Follow_Up_to_Sting_Song_Says

By Fred Pruitt

Responding to the recent article “Sting Song Says,” someone wrote asking what I thought about Saul’s “heaven” status, and whether the Holy Spirit was “on” or “in” the OT prophets, etc.

On this Saul/David issue, I ceased a long time ago wondering about the eternal destiny of OT characters, or even to try to make some logical theological conclusions about the Spirit on us, in us, etc., as regards the OT.

I have never thought that things for the people of God were much different either before or after the Cross. The OT stories have become, to me, less lessons learned about behavior, family life, morals, or worldly success (rich like Abraham with the “10 Principles Abraham used to increase his goods” [I’m being facetious]), but much more, actual revelations about the work of the Spirit in bringing us each to the knowledge/consciousness of Christ “formed” in us.

So I quit worrying about whether Cain, or Ham or Canaan, Abimelech, Pharaoh, Solomon, etc etc were “going to heaven.” I really do not think that is the point in any of these stories, and certainly nothing for us to fret over.

I have mentioned this quite a few times in other writings, but let me tell you the different way I look at Saul and David. I am not denying their “historicity,” but only gleaning what I believe the Spirit is revealing in their struggle for the kingdom in Israel.

In this model I am seeing, Saul and David are the same man, though divided as separate by the Holy Spirit so that we might see with more clarity. Saul is the first man, the “consciousness” of ourselves as “just” ourselves, just as the children of Israel were when they left Egypt for their journey through the wilderness.

The people have sought a king, “like the nations round about them,” so God gives them a King to their “fleshly hearts’ desire, a man taller than everyone else, good looking, a true hero. This new king (in their minds) will keep the land safe and overcome their perpetual enemies, the Philistines.

Israel is looking for an outer king to go before them and keep them safe. They have rejected the invisible King, Who can only be perceived through the eyes of faith (even under the law), and have desired this strong charismatic man to lead and guide them.

And this is like us in our first knowledge of Christ, and the Saul we look to is our false separated consciousness of independence, that “I” am “just I,” and “I” can take these provisions of God and apply them and overcome the enemies with God’s help.

Saul is like the children of Israel in the desert, who, after hearing the law, purpose that, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” They thought they could do it, even as Moses 40 years before had also thought he could do it. And through the wilderness journey in which they still kept the flesh consciousness of and in which they had been born in Egypt, always pining for the onions and leeks, always complaining and grumbling, nevertheless fed every day with manna and if there were no springs, water out of rocks. They have been visibly led and guided by the Spirit in a Cloud by day and a Pillar of fire at night.

But still, with all that behind them, when they come to the Jordan the first time, they cannot cross as a nation. They are still in their own consciousness of themselves as independent self-acting, self-relying selves. Therefore, when confronted with the obstacles, forgetting God and thus exposing their hidden inner god (themselves in Satan’s deception), they finally realized they could not do it.

But  still, they thought if they repented and tried harder they still might prevail, the lesson having not yet sunk in, that He will have no flesh in His presence. So they went out to meet the enemy the next day, despites Moses’ warnings to the contrary, telling them they Lord would not go out with them. Still they “tried” to conquer the territory but the Lord was not with them, and they were routed.

They had learned that they were weak, but they did not know yet that “trying harder” did not work. So back out into the desert for another 38 years, so that all that generation under 20 born in Egypt perished, and the generation going across the Jordan under Joshua had all been born in the wilderness of the daily provision of Christ. The older generation could not get the slavery-bound pleasures of Egypt out of their consciousness, still clinging to it until the end, whereas the generation born in the desert had never known Egypt, and had only known from birth up the daily provision of God for everything.

That is the birth of Christ in us in that picture. That is why we seem to struggle for a long time until we come to the rest. Saul (independent self consciousness) would rule, though giving homage to God in word but not Spirit (heart). At first Saul delighted in David, as we all do when we are first born again, and we think the blessing that God has given, “the new birth,” has come to this old beast we have been deceived into thinking is ourselves.

We long to take on the qualities of this Christ in us, to beef up this “me” that we are. It becomes apparent that we must assume the qualities of Christ (though in our dim understanding we have not yet understood that this is not about our own self elevation, and that is all this false independent self consciousness is about). But try we do, and through God’s mercy, we fail.

The sacrifice scene, with Samuel, is the unveiling of the full presumption of that false usurping independent self, in that it thinks it has the “anointing” of the things of God in itself, and presumes to perform a sacrifice that is only lawful for Samuel or one of the priests to do. It is the ultimate presumption of this false consciousness, echoing Lucifer’s words in Isaiah 14, “I will be like the most High,” in Saul taking this act to himself. Not only has he disobeyed the clear commandment of the written law, worse, he has, in his heart, presumed to be ‘as God’ even as the Serpent deceived Eve, “wise as gods, knowing good and evil.” In other words, Saul had taken what is reserved only to God Himself, and assumed it as his natural right of his kingdom of the flesh. That is the heart of Saul’s “sin.”  It is the heart of Adam’s sin, and we are all Adam, both first and last.

I would interject something here that is very important to remember. We have all been born and lived in and from this snake. This false consciousness of independent self is his; it is a monster born of him. And it IS a monster! This is where “sin” is exceedingly seen to be sin. This is the Romans 6, 7, 8 struggle, taken apart for us in the lives of these two men.

You see Saul getting progressively worse, alternating between loving David (as the man Saul knows he “should be”, and hating David, because he senses David will supplant him in the kingdom, and now that he has the reign, he does not want to give it up. So David (the new man in us) has to hide in the wilderness and help on the side while Saul’s reign begins to self-destruct.

This is that “flesh/spirit” struggle we experience as we are taken by the Spirit into this place of rest and victory. David, the spirit Christ man, hiding in the wilderness, sometimes coming out to be seen and sometimes hidden, whereas the person we do not want to be, but cannot give up being, is this false self-god we have been gripped with as a deception. We seem on top one day and on the bottom the next.

The final moment is when Saul falls on his sword in Gilboa, knowing the Philistines are overrunning them. Saul dies when he realizes he cannot win the battle. This is that crux moment in Romans 7 when we see! We are only conditioned to “see” when that false sense finally self-destructs from the stress of its own efforts, and falls to the ground and cries, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?”

He has looked into himself and finally realized he has not the stuff to do it. The bottommost is “I find that no good thing dwells in me.” This is it, the end.

Who shall deliver me? I thank Jesus Christ my Lord. I thank Him that He has delivered me, and also he has taught me “how” I work.

The “flesh” or “mind set on the flesh” is the self-focused, self-relying, self-acting self. This “mind” is not the self itself, but a wrong consciousness in the self. Because this same self (who had been seeing double) is pulled by the Spirit through this narrow portal. We find ourselves finally standing on firm ground. This new “ground” that is holding us up, we find is “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” We do not see double anymore. The “double” has been swallowed up and now we are seeing God only.

And, it is immediately clear, maybe for the first time or maybe we’ve had glimpses here and there, that we are being held. We are being kept. And that upholding has “set me free from the law of sin and death.” Kept and held becomes a whole new inner rest, an easing of fear, our feet finally touching the true ground we have so long wanted to stand upon.  How long ago was it I read of a treasure hid in a field, or about a pearl of great price? Yes, I thought, I want to find that. And here it is in the kept and held. The Day of Jubilee!

Here finally, as “Saul” has self-destructed in Romans 7, we find David rising, always having been there but he was dim to our sight. But through this death in Him that we have likewise known in ourselves (“for ye are dead”), we find our new life in the Spirit (“life hidden with Christ in God”). This then becomes our operating reality to be David on the throne, knowing it is no longer I, but Christ, but now also this “new me,” which is David/Christ as me.

This is the kingdom of David “which shall have no end.”