Part 1 of 2 Parts
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.
The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, Verses 1-18.
John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. KJV
Verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word.” “In the beginning was the Word.” This Greek word, translated beginning or origin, is talking about the beginning of time. God is eternal. He has no beginning and he has no end. But time, this existence that we dwell in, had a beginning and it will have an end. The Scripture says at the time that God, or the time period that God created this world, which is called time, that the Word already existed. We are told that the Word was with God. That is the next phrase. “And the Word was with God and the Word was God.” We are told that the Word is eternal. Eternity has no limit. It has no beginning, it has no end, it has no limit. Time exists within eternity. Eternity, we could say, fills this whole void. Of course, eternity has no bounds. I am just making a point. And within eternity we will draw this world system as a circle. This is the realm of time. We exist within God. He is so great that we cannot see Him. It is like saying you cannot see the forest for the trees. He is outside of us. He is inside of us. He is so great that we cannot comprehend him. He can liken ourselves to one cell in our bodies not being able to comprehend. If I took a piece of tissue off of my leg -- a piece of skin tissue -- sometimes they have to do that to put it under a microscope. There are living cells in that tissue that cannot comprehend the whole thing. This is how great God is. Each of us is a cell within His body, and He exists beyond His body. The higher you go you cannot escape from Him, we are told; and as low as you fall we cannot escape from Him. As far as you go to the North, the South, or the East or the West, you cannot find the end of Him or the beginning of Him because there is no end or beginning of Him. He is infinite.
At the time that God created this world system called time, the Word already existed. Now what is the word? The Greek word translated Word is Strong’s 3056, and it means logos. There are three different Greek words that are translated Word. This is the Greek word logos, and it means a word which, when uttered by the living voice of God embodies a conception or idea. Let me tell you what that means. There was no such thing as man. God had a dream. He had an imagination. He imagined a creature, and he imagined what it would look like, and because God is alive, when he thought it, it appeared. Nobody here is alive. When you are alive, when you truly have life, the spiritual definition of life, you can never die. When you truly have life, everything that touches you, that tries to kill you, receives life.
When you are dead, everything that you try to touch, everything that you try to impart life to dies anyway. The whole world died at the beginning of time. We are told that when God breathed the breath of life into man He stood that man up in the Garden. He imparted righteousness to him and therefore the life of the ages. But that man dies. Some people get confused with this, but the scriptural definition of death is separation from God. It was not non-existence. The scriptural definition of death is separation from God. When God said to the man if you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall surely die, that Hebrew word translated die means to become mortal. He said to the man, you will cease to be immortal, and you will become a mortal man who is capable of dying. Ever since the fall of man, every human being that comes into this world comes into the world, passes through it and dies because the mind which is in us is already dead. We are separated from God in our mind, and therefore our body dies. In the man, Jesus of Nazareth, His mind was one with God. There was no separation. He said I do nothing and I say nothing that the Father, Jehovah, has not told me to do. He was one with God and He who was joined to the Lord is one spirit, and therefore the life of God dwelt in the Son and everything and everyone that He touched received life, and it was impossible for death to pollute Him. He said no man takes my life. I must agree to lay it down. And the reason He agreed to lay it down was that the form of life that He had, He was man who was a man just like we are and had everything that we have, but He had one thing in addition to what we have. He had a mind which was God’s. The mind was alive because it had been rejoined unto the Father.
He was in a body, a fallen body just like we have. He inherited it from His mother. And the reason He agreed to give up that existence that he received from His mother, from the Seed of David, the House of Israel, He received His physical body and the same kind of mind that we have, from His mother, from the House of Israel, the Seed of David, was that He knew that when the Father raised Him from the dead He would be raised from the dead in a higher life form which was pure spirit. And in that higher life form He would have the ability to pour out His spirit upon all flesh. He is raining on the human race right now. He is raining on us and in many cases He is getting inside of our heart and when He gets inside of us, when the rain drenches into the earth of our soul, Lord willing, that mind of God that enabled the man Jesus to say: No one can take My life. I can die only if I agree to it. That same mind can start growing in you and is in fact growing in many of us. That was why He gave up His life, and now, 2,000 years later we are about to see a great harvest of human beings that look just like we look, that look just like He looked, but whose mind will be God.
So we see that the Word is speaking about -- a Word or a thought that comes forth from a mind that is alive. I want to tell you, every idea that man, fallen man, comes up with produces death. He builds big buildings but he does not build them with a way of escape. He rips out the fields so they cannot produce food. This whole society, the whole world is collapsing because man has built it and built it and built it. But he built it out of the minds of death and everything will eventually die because death can only beget death. Apple seeds can only beget apples. Oranges can only beget oranges. And to beget life, it must be begotten of life. When the Father had a thought and when the Father spoke that thought, it actually took form. There was no man. God imagined a man and it appeared. That is why one of the manifestations of the curse is that we must labor. We must labor to grow our food. We must labor to be clean. We must labor to raise our children. But before the fall there was no labor. Man had a mind which was alive and he thought and it was. We are being told in John 1:1 that at the time that the Father, Jehovah, created this world system that we live in, and that is not just the planet, it is the whole universe, all the universes. Everything that is physical in the world system; every planet as far out as you could go; at the time that the Father created it the Word already existed. And He was one spirit with the Father.
God had this idea. He had an idea. He literally broke a piece of Himself off and saw it take form. How can I explain that? God had an idea. The only substance available for this idea to be formed in was God. He was all that there was. So he imagined a creature and this whole humanity, God calls us a creature that He created, when He imagined us that substance out of which we would be formed had to come forth out of God because there was nothing else. Therefore, we are made out of the very substance of God. Now, some people would challenge me on that and they would accuse me of preaching pantheism, which says that God is in everything. God is in the trees, God is in the rocks, God is in the camera, God is in your hair, God is in the chair. And they would challenge me on that, so I would like to address that issue. Pantheism preaches that a mature God is in all of these things that I just named. What I say is no, it is not a mature God. This is a creation that was formed out of the substance of God. We are fallen. We are, spiritually speaking, we are female and according to deep studies that we have been doing here for five years, we will stay down here in this realm of corruption until our husband comes to join with us and raise us from the dead.
So I am not by any means preaching pantheism. Does anyone have a problem with that right now? We are in a fallen condition. We are in a weakened condition. We are in a condition of separation from God and our God-like qualities are not manifesting and cannot manifest until we are joined with the invigorating Spirit of God Himself. We are waiting. We are a partial tree. We are a partial tree. We are the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are no good by ourselves. We are like the nut and the bolt. One is no good without the other. We are waiting for our other half and we are pretty useless. God tells us that we are useless when we are not joined to Him. We labor our whole lifetime and we die.
In the beginning, when time was created the Word, which is God’s concept of what this world was supposed to be, is not what we look like. God’s creation died. God’s creation died at the time of the fall. So we are dead and you can liken the way we look to the way a skeleton would look. Everything that exists down here is similar to the way it exists in Heaven, on a lower realm. Did God not say to Moses make all of the elements of the tabernacle according to the patterns of the true things that are in the heavenlies? Everything that we see here is similar to that which exists in the realm of the spirit but on a much lower level -- on a much lower level. So we see -- if you would like an example to understand how God sees us in our dead condition, we can go to a graveyard or to a museum and look at a skeleton. As different as a skeleton looks from us, that is how different we look from the creation that God formed, which was the embodiment of His very life.
In the beginning, when God created time there was the Word, the creation of God. And the Word was with God. There was no separation. Therefore, life was in Him. And the Word was God. What the Scripture is saying here is, brethren, when you are one with God and when you are an expression of God, you are a Son of God. Now, we have had a whole movement in the church called the Sons of God. A lot of Christians are nervous about this because we have had a bunch of foreign people running around calling themselves God. Brethren, you cannot make yourself a God because you say that you are God, but, when your mind is the mind of God, when everything potential sin and evil and wickedness is completely under the dominion of the righteousness of God, you are a Son of God. Did not the Lord say to the Hebrews: Ye are God but ye shall die like men? What did He mean by that? He said to the Hebrews, the Hebrew children, you - to you -- the Word of God has been delivered unto you. The Word of truth, the Word of righteousness has been given unto you, but you will die like men. Why did the Hebrew children die like men? Because this Word that is on the paper never became a spiritual reality within their mind. It has to get from the paper inside of the mind. And we see in the church today all church-filled people that cannot give you any reason why sick people are not being healed, why people are still dying. They cannot give you any explanation because the truth has been imparted to them but their answer to the problem that men still die, that men are still sick, that men are still evil, that men -- Christians -- do terrible things. They are unrighteous. Many Christians are unrighteous men. The best of us are anything but perfect. Their explanation for it is well, you these benefits when you die. No, brethren, we will not get these benefits when our body dies. We are already dead and we are in the process -- the whole creation is in the process of being raised from the dead and we are being raised one member at a time. The first man to be raised from the dead was a man called Jesus. He was born of a human woman and the mind of God was imparted to Him and the Father raised Him from the dead. He was the first of many, brethren, and it looks like the plan of God is on hold because it is 2,000 years since that happened. It is a great mystery, brethren, but one day to the Lord is like a thousand years to men. This is only the end of the second day since God’s creation died. And He is moving rapidly to raise us from the dead.
We see that the creation of God was in the heart of God when He thought of it and that that creation was God for so long as it was joined to Him in spirit. Spirit is in the mind. We have a whole church world today believing that they can memorize these Scriptures and that they can do all kinds of things with their mind and that they are going to Heaven. But that is not what the Scripture teaches, brethren. This Word must be made flesh in you. It must be made flesh in you. That mind which was in Christ must be born in you if you want to overcome your sins, if you want to overcome your emotional problems, if you want to overcome death. That mind, that righteous mind that was within the man Jesus which convinced the Father to raise Him from the dead, it must be born in you. You hear a lot about being born again, but brethren, nobody is born again. When you receive -- when you enter into a relationship with the Father you have been reconciled unto Him. When He reveals Himself to you and you take an interest in God and you start reading the Bible and going to church, if you have had a spiritual experience with the Father, you have been reconciled unto Him, you have been brought back into a relationship with Him. But you have not been born again and you are not born again until His mind is fully born in you and you know whether or not His mind is fully born in you because if His mind is fully born in you, you do not die and you do not get sick and you do not sin. There is not one person on the face of this earth today that I know of that is without sin. It has not happened to you yet. You have received the promise.
I have a couple of comments for you here. I have an interesting comment here. And the Word was with God. This Greek word with is Strong’s 4314, and it means on the side of. We are told in the book of Genesis that God took Adam’s rib and made a woman out of it. If you look that Hebrew word up, it really does not mean -- well, it can be translated rib but it has many translations and one of the foremost translations is side. God took one of Adam’s sides. And Adam was made in the image of God. Well, he was made in the likeness of God. I do not want to get into that right now. He was made in the likeness of God. So whatever God did with Adam we could see God doing with Himself. The Son was on the side of the Father. He was taken out from the Father just like that side of Adam was taken out and made into Eve. Now, I cannot repeat all these teachings, so I am going over -- I am hitting on a lot tonight. We have messages in detail on all of this. But when God took that side of Adam out what He did was -- let me go over it. I failed to go over it. OK.
Adam -- what was Adam? He was a man. What was the man made out of? I had an eraser here somewhere. What was the man made out of? Anybody?
Spirit.
And what?
Soul.
And earth. The ashes of the earth. God formed man out of the dust or the ashes of the earth and breathed the breath of life into him. The man was dust and he was spirit. He had two sides to him -- dust and spirit. So what happened at the beginning of time? God formed the man. He formed the man out of the dust and he breathed the breath of life into him. And that breath of life went rushing into the man, invigorating every cell of this person. It was not a man that looked like we look. It was a spiritual creation. Remember, we are the skeleton. We are only a shadow of what the creation looked like. So the breath of God went into the man and invigorated every cell of him. And he was all mixed together -- dust and spirit. And then the Scripture says God took the side or one of the man’s sides. I suggest to you, the side of him which was spirit. He separated the dust from the spirit. Let me give you a similar situation. If I wanted to wash this rug - let us say there was a flood here and the water was up two feet off the ground and I came in with a machine that extracted all of the water off of this floor, the rug would still be wet. So even though I called back all of the water, drained it off, there would still be enough water remaining in the carpet so that the carpet would be wet. When the Lord separated the man into two sides, dust and spirit, the dust was still invigorated by the life that was in the spirit. It was a residue of spirit on the dust -- enough of a residue so that the living soul remained alive. The living soul had received life.
And what God did was He took the spirit, and he formed it into the man’s reproductive parts. Because God is spirit and it is God’s intention to bring forth His Son in the creation. So when God is spirit He is going to join with that part of the man which is spirit so that He can produce spirit. Spirit does not join with the dust to produce something else. Spirit joins with spirit to produce spirit. The spirit is joined with the dust so that the man could receive life, but in reproduction, he has to have the same kind of seed. The laws in the book of Leviticus -- do not mix the seed. Do not mix the seed. Spirit, the spirit of the Lord joined with the spirit of the man and what was born? Anybody remember? What was born? Anybody? Mind. A mind. When the Spirit of God joins with the spirit of man the offspring is a mind. The mind in the man is an expression of the spirit that is possessing the man. The offspring of God is a mind.
Now a lot of people have a problem with this concept of the Son of God. How can a spirit have a son? Now is that not ridiculous? But you have to understand that the Son of God was not the flesh of the man Jesus of Nazareth. He clearly stated I am the Son of God and I am the son of man. He was not confused. He knew who He was. He was saying the mind that is in Me is the product or the offspring of Jehovah and my human spirit. That is what He was saying -- that the mind in Me makes me a Son of God. Christ is the Son of the living God. Christ is the mind that was in the man, Jesus. And we are commanded to let that mind that was in Christ Jesus be in us. And when that mind is conceived in us, it will begin to grow and, Lord willing, it will begin to overtake the mind that we were born with, which mind is death. It is a product of the fall. It was a result of the fall. It is the mind that was born in mankind when the spirit of Satan rose up and illegally stole God’s creation. That is why man is in the condition that he is in.
We are the illegitimate offspring of God’s creation. God formed this creation. He intended us to be His wife. The Spirit of God fully intended and still intends to join with humanity and be revealed through humanity. Right now, we do not see God being revealed through humanity. We see the offspring of the spirit of Satan. Now we called her the carnal mind. In the Old Testament her name is the daughter of Babylon. And she is a fallen creature and she is desperately wicked. We are told the heart of man is desperately wicked. Who could know it? And therefore, every child that is born into this world must be socialized. They must be taught what is right and what is wrong and must be given guidelines, rules so that their life is not ruined. And we are living in a society today which is not doing a very good job of teaching their children right from wrong. In fact, in our own very schools our children are being taught that there is no right and wrong. Situational politics, whatever is right for you in this situation, you do it. And we see our children falling into a lot of trouble.
I told you all that to say this: that the type of God taking Adam’s side and forming the reproductive parts out of it and then the Scripture says: And He brought the woman unto the man. That Hebrew word translated unto, it can also be translated into, and I want to suggest to you that he brought the woman and put her back into the man. Into the man. It was not -- the creation did not look anything like we look now. But the creation was like God and God is male and female. Does anybody here not know that God is male and female? He has many names. Jehovah has many names. Jehovah is just one of them. And one of His names is the Breasted One. He has children. It is in the Old Testament. He is a God who is capable of bringing up and nourishing young. So God is male and female. There is no Mrs. God. And He made a man that was like Him. The man was male and female. We are told that. It clearly says that, I think in Genesis 2, that Adam was male and female.
But, with our fallen minds, when we read that Scripture we assume that it means Adam had many offspring, some were male and some were female. But you cannot prove that, even by studying it in the Hebrew. It says the creation was male and female. And we are likened unto a plant. In the Scripture, Isaiah says we are the planting of the Lord. Jesus said He is the true vine. Isaiah talks about the vineyard that He planted. When God speaks to us in parables He gives us fairy tales so that we can understand deep spiritual truth. He likens us to a plant and there are many plants that are both male and female. If we are like plants, we must reproduce like plants. Spiritual life, when it is alive with God, is both male and female. So God took the female parts of the man and put it back into the man and the Scripture calls his female parts his wife, as we are the wife of God. So I am telling you all this to make the point that when the Scripture says the Word was with God it is saying that the Word came out of the side of God. It is saying that the Word was subordinate to God. It is saying that the Word was female in relationship to God.
Now we have talked here about changing sexual roles in the realm of -- well, not even in the realm of the spirit. Even in our human life here. We are talking about authority. We are talking about submission. If you are a physical man and you are in the army, if you are a lieutenant you are in a spiritually male condition to every man that is under you. But to every officer that is over you, to the captain, to the colonel, to the general, spiritually speaking, for authoritative purposes, you are female. You are in submission. You have to know who you are in each relationship that you have. So the Word, even though it says very clearly that the Word was God, in relationship to The God, He was female. He came out of His side. And when you study this first chapter of John in the Greek you will see that there is a clear distinction between The God and God. It is not translated. It is not translated. You have to study it in the Greek. Jehovah is The God. The Word is God or a God. So the Word, which is God in relationship to The God, is His female part and it came out of His side. Everybody OK?
In the beginning of time the creature that God imagined was one with God and He came out of God’s side and He was female in relationship to God. He was not The God, but He was God. The Word existed in the beginning of time and the Word was proceeding out from the side of God and God was the Word. Now, the King James translation says the Word was God, but the Greek text says that God was the Word. I find that a very important difference, to say that God was the Word. It is very different than saying the Word was God. God was the Word. God became something else. But behold, I show you a great mystery. Even though God became something else, He still remained Himself. Our natural example: when a woman produces a child it is her flesh, it is her blood, it is her soul, it is everything that comes out of her, and her husband, of course. It comes out of her and the offspring becomes an entirely new individual, but she has not lost anything. She is still herself. And that is what happened to God. He was the self-existent one. He was and still is eternal. He has not changed. He never changes. But a part of Him came out from Him and took another form and yet He is still everything that He was before the Word came out of Him.
At the beginning of time the Word was projecting out from the side of God and God was the Word but the Word was also God. My final translation will be the Word was God, but I really felt the need to tell you that the Interlinear says that God was the Word. It is very, very profound. But as we go on, I felt to translate it the Word was God and you will see why. But please note that the Word was God, not The God. Jesus said: I do not say or do anything except what My Father tells me to do. Jesus was the Son of God but He was not The God. Yes, He was a lesser manifestation of God. And in the flesh is weakness. Jesus said the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. How many times did you want to do something and you do not have the mental or the spiritual strength to do what you want to do? The spirit is willing but the flesh weakens us, this fallen flesh. So when the mind of God, for so long as the mind of God is in a fallen flesh body He is subordinate to the manifestation of God, which is pure spirit. We are told that the flesh was -- that Jesus was crucified because of the weakness which was in His flesh. That does not mean that Jesus was weak.
It means that He was not at the maximum expression of God. There is an evolution of God. He did not do the same things when He was the man, Jesus of Nazareth, that He did when He was the glorified Jesus Christ. When He was the man, Jesus of Nazareth, He was restricted to that one physical identity. When He was raised from the dead, He was a glorified spirit. He could take any form that He wants. There is an evolution of God. I know you never heard that before. It may be shocking you. But stop and think about it. I tell you the truth. He is doing things now that He did not do in the days of His flesh and that He could not do in the days of His flesh. That is why He gave up His life. To evolve into a higher form of pure spirit so that he can rain on all of us and do the same thing in us that He did in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. What is that? Give us the mind that was in Christ that we might have the life of the ages. Not in torment, but the life of the ages with every need met, with peace and contentment and joy in the Holy Ghost.
So our Alternate Translation of verse 1 is: At the beginning of time the Word was projecting out from the side of God, meaning He was female to God, and the Word was God. I should say here that at the beginning of time the Word was projecting out from the side of The God and the Word was God. Thanks.
Verse 2: “The same was in the beginning with God.” The Greek word translated the same means this one. This one. The Word. What are we talking about? You have to go back to the verse before. We are talking about the Word. The Word was in the beginning with God. This one was in the beginning on the side of God. I put those two verses together. The Word was existing in the beginning of time and the Word was proceeding out from The God and God was the Word, this one who was in the beginning with The God. Let me read this again. The Word was existing in the beginning of time and the Word was proceeding out from The God; He was subordinate to The God, and God was the Word. And who was the Word? This one who was in the beginning with The God.
I am going to read it to you a few more times, changing it a little each time, trying to make it clearer. I do it this way because lots of times if you hear my final Alternate Translation you will not be able to figure out how I got to it from the original verse. So I am going to read it to you another two or three times and it is just an evolution of the translation, putting it in better English.
The Word was existing in the beginning of time because He was proceeding out from The God and the Word, this one who was with The God in the beginning, He was God. At the beginning of time the Word was projecting out from the side of God and the Word, the one who was on the side of The God in the beginning -- you have to forgive me. I was really rushing today. I did not have enough time to do this. On the side of the God. At the beginning of time the living thought -- now listen to what I am doing -- I am changing the word Word into living thought because we get confused when we hear a word like Word. What does that mean? What does that mean? The Word? So I am changing it to the living thought of God. The living thought of God. In the beginning of time the living thought, which The God spoke into existence was projecting forth from the side of The God and that living thought was an extension of God and He was God. He was God but He was not The God.
Verse 3: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” This Greek word translated without, it is Strong’s 5565 and it means apart. Separate. All things came into existence through Him. Not by Him but through Him. Now, we have large numbers of people in the church world imagining that God was a man like we are and that He had two hands and that He picked up some clay from the seaside and formed a man out of it. So this translation of by Him is a very poor translation. We are made out of the substance of God. We were made through Him because He was, you might say, the tree out of which we were carved. That is the fairy tale that we get. It is called a parable so that we can understand spiritual things. He was the tree out of which this creation was carved. He was the tree of?
Life.
Life. He was the Tree of Life. And we are carved out of His tree. So we cannot realty say we were made by Him. It is not accurate. You can say it if you want to but it is really giving a false impression. All things came into existence through Him and nothing that came into existence came into existence apart from Him. Nothing that exists exists. He is the only material out of which something can be made.
Verse 4: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Now this word, this Greek word translated men, it really means man-faced creature and it is Strong’s 444. I remind you that God only made one living soul. He only made one living soul. It is many members, just like one of my plants over there. There is just one plant with many leaves on the plant, but it is just one root system. This creation that we call humanity; it is one plant, many leaves. That is revealed when you study this phrase in the Greek. In Him was life and the life was the life of men. It is really saying the life of the man-faced creature and what is really interesting about this Greek word is that it is the same word used to describe fallen man as is used to describe glorified man and is used to describe the man Jesus of Nazareth, whose mind was God. You see, the physical man, Jesus Himself, was called the Son of God because the mind in Him was the Son of God. In Him was life -- now this is talking about the man at the beginning of time. This is not talking about Jesus of Nazareth right now. We are talking about in the beginning. We are talking about the man, Adam, the first Adam. There was a mind in that man. It was Christ. Christ, meaning the anointing of God. That is all that it means. That the life of God was flowing through the man at the beginning of time and therefore his mind was the mind of God and because his mind was the mind of God he had life.
So we are talking about the anointing of God that existed when God first formed the creation. But that man died. Adam died. In Adam, we all die. But in Christ, we shall all be made alive. The whole creation is dead. We have not ceased to exist, but we are dead. You know, this is a great mystery. If you go to the traditional church they will tell you well, when your body dies you go down underneath the earth where there is a place called Hell and people still have an existence where they are tormented all of the time. But behold, I show you a mystery. This has already happened. It is not when your body dies. It was when the mind that was in righteous Adam died. That mind fell down, underneath the earth of our soul. It is buried in here under our souls and under these physical bodies. We are in Hell now. There is no place to go. This is it. Our spirit separated from God and died and it was buried under the earth of our soul and our physical body. There is no place to go but up. We already hit bottom. There is no place to go but up.
In Him, in who? In the Christ that existed at the beginning of time in righteous Adam, in the creation, whose mind was God, was life. It was the life of the Father and that life was the light of men. Now this Greek word translated light, it means reason, mind, the power of understanding and especially moral and spiritual truth. So we are told that in the man was a mind. I took this right out of Thayer’s Lexicon. In the man was a mind that contained moral and spiritual truth that contained understanding that contained all of the wisdom and knowledge to keep the man alive. And that mind was the light of men. You see? This is a parable. It is a fairy tale to help us understand spiritual things. In that creation at the beginning of time was a mind, or was life. It was the life of the Father and the life of the Father was the mind of the man. That is what I have just been telling you for the past 45 minutes. It says it right here if you can figure out the puzzle. Let me say it again for you. In him, in Adam at the beginning of time, was the life of the Father and the life -- that life -- was the light of men. But the Greek word translated light, it means mind. The life of the Father was the mind of the man. And the man was alive. But you see, at the beginning of time, Genesis tells us that the creation was good. That the creation was very good, but it was not perfect. It was very good but it was immature. It was like a seamstress cutting out a dress and basting it together. It was not backstitched yet and the backstitching would take place in the form of experiences. The creation was inexperienced.
He did not have the opportunity to exercise the righteous authority of God over the moral uncleanness which was in the earth. And there was a moral uncleanness in the man. He was down under. He was harmless, but he was there because he was a part of the earth that was covering the invisible God so that God could be revealed. He was down there, under righteous Adam’s feet. It was not 50/50. God said to Adam: I put him under your feet. And now I am going to let you be tested because in the testing, when the moral uncleanness tempts you and you overcome, it is going to be binding him, crushing his head into the ground. And at the end of your testing, ye will be completely bound and in a form where he can never do anyone any harm. Yet, he will serve the creation in that he is part of the dust that is revealing the invisible God. So God says: I have done all that I can do for you, because this is the -- not that God is powerless, but this was God’s wisdom to set up the creation thus. That all the parts were laid in their right order and God says: Now, bind that evil in his right place by overcoming his temptations. And God could not do that for the man anymore than you can walk for your children. You put that baby up on his feet and he has got to walk for himself. God could not do that for the man anymore than you could live for your children or protect them from destruction. All He could do is teach them and they have to go out and become their own person. So we are told in Verse 3 that in man, at the beginning of time, was the life of the Father and that life of the Father was the light, or the mind, of the man.
Alternate Translation: In him was the life of the Father and that life was the mind of the many-membered man-faced creature. In another place in the Scripture, in the Book of Ezekiel and in other places, that man-faced creature is called a cherub. A cherub. If you look up the word cherub in Strong’s concordance, it will tell you that the cherub is an imaginary creature, but he is a figment of God’s imagination. He is not a figment of fallen man’s imagination. And when God imagines something good comes out of it. So you see, we cannot abide in this fallen condition forever because everything that God touches must produce life. God cannot produce death. Life cannot produce death. Oranges cannot produce apples. Figs cannot produce pomegranates. God cannot procreate death. Everything He touches receives life. Therefore we must be raised from the dead. To us down here in Hell it seems to be taking forever and it is a great mystery how God intends to do it. But you see our mind has fallen. Compared to the mind of God we have the mind of a canary. We cannot understand what He is doing. We cannot understand His ways. Sometimes, in our mind, we turn against Him and say either He has forgotten us or He does not exist or He hates us or He is a punishing God that just gets His kicks out of sending some devil with a pointed tail and pitchfork after us. But none of this is true. We are out of God. We are carved out of His very life. We are His flesh. And He said Himself, no man has ever hated his own flesh. We have fallen into a spiritual pit and we are waiting to be rescued. We are in the process of being rescued.
Verse 5: “And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.” I want to tell you I am so excited that God is letting me do these Scriptures because I never really understood. I know it sounded good. It made me feel good when I read it and I knew that there was some validity in it. It is the Scripture. But it never really made any sense to my understanding so I am just so excited to be able to preach this today. And the light, or the mind, shines in the darkness of the soul, which was made out of earth. And the darkness comprehended it not. Now, this Greek word translated darkness, it appears twice. It is the same Greek word, but we have mysteries in the Scripture. I cannot prove this to you. You can say yeah or nay. It is up to you. But I am suggesting to you that the reason the word darkness appears twice is that the first time the Lord is speaking about the whole living soul, the darkness of the living soul. It is darkness without the mind of God in it. When our mind is carnal we are in complete darkness. The Scripture says the whole world lieth in wickedness, spiritual darkness. We are covered over with it. It is inside of us and it is outside of us. There is darkness in the way we think. The second time the word darkness appears it is speaking about the intelligence that is darkness. Whose name is? Somebody?
Satan.
Satan. The living soul is darkness but there is an intelligence in that living soul whose name is Satan. And he, too, has the same name. Darkness. When a man has a wife, does not a wife take his name? OK. So the name of the soul is darkness, but the name of the intelligence in that soul was darkness first. That is why the soul is named darkness. Everybody OK? So the light, which we are told in verse 4 was the mind, shineth in the darkness. This Greek word translated shines -- I did not put down the number for you, but it means to become evident, to come into view, to appear, to be seen, to be exposed. So the mind of God is being revealed through the darkness of the living soul and, as we have been teaching here, this whole creation came to pass for, among many reasons, I am sure; the two the Lord has revealed to me is that the invisible God desires to be seen. And He has a plan as to how He will be seen and that plan is by contrast. He is righteous. Therefore He will contrast Himself against unrighteous. He is invisible and He will therefore contrast Himself against matter, physical matter, dirt, dust. That is how He is being seen in the physical realm by being covered with the dust and in the spiritual realm by contrasting His righteousness against the unrighteousness of the moral impurity which we just see is called darkness in verse 5.
So the light shineth in the darkness. The light, which is the mind of God, is revealed in the darkness. And the darkness and Satan comprehended it not. Comprehended -- the number in Strong’s is 2638 and it is a Greek word that means to lay hold off so as to make one’s own. To take possession of. I want to suggest to you that in the beginning the darkness did not overtake Christ. Satan did not overtake Christ. Christ had Satan’s head under His feet. There was no mixture at the beginning. God said it up with a handicap. Satan was down in the pit and Christ was standing on top of him. Adam did not fall from an equal position. He fell from a position of dominance. He had the power to say no. And the light shineth -- and the mind of God -- I just said that the Greek word translated shine means to be seen, to be exposed, to come into view. It was seen through the darkness of the soul because the mind of God kept dominion over that soul. But there was a tragedy. There was a tragedy. Something happened and the darkness in that living soul rose up and deceived. The Scripture says the woman was deceived, the man was not deceived. But the man had to go along with it because that creation died and now, what is being revealed through the darkness? The darkness is being revealed through the darkness. The darkness of the intelligence known as Satan is being revealed through the darkness of the living soul and there is darkness within and there is darkness without. There is darkness everywhere because the only light than can light the creation is the mind of God.
And we saw that mind or that light appear in Israel. It arose and it fell. And we saw that light appear in the man Jesus of Nazareth. It arose and it fell. Now, I declare to you, brethren, there is another rising coming. Another arising coming and this one will not fall but it will abide for the life of the ages. Because it will not be an immature manifestation of Christ but it will be a mature manifestation of the Christ, the anointing of God, the mind of God that will have totally dominated and subjugated the darkness in the earth so completely that we are told it can be likened to or it is described as the slaying of the enmity in the flesh. And Satan, described as a wild bull, we are told, will be castrated. He will become an ox. And an ox serves mankind. What will he be doing? He will be the contrast or part of the whole of the creation which makes the invisible God visible. What happened was, he got out of his place. Now, I do not want you to think that I was saying that the anointing on Jesus of Nazareth fell, because it was an imputed anointing and not an imparted anointing. It may have sounded that way, what I just said a few minutes ago, so I would like to clarify that.
Our Lord Jesus Christ had an imparted anointing and therefore He could have lived forever. But He sacrificed His privilege of living forever as the man Jesus of Nazareth. He did it out of obedience to the Father. He gave up that life, the glorious life that had arisen in His mind, and He gave it up so that He could be raised from the dead and ascend into a higher life form, which is now pouring out of His spirit upon all flesh and reproducing the mind of Christ across the world, in men across the world. So the man Jesus of Nazareth had the imparted anointing but He willingly gave it up. What we are about to see on the earth today is a company of men who have the imparted anointing who will be permitted to keep it and through whom the Lord will impart His mind to the entire world. And the Father’s moral and spiritual truth, the mind, appeared in the darkness and the darkness did not swallow up the light. And Christ, the image of the Father’s moral and spiritual truth, appeared in the darkness of the living soul and Satan did not rule over Christ and Christ was the mind of the living soul and Christ subjected Satan and the living soul received life.
Please note that verses 1 through 5 are talking about what happens at the beginning of time. And, if you have read ahead, you will see that starting with verse 6, it brings us right up to 2,000 years ago, which is what some people call the beginning of the New Testament or the beginning of the New Covenant. And we see here that the Apostle John did something very interesting. He is telling us about this glory that God imparted into the living soul at the beginning of time. He does not mention the fall. He does not mention anything of the fall, such as I have been talking about here tonight. He does not talk about it at all, but in verse 6 he begins to tell us about John the Baptist who was a Nicene; he was a devout Hebrew holy man and the fact that John the Baptist announced and declared the Christ.
What am I saying? As far as God is concerned, He is not even addressing the issue of the fall or all of these thousands of years of torment to humanity. He is not addressing it in the Gospel of John. Now, He addresses it in the other Gospels and He addresses it in the Old Testament and He addressed the fall of man in the other Epistles of the New Testament. But in the book of John, all He is talking about is the glory of God and the Christ. And what is the Christ? And what does it mean to man and what does it mean to have the mind of God in your mind? And all of the information about eternal life, that is what John is talking about and we have five verses from the Old Testament and the rest from the New Testament. I found that very interesting.
And I would just like to put one comment in here. We have a lot of preachers today and they are just preaching the positive side of the message. The positive side of the message is wonderful, but if you do not hear the negative side of the message, how will you ever understand that there is a spiritual warfare that is already falling upon the earth and that, if you want this mind that was in Christ to be in you, which, when that mind is in you, you will be raised from the dead, you have to know that there is a negative side to this gospel. If you do not know it, how are you going to engage in the warfare? If you do not know that someone is trying to kill you how are you going to try and stop them? The message is there are two minds in the creation today. We were all born with a mind that was carnal. We were all born with a mind that is death. We think thoughts of death and we say words of death and we do things that produce death and surely, as nighttime comes after the morning, we die. But in this hour there is a new mind -- not a new mind, but another mind available to men and those of us who have received the engrafted word, in those of who have received the engrafted word, the seed of that mind has been planted. That is what the word engrafted means. God does not come to you and cut open your head and give you a fully mature mind of Christ. Everything God does grows up from seed. It is a scriptural principle. It is all through the Old Testament. Everything He does begins with seed.
When He took the Hebrew children out of Egypt they had to grow into the glory that He gave them. They were vagabonds. They had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. They had forgotten everything that they knew of God and He had to teach them. He had to give them wisdom. And He raised them up and they were so reprobate that whole generation had to die in the wilderness except for Joshua and Caleb. I am talking about the men now. There were children and I think some women who entered in. But those men that came out of Egypt, out of all of them only two of them entered into the Promised Land. God took their children. Everything God does He raises up from seed. So those of us who have received this seed and it has engrafted in us, we have entered into a spiritual warfare. God has an enemy. You know, most people, they cannot reconcile the blood and guts of the Old Testament. They cannot reconcile words in a book saying that God hates with the love shown through Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Love your brother. Pray for those who despitefully use you. They cannot reconcile the Old and the New Testament. Let me reconcile it for you.
Jesus is saying unto you in the New Testament, your enemy is not man. Your enemy is the criminal mind which is vibrating forth and being revealed through this many-membered man known as humanity. And He said the hour has come for the war. You have to know that your enemy is a criminal mind. So those of us that now have two minds, the war has started. It is between the two minds that are in us. As Christ begins to prevail in you, as the mind of God, as the thinking of God starts to subjugate the carnal mind that you were born with, put it down under foot, returning you to the same position that God had placed Adam in at the beginning of time. As you start to overcome him and take the victory you will find this criminal mind in other people coming and trying to strengthen the carnal mind in you that you have down in that bottomless pit. They are going to come out of the woodwork to try to get you to do things that you have not done in years. They are trying to get you to hate people, to try and get you to do things that are going to weaken the mind of God and strengthen the criminal mind in you. This is the war. It is called Armageddon. God has an enemy. He hates His enemy but it is not the hatred of man. What man hates he destroys. What God hates He destroys the one that is destroying you and imparts life to you.
There are many in this hour that are hating and killing in the name of God, but they are liars. They are liars. They are imposters. God is righteous and everyone He touches receives life. His warfare is in the spirit. His warfare is spiritual. Yes, the Hebrew children went into warfare but that was the Old Covenant and we are told that everything that happened in those days happened so that we could have an example of spiritual things because spiritual things are so hard to understand that, without natural examples or without parables, we could never understand them. So the Hebrew children paid a great price so that this Bible could be delivered unto us and so that we could have their experiences as natural examples. Because we are clearly told that the promise that had been upon natural Israel has now been given to the gentiles, but only for a season, until the Jews be grafted back into their own tree. For everybody, it is for the whole human race, salvation is for the whole human race. God’s enemy is a criminal mind which has been controlling and revealing itself through men across the world for thousands of years and the provision to put this criminal mind down under the foot of the righteous mind of God is now in place. The mechanism is in place. Therefore, love your brother, pray for the one who despitefully uses you and pray that that righteous mind be imparted to him, too, that he might defeat the criminal mind which has caused him to harm you and receive of the same grace that you are receiving.
Verse 6: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” Again, we see the Greek word translated man is the man-faced creature. I am making a point out of this because we will find out before I finish this message, or somewhere before the end of verse 18, that we have a word translated man which is a different Greek word. So I am making a point out of this that the word here is the man-faced creature. Now, when I study this in the Greek -- well, let me put it to you this way. The English says there was a man. That word “a”, it is called the indefinite article. It does not tell you which man it is. The word “the” is the definite article. If I were to say the man, meaning that one man over there. But this is a man, meaning it could be any man. But that indefinite article does not appear in the Greek. It does not appear in the Greek. It just says “man.” Oh, I am sorry. But the definite article “the.” OK.
In the Greek it is the definite article, the man. The man. OK. Now the problem that we have here is that our fallen minds keep thinking that we are all individuals. We have to keep taking authority over it and asking God to help us think with His mind, which is Christ. We are just one man. God just made one man and he is in many members. This is a great mystery but it is a spiritual truth. We are like unto a plant, one root system, many leaves. So, in the Greek, it is not a man it is the man. I want to suggest to you that John the Baptist was the first of a company of fallen men who will witness to the Christ. I am going to say it again. It says the man. Let me read. There was a man. There was the man sent from God. I want to suggest to you that John the Baptist was the first fallen man. He was a fallen man. He was not perfect. He was the first fallen man of many whom God would send to witness to the Christ. We see many men all over the world today. I am one of them. I am witnessing unto the Christ.
What does that mean? I am telling you about Him. I am telling you about that mind, that righteous mind which is available in this hour to men. When it appears in us, it will raise us from the dead and impart the life of the ages to us. When our mind is dead, our body dies. When our mind is alive, the body will not die. Our body dies because our mind is dead. So, I am going to say it one more time. The Greek says the man. There was the man sent from God. I am going to suggest to you it is a many-membered man, the first of which was John the Baptist. And there are many men preaching today. I do not know how many are witnessing to the Christ but there is at least one more here. I am sure there has to be others.
I am going to make a comment here. We have some new people tonight. If you do not understand me just try and bear with me. But for those of us who have been studying for quite a while, I want to point out to you that this whole company of men who are witnessing or preaching to you about the Christ and who He is and what His characteristics are, that we are all in the spirit for the whole time that we are in this function, the spirit of John. I remind you that Jesus said if you can receive it, John the Baptist, that is the spirit of Elijah and we have been preaching here that we can recognize who we are spiritually by the functions or by the things that we do out of Christ. Let me put it this way. By what Christ is doing through us. By what Christ is doing through us, we can recognize who we are in the Kingdom of God. So for those who are witnessing to who Christ is and what He is and what He is doing for us, at the time that you are doing that, it is that manifestation of the Spirit of God, which was on John, that is flowing through you. So you could say, you could put yourself right in this scripture, that you are John at that moment, the spirit of John is upon you. If you are bringing forth doctrine, if you are doing what Paul did in that area of your life it is the spirit of Paul which is upon you. Now, there is only one spirit. It is the Spirit of God. But many administrations thereof. What the Spirit of God did in the man Elijah, if He is doing it in you, you have the spirit of Elijah. What did the Spirit of God do through Elijah? Well, he rebuked Ahab. He almost got himself killed. He went to he king and he told him he was a wicked king. So, if God is sending you to the king to tell him he is a wicked king, well, the spirit of Elijah is upon you.
Now, if you have the Spirit of Christ coming forth in you, if the mind of Christ is being developed in you and is growing in you, eventually you are going to do all of these things. Because Christ is not divided. As the Christ in you comes to the fullness you are going to be doing everything that Christ has done everywhere in this Bible. But some of us are just small spiritual children. But as Christ develops in us we will be receiving more and more mature assignments. Now remember, every time Ahab tried to kill Elijah, he flew away. So you have to believe that the power of God that is going to be upon you will be in direct proportion to the difficult assignments that God gives you. He is not going to give you an assignment that is going to get you killed. We do not have any kings today anyway. Besides, the warfare is all spiritual so if you go to somebody who has authority and you tell them the truth, you may find yourself engaged in a spiritual warfare. You know what you are supposed to do, right? You are supposed to pray for his salvation if someone is trying to hurt you.
I am being long-winded tonight. Let us get back to this message. And in the Greek, where it says there was a man sent from God -- now it is not The God in the Greek. It does not say The God. It says God. Let me try and explain this to you. The God had only one Son. The God had only one Son. It was a spiritual Son and now this spiritual Son is causing individuals to appear on the face of the earth. And we are going to go into this a little further on. I think it is verse 13 where it talks about every human being on the face of the earth has not been incarnated by the same source. Some have been incarnated by blood, some by the will of man, some by the will of the flesh. But some have been incarnated because God said come forth. We know that in the book of Jeremiah God called -- who was it? Cyrus? Cyrus? Somebody? Nobody knows? OK. God -- I think it was Cyrus -- He called Cyrus by his name before he was even born. He brought forth that man to be the King of Babylon because He had something -- was it Cyrus? Cyrus. What?
He was the King of Persia.
Was it the King of Persia? Was it Babylon? I thought. No? I could be wrong. It was Babylon, right? OK. He brought him forth because He had something for him to do. Our God is so great that He could look at a man and He could look into his loins and see all of the potential offspring that that man could bring forth and He could say that one, come forth. That is what He does. We are told that Levi paid tithes when he was still in the loins of Abraham. God looked at Abraham and said I see Levi in there. I know that so many generations down there is going to be a man who is going to come forth. His name is Levi and he is going to be the beginning of the Aaronic Priesthood. That is how great God is.
What I am suggesting to you is that this company of men that are coming forth in the spirit of John, that it is not The God that is bringing them forth, but it is now that mind which is in the earth bringing them forth. Now remember that mind died. That mind died. The mind of Christ died at the beginning of time but He is buried in the earth and God could still call upon -- He still has strength to bring forth a man if it wants to. This is a great mystery. It is a great mystery. But these men that come forth to do the will and the purposes of God, they are not coming forth from The God but they are coming forth from the God who is in the earth of humanity even though He died. Is that amazing? I find that amazing. But that is what it says.
Alternate Translation: Verse 6: There was a company of spiritual men sent from God whose name was John. There was a company of spiritual men sent from God whose name was John. They did not arrive in the earth because of the blood or because of the will of man or because of the will of the flesh, but because God said incarnate. God said be born. I have something for you to do.
Verse 7: “The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.” The word witness -- these are two different forms on the word witness. There came for a witness. What that is saying is that these men are in a prophetic office. They are in a prophetic office. They are prophets. They are coming forth with a specific instruction to give information about God’s plan to raise this whole creation from the dead. So the men that are in this John company, they have the office of a prophet. Let me remind you that the office of prophet is different from the gift of prophecy. It is completely different. The Hebrew prophets were not allowed one mistake. The Scripture -- the law is very clear. One mistake and they were stoned to death. There was no room for mistakes for the Hebrew prophets. We have false prophecy all over the church today. Amen? It is a different anointing. It is a different dispensation. It is a great mystery, you see?
But this is what happened. I will make it as simple as I can make it. There was an anointing of God. There was a Spirit of God that rested upon Israel and it was very powerful. But it did not come forth from seed. Now I just spent 15 minutes talking about that. That everything God does starts from a seed and grows up. Is everybody with me? The anointing that was on natural Israel -- it did not fall in that category, although I did say to you -- I did say to you that the Hebrew children came out of Israel and the whole first generation had to die in the wilderness. That is all true. That is all true. But the anointing that was on Israel was not upon them as a result of spiritual experiences. The people that died in the wilderness died because of disobedience. They did not have an opportunity to overcome Satan and fail. I do not know if I am getting myself into trouble with this. Father, help me to explain this.
The children that came out of Israel, they were given specific instructions and they did not obey. They were told to circumcise their children in the wilderness, for example. They did not do it. They did not do it. But the anointing that was on Israel was on a priesthood. It was on a priesthood even though they had to grow up through generations until they came to the generation that had entered into the land and was obedient. I guess I am getting myself into trouble. Maybe I had better drop it. I am having trouble explaining this. Well, let me just put it to you this way. The anointing that was on natural Israel was very strong but it was limited. It could only go so far. We are told in several places in the Old Testament that Israel brought forth wind. You see, there is a child that is being born into the creation. It is the man-child that we read about in Revelation 12: and we shall be saved in childbearing. That child is the mind of Christ. It is the offspring of the Father and the spirit of man and when he is born in us we shall be saved. Israel never produced the child. They had a relationship with God and there was power in Israel but they never produced the child. It was that same anointing that I earlier described as being reconciled to God. They had a relationship with Him but it was a relationship that could be given and could be lost. It was not permanent. It was not the result of the binding together of the mind of Christ and that moral impurity which was in the earth. And the Lord continuously, throughout the Old Testament, indicts them and he likens them to menstruous rags. And what that means, what He is saying to them, is that I am having a relationship with you. The Scripture clearly states God was married to natural Israel. You are my wife but there is no Son. There is no Son. He has not come forth.
Therefore, you are having your menstrual cycle. There is no Son. That is what [?he?He?] was saying to them. So the anointing on Israel was intense, and it is greater than we see in the church today. But what is happening in the church today is that God is starting the people off as spiritual children, and He is giving them spiritual experiences because hopefully we will be growing up into fully mature spiritual men.
OK, I know how to explain this to you. We are told in the Scripture that Israel was a servant. God gave instructions, and she obeyed, just God gave instructions, and she obeyed. She did not understand. God said to Moses, I will put my words in your mouth. I will tell you what to say to Pharaoh, and Moses just repeated what God told him to say. But we, in this hour, are being raised up to be sons of God, not to be just mindless. Well, I do not mean to make this sound wrong, not that they were mindless, but we are not being raised up to be servants where we just repeat what is told to us, but the mind of God in us is being woven together without humanity so that we can think with the mind of God. That is it. I got it, OK.
In natural Israel, they had the mind of God, but it was separate from them. They had a seat for it. They went to the prophet. They went to the oracle of God. They went to s- -- to the prophet and say should we go to war. Is everybody following me now? I think I have finally got it. No?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. Natural Israel, the individual did not have access to the wisdom of God and the mind of Christ. They had to go to the prophet. It was the prophet that had the mind of God. Dispensation, God is doing a new thing. He is not making the masses of the people go to a prophet. He is putting that mind in all of the people, and He is teaching us to think with His mind.
See, the Hebrew children, they just obeyed instructions. God said go to war; they went to war. God said do not go; they did not go, or if they went, they were destroyed. But in this hour, in this dispensation, the mind of God is being given to us, and we are being instructed in how to use it. So we have a whole church full of spiritual children to whom God is giving spiritual experiences, and we see them prophesying with the gift of prophecy where they are allowed to make mistakes. God does not kill them if they bring forth a false prophecy, like He did in Israel.
So we see spiritual children who have a much lesser anointing than was on natural Israel, but the difference is that these spiritual children, with the lesser anointing, have the potential to go all the way. And what is all the way? To have the fully born mind of Christ born in them and to have that mind completely joined to their carnal mind. Natural Israel did not have that potential. They could only go so far. The anointing was great. It was intense, but the provision had not yet been made to bind that mind of Christ together with their carnal mind. Did I make that -- I know I stumbled a little on that. Is everybody OK?
The anointing that was on Israel was greater than the anointing that we see today, but the spirit of adoption had not been poured out. The provision, the mechanism to bind that mind that was in Israel together with the carnal mind that they were born with, with the fallen mind that they were born with, the mechanism was not in place. And, therefore, the Scripture says they menstruated. They did not bring forth the child that would abide permanently in their mind.
But in this dispensation, that mechanism is now in place, and it is for the whole world. It is not only for the Gentile, but it is for the Jew that did not have it back two, 3,000 years ago. It is for everybody. It is for whosoever will. The mechanism to bring forth the mind of Christ and bind it together with the mind we were born with is now available, and the name of that mechanism is -- anybody? The Lord Jesus Christ, who is now a spirit and is able to implant Himself in the minds of the entire human race, OK.
We are in verse 7, OK. So, OK, verse 7, "The same came for a witness." [?Per-?] -- John was a prophet, and his function was to bear witness of the Light, and the Light is the mind of God. He came as a prophet, and he came telling people about this mind of God that is available to men. And he is -- and the reason that God has sent this company of men to tell everybody about the mind of God and that it is now available, that the mechanism is now available, that this mind can be formed in you, that you too should be raised from the dead and have eternal life, OK.
The reason for it is that men should believe it. You cannot believe it if you do not hear it. God is sending the message, and He is sending preachers so that you should believe it because, when you believe it, then you open yourself to the actual spiritual experience. You are not likely to have the spiritual experience if you have not heard about it or if you do not believe it. God could do anything, but it is not likely.
So we see God raising up a company of prophets with a predictive anointing, preaching that this mind that was in Christ Jesus is now available to all of humanity, and giving enough information about it that men should believe it and desire it. It is a thing to be desired. It is a pearl of great price, is it not? The kingdom of God is a pearl of great price, and, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. The mind of Christ is the kingdom of God.
Verse 8, "He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light." John was not Christ. Brethren, we have a company of preachers in the spirit of John were witnessing to the Christ and telling us all about Him and what He is, but they are not Christ. We have a whole company of preachers, with what we call the imputed anointing, the gifts and the calling of God which are without repentance, and they are preaching about Christ, but they are not Christ.
You see, under the [?old?] -- when just appeared on the earth, we found John, a man who was of Israel, OK. He was -- I believe he was a Levite. He was a holy man, and he was witnessing to the next order that was appearing in another man by the name of Jesus. But in this hour, we have a church of men who are natural men just like John was who are preaching about the Christ, and, Lord willing, that Christ is not another man outside of them, but that Christ is coming forth in them. So those who were John the Baptist, those who had the spirit of John, OK, and were perching about the Christ will eventually evolve into the Christ, a change of mind within the same physical person, same body, same family, same wife, same house, new mind, just like in the "Body Snatchers."
Well, so we are on verse 8. "He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light." The men that were in this company, they were not Christ, but they were sent to witness about the Christ. Now, in this hour today, we have two different companies of men. One company, they are not Christ in any measure. They have the imputed anointing. The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. That means they are unregenerate men. They are unconverted men, but they are witnessing this message.
But, in the same hour, we have a company of men in whom the mind of Christ is beginning to appear. They are not fully born into Christ. Their mind is not completely Christ. They are not God, but that seed has engrafted to them, and it is growing, and wherever Christ is appearing, He is waging war against --
The carnal mind.
Our carnal mind. He is waging war against the sin which is in the carnal mind. It is true. He is waging war against the carnal mind. He is waging war against sin. So if the seed -- if that incorruptible seed has been engrafted into your soul, there is war going on in your mind and in your life. James says that you are double-minded and that there is a conflict in you.
So we have two companies of men, one with the imputed anointing, witnessing to the Christ, and then another company of men in whom the Christ is being formed, doing pretty much the same thing that the first company is doing but doing it by another spirit. So we see two companies of men, and then we see a group of men which is evolving from imputed anointing into the imparted anointing in the same man, but at the same time we still have two different groups. Did I make that clear?
[?Mm-hmm?].
OK. See, eventually, it will just be one group. Eventually, everybody that is preaching by the imputed anointing will receive the engrafted word, and then we will see only one company of men who are not yet in full stature who have the two minds. But for the time being, we have two companies of men, one company of which has one mind, but is still preaching the truth, and the other company of which has two minds and is preaching the truth sometimes from the old mind and sometimes from the new mind. And they are waging this warfare against their carnal mind, struggling to get control over that old mind.
And the natural example that God gives us, the parable that God gives us is our natural children trying to get control over their bowel functions, trying to get control over their temper tantrums, trying to get control over the disobedience to their parents. Jesus said, if you want to enter into the kingdom, you must become as a little child. Well, yes, you have to believe like a child, but even more than that. You have to understand that you are having a new childhood in the spirit and that everything that you experienced as a natural child, you will be experiencing as a spiritual child. And you have got to start getting your passions under control, and in the spirit, your passions refer to the hidden sins of the mind.
So the first thing that you must experience is Christ coming into your mind and ripping up the turf and exposing the hidden sins of your mind because you cannot put them underfoot if you cannot see them. So we have a warfare. We have a purging. We have a cleansing with Christ coming in and tearing down walls of denial and exposing what we call specific sin.
I have never really met anyone in the church that is not willing to say I confess the sin of pride; I confess the sin of witchcraft or jezebel. I have never heard anyone say I will not confess it. They all say I confess it. Until God sends somebody to you and says that particular thought that you had, that particular way in which you dealt with this problem, that particular thing that you said, that was a manifestation of pride, and then, as one man, they all say, oh, no, that was not pride. I am not picking on anybody. Nobody is answering me.
As everybody says, as one man, oh, no, that was not pride. I did not mean it. It was just -- no, it was pride, and this is the judgment. This means that you are entering into an anointing that is no longer without repentance, but repentance means specific repentance. God wants to show you where the carnal mind is operating in the way you think, and you have got to hear this message because when the servant of God comes to you, you have to realize [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- you have to recognize in Christ that they are not coming to destroy you but that they are coming to impart the life of Christ to you.
And we have had people in this ministry who have had dreams. One of them is available on a message. One young woman had a dream that -- I think it was a spider was coming and stripping her flesh off her. And when she came to me to interpret the dream, she was upset, but a lot of people come to me with upsetting dreams, and I say, oh, what a wonderful dream because I see Christ in the dream. He is coming to kill your carnal mind, and your carnal mind perceives Christ as a monster.
And let me tell you, this is how we get the translation of the plagues in the Book of Revelation. The Book of the Revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ was translated from the Greek by British scholars, not spiritual men. They were translating prophecy with their carnal mind, and they perceived it to be all this horrible things that were coming upon man. But the truth is that every plague in that book is Christ, and everything that He is doing, He is doing to the carnal minds of men, and He is killing us.
But what we do not seem to understand and what is not clear in the Bible is that, yes, He is killing our carnal mind, but simultaneously, at the same time that He is killing us, He is giving us His life. So we can say what Paul said, I live but yet not I. It is Christ that liveth in me. Ch- -- Paul said, I am crucified to the world. I am crucified, Paul said, but nevertheless I live. That is what He is doing to us. But our carnal mind, when he sees Christ coming, perceives Him as a scorpion, and someone today just told me that they perceived Him as -- well, they had a dream about a snake. My interpretation of the dream was that it was Christ. Does anybody not understand what I said?
The judgment of your soul is the revealing of sin in the very way you think and deal with problems. Most of the people do not know that it is sin, but Jesus is coming to you. He is saying it is time for your carnal mind to be destroyed, and in order for it to be destroyed, you have to be the one that destroys your own carnal mind. Before you could do that, you must be able to recognize sin in your own mind.
The Scripture says cast down every imagination. Bring every thought into captivity. We must be able to recognize sin in our own minds so that the Christ in us can kill it because this is the experience known as being born again or known as full stature. It is an overcoming. Is that not what we are told in the Book of Revelation, to he who overcometh, to he who overcometh, to he who overcometh? What are you overcoming? Your carnal mind, and it is a battle. It is an ongoing battle of overcoming sin in our mind. Well, if you cannot recognize that it is sin, how do you expect to overcome it?
And we find that -- it being a very common problem amongst members of the church, that when sin begins to be revealed, they defend that sin. And I am telling you about it so that you can ask God to show you if you are doing that. Because if you are hearing this message, the chances are excellent that the word is either engrafted in you or about to be engrafted in you and that the war has begun for you. And just like the labor of a human woman, you can have a hard labor, or you can have an easy labor. But I want to tell you that if the word, if the seed has been engrafted in you, the Lord Jesus Christ has every intention of doing everything He can to bring this pregnancy to full term, and you can either work with the doctor, or you can work against Him.
Someone had a spiritual -- had a word not too long ago that God was sending them to a Lamaze class, a spiritual Lamaze class. You can work against the birth. You can push when you are supposed to be breathing, or you can work with the doctor. But the Lord wants this baby to be born in you. He fully intends to appear in this human race, and it is a travail, and there may be some tears, but joy cometh in the morning, when you see that you have a manchild and that that manchild is the one who will you save you when you have born Him.
So let us try and go on. Verse 9, "That" -- well, let me just read you verse 8 again, the Alternate Translation. "They were not Christ, but they were sent to witness about Christ or to witness about that mind, that mind which was," Verse 9, "which was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The Greek word translated lighteth is Strong's 5461, and it means to impart a saving knowledge. It does mean to light, but in my Greek lexicon, one of the translations that are listed is to impart a saving knowledge.
So this mind of Christ that comes into the world -- I mean, what does it mean to you? If I say to you that mind lights you, I mean, it does not mean anything to you. Brethren, we have got to start understanding what these words mean. That sounds wonderful. He lights every man that comes into the world, but it is time to find out what it means for you personally. And what it means for you personally is that it gives you understanding that will lead to salvation. The mind of Christ gives you understanding that will lead to salvation. What understanding? That you must destroy your own carnal mind, that this war is happening inside of your head and that, in Christ, you have received power to put down under your feet everything that would cause you to sin and is thereby killing you. And when you have put every enemy under your feet --
[INAUDIBLE]
I know the Scripture says Christ. Well, when Christ in you has put every enemy under His feet, you shall be in full stature. And if you are waging this warfare, you are Christ. Paul said, if you do not agree with the sin, it is not sin that -- it is not you any longer but sin that dwelleth in you. So if you are engaged in this warfare and you have a mind of Christ and you have a carnal mind that is thinking sinful thoughts in your mind, you should know that it is not you, but it is sin that dwelleth in you. If you are doing everything you can to live for God, it is no longer you but sin that dwelleth in you, and you have become Christ. And when you, that part of you which is Christ, have put down every enemy under your feet, even the last enemy which is death, you shall be in full stature.
It is not a rapture. For years, I thought it was a spiritual rapture. I used to say to the Lord, how will I know when I am in full stature? Will I wake up one morning and be in full stature? And the Lord said, no, it is little by little as you overcome sin and your mind and you witness and experience the victory in this life. It is an ongoing process. It is a battle. It is a war, but the end of the war is the life of the ages.
So he came to witness to the light that was the true light. So, brethren, for those of us that have been studying with a while -- with us for a while, we have a reverse inference here. If there is a true light, there must be a false light. There is a reverse inference. It does not say there that there is a false light, but if the Scripture says there is a true light, there must be a false light. Otherwise, why would the Scripture be bothering to say it is a true light? And the name of the false light is Satan as he manifests through his carnal mind, amen. It is a false light. He says he is the mind of God, but he is death. He brings death unto you.
So they are witnessing to that true light which brings ever man a knowledge of salvation, every man that cometh into the world, a knowledge of salvation. Now I want to tell you that this is not an intellectual knowledge. This is the word that can be likened to the word used in the Book of Genesis where we are told that Adam knew his wife. It is a knowledge that indicates a union. We must join with the Christ. We must join with the Father in our mind to bring forth His son.
It is a union that is likened on human sexuality. We have a parable so we can understand it. Look at men and women. Look at how they live, and you will know that that is what is happening between God and the human race. God is the man, and the human race is the woman. So he was not -- John was not that mind of Christ, but he was sent to teach us about that mind of Christ, which is the true knowledge that will lead to savla- -- which is the true light, excuse me, which is the true mind, which will give us that intimate relationship with God that will produce salvation. And He is the true light of every man that cometh into the world. The world system -- that He was the mind of God which is saving -- well, let me read you the two verses together. It is not making any sense.
This is verse 8 and verse 9. "They were not Christ but were sent to witness about the Christ." To witness what? That He. Who? Christ was the mind of God which is saving the many membered man or the many membered living soul who is presently appearing in this world system. There is a man that is appearing in this world system. And the mind of Christ is come, that he might receive a mind which will join him back to God because he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit, that he might be saved.
Let me read it again, verses 8 and 9, "They were not Christ but were sent to witness about the Christ, that He was the mind of God which is saving the many membered man who is appearing in this world system."
Verse 10, "He was in the world." Christ was in the world, "and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not." Well, I should have told you this for verse 9 also, but I skipped past it. There are several Greek words translated world. This is the Greek word that means cosmos, and it is talking about a worldly arrangement. It is referring, for example, to our planetary system. We have a sun with planets revolving around it. It is a system. Everything is set in its place and functioning orderly.
Also, our bodies are a system. We are a whole. We have particular organs that are all -- in every human being alive, unless you are deforming, your organs are in the sa- -- ev- -- the organs of every man are in the same place. Your lungs are in the same place. Your kidneys are in the same place. Your heart is in the same place. So each individual is a cosmos. The whole many membered man is a cosmos, and the whole universe is a cosmos, and orderly arrangement, and that is the Greek word that is being used in John chapter 1.
And we are right now up to verse 10. He came in. The Christ came into this world. He came into this world system. He came into the earth. He came into the church, and He is also coming into the individual. He is coming to each level of cosmos, each level of orderly arrangement. The mind of Christ which is spirit is coming to us, and it is His full intention to go as deep as He can go, which is into the heart of man, and join with Him. That is what he wants to do. He is penetrated this physical world system. Now He is going to individuals, and He fully intends to join with us.
But the Scripture tells us that when He tried to do it, we did not want Him. This world system came into existence through Him. We are made out of His substance, and even though He was in the world system, the world system and the individuals thereof did not engage in an intimate relationship with Him. The world system came into existence through Him, and even though He was in the world system, it did not engage in an intimate relationship with Him.
To the best of my knowledge, there was only one man who engaged in an intimate relationship with that mind which was in the Lord Jesus Christ. Anybody know who he was? I preached on it recently. Anybody remember? It was the apostle John. And the way the Scripture explains it is that apostle who Jesus loved. Did you ever wonder how the Scripture could say that, that apostle who Jesus loved? Jesus is no respecter of persons. What do you mean there was one apostle that He loved? What is the Scripture talking about?
What the Scripture is talking about is the Jesus had a spiritual relationship with the apostle John and apparently with none of the others. He had a love for John that was higher than the love of women. We see it in the Old Testament between David and Jonathan. It was not the filial love of men that is soul to soul, friendship, soul to soul, but Jesus had a spirit tie with John. You have heard about soul ties. Jesus had a spirit tie with John. And let me remind you, after the resurrection, when just was on the shore cooking the fish, John was the one that recognized Him. Now, physically, He did not look like Jesus of Nazareth. John recognized Him because John did not know Him after the flesh. John knew Him after the spirit, and John was the one that said, there is the Lord. He had a spirit tie with Jesus.
So Jesus came into the world, OK. When the man Jesus of Nazareth was here, not many people joined in the spirit with him. Now why would that be? Well, one very strong reason might be that in order for you to have a spirit tie with somebody, the spirit tie must be between Christ in you and Christ in me, so not that many people had Christ formed in them. That is what this Scripture is saying to me. Not that many people had Christ formed in them. Peter kept manifesting the carnal mind to Him, telling Him He should not be crucified and He should not do all kinds of things.
Well, you cannot have a spirit tie with somebody that keeps showing you their carnal mind, and if you have someone in whom Christ is functioning and you keep trying to have a relationship with them by your carnal mind, you are going to be in conflict with that person. You will be in continuous conflict with that person. And if there exists a person who is living a large measure of time out of their Christ mind and you try to have a relationship with that person and they -- and you are carnal and they will not yield to your carnal mind, you are going to have continuous conflict, continuous conflict.
Now if this person is moving in the love of God, that continuous conflict will beat down your carnal mind, and Christ will begin to appear in you, and you will have the beginnings of a spirit tie with that person, if they do not compromise and if they do not yield to the witchcraft which is in your carnal mind. Because every carnal mind has a spirit, [?and then they?] -- and the spiritual power of that spirit is called witchcraft. You do not have to be dancing around shaking a rattle. It is witchcraft of the mind. It is using spiritual authority to try to influence people to get them to do what you want them to do, to pressure them, to manipulate them. They will bring you into a power play. We were talking about that the other night.
We are supposed to be overcoming this. I am not condemning anybody, but if you have a carnal mind, the Lord I saying to you -- we had a very nice exhortation on this the other night, Thurs- -- at the Thursday night meeting. If you have a carnal mind and it is showing through your personality, if you are hearing this message, the Lord is telling you, you are old enough to start wearing underwear. Cover that thing up. You are no longer a spiritual infant. You cannot run around naked anymore. You have got to cover yourself. That carnal mind is not socially acceptable to be revealed in the church. You are out of order.
I do not know. I -- when I first came to the Lord, I went to the church, and I heard them preach, ladies, cover your arms, and, ladies, your skirts are too short. I heard that all the time. Well, I am just a spiritual preacher. Cover your carnal mind, people. It is not allowed to be showing. Now you cannot cover it if you cannot recognize it. You cannot cover your carnal mind if you cannot recognize that you are being carnal. So if you are being carnal, somebody -- God may send somebody to tell you that you are being carnal. Do not get mad at them. Tell the Lord that if what they are telling you is true, you really want to know it so that -- because they are trying to help you to recognize your carnal mind.
And if you lay hold of your pride and crush it and at the very least honestly ask God is it true, well, He has to answer you. And then when He answers you, you are going to start to recognize it yourself, and when you recognize your own carnality, there will not be any need for God to send somebody to you to tell you that was your carnal mind or to stick a sign in your face like this.
[INAUDIBLE]
That is my carnal mind sign. Verse 11, "He came unto his own, and his own" -- oh, I had another witness here for you. Oh, no, that is OK, excuse me. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." This Greek word translated unto can also be translated unto can also be translated into, and I want to suggest to you that He came into His own. Now I guess I got a little ahead of myself. Verse 10 is saying that He came into the world, and the -- nobody wanted Him. The Hebrews did not want Him, OK. The church, the existing church did not want Him. [INAUDIBLE]
So he was in the world. The whole world system did not want Him. At the end, everybody rejected Him, at the end. I guess that must be what it is referring to. Everybody rejected Him at the end. And then verse 11 says He came into His own meaning He came into Israel, not just into this world system. He came into Israel, and they did not want Him either. And the intent of the Greek is that He came into His own self.
And we found many Scriptures in the New Testament indicating that He considers us Himself. I said earlier that we are cut out of -- carved out of His very own substance. We are His very own life, and He is not about to throw us away, nor is He about to burn us in Hell forever. I tell you the truth. We are His self. But what He is going to do with us, He is going to cast Himself, which is us, Him and us, into the lake of fire, which is His glory. Is not our God a consuming fire? And when we are cast into the lake of fire, it is going to burn away all of the dross. It is going to burn away all the sin, and we are going to come out as pure gold, but you might hear a few [?yippies?] when you are in the fire. Ouch, ouch, ooh, ooh, ooh, it burns. It is called the fiery trial. Glory to God.
So we are in verse 11. He came into Israel. He came into His own, and they did not receive Him. And that Greek word translated receive is Strong's 3880, and it means to join oneself. They refused to join themselves to Him. We have Him in the church today. Many in the church refuse to join themselves to Him. They refuse to do it. They refuse to do it. They throw Him out of the church. They reject His Spirit. They reject His doctrine. They reject His ministers, and they really believe that He is not God or that He is not Christ.
So we see that our God is going to have to do something to bring these people to Him because they are not coming. Why? Because the fire is hot, you see, and all of this resistance goes on in the unconscious mind. All of the resistance goes in the unconscious mind. You really -- whoever you are, everybody goes through this. You really believe God told you to go in the other direction. You really believe God told you to stay away from that anointing. You really believe God told you that it is not Him.
I had a woman in Nigeria come into one of my meetings and say to me, "Every time I put on one of your messages, the Lord tells me to stop listening," so I started to question her. And let me just tell you this, that I had an encounter with her last year in Nigeria. She was very angry at me. She manifested. She ran out of the meeting, and she came back two days later. She said that the Lord put His finger on her on the bus and said, who do you think you are? I did not tell you to leave that meeting. And she came back, and she was really blessed. So this year she surfaced for only one meeting. She said, "I have been listening to your messages, and every time I listen to that message, God tells me to shut it off." So I said to her, "What makes you think God is telling you to shut it off?" she says, "I am just filled with fear, and my heart starts pounding." I said to her, "Sister" -- I said, "Sister, God does not tell you to stop listening to a message by filling you with fear and causing your heart to pound. That is your carnal mind scared out of his being."
You see, Satan -- well, if he could keep you out of the church, Satan, he will keep you out of the church, OK. You know, if he could keep you out of deliverance, he will even keep you out of deliverance. But I want to tell you, when you are strong enough in Christ to start submitting yourself to this kind of a message and this kind of a meeting on a regular basis, you really have some control over your carnal mind because this message is announcing the death of the carnal mind. That is what I am preaching here, the death of your carnal mind, and no carnal mind in his right mind is going to let you sit here if he has any control over you at all. And I --
[INAUDIBLE] because [?He?] does it five minutes after you [INAUDIBLE]
The carnal mind is never in his right mind.
The carnal mind -- no, he is in his left mind, definitely. You know, the Gadarene demoniac, he was -- after Jesus rebuked the legion, he was sitting up and fully dressed and in his right mind. Well, that means he must have been in his left mind or his wrong mind when Jesus rebuked Him. He had two minds apparently.
So I said to that woman, "Sister, you know, God does not make you afraid and your heart pound. That is not how God tells you to listen to a message." So that is your carnal mind, because his very life is being threatened, and he is terrified. And is that not what we are told in the Book of Revelation, that their hearts would fail them for fear? So the -- God does not tell you to stay away from a meeting by making you afraid. Fear is never of God. So let us try and ge- -- I am very long-winded tonight. Let us try and get on with this.
Verse 11, Alternate Translation, "He came into His own flesh, and His own flesh refused to cleave unto Him." They refused to join their carnal minds to Him. Why would they refuse to cleave unto Him? Because, brethren, to cleave unto Christ means to submit to His lordship, and the church is in rebellion today. They are listening to every voice or any other spirit, and they are convinced that it is God. He is their savior, but He is not Lord. The church is in rebellion. They are in disobedience.
So He came into them, and we can apply this to the church today. He came in by His spirit. They re- -- we have many that have received the Holy Ghost, but they will not go where He tells them to go, and they will not do what He tells them to do. Why? Because it strikes terror and fear in their heart, and they cannot analyze what is happening to them. They do not understand that they are not Christ, and it is their carnal mind that is terrified. They need to hear this message, but when they get near this message, many people, they flee sometimes for several years until God deals with them. Sometimes He brings them back once every two years. One of these days, they will stay, Cathy. That word is for Cathy. She is not even listening to me. No, but that is the truth. That is --
[INAUDIBLE]
That is the truth. The people in the church today, they are being torn between two opinions, their carnal mind and their Christ mind. I am not condemning anybody. I am telling you the truth, that you should know that -- if this is happening to you. You should understand what is happening to you. It is commonplace here. I am used to it. I have no problem with it. God calls people here, and the next thing I hear they are leaving town. They are going to another state. It happens all the time, and they think it is God sending them.
But, you see, you have to understand. When it is your time, God will draw you back. He will draw you back. No one else could draw you back into the fire that is going to kill your carnal mind. No one in their right mind is going to come. God has to be drawing you in, and God has to be sustaining you here, or you will never stand because no decent, carnally minded person would abide in a ministry like this. They would not. It is the truth. You have to really -- to stay here, Christ has to really be strong in your life, and it is not easy. It is not an easy ministry.
So I just have a witness to this, Genesis 2:24, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." So we are the wife of Christ, and He is coming. He is a mind. Jesus said I have no place to rest my head. He is a mind. He is looking for a body to dwell in, and the people do not want Him because we are so fallen, brethren, that we see Him as an enemy. And we have several messages on this in the 78 series.
This is what our problem is. We are joined to our husband in our mind. We married Satan. We married him at the time of the fall. We are so joined to him that the Scripture likens it to a dyed garment. He has dyed us with his life. How do you separate the dye from the garment? We are as joined to him as the salt which is in the sea. We are one. So when his heart fails with fear, we fail with fear, and that is why we need this message, to understand that when that fear comes upon us, or whatever that false message is to take us away from Go- -- and I am not talking about this ministry here.
I am not talking about this ministry here. I am talking about the spiritual ministry, which is in Christ, which is killing your carnal mind wherever God sends you to go. I am not talking about Living Epistles. Wherever God sends you, when this Christ mind is coming forth in you and every time you obey God your carnal mind is dying a little bit, he is going to do anything he can to get you to disobey God, whatever it is that God wants you to do. You are going to wake up in the morning with a light bulb going off in your head, thinking that God told you to do the exact opposite. I am telling you the truth, in every area. I am not talking about Living Epistles.
That is the way it works. I went through it myself. I counsel people all the time that are going through the same thing, so you have to be aware of this so that you can pray carefully and pray seriously, asking God. And this is my counsel to you. Say, Father, I want to obey You. Whatever You want me to do, wherever You want me to go, wherever You want me to be, I want it. Keep me from the deception of my own mind. And if you pray this prayer and you really mean it, you are going to find yourself in places that you would have never believed that God was sending you because our carnal mind never acknowledges where God wants us to go, especially when you are getting in this deep, never.
So my witness was that Jesus came to His own flesh. He is a mind without a body, or He was a mind without a body. That was what He meant when He said He had no place to put His head. I have not looked up that Greek word head in the Scripture, but it could mean head. It could be in parable form, but what He was saying was there is a mind. Now, especially now that Jesus is glorified, He is a mind, and He is in many bodies -- well, the seed of His life is in many bodies, but He is not fully manifesting in the flesh anywhere today. He is a mind without a body. He is a man without a wife. That is what He is saying. He is looking to join to a company of human beings, and we are resisting Him.
And if you study our natural example, human conception, God showed me a T.V. program on it once. I was amazed that the environment inside of a woman is totally hostile to the male seed. It tries in every way to kill the male seed that enters into her body. It is a miracle, fertilization. These secular people who made this movie said it is a miracle that a woman conceives, that the environment inside of a woman's body is so hostile to the male seed, it is a miracles every time a woman conceives.
And I want to tell you that it is a miracle every time a human person conceives Christ. What does that mean? It means every time the word engrafts to them. That is the conception. It is a miracle because the environment of your carnal mind is killing or trying to kill that seed of Christ, denying the word, resisting it, thinking evil of the preacher, thinking evil of the other people in the ministry, anything it could do to stir you up, to take you away from the place where God sent you. If you are going to a church where there is a powerful outpouring of the Spirit, any church anywhere, this is what I am talking about. Your carnal mind will rise up to kill your obedience to Christ in anything and in everything because the more obedient you are, the more you are crushing Satan and his carnal mind under your feet.
He came into His own. He came into the church. He is coming to us by the way of the Holy Spirit, and our carnal mind is trying to kill that seed that is trying to engraft to our soul. I tell you the truth. You have to know this. Every voice that you hear is not God. Every thought that you think is not God. Every time you feel peace, it does not mean it is God. Peace, peace, but there is no peace. Brethren, the only peace is in the destruction or the utter subjugation of your carnal mind. There shall be war of long duration until your carnal mind is subjugated.
The fact that you go to a church where you feel peace or that fact that the result of something that you have done gives you peace does not necessarily mean you have obeyed God. Some of my greatest torments have occurred in my emotions as I was doing what God told me to do. The carnal mind does not want you to do it. When I first started preaching and I would study through these messages, I would go into torment for hours as I was preparing these messages. I would call people up and say, pray for me. I am under attack. Some witches coven must surely be trying to shut down this ministry.
And then eventually I found out that what was attacking me so badly was my own carnal mind. He did not want me to do these studies. They were burning him. They were hurting him. They were tormenting him. He did not want to go down into the bottomless pit. He did not want to get down under the Christ in me, and I would be in torment for hours, but I would sit at that computer. And then a day came where there was a piercing through, and the carnal mind does not torment me anymore when I study. On the contrary, I pierced through to the other side. The greatest moment of peace and my highest experiences of spirituality occur when I am doing these deep studies because apparently he was killed. Some measure of his power was killed, and I entered into another realm.
But I want to tell you it went on for long periods of time, several years that I would have to call for a prayer two or three times every night that I was studying for one of these messages. And I used to say, boy, these people, whoever they are that are praying against me, they are really strong. What is this [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- and it was not them. It was me. It was my own carnal mind torturing me. It is a piercing through. It is an overcoming.
I want to tell you, brethren, entering into the kingdom of God does not involve going up on a prayer line and having someone pray over you and getting slain in the Spirit, OK. OK, now, even the casting out of demons, they are important. The casting out of the demons and the breaking of the curses and the going up on the prayer line and having hands laid on you, it is all important. What it is doing is plowing your earth so that you can receive the seed.
But once you receive the seed, then all of the rules change. All of the ground rules change. Listen to me. The healing, the deliverance, the prayer line, the getting slain in the Spirit, this is all ministry that will result in the engrafting of the incorruptible seed to your soul. Once the incorruptible seed engrafts to your soul, the whole picture changes. Christ starts coming forth in you, and you are overcoming warfare has begun.
Now that does not mean that there still will not be demons to be cast out or that you cannot have hands laid on you, that you cannot go out in the Spirit. It does not mean that. I am not saying that. It can happen every time and as often as God wants it to happen in your life, but the emphasis now goes onto the overcoming and the doctrine. It is a maturing in Christ. You have to go one. You can stick where you are. You have to go on. You have to grow up in Christ because the end of your travail is full stature. If you want to call it a rapture, call it a rapture, but do not stay where you are. Keep on going. If the Lord permit, go on to perfection. You have to keep on going.
And everything that is taught in the church is available to us, at any time that God wants to give it to you. Anything that is legitimately in the Spirit of God, I am open to having it done here if the Lord is doing it [?that night?]. But, remember, the emphasis now is in the increase of the seed in you, the maturing of the seed in you, and as He matures, He is killing your carnal mind. And you are joined with your carnal mind. You are one, so that is how I got onto this whole subject.
We are so joined in our mind to our carnal mind that we perceive the warfare of Christ as the enemy. As He comes to kill our carnal mind, we cannot comprehend that He is killing our captor and He is snatching us to safety and that as soon as our carnal mind, we are going to be joined to Him in a new marriage. We have trouble comprehending it, and we see Him coming to attack our carnal mind, and since we think we are carnal mind, we decide that the person in whom Christ is manifesting is some devil.
Now you have to hear this. At least pray about it. If you do not believe it, at least pray about it. I am telling you the truth, but you owe it to yourself to pray about it. Does anybody not understand what I said? OK. Because this war is on, you see. Whether you believe it or not, whether you want to be a part of it or not, this war is on.
Now I remember years ago when we used to go to that other church, that pastor said a couple of times, once you come to this church, he said, you are marked. He said there are people out there writing down license plates, when we had Geraldo Rivera around. And he said, in the spirit, once you come here, you are marked, and the demons are watching for you. And I think it was probably true, but I am telling you the same thing. Once you walk into this place, you are marked. In the spirit, you are marked. Go on. Do not go back; go on. You have got to fight this war, and the war is much more, it is much greater than casting demons out of you. It is the subjecting of your carnal mind.
Your carnal mind cannot be cast out. You cannot cast out your carnal mind. Your carnal mind is your personality. You cast it out, and you die. So if there are demons to come out, let them come out, but they are only coming out to weaken your carnal mind to the point that Christ in you will rise up and subject your carnal mind. You are in the big time now. You cast out the lion and the bear, and now we are after Goliath, and even bigger time than this is when you start taking on the carnal minds -- unrepentant carnal minds in other people that are recognizing Christ in you and trying to bring destruction into your life. OK.
Alternate Translation, verse 11, "The world system came into existence through Him, and He desired that their mind should be Christ, but they did not submit themselves to His mind." So I said all that to say this, that the Holy Spirit is in the church. People love to prophesy, to dance and speak in tongues and exercise all of the gifts of the Spirit, and it is wonderful, but that we are supposed to be submitting our carnal mind to that Spirit. And very few are doing, and alm- -- no one is doing it 100 percent of the time, nobody.
"The world system came into existence through Him, and He desired that their mind should be Christ, but they did not submit themselves to His mind.” Verse 12, "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name."
The Greek word translated receive means to lay hold of something in order to use it. "But those that laid hold of Him." Brethren, Christ is a weapon. I have been preaching that here. Christ is a weapon. You have got to laid hold of Him and use Him as a weapon. To do what? To subject your carnal mind. You have to lay hold of Him, not to bind and loose on your brothers who owe you money or who are trying to hurt you. It is to bring your own carnal mind, your own problems, your own weaknesses, your own compulsions into submission or subjection to the mind of Christ in you. That is the overcoming battle which results in full stature.
The word power is authority, and the word sons in the Greek means true offspring. Now if there are true offspring of God, there must be --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- false offspring of God. Brethren, we are the false offspring of God. We are bastards. That is why we need to be adopted. Do not get your nose out of joint. If you were a true son, why would you need to be adopted? We are the false offspring of God. We are the illegitimate offspring of God's wife. Our father is the devil. Did not Jesus say it? He said to the Pharisees, you are father is the devil. That is why we need to be adopted.
Alternate Translation, Verse 12, "But as many as joined themselves to Him, He gave authority." He gave them authority over their carnal minds. When they joined themselves to Him, when they submitted to His mind, He gave them authority over their carnal minds so that they could become the true offspring of God. Everyone that submits to the Christ, wherever He is appearing, authority is imparted to you to defeat your carnal mind so that he might be subjected, so that Christ might be fully your mind, so that you might be the true offspring of God.
Again, we are the children of God, not the children of the God. We are the children of Jesus Christ. We are not the children of the God. We are the children of God, the expression of God, OK.
Verse 13, "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Now this word blood, in the Greek, it is plural, bloods. The life of the flesh is in the blood. The birth, which comes from blood, is referring to that child which results from a union between a man and a woman. It is the way of reproduction of this world system, and we are just reproducing. It is likened to the unfolding of a plant. It is just the way this creation reproduces itself.
So those who are the sons of God, they are not coming into existences because of the ways of this world system, neither because of the will of the will of the flesh, and that is the carnal mind desiring to incarnate. There is one carnal mind in a many membered company of human beings, and he desires to incarnate so he can bring forth human beings too. That is not why the sons of God are manifesting.
"Nor by the will of man," and that word man is 43- -- Strong's 435. It is not the man-faced creature. It is referring to any male person desiring to produce a child. Lots of men want children. I just got back from Africa. Children are a big thing there. You are not a man if you do not have a child. You have to have many children, and Africa was steeped in polygamy for years, and one of the principles behind it is that men want a lot of children to show off their manhood, to indicate their manhood.
Alternate Translation, Verse 13 -- well, let me get back a little. "But as many received Him, and many as laid hold of Him, to them he gave the authority over their carnal minds to defeat their carnal minds so that they might become the true offspring of God, even to them that believe on His name." You see, I left that out. So those who believe on or into His name are the ones who will lay hold of Him.
You cannot just believe intellectually. You see, we are spirit, and when we do anything with our mind, our mind vibrates out from us and touches other people. It is a believing into Him. It is a believing with such an intensity that our human spirit vibrates forth and joins with His Spirit. It is a believing into Him.
"Not those which were born of this world system" -- let me -- "Which were not born because of the reproductive force of this world system, nor because of the carnal mind's desire to incarnate, nor because a man desires to father a child, but those which true offspring came out of God, came out of the seed of God."
Verse 14, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." This Greek word translated dwelt, it means tabernacled, and it is talking about life in a tabernacle. Our human spirit is dwelling inside the tabernacle of this flesh. It is within the tabernacle of this flesh. It is talking about Jesus' human body.
"And the Word was made flesh." The Word, which was the idea of God, became a personality. Now that is not talking about this physical flesh. It is talking about the flesh of the soul life. God had a thought, and it appeared. The soul, the living soul, appeared, and it appeared in the earth in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. And that idea of God, that living Word of God was made into flesh and tabernacled with us. That means He was in a human body, like we have, and we beheld His glory.
And this word glory, it is Strong's 1391. It means opinion, estimate, view, judgment, and I want to suggest to you it is speaking about the mind of God. We say His glory. Now how could you see a mind? How could you see a mind? You have to see a mind with spiritual eyes. We are talking about the discerning of spirits, and what this verse is saying is that Jesus looked like a man, like every other man, but there were those who saw His glory. They saw that that mind that He had was different than everybody else's mind. It was not a typical mind. It was the mind of God, and they discerned it. That is what this Scripture is saying.
And we saw His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. Now I have a different translation for you than that. I am not saying that Jesus was not the only begotten of the Father, but the Lord showed it to me a little different in the Greek. And the way the Lord showed it to me is that the Scripture is saying this is a mind that could only be begotten of the Father. They saw a mind, and they saw that it was different, and they said, look at that mind. A mind such as this, it could only be a mind that was begotten of the Father. Man could not have brought forth this glorious, glorious mind. It could only have come from God. That is how I see it in the Greek. That is how the Lord showed it to me in the Greek.
"Full of grace and truth." Grace is Strong's 5485, and it is speaking about speech. It is speaking about gracious speech. Now what in the world does that mean? I want to refer you to James, chapter 3. We are not going to go into tonight because I really got long-winded, and I am sort of pushing through these last few verses. James says if you bridle your tongue, you are a perfect man. So this word grace is indicating the fact that the man Jesus of Nazareth had bridled His tongue. Every word that came out of His mouth was gracious. Every word that came out of His mouth came from the mind of God. That is what it is saying.
"And truth." Now this Greek word translated and can also be translated with, and we are going to translated it that way. And truth is the opposite of a lie. It is a genuine article, speaking about that which is genuine, and it is speaking about the true spirit. And if there is a true spirit, there must be a false spirit. And what that means is that Satan is not really a spirit. Satan is a part of the living soul. He is really soul, but what happened was he exalted himself and stole the role of spirit. He is functioning as a spirit. He is doing what a spirit does. He stole God's wife, and he impregnated her just like a man, but Satan really is soul, and therefore he is the false spirit.
He is not really a spirit. He is a lie. He is really soul. And what does that mean? It means that being soul, he should be in submission to a spirit, which is male. So he is completely out of order. She is really female. Satan is really female. She has risen up and stolen the male role in the creation and impregnated God's wife with the illegitimate offspring, the carnal mind, but she is a liar, and she is false because she is really not a man. She is a woman that has taken on a male role.
So this expression, grace and truth, I want to suggest to you to you that it is really saying that Jesus' speech was completely infiltrated with the spirit of truth. Everything that Jesus said was completely soaked and saturated with the spirit of truth. That is what it is saying.
Let me read you this Alternate Translation. "And the living thought which God spoke was made into flesh and lived in a tent among us. And we saw His mind, a mind that could only come from the Father, and that mind was so completely permeating His speech with truth that every word He spoke revealed the Father."
"And the living thought which God spoke was made into flesh and lived in a tent among us," the tent of this body. “And we saw His mind, a mind that could only come from the Father, and that mind was so completely permeating His speech with truth that every word He spoke revealed the Father."
I am going very long tonight. I feel that a couple of people here, it is really too much for you, but I am going to just ask you to bear with me. If you do not understand what I am saying, just ignore it. I just want to get it on the message. I am not usually this long-winded. It just turned out very long tonight. I think -- well, for whatever reason. I would like to finish it up, so if you want to go to asleep or do whatever you want, just do it. Please, just hang in there with me for this last 15 or 20 minutes.
"And the living thought which God spoke was made into a personality." This is an amplified translation of verse 14. "And the living thought which God spoke" -- now I changed the word "word." "And the Word was made flesh." I changed it to the living thought.
"And the living thought which God spoke was made into a personality and lived in one of the fallen human bodies which are generated by this world system. But we saw His mind, a mind that could have only come from the Father, and that mind was so completely expressed through His speech that every word He spoke revealed the nature of the Father."
And as a natural example, I would like to call to your attention that in an an- -- in a human body or in an animal body, the blood is in every area of the flesh. Every cell of the body has blood in it; that is why any part of your body that you prick, blood will appear. So the life of the Father, we are said -- we are told, was completely saturating the personality of the man Jesus, just like the life of this flesh, which is the blood, it totally saturating every area of our flesh. That is why we need this skin, to hold the blood in. Otherwise, it would be dripping out.
Verse 15, "John bare witness of Him, and cried, saying, This was He of whom I spake, he that cometh after me is preferred before me: for He was before me." Now that is another verse that always confused me. Well, I looked up some of these words, and the one -- the word that says cometh after me, it means to come from one place to another. The Greek word translated preferred before me means to exist, and the word translated was before me means first in authority.
So this is what that verse is saying. "John bare witness of Christ and preached, saying, this is the one that I told you about. He was born after me but existed before me, and He has a higher authority than me." John witnessed to the Christ and preached about Him, saying, "This is the one that I told you about who existed before I was born and who has a greater anointing than I do." One more time, "John witnessed to the Christ and preached about Him, saying, this is the one that I told you about who existed before I was born and who has that imparted anointing."
Verse 16, "And of His fullness have all what received, and grace for grace." This Greek word translated fullness, it means His completeness. How have we received of His completeness? Because the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was the Christ, was completed, and because He was crucified and raised from the dead, that completed life is sprinkling on us and, Lord willing, engrafting to us, and we are partaking of His completeness. It is being reproduced in us.
Now this expression, grace for grace, I want to tell you it never made any sense to me at all, so I have an exciting translation for you, if you get excited about things like this. This is what it means. Grace means grace of speech. I mentioned that earlier. And this Greek word translated gra- -- for -- the Greek word translated for, it is number 473, and it indicates succession. So that means one grace is further along the line than the other grace, and I want to suggest to you grace for grace is speaking about the two dispensations, natural Israel and the church. And you will see that verse 17 -- verse 18 bears that out. So let me give you an Alternate -- verse 17 bears it out.
Let me give you an Alternate Translation on Verse 16. "And we have all received of His completeness, which is the grace of the New Covenant in addition to the grace of the Old Covenant." It is that purification of our speech or our lifestyle that comes with the Old Covenant, plus the grace which gives us the New -- which comes as a result of the New Covenant. It is the double portion. It is talking about the double portion, the double portion which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. "And we have all received of His completeness, which is the grace of the New" -- He is completed because He has the grace that was imparted through the New Covenant as well as the grace which was imparted through the of course. That is why He is complete.
Verse 17, "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Now that -- does that not follow right through with what I just said? It is made clear in Verse 17. "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."
But I am going to have to change that translation a little. As I studied it in the Greek, this is what it sounded like. "Because the grace which is of the law was given by Moses, but the true nature of God was revealed through Jesus Christ." "The truth is the true nature of God because the grace which is of the law was given by Moses, but the grace, which is the true nature of God, was revealed through Jesus Christ."
"For the law was given by Moses." There is a grace of the law, "but the truth came by Jesus Christ." You see, that word but is not -- if you look in your King James, that word but is in italics, which means it is not in the Greek. "For law was given by Moses' grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." It is just a question of how they put the Greek -- the translation of the Greek together. And we have all received of His completeness, which is the grace of the New Covenant, in addition to the grace of the Old Covenant because the grace which is of the law was given by Moses. But we needed a New Covenant because the true nature of God was not revealed except through Jesus Christ.
Verse 18, "No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." The word God is without the. It is not the God. It is God. No man has seen God. Now who is God? Remember, the God expressed Himself in another form, in the form of a mind. God is that mind which was in Christ. The Spirit of God joins with the spirit of the man and produces an offspring, a mind which is God.
So what this Scripture is saying is that no -- well, first of all, it does not say no man. Let me give that to you. In the Greek, it does not say no man. In the Greek, it says no one. No one has seen God. No one has seen this mind. And how do you see a mind? You have to discern it. No fallen man has been able to discern this mind, which is the offspring of God. That is what it is saying. No man has seen God at any time.
This phrase, at any time, it does not mean that at all. It is Strong's 4415, and it means that right of the firstborn. So what the Scripture is saying, no one -- now who is the firstborn of God? It is the mind that was in Jesus, the Son of God. Christ is the Son of God. It was that mind that was in Jesus. The flesh of the man Jesus was not the Son of God [UNINTELLIGIBLE] before the glorification. The flesh of the man Jesus came out of natural Israel. It was fallen. It was capable of being destroyed. After the glorification, when the mind and the flesh were so completely joined that they were one, then the whole man, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the Son of God. But before that, it was the Christ which was in the man Jesus which made Him Jesus the Christ. He was Jesus the natural man whose mind was Christ.
So no one has seen this mind which is -- which has received the rights of the firstborn. And what are the rights of the firstborn? The firstborn inherits everything, all of the money, all of the property, all of the possessions. The Scripture is saying no one has seen this mind that has inherited all that God is and that God has. Who has seen it? The only begotten Son, and that does not -- and that only begotten, it means the only one of its kind. The Greek word translated Son is speaking about a specific male issue. No one has seen this only one of its kind, this only Son of God who has recei- -- who has inherited everything because He is the firstborn, who is in the bosom of the Father, who is hidden in God.
Well, I looked at this in the Greek. Now I was really rushing. I am -- again, I have to apologize to you. As you know, my dad, I took him out of the hospital, and it is been an absolutely crazy day, and I was really rushing on this last verse because you were all here already. And I cannot -- I did not have enough time to go into the Greek, but I know what God has said into my heart, and I am going to give it to you, that this last phrase which says that -- to be in the bosom of the Father would mean that the Christ was within the Father. That word bosom, it means a hollow place, and it would be saying that Christ was within the Father, but we know that that is not true, that the Father is dwelling within His Christ. So it has to be some play of the words in the Greek. Do you know what I am saying? You do not know what I am saying.
I will say it again. The way it is translated, it looks like it is saying that Christ is ins- -- within the Father, but we know that the spirit dwells within the soul. How do we know that? The Father is the spirit, and the Son is soul. Are you OK with that?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. Well, we know that in the prophets it says, behold, I will do a new thing. A woman shall compass a man. In this creation, the soul will be outside of the spirit, so I am sure that it is just the way the Greek was stated, and I did not have time to go into each and every word. But I know that it cannot be -- the Son cannot be in the Father because it is not scriptural. Do you understand what I am saying, [?at least?]?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah, OK. So this is my Alternate Translation. "No one has seen God's firstborn, the only Son of His kind." He is the only mind which is the offspring of God and man who is -- "No one has seen God's firstborn, the only Son of His kind, who is in God's womb, that one explains Him." Now that is a literal translation, which I am going to change. "No one has seen God's firstborn, the only Son of His kind, who is in God's womb," which we -- I just explained to you is not scriptural. "That one explains Him."
So this is my amplified translation. "No one has seen the firstborn of God, the only Son of His kind, in whom the Father dwells, that one explains Him." Now, remember, Christ is a mind, so I am suggesting to you that that one who is explaining Him is the man Jesus of Nazareth whose mind was Christ, is showing everybody this is what a man is like whose mind is God. That one, Jesus of Nazareth, is declaring to the whole world, this is -- this mind that is in Me is the only Son of the living God, and He has inherited everything. All power and authority in heaven and earth has been given unto Him, and if you want to see Him, look at Me.
That is what that is saying. It is talking about Jesus of Nazareth. But we know that Jesus of Nazareth has a son, a many membered son, the church, the 42nd generation. So it is not just restricted to the man Jesus of Nazareth. The day is coming very soon where a company of men will be appearing on the earth whose mind will be Christ, and we are going to see a many membered son revealing this mind of God, declaring to whoever would like to see, that this is what a man looks like, is like, lives like when his mind is God. That is what this Scripture is saying.
No one has seen the mind of Christ. And why is that? We are told in another place that only Christ can discern Christ. Only if Christ is in you will you be able to discern Him in another man. Paul said we judge all men. We know whether it is Christ or the carnal mind in all men, those of us who are in Christ, but they cannot discern that it is Christ in us. And what happens when a carnally minded person cannot discern Christ in you? They think evil of you. They never understand you. They always misjudge your motives, and they think evil of you.
"No one has seen the mind of Christ, the only Son of His kind, the one in whom the Father dwells, but that man Jesus of Nazareth whose mind was Christ explains Him." And, of course, the 42nd generation of Chri- -- I guess I should change that to that man. "No one has seen the mind of Christ, the only Son of His kind, the one in whom the Father dwells, but that man Jesus of Nazareth and His son -- and His offspring whose mind is Christ explains Him." Glory to God. I would like to read you a recap of those verses, and I will let you go. I know I have tortured you tonight. I am sorry.
Recap, John 1:1-18, "At the beginning of time, the living thought which the God spoke into existence was projecting forth from the side of the God, and that living thought was an extension of God, and He was God. All things came into existence through Him, and nothing that came into existence came into existence apart from Him. In Him was the life of that Father, and that life was the mind of the many membered, man-faced creature."
"And the mind of Christ came into the living soul, and Christ subjected Satan, and the living soul received life. There was a company of spiritual men sent from God, whose name was John. The same came as prophets witnessing about the Christ, that all might believe through Him. They were not Christ but were sent to witness about the Christ, that He was the mind of God which is saving the many membered man who is appearing in this world system."
"The world system came into existence through Him, and he desired that their mind should be Christ, but they did not submit themselves to His mind. But as many as joined themselves to Him, He gave authority over their carnal minds so that they could become the true offspring of God, which were not born because of the reproductive force of this world system, nor because of the carnal mind's desire to incarnate, nor because a human man desires to father a child, but which true offspring came out of God."
"And the living thought which God spoke was made into a personality and lived in one of the fallen human bodies which are generated by this world system. But we saw His mind, a mind that could only come from the Father, and that mind was so completely expressed through His speech that every word he spoke revealed the nature of the Father."
"John witnessed to the Christ and preached about Him, saying, this is the one that I told you about who existed before I was born and who has the imparted anointing. And we have all received of His completeness, which is the grace of the New Covenant in addition to the grace of the Old Covenant, because the grace which is of the law was given by Moses, but the true nature of God was revealed through Jesus Christ. No one has seen the mind of Christ, the only Son of His kind, the one in whom the Father dwells, but that man Jesus" --
I guess it should be but that man Christ Jesus. That is what it should be, "but that man Christ Jesus." That [?takes in?] the two generations of Christ, Jesus Christ of Nazareth plus the second generation of sons.
"No one has seen the mind of Christ, the only Son of His kind, the one in whom the Father dwells, but that man Christ Jesus whose mind was Christ explains Him." And just as an ending thought, I would like to emphasize to you that the way you see a mind is by listening to the words that that mind speaks. I just feel to push this home.
"And the living thought which God spoke was made into a personality and lived in one of the fallen human bodies which are generated by this world system. And we saw His mind, a mind that could only come from the Father. We saw His mind, a mind that could only come from the Father. And that mind was so completely expressed through His speech that every word He spoke revealed the nature of the Father."
So, remember, you cannot see Christ by what He looks like, where He lives or any such thing, and you cannot even recognize Christ by what He does because He does a lot of things that look like other men's behavior. But by His speech, now not His language, not by His language, not by the English language, not by the Spanish language, but His speech is the meaning behind the language. Jesus said, why do not you understand My speech? He said it to the Pharisees. I am speaking to you. Why do not you understand My speech? He was saying to them, you hear my language. Why do not you understand what I am saying?
You will see the Christ when you truly understand the words that He is saying to you, and the more Christ-like someone is, the more misunderstood He is. People hear that man's language, and they think He is saying something that He is not even saying. When you understand the speech of the Christ, you will see Him, amen. Any questions tonight? OK, just do me a favor and put it on the message.
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Would you mind putting it on the message?
[INAUDIBLE]
People need to hear your questions. People have the same questions as you do.
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OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
OK, yeah. It is for the -- it is an act of mercy to people.
Whenever I have had the question asked to me, I would like to know a more extensive answer about the conception of Christ in a person's spirit, when they conceive Christ. And they always say, how do you know that you have conceived Christ? And it looked like maybe some more answer was coming when you said the engrafted word on the soul, that is conceiving Christ. And so I was asking you, how do we know when the engrafted word is on our soul, rather than just hearing the word, but that it is actually engrafted on our hearts?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, when the incorruptible seed engrafts to our hearts, it immediately begins to wage war against our carnal mind, which is our human personality. It is not easy to discern the engrafted word, or it is not as easy as to discern the receiving of the Holy Ghost, which is evidenced by the speaking in tongues. That is obvious, OK. The evidence of the engrafted word is that you begin to be chastened, which is the judgment seed of Christ. The minute that Christ begins to appear in your soul, He starts to judge your soul. So we see judgment coming into our life that is not unto destruction but that is unto correction. We see a reaping and a sowing and experiencing what we do to others to the end that we are convicted of our ungodly ways and change coming forth.
It is hard to say spiritual growth because one can experience spiritual growth with the imputed anointing, OK. You can experience spiritual growth with the imputed anointing, but this is the difference. See, it is not -- it is very subtle. This is the difference. The spiritual growth that you experience with the imputed anointing is an improvement of or a ministry to the old man. It is ministry to the old man. Whatever problem you have, if it be physical or if it be emotional, when the power of God comes into your life, you can receive improvement along the same lines that a physical doctor with medication would bring improvement, or along the same lines that a psychiatrist would bring improvement. That can happen under the imputed anointing. It is ministry to the old man.
But the engrafted word brings forth a new life which begins to kill the old man. It begins to kill the old man. And so at the beginning, it is not that easy to tell the difference, OK. So judgment, the judgment of your carnal mind, is a major characteristic because God only chastens His sons, and you are not His son until the seed is engrafts -- is engrafted. So a chastening that results in the development of Christ in you is the number one characteristic, but it is not that easy to identify.
And another characteristic that is easy to identify but which can easily be confused with something else is that the gifts being to pass away. Because when Christ is engrafted in you, when He is conceived and He starts to grow, He is the reality that will replace the gifts. The gifts are just a shadow and a type of the reality of the life of Christ. So we see that we start to speak in tongues less, and we start to minister the gift of prophecy less. But you have to be careful because you can have some carnal person who for some reason is backsliding, and they are not moving in the gifts any more, and they are going around saying that they are moving into the engrafted word, which is Christ being formed in you, the hope of glory.
So there is no clear-cut, set proof. The -- I could just give you guidelines. Like Jesus said I will show you the signs of the times, and then you have to go before the Lord and ask Him if this is what is happening in you. And I have been telling you the same thing that I have been preaching here for all of these years. If you deceive yourself, you are just deceived. It is no benefit to you at all, and I encourage everybody to open their hearts to God and to ask Him, that if they are not truly opening their hearts to God, to help them to do it, to really, truly want the truth. And if we are deceiving ourselves in any area, that we truly, truly want the correction.
And I encourage you to tell God that if you think that that is what you are thinking and if you think that that is what you are praying for, but you are really not, that God should expose that too and should bring a deep conviction and a deep enablement in your own soul to open yourself to Him, to Christ, to bring whatever kind of a correction He wants to bring. It is not easy, and our biggest enemy is our own heart, which is out to deceive us.
And our only hope of not being deceived by our own heart is what I just told you, is to throw yourself on the mercy of God, telling Him that you will take -- that -- I tell Him all the time. You know, my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak, you know. But I say to Him, in principle, I want everything You have for me. I am willing to accept any chastisement you have for me, but have mercy on me because my flesh is weak. I may not like it when it is happening, but in my heart of hearts, Lord, you are all that I want, you know. And then, again, to tell Him, if that is not -- if you are lying to yourself and you do not really feel that way, ask Him to really put that desire in your heart. And more than that, you cannot do more than that.
So to get back to the original question, the two most obvious signs of the engrafted word is the chastening of a son, which results in not the spiritual growth of the old man, but -- which the chastening which results in the development of the very Christ. And the spirituality of the very Christ is different than the spirituality of the carnal man who has received the Holy Ghost, but I cannot give you any clear-cut, specific instructions. I cannot give it to you. If they exist, I do not know about them. I do not think that they exist.
It is something that has to be spiritually discerned, that there is something different about the anointing on this man from the anointing on that man. And what the difference is, is that the first man is manifesting the very life of Christ, and the second man is manifesting a gift which comes with the receiving of the Holy Spirit. And the difference is as of day and night because the old man who has the gifts of the spirit, he is of another age. He is of another age that has received a measure of that which is to come, but the man who has the engrafted word, he has received that which is to come, and it is growing in him.
And it is a stronger measure to have the engrafted word. It is a much greater measure of spiritual life, power and authority, and it has to be discerned. If there is -- that is the best I could do for you. Did I help you at all?
Yeah.
Yeah, [?and the very?] --
It is not --
It is not --
-- a really obvious difference?
It is not cut and dry, but you always have the option to pray. What you do is you -- whether you are looking at yourself or whether you are looking at somebody else, try the spirit, and make a judgment. Tr- -- you know, train -- let yourself be trained. Try the spirit. Make the judgment, and then say, Father, I tried the spirit, and I made the judgment. Was I wrong, or was I right? And if I was wrong, please, let me hear the correction. More than that, you cannot do.
OK. I think that you have mentioned that the unregenerate man -- was that the way you have put it?
OK, yes.
The unregenerate man is under the judgment of Satan?
Yes.
And the saved man is --
Well, excuse me, let me correct you. He is not really under the judgment of Satan. He is under the wrath of God, which is mediated by Satan.
OK.
It -- Satan is God's servant. He is the mediator of the wrath of God, OK, but he is not the originator of it.
So my question is when does the white throne judgment begin, when the person gets the Holy Spirit in their heart or when they actually conceive Christ, the saved man? Do you understand my question? What is the saved man? I mean, when does this begin? I mean, the -- what the church world has taught us to be the saved man, we are not really born again until Christ is fully born in us.
Amen.
So nobody is saved yet.
Amen.
Right?
Except Jesus of Nazareth.
Except Jesus. Fully saved that is, right? Their spirit is saved?
Well, there is this whole -- the spirit that is in the living soul is Christ.
Oh, you said the spirit is -- excuse me, you said the spirit is redeemed.
The spirit is redeemed. He is been purchased back. In other words, when -- yes, the spirit has been redeemed.
So it is not even going to be saved?
Well, I believe the way the Lord is showing it to me now is that the whole creation is being saved, but salvation unto the spirit has a more specific name. It is called redemption. Salvation to the soul has a specific name. It is called the adoption, you know.
OK.
But it -- the whole creation is being saved, but we are told that that end of our faith is the salvation of our soul. We are really -- we are not saved until we are glorified. That is my opinion. Anyone who is hearing this message, if you want to disagree with me, God bless you, I will not argue with you, but that is my opinion.
I was just looking at a Scripture. God just had me look it up inside in Romans 14 where it says and He both died and rose and revived, Christ. I think it says Christ both died and rose and revived. And I looked those words up. Now we know that Christ died at the fall, and we know that He rose from the dead in the man Jesus of Nazareth, but there is a step beyond rising from the dead. And the Greek word translated revived, it means to live again, so we have to be raised from the dead, and then we have to live again. And we are not really saved until we are living again.
So when does this white throne judgment begin? Is it at the conception of Christ in the person's spirit?
Yeah, let me make one more comment on that other issue. I had a man in Nigeria that was very upset when I said something like this, and I want to put on this message what I said to him. That everybody that is in the church that is getting upset by what I am saying, you have -- let me tell you, you have had an experience with God, but the name of that experience is not salvation.
The name of that experience is reconciliation. When the Lord revealed Himself to you and you started panting after Him and reading the Bible and going to church and doing all these things, you have had a valid experience with God, but the name of it is not salvation. The name of it is reconciliation. You have been permitted to enter into a relationship with the Lord, which relationship is being very beneficial to you and is the first step on the road to salvation. So you have been reconciled unto God. You have had a valuable, valid experience with God, OK.
I -- these terms. I would really like to have everything redefined for me. I do not know about anybody else, but what does it really mean, then? What does salvation really mean? I know this sounds really simple and -- but, you know, we have to become like a child to enter into the kingdom, right? What is salvation?
Well, salvation means to be rescued.
Rescued?
You know --
What is the difference between salvation and redemption?
Redemption means to be purchased back, to be purchased.
Redeemed.
Redemption means to be purchased.
OK.
Although some of the -- in some of the Scriptures where the word redemption is used, if you look it up in the Greek, it means ransom. It means to be ransomed.
What is ransomed?
OK. Well, do you know what a ransom is in the world? If somebody steals something that is yours, usually this term is used in kidnapping. If someone s- -- kidnaps a millionaire's son, they ransom -- they ask for a ransom. They call up the father and say we have your son. Give us a million dollar ransom, and we will give you your son back. Are you following me?
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It is a payment. You OK? Let me say it again. The kidnapper steals the little boy.
That is redeemed. That is redemption?
That is ransom.
That is the meaning under redemption, though?
Some of the Greek word translated redemption really mean ransom.
Ransom.
Not all of them, OK, but look at how close they are because redemption means to purchase, and the w- -- the ransom that I just described to you is a form of purchase. It is p- -- the man is purchasing his son back. Can you see that? OK. But you can -- you see, any ransom that you pay is a purchase, but every purchase is not a ransom. Can you see that? Every time you pay a ransom, you are purchasing something, but every time you purchase something, it is not a ransom.
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OK. So we find broad categories with a variation of meanings within them. That is why there is several Greek words translated redemption. Some of them mean to purchase. Some of them mean to be purchased under the context of ransom, OK. And the ransom, in the Scripture, it is not the same as it is in this world. Now God's Son was stolen. I should say -- excuse me. God's wife was stolen, and the way He is purchasing us back is different from the way you would deal with a kidnapper in this world. In this world, you give the kidnapper the valuable possession, or the money, and your child is returned to you.
But in the realm of the spirit, God giving His Son. He is not getting His son back. He is giving His Son, and the thief is not running away with the spoil. The ransom is that Jesus Christ is being joined permanently to the thief. It is the very thief himself that is being purchased back by giving the ransom. And the ransom price that is saving the thief's life is the Son of God who has been committed by his Father to be joined to this thief, the living soul, Adam, the fallen Adam, to be joined to him for the life of the ages.
Now why would the Father do that to His own Son? Because the only way this soul is going to be raised from the dead or purchased back is to impart righteousness to it. We are down here in Hell because we are unrighteous, and we have no hope of ever becoming righteous. Therefore, we are under the wrath of God. We are in eternal torment. The human race will continue indefinitely down here in Hell in various degrees of torment, so God, our Father and our husband, is paying a ransom to get us back. But the ransom is not letting the thief run off. The ransom is redeeming the very thief that has stolen God's property.
Now how could we say that? Let me put it to you this way. The thief, which is Satan, has stolen God's property, which is His wife, and the two are one. The thief is not separate from that which God is purchasing back. We are all part of the same creation. Therefore, God has given us His Son to be our righteousness, and the thief, as well as God's wife, is being redeemed and will eventually be saved, will be fully delivered out of Hell.
Salvation is deliverance out of Hell, both in the mind and out of the Hell of this world system. Did I answer your question?
So my question is when does the white throne judgment begin, at the conception of Christ or --
It begins --
-- when the Holy Spirit comes into the heart?
No, not when the Holy Spirit comes into the heart. The white throne judgment is mediated by Christ. So to be under the white throne judgment, Christ has to be present. You see, it is not a Christ outside of you. It is a Christ inside of you. The white throne judgment is Christ in you, the hope of glory, judging your carnal mind so that he becomes weakened and goes down under the control of that very Christ.
So the white throne judgment starts -- I do not know that I can honestly say at the moment of conception. Let me put it this way. The white throne judgment starts at the moment that the engrafted seed, at the moment that the conceived Christ begins to function in your life.
Now when Christ is conceived in the spirit, what is He -- what is His function at that point? What happens? Is it just a little seed? Is it like a little baby in there? Is it like something is forming like a little baby, or what does He look like? Is He able, at conception, to make a judgment?
That is a good question, OK. I do not believe He is a little baby at conception. I do not believe that. I believe He is the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ that has been raised from the dead and glorified, but He is in a seed form. He is been -- for lack of a better word, let me say He is been reduced to a seed form for the purpose of being reproduced in the hearts of men. But this is a great mystery, but that manchild that is born is a fully-grown, mature man, and that mustard seed, it is the beginnings of the fully-grown, mature man, OK.
But the problem that He has is that He is coming forth in a fully developed personality. He is coming forth in a personality where the carnal mind is in full stature. And the Father has said to Him, now, overcome that carnal mind, and put it underfoot. So we see Him overcoming little by little, and it is a process whereby everything that our Lord and savior is, the Lord Jesus Christ -- you see, all wisdom and knowledge and understanding is in that seed, but that seed has to lay hold of our carnal mind, destroy our old way of doing things and bring us to a place where we start to live out of that mind of Christ. But the very seed itself is complete. Does that make any sense to you?
Well, then why are we saying He has to grow up in us, and He is one years old, He is two years old, He is three years old. Why are we saying that then?
It is us that is one year old or two year old or three years old.
Oh, I thought that we were saying that Christ is growing up in us from seed. It would mean that He was growing up from a little one.
Yeah. It is a good question. Just bear with me as I struggle with you, OK. I know -- I do not always -- I know the answer, but I do not always have the words, so let us just see --
OK
-- that God would give it to me in a way that you can understand it. It is a good question, OK. You see, it is the second generation of Christ, OK. I guess, a way to put it, for example, is if you have an apple seed. You have a seed that has within it full authority to be an apple tree. It has full authority to be an apple tree. It has everything that it needs, but yet it is a seed. I do not know how to put this to you. Christ is coming forth in a new -- in another form. He is in seed form. He has everything that He needs to be the rea- -- and He is in fact the real thing, but He is being -- He is coming forth in the mind of a man. I do not have more of an answer than that right now.
OK.
I am sorry, OK.
OK.
I have just asked the Lord to give it to me.
All right.
Just l- -- just give me another second here. If He is not a little baby, how could it be one or two years old? OK, let me put it to you this way. The seed is the glorified Lord Jesus Christ who is a fully-grown, mature man, but He is bringing forth Christ Jesus in us, which is the second generation of sons, so it is Christ Jesus in us, our new conscious mind that is one year old, two year old, three years old. But the glorified spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our unconscious mind, is a fully mature man.
So our conscious -- new conscious mind is one, two and three?
Yes.
And that is -- the apple tree does grow up from a young tree to an old tree?
Yes, that is our new conscious mind, but our unconscious mind, which is the glorified Lord Jesus Christ, He is complete.
And is the unconscious mind the same as the spirit of the mind?
Yes. The unconscious mind is spirit.
So the spirit of the mind, when it has Jesus Christ in it, it is complete.
The spirit of the mind is complete, yes, and the mind is the baby.
Now do you have to have the baptism of the Holy Ghost to have the new unconscious mind of Jesus Christ, the spirit of the mind?
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] you certainly do not have to have the baptism. The question is do you have to have received the Holy Ghost. Recall the difference between receiving the Holy Ghost and being baptized with Holy Ghost.
OK.
I do not believe -- I do not know anyone today that is baptized with the Holy Ghost. We all seem to have the lesser manifestation of it, which is called receiving the Holy Ghost. And what was your question?
Do we have to receive the Holy Ghost into our spirit, of the mind, the unconscious mind, in order to have Jesus Christ in there, Christ conceived, I guess?
To have Christ Jesus conceived in us?
Yeah.
I do not know the answer to that. I cannot prove it to you. I cannot even give you a Scripture for it, but I can never forget -- I can never seem to stop thinking about Baptists, in particular. There are many Baptists that do not speak in tongues, but I cannot deny the move of the spirit on their life. They preach under an anointing. They have obvious faith. They have faith in God, some understanding in the Scriptures, and they have not received the Holy Ghost. So when we did that message, "The Truth About Baptism," we found out that there is an anoint- -- or a baptism of faith. I am trying to remember by teaching on the truth about baptism.
Just like we said the baptism with the Holy Spirit is the greater anointing and receiving the Holy Spirit is the lesser anointing, the baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus -- I hope I am remembering it correctly. I guess I am not doing too well tonight. Baptized -- the baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus is the baptism into His spirit, and there is a lesser manifestation of it, which is a baptism in faith. I am going out on a limb. I am making it very clear that it is my opinion, and I cannot really prove it to you, but I think that Christ can be conceived in you without having received the Holy Ghost. And it is a baptism with faith, the type of which we see in the Baptists.
Now to get to full stature, I think at some point they will probably have to have this experience, but it does not have to come in that order. For example, I received the Holy Ghost before I was water baptized, so I think to be in full stature, they will have to receive the Holy Ghost, but God can do it in any order that He wants. Do you understand what I am saying?
So experiencing the Holy Ghost with all of His gifts is part of coming into the fullness?
I think so. I do not know. Who knows? Maybe there will be people --
OK.
-- skipping over it. I do not know.
OK. I have got another question here. What is the difference of believing intellectual and believing in intensity that you speak of? Do you know what I am talking about? You have said that in the last two meetings.
Believing -- yeah.
You said there is a believing intellectually, and there is a believing in intensity.
I think I said experientially. There is an experiential believing.
You said last night, with such an intensity of [?believing into Christ?].
Oh, I see what you are saying, OK.
So I do not understand the difference. It is both believing, right?
Well, it is not the same thing.
So that is why I asked. I would like it explained.
Yeah. OK. How do I explain this, Lord? OK. There is an intellectual believing that is -- let us find a simple example here that says -- there is an intellectual believing that is simply an academic understanding, that I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and in Him we have eternal life. OK, a lot of people, they believe that. It is like a story. It is like a teaching. They believe it. But there is no life in it. It is the same thing as the letters on the page. But when your heart rises towards that belief and starts laying hold of it -- it is a laying hold of it. It is when something rises in your heart that makes you rise up and go out and get it.
You said it very well this morning. We do not see many people in the church today lusting for God. They hear the word. They read their Bible, but they do not -- they are not really lusting for the promises of the Bible. They are content with what they have, and they are sitting there saying, if God gives it to us, fine, and if He does not give it to us, I am content with what I have. But when our heart starts desiring what we believe, it is the next stage of believing. It is to desire it and to crave it with your heart. That is when it starts to come to pass, because this desire rises up as a living thing out of your heart and starts reaching out for it. It is a spiritual thing. It is a reaching out, which is the step beyond believing.
So a person can actually believe -- well, [?I was going to say?] if he believes in his heart that Jesus rose from the dead, he shall be saved, right? If a person actually believes the story in his mind, it is hard to understand that somebody could believe that story without actually believing it in his heart.
Well, they could believe the story without believing into his heart. The whole point is, we have to reach out and join with His life. The intellectual believing is supposed to stir up a fire in us that will result in our mind rising up and reaching out to try to capture this promise. And if all we do is believe it intellectually, but this rising up and reaching out never occurs in us, we will never enter into anything.
It is the same thing as saying to a young person, in this country today, I read it somewhere, and I believe that if you get good grades, in this country, you could go to college. We have student loans, and we have all kinds of programs, and if you go to school and study and do the best you could, you will get into college. And the person will say, yeah, I believe that. If I study, you know, I will get into college, but he never does anything about it.
And then the other kid says, yeah, I believe it, and, therefore, I am going to go, and I am going to study, and I am going to do my homework. And I am going to go, and I am going to fill out my applications, and I am going to do everything I have to do because I really believe that I could go to college. And when he does all these things, he enters in, and then there is somebody else sitting home doing nothing, saying, yeah, I believe it, that there is opportunity in this country. And I believe it is -- college is available to everyone in this country. Well, why do not you go fill out your application, Johnny? Well, tomorrow I will fill out my application.
I see.
That is an excellent example. Thank you, Lord. That is it right there.
Yeah. They really have to want it in their heart.
Yeah. There is a believing, and there is a believing.
People that, like, have a deep, like, negativeness and want to die in their hearts, is that going to keep them from wanting eternal life because eternal life is living forever? Is that blocking them from wanting it?
Ask me again?
Well, those -- it seems like if those that have, really, a desire working in them that they just do not want to put up with this world anymore and they want to doing, OK, is that just the opposite, then, of believing [?into?] eternal life?
Of believing into eternal life.
I mean, can we just call that a spirit of suicide, or can we actually call it that the person has got not -- is not working with faith and wanting, lusting for -- to live forever.
I see. Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I see what you mean.
The opposite of lusting --
Yeah.
-- to die.
Yeah, well, I think anyone that is lusting to die is a damaged person. They are a spiritually diseased person, and only God knows what is on the very inside of somebody's heart. And this is one of the biggest, most important things we have to know about today. We have a church world out there that is condemning many people who seem to be not making it in the church.
And at the hour that Jesus appears, there is going to be a lot of shame-faced people because a lot of these people that do not look like they are making it, that cannot -- they are having trouble standing up. They are having all of these problems in their day-to-day life, holding a job, with their marriages or whatever, many of them. God knows their heart. They are fighting with everything they have to overcome problems that they were born into, in most instances born into. And it looks, to the carnal mind, like they are not making it.
And we have all these people in the church that look like they are making it. They have good jobs. They have money. Their kids are happy. They are healthy. Their life is in order, but in their heart of hearts, they are so content with their [?churchianity?] that they are not really reaching into Christ. And in the hour of His appearing, these two groups are going to be made manifest, and there are going to be many wailing and gnashing their teeth. Because he who is last will be first, and things are not the way they look.
So if a person is spiritually and mentally in that condition that they want to die, it will not necessarily keep them from eternal life then?
No, because [CROSSTALK]
Because I have heard stories like what -- like those were in so much pain, that they decided in their spirit they wanted to die, and so they did. I mean, ho- -- what does that mean, you know? That they --
So they decide in their spirit that they -- and these were believers?
Yeah, that they had a strong enough will to live. They made it through, but those that just did not have the will and they wanted to die, yes -- no, those that say the person is really in a lot of pain or something.
But these are believers you are talking about?
No, just people.
People. Well, that is a big difference. People are not believers, you know. If they have a --
And they wanted to die, and they died.
Sure. They have not been quickened by the Lord. That is a whole different category.
Oh, OK.
Yeah. Because, remember, nobody can come to the Lord unless they are drawn.
Yeah. OK. This is a general question. But what i- -- what makes Christ in us grow? I know you said that these -- hearing the revelation and coming to the meetings makes it grow, hearing the message, right?
Well, not really. Only Jesus can give the increase, OK. When you come to these meetings, you are being watered, and you are being seeded, but only God can give the increase. But you have to -- you need the water, and you need the seed, you know, but only God could give the increase. What I am saying is that you can have two people in meetings like this, and one person can grow tremendously and the other one not grow at all, and they are both submitting to the same meetings. See --
Is it anything that the person is doing, the one that is growing or the one that is not? You know what I mean? Is there anything that the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] or is this all a work of Christ and nobody can --
Well, no. There are things --
-- throw their will into --
-- for us to do. There are people that He is calling that are not coming. You know, I really do not have all the answers. I know the bottom line is He is in control of everything, but I believe that He is calling a lot of people in this hour, and many of them are not coming, and He is letting them God, that He is going to have His handful that are going -- that He is going to appear in, but many are called.
And few are chosen.
Yeah, and some people are being dragged against their apparent will, and others, He is letting them go off, you know, so I do not understand it all. [CROSSTALK]
Is it possible that two are doing all they can, you know, as far as trying to submit to Christ and the other one gets -- grows more than the other because it is Christ's choice --
Sure.
-- in that hour?
Sure.
So is -- what can the -- what can humanity to cause Christ to grow in them. What can they do? What can the man do?
What can the man do?
Mm-hmm.
He can tell the Lord that he wants it and ask for it and submit himself to a program of spiritual education, but if God has not called you to it, nothing will work. God has to grant it to you. See, the church has to come to terms with the fact that we really do not have any control, that at the very most, we can say God has granted our petition, but the church wants to control. We do not have any control at all. God is in complete control. He -- either He gives it to us, or He does not give it to us. It is up to Him.
Yeah. I have a question about the prayers prayed that we crush the carnal mind, you know, have the carnal mind crushed. I think I have heard you say that it is Christ that crushes the carnal mind and that the -- that Christ must arise in that person to crush their carnal mind and that He is first going to grow up before the -- in other words, He is growing inside the carnal mind. Well, if He is in there, why are we praying that the surrounding of what is covering Him up be crushed when He is not old enough yet to be their sustenance?
Yeah.
That part I do not understand. Should our prayer not just be, Christ, grow up in us and arise in us, and He will do that crushing?
No. You have to understand that when we pray that the carnal mind be crushed, the way God answers that prayer is to grow up Christ in us.
So the a- -- the prayer is to crush the carnal mind, but what we are really asking is that Christ grow up in us then?
Well, yeah, but that is telling God how to do it. We are supposed to tell the Lord what we need. We need our carnal mind to be crushed, you know.
I see.
But these are all very fine lines, you know. You can pray to have Christ grow up in you. That is OK. I pray that too.
Yeah, you do pray that too, but I just wondered it because what -- from what you said, it looked like that the order is that Christ has to grow up [?in us?], and obviously He has not grown up in all of us yet --
It is simultaneous.
-- and we are praying that our carnal mind be crushed, and it is like there is no sustenance either way then.
Oh, well, that is not an accurate way to look at it. You have to realize that when you ask for something, that God is going to do whatever He needs to do to bring it to pass.
To bring it to pass, and we do need our carnal mind crushed.
When you say -- when you pray crush the carnal mind --
I see what you are saying, OK.
-- the only way to crush the carnal mind is Christ, so, therefore, Christ has to grow up in you before the prayer can be answered.
Yeah, OK. All right. You were preaching last night about -- in John 1:4, you were saying it was the mind of men in the begin- -- that the mind was the light of men. God's life was the mind of men in the beginning. And you also said it was very good, but it was not perfect. It was immature and lacking experiences. And you -- the way you were saying it, I was thinking about it. I was like, well, how could we get these experiences, you know, if the man had not fallen? Then how could he have learned from mistakes --
I see.
-- and experiences? So it kind of a- -- it is like that question is in there. Did God mean for the man to fall? And I know that you have said before He did not, but where is the answer to this? What -- you know, what are the -- how would he have had the experiences? You know -- do you understand my question?
I think so.
I am not trying to contradict you --
Yeah.
-- or start anything that would be contradictory or a disagreement because it is not. I am just wanting to know the answer.
Yeah. Well, I do not have all the answers, but I would think that he would have had the experience. You see, what you are saying is -- what we are saying is that Christ matured by overcoming the evil, the spiritual immaturity, amen. So it is just a question of whether Christ would overcome the spiritual uncleanness from a position of dominance or whether Christ would overcome from a position of having fallen. It is the same -- it does not matter. Christ has to overcome. So if He had not fallen yet and Satan tempted Him by -- if He had taken the victory over Satan and said, no, I will not do that, then He would have had an experience saying, well, Satan is capable of tempting me to spiritual adultery, and I took the victory, but now, the next time he tries to do that to me, I will be able to get him down faster. See, I have experiences --
So [CROSSTALK]
-- like that right now. Something will come to me, and I will think I have this big problem, and I will get the whole thing worked out in my mind, and then I find out that it does not come to pass. I took the victory in my mind without it ever coming to pass in the natural. Has that ever happened to you? That is happened to me several times. Yeah. Do you understand what I am saying?
Yeah.
Yeah. I have experienced that, where I took the victory, thinking it out, and I knew that in my heart. I know that -- let me just put an example on the message. That one night, I got a word of wisdom that someone was going to strike me, and I was to fall down on my knees and pray for their life, and I really thought that I was going to be physically hit. I really did, and I just went before the Lord, and I said -- well, I prayed that -- at first I was upset that I prayed the whole thing through, and I said, well, so I will get it, so what? And I took a total victory in my heart. If God was requiring me to be smacked by somebody, I was prepared to receive it, and then it never came to pass. It was a spiritual hitting, you know, but I overcame in my mind. So there is a perfect example if you can understand what I am saying.
Yeah.
OK, so that is the answer.
OK. You were talking about, at the first part of the chapter of John, you were talking about that the light was Adam, and then it changed as you were talking about John coming into the picture. And you were saying after that, the verses that talked about light, it seemed like you were saying it talked about Jesus. So I would just like to know when the switch happened from Adam to Jesus and understand that a little bit better.
Righteous Adam -- what did I say? The word was the light. Is that what I said?
The first couple of verses that were talking about the light.
And He was the light and the word -- well, if you could read me the Scripture, it would help me. Can you turn to John 1 and read me that Scripture?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK, the first verse here that is speaking of light is number 4, "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." And verse 5 is, "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." And then [AUDIO CUTS OUT] -- OK, verse 3 -- verse 4, sorry, again, "In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." I thought you were talking about Adam there, righteous Adam. And then it goes on, and it seemed like after verse 6, when it talked about John, you started speaking of the light as being Jesus.
OK, [?I see your question?] [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah. The life, OK, it was the righteous mind which was in Adam. Adam, the creation of God, orig- -- God put a righteous mind in him, and when the mind which was Christ, the immature Christ, was the mind in Adam, it was the light of the man. It was the light of the man.
Yeah.
OK. But then the creation fell, and the next time we see the mind of God in the creation, it is in Jesus Christ, OK.
So that is the -- that is what happened? It was ta- -- he was talking about righteous Adam, and then right after he is talking about John, it is starting to talk about Jesus?
Yeah, that is -- it is like a big mystery, but he left out -- the apostle John left out a whole big chunk of history out, the history of mankind from the time of the fall. All of that is left out. All he is talking about is the mind of Christ.
OK, so the sa- -- after he says, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe." Now He is talking about Jesus?
Now he is talking about Jesus, yeah.
Wow.
Is that amazing?
Yeah.
Yeah, because I am sure everybody thinks --
Because it was like, wow, [CROSSTALK]
-- that the first -- yeah, that the first -- what is it, the first five verses? That they think the whole first chapter is Jesus, but it is not, those first five verses.
I used to think that.
Yeah.
And now I --
Can you receive it?
-- understand what you are saying.
Can you hear what I am saying?
Yeah. That he did, he left a whole chunk out there. Yeah, that is what that meant?
It is in the rest of the Bible. He was not dealing with any of that negative stuff you see. Now we find some preachers in the church today saying I am not going to deal with any of that negative junk, and it is not working for them. You see, God anointed the apostle John to do this, but the Gospel of John is just one of four Gospels, and it is a part of the whole Bible. You are supposed to read the whole counsel of God, so for whatever God's reason, John did not deal with that, but someone else dealt with it.
But when you take a fallen man who is a preacher and he is preaching only the positive side of the message, he is producing a deformed Christ in you because you have to know that there was a fall. If you do not know that there was a fall, if you do not know that there what is sin, how do you expect to be raised from the dead? You see, it is -- do you understand what I am saying? When a fallen ma- -- preacher tries to do it, it does not work. But when Jo- -- the apostle John does it, it is OK because it is only one aspect of the whole Bible. You have to take the whole counsel.
But when you find a ministry doing that, if you -- for the group of people that are not taking the whole counsel of the body of Christ but are just studying under this one ministry, it is producing a lopsided message and, therefore, a deformed Christ. Did I make that clear. Do you know what I am saying? You do not know what I am saying? OK.
When you take one book -- let me hear you say, I do not know what you are saying, pride.
[?I do not know what you are saying?].
OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. Look, when you take one book out of the 66 books of the Bible, or one chapter out of that book, OK, and you [?see?say?] that this whole story of the fall and the whole negative aspect of what happened to the creation is omitted from it, OK, it can be done because the person who is reading it is supposed to be reading the whole Bible. And there are other parts of the Bible that talk about the fall, OK.
But we have some ministries today that are only preaching the positive side of the message, and they do not talk about the fall, and they do not talk about sin, and they do not talk about the devil and all of those things. So for the group of believers who are studying under this ministry -- and most believers do that. I think the more mature you are, the more likely you are to listen to messages and read books from other places, but the less mature you are, the more likely you are to just cleave unto the one ministry that God puts you in, and there is nothing wrong with that when you are a baby. You do not want to be confused. So if you are sitting under a ministry that is only teaching you the positive side of the message, it is -- you are not going to be developing properly. Do you understand what I am saying?
11/26/14 Transcribed by VerbalFusion
12/05/14 1st Edit CAS/BP
