Revelation in connection with what has been calling itself “church” continues to get clearer. This morning it hit me as the title of this post suggests: (Vine – branches – stems). We know that branches that don’t abide in the vine get “thrown into the fire.”
John 15:4-6: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”
The stem cells may be attached to branches that are still in the vine, but if they are mutant stem cells their fruit will be devilish rather than Christish. Jesus said, “Your father, the Devil…” The children of the devil are not the devil, but they are devilish. The children of the Lord are not Christ, they are Christish – Christian. As such they are the fullness of Him Who fills everything in every way. Mutant stem cells taken together are the fullness of the Devil, who may not fill everything in every way, but for the present, fills a lot of bad stuff in a lot of ways.
Taking out the stem cells is a daunting task, they have a lot of defense mechanisms, if you can manage to get at them in one place or set of circumstances, they mutate or morph into another place or circumstance taking new forms of defense mechanisms with them. They cause both the growth and the spread of cancer. They are very defensive. When their mutant associates, non-stem cancer cells get injured the stem cells respond by multiplying to help their mutant friends. This is one of the down sides of current cancer therapy – the tumors may shrink, but the stem cells increase and some of them run and hide in new places. During periods of remission they are able to hide out most any place, and then in their own bad time reemerge as recurrent cancer, the same as the original or mutated into something new. They are very wily moving targets.
What comes to mind here is something Jesus said to the religious experts of His day: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” Matthew 23:13, 15 (NIV). I should say the the NIV omits verse 14 except by a foot note: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Therefore you will be punished more severely.” I should say that religious experts do that quite well also. They share a gospel of sorts, but along with it they preach a lot of error, and as the Apostle Paul wrote: “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?” 1 Corinthians 5:6
Perhaps enough said for now about mutated religious experts and their down line.
This just to say that we continue to travel over land and sea in search of the truth where cancer is concerned. Our hope is that something will emerge in the face of all the attention that is now focused on mutant stem cells, something that will either straighten them all out or wipe them all out.
Love!
Loving Like God 
Jay, as I read your piece it occurred to me how the old man of the flesh in us is like those mutant stem cells. He starts out in one form and when that form is under fire he hides for a while and emerges in another form… anything to maintain control and to go on manifesting (not so different from demons). When Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked after they sinned, they hid and cloaked themselves in fig leaves. Funny, but I have heard that the fig tree is a sign of the O.T. people of God. So it is with the flesh in us. Our inward self (nakedness) gets exposed and we start putting on the garments of religion. We go to church and hang out with the “holy people” and we memorize scriptures so we can spout them off at will, yet for many of us it is just a smoke screen to cover up the cancer that is inside.
Surgeons often cut out parts of the body to try and get rid of the bad cells in the tissue. Couldn’t this be likened to us as the branches that are constantly being pruned by the Father even after we have been grafted into the Vine? I know in me it seems that the more He cuts away, the more there is revealed. God has been showing me a lot about abiding IN Christ and what it means to be enveloped in Him, but with that revelation is coming a lot of pruning.
Looks to me like we are on the same page, or at least hanging from the same “branch.” :-)
Love!