The Meaning of Our Logo by Scott Flanagan
A number of years ago the Lord gave me the image of the cross and the crown as the logo for The Kingdom Academy. At the time, I liked it, but did not understand what it meant. A frequent image of the cross and the crown is with the cross inside a glorious crown. However, rather than standing upright and triumphant, the cross is leaning back and to the side. In these Knights Templar and Masonic images, the cross looks like it is falling down sideways and/or backwards. And in some of them, the cross almost appears horizontal.
Recently, the Lord showed me that this is the enemy’s message. Since the fall, man has been seeking a way to overcome the suffering and limitations of our material existence. That human yearning stems from our primordial memory of what Adam and Eve lost in the fall and what we had in our preexistence in our first estate in Father’s heart. The enemy’s message is I can give you secret knowledge that will enable you to attain transcendence over your suffering and material limitations without having to change. I can give you all the carnal desires of your heart – the desires for power, influence, material things, fame, adulation and every kind of bodily pleasure without end. Those that follow that path are dazzled by the vision of the glorious crown – attaining dominion over the material realm and all the things this world has to offer. That was Lucifer’s path. He sought power and dominion to glorify himself. Those that follow his path will end up as he did, gaining the opposite of what they seek. The masonic image of the cross and crown is declaring that by pursing the crown, people can overcome and rise above the cross and their material limitations and become gods who rule everything, bringing glory to themselves and indulging all their carnal desires.
Jesus models a very different path for us. Instead of seeking to overcome the sufferings of life, we are to embrace them and become the suffering servant that Jesus was. We embrace the suffering, because it is what refines us until we are willing to yield all our dreams, everything we hold dear to the Lord. This is the process of dying to self and it does not happen without suffering. Dying to self is a difficult and painful process. We have to overcome our dreams of attaining the things the world has to offer and yield our lives fully to Him. Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt 16:24 NKJV).
The Protestant church has sanitized the cross by taking Christ off of it, so that we do not have to look at His suffering. In truth, Christ is no longer on the cross. He overcame the world the flesh and the devil. In order for us to do the same, He is inviting us to take His place on the cross. When we do, we discover that the love, joy and peace that floods our soul when we embrace Him and His path more than compensates for the hurts and losses we experience in the world.
Our logo depicts a book. The Bible is the foundation of our faith and we are instructed to “study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15 KJV). The Bible is our sure foundation and we must daily be feed by its truths to escape the deceptions of the enemy. As Jesus warned us, “narrow (is) the road that leads to life” (Matt 7:14 NIV). Above that foundation, there is a cross. Rather than a sanitized cross, it is a simple Celtic cross. The circle in the Celtic cross represents wholeness, completeness and union. Here the circle has become a crown of thorns. The message is that you cannot get through the cross experience and become whole and united with God without getting mortally wounded, the death of self. As Paul wrote, we are to present our lives and our bodies to the Lord as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is (our) reasonable service” (Rom 12:1 NKJV). When we are able to go all the way through the cross experience, we become one with God and gain the crown – ruling and reigning with Him.