Shooting stars, beautiful stars

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…)