“I bear upon my body the stigma of Christ.” Paul the Apostle
Before we carry on, I think the point I was trying to make in the last post must be clarified. What we are mucking about in now isn’t high-falutin’ theological exegesis, but the basics of spiritual language. This is God’s grammar, and when you really begin to grasp this, you begin to understand the creative word.
Christ is form. He is the beginning of creation and he is the form that is marked. Those marks are engraved in him. Then light shines through those marks on him, and just like the example of the hologram, his world comes into being. That is why Paul’s description of Jesus Christ reads, “IN him and THROUGH him and FOR him all things consist, cohere, and are held together, and he is before all things.”
The marks that were made on Jesus Christ were not just random cruelty, but were specific marks that altered the history of the world. If he were marked differently, our history would have been different than that which has passed. Name is marked onto form. In turn, those marks alter the fill, the name, within the form. Name alters form alters name. This is a recursive cycle, a fractalization, if you have read The Glory of Kings.
At every juncture of history, name has altered form, which in its turn alters name. Form has been marked to change what is to come. Creation is the first example. “The earth was without form (it had no form), and it was void (it was empty, it had no fill, no name). God names, “Let there be…” That name begat form. Then further words engrave markings upon the form of the world. The light shines through those markings, and that thing that was named comes into existence and fills the form of creation. Name alters form, which alters name.
In the time of Alexander the Great, his loyal soldiers would mark themselves with the first letter of his name to show their fealty. This is the stigma to which Paul refers. This mark doesn’t so much change what is on the outside as what is on the inside. This is why a slave is branded. It isn’t so much a mark of ownership, as it is a way to alter the internal reference of the one who is marked. Such a marking works to alter the perception a person has of themselves, and makes it easier to have power over them. This is the, often subconscious, goal of the act of rape. As has been stated elsewhere, it isn’t about sex but about power. And here we drift into the fringe of charagma. Charagma is the word we would use to show a mark upon a beast, such as when you brand cattle. The mark you make upon a cow is more a mark of ownership than any attempt to alter the self worth of the cow.
Where is this taking us? The argument of this blog is that we are at one of these junctures in history, a juncture named Kingdom. Kingdom relates to the bride of Christ. If we are at one of these junctures, then the theme of this time will be about marking. It is form that is marked, and that form is Jesus Christ; however, we are told that the church is the body of Christ, so it is reasonable to assume that this is the form that will be marked.
In the book of Revelation, it speaks of the beast putting marks on form. The purpose here is not so much physical control over a person’s actions, “you cannot buy or sell without the mark,” but spiritual control. This being is making an attempt to alter history. Because he is a beast, his mark is charagma, as that is all he has to offer. There is no eternal covenant within his grasp (again, see The Glory of Kings). Here There Be Dragons spoke on how Satan has control over spiritual currency. This is the point in history where that control is wrested from him. He is the one who seals the pattern, so it will be his marks that alter history, but not in the way he intends.
Christ was wounded on four different parts of his body, his feet, his hands, his head and his side. The beast of the book of Revelation blasphemes four times, against God, against his name, against his dwelling place, and against those who live in heaven. This fits into our rule of four:
So it isn’t the way the world is marked that will change history, but the way the church is marked. The world is just collateral damage.
There are biblical warnings about marking our bodies. This isn’t a mandate against all marks, but a brake in order that we ask ourselves, “Do we know what we are doing?” We so insouciantly mark ourselves with tattoos, piercings and in other ways, but that name upon our form inevitably impacts our destiny. Does it do so in a righteous or an unrighteous manner? Most of us are WAY too ignorant to know. We are clueless that it even matters.
This is also some insight into why you go through hard times. Suffering engraves markings upon both physical and spiritual form. Those markings alter your destiny. But you can choose during those times to be marked with either stigma or with charagma, and that makes all the difference.