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Mark 8:34 (CJB) “Then Yeshua called the crowd and his talmidim to him and told them, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him say ‘No’ to himself, take up his execution-stake, and keep following me.”
(KJV) “And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
There is a big difference between taking up a cross and taking up an execution-stake. In this religious context, a cross means much more than burdens to bear and hardships.
(Matthew 16:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27)
At the execution-stake
At the execution-stake
Where I first saw the light
And the burdens of my heart rolled away
It was there by faith, I received my sight
And now I am happy all the day.
According to some bibles, this song is supposed to be talking about each person's own execution-stake because we can only get what comes through the execution-stake of Jesus through our own execution-stake. Stake to stake, not faith to stake, not praise to stake. Jesus said take up your execution-stake THEN follow me. He did not say follow me and then bear some burdens or go through regimented rules of religion and count up how many years we've been believers and then sing at the cross and be happy all day because Jesus died on the cross. No, We are supposed to be right there at the execution-stake with our own execution stake and willing to trade places for the world's sake and demonstrating it through daily actions that exemplify the core of love religion talks about. There is a lot more at stake when death is more than a scriptural literary phrase about the old, former, corruptible nature of self and human sacrifice washing away sins.
Matthew 10:38 (CJB) “And anyone who does not take up his execution-stake and follow me is not worthy of me.”
It is about being born again (Renewed) to the pure state of human beingness. It is not about clinging to man's way of being that is written out for us to follow. No. It's already written in the genetics in every cell trying to tell us which way to go. It is a library written in the spiritual language we share with the rest of the ecosystem. We must start over, first from the book of nature, THEN come back to religious books.
Being born again is like pushing the reset button, restoring self to our last known good configuration and removing corrupted information and malicious agents. Why be born again away from an old nature filled with the thinking of man that got us messed up in the first place and then once again latch onto the thinking of man as a sole and primary way of knowing the Creator of the self we possess? We are in possession of the potential to know.
If we cannot know the Creator via a self-discovery, higher spirit-led process, then we cannot know who we are at all on any level - real or imagined. There's no use walking around saying we know who we are without the awakening of the Creator consciousness who mentors in mirror images to show and explain who we are.
The above should be compared with:
“For God will bring to judgment everything we do, including every secret, whether good or bad. [Here is the final conclusion, now that you have heard everything: fear God, and keep his mitzvot; this is what being human is all about.] (Ecclesiastes 12:14)
