Bonnie Casey and Jesus Christ
Take 3 was an amazing Adventist
song group from the early 1970s. Beautiful songs from vibrant, dedicated young
people. Below is the address for a perfect copy of the full 29:41 minute album,
Songs of the Morning. Copy/paste address into search engine.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&p=songs+of+the+morning+take+3#id=1&vid=5d6d8a3bdaa5fd6147626185326eece4&action=click
I believe that her songs were
inspired by the Spirit of the Lord, and flowed from an honest heart that sought
Jesus with all that was in her. But, of course, Satan can’t have that...
Bonnie Casey, the soprano, and the
three others of Take 3, I believe, were the outgrowth from the revival of
Righteousness by Faith by Jesus, under the leadership of Elder Morris Venden, which took place in Seventh-day Adventism in the 1960s
and 70s. Bonnie was interviewed by Spectrum Magazine in 2012. In that conversation
she reveals some heartache, Adventism-related heartaches, that drove her to
express her sorrows in beautiful music for the Lord. Bonnie’s experience bears a
resemblance to Jesus in Gethsemane, when infinite mercy was pressed out of a
pure, spotless soul by the infinite justice from His Father. There, crushed under the
wine-press of Jerusalem the Son of God was “made an
High Priest” (Heb. 6:20).
Like charcoal that adsorbs, that is, collects
poisons on its surface rather than drawing the poisons within itself, Jesus did
the same with the sins of the world at large as God revealed them to Him, and
with the unbelief and sinfulness of the surrounding people of Israel. His soul
tucked deeply in the bosom of His holy Father’s just and merciful love, the Son
adsorbed the world’s sin day by day.
Thus He retained a life separate from sin every day as His soul was assaulted
by the slowness of heart among His friends, and His heart abused by the animosity among
His enemies. Hour after hour and day by day, He must witness the rebellion and
lust of the multitudes, and the rampant carelessness toward His Father and carelessness between
each other. The rebellion and its diseases that the Son of God healed, were
representative of all humanity’s plight.
That
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself
took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses (Matt. 8:17).
All day, every day Jesus gladly carried humanity’s
sin, while denying its incursion into His sorrowing heart. And then He gave it
all to His Father in a flood of repentance night after night. “Oh, this people
have sinned a great sin…. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin —; and if
not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written”, because,
without them “what good shall my life do me?” (Exo. 32:31, 32; Gen. 27:46, cf
John 5:39).
A
man of sorrows…. Surely he hath borne
our griefs, and carried our sorrows (Isa. 53:3, 4).
To sin, wherever it exists, “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). Nevertheless, He mercifully refrains from desolating a
sinful world so long as His Son can bring it regret and repentance, pains of
their conscience for the exceeding sinful of their sins committed and utmost fear of
judgment for those sins. Let no one doubt that the great Judge of
all the earth resists the presence of our sins, which are ever before Him and
constantly beg His notice. But His mercy is forthcoming because the
companionship and fidelity of His Son have helped Him to hold the hated
presence of sin in continual abeyance for thousands of years.
Night after night, God graciously received
the world’s sin from His repenting Son so that His Son would not be weakened or
destroyed by bearing the loathsome burden, or be distracted from freely
ministering to our needs. The Son of man could agonize under the presence of
sin only for a day at a time, but His Father, the great Ancient of days, had
done so for four thousand of years. Graphically had the world’s murdering,
unrest, enslaving, and abusing played out before the inescapable vigilance of
our holy Father. Tragically had the autoimmune nature of sin voraciously
devoured the special creation of His image. Vividly had humanity’s demise
repeated in His eternal, unfailing memory; and still it does. Yet, for His
Son’s sake the Father has withheld our eradication and continued to endure His
ages-long crucifixion. The Son’s infinite, disinterested love for childbearing
has been the Father’s help-meet to stay His wrath against our sin problem.
Thus, revealing to us the perpetual work of
Christ to intercede before God with groans that don’t exist in man to utter,
Jesus unburdened His soul to His Father nightly. Knowing the pains that
unrepentant hearts caused His Abba, Christ fearfully interceded before God for
Himself and then for us. He found no relief for His daily adsorbed sins until He received from His Father again the promise to
accept the sin-burdened children of His rearing. But, His sinless nature also
comprehended the appreciation and joy that His Abba gained by suffering
together with His Son’s necessity to know that Their children were acceptable
before the Law of the kingdom.
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…. And I have
declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou
hast loved me may be in them, and I in them (John 17:24, 26).
Each night, shut in with His God and
assured that the almighty Father of all had accepted His own weak humanity and
that of His human race, then Jesus could sleep in perfect peace. Love, in the
context of saving mankind from the enslavement to sin and from its sure
destruction, was the sole motive driving every act and look and word from His
Majesty, the Anointed from heaven.
Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he
shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high (Isa. 52:13).
Thus Michael, the world’s Messiah, day by
day patiently carried our absorbed
weakness, infirmity, and guilt. And then each night He exchanged our guilt for
His Father’s pardon. And in the place of our infirmity and weakness He gladly absorbed His Abba’s excellence,
righteousness, and strength. It was this fellowship of like minds that
completely rejuvenated Christ every morning after often receiving only a little
sleep, and sometimes none. Jesus went forth from those precious vigils fully
rested and invested to convince the people that their God was still merciful,
and to continue to route the adversary from His kingdom.
And he came down with them, and stood in the plain,
and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all
Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to
hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were vexed with
unclean spirits: and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch
him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all (Luke 6:17-19).
His voice was the first sound that many had
ever heard, His name the first word they had ever spoken, His face the first
they had ever looked upon. Why should they not love Jesus, and sound His
praise? As He passed through the towns and cities He was like a vital current,
diffusing life and joy wherever He went The
Desire of Ages, p. 350.
He met humbled men and women, broken and degraded by the
tempter, and gave them the message of His Father’s acceptance and their life of
sin forgiven. He healed hearts and minds as He took the diseases from their
bodies. He gave them the Holy Spirit of union with His Father. With contained
exhilaration He proclaimed the long awaited time for His good God’s acceptance,
“the acceptable year of the LORD”
( Isa. 61:2).
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith
your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare
is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the
LORD’s hand double for all her sins (Isa. 40:1, 2).
The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe
the gospel (Mark 1:15).
Cast
ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way
of my people.
For
thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy;
I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and
humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of
the contrite ones.
For
I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit
should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.
For
the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was
wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart.
I
have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore
comforts unto him and to his mourners.
I
create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him
that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him (Isa. 57:14-19).
He brought the peace of heaven to a world hostile to heaven.
For God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life (John 3:16).
He proved God’s love through a life of blessing, not to
Israel alone. But in them He proved His strong desire to bless the whole world.
Then, after having fully gained our love
and confidence by thirty-three years of consistent faithfulness and blessing,
thirty-three years of going about His Father’s business without falling to the
tempter’s devices, thirty-three years of living on a far-flung outpost from His
heavenly home, while day by day publicly or subconsciously speaking to His God,
and openly rejoicing and confiding with that “certain householder” in “a far
country” (Matt. 21:33). He always knew that His Father was only as far away in
Spirit as the next thought that They would share together. He had had constant
two-way flow between His Spirit and His Father’s. After thirty-three years of
that unparalleled faith, then the blessed communion would suddenly end. And
with that a complete reversal of Christ’s badly needed remission for sins that
He had been carrying for the purpose of blessing the repentant.
Beginning gradually at the last supper,
like the dull pain from an epidural wearing off, all the sins that Christ had
adsorbed God must refuse to take from Him, with all of its associated spiritual
agitation. All the selfishness and idolatry, beheld by His senses and by
revelation, each sin for which since Eden He had beseeched His Father for
forbearance and mercy, must remain His burden. All this His Father would lay
upon Him in an exponentially increasing, multiplying knowledge of wretchedness
that had characterized the whole race, and not only of its past and present,
but also of its future. For a world, which has sworn moment by moment that, if
it could, it would overthrow the holy government of heaven, the Son must bake
under the heat of divine wrath.
Whose
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness…
Destruction
and misery are in their ways (Rom. 3:14, 16).
Our treason would become Christ’s
responsibility, and His Father’s hot wrath would be His due until He must
necessarily be consumed by it, obliterated by His own Father. All this might
sound like a strange action from His Father, but it was necessary in order to
intercept our avowed determination to desolate Their kingdom of righteousness.
The human race has proven that in its very
nature it harbors a ready longing to topple its self-sacrificing, benevolent
Creators. Our hearts and hands are blood-stained with regicide of the King and
His Prince, regicide of the highest order. At the cross, we demonstrated that
the Father is not safe around us. From our deepest soul we proclaim, “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). At birth separated from the presence and power of God’s
grace, we are at irreconcilable odds with our Maker. “The carnal mind is enmity [antagonism] against God:
for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). The serpent’s venom has spread deeply into humanity’s
hearts. “The poison of asps is
under their lips” (Rom.
3:13). The holy Law of God demands the extermination of our
determined contumacy. Heaven’s retribution for this world’s harvest of sin and
moral darkness must be satisfied. Unless the offenders of the divine Law of God
are destroyed forever, the eternal kingdom could never survive the degradation
and disintegration inflicted by the insidious spores of our lawlessness. If
Satan and his demonic hosts were blotted out, we would succeed them to finish
the demolition of the firm foundation of God’s government of peace and
righteousness.
What
do ye imagine against the LORD? He will make an utter end (Nah. 1:9).
The whole race would be destroyed, unless
the divine Representative of humanity would accomplish His vow to be the
substitute for all who could be brought to deep repentance and contrition, so
that He could give them a new heart to receive His Spirit again and so that He
could subvert their natural destruction of everything good. This was the
Father’s plan to which Jesus whole-heartedly agreed long before the great
controversy erupted under Lucifer. In the Spirit from His Most High God Christ
had declared to Him, “Behold the
handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).
An immovable, impenetrable barrier needed
to be erected to prevent sin and sinners from ever again threatening the Creator
and His kingdom. This barrier will forever act as an immense pillar of witness
against humanity repeating their experiment with exalting self above the
selfless Father. The immense pillar will continually remind the redeemed human
race of the death and desolation that self-worship bequeathed the Creator’s
kingdom. This stone of witness is the mark for us to come up to today, for the Father
can never admit a single sin-loving heart into His vulnerable kingdom of trust
and love. In us there must result from Lucifer’s controversy so voluminous
consternation and pain in the conscience that the whole family in earth and
heaven abjectly fears a return of the sin plague.
The Godhead have created such a visible
stone of witness. That stone against our rebellion is the repaired Law of God,
complemented with the crucifixion scars covering the whole frame of the Son. This
Mizpah Stone of witness will never be forgotten by the redeemed. And per 1
Corinthians 15:24-28, that Citadel Stone of the Son (see Daniel 2:35) will
become His Father’s everlasting Everest that will fill the whole earth “for ever”, “even for ever and ever” (Dan. 2:44;
7:18, 22). Then the children of the kingdom must forever behold the
affliction that they brought against their most high King and His only-begotten
Prince. No one will be truant in that classroom; all who would contemn it won’t
be there. After all that the most holy King and Prince had done for us, this judgment
will be fair. But, the children of the kingdom will gladly study the offering
that the Father and Son Godhead poured out for Their beloved offspring—humanity, rehabilitated and restored.
Truly
our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3).
And,
Affliction
shall not rise up the second time (Nah. 1:9).
His earthly ministry concluding, Jesus’
agony was His Father’s retribution on account of all the sins for which He had
ever requested pardon. He alone had been standing between fallen man and God
since the day that our first parents chose to rebel in Eden. And alone He would
continue to represent us before God until the day of His second advent.
He
shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied (Isa. 53:11).
The ages-old plan to spare humanity said
that the Son of God must not adsorb,
but absorb, His Father’s full agony
and wrath against our tyranny, which had so absorbed the Father’s attention. We
need to comprehend our Father’s difficult circumstance—the King must see
perfect righteousness. The Most High God, who is most holy, can behold only
constant perfect selflessness.
Mercy
and truth preserve the king: and his throne is upholden by mercy (Prov. 20:28).
A
king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his
eyes (Prov. 20:8).
He
that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his
friend (Prov. 22:11).
With every creature that lives in His
eternal kingdom of self-forgetfulness God must hold ceaseless, holy communion.
The most holy Father could be satisfied only by continually witnessing
self-sacrifice in all of His creations. There could be no other option. And, of
all His precious children of Adam, the Father could see that perfection only in
His Son, begotten and incarnated into Adam’s fallen creation. Only His Messiah
could satisfy His Law. The Son’s supreme act of accepting humanity’s
damnation, the Father would forever pronounce to be the Law’s ultimate definition of
obedience.
We must understand our heinous condition
and see its horrific remedy only in light of Christ’s cross and ours. Our cross begins
with deep repentance, which can only come through Christ’s cross. We cannot die
to self unless we behold the Son dying to self in a way that is higher than the
highest human thought. Then, by comprehending divine love in the Lamb’s
substitutionary sacrifice, our death to self is doable by beholding His.
The Father must unburden upon His Son all
the reality of our world’s willful trampling upon the Law of love, a poisonous
reality which the Father had been adsorbing and holding in suspense since our
Eden eviction. If the Son failed here then the King must break forth in a
retributive plague upon our loveless, lawless race, obliterating it by fire.
And then the Father must consummately cleanse Himself from His contact with our
filth. But, this retribution, as correct as it is, simply could not be an
option without a plan—the eternal plan—to restore us to Himself through His Lamb.
Jesus must permanently hold our abominable self-love plus the Father’s
unburdened tonnage upon that defiling cursed thing, until His Lamb would be
swallowed up by “overmuch sorrow” (2 Cor. 2:7), and “striving against sin”
(Heb. 12:4). In vain Jesus would seek His Father’s help and His mercy for
humanity, the prayer which had always been His only faithful outlet.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him
(Isa. 53:5).
Jesus “took with him Peter and the two sons
of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy” (Matt. 26:37).
Then saith
he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here,
and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face (Matt.
26:38, 39).
As
He neared Gethsemane, He became strangely silent. He had often visited this
spot for meditation and prayer; but never with a heart so full of sorrow as
upon this night of His last agony. Throughout His life on earth He had walked
in the light of God’s presence. When in conflict with men who were inspired by
the very spirit of Satan, He could say, “He that sent Me is with Me: the Father
hath not left Me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.” John
8:29. But now He seemed to be shut out from the light of God’s sustaining
presence. Now He was numbered with the transgressors. The guilt of fallen
humanity He must bear. Upon Him who knew no sin must be laid the iniquity of us
all. So dreadful does sin appear to Him, so great is the weight of guilt which
He must bear, that He is tempted to fear it will shut Him out forever from His
Father’s love. Feeling how terrible is the wrath of God against transgression,
He exclaims, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”
… Every step that He now took was with
labored effort. He groaned aloud, as if suffering under the pressure of a
terrible burden The Desire of Ages, p. 685.
He went a little distance from them — not
so far but that they could both see and hear Him — and fell prostrate upon the
ground. He felt that by sin He was being separated from His Father. The gulf
was so broad, so black, so deep, that His spirit shuddered before it The Desire of Ages,
p.
686.
He … prayed,
saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me (Matt.
26:39).
There,
staggering into that hill garden, Jesus collapsed to the ground emotionally
nerve-racked and mentally confused. His ever present Help had left Him and,
instead, wrath hit Him with blinding force. He could not see His Father’s mercy
past the enormity of His justice. Like never before, Jesus experienced sin’s
dreadful total separation from His King upon whomever sin diseases. The Son
went where no man had gone before; and neither had He ever been there. In the
soul of the eternal Son of God, infinite mercy had always rejoiced for His
Father’s tremendous scourgings in the work of His perfect upbringing (see
Proverbs 8:30; James 2:13; Hebrews 12:6; Galatians 4:1, 2). But the Father’s
infinite burden from man’s sin required of His soul greater scourging from His Abba
than those personal, developmental judgments.
He … offered
up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was
able to save him from death…; though
he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered (Heb. 5:7, 8).
Now, in Gethsemane He strove to cope with
His Father’s own infinite dying, which was being laid upon Him. By this deep
void of mercy from above, He must know all of His Father’s horrific misery from
sin-bearing. With all of Christ’s power scattered, the Prince of life struggled
to accept this infinite death.
Spiritually uncertain, physically
exhausted, and in emotional upheaval, the Son of God grappled over whether He
could reach the cross. Could He get to the place of His public offering? How
could He be lifted up on a cross so that all men might be drawn to Him if He
were to continue losing the measureless Spirit from His Father’s previous,
blissful presence?
Jesus must absorb, not adsorb, all of His
Father’s disposition toward our sins, and His judgments upon them. Since the
beginning of the controversy, the Son had always yearned to allay all the agony
of sin that His Father had been carrying. His Father’s infinite dyspepsia from
our aversion to perfect excellence, together with His loss of
communion with our preferred world, had left the Father in unending turmoil.
None except the Son of God realized the Father’s brokenness brought about by
Lucifer’s attack on Adam’s race. Like a weakened, older tree fallen into the
boughs of a strong, younger tree, upon His own soul Jesus would support His
beloved Abba’s need to unburden Himself fully. Absorbing His Father’s infinite
consternation, the Ancient of days would thus be relieved of His awful burden.
The Father’s own excruciating anxietal
convulsions could never cease until sin and rebellion were destroyed from
Earth. This the Son would accomplish in order to spare both His Father and
Their human children the anxiety from the God-man alienation. Then in His
Father’s revived hope and relief and satisfaction of the sin problem resolved,
at Pentecost His Father could anew send to His beloved humanity communications
from His reconciled Spirit.
God
was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their
trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation (2
Cor. 5:19).
…
that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after
the flesh, but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:4).
And it was only right for God to lay onto
His trusted Mediator all the accumulated consequence of sins committed. God’s
powerful pardons, by trusting in His redeeming mercy, “the righteousness of God without [apart from] the law” (Rom. 3:21), could not forever unbalance His enforcement of a broken
Law. God’s perfect gift of grace must have its equivalent complement of His
perfect justice. God can never enable sin; by His mercy He will not give Satan
that advantage over His vulnerable family of heaven and Earth. From the
beginning God’s withholding full justice upon Adam and his children, and the
over-accumulation of His mercy, had continued long enough. Sin had been
adjudged a cancerous tumor disintegrating the foundation of love and life in
everyone it infects. Under the control of the most powerful opiate the subjects of Satan had
proven themselves irretrievably addicted to sedition and murder. Sin must be
removed; sinners must receive execution. The postponement of judgment upon sin
must now end. The limit of borrowed grace was maxed out; repayment must now
commence. The equity of justice and mercy must return to equilibrium. The
government of mercy and justice must come back into balance.
Intercession would be suspended until this
other form of intercession could be accomplished. The dependable,
burden-bearing God must evade His beloved Son’s pleas to forgive, until the
King’s disgust and anger toward sin would utterly destroy His most blessed One.
Like an over-wound clock that could not be winded any more, the time had come
when the Great Judge could no longer suspend His capital punishment upon a
world of demon-driven, run-away rebellion, and unceasing self-exaltation. “As the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man”, the Father had
been “tormented with
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of
the Lamb” (Rev. 9:5;
14:10).
The Law of God demanded our destruction.
The Law of the kingdom must be satisfied; transgression must be dealt with. The
justice of the Father must be satisfied so that all the danger of sin to His
pure kingdom would be removed. The sanctuary of the Father’s soul must be
cleansed and no one else but divinity could successfully and properly carry
God’s infinite, infinite load. That crushing punishment, which was due us, Christ
must accept, and His Father must feel every ounce of His pain.
But, His blessed and holy One who He had
never been without — could the Father go through with it
(see Genesis 22:2)? Could He risk the eternal loss of His only Son of His bosom
who would be weakened under His infinite wrath, and in the grasp of devious and
powerful Satan, all for regaining His beloved humanity? Yet, His original
provision from eternity past would remain His determination.
His Father’s abounding presence, ever powerful in justice and righteousness, wholly blotted from His sight, the Lamb felt the aggravated,
assaulting malignity between the King and sin. Jesus was made to be the wicked
who “shall be ashes under the
soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts” (Mal. 4:3). It was wrath like the only Begotten had never known to exist
in His God. His Father’s angry thunders of offense against each rebellious and
unclean thought, word, and act, conscious and subconscious, even against our
self-serving nature coalescing within the very beginnings of our prenatal
months, all forced the Lamb to live the destruction of “Sodom and Gomorrha …
set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 7, cf
John 5:39). Jesus heard His Father’s thunder and saw Himself forever remaining
cursed for our sakes, dying alone and forgotten by His Abba throughout
perpetuity.
The Lord …
hath put him to grief (Isa. 53:10).
Before any man was ever pepper-sprayed with
judgment, the lamb “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) had
Himself pepper-sprayed all over, again and again, ten billion times. Before the
Father would ever drop a Judgment Day bomb of reproof on any sinner, the Son
must first accept the hydrogen bomb from His Father’s continual offense at
man’s disregard of His laws. Father and Son both have been slain since the
foundation of the world, both laying down Their lives for Their children. We
have a Mediator before God who is touched with the torment and plagues and
sicknesses that we suffer. Our Advocate knows the smoking ruins of our lives.
He knows the pains of the cancer patient, the drug addicted, and the clinically
depressed. He knows the abused and the neglected.
(To be continued…)
