The Conversation Between the Throne and the Earth
What Had Never Happened Before. What the Cross Accomplished.
What God All In All Means.
Part 11 of 14
Something New in the History of Eternity
Across the thousand year reign, YHWH manifested through named human vessels. Through each one he acted, spoke, delivered, declared. But the vessel was always separate from the presence. Yehoshua (Joshua) was not YHWH. Eliyahu (Elijah) was not YHWH. The presence inhabited the vessel, did the work the name declared, and withdrew. The vessel remained human. The presence remained distinct.
At the incarnation something occurred that had never occurred before in the history of eternity. The presence did not inhabit a vessel. The presence became a person. The Word, the full divine identity, not a portion of it, not a representative of it, became flesh. Not working through flesh. Becoming it.
From that moment, for the first time, there were two simultaneous expressions of the one divine presence. The eternal, universal, throne expression, YHWH as he had always been, present everywhere, sustaining all things, the one before whom the seraphim cry holy. And the localized, human, earthly expression, YHWH saves, walking the roads of Galilee, sleeping in boats, weeping at graves, kneeling in a garden.
One presence. Two expressions. And between them, a conversation that had never been possible before. YHWH speaking to YHWH. Not through a prophet. Not through a vision. Directly. Intimately. In Aramaic. In the garden. On the cross. From the depths of human suffering to the eternal throne that suffering could not move.
For the first time in the history of eternity, YHWH spoke to YHWH directly, not through a vessel, not through a vision, but as two simultaneous expressions of the one divine presence in direct conversation.
Abba
The Word That Defines the Conversation
When the earthly expression of YHWH addressed the throne expression, the word he used was Abba. Intimate Aramaic. The language of the closest possible relationship, not formal address, not the protocol of a creature approaching a creator, but the directness of one who is completely known and completely knowing.
Christianity took this word and built from it a relational pathway, approach God as Abba, develop a personal relationship with the Father, cry out to the divine as daddy. The intention was intimacy. The effect was the construction of a religious practice designed to obtain a relationship that the cross had already universally established.
Read in the framework of this series, Abba describes what the two expressions of the one presence were to each other in the conversation of the incarnation. The earthly expression addressing the throne expression with the intimacy that belongs to the one divine identity speaking to itself. Not two persons in a relationship. One presence in two expressions, the localized speaking to the universal with the familiarity of complete mutual knowledge, because they were the same presence knowing itself from two positions.
And then, and this is the turn, Paul writes in Romans 8:15 that the Spirit of the risen one within humanity cries Abba. Not that believers must learn to approach God with the intimacy of Abba. That the Spirit already within them, the ruach of YHWH already dwelling in the human race accomplished by the cross, is already crying Abba from within. The divine presence within humanity addressing the divine presence on the throne. The conversation that began in the garden between the two expressions of YHWH has not ended. It continues, from within every human being in whom the presence now dwells. Divine to divine. Still. Always.
Gethsemane
Not What I Will But What You Will
The garden prayer is the most concentrated record of the conversation. The earthly expression of YHWH, in the full weight of what the human dimension was about to undergo, addressed the throne expression directly.
Abba, all things are possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.
Christianity read this as the prayer of a subordinate divine person submitting to a superior. It created a hierarchy within the divine identity, the Son yielding to the Father, the lesser will surrendering to the greater.
The framework of this series reads it differently and more precisely. The earthly expression of YHWH, inhabiting the full weight of human mortality, experiencing what human beings experience in the face of death, was holding together two things simultaneously. The instinct of the human dimension toward preservation. And the eternal certainty of the throne dimension’s purpose, already declared through every YHWH-bearing prophet, already written in Tzekaryahu’s (Zechariah’s) vision of the shepherd struck, already determined before the foundation of the world.
Not what I will. The earthly expression acknowledging the limitation of the human experience it had fully entered, not performing humility but genuinely inhabiting the human condition in which the body resists death. But what you will. The eternal purpose of the throne expression, the completion of the work that all the manifestations had been pointing toward, is what prevails. Not because the earthly expression was overruled by a superior. Because the one divine will, expressed from two positions, was always the same will. The garden prayer is the conversation of the one presence with itself, the temporal expressing to the eternal the full weight of what the temporal was experiencing, and then aligning with the eternal purpose it had always shared.
Not what I will but what you will. One divine will expressed from two positions, the localized experiencing mortality, the eternal holding the purpose. The conversation of the one presence with itself.
My God My God
YHWH Quoting YHWH
On the cross, at the ninth hour, the earthly expression cried: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.
Every first century Jewish person hearing those words recognized Psalm 22 immediately. Not a cry of abandonment. A citation. The earthly expression of YHWH, from the cross, beginning the recitation of the Psalm that the throne expression had spoken through David a thousand years before, through the YHWH-bearing name Yahu at the close of David’s prayers, through the covenant memory of the divine presence recorded in the Psalms.
Psalm 22 does not end in abandonment. It ends in vindication. He has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one. He has not hidden his face from him. But has listened to his cry for help. The earthly YHWH citing to the throne YHWH the recorded declaration of the throne, the declaration made through a YHWH-bearing vessel in the reign, now being completed in the one in whom the reign culminated.
This is not a cry of abandonment. It is the conversation of the one presence completing the work the conversation was always moving toward. The earthly expression quoting the throne expression’s own previously recorded word, the word spoken through the named vessel David, as the declaration that the Psalm was now being fulfilled. YHWH quoting YHWH. The conversation between the throne and the earth reaching its predetermined conclusion in the voice from the cross.
Father Into Your Hands
The Conversation Completing
The final words of the earthly expression on the cross, recorded in Loukas (Luke): Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
Again, a quotation. Psalm 31:5. The earthly YHWH citing the throne YHWH’s own recorded word as the declaration of what was happening. Not a desperate final prayer. A deliberate, composed, covenant declaration, the localized expression of the one presence releasing back into the universal expression, the temporal returning into the eternal, the work completed and the completion acknowledged in the language of the Psalms that the throne had spoken through the reign.
Into your hands. The earthly expression returning to the throne expression. Not ceasing. Not being destroyed. Transitioning, from the localized human form that had accomplished the work to the universal indwelling presence that the work had established. The conversation between the throne and the earth reaching its resolution. The ruach, the same breath that had animated the dry bones in Yechezkel’s (Ezekiel’s) valley, the same breath YHWH breathed into Adam, released from the earthly expression back into the throne expression, which is also the expression that would three days later breathe that same ruach into the risen body and into all of humanity.
The conversation did not end at the cross. It completed. And in completing, it became the permanent reality of all humanity, the throne expression and the earthly expression unified in the resurrection into the single indwelling presence that John 14 promised: we will come and make our home with you.
Paul’s Seal
God All In All
First Corinthians 15:28 is the statement that closes the conversation. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.
The earthly expression delivering the completed kingdom to the throne expression. The two expressions of the one presence, which had been in active conversation across the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection, reunifying in the final act of the reign. Not the earthly expression being subordinated to a superior. The one divine presence, which had distributed itself into two simultaneous expressions for the specific purpose of accomplishing the work from within human experience, completing that work and resolving back into the undivided unity it had always been.
God all in all. Not God above all. Not God ruling from an external position over a humanity that is separate from him. God in all. The presence that had been signing human names with the divine signature across the entire covenant history, that had arrived in full at Bethlehem, that had spoken to itself from the cross and the garden, that had released back into itself at the moment of death and breathed itself back into the human race at the resurrection, is now the permanent indwelling reality of all of humanity.
The conversation between YHWH and YHWH that began in Gethsemane resolved into the single undivided presence that was always its destination. And that presence is not above. Not returning. Not waiting. It is within. All in all. The throne established inside the human race it entered and never left.
The conversation between the throne and the earth was the most significant event in the history of eternity. It was YHWH, from within human experience, accomplishing what only YHWH could accomplish, the defeat of the last enemy, the constitution of all humanity as the righteousness of God, the permanent indwelling of the divine presence within the race it had entered at Bethlehem.
Abba. Not what I will but what you will. My God my God. Into your hands. God all in all. One conversation. One presence. Two expressions resolving into one indwelling. YHWH saves. And from within the saved, the conversation continues, the Spirit crying Abba from within the human race, divine to divine, forever.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams