THE CHRIST
COMMENT: You said the whole creation is carved out of the very substance of God, and that He is sustaining us. You said that it is the sticky part that is holding us together. I am kind of getting this confused, with the fact that you said that the Primordial Serpent is appearing today as Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, and the Devil, that we are in the image of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, and that he is the one that is sustaining this realm of appearance.
PASTOR VITALE: It is true that we are built on the power base of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, the one who has incarnated this fallen world, but this fallen world would not even exist if it were not formed from the original building blocks of creation, which were carved out of the very substance of God. See, a lot of Christians get all upset at that, but the Scripture clearly states that God created evil. God made everything that was made, and that includes the Serpent, which is the evil in the world. We read in John 1 that everything that was made, which includes the Serpent, Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, and the Devil, was made out of the substance of God.
The basic building blocks of the creation were made out of the substance of God, and then the creation was formed out of those building blocks. The Serpent, who is the partial Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, departed from Adam, the whole Tree of Life, and is incarnating this present world on his own power base today which is Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind. This means that Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, cannot even exist apart from the substance of God, which the Serpent stole from Adam, the Son of God, that God anointed to rule over, nourish, and protect all aspects of the creation.
The word "Anointed" is translated "Christ" in the New Testament. We see that the Christ, the Son of God, was originally in the form of Adam. That is why Paul calls Jesus, who was The Christ in the days of His flesh, "The last Adam." Why do I say, "In the days of His flesh?" Because Jesus died to His flesh form, which could have lived forever, and took on the higher, spiritual form of the Father of Lights which today is impregnating the dying members of mortal humanity with Jesus' immortal life.
The glorified Jesus Christ, who we call the Lord Jesus, is reproducing Himself today as the next spiritual generation of Christ in the flesh of mortal humanity. This fetal Christ, when He is rooted and growing up in a mortal man, represents the hope of immortality that fallen humanity inherited when Jesus of Nazareth, who was "The Christ" in the days of His flesh, was glorified. You see, Christ can be growing up in the flesh of a mortal man, but that mortal man can be called "The Christ" only when the Christ within that mortal man has subdued and completely overcome that mortal man's sin nature. That is a hard word for religious Christians.
COMMENT: I hear what you are saying, but you are saying the very part that was supposed to be, the real small part, the pestilence, is what is appearing, that is what we are seeing. I mean, even these physical bodies, everything in the material world, everything that we can see with our eyes is the pestilence.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, and when we did the Daniel 8 series, we found it expressed in the Scripture that the Serpent went beyond; that righteous Adam formed a visible creation in the soul realm and it was good. When the Serpent arose and broke the bones of Christ at the beginning of time, and put her carnal mind on the throne, so to speak, made her carnal mind the head of this creation, she went beyond the visible, spiritual realm of the spirit, and she formed the visible realm, which is physical, and it is not of God. When Christ appears in the earth again, this whole world system is going to disappear. Mongoloids, for example, have an extra chromosome, something extra in their genes, that results in a perversion; it is not supposed to be there.
COMMENT: You said Jesus Christ's spiritual life was nailed to the carnal mind in Him. Have you said before what that nail was? What is that nail?
PASTOR VITALE: Christ is the nail. The mind of Christ within the man Jesus is the nail, and the nail went through or crucified the carnal mind.
COMMENT: Christ in the Greek is the anointing? The anointing is the nail?
PASTOR VITALE: The Spirit of Christ is the nail, He is the needle. We see the Spirit of Christ appearing as the nail that went through the Sisera's carnal mind, that is our type. Are you familiar with that teaching?
COMMENT: No.
PASTOR VITALE: Sisera was a General when Midian was oppressing Israel, and the children of Israel cried out to God and He raised up a judge, Deborah. She led the Hebrew children to war, and Sisera was killed. This mighty oppressor of Israel was killed by a woman which typifies mortal man. Sisera was killed by a woman, who drove a nail through his head, but not a little household nail like this. When the Bible says a nail, it is really talking about a stake that you would drive into the ground to hold a tent down. She drove a stake through his carnal mind and nailed him to the earth.
That is the type of what is happening to the carnal mind in us. Sisera, right through his head, right through his temple and she nailed him to the ground. Well, she did it through his physical head, which is a type of what Christ is doing to our carnal mind.
COMMENT: You know that the pestilence is the carnal mind that we are supposed to keep under the Christ mind, and she nailed it to the ground.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, spiritually speaking, this would mean that Sisera's carnal mind was ascended in spiritual power and, therefore, dominating the collective Christ mind in Israel. The Christ within the spiritual woman of dominated Israel, (not "The Christ" that appeared in Moses, for example) rose up and crucified Sisera's carnal mind to the ground. This is another way of saying that Christ arose in power within mortal Israel and overcame and cast down the ascended carnal mind of the Midianites, who were dominating mortal Israel. This account is a natural type of how our carnal mind is being crucified by the Spirit of Christ, which is a sharp, penetrating instrument. Amen, and Amen. Christ must be formed in us before the Spirit of Christ can crucify our carnal mind. Everything done decently and in order.
COMMENT: I was just thinking of the carnal saying in the world, "she nailed him," it had another meaning to it.
PASTOR VITALE: It means to bring someone into submission. I thought it meant that she got him to marry her, you know, she joined him, she effected a joining.
COMMENT: I am just curious, when Christ was being crucified, they pressed thorns into his head. Did that signify death to the carnal mind too in some manner?
PASTOR VITALE: No, when they put the thorns from the outside into the man, Jesus of Nazareth, it typifies that they tried to kill his Christ mind, but they could not. They killed his body, they penetrated his body and his skull, but they could not penetrate Jesus' Christ mind.
COMMENT: Kind of along the lines of what she is saying, is it true, that where they have said, you know, they tried to crucify the Lord of glory, but they did not realize what they were doing, because in crucifying him, He overcame death.
PASTOR VITALE: Jesus was crucified so that all men would believe. I do not believe that his body really had to die for Jesus to be glorified. I do not think that he had to be physically crucified to ascend to glorification. I do not believe that. I believe that he did it out of obedience to His Father. Jesus had to die to His flesh existence, but He did not have to die like that. Jesus breathed out of His physical body before it died on the cross, so surely He could have breathed out of His physical body at any time.
COMMENT: Is it true that He said at some point, He told someone or He said to somebody, that if He would have desired it, He could have called for ten thousand angels?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes.
COMMENT: He said that He chose to lay down his life?
PASTOR VITALE: He said, "I am not of this world."
COMMENT: I heard a remark from a person that said, "You know, if the father is so merciful, what father would allow his son to go through what his son went through?" I said, "I think there is a misunderstanding here, Jesus freely gave his life, and He could have called ten thousand angels," does it not say that in the word?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, He said, "If I was of this world, I could have, but I am not of this world." Well, I think you know it is a great mystery that the Father did that to his own son to save the whole world. Remember now, Jesus was in full stature, He was different than we are. Not only was He in full stature, He had circumcised His soul, He had completed the second stage of resurrection. Have you heard about Hindu holy men who walk on nails and the skin of their feet are not pierced? Or who swallow fire, and are not burned? Jesus was in a high spiritual place. Do you think Jesus would feel pain when a Hindu Holy man does not? I think not, brethren.
COMMENT: You know this same person told me that. He said to me today, "There was some way to find pleasure in pain and he said, it is a condition of the mind." I said, Well, there is spiritual power, either in God or in witchcraft." He said, "Well, what is wrong with witchcraft," and I said witchcraft is of the devil, it is of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind.. He said, "What about those that...how do you think they walk across coals?" I said, "Yes, but it is through witchcraft, and the whole bottom line is the motive," and it is along these lines that...
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, they do not feel pain when they walk across the coals.
COMMENT: They do not feel the pain, and he was saying there has to be a way to come out of the pain.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, that is what I just said.
COMMENT: That is what you are saying?
PASTOR VITALE: I believe it.
COMMENT: It might be the answer to that, it might be the answer to that, to even his question, that why would God allow his son to go through torture, because he said, "If I was a father and I had a son that was doing drugs, I would do everything I could, to get him off those drugs," which is ironic that this kid was telling me this. I looked back at him and said, "If you overdosed, that would be the destruction of your flesh forever, I said, but God knew." This was the only answer I had for him at the time, that God knew that he was going to raise Jesus Christ from the dead.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, but the question is why did He let him be tortured? Why did He not just let Him die? I will say this to that; that He had to be crucified because the crucifixion of having the nails driven into His flesh was the type of the nail crucifying Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, in the realm of the spirit. Now, you might say to yourself, "Why did God let the Jews be in bondage in Egypt for all those years?" God has permitted His servants to experience great difficulties in pain over the centuries, and He has done it. His mind is greater than ours, and I would not let anybody in any way cause me to call God unrighteous. You know, He just knows what He is doing. We may not understand it right now, but He has got everything under control. That is all that I could say to you, that His mind is greater than our mind and that He is righteous, Okay?
As far as Jesus goes, I really question whether or not He did soul travel and come out of his body, I really question that.
COMMENT: The people that were very devoted to Jesus were martyred, and they had horrible things done to their bodies. Well, you said, "We know this has gone on through the centuries, that many have been martyred and physically tortured and in many different ways. God allowed this, and there has to be a purpose in it, for the suffering and pain that we, in our, (it must be our carnal minds,) that just rebel against it so much and so the carnal mind is definitely afraid of that because, yes, it does not want to die."
PASTOR VITALE: Afraid of the pain, I do not mind dying, I do not like the thought of pain.
COMMENT: The pain, the pain is it. I mean the death part, it was just like that, and it was over, I guess, you know. Even that, even that, because I have heard some people with suicide spirits say, "Oh that would be such an easy way to die." In other words, escapism you know, out of this realm, because this is painful, this is just painful, this realm completely, it is painful. To be physically tortured is heavy pain, and nobody wants to face physical torture, but I do not want to deny, to live in denial of it either, because it could be the carnal mind. I mean is it true, that Jesus did suffer, I mean I do not want to be in denial if He did, you know?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, I am waiting on the Lord. You know, I have taken different positions over the years. I have been questioning this for quite a few years, and what sticks with me is one of the testimonies of Watchman Nee, who you may recall was in jail for many years, and he was tortured continuously. One of his testimonies is that they were coming to torture him and he said to the Lord, "Father I just cannot take it anymore, I really cannot take it anymore." The next thing that he remembered was that he heard a man screaming, and he was wondering where the pain was coming from, and he had projected out of his body. He had left his body and he was up, hovering above his body and he looked down and it was his body screaming and yelling, but his soul was out of his body and, therefore, he was not experiencing the pain. It does happen.
COMMENT: Even Steven, when he was stoned did not seem to feel any pain, you know.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, and someone else as a matter of fact; the woman that shared this same testimony about Watchman Nee with me, she reads a lot of these kinds of books. She read a story about a group of people that were being persecuted by a military regime (I do not remember where), they were in jail, and they were sentenced to death.
This one young woman, she knew she was going to die, and she was terrified and she cried out to Jesus and she just clung unto Jesus, and everyday those around saw her face changing. It just became everyday more and more peaceful, and at the time that they marched her out to be shot to death, she had the face of an angel. I believe that Christ appeared in her, and now if that is true, when Christ is appearing in you, nothing is going to bother you, including Jesus hanging on the cross.
That is the question, how much pain can you really feel if the second stage of resurrection is completed in you. I do not know the answer. but I think there is a possibility he did not feel it. Yet like xxxx said, there are many martyrs that have been tortured for Christ's sake.
COMMENT: In the Scriptures, it says, "He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities." Now, do you know, was that just happening, and he did not feel that? He never cried out.
PASTOR VITALE: I do not think that is talking about the cross, I really do not. Now, remember that Jesus is still in the earth, He is in us, okay? In accordance with this message that we heard tonight, when we preach this gospel, and the carnal minds of men rise up, they are wounding us, and they are bruising, and we are Christ. If we are preaching this message and someone's carnal mind is killing me, I am Christ, and I am being wounded, and I am being bruised and am beat up real bad. Everybody that preaches this message, or any message, you know, but this message especially, you get beat up really bad.
COMMENT: Where the Lord said to Saul, why are persecuting me, in other words he was, and he was already...
PASTOR VITALE: That is a good Scripture for that. Amen. I believe that is what that Scripture said, not about the cross, but he says, He was bruised for your iniquities. What does that mean? Well, a minister of Christ is preaching this gospel that is going to impart Christ to the people, and it is going to save their lives. Their carnal minds, their iniquity is killing the person in whom Christ is residing. He said, "I was bruised for your iniquity, I was bruised because your iniquity was killing me as I tried to save your life." That is what I think it means.
COMMENT: When Jesus was on the cross, He said, "I thirst."
PASTOR VITALE: We do not know what He thirsted for. They offered Him vinegar, and He refused it.
COMMENT: Yes, still He was conscious, He was not out of his body.
PASTOR VITALE: The first time He refused it, the second time He received it.
COMMENT: We will not be given any more than we can bear. He had His senses where He gave John care of his mother. He definitely was alert, and very aware of all the circumstances around Him.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, I think He gave John His mother at the very beginning, because it said, "Everybody had abandoned Him on the cross." When He gave John His mother, John was still there, so then everybody left. After they strung Him up, they could not bear to watch and they all left.
COMMENT: When he said, "My God, my God," on the cross, "Why hast thou forsaken me," is it not true that in the Greek it does not mean that, that was not the right words?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, we looked that all up, and I also heard a tape by xxxxxx, which really blessed me. He had the same revelation. What He was saying was, "My God my God, now that you have left me, it is done." I believe what that means is that He could not die so long as the Father was inhabiting His body. Jesus' humanity was being crucified so that men would believe Jesus was in control. The Father left His body and He said, "My God my God, now that You have left, thank you, I can die."
There is another Scripture associated with the crucifixion where it said, "And He gave out one loud cry and He gave up the ghost." Well, when He gave up the ghost, if you look that up in the Greek, (I am pretty sure that is the word, if you look that up in the Greek,) what it is really saying is that He did not just die. He did not just die. He forcibly, He forcibly breathed out of His body. He did not die of natural causes.
He hung up there on the cross until that which had to be accomplished was accomplished. Then He said to the Father, "Thank you Father, now that it is finally over and you have left, I now, I can go too," and He forcibly breathed out and the body died. His body did not die from natural causes. He forcibly removed His spirit and His soul from that body as an act of His own will. They did not kill Him. This is why the Scripture says that Jesus made an open show of the powers and principalities.
Jesus was not the first man to be raised from the dead. Jesus was the first man, born of a woman to leave His physical body before that body died. It is interesting to note that Elijah, as well as Jesus' physical body, was never found. Enoch lived before the Flood, so we do not know what kind of body he had, but it was not a Homo-sapiens, animal body. Enoch was not born of a human woman..
COMMENT: This did happen; the separation from the Father, and the Son completely.
PASTOR VITALE: I am sorry, I do not understand your question.
COMMENT: My thought was that it never even happened, God never separated from Him, that God never separated from Jesus, but what you are saying is the Father did separate from the son, and He separated completely from the son on the cross.
How is it that the King James, or I do not know how it got in there like that, but it came out as a question, when Jesus was making a statement? It is proven in the Greek that it says, "Now that you have left me, it is done." That is what it says in the Greek?
PASTOR VITALE: "Now that you have left me it is all over, I know it is all over." The work in the spirit that was taking place, the work of the spirit that was taking place when He was hanging on the cross was completed.
COMMENT: I just thought it meant in another verse, He said, "It is finished," you know, but it was not right at the same time, as when He said, "Why have you forsaken me?"
PASTOR VITALE: The Father did not forsake him. The Father never forsook him. The Father did leave Jesus because Jesus' physical body had to die. First, the Father went and then Jesus went.
COMMENT: What was the significance of Him being lifted off the earth? Is that anything to do also with this whole matter, you know, that they had to take Him off the ground?
PASTOR VITALE: That he was crucified, that He had to come off the ground? There is a Scripture that said, "Cursed is he that is hanging between the heaven and the earth." I do not really know that the Cross was a fulfillment of that. What that says to me is, cursed is he that is not really manifesting spiritual power. I mean, I think that is what we are all going through now. It is really a curse to be rejecting our carnal mind and yet not have fully moved into the kingdom. It is a very frustrating time of life. Amen?
Hanging between heaven and earth is very frustrating. He has taken so much of my soul life away from me, and yet I have not really entered into the kingdom. It is stressful. I could see where it is a curse, but you have to keep on going, you have to press in, you have to enter in all the way, you have to go through.
COMMENT: The Scriptures say, "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend." Christ being on the cross seems to me, the greatest manifested proof of His love to all the world, even those who do not have any knowledge. Even a carnal man has to acknowledge there is a God who loves to that extent, there is no greater manifestation than that.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes. Well you see, He hung on that cross just so that men would believe. The real act of love that He did was not that He hung on the cross for six hours. The real act of love was that Christ was fully appearing in that man Jesus, and He could have lived forever in that condition, but He gave up His soul life. If you look up that word in the Greek, when He was crucified, what died was His soul life. The soul life that went by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, that was the life that He laid down.
He could have lived forever, and He gave up that life in the flesh so that He could be poured out upon all of us. Now, once again, He is trapped inside of the sinful flesh of mortal man, but this time He is inside multiple members of mortal humanity helping us to overcome our carnal mind, so that we can partake of His sinless life and enter into immortality.
You know, it is not pleasant for Christ to be in these boundaries of our fallen bodies, it is not pleasant for Him. We have the Psalm of David crying out that God should not leave him in Hell. I believe that, that is the cry of the Son of God, trapped inside of our physical bodies, where He is subjected to our carnal minds. It is not pleasant for Him. Christ gave up one human vessel (Jesus of Nazareth), in which He was finally appearing in the earth, and now 2,000 years later, He is giving up that freedom to be trapped once again inside of sinful men. This is why Jesus of Nazareth, who was The Christ, lay down His life. That was the incredible sacrifice of His perfected life.
Jesus was physically crucified so that men would believe. It was just six hours hanging on the cross; they crucified men every day in Rome. If you want to look at it that way, you have to ask yourself, "What did Jesus do that no one else did?" They crucified them up and down the way there, and not only that, but His crucifixion was shorter. No one dies in six hours, so what was the big deal that He did?
COMMENT: Well, for one thing it was fulfillment of prophesy. In that one day he fulfilled, I understand 31 prophesies were fulfilled.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, it was just the beginning. What I am saying is, I do not want you to misunderstand me. I am not putting down what He did, but I am saying that the spiritual aspect of what He did was much greater than the physical aspect of what He did. We do not hear much about the spiritual aspect of what He did. That is what I am saying, do you understand?
COMMENT: Only the part that the carnal mind could understand was fulfilled.
PASTOR VITALE: Right, so that is why it was fulfilled in the natural because the carnal mind could never understand its fulfillment in the spiritual, okay? Well, what did you say, 31 prophecies were fulfilled? Well, I would like to see those prophesies, but it was just the beginning, it was just the tip of the iceberg, it was fulfilled in the natural so that men would believe and now 2,000 years later, those prophecies are still in the process of being fulfilled in the spirit. The temptation is still taking place, the crucifixion is still taking place, the resurrection is still taking place in all of the men in whom Christ is starting to appear.
Now, 2,000 years later, the whole process that took place in the man Jesus of Nazareth is taking place in the spiritually female Church, even the Bride of Christ, which is pregnant with the second generation of Christ.
COMMENT: I remember a long time ago, it says, "Now you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh," and I rejected that because I believed everything was to be in the spirit. What is your interpretation?
PASTOR VITALE: Why did you reject it, tell me why you rejected it?
COMMENT: Because I saw everything as in the spirit, you know. Jesus was already glorified, He was no longer flesh and blood.
PASTOR VITALE: No, you see that is not true. The glorification is not over, it is all still happening. Christ is still being baptized in the spirit, He is still being anointed in the spirit, He is still being water baptized in the Jordan, He is still standing up in full stature, He is still going through the circumcision in the soul, He is still being glorified. Everything that you saw happen to the man Jesus, it is still happening to Christ, because Christ has a many-membered body, and the man Jesus was just the first member that all these things happened to. It is all still going on. That is the great sacrifice that Jesus made.
You see, the personality (soul) of Jesus of Nazareth was completely joined and co-mingled with the Christ that was within Him, so now Jesus is a part of the Christ that is being joined to the many members of humanity. No man should have to go through the hardships of overcoming their carnal mind more than once, but Jesus is experiencing this painful experience over and over again in you and in me, and in everybody that His spiritual seed is joined to. He could have stopped right there in Jesus of Nazareth, but He is going through all of this pain in millions and billions of people. That is the love that is incomprehensible.
See, we could say the Man-child was born in the man Jesus of Nazareth, but the truth is that only the head was born in Jesus of Nazareth, and now the Body of Christ is being born.
COMMENT: You said His soul died, but I thought His soul resurrected.
PASTOR VITALE: He gave up the soul life of the man Jesus of Nazareth. Christ was raised from the dead.
COMMENT: Then he had another soul?
PASTOR VITALE: Yours. If that spirit that raised Christ from the dead be in you, the one that raised Christ from the dead shall quicken your mortal soul. Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth raised the soul/personality of the man Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, and because Jesus' soul/personality, was raised from the dead, He could have lived forever.
Jesus of Nazareth died to this soul plane of consciousness so that Christ Jesus (the co-mingled Christ and the soul/personality of the man, Jesus) could be glorified and reproduce Himself in all of us. The man Jesus gave up His existence as the single, physical man Jesus of Nazareth and became a disembodied, glorified Spirit that is grafting itself to the many-members of mortal humanity for the specific purpose of sharing His sinless immortality with us. You do not understand it?
COMMENT: I am confused because I heard on one of the tapes that you said something about He is taking His soul and putting it in us, His soul is within us.
PASTOR VITALE: Not the soul of the man Jesus of Nazareth, which was a fallen soul that He received from His mortal mother, but the glorified soul of Christ Jesus, which is the purified soul of Jesus of Nazareth, completely co-mingled with the sinless Christ.
COMMENT: He does not have any soul anymore, right?
PASTOR VITALE: Christ?
COMMENT: When He resurrected, His soul died, so He does not have a soul?
PASTOR VITALE: Jesus' mortal soul/personality was quickened, which means that it died to its potential to sin, but was purified when the fiery spirit of Christ joined it to the Mind of Christ. Today the Lord Jesus has a sinless or immortal, soul which is joined to my mortal soul and the mortal soul of everybody here. The glorified Jesus is living in the second generation of Christ today. This means that, in addition to His glorified, ascended life, the Lord Jesus is also joined to many mortal souls, which He fully intends to purify and liberate from the physical bodies that they are imprisoned in.
That is why Christ Jesus appears in the Book of Revelation wearing many crowns, signifying the many mortal souls that He has liberated through union with Himself.
COMMENT: Those souls are not glorified?
PASTOR VITALE: Our souls are not glorified yet, but Jesus' soul was raised from the dead, which means that it was purified and glorified together with Christ.
COMMENT: Jesus' soul was raised from the dead, this has really got me confused.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, if that spirit which raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, that spirit which raised Christ from the dead shall quicken your mortal soul. Abel, Jesus' spiritual potential, was raised from the dead in the man Jesus, and the quickened Abel is called Christ. Abel is Adam's root system, so we can say that when Abel/Christ was raised from the dead in the man Jesus, the Adamic soul rose within Jesus thereafter.
COMMENT: Where is the Adamic soul?
PASTOR VITALE: The Adamic soul is called Christ Jesus in the second generation of Christ
COMMENT: His raised soul is in us?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, Christ, the seed of Jesus' glorified life is in us.
The soul of Jesus was completely absorbed by Christ. When we go into glorification, our soul which is our personality will completely die to sin. You only have a mortal personality in the first and second stages of the resurrection. In glorification, the mortal soul is completely swallowed up into Christ Jesus and becomes an immortal soul.
COMMENT: Jesus' soul was raised from the dead, but He was not glorified, the soul was not glorified, you say.
PASTOR VITALE: I prefer not to say that the mortal soul of Jesus of Nazareth was glorified because in glorification the mortal soul/personality ceases to exist, and a new holy, sinless, soul/personality in the image of the Father is born.
COMMENT: This happened then, when he ascended to the father, right? When He met Mary Magdalene in the Garden and He said, "Do not touch Me because I have not ascended to the Father," that was Jesus' raised Adamic soul that she was talking to?
PASTOR VITALE: Jesus' mortal soul was raised from the dead before the crucifixion. This is what "Full Stature" means, that the spiritual potential within Jesus' mortal soul matured to its full potential.
COMMENT: When he ascended to the Father, He was glorified. He was not glorified at the moment He talked to her because He said, "Do not come near me, I have not ascended to the Father yet."
PASTOR VITALE: He was not fully ascended yet.
COMMENT: I think when He spoke to Mary at that time, He was saying, "Do not interfere, do not try to hold on to Me."
COMMENT: He does make the statement , "I have not ascended to the Father yet." We have the understanding, right, that when he ascended to the Father, that is when He was glorified?
PASTOR VITALE: Glorification is a process that began with the separation from His physical body, after He was crucified, but at the point that Jesus met Mary Magdalene, the procedure was not completed yet.
COMMENT: I was just thinking, it was another way for Christ to show that He has power and authority over death. It was the resurrection. Possibly going through it in a dramatic way and then the resurrection.
PASTOR VITALE: We really have to watch out for our carnal minds, because spiritual things do not necessarily make sense to the carnal mind. It is this rapture mentality that makes us think that something happens instantly. Jesus was glorified, His physical presence in the earth was converted into a non-corporeal spiritual form, but it could have taken 40 days to complete the process. I personally feel that Mary Magdalene could have been hurt, that He must have been hot to the touch. She would have been burnt when she touched him, because at that point He was pure spirit, energy.
COMMENT: I was asking if the soul of Jesus, not Christ, the soul of Jesus had any existence, after He raised His body from the dead, and if the existence was gone when He fully ascended to the Father, that was my question.
PASTOR VITALE: As I said previously, Jesus' soul/personality emerged in a sinless form after it was joined to Christ, but that happened before the crucifixion. The glorified Jesus took many forms before He ascended. He appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who did not recognize Him because He was in a totally different form. Then He appeared in the form of Jesus of Nazareth with the nail prints in His hands. Then He appeared on the shore cooking fish, and the apostles said, "We know it is the Lord, but it does not look like Him," and they were afraid to ask.
He was already in a condition that was way beyond what He had been before He was crucified. We see that the significant change that took place after Jesus shed His physical body is that Jesus acquired the ability to change His form. Jesus became a shape-shifter after the crucifixion.
COMMENT: He gave up His flesh, because Jesus was God in the flesh. Right?
PASTOR VITALE: He gave up His flesh.
COMMENT: You are saying that He also gave up His soul and the carnal mind that He was born with?
PASTOR VITALE: Jesus gave up the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, and is now known only as Jesus, the Christ, Son of God.
COMMENT: Right, so He gave up his personality, His mind.
PASTOR VITALE: As Jesus of Nazareth yes, He did, He gave it up and now...
COMMENT: The mind of Christ is another mind, besides the mind of Jesus of Nazareth?
PASTOR VITALE: Absolutely. Jesus gave up the parts of Him that were generated by His mortal side, the carnal mind and physical body that He inherited from his mother, and today is living in the many souls and many bodies of the second generation of Christ.
COMMENT: He was not fully fulfilled as the 100% mind of Christ until He finished the work on the cross?
PASTOR VITALE: Christ Jesus is not completed until Christ is appearing in the whole population of this earth.
COMMENT: Jesus did come into Full Stature, which would mean having the 100% mind of Christ, right?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, He did.
COMMENT: Then He did have the mind of Christ before the crucifixion.
PASTOR VITALE: Oh yes, definitely.
COMMENT: He had two minds before the crucifixion?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, He had two minds, but from the moment that He ascended into Full Stature, His carnal mind was paralyzed by the mind of Christ. It was not functioning, just like when a bird flies, its legs are not functioning.
COMMENT: Is that carnal mind, that Adamic mind of Jesus Christ?
PASTOR VITALE: The carnal mind is the residue of Adam after he fell and died, but Adam rose from the dead and was restored to righteousness in Christ Jesus.
COMMENT: He gave that up?
PASTOR VITALE: His perfected personality as Jesus of Nazareth, that is what He gave up. The spiritual life that dwelt within Jesus that was completely fused with Jesus' purified personality ascended to the spiritual grade known as "Father," and now that glorified spiritual life is in us in the form of the reproductive, spiritual seed of His glorified life which is now grafting to a whole bunch of mortal souls that live in physical bodies.
COMMENT: I was just thinking that the risen Christ and the various forms that He takes, gives credence that this realm of appearance is really an illusion.
PASTOR VITALE: The risen Christ ascended beyond the spiritual authority of this world and can now take any form that He wants. This is an illusionary world, so He can appear in any form that He wants.
COMMENT: I thought it was because Thomas did not have any faith and that is why Jesus appeared like that.
PASTOR VITALE: What xxxx is saying is, there had to be a reason why he would not let Mary touch Him. We know why He told Thomas to touch Him, but we do not know why He did not let Mary touch him. Jesus' spiritual condition could have changed within twenty-four hours which is an interesting point. If Jesus did not let Mary touch Him, saying, "I have not ascended to the Father yet," because He was pure energy and she would have been burnt, does that mean that if He let Thomas touch Him a couple of days later, by that time He must have ascended to the Father? He was on the earth for forty days, so let us say it was a couple of days later that He wound up with the apostles. What does it mean to ascend to the Father?
The Spirit of Elijah was the Father of Christ Jesus, the spiritual man, within the personality/soul named Jesus, who joined with that soul/personality. "To ascend to the Father" means, to ascend to the spiritual grade of the glorified Elijah. If our reasoning is correct, Jesus was converted into a spiritual man before He disappeared.
When Mary saw the glorified Jesus, the process had not been completed yet. Mary saw Him right after the crucifixion. She was the first one to see Him, right? Maybe it was just the first twenty-four hours that He could not be touched, and He was completely glorified within twenty-four hours. We do not know.
COMMENT: It sounds like in the Scriptures this could be the letter, but it sounds like He is saying, "Because I have not ascended to the Father yet, do not touch me."
PASTOR VITALE: The question is, what does "Ascend to the Father" mean? To the carnal mind it says, "I have disappeared off the earth." I am suggesting to you that "Ascending to the Father" means conversion of Jesus' corporeal form into a spiritual form. Maybe, twenty-four hours later He had ascended, but even though He had ascended into a spiritual form, He was still in the earth. You see, the carnal mind says, "To ascend to the Father" means that you would have to leave the earth, but this is not necessarily so.
COMMENT: That is, ascending to the Father, becoming pure spirit. It is going into the spirit realm in the Heavenlies where He is righteous, and then if He chose to appear in the earth again, He could?
PASTOR VITALE: Right.
COMMENT: Then, when He ascended up again and they waited for Him, then that is when He sprinkled out into everyone?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, He is not inside of everyone right now, but, yes, He is sprinkling out upon all flesh.
COMMENT: Those that receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, right?
PASTOR VITALE: That was not a sprinkling, that was tongues of fire. Well, I do not want to get too technical. Yes, He came back to the earth, pouring out of His spirit. He was first seen as tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost, that is true. The sprinkling is the dissemination of the spiritual seeds of His glorified life.
I would like to point out to you that a glorified spirit, the glorified spirit of Jesus Christ, has the power to transmute matter. What I mean by matter is anything that is solid. Spirit is not solid. Matter is solid. Glorified spirit has the power to transmute matter. That means when Jesus was on the shore and was cooking fish, there is nothing in the Bible that says He went fishing. Where did He get the fish from, where did He get the firewood from? I want to suggest to you that a glorified spirit has the power to take the elements out of the air and cause anything He wants, to appear. It is magic when it is done by Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, but when it is done by Christ, it is not magic. It is the legal exercise of spiritual power.
COMMENT: That is how He made things appear in the beginning, right? It is, it is Himself, and when you are in a spiritualized form, you have all power over the natural.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, all power, the use of the atoms are at your command, you just think it and it appears. That is how the Scripture can say, we were driven out of the Garden of Eden into a land of labor, and when we return to Eden, there will be no labor. Well, how are you going to get everything done? You are just going to think it, and it is going to be.
COMMENT: I think you answered my question, because I was wondering about Thomas, because Jesus said, "Touch me, see that it is really me, put your hands in my side, and in the nail prints."
PASTOR VITALE: What was your question?
COMMENT: How could spirit take the form of flesh, where you could...
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, that is what you can do when you are in a glorified body, right. We really have to get our minds expanded, God has to help us to get our minds expanded, because what is happening is glorious, it is awesome, you know. Now, Jesus, to the best of my knowledge, Jesus, before the crucifixion could not do that. This is one of the privileges of glorification.
As I have said on a recent tape, I do not even see Jesus doing anything aggressive before the crucifixion. He just healed and delivered, and when someone tried to attack him, He disappeared, and the only violent thing He did was overturn the tables of the money changers, which actually was a spiritual event that happened in the natural in a completely different way. I do not see, and anyone, please tell me, if you know of a Scripture where Jesus used His spiritual authority in any aggressive way to restrain somebody. I do not know anything of it.
The first I hear of it is after he circumcised his soul in the Garden, and He came out and He just said, "I am," and they fell backwards. That is the only thing I know of, where anything aggressive came from Him.
Of course, His spiritual authority increased after the circumcision, and then again after the glorification. He had all authority over the soul realm. He walked on the water, so He had authority to walk on the water. He defied gravity, and He had authority over the flesh of men. He could heal their eyes and reconstruct their bodies. You know, He had that kind of authority over men, but we do not hear anything at all about Him making things appear or disappear, or about Him getting a fish out of the water to cook it.
He had a much higher authority after glorification, He had unlimited spiritual authority. I get so excited when I talk about it, that I lose my breath. We think it is fantasy or science fiction when we hear about someone snapping their fingers and a whole house completely furnished appearing. I believe that this is the ungodly magic side of the exercise of spiritual power. The people who teach the ungodly aspect of the exercise of spiritual power say that people that have that kind of power are going to use it to build worlds like we have now.
I believe that when the creation is glorified, we are not going to be living in a world like this, but we will have total authority to transmute matter, to take this table, and speak the word and have it converted into something else. Our modern day science believes that this is possible, but they believe that the amount of energy necessary to do it is not presently available to man. Based on the laws of physics, they believe it should be possible, but the power source necessary to do it is not presently available to us. I believe that it was this power source that comes from the Father that converted Jesus' body and his soul.
Now, our physical body is matter. Does anybody not understand that our physical body is made out of matter, and that our soul is made out of matter? What happened to Jesus' soul and His body? It was transmuted by the power of the Father. It was converted into something else, and He became a spiritual man, a spiritual man. "To alter" means, "to take the atomic structure of this table and to reform it into a black book." That is what transmutation of matter is.
COMMENT: When you said that Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, also has the power to cause things to appear in the realm of appearance, right? Well, He must have known something because after Jesus fasted for forty days, Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, must have had the knowledge of it, because how could he have said to Jesus, "You know You could take those stones and transmute them into bread." You know he had the knowledge that He could do that. He told Jesus, You could do that.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, Satan may have been lying, we do not know that he was telling the truth. I do not know. I have not seen it when I read the Bible, I do not see Jesus doing anything like that at all. Whether or not He had the power, we do not know, but we know that He did not do it. Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, could have been lying. Satan also said to Him, "Worship me, and I will give you all the kingdoms of this world." Well, the kingdoms, meaning all of the human vessels, that is who the kingdoms were.
COMMENT: Jesus made food appear when He fed the 5,000.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, it is not the same thing.
COMMENT: As transmuting?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes. Increasing the loaves and fishes is not the same thing as changing one kind of material into a completely different substance.
COMMENT: Well, is it not strange that he made that suggestion? That is transmutation. That Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, made that suggestion to Him on the mountain, He had the knowledge. Even if he was lying, he did have the knowledge of it.
PASTOR VITALE: You know, I was down in Port Jefferson the other day, and I mentioned to you that there is tarot reading store, and I have seen that for a couple of months and now there is another store. I do not know how long it is there, but I just discovered it for the first time. They do tarot cards, and they have all these occult books in the store. I just looked in through the window, and these titles, they were just so fascinating, and all that I could think about was the Scripture that says, "The children of men are so much wiser than the children of God." You know, the church is so infantile. There is no other word for it. They are absolutely infantile.
You know, even the kingdom church is not very spiritual. They are talking about doctrine, but they do not talk about this kind of stuff, not to my knowledge. Do you know any other ministry that talks about this kind of spiritual activity? You know, they are absolutely infantile, but the occult people, they are writing all these books about spiritual activity, and the church is yelling, occult, occult. Well, it is real and it is legal in Christ Jesus. I am so excited I could jump up and down.
COMMENT: Did not Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, take the matter and force it into what he wanted it to look like? When he got out from under Christ and took control, Satan, the pestilence, made the land of Nod appear, did he not transmute when he did that, did he not take the matter and force it into the image that he wanted to appear?
PASTOR VITALE: I do not think it is the same thing. The way I see it, for example, is if I were to say to you, "You are a human woman and you are capable of producing a child, you are capable of reproducing within certain restrictions." Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, when he brought forth his carnal mind, had the ability to do that, but he was limited as to how he could form this world. That is not the same thing as taking something that is already formed and changing its molecular structure.
COMMENT: Well, that ash is a form of something, right? It is white ash, right?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes.
COMMENT: That is why I thought that you knew that he took it, and he changed it into something that he forced into the image that he wanted.
PASTOR VITALE: The only example that is coming to my mind would be to say, "You are a woman, you are capable of bringing forth a child. If you marry a white man, you will have a white child, if you marry a black man, you will have a black child, if you marry a Chinese man, you will have a yellow child, but you are only capable of producing a human child." You are limited as to what you can do.
I believe when Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, produced the carnal mind, she had some authority to produce a world within certain limits, but that is not the same thing as having such spiritual power that you could pick up something that is already formed and recreate it. That is my opinion. You know, if you are right, I ask God to show it to me, but I do not see it the way you see it.
COMMENT: I could see how it may have happened, you know.
PASTOR VITALE: You see, God set up this creation and He said, "I have the living soul and this living soul is capable of producing an offspring." When the Father joined with the living soul, the offspring was the living Christ. When the Serpent joined with the living soul, Christ was destroyed, and the Serpent, working within the restrictions of the living soul that the Father had already established, brought forth his child. The Serpent did not go in and change the whole nature of the creation. He worked within what the Father had already created and perverted it.
The Serpent perverted what already existed. He did not make a new substance out of the building blocks of the creation. The building blocks of the creation which are carved out of the substance of God were not changed. The Serpent reformed what already existed. For the Serpent to have transmuted the creation, he would have had to change the building blocks of the creation which he did not do. Taking a fish and multiplying it into many more of the same thing is not the same thing as picking up this piece of wood and turning it into a pair of eyeglasses.
COMMENT: One image, and now it is another image, it began in the image of Christ and now it is the image of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind. So that is why I thought that.
PASTOR VITALE: He reformed it because it was not permanent. It would be like if I went to the beach, and I built a sand castle, and you came over and you crushed it, and you built another sand castle. That is pretty much what he did.
COMMENT: How is it that he had that thought, that he came to Jesus and said that?
PASTOR VITALE: All we know is that it was a temptation. I always thought that there was a spiritual application to that, that when Satan said, "Take these stones and make them bread," he was talking about the stony hearts of the human race and Satan was saying to Jesus, "Take these stony hearts and make them into Christ, and do it ahead of the plan of the Father." There is a spiritual application to that also.
COMMENT: That is still transmutation.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes. If you take it on that level, it is transmutation. Amen.
