[mfblume]

But what is really a blessing is to see that the false cross is exposed for being a salvation that avoids the death of the cross. Like the knowledge of good and evil in the false tree, the false cross preserves SELF and exalts SELF by avoiding at all costs any such thought of a death of self. But the true message of the cross demands the death of self WITH CHRIST on the cross.

Satan told Eve that she would be as God, and implied she could save herself. But God wanted man to have God's Life within, from the fruit of Life, and that requires self life to be set aside. Salvation by works is the message of the false tree and cross. Since we need to make ourselves as good as we can by acquiring all the necessary knowledge of good and evil so as to avoid the evil and do the good, death of self is the LAST THING we need to experience.

But self must die in order for true salvation to occur, and that salvation is not of works but only through the work God did through the death of the cross, that we find a powerful revelation in Jesus' response to the penitent thief's request to be remembered in the Kingdom. Jesus must have shocked the penitent thief! The thief probably considered any association with the Kingdom to perhaps occur years or eons later at some wonderful great by and by! But this Kingdom is so much based on God's work and not our own, that Jesus let the thief know that as soon as he dies with Christ on that cross, and their souls and spirits left their bodies, that the thief would indeed be in the Kingdom Paradise (Garden) of God THAT DAY!

Without the thief able to do one impressive deed for the Lord, as though works could save, the moment he died with Christ would give him entrance into the Kingdom!

AND SO IT IS TODAY!