by Tony Salmon

I was walking home with two of my cousins on a bright, sunny afternoon.  Herbie was around sixteen years old and Diane around fourteen.  I was only six.  As I walked about fifty feet ahead of them I thought it would be a good idea to walk on the narrow margin of grass between the sidewalk and street.  Walking on this strip of grass was quite amusing to me because we didn’t have much grass in the slums of Mount Rainer, Maryland, which was just a stone’s throw from the northeast border of Washington, DC, off of Rhode Island Avenue.  As I scurried in my carefree manner across the grass I looked behind me at my cousins and said, “Hey!  Look!  Look at me!  I’m walking on the grass!  I’m walking on the…”  Oops! 

I did not know that earlier that day some city employees were doing some work under the grass I was walking on in that city beneath the city, right in the stuff that makes the grass grow.  Perhaps the men worked right up until quitting time and the city was not willing to pay the fifteen seconds overtime necessary to close the manhole, but close it they did not!  I fell through the manhole, right into the sewer. 

Please understand that from where my cousins were standing they could not see a manhole at all, just grass.  From their perspective I did not fall, I simply vanished into thin air!  To make matters more interesting, we were right in front of the residential lot where the exorcist story had taken place.  The real story happened to a boy, not a girl, and he lived two doors down from my childhood home in Mount Rainier. 

Herbie and Diane looked at each other in bewilderment, “Where’s Tony?” they asked.  They ran to where I had been standing and then saw the manhole.  Herbie and Diane each took a wrist and lifted me to safety. 

I was unharmed; I was not injured.  There was no lawsuit or complaints filed with the city.  My arms and legs were not broken and although some of my readers may wish to contest this point, I did not hit my head on the iron orifice that forms the manhole.   

Let’s consider for a moment what would have happened if I had been hurt.  I would have owned a part of the city.  The city would have been liable for my fall.  The city would have been responsible to compensate me for my medical bills and my suffering.  If I had opened the hole myself they would have no responsibility toward me but since the mistake was theirs they would have been held responsible for my injuries.   

We purchased a home in July of 2001.  My insurance agent told me that if I put a swimming pool on my property that he wanted me to put a six (number of man) foot fence around it to comply with the rules of the insurance company and with the laws pertaining to liability.  Here’s the irony of the situation.  If I install a pool on my property and do not put a fence around it then I am liable for the trespasser who drowns in my pool.  That means if I leave home for a ministry trip and return home to find a face-down floating trespasser in my pool I am LIABLE for the incident and the RESPONSIBILITY to compensate for the loss is mine.  On the other hand, if I comply with the law by putting a six foot fence around my pit, my pool, then I can return home to find ten face-down floating trespassers and I have no legal liability whatsoever.  The dead victims alone must bear the responsibility for their demise.   

If an ox falls, or if an ass falls, the owner of the pit assumes full responsibility for the pain and suffering and is bound by law to “make it good.”  The ox in this passage speaks of a servant of God who falls into a pit.  He fell into a trap or a pit unawares while serving the Father out of a heart of love.  He fell in a moment of weakness.  He was lowered into the abyss, the manhole with no bottom, trapped by old, depressing thoughts from painful memories that have never healed.  Not only was this fall unexpected but in the ox’s mind the pit no longer existed because he thought the owner closed the pit long ago.  The ox now sits, hopelessly trapped in the dungeon, with no way to rescue himself.  Thoughts of despair fill the ox’s mind as he sees no possible way of escape and thoughts of betrayal fill his mind as he wonders how the owner of the pit could have deceived him and allowed him to fall into a pit that he thought was gone.  The ox is hurt for sure...he is PARALYZED, unable to move, unable to serve, and seemingly unable to fulfill destiny.  Like Joseph of old, he sits in darkness wondering if the light will ever come, if his dreams will ever be reality, if he will ever live again.  Will the Deliverer come or has He abandoned me, forgotten about me, or left me to rot in this prison?   

Am I getting through?  This is only the ox.  Allow me to go a step further. 

The law also reads that if an ASS falls into a pit that was not covered that the owner of the pit is liable and must “make it good…” The ass speaks of the stubbornness of human nature.  The ox falls into the pit accidentally while the ass falls into the trap DELIBERATELY!  The ass has been warned of the hole, he sees the hole and he knows the path he is on leads to destruction.  He is persistent, he is headstrong, and he is determined to jump into this pit while blocking from his mind the obvious consequences his actions will bring.  Like the ox, the ass is in the hole thinking all hope has been lost, that he is forever trapped in this pit with no way of escape.  The ass feels that since his actions were deliberate that he is getting what he deserves…”I’ve sinned, therefore I deserve to be punished.”  He feels responsible for the pit he finds himself in and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be rescued and feels guilty to ask for help because his actions were calculated and deliberate.  

To illustrate what I am trying to convey I will share the following story.  I preached a funeral for a man who died of emphysema due to his many years of cigarette smoking.  A month or more before his death I sat with him at his kitchen table in his home and spoke with him.  Breathing shallow breaths of pure oxygen through the rubber hose in his nostrils, he said, “Tony, I’d like the Lord to heal me but I feel bad asking because I know I brought this on myself.”  Two weeks before his death I had the privilege of visiting with him in the hospital and praying with him for healing.  As I laid my hands on his back and prayed I could sense the resistance due to the guilt he was feeling for being trapped in a pit that he willingly entered but was powerless to escape.  He never left the hospital.  Father took him home two weeks after my visit.  My friend had no problem believing that the Lord had forgiven him for destroying his body but had no idea that Father OWNED the pit he was in and had already taken full responsibility for his fall and for his weakness and was bound by His own law to, “make it good…”  My friend had no idea that Father’s grace transcends every barrier, breaks down every wall, and supercedes every other law.  His grace reaches to the highest heaven and descends into the lowest hell; His grace fills the expanse of the universe so that there is no place to hide from Him.  His grace is inescapable.  My friend had no idea of Father’s timeless law that declares, “...But (but=Behold Unfolding Truth) where sin abounded, grace did much more abound…” (Ro.5:20b).   

I like the last part of the passage we are using, Exodus 21:34, “The owner of the pit shall make it good, and give money unto the owner of them; and the DEAD BEAST SHALL BE HIS.” What an awesome thought!  The Father not only owns the pit but He now owns the beast, the ox or the ass, that fell in the pit.  “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father” (Matt.10:29).   

Jesus used the example from Exodus 21 of an ox or an ass falling into a pit while eating in the home of a chief Pharisee.  Let’s examine that story:  “And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day, that they watched him.  And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy.  And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?  And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go.  And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?  And they could not answer him again to these things”  (Luke 14:1-6). 

The pit belongs to the Father; the ox and the ass belong to the Father.  The ox fell in accidentally, the ass fell in deliberately.  It makes no difference.  Father takes responsibility for both and the only thing that matters is that they are in need of healing and restoration.  An emergency room doctor that receives a patient with a self-inflicted gunshot wound does not say, “This wound is his fault, he got himself into this mess and I’m not going to try to save his life.”  No indeed, the emergency room doctor and staff will fight just as hard to save a victim who has attempted suicide as they will the innocent bystander who was injured in a drive-by shooting.  At this point it does not matter how the wound was inflicted or who was at fault, the only thing that matters is saving the life of a dying victim.   

 “How can you say the Father created this pit?” some are asking.  Let’s go back to the beginning and see where this pit originated. 

We find the pit mentioned in the opening statement of the Bible.  In Genesis 1:1-2 it reads, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” 

I want to quote this scripture again but this time with an emphasis on the spiritual creation.  The opening statements of Genesis are rich with deep, spiritual insight and they are layered with many different applications and levels of truth.  Father did not haphazardly throw together the opening words of this book of beginnings.  In fact, the first three chapters of Genesis are some of the most spiritually rich and revealing chapters of the entire Bible.  These chapters of Genesis tell the entire story practically anything one would want to know can be found in the first three chapters of Genesis.  Volumes of books could be written, and probably have been, on this portion of scripture.  Since I know I personally cannot exhaust even the first couple verses of chapter one, I now walk very carefully to at least, with the Spirit’s unction, examine it with a measure of grace and truth.   With all this in mind let’s take a closer look at this scripture and hear the heart of the Father. 

 “In the FIRSTFRUITS (Hebrew, reshiyth) Elohim PROCREATED CHRIST and ADAM.  And the ADAM was without form, and void; and IGNORANCE (lack of understanding, revelation, LIGHT, void of the knowledge of Christ) was upon the face of the ABYSS (Hebrew, tehowm, the deep, the bottomless pit, a surging mass of water). And the Spirit of God moved (Hebrew, rachaph, BROODED) upon the face of the waters (Hebrew, mayim, semen, sperm)” (Gen.1:1-2).   

In the beginning, in the FIRSTFRUIT or ELOHIM COMPANY, Elohim PROCREATED.  This shows us that we were indeed with the Father in the beginning, before our natural birth or before the creation of the natural cosmos.  The name, Elohim, is not only creator, or procreator, but it is also a last name or family name.  We were procreated in the image of Elohim, we are Elohim’s offspring and therefore bear His last name in the same way that I bear my earthly father’s last name.  Father did not simply create us out of thin air, but He birthed us out of His very being, His bosom, His very loins.  All of creation was within His loins even though in this particular passage only a certain company, the Firstfruit company, is mentioned.  The Firstfruits were simply waiting to come out first to be the saviors of the rest of His offspring.  My daughter, Sarah, was locked up within my loins long before conception took place.  Children are constantly being born into the earth because Father can never empty Himself, He will never be done DISPENSING Himself.   

Now, let’s take a closer look.  Father looked within His loins at the company of Firstfruits.  Out of that entire company, Father chose TWO to be the first of the first, a pattern, a prototype.  He reached within Himself and pulled out Christ and Adam and chose them to be the two firstborn sons.  Now, I can hear some of my readers saying, “Wait a minute...Adam was first!”  No, he wasn’t.  Let’s go back to the early types.  Our understanding is that the blessing or birthright goes to the firstborn son but we see a reversal of that principle right from the very first natural offspring.  Cain was the firstborn son but he was a murderer (a type of his natural father, Adam) so the birthright went to Abel.  “Ah!” you say, “Abel was cut off before producing offspring and the lineage of Christ stems from Seth!”  Yes, that’s true, and that’s what makes Abel a type of Jesus who also was CUT OFF, MURDERED BY THE SONS OF ADAM, before he ever had a chance to produce NATURAL offspring!  Isaiah 53 shows us that Jesus was cut off, he had no posterity or succeeding generations in the natural, but that HE WOULD SEE HIS SPIRITUAL SEED!  Seth was Abel’s replacement (Gen.4:25) to produce natural offspring to form the lineage of Jesus. 

We see this principle of the birthright being reversed time and time again in the book of Genesis.  Ishmael was Abraham’s firstborn but the birthright went to Isaac; Esau was Isaac’s firstborn but the blessing went to Jacob.  Manasseh was Joseph’s firstborn but the Israel crossed his hands and imparted the greater blessing to Ephraim.  The picture is that the Father had two original, prototype Sons, Jesus and Adam, and even though Adam was the firstborn in the natural, the birthright goes to Jesus, the anointed Son, who was the FIRSTBORN IN THE HEAVENS. 

Now we see that Elohim procreated Christ and Adam.  The passage goes on to say that Adam was without FORM. One of the definitions for word “form” is vanity.  Romans 8:20 says that the creature, or the thing that was created or procreated, was subjected, or lowered, into VANITY, or FUTILITY, or FRUSTRATION, or WEAKNESS, NOT willingly, but by reason of Him, yet not without hope.  The word “form” also means an empty place, which begins to show us the pit or abyss. 

The word “void” means emptiness.  Adam was without form and void.  So, now we have an empty place within the mind of the man.  This void is the abyss or bottomless pit that is the root of all of the man’s problems.  This void or empty place is nothing more than the mind that does not have the light or understanding of Christ.  The scripture goes on to say that IGNORANCE was upon the face of the abyss.  That means that the knowledge of Christ has been sucked out of the man’s mind leaving a vacuum, an empty space.  Nature revolts at the idea of a vacuum and therefore the empty space within the man’s mind is filled with lies, misunderstanding, fear, doubt, death, rejection, and a world of other bad thoughts that keep leading to thoughts worse than the ones before.  This is why the pit is bottomless...evil thinking keeps giving birth to thoughts more evil than the previous thoughts.  The negative thoughts keep spiraling downward and there is no end to how wicked and harmful the thoughts can become.  This is a trap, a pit, a sheol or grave, that knows no end, that has no bottom. 

We see that the pit is found in the first couple verses of the Bible but now I want to take a look at just how that pit was formed.   

Genesis 2:7 says that Jehovah Elohim FORMED man out of the dust of the ground.  Unfortunately, we have had a fairytale idea of what that means.  We have imagined, and have been taught, that the Lord literally formed a clay-dough man, picked him up and carried him into the garden, and breathed life into him.  Let’s take a closer look at how this forming may have taken place. 

There are only two things in this universe, energy and mass, and they are interchangeable.  Mass is nothing more than energy slowed down and the molecules that make up mass can be speeded up to become energy.  Scientists say that we are 99.99999% pure energy, leaving the tiniest margin to account for possible error.  Mass and energy are equal, they are one and the same.  God is invisible and omnipresent.  He fills the expanse of the universe because He exists on a frequency that far surpasses anything the human mind could ever comprehend.  For Father to create mass all He needed to do is slow down the vibration of energy.  Remember, the physical body of Jesus transformed into energy, a body of light, on the mount of transfiguration.  This happened again at His resurrection.  The natural light that we can relate to travels at 186,000 miles per second but that speed is very slow compared to the higher realms that we have called the realm of Spirit.  There are not really two realms at all, a natural and a spiritual, but rather one realm with matter existing on lower vibrations and spirit existing on vibrations too high for natural light to control.   

Was there a “big bang” that scientists speak of?  Quite possibly, but not in the way scientists have thought.  The big bang may have been energy and light slowing down from what we think of as the spiritual realm and exploding into this realm that we call time and space (thank you, Michael Green).  The big bang may have occurred once the Creator caused light to reach the slow speed of 186,000 miles per second.  In order for the Father, who is energy and light, to add a third dimension to His existence, He first needed to create a terrarium suitable to the needs of the spirits that would be lowered into the physical dimension.  He also needed to create a surrounding universe to support His work on this planet, and who knows, perhaps a billion other inhabited planets.  When Jesus was transfigured, and when He arose from the dead, His body molecules began vibrating at a minimum of the speed of light squared, that is, 186,000 miles per second times 186,000 miles per second.  He still has His body, and He can descend at will into the dense physical plane we live in or ascend into the highest heights, frequencies, of the heavens and fill the expanse of the universe in union with His Father.  He can eat, be seen and touched, yet He can walk through a wall, change His appearance, or be invisible.   

With all this in mind let’s look at how Adam was formed.  Remember that in the beginning, before the earth was formed, that God procreated Christ and Adam.  That is, He reached within Himself and chose these two Sons to be first of the Elohim company and first out of the billions of other offspring that would eventually fill the earth.  Now He creates the realm that we call time and space and the planet that we call Earth.  Adam is chosen to be the first NATURAL son to be lowered into futility.  Adam agrees to the plan; he agrees to go.  Father causes Adam’s spirit “molecules” to slow down.  They get slower and slower and slower until he comes into physical manifestation.  “Oh no!” Adam thinks, “what is happening to me?”  Finally, this spirit-being finds himself trapped in a human body, crucified in time and space.  He is still ONE spirit-being but now, somehow, he feels as though he has three parts to his being.  He perceives a spirit, a soul or mind made up of thought energy which is still spirit, but on a lower level and heavier than pure spirit, and a body, which is spirit vibrating so slowly that it feels like something other than spirit.  At this point the man is still awake, he remembers who he is and where he came from.  His third dimensional body is clothed upon with his house from heaven, his spirit body, giving a fourth dimension to his third dimensional body.  His spirit will continue to envelop his body, and light fill his veins, until he falls asleep in death, forgetting who he is.   

Soon after being lowered, or “slowered”, into the physical realm, Adam begins to believe a lie.  He does not understand what has happened to him, so, since the mind will not settle for fragmentary information, he begins to draw his own conclusions.  He thinks his Father has abandoned him, betrayed him, forgotten about him, and rejected him.  He has forgotten about that Day before time when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.  He has forgotten Jesus and the master plan of redemption based on the slain Lamb.  Ah!  He forgets that firstborn Son, Jesus, who would come and die to save all mankind, and in the forgetting, Jesus is removed from his memory banks, leaving a void, a grave, a pit, an abyss.  The pit is created, the man dies.   

Something wonderful is taking place at the same time Adam is dying but Adam doesn’t know anything about it.  On another plane, Jesus is offering His body on a cross.  Jesus is dying to free Adam and rescue him from the agony of this awful pit into which he has fallen.   According to Einstein's theory, the only barrier between past, present, and future is a stubbornly persistent illusion.  There is no past or future, the present is the only absolute.  If that is true then everything happens at the same time, just on different planes.  Scientists theorized years ago that many universes can occupy the same space at the same time as long as their simultaneous existence is on different planes.  Now I can understand what the scripture means when it says that the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev.13:8).  At the very moment that Adam is falling, Jesus is dying.  Adam will never fully understand in the course of his natural life the truth that when he fell, Jesus caught him.  Jesus was there; He was never far.  In the very moment Adam screamed in the agony of the fall, Jesus screams from the cross and echoes Adam’s mistaken fear, “My God, My God, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME!” He felt the lie that haunted Adam mercilessly and He came instantly to remove the curse from Adam and place it upon Himself.   

I have a message for you, dear reader.  Tears strolled down my face as I wrote the last couple of paragraphs that you just read because as I wrote I began to see a picture in the heavens.  At first I thought it was just me but soon the picture became so clear that I knew Father’s heart was reaching through me to you.  Please know that I had no intention of ending this writing with the words you are about to read. 

I see the cross.  The body of Jesus has just been removed.  The excitement is over, all good Jewish people have returned home to honor the Sabbath.  The cross stands empty, all by itself, yet somehow it seems to want to convey a message to you and me. 

There is nothing glamorous about this cross.  It is nothing more than a humble construction of rough cut timber.  There are three holes where the spikes had been to fasten arms and legs and there is the sign at the top but I am seeing something else.  The vertical beam of the cross, the part against Jesus’ back, is completely soaked with blood.  Had you ever considered that every time Jesus breathed while on the cross, and when He spoke, He had to push Himself up on the spike that went through His feet?  Remember that His back had been completely lashed open with a Roman cat of nine tails leather whip with pieces of bone, metal, and broken pottery in it.  As He pushes Himself up to breathe, the splinters from the jagged edges of the cross are removing the remaining pieces of flesh from His backside.  He pushes up to breathe. He pushes up to speak healing words to His mother and teenage disciple.  He pushes up to restore the broken life of a man who is dying with Him.   He pushes up to ask His Father to forgive His murderers, as well as the entire human family, because they do not know what they are doing.  He pushes up in a cry of thirst.  He pushes up to echo Adam’s cry from the garden.  He pushes up to release His Spirit into the hands of His Father.   

The cross in my vision is sending me a message.  It is speaking to me of a love that has broken down every barrier.  It is revealing to me a love that knows no boundaries, a love that is completely beyond the scope of human comprehension.  It is a love that points in every direction...all the way back to Adam and all the way forward until the last knee has bowed and the last tongue has acknowledged the Lordship of Jesus.  It reaches to the highest heaven and the lowest hell.  It is a love that keeps on reaching out until all creation is healed.  It is a love that CANNOT stop until it has met its objective.  It is a love that keeps seeking and saving that which is lost.  The cross is timeless.  It stands as a testimony for all time of a Father’s love that held nothing back to win you back and rescue you from the pit.   

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