let's follow Him in His eternal journey in love as we daily join our Pilot in crucifixion, both individually and corporately. Just as He did, take up your cross daily for all who will come to believe in Him, giving self eternally for *all* the brethren, as you daily crucify in yourself the "old man" in "the body of sin". That's the body of sin we crucify individually "which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts", as we each kill off within ourselves all that would separate each of us from life in the Spirit. That's also the body of sin we kill off within ourselves that would separate each of us from one another, as we collectively crucify daily the carnal man in each of us that causes "envying, and strife, and divisions" in the living body of Christ. That's the body of believers, all of us in His one body in love together, alive together in His eternal Spirit of love, through faith in Christ as God's love to us all, in the world today though never of it, all of us together crossing life's ocean with and in Him.

It's a long voyage that requires perseverance, and the roughest waters are just ahead, but we believers all patiently serve the perfect Pilot. We're all in the same boat together, in Jesus, the one perfect vessel of God's love, and the only Holy One honored to bear the name, Christ, and fly the colors of the Kingdom of God. No one of us reaches the far shore without Him, or apart from all that are in Him.

Shun the siren's song of the separated voices of logic, and instead learn, and learn to live, the foolishness of God's love on the cross. Follow Him in His eternal, self-sacrificial love for all believers to repentance in Him, including those in every Christian denomination and Christian faith group.

There's no logic of man in God nailed to a tree.