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Zechariah, Chapter 11, Verse 1 through Verse 14.
Verse 1, “Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour the cedars.”
“Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen; because the mighty are spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of Bashan; for the forest of the vintage is come down.”
“There is a voice of the howling of the shepherds; for their glory is spoiled: a voice of the roaring of young lions; for the pride of Jordan is spoiled.”
I [?looked at it?] through this whole chapter, and I believe that Jehovah is speaking not only to Judah but to the entire church, and he is speaking about his plan of salvation. I have found the work that I have done so far very exciting [INAUDIBLE]. I believe the Lord has told me that he is speaking about the -- what I call the imputed anointing and the imparted anointing, or you might say the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, which appear to be two stages of Jehovah’s plan for the salvation of humanity.
And we see that the church today largely preaches that we are under grace, that Israel is under the law, and we under grace, but I have always disagreed with that because the Lord -- to be out from under the law requires us to be a righteous man. And for a while I was actually calling the covenant that the Lord has with the church either the covenant of the Holy Spirit or the in-between covenant. I knew that I really did not have any specific scriptural basis for it, but I did know that the church is very much under the law of the Holy Spirit. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and thy soul, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Man in Pentecost is still fallen. We still need laws. We still need guidelines. We have talked a lot about that here recently.
So in the course of this study of Chapter 11 in Zechariah, the Lord has shown me exactly what the -- they appear to be three covenants, but there are only two covenants. The Old Covenant has been offered first to Judah and then in another way to Israel. One way to Jud- -- the same covenant, one of expression of it to Judah, under the law, and another expression of it to the idolatrous Israel, which is the church today. The church today are the Lord’s tribes of Israel gathered together, receiving the grace of the Old Covenant, which is the Spirit of God without repentance. The Spirit of God without repentance, reconciliation, the privilege of having a relationship with the Father without repentance. And it is the New Covenant which is in the blood of Jesus Christ which is full deliverance from sin, and that is what I call the imparted anointing.
[?And?] this is a big confusion in the church today. We have many Christians going around saying that they cannot sin, that they are without sin, and we know that this cannot possibly be true, but [?we were?] confused by some New Testament Scriptures [?that we read?]. And I will go into this more specifically as we go down the verses. I hope I have not confused anybody, but this is very exciting to me to see what the Lord is showing me here and showing all of us, hopefully. So [?did?] -- does anybody not understand what I just said? There is two covenants, but the first covenant, the Old Covenant, if you will, is offered in two different ways to a divided Israel, Judah and the 10 tribes, and the 10 tribes being idolatrous and completely separated from the law of the covenant which was given in Sinai, the Lord, in this recent hour, in the last 2,000 years, has offered them the same, old covenant with the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Now we see that -- I do not know if you are aware of it here or not. I asked somebody once if you have Jewish community here, and I was told [?none?]. Is that true? Do you have no Jewish community in Nigeria? You do not. Well, in New York, there are some Orthodox Jewish [?peoples?] who are very active in evangelism, and the object of their evangelism are non-practicing Jews, and they are out there trying to convince them to come back [?over to law?]. I have ministered to a few of them, and they are very angry at these teachings, that the way to the everlasting covenant is directly through Jesus Christ. They believe you have to come back under the law and then enter into to the other, everlasting covenant. And I knew in my heart, of course, that that was not true, but I never had the scriptural proof that the Lord has just shown me in Zechariah 11.
So what I am saying, simply, is if [?the?] Judah, who is still under the law [INAUDIBLE] [?they are?] going directly from the Old Covenant into the everlasting covenant, the New Covenant. Now this is a very controversial thing that I am saying, but I am telling you, brethren, that the Spirit of God is with those who worship him in spirit and truth, wherever they are worshipping him in spirit and truth. And I believe that there are Jews who are in this word day and night who have touched the Spirit of Jesus Christ. They do not know it, but if [?attending their meetings?], you would recognize that the anointing [?is full on them?]. There were several ministries writing from Israel that are [?recording this, and it has been a?] confusion to a lot of people because they do not understand how this could be happening. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is pouring himself out to people who are seeking God in his word. I feel that I have confused all of you. Father, let me try again.
There is no way, Father -- there is no way except through the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the New Covenant. It is the only way. What I am trying to say to you is that, in the hour that the Lord Jesus Christ reveals himself to Israel, OK, that the faithful who are in Israel today are going to enter -- they are going to go very quickly into reconciliation, justification and right into the New Covenant. They are going to jump right in because where they are now, they are worshiping God to the best of their knowledge.
Now we know that that covenant is not valid anymore. It is not valid anymore, but when the Messiah appears to them, at the appearance of Jesus Christ, I believe that they are going to enter into the -- enter into a world that Jesus Christ is Messiah, is savior, and jump right into the imparted anointing. They are not going to spend five years in Pentecost [UNINTELLIGIBLE] if you can hear what I am saying. They are going to jump over Pentecost. They are going to enter right into what we call justification, which is the beginning of the formation of Christ in you because they do have a relationship with the Spirit of God right now.
And you may recall me telling you that Israel had a relationship with the Spirit of God, but that relationship was in a form that could not produce everlasting salvation. [?You remember?] me teaching [?you that?]. [?He?] had a mind of Christ appearing in him, but it was in a form that could not result in the mind of Christ being interwoven with [?a?] humanity. That condition of having the mind of Christ interwoven with your humanity, with your mind, the mind of Christ growing out of your soul [INAUDIBLE], it is in the New Covenant. It is in the imparted anointing. It is when Christ sits down and possesses your soul. Another way that we put it is in the crucifixion of Christ. It is the joining of the Christ mind to the soul of the man. And I just pray that the Lord help me to explain this because I think that I am missing you.
So we see that there are two stages to God’s plan of salvation for humanity, and the first stage is to have a relationship with the Father, through the Lord Jesus Christ. We are reconciled unto God, through him, whereby we [?talk?] and receive answers from him, but his life is not yet literally growing like a spiritual plant out of our soul. This is the anointing which is in Pentecost. It is a gift and a calling of God which is without repentance. It is given without repentance. [?Whosoever?] [INAUDIBLE] come and acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord and savior, and you can receive the Holy Ghost, and it is without repentance, and we are supposed to move on from there to a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ which requires repentance, ongoing repentance as sin is revealed in us. And in this relationship, which is called justification, Christ begins to be formed in us, the nature of Christ, no longer just the power and the gifts and the outpouring, but the very nature, the righteousness of Christ himself, which is in justification, the blood of Jesus, the planting of the word growing out of our own soul. Is everybody with me so far? OK.
So what I am saying is that -- well, do -- [?well, we know?] that there are Scriptures that says that Israel will be grafted back into her tree, OK. When the fullness of the Gentiles is come, Judah is going to be grafted back into her tree. And I noticed many years ago that there had to be an error in the teaching that the church is out from under the law because the teaching that rises out of that is the teaching that the church is without sin and that the church cannot sin, and I know that is not true because I sin, and everybody else that I know of in the church sins today. We are not perfect, but because of this misunderstanding, the false doctrine of perfection after the death of the body has arisen in the church. The perfection is in the flesh, but in a perfect -- [?while the?] -- our spirit is made perfect while we are judged in the flesh.
So the question is how could we be under grace if we are still not perfect? Because anyone who is not perfect is required to be under the law. The law is only for a righteous man, and we are not righteous yet. So I have been maintaining for a long time that we are under the law of the Holy Spirit. You must love the Lord thy God with all your heart and your mind and your soul and love your neighbor as yourself. We still need to be told what to do because Christians mess up all the time. We sin all the time.
And I did not have an explanation for this. I used to call it the in-between covenant, the Old Covenant which was to Judah, the New Covenant which is in the perfection of the imparted anointing, and then I used to look and say, well, now what do I do with a church that is under the law of the Holy Spirit who sins all the time, who sins continuously? That is why judgment is coming upon the church, beginning with the elders thereof. And I used to say what is this in-between covenant? I see that it is there, but I cannot find it in the Scripture. Everybody is following the problem that I am having? OK.
Well, I found in Zechariah 11 that this -- and [INAUDIBLE] the church is under the [?law of?] the John the Baptist covenant. We have come out from under the law of ordinances because the law is now made spiritual, but when the John the Baptist company [INAUDIBLE] [?the youngest?] [INAUDIBLE] in whom Christ has begun to be formed is greater than the greatest anointing which is given without repentance.
So we have some great evangelists and teachers in Pentecost who are -- have been found to do many unrighteous things, but yet they heal, and they deliver, and they teach, and we see great miracles worked through them. They have an imputed anointing. Their nature has not yet been made holy or righteous, and they are category [?of?] John the Baptist. I have been saying this for years. A lot of people get mad at me, but I believe that it is the truth.
And therefore we see a phenomenon coming up in the church today that we could find some even very young person or very unobvious person sitting in a congregation in a large Pentecostal church who has more knowledge and how has more wisdom and who is more anointed than the man who is in the pulpit, and it has proven to be a great problem. That is why, here in Nigeria, the [?kids in churches?] come out of Pentecost because there is some form of recognition of this problem, that there is a new order coming up, that there is a new [?root?]. There is a new anointing, that there is a new covenant coming up that seems to be, spiritually speaking, greater or greater because of righteousness than the existing anointing in Pentecost. And there is a clash between the new order or the imparted anointing and the old order or Pentecost. That is why the kingdom church has separated from Pentecost [INAUDIBLE].
So all of these years, I did not know what to do with this church, which I called the John the Baptist company, which were claiming they were righteous, but I knew that they were not righteous. And the only thing I could tell anybody was that they were under the law of the Holy Spirit, got a lot of people mad at me, but it is still the truth because a lot of people, if not all people, would not know what to do without that law, and some -- a lot of Christians do not even obey the law. Love your brother as you would love yourself, and love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind and your soul. The whole church is filled with idolatry and hatred for their brother; that is why judgment is coming.
And what I am trying to tell you is that I found the answer to my predicament today. The Lord is offering the Old Covenant, OK, which is the covenant of grace. It is the grace of the law, and we found that in John, Chapter 1 [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- before I go any further, let me just show you that -- since I started this way. I do not really know why I started this way.
John, Chapter 1, if you have your Alternate Translation with you, otherwise I will just read it to you. Verse 16. It says grace to grace. That always confused me. Our Alternate Translation of John -- the Gospel of John 1:16 is, “And we all received of his completeness, which is the grace of the New Covenant in addition to the grace of the Old Covenant.”
So we see that to say Judah was under the law and we are under grace is a fallacy because there are two graces, the grace of the Old Covenant and the grace of the New Covenant. And the only man who is not under the law is the man who has been made righteous or perfect, [?but I?] found out that the covenant which is been offered to the church today in the grace of Jesus Christ is the same, old covenant, but it is being offered one way to Judah and another way to the church, which is largely the lost tribes.
If I have lost you, I will just go on. Is there not a Scripture that says one will be saved by faith and the other will be saved through faith? I get it mixed up, but [?maybe it is?] Judah that will be saved by faith [INAUDIBLE] the church [INAUDIBLE] saved [INAUDIBLE]. Anybody know that Scripture? [?I am losing you all?]. I am just going to start [INAUDIBLE] OK. And if anybody here thinks that I said Israel is going to be saved without Jesus Christ, you are mistaken. I did not say that.
So we will just start with Verse 1 of Zechariah, Chapter 11. “Open the doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.”
And I suggest to you that this is the Lord, Jehovah, speaking to humanity at large. The message of the prophets, although it was originally preached to Judah and sometimes to Israel, is to the church. It is to the end-time church, and the [INAUDIBLE] which God is offering to the end-time church is to [?whosoever will?]. It is the will of the Lord that all should be saved.
If you look at the prophets, we see there are many prophecies that have not yet been fulfilled, and much of the prophecy is to all of humanity because inasmuch as the offer of salvation has gone out to all of humanity, technically speaking, if you can hear it, the New Testament Israel is the global spiritual Israel. It is the whole world, spiritual Israel, because circumcision [INAUDIBLE] [?flesh?], but it is of the heart, and it is a spiritual Israel. Everyone whose heart is circumcised is a member of spiritual Israel, so it is offered to the whole world in this hour, although all Israel is not Israel. Everyone is not taking it.
Everyone is not walking in the covenant, but it is available to whomsoever will -- so I suggest to you, in Verse 1, the Lord Jehovah is speaking to everyone whosoever will today, and, “Open thy doors, O Lebanon.” [INAUDIBLE] [?I think?] the word translated “open” is a verb that can also be translated “to loose oneself from one’s bind,” and we have found in other places that the -- “Open thy doors, O Lebanon.” Lebanon is a type of all of humanity. [?I mean?], you have all heard about the cedars of Lebanon. [INAUDIBLE] [?great truth?] [INAUDIBLE] [?for building?]. [?Their wood is?] -- [?resists?] corruption, and it is used in the temple. It was used to build the Ark and to build Solomon’s Temple. Cedar was used because it is wood that does not rot, so the cedars of Lebanon are a type of the preserved flesh of a man in whom Christ is appearing.
When the mind of Christ appears in you, the flesh will be preserved, so we see the Lord speaking to the people in [?whom?] Christ is beginning to appear in and saying, open the doors, that the fire may devour your cedars. And I suggest the Lord is saying stop resisting the judgment. Let down your defenses, humanity, so that your flesh nature can be burnt up because there is no way we are entering into the fullness of the New Covenant until the sins that we were born with are burnt up. We were born with a sin nature, and we have sinned since we were born.
So the Lord is making an announcement to humanity. Stop resisting me; stop going down to the street corner and trying to save everybody else. It is time for you to move on. I want to give you my life. I want to give you my mind. I want to give you full deliverance and perfection and the glory of my Spirit, and there is no way that you are going to enter in without your sins being judged, and the judgment of sin is the casting out of your sins.
The Lord has promised us that our sins will be cast into the sea. Everything that torments us, that hurts us, that tortures us, that ruins our relationships and our lives are promised to be cast behind us so that we can go on and arise in righteousness and be a son of God. So we see in Verse 1 of Chapter 11 the Lord making this offer to whosoever may open the doors, Lebanon, a type [?of the world?], that the fire of God or the lake of fire, if you may, may devour your cedars or loose your cedars from the bondages [?that it is in?]. And who or what is the bondage? That our nat- -- [?the?] Lord typifies the natural life by bondage. [?Why?] bondage is our natural life where we are bound up with our carnal mind and in servitude to Satan. And we have to get loosed from these two, [?from?] this unholy alliance, so that we can be completely joined to Christ in our mind because so long as we are double-minded, we shall never enter into perfection or everlasting life. If you sin [?in?] one [?point?] of the law, you are guilty of the whole law, so every sin must be wiped out, that we might enter into perfection and partake of the promises of God.
[?You can see?] the Old Testament, they were continuously rebuking the church because, as often as the Lord offers us his Christ, it is just our human nature that causes us to desire things of the flesh, frequently, more than things of God. Why? Because the carnal mind is like a spiritual gravity, just pulling us back, pulling us back, pulling us back. That is why judgment of sin is necessary to bring into our mind and our consciousness and our understanding that much of the way we think is sin.
We do not even have to be doing anything. Sin is in your thoughts. It is pride; it is rebellion; it is an attitude; it is an emotion; [?it is the?] way you think about your brother or your sister. You do not even have to verbalize it; sin is a condition of mind. And it is my understanding of this Scripture that the only way we shall pass from death unto life is to be freed from this mind that binds us to Satan, so the Lord is saying I am here to do it for you. Stop resisting me.
And the overall message of this chapter is that I am going to do it for you up until a certain point, and then that point is going to come, and I am going to stop doing it for you. And either you are going to start flying, or you are going to lose what you have got, and this is a scriptural principle. We see it in the parable of the talents. The Lord said the man who did nothing with the talent that he had, take it back, and give it to someone [INAUDIBLE] [?and we see that there are?] two cat- -- actually, three categories [?of people?] [INAUDIBLE] two categories that the Lord will, in his anger, be saying I am coming to a point where I am telling you [INAUDIBLE] the Holy Spirit, if Christ is not being formed in you, I have been coming to you. I have been pleading with you. I have been speaking to you in dreams. I have been sending my prophets to you. You do not want it to go on, OK. Let the Holy Spirit -- let it die. Let it be taken from you.
Then there is a category of people in whom Christ is already being formed, but they refuse to live out of him. Why do they refuse to live out of him? Because it is hard to live out of Christ. It is hard to say [?you know it is your sin?] in your mind. It is hard to be examining yourself, looking for the wrong thinking and then recognizing it and confessing it [INAUDIBLE]. When you see sin in your own heart and then refusing to do that sin, you are doing the righteousness of God. It is hard; it is tiring; it is a war of long duration.
So the Lord is saying I have supported you; I have supported you; I have supported you. And it is my judgment now that you are able to fly, and I am not going to carry you anymore. You have got to start confessing your sins, and if you do not do it, let your carnal mind rise up and cover over your Christ mind. And it says there are 7,000 that [?have not?] [INAUDIBLE] [?he has his faith though?] in the church, [?people that will examine themselves?], recognizing sin, confessing it, resisting it and moving on to righteousness, and those people -- [?his?] [INAUDIBLE] he is going to care for them; he is going to [?rule?] them; he is going to give them power to finish the job. The job of what? Crucifying your carnal mind to the Christ in you.
When you crucify Christ to your carnal mind, your carnal mind [?dies?], [?and you rule the whole man?] [INAUDIBLE]. This is the promise to the faithful that [INAUDIBLE] Zechariah 11 are nailing their carnal mind to the Christ. They are nailing him down. They will not let him up. [?They hate sin?], and they are seeking righteousness [INAUDIBLE]. So here is [?what I am saying?]: Open your doors. Do not hold back the fire of God. Let the judgment come. The judgments of God are merciful. Do not proclaim you are innocent. None is innocent, no, not one.
Verse 2, “Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen.”
There are Scriptures that indicate that the great cedar is the king of Assyria. I suggest to you [?it is?] a type of the carnal mind, and as I have told you before, to understand the prophets, we have to understand some Bible symbology. Not only do we find many of the words in the King James translation poor choices from the many potential translations in the lexicons, but we also find that many of the words are symbols, so we have to interpret the symbols and interpret and translate the words properly to get the hidden message in the Scripture.
And the king of Assyria or the Assyrian, I suggest to you, is the carnal mind. I cannot be redoing all of the studies. If you recall, we did something like this when I was here last year, and I will just tell you what the symbols are because it has taken us years to work up this [?list?] [INAUDIBLE]. So, “Howl, [?fir tree?]” [INAUDIBLE] the Hebrew word translated “howl” means “make a sound of war” or “sound a war cry.” The fir tree also is the juniper tree or the cypress tree, and [?I am told?] [INAUDIBLE] next to cedar trees. It is used [?in the temple?]. Also, it is used for positives purposes, used for [?weapons?]. And 2 Chronicles 3:5 says that the greater house is ceiled with the fir tree, that the ceiling of the greater house is made out of the fir tree, so it is a positives tree. And I remind you that Christ is the head over [?his own house?], [?and Christ is?] the greater house. So [INAUDIBLE] to say that the fir tree is typifying Christ.
Howl, or make a war cry, all you people in whom Christ is appearing. If Christ is appearing in your mind, sound the war cry. Power is imparted to you, for the cedar is fallen, the cedar, the [?great sin man?]. The carnal mind is coming down “because the mighty are spoiled.” “The mighty” means “[?the powerful one?],” and “spoiled” means “to be leveled” or “spread out,” and I suggest to you that this is speaking about the breaking down of the carnal mind.
You may recall that the carnal mind is formed when Satan captured the human spirit and God’s creation joined with her and brought forth his offspring, the carnal mind. And so the leveling or the spreading out of the carnal mind, I suggest to you, is the breaking of that union and of that offspring of this adulterous union between Satan and the spirit which is in man. So, you see, that union must be beaten to pieces and broken for the [INAUDIBLE] [?for the?] spirit which is in man to be fully joined to the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which union will result in the formation of Christ in that person.
So first we see a call to not resist the judgment. Then we see a promise that the Assyrian is coming down; the carnal mind is coming down. This is speaking about the corporate carnal mind, brethren. Just as there are two generations of Jesus Christ, there are two generations of the carnal mind. First generation of Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, who in this hour is a glorified Spirit appearing as the unconscious minds of all of his followers. And [?if we?] [INAUDIBLE], he is reproducing his nature in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory. And the Christ which is being formed in us is called Christ Jesus or the second generation of Christ or the 42nd generation. So we see that, in this hour, Christ Jesus is not [?really in?] perfection. [?We are?] Christ Je- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
So I could go on, but I really have to stop. I really have promised to leave by 9. It -- we could talk about this a little more tomorrow if you like, but that is the second stage, and I will just say this. The third penetration is from his position, from Christ’s position on top of the carnal mind. He then crucifies the carnal mind. He -- which is another way of saying the third stage of resurrection. That is the crucifixion of Christ; it is the permanent joining of the two minds, the carnal mind to the Christ mind. And the Christ mind does not die; the carnal mind dies. And of the twain, he made -- or of the twain, of the two minds, he made one new man, the creation of God, the third penetration. God bless you, brethren. I will see you tomorrow.
Well, praise the Lord. We are in Zechariah, Chapter 11. We are up to Verse 2.
“How, fir tree; for the cedar,” that great cedar, the carnal mind, “is fallen; because the mighty,” the powerful one, “is spoiled,” or leveled or spread out, which means the union which has produced the carnal mind is spread out. They are no longer clumped together because there is power, you see. When Satan joins with the spirit of man and produces the carnal mind, there is power in the product of that union, but now he is spread out. He is leveled; that means he is brought down. So the Lord is saying, everybody, sounds the war cry because the Lord is giving the power for the battle.
“Howl, O ye oaks of Bashan.” Now the oak seems to be a negative tree. You may recall Absalom was caught by his hair in an oak, so we see judgment coming forth in the oak tree. And if you look up in your Strong's Concordance all the listings under oaks, you will see that it is involved in other work of n- -- in idolatry, and it is a negative tree. So we see the Lord speaking to trees in -- through the prophet Zechariah, but he is really not speaking to trees; he is speaking to men and the various conditions of their mind.
“How, O ye oaks of Bashan.” Now Bashan, you may recall, is the nation of Og, and Og was the last of the giants, the king of Bashan. And the giants, at the end of their line, were a spiritually criminal race; they were a fallen race. So -- hmm? [INAUDIBLE] excuse me. So we see the Lord speaking to the people. He is saying you have two minds. Let the Christ in you sound the war cry because the battle is on, and he is saying -- to the cedar, he is saying get ready because the war is here. He is saying to the fir trees, you typify the carnal mind. Get ready to come down. And he is saying to the forest of the vintage -- he is saying the whole forest is coming down.
Now, strangely enough, we find this in the Old Testament frequently that the choice of the King James translators is very poor. The Hebrew word translated “forest” can also be translated “honey, spontaneously just flowing freely,” and honey is a type of -- does anybody know? Honey is a type of the wisdom which is found in Christ. So we see this Hebrew word translated “forest,” but I suggest to you that it is speaking about Christ. And the Lord is saying sound the war cry, everybody in Christ, and everybody’s carnal mind, get ready because the honey is pouring down. The Spirit of Christ is coming down, and he is joining to the human spirits of men. That means Christ is being formed, and you have got war on your hands because the Lord is seeing fit to defeat you.
So the vintage of the forest is come down. This Hebrew word translated “vintage” means “to be exalted,” the exalted honey or the exalted wisdom of Christ, or I suggest to you the Spirit of Christ is come down. Come down from where to where? It has come down from heaven into the minds of men. To do what? To join with the human spirits of men, to bring forth Christ in the individual. The Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ that is not growing out of your soul is coming down, entering into your heart, joining with you and bringing forth Christ Jesus in you.
Christ Jesus is the warrior. Remember, the Father says I have not come to judge man. Judgment is in the Son. Now what does that mean? It means that the Holy Spirit does not come to judge your sins. The Holy Spirit is given without repentance. The gifts and the calling of God are given without repentance. It is not until that Holy Spirit joins himself unto your spirit, your human spirit, and thus the Son is conceived in you, this condition, this experience is called justification. It is likened unto the blood of Christ being painted on your personal walls.
Our natural example is the Passover. The Jews were commanded to slaughter a lamb and to paint the blood on the doorposts. Now the family that slaughtered the lamb but did not paint the blood on the doorpost, the angel of death did not pass over them. Brethren, if you have the blood of the lamb in your house, it is not enough. He has got to be painted on your doorposts, and the painting of the blood on your doorposts is the joining of that blood to the wood of your doorpost. We are talking about the spirit of adoption. It is not enough to have the Holy Ghost flowing over you, flowing under you, flowing through you. He has got to get on the walls of your person. There has to be a joining between the wood of your human personality and that spiritual blood of Jesus, and this union is called justification, and it is the beginning of the reproduction of his life in you, and it is called -- that life in you is called Christ Jesus.
So we see the Lord sounding a battle cry to the corporate carnal mind, to that carnal mind that is in the unconscious realm of all men. And the Lord is saying the Lord Jesus Christ is coming down from heaven. He is pouring out of his Spirit upon all flesh. Now all the individual members, get ready. Sound the war cry because I am only going to take you so far. The Lord Jesus Christ gives us the weapon of Christ Jesus, and we must slaughter and offer up as a sacrifice our own carnal mind to the Father.
What does that mean? It means laying down your soul life. It means every thought that comes into your mind, you have a choice: Either you will obey the thought which comes out of Christ, or you will obey the corresponding thought which comes out of your carnal mind. Everything you do is a choice, and every time you choose Christ, you are killing your carnal mind. And every time you follow after the command of your carnal mind, Christ is being tread underfoot. Now there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, but a battle it is, and hopefully it is three steps forward and only two steps backward, as long as you get there, brethren. Every defeat is an opportunity to learn and to get stronger and to overcome, but a war it is.
So the Lord is loudly proclaiming this message to all who have ears to hear, that the warfare is on. You do not hear it preached much in the church today, but, nevertheless, the war is on, and everybody is being invited into this warfare to wage this warfare, and very few -- the harvest -- the fields are white to harvest, but the laborers are few. I bet you always thought that meant you were supposed to go out with a tract. No, that is not what it means. The fields are white to harvest means that all these people in Pentecost -- out of all these people in Pentecost, many have conceived Christ, but once you conceive Christ, there is a labor to harvest that Christ, and that labor is the destruction of sin in your own mind by the Christ, by the power of the Christ that was conceived in you in Pentecost. And most people are not doing this because they have not even heard the message. Some people are doing it because they are close enough with Christ to have heard this message in their heart, even though it was not preached. Some people need to hear it preached.
The harvest -- what is harvest? Harvest is the separation of the fruit from the vine. It is not the going out and giving tracts and bingi- -- bringing people into your church. Harvest is the separation of the fruit from the vine. It is the maturing of the fruit. And who is the fruit? Christ is the fruit. Harvest is the maturing of the fruit to such a point that he does not even need this fallen body to survive anymore. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the heathen and bringing the heathen into your local church.
Harvest is spiritual maturity. Harvest is full stature, which is the first stage -- actually, the fullness of the harvest is glorification. The fullness of the separation of Christ from the vine is glorification because our natural man is the vine, so when the fruit of Christ separates from us, what happens to us? In the natural the plant stands in the fields, and it rots. It dries up, and it rots, and it is plowed under as a form of fertilizer. But our God is much greater than a- -- than that, and that is not about to happen to our natural person. Christ Jesus is powerful enough to take us with him, to convert our natural -- the natural aspects of our humanity into a form that will be incorporated in the glorified spiritual man, and all of us is going with him. So we might say harvest is deliverance from the bondage of this world system. It is deliverance from the bondage of this carnal flesh, of this thick, solid flesh that you cannot see through. It is a bo- -- it is deliverance from the bondage of this existence of labor, and it is a moving into a spiritual world where all of our needs are met by the power of the Spirit of God.
We see a lot of people having their needs met by the power of Satan’s spirit these days, and it is illegal. The spiritual activity we see here in Africa is illegal, but everything that Satan does, there is a true, legal, spiritual activity which is in Christ, and that spiritual activity is becoming available to men. No longer dependent on the ratio of naira to dollars, no longer dependent on whether the field brings forth its crop this year, no longer dependent on whether or not you can afford to travel, but because of the righteous life of Christ dwelling in us, we shall walk above every restriction of this soul realm.
This is harvest, brethren. This is the truth of harvest, and this is the promise of our God, but there is something we have to do. The free gift is the Holy Ghost. Once Christ begins to be formed in you, the warfare begins, and we must endure hardship like good soldiers. Now that does not mean the hardship of automobile accidents and sickness; that is not the hardship of the judgment seat of Christ. The hardship is the distress that we feel when we refuse to obey our carnal mind. The resistance of the commands of our carnal mind will cause us distress. He is not about to let us go. Paul tells us we have a new husband, and by faith we should count ourselves divorced from our present husband, the carnal mind, and live as unto our new husband as if he is already our husband, as if this is an accomplished fact, and that requires a warfare. You cannot obey Christ without wounding your carnal mind because if you do not wound your carnal mind, he will wound you. So we see that the exalted honey is come down into men.
Verse 3, “There is a voice of the howling of the shepherds.”
Now why would the shepherds be howling? Shepherds mean governors and rulers. It is talking about the authorities in the church. They are howling, brethren, because they are not Christ. They are carnal men, and the Lord is bringing down this existing ministry that is not caring for God’s people. So we see the voice of the shepherds howling; “for their glory is spoiled.” And, again, glory refers to spirit, and the spirit in Pentecost, brethren -- now I am not talking about the outpouring that brings healing and deliverance, but the spirit that is ruling in the men, the spirit that is ruling in the shepherds in Pentecost, is Satan. That is why their doctrine is all off because all doctrine is in Christ.
You can have healing and deliverance and tongues and prophecy in the Holy Spirit, but the doctrine of Christ only comes out of the mind of Christ, so that is how you find many anointed men of God, and their doctrine is all off. Many believers stumble over this. They say how could this be? This is how it could be: They are natural men who have received the gifts that enable them to heal and deliver by the power of God, but their mind is still carnal, and therefore their doctrine is the doctrine of the carnal mind.
And we found in the Book of Romans that there is a doctrine of the wounded heart. The carnal mind has its own doctrine. Now the doctrine of Christ leads one unto life, and the doctrine of the wounded heart or the carnal mind or the carnal heart leads unto death. Now it is a question of which comes first, the chicken or the egg. You cannot enter into Christ strictly because you have the doctrine, but when Christ is being formed in you, then the doctrine will come, and you will understand it. If you have an intellectual understanding of the doctrine, you -- if it is just in your intellect, you will not enter in because salvation is through union with the Son. He has to be growing in you. Christ has to be growing in you, and he has to join with your spirit and marry your soul, but when that happens, brethren, you will have the doctrine of Christ. You will not only have it, but you will understand it.
So, “There is a voice of howling of the shepherds; for their glory is spoiled.” The spirit that is ruling them is taken down. It is the spirit of Satan, and “a voice of roaring of young lions.” Now the young lions are male. If you look the word up in the Hebrew, it is a male lion which is weaned and beginning to hunt. The only male -- well, lions are a type of spirit in the Scripture, and the only male spirit is Christ, so I suggest to you that the young lions are Christ Jesus in you and in me. And who are they hunting? They are hunting the carnal minds. The war is on for those who are willing to fight.
“For the pride of Jordan is spoiled,” the pride of Jordan. Now this Hebrew word translated “pride” can also mean “glory” or “majesty,” “spirit.” And Jordan -- if you look up in your lexicons, you will see that every time the river, Jordan, is mentioned, it is always mentioned with the article, T-H-E, The Jordan, but the article was not in the Hebrew. It just says “Jordan.” We had the same principle when we did our study of the temptation, and it says, “Jesus returned from Jordan,” and we found out that that Scripture was not talking about his returning from the Jordan River because when I looked it up, he had not even left the Jordan River. It was all confusing, and we found out that what the Scripture was saying, in a parable, was when Jesus had overcome death.
Jordan is a type of death, and I suggest to you that the same principle is operating here I the prophet Zechariah. It is not speaking about the Jordan River; he is speaking about death. The pride of death is spoiled, or the glory of death is spoiled and the spirit of death. Death is the carnal mind. To be carnally-minded is death, and the glory or the spirit of death is the spirit of Satan, and we are told here in Verse 3 that he too is leveled and spread out. Hallelujah.
Now all this is on faith. I have found a lot of people that read these Scriptures, and they say, oh, wow, it has happened to me already. I am fine. It is all done. The carnal mind is destroyed. I am entered into heaven. I am sinless. No, this is all prophecy. It is coming. It is warning. It is an education. Get ready. Do not be overtaken. Do not let this warfare come upon you like a thief in the night. Do not be surprised. Do not be caught wondering why the fiery trial is upon you. Be warned. That is what this is all about. This is the message of the prophets.
So I have just a brief translation for you for these few verses. I would like to read it to you.
“Let down your defenses, all of humanity, so that the lake of fire can consume your flesh nature. Sound the war cry, all you men in whom Christ is being formed, because the corporate carnal mind has been cast down; the powerful one has been leveled. Even though -- sound the war cry, even though you are expressing the carnal mind, because the exalted honey, which is Christ, is come down to the earth.”
So the Scripture is saying I know you are still showing your carnal mind. I know you are still in sin, but sound the war cry anyway because Christ is come down into the earth of your soul, so on faith believe that this work will be completed in you.
“The pastors are wailing out loud because the mind of Christ is spread out. The cry of grief-stricken men is heard because Christ Jesus is bringing down the spirit of death, which is Satan.”
Now we are told in another place that, in that day, we will see men with their hands on their loins as a woman in travail. We need to know that this is not going to be a piece of cake, that there will be some stress, that there is a warfare. You need to know this so that you can steal yourself and go through, and I have told some of you that one of the principles that has helped me a lot is to know that every trial that I go through has a beginning, and it will have an end. No matter what it looks like when you are in the midst of it, it had a beginning, and it will have an end. Excuse me.
And we are victorious in Christ Jesus no matter what the trial. If we just do not look down at the circumstances because we will -- as Peter was walking in the water and looked down, he lost his -- temporarily lost his ability to walk or lost his sea legs, you might say. But as long as we cleave unto Christ and we are faithfully serving him, we are undefeatable in Christ. No matter how bad it looks, we are undefeatable, and you need to know that, when you are cast down, because a righteous man will be cast down seven times, but he will never be destroyed.
And you will be cast down. It is very unlikely that you will never be cast down. I cannot tell you that it must happen to you, but I know it happens to me, and it happens to me a lot. Curses hit me, and I go down. I wish it was not true, but it is true. It just happened to me two days ago. I was hit really hard, [?you know?], but I came up out of it. You always come up out of it. Listen, brethren, when you go around throwing punches at Satan, you have to expect he is going to throw a few back at you. So if you do not expect that he is going to throw a few back at you, you are being very naïve, OK, so do not be shocked when you get hit. Just get up fighting, and know that no matter how overcome you are, just cry out the name of Jesus, and he will raise you up.
You may recall I mentioned in our series on Elijah, which I found a great, great blessing to me, finding out that Elijah’s travail after his encounter with the prophets of Baal, what the deep truth of the Scripture is, really, is that -- not that he was afraid of Jezebel, but that after he broke down all the altars and killed all the prophets of Baal, all the idolatrous sons of Israel got real mad at him for killing because he broke their idols and killed their prophets, and their carnal minds went after Elijah as one man because Elijah had exposed them as idolatrous, pagan Baal worshippers, and it was Elijah calling on a preincarnate Jesus Christ to raise him back up again.
And that is a very interesting series, if you would like to listen to it. It really blessed me. I found it very timeline to the situation of believers going through their own personal tribulation in this hour, in this warfare. And as much as you pray about it and as much as you try to discern where these spiritual bombs are coming from, you know, lots of times you know; sometimes you know; sometimes you do not know. Sometimes you know, and you say, well, so what, you know? I still got it. You just have to learn to deal with it, and hopefully, brethren, we are getting stronger and stronger until one day we will not be hit anymore. I look forward to that day, OK.
Going on with Verse 4, “Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter.”
Now what does that mean? We find the Lord speaks about the flock, speaking about small cattle, and all of humanity, brethren, we are in animal bodies. The Lord calls us his flocks, and just as in the Old Testament Abraham would go into his flocks of goats or other beasts, excuse me, and choose animals to sacrifice unto Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ looks through his flocks of humanity, and he picks whoever he wants, and he apprehends us, and he sacrifices our carnal mind, and he possesses us and manifests through us, and that is what is happening in this hour.
So the flock of the slaughter, I suggest to you, is the flock or those animals of the flock or those men of the flock who are being slaughtered. And who are the ones who are being slaughtered? The one whose carnal minds are being slaughtered so that Christ can be glorified in them, so the flock is all of humanity, and the flock of the slaughter are those men who are fighting the fight. They are the men who are fighting the fight. They are the men who are crucifying their carnal mind. They are the men who are saying I will not sin. I recognize your voice. I see your face. I know who you are. You will not rule me any longer. Everybody is not fighting this fight, but some people are fighting the fight. They are speaking to Satan in their mind. They are speaking to that other voice, and they are saying no way. Christ is my God, my Lord and my master, and him I obey.
So, “Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter.”
Feed or rule or govern those who are waging this warfare. Well, when I first read this, I said, well, what does that mean, rule or govern? Bl- -- brethren, it is a blessing to be ruled by Christ because every man has a god. Now if you are not ruled by Christ, you are ruled by the carnal mind, and he is a tyrant, a wicked, wicked tyrant. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” so when the Lord says feed the slock o- -- the flock of the slaughter, he is saying rule over, OK, or pastor those men who are doing their part, who are waging this warfare.
“Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty.”
“Whose possessors slay them,” yet they are not -- they are counted not guilty. The word, “possessors,” is the Hebrew word which can be translated “founders” or “creators.” Brethren, there is only one foundation that is a true foundation; his name is Jesus Christ. But there is a foundation of sand, and if you are a carnally-minded man, your foundation is sand. This is the foundation that is being spoken about in Verse 5, whose foundations -- whose very own foundations slay them.
So who is our foundation? What is the foundation in man? If Christ is our foundation, Christ is in our mind. Brethren, the mind is the foundation that the whole man is built upon. We cannot exist without a mind, so Verse 5 is saying their very own mind is killing them. To be carnally-minded is death. Our very own founders are killing us, and yet they do not acknowledge their guilt, that they are living out of their carnal mind, but they will not acknowledge the fact that their carnal minds are killing them.
So this is the condition in the church that the Lord is dealing with, believers who would rather not believe the truth; they would rather have their ears tickled than hear the truth. [?So?] the indictment goes forth. Their own minds are killing them, Verse 5, and yet they claim that their -- they have no sin, and those that sell them, their own pastors, say -- and what does it mean to sell them? To sell them to who? To sell them to their carnal minds. If you have a pastor or a minister over you and he is not showing you your sins, he is saying, Satan, they are yours.
When a minister of God shows you your sins in the right spirit, he is saying to you, look, this is the operation of sin in your mind. I am showing it to you so that you can resist it and wage war against it. This is the love of God, and I show you your sins knowing that, whether you are aware of it or not, whether it is your conscious mind or your unconscious mind, there is one good chance, like, a 99 percent chance, I am about to get a couple of potshots to my chin because some part of your mind, conscious or unconscious, does not like what I am doing. So to show somebody their sins is to open yourself to a spiritual attack, but a minister who loves you will serve God faithfully and show you your sins at the moment that God says this is the time. No matter what the consequences, no matter what the retaliation, a faithful minister of Christ will show you your sins and therefore refuse to sell you unto Satan, but hold you back.
The minister that sees your sin and will not show it to you sells you to Satan. What does that mean? He says, all right, carnal mind, they are yours. They are blind. They do not even understand that it is your mind in them. They do not understand that they are sinning against you, and as long as you can keep them blind, you own them; they are yours. So the hireling minister who would rather not [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- excuse me, who would rather not endure the spiritual warfare, says, all right, sin. I do not care. Just come to church. Sit in the church. If you are tithe, whatever you do, you know, whatever your contribution is, come here and be here, but I am not going to show you your sins and be victimized in any way by your unconscious mind. The Scripture says a minister do- -- that does that is selling you to the carnal mind, and the spirit that rules the carnal mind is Satan.
Brethren, we must see our sin in the way we think and in our behavior. It is so common in the church today for people to confess their sins in principle, but they seem to be totally blind to when their -- that sin is operating in their mind and in their behavior. They cannot put the two together. Well, you cannot kill your carnal mind until you can see him. The man of sin must be exposed, OK, and it is not true that he is in everybody here except me, and it is not true that he is everybody here except you. He is in all of us unless you are perfect, and he is thinking through you, and he is speaking through you, and he is doing through you, and it is not necessarily the act of murder. He is thinking pride; he is thinking envy; he is thinking things that human beings have been trained to accept as, quote, normal. Well, that is just the way people are. That is just the way men are.
That is just the way fallen men are, brethren, but if you desire righteousness, if you believe that righteousness leads to eternal life and you desire righteousness, we must start seeing the man of sin in the way we think, in ways that have been acceptable to our ancestors for generations but are not acceptable when we compare ourselves to the standard which is Jesus Christ. And this is what the judgment -- the white throne judgment is; this is the judgment of our soul. You do not have to be a wicked, bad person, OK. I have s- -- a lot of people say to me, I have always done the best that I could do. I always -- I do good. I have never hurt anybody, you know. Well, if you say that, you do not understand what this judgment is about. You do not understand it, brethren.
The Lord is not just going after the mass murderer. He is going after the man whose mind is not in the image of Christ, and that is everybody, and it is not impossible to see the man of sin and have him exposed by Christ and to have a change of mind, not to go from an evil manifestation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to a good manifestation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not to stop being a murderer and become a solid citizen. That is not what the Scripture is talking about. No matter how clean your lifestyle is by human standards, your righteousness is as filthy rags compared to the righteousness of Christ, therefore he wants to give us his righteousness to replace our own righteousness so that we can be righteou- -- so that we can be the righteousness of God, so that we can ascend up to heaven because only he who came down from heaven is ascending back up to heaven. And we will never ascend back up in our fallen condition because the carnal mind was never up there. Satan was never up there, never in the heaven of God, and he is not going back up there. So the only way we can get up into heaven is to have heaven first come down and dwell in us.
That exalted honey that I mentioned in a prior verse has to come down and attach itself to the doors of our life, and then when Christ ascends, he will lead captivity captive. We are captivity. We are in captivity down here in Hell, but when Christ gets inside of you and the Father says come up hither, he is going to bring you up with him. We are going to be hanging onto him, and we are going up too. So righteousness must be found in us, and it is not of ourself, but it is of the Lord Jesus Christ, must be added to us and joined to us and apprehend us and raise us up to where he is.
So we are on Verse 5. Their own minds slay them, and they deny that they have sin, and they that sell them, their own pastors, say, “Blessed be the Lord; for I am rich,” or I am righteous, “and their own shepherds do not pity them,” or do not care about them enough to tell them the truth. Why? Because most pastors -- for most pastors, pastoring is a secular job that supports them, and it supports their family. The ministry is a respectable career. Is that -- I see everybody is saying yes here. It is a respectable career. Do not shake the boat. You need all the people in the church or you are out of a job. Well, the true ministers of Christ serve Christ; they do not serve the people.
I mean, they serve the people. They do not submit to the people as their rulers. If you are a true minister of Christ, you must be a ruler of God under Christ, loving the people, showing them their sins and helping them to overcome them and live a righteous life by the power of God, and you must believe the Lord to meet your every need. How can you rule people and correct them and show them their sins if they are the ones that are paying your bills, and they know it, and they exercise an authority over you? You cannot do it. Well, there is nothing wrong -- if you are a legitimate ministry, there is nothing wrong with receiving donations so long as those donations do not have strings. If that donation has a string, it becomes a bribe, and you are not allowed to take bribes.
So that means, to be a m- -- a true minister of God, you have to be bold enough to say to the people -- whatever God tells you to give, give it, but it does not give you any more authority over the way I run the ministry than your taxes over the police force. I do not know how it works here in Nigeria, but in the United States, we pay taxes, and our taxes pay the police, and they pay the firemen, and they pay the Army. They pay all pub- -- they pay the president, the governors, all the elected officials, our taxes, but we are -- the only thing we have to say is in the voting booth. We cannot be calling up our senator and saying, now, listen, I want you to do something for me because my taxes paid your salary this month. It cannot be.
So to serve Christ, you have to be answerable to the Father, and you have to do the works of Christ. And what are the works of Christ? To bring forth Christ in the people. You have to bring forth Christ in the people. Everybody is supposed to be growing in Christ. You are supposed to be growing in wisdom and knowledge and grace and truth, not just in your intellect, but spiritually. You are supposed to be overcoming problems. You are supposed to be seeing curses broken in your life. Bondages that were there last year should not be there anymore, or at least there should be some visible sign that you are moving forward, that the power of God is moving in your life, cleansing you, washing you from sin, bringing you forward. So if you are sitting in a church for 20 years and there is been no spiritual growth, you had better get out of that church.
Verse 6, “For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord: but, lo, I will deliver the man every one into his neighbor’s hand.” For I will no more have compassion on the inhabitants of the land.
Oh, I did have an Alternate Translation for you. Let me read you this. Verse 4, “Therefore, says Jehovah to Christ Jesus in the many members of humanity, govern the bestial men whose carnal minds you are slaughtering,” because we are in a bestial condition right now, living in a beast -- in beast flesh. “Christ Jesus, you are the head of the carnal mind. Govern them; govern the men whose carnal minds you are slaughtering, the ones who are enslaved by their own carnal minds but nevertheless declare their own righteousness, whose own pastors do not even have enough compassion to expose their sins.”
So Jehovah says I will no longer have mercy on the inhabitants of the land. This Hebrew word translated “inhabitants,” it speaks about sitting down. You may have heard me use the term, sitting queen. The carnal mind is the sitting queen. She is attached to your soul. That means, unless you are in i- -- moving into Christ. I am not talking about that. Thoughts that come naturally into your mind, that just filter in, that you do not have to -- answers to problems that you do not have to pray about that just come automatically, that only occurs with a mind who is attached to your soul. That is why, in many instances, the first response to a problem is the wrong response. Frequently, Satan gets there first. She is sitting down on your soul, and I have to pray, and I have to say, Lord Jesus, what is your mind in this problem? What is your answer to this problem? And I have to wait, and I will put out a fleece, and I will say I heard two voices. This is the voice that I think is Christ; this is the voice that I think is Satan. I will make a decision, and I put out a fleece with the Lord.
But the mind that is sitting down on your soul, the mind that is attached to your soul, the answer -- the thought comes through just like a natural thought. You do not have to pray and wait for the answer to come down. As Christ begins to be joined to your soul, you will see that, in some reactions where you used to have a carnal reaction -- such as someone crashes into your car, and a rage goes up in you. I hope it does not happen to anybody. Some of you do not even have cars.
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. Somebody crashes into you, OK. Somebody [?used to?] crash into you, and you would get very angry, and your automatic reaction would be hatred towards that person. You would have to lay hold of Christ and say, Lord Jesus, help me to have a Christ-like response to this person, and you have to resist your carnal response and wage war against it till it went down.
And then, one day, you res- -- you had several experiences like this, and you took the victory. The rage went down, and then, one day, a man came crashing [AUDIO CUTS OUT] -- said, oh, that is all right, walked away and said, my goodness, he stepped on my toe. He hit me in my side and dropped my papers all over the floor, and I was not even annoyed. This is a miracle. In this area of my life, Christ has defeated my carnal mind, and there is a genuine change in your response.
And that does not mean that it is not possible that you could have 10 such godly reaction and on the 11th time that someone steps on your toe and crashes into you, it does not mean that there is no chance of you being angry because we have an accumulated amount of stress in our life. Everything that happens to us is a variety of factors. Maybe this one day you had six problems pressing on you, and the same man comes running around the corner and crashes into you. And after 10 times of saying that is all right, today some very unkind words came out of your mouth. It does not mean that you are backslidden. It does not necessarily -- it may mean that you are backslidden, but it does not necessarily mean that you are backslidden. It may mean that you had a lot more pressing on you than any of the other times that this man crashed into you.
So you repent. You confess your sin. You repent, and you do whatever you have to do to get yourself right with God, and you go on because just as with weightlifting, the Lord permits the pressure to continue to mount and continue to mount, and he requires us to overcome. And when we overcome, he puts another stone on the scale, and the pressure mounts. This tribulation is pressure. There is continuous pressure on us. Why? To see which mind is truly attached to our soul in every given area, and if the mind that is attached to our soul in that area -- if our automatic reaction is ungodly, we are to work on it, to rebuke it and attack it until she gets at- -- dis-attached from us, detached from us in that area. Let Christ sit down on that area.
We are having a change of mind an attitude at a time, a victory at a time, a battle at a time, a relationship at a time, a personality characteristic at a time. So do not ever let anybody condemn you, and sorrow is only acceptable if it is unto repentance. If it is a sorrow that is coming forth because you truly recognize a sin in your heart that you never saw before and you are wailing, saying, dear God, I see it, please, make me righteous in this area, that is acceptable to God. But a sorrow that drags you down, a sorrow that says I will never do better, this is the sinner that I am, and it is hopeless. That sorrow is to be resisted. It is a ma- -- hidden manifestation of pride, and it is operation is to stop genuine repentance, which will bring overcoming power into your life.
So the bottom line of what I am saying, brethren, is that you need discernment. We need to know what is operating in our heart. We must be able to track the operation of sin in our hearts. That is much easier said than done. If you can do it by yourself, if you can judge yourself, there will be no need for the Father to send someone to help you or to judge you, not to hurt you, but to help you to see the operation of sin in your own mind. Maybe so- -- in some areas, you can see it, and in other areas you cannot. If you are one of God’s faithful and you are pressing into the kingdom, he will send someone or maybe more than one person to help you to see the operation of sin.
You know, I have known people, including myself to tell you the truth -- I say all the time, if I had any idea what I was asking for when I cried out to God to please help me, if I had any idea the way he was going to help me or how difficult it would have been or how painful it would have been, I honestly cannot tell you that I would have cried out all the years that I cried out, Jesus, help me, Jesus, help me, Jesus, help me because everybody thinks that he is coming to help you by putting down the other guy. Everybody thinks that he is coming to help you by giving you a new job, by giving you a new place to live, by giving you a new husband, by giving you a new wife. No. When he comes to help you, he comes to change you because every problem that we have is because we are dealing with the problem out of carnality.
When you deal with the problem in Christ, you take the victory right where you are. Now sometimes God changes the circumstances of your life, but only if it is a last resort, and that judgment has to be made by God, OK. If you have -- if because of sin in your life you have really made a serious error, as an extreme example, with regard to your marriage and this marriage is truly destructive and dangerous to yourself and/or your children, the Lord may give you a divorce. There are certain grounds where this is acceptable, only when the Lord makes a judgment that this marriage is unredeemable because one of the partners is reprobate, and there is no chance of change. I have seen it happen, but it is rare, and it has to be God’s decision.
We have to labor with the life that we have and see the victory of Christ in it. God is never glorified in our running away, never. We must stand and fight and believe that, if we change and change into Christ in a positives way, that everybody whose life we are affecting will also change, that the power of God will come in and do miracles as long as we are willing to confess that it is not all the other guy, and that since it is both parties, it may not be 50/50, but you should not even be looking at those things. You should not even be looking and saying, well, it is 25 percent me and 50 percent the other guy. We should be looking at ourselves and saying, Lord, this is the problem. What must I do? What do you require of me? How do I need to change? And just worry about yourself.
Look at the beam in your own eye unless God specifically sends you to somebody else, and he is not likely to send you to somebody else unless you are really moving in this judgment yourself and you have really got your carnal mind under control and you are really able to discern sin in your own heart and deal with it when it arises. If you are not at that place of maturity yet, he is not likely to send you to someone else. Why? Because when you s- -- when you go to someone to show them their sins, almost with exception, if not their c- -- if not consciously, verbally, their unconscious mind starts beating on you. You have to be able to deal with it. You cannot retaliate as a fallen man. You have to respond as an angel of God, forgiving them their sins, suffering long with them, being merciful and tender and pitiful and helping them through.
Now you cannot do that if, when their carnal mind rises up and attacks you, your carnal mind gets loose; then you get into a free for all. You have to have control over your own carnal mind to be judging other people’s sins, it is not a parlor game. I have seen that in old-order deliverance. Oh, well, everybody, get out the chair. Everybody takes a turn sitting in the chair, and we will see what demon we are going to cast out today. They do that. At least, in New York, I have seen it done in old-order deliverance. It is not a game. The exposure of people’s sins is a very serious business. You are dealing with somebody’s life. You are dealing with their emotions, and you would not want to -- I am sure you would not want to give them an additional wound wa- -- rather than bring a healing.
Sometimes, in Christ, when we show people their sins, we cause a wound, but if it is truly Christ causing that wound, the fruit at the end of the wounding will be life, victory increase, but, brethren, we cannot go around just hurting people. We have to be sent. If we are going to show somebody their sins, we have to be sent. And the fact that you see a sin in somebody, even if God -- and I am not saying God did not show you that sin. He very well did. I see sin in people that I keep in my secret heart sometimes for long periods of time before I will ever talk to them about it because I do not talk to them about it until the Lord opens the door. If you talk to them about it before the Lord opens the door, they will never receive it. Enmity will be produced, and it will -- there will be no good fruit.
We are apostles of God, brethren, ministers of Christ, ministers of reconciliation. We are peacemakers, and we are here to help people, and the end of all ministry must be peace. Now there might be a temporary hostility if somebody is manifesting their carnal mind, but we are only responsible for ourselves. We must be seekers of peace, and our motives in showing people their sins must be to help them, knowing that there is no glory in it for us, but frequently discomfort, but that there is deliverance for the other person.
It is a sacrificial ministry, brethren. Going to people and showing them their sins is a sacrificial ministry because, more often than not, they get mad at you. Even the believers who are trying as hard as they can to bravely go through this exposure, they have involuntary reactions that are stressful. It is a sacrifice on your part to show someone their sins. It is not a game. It is a very serious business, and you really have to have a strong witness from the Lord that you are ready to be doing this, and the -- it has nothing to do with how well you know doctrine. It has nothing to do with how chronologically mature you are. It has nothing to do with your education. It has to do with the condition of your heart and a condition of the maturity of the heart of God in you, so, wait, you know. There is no reason to rush into this ministry; it is painful. Do not go before you are sent.
Well, I seem to have gotten off of my message here a little. Let us see.
We are in Verse 6. “For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord,” and the inhabitants are those who are sitting down.
That means the carnal minds in the people. The Lord is saying he is not going to have pity on people anymore who are living out of their carnal minds. What does that mean? It means that, for a long season, there were many people in Pentecost who came and who were under the rains of the anointing of Pentecost, and Christ began to be formed in them. Now, technically speaking, as soon as Christ begins to be formed in you, it is the time for the judgment of your sins to begin, but there are plenty of people in whom this is not happening. Why? Because the laborers are few, brethren. There are very few people that are either willing to or qualify to show men their sins.
So we see here that the Lord had pity or he was longsuffering, meaning that judgment did not fall right away on sins that people in the church are manifesting. But the Lord says the minute that Christ Jesus comes to you, the minute that Christ Jesus is coming, he is not going to be longsuffering with you anymore, but that is not a negative thing. He is saying it is time for the judgment, which is the mercy of God, so you are going to have to start to look at yourself. You cannot go on blaming everybody else around you.
You have got to look at yourself, and your thoughts should be towards ministry for yourself. No matter what is going on, no matter what the conflict, no matter what happened, Lord, where am I to -- where -- what did I do? Is there anything at that I contributed to this? The first dealings has to be with you, or you are not qualified to go to the other person, so this is an attitude. It is an ongoing attitude that the Lord wants to develop in us. Every problem, Father, where did I mess up? I do not care what the other person did. I want self-improvement out of this. After I have learned everything that I can learn, then is there anything that I could do to help the other person? Not to take vengeance, not to correct them because their sin is making me uncomfortable, OK, not to correct them because I want them to stop doing this to me because it is causing me to sin.
You see, I have to not sin no matter what you are doing to me. I do not have a right to sin because you are provoking me. If your provocation of me causes me to sin, then sin has been found in me, and you were just the vessel of the test. You see, the fact that your behavior provokes me does not justify me breaking off the relationship, does not justify me quitting the job, does not justify me leaving the fellowship. I must overcome that in me which was provoked. This is what it is all about, brethren, go from death unto life, from sin unto righteousness. We are rubbing against one another. In relationships we are exposing each other’s sins. That is why we must fellowship. You do not hide from people. We need each other, and the more offensive a person is to you, the more you should be going to see them --
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-- so that you could have your sins revealed, your weaknesses, your inability to cope with certain behavior. Then you ask the Lord why you cannot cope with it. What is operating in you that you cannot cope with it? And your own sins will be revealed, and after the revelation of the man of sin, the righteousness of Christ, who is coming with a fire and a recompense to burn up that man of sin and translate you into the kingdom of God. So, brethren, let us bravely take an inventory of our own shortcomings so that we can enter in. This is what it is all about. Jesus.
“For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord: but, lo, I will deliver the men every one into his neighbor’s hand, and into the hand of his king.”
This Hebrew word translated “neighbor,” it means “a beloved” -- “one who is beloved of a woman.” Now you may have heard me preach, when I am here, that Satan is a spiritual female. What this is saying, he is delivering everybody over into the hands of Satan. This Hebrew word translated “deliver,” it can also be translated “to meet with calamity.” He is saying to you, look, brethren, either you are going to judge your sins, either you are going to receive of the white throne judgment, which is the mercy of God -- the white throne judgment is either you are judging yourself -- either God coming to you directly and showing you sin in your heart and you are saying, amen, help me, or God is sending a man to you and saying, now, look, this attitude is sin. You need to repent. If you will not respond to that with the right response, confession and repentance and attempt to change and crying out to God to help you to change, if you will not do it, you are being turned over to your female lover, which is Satan.
Now Christ is our husband, right? When the carnal mind is formed in us, it means we have a female lover instead of Christ as the lover of our soul. So the Lord is saying, if you will not take the gentle correction of the white throne judgment, which is pitiful -- you see, the Lord said I will not have pity on you anymore. The pity of God is the white throne judgment. The longsuffering of God is the white throne judgment, where he comes to you himself or he sends a man to you and explains these things to you and gives you an opportunity to change, and the man is willing to pray with you and help you. This is the pity of God. The Lord says, if you are not doing your part, I am going to turn you over to the judge of this world. I am going to turn you over to the reaping and sowing judgment, which is mediated by Satan, where there is no pity at all. There is no explanation. There is no opportunity to repent; there is just calamity.
Now we have some people very concerned that God might give them a car accident or God might make them sick or God might break their leg. God does not do things like that to you, brethren. That is the judgment of the god of this world. That is the judgment rendered by the god of this world. Excuse me. Calamity with no warning, with no explanation as to this is a recompense for that because every sin shall have a just recompense, just calamity. You do not know why it is happening to you. You do not know whether it was your sin or whether it was your ancestors’ sin. You do not know when it is coming. You have no opportunity to repent. You have no opportunity to forestall it.
We hear in the New Testament, Paul saying, I turn these over to Satan, that they should learn not to blaspheme. What does that mean? The Lord has spoken to you face-to-face. He has spoken to you in dreams. He sent a man to you. He has had a preacher preach it from the pulpit. You will not hear the correction. You do not believe it is you. I believe it is you and you and you and you and you and you and you, but it is not me. Did you ever see somebody in a service saying --
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So, for years, the Lord says, I have been merciful to you, talking to you and talking to you and talking to you, but you always think it is for the other guy, so you leave me no choice but to plead with you with blood and pestilence. I must turn you over to Satan. And when your leg gets broken or when some calamity happens to you, then maybe you will say, Lord, how did this happen to me? And then you will listen when I answer you. Do not let it come to that point. There is two judgments in this world, two judgments: the reaping and sowing judgment, which is mediated by Satan, and that is when you are under the wrath of God; that is for unsaved people, people who are not reconciled unto God.
Most of us who come to the Lord are under the wrath of God; we have calamity all over our life. I had calamity all over my life when I came to the Lord. And what does he do? He lays hold of all of your sins that are legal ground for Satan to execute calamity upon you. The Lord Jesus Christ lays hold of them, and he starts telling you, through his word and through his prophets, what is wrong in your life that is an open door for these things.
And when you repent and when you make changes, it does not stop the trials from coming completely, but they are no longer calamitous, and the end of them turns out for your good, a learning experience. You take a victory over that which was meant for your evil; God used it for your good. He did not let you wind up severely damaged, or I am not going to tell you that you cannot ever wind up in the hospital, but whatever evil was meant, God will definitely cut the edge off it. He will make it softer. If possible, he will circumvent it completely, and your life will turn away from calamity and start going towards Christ, and there will be improvement and improvement and improvement as you confess your sins and change by the power of God. So those are the two judgments that are existing in this world.
So the Lord says he is not going to have pity anymore, no more white throne judgment for those men who are still living out of their carnal mind, but, lo, I will deliver every man unto his female lover, unto the s- -- calamity mediated by Satan, “and into the hand of his king.” Everyone has a king, brethren. It is -- either Christ is your king, or the carnal mind is your king, and Satan and the carnal mind shall smite your land, the land of your soul, and I will not deliver them out of their hand. This word, “deliver,” means “to snatch out of danger.”
I have an Alternate Translation of Verse 6. “Because I will not have compassion on those who are agreeing with the carnal minds any longer” --
You see, the s- -- the reason the Lord will turn you over is not because you have a carnal mind or not even because your carnal mind has overcome you in any one particular instance, but those who are agreeing with their carnal mind, those who are sinning unrestrainedly and convinced that they are absolutely justified in what they are doing, the time will come that the Lord will turn you over to Satan. If the preaching has not done it and the pleading has not done it and the kind talk has not done it and you are absolutely convinced that you are right and the other guy is wrong, the time will come that the Lord will turn you over to Satan to teach you not to blaspheme against his word which says that is the sin of pride rising up in your heart. I do not care what the other guy is doing to you; your response is pride or rebellion or arrogance or hatred or murder. And I do not care what the other guy is doing to you; you are my son, and your response is ungodly, and I want you to look at yourself. And if you refuse to do it, you are turned over to Satan, that you should learn not to blaspheme.
“Because I will not have compassion on those who are agreeing with their carnal minds any longer, says Jehovah, but will turn them” -- a man at a time, not a whole nation now.
Now, remember, Israel -- the whole nation of Israel was turned over, but he is going to turn them over a man at a time, everyone individually judged, over to Satan’s calamitous judgment. And Satan and the carnal mind will break up the Christ mind, and I will not snatch them out of that -- out of danger. I am going to let Satan do it to you, but I will feed the sheep or I will take care of the sheep who are slaughtering their own carnal minds. If you are con- -- looking at yourself and confessing your sins, I will not turn you over to Satan and the carnal mind. I will still be your king, and you will still have my pity, and I will still come to you or send men to you to help you recognize your sins.
Verse 7, “And I will feed the flock of the slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock.”
Now “I will feed the flock of slaughter,” that means there is a flock within a flock. Have you ever heard that preached, a people within a people? There is a flock within the flock. The flock is all of the people, and then the flock of slaughter are those people who are slaughtering their carnal minds, the people who are waging the warfare, and they are in a special category. They are very beloved. I will feed or I will rule over, I will be the king of the flock who is slaughtering their own carnal minds, “even you, O poor of the flock.”
And that word, “poor,” it is not financially poor. It is speaking with the idea of piety. They are humble before God. They are pious. The ones who are not lifted up in pride but have a godly fear of the Lord and are confessing their sins out of reverence for him, he says I will be your king. Do not worry. I will not turn you over to Satan and the carnal mind; I will continue with my pitiful judgment, and he said this is how I am going to do it. Here we see the plan of God’s salvation for all of mankind. He said, “I took unto me two staves, and the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands.”
The Hebrew word translated “stave” is “twig.” If you look up twig in your English dictionary, it means “a small branch.” And we know that Jesus is the -- in the Old Testament, it says Jesus is the branch. In the New Testament, Jesus says I am the vine, and you are the branches. So I want to suggest to you that, in this parable in Zechariah 11, the Lord is saying I am making two covenants with humanity, and each of these covenants is a stage of my plan of salvation. The first stage of my plan of salvation is that I am going to pour out my Spirit upon you. I am going to show you righteousness. I am going to tell you that which is right, even though I know you are not righteousness. I know you have a carnal mind. And the second stage of that deliverance is that I am going to impart my righteousness to you. I am going to interweave my righteousness with your mind so that your automatic reaction to provocation is righteousness and not sin.
Some people call it the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, OK. We -- I read you a Scripture at the beginning of the message where we are told in the Gospel of John, Chapter 1 -- I think it is Verse 16, if I am not mistaken -- that the grace of God is twofold, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant gave us the law which no man could keep, we are told in the New Testament, and the New Covenant is the law internalized in the flesh of a man, our example being the Lord Jesus Christ. He says this is how I am going to save you from your sins: I am going to give you a demonstration of righteousness. I am going to give you power, and I am going to make you righteous.
And we see that the man Jesus of Nazareth had the double portion; he had the grace of the Old Covenant and the grace of the New Covenant. We are told in the King James Version, “grace for grace.” I never knew what that meant. He had the double portion, the grace of both covenants, operating within him, the imputed and the imparted anointings, the a- -- power of God that was given without repentance and then the power of God that was given with repentance, the power that comes with righteousness, which resulted in the man Jesus of Nazareth standing up in full stature, which is the first stage of resurrection of man. And in a parable form, he calls the Old Covenant, or which I call the imputed anointing, “beauty.” If you look that word up in the Hebrew, it means “grace.” “Beauty” means “grace.”
And the second twig or the second branch or the second group of men through which he is going to reveal his life is called bands. If you look that up in the Hebrew, it means “to be united,” and it is speaking about the weaving together of the nature of God with fallen man because it is in the weaving together of the nature of God into our fallen humanity that we shall be raised from the dead. It is in the mind, brethren. That is why an intellectual knowledge of this message will not save you. It cannot be an intellectual knowledge. His righteousness has to be joined to us and woven together with us and outworked from us are through us, and we shall be saved.
So we see in this mysterious wording, “I took unto me two staves,” I took unto me two small branches, I took unto me two categories of people. The one I called the anointing or the power of God which was without repentance or the gifts and the calling of God which was without repentance, and the other I called the binding together of the two minds, or a term you are more familiar with is the crucifixion of Christ, the crucifying of Christ to the carnal mind. Now this is a great mystery, brethren. Most people think that the crucifixion of Christ kills Christ, but the crucifixion of Christ kills your carnal mind, OK.
First of all, let us distinguish between the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth who was the Christ, the man, Jesus of Nazareth who was the Christ; and the Christ mind, which was within the man, Jesus of Nazareth. That mind which was in Christ -- in Jesus, the Christ, he is now in us. The same mind that was in Jesus of Nazareth is now being reproduced in us. Christ Jesus, that glorious mind, that holy thing which was in the man, Jesus, the mind which is the offspring of the Father -- of the union between the Father and the spirit of man -- did that go off?
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No. It is still on, OK.
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Yeah. That --
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OK. Now -- this is OK. That holy thing, the Christ, the Son of the living God, the product of the union between the Father and the spirit of man.
So we see that Paul clearly said that he is crucified to the world, that he is crucified to Christ, nevertheless he lives, but yet not him, Christ in him. So I suggest to you, brethren, that there is a difference between those Scriptures in Galatians that I just quoted to you about Paul being crucified to the world and being crucified to Christ, yet he lives. He is not speaking about the physical crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. We are not required to be physically crucified, brethren, but our carnal mind, which is the world -- it is another way of saying the world, the cosmos -- must be crucified or joined to Christ Jesus, which is being formed in us. It is in this union that we shall be saved because he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. When the carnal mind that we were born with is joined to Christ Jesus in us, we shall be raised from the dead.
So I suggest to you that bands or being united is the name of the second covenant; it is crucifixion, brethren. If you want to come out from under the law, you have to be crucified. It is not enough to speak in tongues. Speaking in tongues does not bring you into the New Covenant with Christ. The New Covenant is in the blood of Christ. The New Covenant is when Christ in you kills your carnal mind; it is in crucifixion, the crucifixion of your carnal mind. When the life of Christ is reproduced in you, when his nature is appearing in you, when his righteousness is in you with such strength that you no longer need a law, this is the New Covenant. It is in his blood.
Now the Holy Spirit is not the blood; the Holy Spirit is the fountain of living waters; the Holy Spirit is the seed of the Father. The blood is the life of the Son, speaking about that man child of Revelation 12 being born in you and swallowing up your sins. So, you see, we are headed for the New Covenant, brethren, but we are really not a partaker of it until blood is shed. Now I know the blood of Jesus of Nazareth was shed on Calvary, and what he did was make available the power to you to enter into the same covenant with him. Blood must be shed. The blood of your carnal mind must be shed. In the crucifixion to Christ, Christ lives; your carnal mind dies.
There is no -- the covenant is not of effect without a death of your carnal mind, brethren. You cannot inherit his glory when there is still sin in you. The whole purpose of his covenant to you is that he is giving you his perfect life so that when he kills your sin-filled nature, you will not die. You see, the judgment for sin is death. Your carnal mind has sinned, and she must die. His grace to you, his mercy to you is his mind. When the judgment for sin comes down, you will not be wiped out, but he is giving himself to you, that you should be able to continue not only an existence, but that your existence should be elevated unto life. So not only are you not being wiped out and destroyed because of your sins, but you are being elevated and exalted and set in a high place. He is giving you his own righteous so that you do not have to be wiped out, but there is a procedure of conversion that we must go through that is not the most pleasant procedure, but the end of it is life.
So we see Zechariah speaking about the two covenants, the covenant of grace whereby he shows you your sins and you confess them and get delivered, and the other is the covenant of crucifixion, and he says I rule the flock. Christ rules us from within. Brethren, he does not rule us from Calvary; he does not rule us from Golgotha Hill. He rules us from his position in our mind.
Now there may be a temporary time when he is not yet in our mind, when we are ruled by a minister, but it is only temporary. God’s best is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We are supposed to become disciplined, strengthened, functioning, righteous human beings, and so long as we need guidance, we are under tutors and governors, but we are supposed to be continuously arising out of that until we reach the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that only arrives through the crucifixion of our carnal mind. There is no other way.
The rapture will not do it, and the judgment is in the flesh so that we can learn to live by the Spirit. What does that mean? It means that if we had our choice, we would follow after the promptings of the flesh, so the judgment is against the thoughts of the flesh. It is against the desires of the flesh. It is a wounding of the flesh that weakens the flesh so that we can find the strength to obey the spirit. Jesus said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I do not know about you, but that is true of me, definitely. There are so many things I would do if I could, and as Paul said, I do not have the power to do it. I would do it if I could do it, but I cannot do it, so I do not do it. I would be righteous. I would be a perfect man, but I fail every day because of my condition.
So the covenant is crucifixion; perfection is in crucifixion. It is in the destruction of the body of sin, brethren. I bet you thought the body of sin was out there somewhere or that the body of sin was in Hell somewhere. Brethren, the body of sin is your carnal mind. Every time you see the word, body, in the King James, it is not speaking about this physical body. More often than not, it is speaking about the soul, which is the body of the spirit, body or container of the mi- -- excuse me, of the mind. So the body of sin is the container which holds the sinful mind. That sinful city, Babylon, she is up in here. So our flesh is wounded, that the body of sin might be destroyed. There is no other way. It is in crucifixion. Hallelujah.
Verse 8 -- how are you doing? Is everybody OK with this? OK.
Verse 8, “Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul also abhorred me.”
Well, this is a difficult verse, but I have some interesting revelation on it for you, if I could just find my place, OK. I did that. I did all that already.
Well, let me give you my Alternate Translation. This is -- nope, OK. “And I entered -- this is how I am going to do it. And I entered into a marriage contract with humanity, which provided that she would become my wife in two stages so that she could be delivered out of the power of death. I called the first stage of my contract grace or the imputed anointing and the second unity or the imparted anointing, and this is how I govern the flock of humanity until the marriage, by these two covenants.”
But I will govern the sheep whose carnal minds are being slaughtered, those who are wretched and afflicted because of their faithfulness to Christ, and this is how I am doing it: I have entered into a marriage contract with humanity which provided that she would -- that I would appear, that Christ would appear in her mind in two stages. The first stage is called grace or the imputed anointing, and the second stage is called crucifixion or the imparted anointing, and this is how I am governing mankind until the marriage, OK.
The third part of the shepherds. Verse 8, “Three shepherds also I cut off.” I have a lot of teaching on this third part on my message, if you have read it. There is a place in the Book of Revelation. It is a series of verses where it speaks about the third part of the grass burning up and the third part of the trees. When we were doing a word-by-word investigation of those Scriptures, I was really stuck on that. I meditated on it for a long time, and what the Lord told me is this. If you do not receive it, that is fine with me, but this is what he told me, and it is the best explanation that I have had to date, that, first of all, man’s mind is in three parts: the male seed, the female seed and the offspring, which is the mind that is actually born. And when you look at the carnal mind, the third part of it is -- and there are many Scriptures that I am not -- I do not want to go into the whole thing now. The third part is always Satan, so we -- he is the third part. First, it is -- it was -- I think it was Adam, and then there was Eve, and then there was the darkness in the earth. As you follow it through -- and as I told you, I have messages on it if you would like to look this up -- the third part is always Satan, so that is one of the symbols that I use when I am dealing with prophecy. The third part is Satan, and whenever you see in -- the number three in either the Greek or the Hebrew, usually it is acceptable to translate it “the third part.” That is the way the language goes.
So we see in Verse 8, “Three shepherds also I cut off.” I would like to suggest to you the third part of the shepherds, that which is satanic, that which is Satan and the carnal minds are the shepherds, he is going to cut off. This is how he is going to affect his covenant with you. This is how he is going to defeat the carnal mind. He is going to cut off Satan; Satan must be cut off. Brethren, Satan is too strong for us. We as natural men cannot overcome him. The Lord Jesus Christ must come, and Satan in our own minds must be cut off so that Christ Jesus in us, who is not yet in full stature, can take the victory over the carnal mind.
We cannot take this victory without the Lord Jesus Christ who has already overcome the world. He has already overcome Satan and the carnal mind in the days of his flesh, when he was Jesus of Nazareth. He did it already. Now he is a glorified Spirit, and he is in your mind, and he is in my mind. So as Christ comes forth in us, he is backing us up, and he is always there, already being victorious over Satan. So any area in which Christ in us is not making it, the Lord Jesus Christ is there giving us that extra strength. Praise God.
So the third part of the shepherds -- brethren, Satan and the carnal minds of the shepherds is being cut off. This Hebrew word translated “cut off” can also be translated “to disown,” “to cover” or “to hide,” and it is from a root meaning “to overcome in battle,” and I suggest to you that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming. He is overcoming the carnal mind -- Satan and his carnal mind in battle. How is he overcoming him? Despite Satan’s position of the spirit of man, the Lord Jesus Christ is penetrating our human spirit and bringing forth Christ in us, despite the defense of Satan and the carnal mind, despite the ownership of the vessel that he is f- -- that he is joined to. Satan is in every fiber of our being. Christ is still strong enough to penetrate him and bring forth Christ. The Spirit of Christ is -- I am sorry. The Holy Spirit is still strong enough to penetrate us, despite Satan’s strong defenses, and bring forth Christ Jesus in us, and when Christ Jesus comes forth in us, he is covering over the carnal mind. He is covering her over.
You heard the sun would be covered with sackcloth, as with sackcloth. Brethren, the sun is going to be darkened, the sun of this fallen world. Christ is covering over the sun of your carnal mind. The mind is the sun of your vessel, and the soul that your mind is dwelling in is the moon of your personal cosmos, of your personal world system. So the world is not being destroyed. The sun is turning black, and the moon is turning to blood. What does it mean? It means the sun of this horrible, fallen world called Hell is being covered over by Christ, glory to God, and it will be darkened. It will shine no more. It will lose its power, and that the moon, the soul, which is the expression of this carnal mind, the soul which has died because she is carnally-minded, she is turning to blood. That moon is being covered with the blood, the soul life, of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
And if that Spirit which raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, it shall quicken your mortal body or your soul, not this body here. If you have a mortal body, you must have an immortal body. Your immortal body is the Spirit, I suggest to you, and your mortal body is the soul that she dwells in. So when Christ is raised from the dead in you, that dead soul which is dead because of the carnal mind shall receive life, quickened -- shall be quickened. And the parable says, and the moon shall be covered with blood, the all the ghouls are out there saying, oh, my God, the blood is coming on the moon.
It is time to grow up, brethren. It is time to grow up. Give up Christmas; give up Santa Claus; give up the Easter bunny, OK; give up the -- Satan with the -- who is a red freak with horns and a tail. It is time to grow up because it is time for all this Scripture to come to pass in your life, and you cannot be walking around in fear, shaking in your boots, preaching the end of the world, neither can you continue to look to the Middle East for some man to stand up because he is probably going to stand up. But that -- what does that have to do with you?
[INAUDIBLE]
It is probably going to happen. I do not have any time to look at the Middle East. I have got to crucify my carnal mind --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- so I can stand up in full stature --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- so I can walk over all this junk when it happens. So we see there are three shepherds that shall be cut off, the third part of the shepherds, the third part of the rulers of Israel, the third part of the people who are governed by Christ. He is going to cut off that third part. Satan is going to be neutralized in you because, if Christ Jesus is in you-- is growing in you, you are a ruler in Israel. So -- and a ruler in Israel, that is just another way of saying shepherds, so the third part of the shepherds is going to be cut off when Christ starts to arise in you.
And he is going to cut them off in one month. The word, month, speaks about moon. We just mentioned it. The moon speaks about the soul realm, and I suggest to you that he is speaking about -- the Scripture is speaking about the whole soul realm, OK. The third part of the whole soul realm, which is Satan, shall be cut off. And that word, one -- the Hebrew word translated “one” can also be translated “whole,” so the third part of the whole soul realm, which is existing in all the people in whom Christ is being formed, shall be cut off, “and my soul lothed them, and their soul abhorred me.” That sounds terrible. The Hebrew word translated “lothed” can be translated “harvest.” My soul harvested them, or my soul sought to harvest them. My soul wanted to save them from their own carnal minds, but they abhorred me. The Hebrew word translated “abhorred” means “greed.” They denied me.
In other words, harvest was present. You see, there cannot be any harvest without the fruit. Christ was present or Christ is present. I believe this is going on, you know. Christ is present. He is saying the deliverance from Hell is existing in your very own mind. You have got to take it. You have got to start rejecting your carnal mind, your carnal ways, your carnal ways of doing things, your carnal wi- -- ways of getting your needs met, your carnal ways of dealing with problems. You have got to change and start using your new weapon, Christ, because your old ways of getting your needs met and your old ways of dealing with human problems are killing you. Why? Because to be carnally-minded is death. You have got to start dealing with your problems and getting your needs met through prayer and through the other methods which are in Christ, righteous judgment.
So what the Scripture is saying here is I was ready to harvest them. I provided my Christ, but the fields were white to harvest; they would not labor the labor. They would not labor the spiritual labor. They told me it is by grace and it is not by works, and they would not labor the labor. They were waiting for the rapture. They were waiting for the Lord to do it for them. They were waiting for it to happen in their sleep. They were hoping they would not have to really look at the sin in their own heart and admit that it was true. Maybe if they just blinked, it would happen. Well, does the Scripture not say in the twinkling of an eye, in a moment? There is only one problem. It is not in the twinkling of your eye; it is in the twinkling of God’s eye, and when God blinks, it is your whole lifetime. When God closes his eye, you are gone. When he opens his eye, you have existence. When he stops seeing you, brethren, you cease to exist.
[INAUDIBLE]
You are gone. [?There you go?]. So we see this mysterious verse. “Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul abhorred me.” We see a glorious truth that the Lord Jesus Christ has overcome Satan in the minds of his people. He has given us power. He has weakened Satan to the point that we can overcome him. He has given us his Christ, and we will not pick it up. We are not doing our part. We denied him that which was his. What do we have that we are denying him? Brethren, the human spirit or the spirit which is in man is out of God; it is the breath of God. She is the breath of life that was breathed into the man at the beginning of time. Our spirit is his. He is the Father of all spirits, and we have got her all bound up with Satan and the carnal mind. We -- if we will not labor the labor which is freeing our spirit from the carnal mind so that she can marry Christ, if we are not doing it, we are denying the Lord that which is his, and we are told in the Scripture that the majority of people fall into this category.
Verse 9, “Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another.”
So what is being said here is that the Lord said I am not going to feed you; I am not going to govern you anymore. You see, you have all the benefits of Christ appearing in you. You have all -- the word, “feed,” means “pasture” or “pastor.” It means, excuse me, “to rule” or “to govern.” Now, remember, the yoke of the Lord is easy. If he is not ruling us, Satan is ruling us. So for the Lord to say I will not feed you anymore does not mean he is a tyrant that is starving us to death; it means he is not going to be our king anymore. It means we are turned over to Satan so that we should learn not to blaspheme. That is what it means.
So I am removing my Christ mind from you. You can have your carnal mind back. Be joined to the tyrant, and he says, and I am telling you right now, when I remove myself from you, there is going to be calamity in your life. We mentioned this earlier, and he says, that which dies, when I remove myself -- when I remove my Christ from you, that which dies, let it die. Well, if you have the Holy Spirit, if Christ was never formed in you or if Christ dies, let it die. You never thought you would hear the Lord talk like that. I am telling -- I have been telling you since I am here. You are not playing with -- you do not know who you are playing with. We do not know who God is. You push him, and you push him, and you push him, and he is longsuffering, and he is longsuffering, and he is longsuffering. And the day is coming that he is going to say, if you are not going to labor the labor, if you are not going to use what I have given you to judge your own soul or at least submit to the person I have sent to judge you, if my life in you dies, let it die. That is what he is talking about.
And the second word is, “And that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off.” That Hebrew word translated “cut off,” we just had it before in another verse, “to be” -- “cover over.” He says, if Christ in you is wiped out completely, let it be. I call it spiritual abortion, if you have read it in my messages. There is such a thing as spontaneous abortion in Christ. You can lose your Christ child before he is born because, you see, the whole human race is saved in childbearing. When that Christ child is fully born, he is going to marry or join himself to our soul, and forever we shall be with the Lord, but it is possible for you to have a spontaneous abortion, which means -- a spontaneous abortion means that it is not something that we went to the doctor and said abort this child. Not many people are going to do that. Not many people are going to say get this Christ child out of me. But by being disobedient and being profane unto the Lord, without realizing it, the result of our actions could be in the spontaneous abortion of this Christ child, which will throw us back under the power of the carnal mind and the death of the carnal mind.
So the Lord says that which is going to die, let it die, and all the Pharisees yell, how can he let his son die? Because he is got 7,000 that have not bent their knee to Baal, you see. So the Christ child is not being wiped out of humanity; he is just being wiped out of a few profane vessels that the Lord Jesus Christ has made a judgment do not deserve hosting his Son. But I thought all men were going to be saved. No. The s- -- the creation of God is being saved. The spiritual substance, which is the very life of the Son himself, out of which this creation is formed, is being saved, but every man, which is just a temporary formation of the clay, is not being saved. Some of us are brute beasts, and [?they were?] not good for anything except to be burned.
Look, brethren, every Scripture in this Bible has to reconcile with every Scripture in this Bible, and if you believe in ultimate reconciliation, you have to have an answer as to what to do with these Scriptures that say some men are good for nothing but to be burnt. And that does not mean they are going to be burnt by the fires of Hell with little demons sticking pins in them; it does not mean that. It means they will live out their life, and they will come to an end, that there is no eternal life in them. That is what it means. I mean, they may have a premature death, but there is no concept of eternal torment. What it means is this temporary formation, this formation of the clay in this man who lives 80, 90 years, if the Lord blesses him, is going to finish -- it did not produce Christ. A graphic example is a human woman’s ovaries. Thou- -- is it thousands or millions of eggs in an ovary? Millions.
[?Yeah?].
Millions of eggs in a woman’s ovaries. The most I have ever heard of is 13 or 15 children, and most women think of having 15 children, and they go, oh, my God, 15 children. They cannot even talk, 15 children, millions of eggs. Brethren, we have got to face reality. Every human being is a spiritual egg. Each of us is a potential to manifest the life of God, which is in his Christ. That is why Jehovah said to Israel, your righteousness is as filthy rags. That is what he was talking about. He said you are all -- have the potential to produce Christ. I am the male, Jehovah said, and you are the female, and I gave myself unto you. I took you as a wife, and therefore you had the potential to produce the life of my Son, but you menstruated. The egg which you are did not result in the life of my Son. The egg passed out into the draft.
And this is the truth of every human being on the face of the earth: Every man has a potential to bear the Christ child, but every man ever born shall not bear the Christ child, but nevertheless the Christ child shall be born. And when the Christ child is born, those men in whom he appears will be made permanent formations, for so long as we are in the flesh, until the creation is glorified. And, eventually, the entire spiritual substance of the original creation will be appearing in human flesh and saved, but not every clay person or not every sack that has appeared on the face of the earth over the centuries shall s- -- shall live again, only the spirit which was in that sack or that clay formation.
I am sorry, but it is grow-up time. Santa Claus is not real, and it was your mother who dyed the Easter eggs and bought the bunnies for you. If you could just see it, if you could just -- if God would just give you the ability to see it, if it was possible to talk to the seed in your body, male or female, millions -- say, all you guys in there, only three or five of you are going to make it. I love you all. I love you like I love every part of myself, but only five of you are going to make it out into the world. If you can hear it, hear it. I am telling you the truth.
Now, look, if you pass through this world, and y- -- and the Christ child is not formed in you, it is no shame, just like it is no shame if you are an ovum that does not become a child. The only shame is if God has given you the opportunity and you have been found not worthy because of profanity in your own heart; that is a shame. If God gave you his life, if he called you, if he put his Son in you and you blasphemed against him, then you find yourself on the outside knocking in when he appears, saying, Lord, Lord, how could this have happened to me? And the Lord will say, I never knew you. That is a shame. But to be a person that has lived and -- especially if you have done the best you can to be a decent person, and God just never called you, before the hour came when everyone on the face of the earth, you know, would be reconciled unto God, there is no shame in it. But to be called and not answer the call, that is a shame.
And do not take what I just said as any kind of ungodly burden because all the Lord requires of you is your best and that he meets you in the air and drags you the rest of the way. No man can enter in under his own power. He is looking for a humble heart. He is looking for a willing heart. The only people who have begun with him and will fall away are people who are profane against God. You see, it is not a question of sin. We all have sin. He is cleansing us from our sin, but if we desire him, he will bring us through. But if we love our sin more than we love him, then we can run into trouble. It is the man who loves sin more than he loves God, and even that shame is not forever. Look at Judas, you know. This whole concept of eternal torment is Satan’s doctrine.
The end of this whole scheme of things is that the glory of God will be found in the earth of mankind, and all the old things will pass away. Behold, all things will be made new. It is just a question of whether or not you want to be a part of it right now. And if you would like to be a part of it and you have gotten far enough to hear this message, it means that you are invited to be a part of it, so I encourage you to just humble yourself before God, and tell him to cleanse you of any unclean thing in your heart. That is all he wants is a humble heart, a humble and a willing heart, and he will bring you through. There is should not be any fear in this at all. If anything that I have said has made you afraid, I am -- you m- -- I am sure you misunderstood me because I am not a preacher of fear. I am just trying to show you how serious the matter is, but I am not a preacher of fear at all. He loves you; Father loves you more than we could even imagine.
So we are in Verse 9, “Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off” -- if it is going to be covered over, let Christ be covered over -- “and let the rest,” whoever is left, “eat every one,” excuse me, “the flesh of another.”
Well, that sounds strange. I lost my place. Verse 9, Page 13.
I have an Alternate Translation. “But I will govern the sheep whose carnal minds are being” -- I cannot read my own handwriting. “But I will govern the sheep whose carnal minds are being slaughtered, those who are wretched and afflicted because of their faithfulness to Christ.” It means they are suffering because of their faithfulness to Christ.
Oh, I have read you this one already. I am sorry. What did I do here? Insert 9, Page 13. I am sorry. I am used to working with a computer. I do not know what I did here, just one second. I got it.
Alternate Translation, Verse 9, “Then I said, I will not rule you anymore. Whoever has the Holy Spirit” -- in other wor- -- “Whoever has the Holy Spirit and lets him die, let him die. Whoever has Christ and refuses to live out of him, let Christ be tread underfoot, and let the rest of humanity who is to be ruled by Israel” -- because the common people, the people who are not yet in either of these covenants, are to be ruled by Israel until they move up -- “let them all continue in their adulterous relationship with the carnal mind.”
I forgot to tell you something here. And this phrase that says, “And let the rest eat every one the flesh of another,” that word, “another,” in the Hebrew means “woman,” and it is really saying let her eat the flesh of the woman, which is Satan. Let her come back into her carnal mind. So we have some people that have the Holy Spirit, some people that have Christ, and then the peoples of the world who have neither are supposed to be under the governorship of the people who are in Christ. So if you have the Holy Spirit and he dies, if you have Christ and he is covered over, there is nobody judging righteous judgment. There is nobody judging righteous judgment. That means the whole world is coming back under the carnal mind, OK, but we will find in a subsequent verse that the Lord is saying it does -- it is not as bad as it sounds. I have got my faithful ones. I have always got my faithful ones. I will always have a man in the earth. Christ will always be in the earth, and the ones who are strong enough to overcome and to enter in, as soon as they reach the top of Mount Zion, as soon as they stand up in full stature, they are going back to get the others out.
Because I declare to you, brethren, and I believe this with all my heart, no one in their right mind would say no to such a salvation, no one. For you to say no to God, you have to be in your left mind, really. You have to be spiritually sick to say no. To choose sin over the glory of God, you have to be spiritually sick, and that is how God can forgive you. He knows, and getting through to full stature is very difficult. You have to be a very strong person. You know, some people get confused when I say that because some people in Christ have had weaknesses in their lives, just by way of example, alcoholism, drug addiction, weaknesses that may have really damaged their lives. And I have had people say to me, how could you say I am strong? Look at how I have messed up. And my answer to them is this: You have a very strong spirit, you see. You may be weak in your soul. Remember, we just talked about that. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
A lot of people who come to the Lord, they have been overcome in their f- -- in the weaknesses of their flesh, and because their spirit was not joined to Christ but was joined to the carnal mind, they were weak in the spirit and overcome in the flesh. And a lot of people who have been overcome in the flesh have very strong spiritual qualities; it is just that the curses on their life and the variables that made up their peculiar -- their particular person was too strong for them, that -- it is not even to say, you know, that someone else in -- under the same circumstances could have done better. Some people are just born with circumstances in their life and curses in their life that cannot be overcome.
You know, there was a time in my life when I did not believe that. There was a t- -- or I did not understand it. There was a time in my life where I believed, if you just work as hard as you can and do everything as hard as you can, you would come out on top and that everybody in the l- -- in this world who failed in any way, it was because of some lack in them, but the Lord has shown me that is not true. Some people really do try as hard as they can possibly try, and the factors of their life are just too strong for them to overcome. And there is a truth to that, and I am not in any way fostering people not working hard or not trying hard. I am not in any way justifying sin or weakness in one’s life. I am merely stating a truth that the Lord has shown me: Some people really do the best they can, and it is not good enough to overcome the circumstances or the curses upon their life.
I have seen people make it all the way to the top of the business world. I have seen it -- and it is all -- it is in the newspapers in the United States, a medical doctor, dentist, wealthy tycoon, hopeless drug addict, died from an overdose. Well, how do you explain this? They were strong enough to make it in society, to make it financially. They are married. They have children. Their life looks wonderful, and you see the headline on the newspaper.
Did you ever hear of the Bowery in New York? Did you hear about that? There is a place where people -- we find some people who are dropouts from society, where we see people living on the streets. Although, in the United States today, you do not have to go to the Bowery to see people living on the streets. Things are getting pretty bad in the United States, but there was a time that, if you wanted to see that kind of lifestyle, you would go down to the Bowery, and it is a truism. There is all kinds of successful people down there living on the streets, overcome by alcoholism, usually by alcoholism, despite every opportunity that their life had afforded them, which opportunities they took advantage of, highly educated people, successful people; uneducated, successful businessmen; successful people of every walks of life. But they had a spiritual problem that was stronger than all of their accomplishments in life, and it ruined everything. It ruined their best. They lost everything.
So I see a lot of people in whom I recognize a very strong spirit, but who, nevertheless, have been overcome by either the circumstances or the inherited realities of their life, and they are shocked when I tell them you are very strong, but I am not looking at their flesh. I am looking at their spirit, and I know that when Christ comes into their life -- and, usually, if they are talking to me, Christ is there most of the time -- and joins himself to their spirit and starts giving them the power to subject the curses and the circumstances that have subjected them, that once they get a vision of power in Christ to overcome, that there will be no stopping them and that, whereas they were the tail, they would become the head, and whereas they were the borrower, they would become the lender. And, brethren, this is not just speaking about money; this is speaking about authority over your own life, strength to rule in victory, not through witchcraft or subtlety, but through the power of God in righteousness, to lead a victorious life. That is very exciting to me.
So Alternate Translation, Verse 9, “Then I said, I will not rule you anymore.” It -- well, that -- what [?it is?] talking about [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- I am not going to give you the gentle correction of the Holy Spirit anymore. You have to start doing something yourself. “Whoever has the Holy Spirit and lets him die because you are not working the work, let him die. I am not s- -- I am not picking up the pieces anymore. Whoever has Christ and refuses to live out of him, let Christ be tread underfoot, and let the rest of humanity who is to be ruled by Israel continue in her adulterous relationship with the carnal mind.”
And I suggest to you that this is speaking about the test that Paul tells us about in Romans 7, and it is likened unto the test that God gave unto righteous Adam at the time of the fall, which is a big -- this issue is a big bone of contention in the church. A large part of the kingdom church believes that God not only knew that Adam would fall but that he arranged for Adam’s fall, and Adam’s fall was a part of God’s program. I do not believe that, brethren. I do not believe God put us down here in torment as part of our development. I do not believe this is God’s best for us. I believe God knew Adam would fail the test, but, nevertheless, God had an imagination, and he imagined a creation that was a thinking, working expression of the mind of the life of God, not a robot, but a son. And being a son, God could only give us so much. He gave us everything to overcome sin. He gave us everything that we needed to overcome the sin which was in the flesh of the creation.
But the time came that the Lord said, you are not a robot; you are a son. Now you have to go out on your own, and if you stand, you stand, and if you fall, you fall. And if you fall, you are going to be cast down into Hell, but it will only be for a season. I will get you out, and when I get you out, I will raise you back up to righteousness in a form which -- in which you will never be able to fall again. You will only die once. It is given unto a man once to die, and then the judgment, not the death of this body, brethren. You die spiritually. We already died, and we are waiting and praying for the judgment which will restore us back up into righteousness, and that is what we have been talking about all night, the judgment which is to restore us back up unto righteousness.
So what we are talking about here in Zechariah with the Lord saying I will not rule you anymore, it is not a vindictive God saying I will not rule you anymore. It is the Lord saying you have to fly. I am pushing you out of the nest; fly or crash. And whoever crashes, let him crash. I have got my 7,000 faithful. I know my Son is going to appear in the earth. Some people call it survival of the fittest. God would not do that. He is not respecter of persons. He is not. Everybody has the same opportunity. If you crash, you crash; if you fly, you fly, but Christ will appear in the earth of this creation. Well, it is 9:30. Maybe we should stop and -- if anyone wants to leave at this hour, you know, I guess, we can -- I guess I could go on as long as they want to stay here. OK. So it is up to you. I understand the situation here in Nigeria. If you would like to leave, you are free to go, but I will take questions and answers, and you cannot stay all night, especially you two. But [?it is?] -- I will s- -- I will hang in there here with you for a while, if you would like to stay. Any questions? OK.
I just want to ask a question in connection with your last words. You said everybody has the same opportunity, but I did not choose where I was born. I did not choose if I were to be -- ask where to come from [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- choose where you came from, and I would not choose the family I came from. So how can you relate that to the opportunity because looking at [?circumstances?], you feel some people have a better opportunity of serving God, and some do not.
OK. This is a mystery, OK. But God sees a whole family line as one man. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day called Abraham their father, and they skipped all the generations in-between. Abraham was their father. So every family line in the earth will have the same opportunity to serve God. It may not be in this generation. It may be in the next generation, but everybody in the earth today is a descendant either from Shem, Ham or Japheth. And not looking at the -- just like I said every individual is not being saved but the spirit is being saved, every family line is having the same opportunity, Shem, Ham and Japheth, not necessarily every individual, and maybe I did not make that clear. But I know that -- I know it is a scriptural principle, and I have seen it in life. Somebody cries out and cries out, and their prayer is answered in their offspring. I have seen it happen. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
-- [INAUDIBLE] the sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation. Blessings and answered prayer is answered in future generations. S- -- that is a difficult concept for some people to understand, but there is a truth in it, that a family is one man, one spiritual man moving through the earth, and he is just changing his garments because his mind is dead, his personality and his body wears out. But f- -- as far as God is concerned, it is the same spiritual man, and if I made it sound -- I -- thinking back, I may have made it sound like every human being has the same opportunity; that is not true, OK. So if I sounded it -- that way, I should not have said it that way, OK. Anybody else? OK.
I guess, just one more thing. I guess, what I must have meant when I said that was everyone reading a message like this, you all have the same opportunity. I must have said -- meant something like that.
I just wanted to ask, in the books of -- in the Book of Acts, I think, 17 something, it says when Paul went to [?Marcius?], he was talking to the pagans there that made a sacrifice to an unknown god, and he told them that they should repent. But something I found funny there was he was not actually saying something about sin or something. He said they should repent of their ignorance, that, in him, we live, move and have our being. So I just wanted to ask -- and in that same s- -- verse, he s- -- he called them God offsprings.
God’s offspring?
Yes. He said they were God offsprings, even though they -- by that time, they never had any development of the Christ Spirit in them. I just [?wanted you to?] explain that.
Well, we know that Adam -- if we read the genealogies, Adam was the Son of God, and the whole human race is the offspring of God. The reason we do not look like him or the -- you have heard me say you are -- well, you are bastards, OK -- is that we died, and in our death, we have taken a different form, OK. Now that really sounds like a contradiction, OK. We are all the offspring of God because his life is in us. He breathed the breath of life into us at the beginning of time.
You see, one of the problems with the Scriptures is that God will say things from a particular point of view. When he was talking to those people, he was saying you are potentially of the offspring of God. He was saying to them, my Spirit is in you, even though it is dead, and therefore you could be the offspring of God. You have what it takes to bring forth Christ in you, and therefore you should repent of your ignorance and come unto the one true God. That is what he was saying to them. In another place -- and you have heard me preach, well, you are bastards; that is why you need to be adopted, and your f- -- and your daddy is the devil. Well, both of those things are true; it is just that the Lord is making a different point. Right now, at this moment, and for those men too, their daddy was the devil, but the Lord was not rebuking them. He was giving them information and saying you have a potential to be the offspring of God.
So every Scripture that we read, we have to -- well, you apparently did identify who was being spoken to, but we also need to identify is a rebuke being brought, is a teaching taking place? I have found many Scriptures where Jesus and sometimes Paul is speaking sarcastically. I know in one place Paul says, oh, I know, you are strong, and I am the weak one, OK. So we have to ask God to help us recognize these subtleties when we read the Scripture.
When I first came to the Lord and I used to read the Bible, I thought everyone in the Bible was good. When I found out that there were criminals in the Bible, I was shocked. I think the first time I started thinking along those lines was when I was reading in the Book of Judges about some Levite priest stealing somebody’s idol. And I looked at that book. I said, a Levite priest stealing an idol? I do not -- what would they be wanting with an idol? I just could not make any sense out of it, and then I read something about Jacob being a usurper, and I was all confused until I found out that the Bible is a book that teaches about human nature, and human nature is fallen, and there is all kinds of people in it. And everything you have ever seen manifest in a human being, you will probably find it in this Bible if you have -- if Christ in you illuminates the words and makes them alive.
Even -- the first time I realized something along these lines, when reading in the Book of Acts, Paul wa- -- or the guard who had arrested Paul or to -- actually, to protect him, he had arrested him. He was saying to him, why are these people trying to kill you like this, you know? I thought you were that guy that led that mom of Jews out of Egypt. And the day that the Lord showed me that this heathen guard got Paul mixed up with Moses, it just really blessed me. I used to read that Scripture. Why is he saying that? I thought Paul led this bunch of criminal Jews out of Egypt. What in the world is he talking about? Until the Lord said this heathen man could not tell Paul from Moses, and it was funny. I found a joke in the Bible.
So we have to ask God for life, and there is all kinds of subtleties of human nature. It is for important to know what [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?speakers?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] so Paul was encouraging these men. There is hope for [?you?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] you do not have to s- -- or in this ignorance, you t- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?as if God could have known?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] and he says you call yourself [AUDIO CUTS OUT] daddy is the devil. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] Bible gives you. No wonder some people say, well, [?it is just a device of?] [INAUDIBLE], [?but with their kind?], and it drives them crazy. They cannot make any sense out of it. It all -- it appears to be one contradiction after the other, but it is not, and it is a tremendous opportunity to look into the window of men’s hearts and see men’s potential.
I had an ongoing dialogue with an orthodox Jewish rabbi for about two years, maybe longer, and I got him so upset. I did not mean to upset him; he is a very nice man. But I told him that Jacob was a sinner, you know, and I had no idea I was going to upset him. I had no idea they had such idolat- -- you see, I am a realist, you know. If it is in there, it is in there, you know. When I told him Jacob was a sinner, I thought the poor man was going to have a heart attack. I really did not mean to offend him. I -- till I real- -- and I told him that day that he had idolatry for his forefathers. He did not appreciate that, but this book is fantastic insight into human nature, once you get the revelation that the only righteous one is Jesus Christ. And that is -- this book is about righteousness, and it is about evil, and it is about the wickedness in the hearts of men. It is a tremendous book, OK.
W- -- You s- -- when you said something about [UNINTELLIGIBLE] something you called -- you mentioned something real, something like that. It brought [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [?called real?]. You said something real.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes. When you said [?something?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [?realistic?], it brought to mind what we said some time ago [?in Brother Dalton’s place?], when we were talking about reality. So I wanted to ask, is -- in hypnotism, when someone is hypnotized, a part of his consciousness goes to sleep. Then h- -- but during that state, the person doing the practice could actually make him see something that is not actually physical. He could make him see a snake, a lizard, and tell him, when he opens his eyes, he will see it. And when the person opens his eyes, he actually sees it in that aspect. So I wanted to ask, is it almost the same thing like, kind of, Christ mind, kind of, went to sleep, and the [?second mind?] came awake to actually bring to view many things we actually see now? It is like, [?do they look real?]? But this -- they are quite not real because the only thing that is real is the Spirit of the Father. So I wanted to ask, is it something like that?
[?Yeah?]. Well, yes. There is a truth in that. When the -- well, I do not know that I could say that the Christ mind went to sleep. It is my under- -- but this is just a technicality. It is my understanding that the Christ mind was dismantled. If you remem- -- my teaching on this area is that Christ is formed after the Spirit of the Father joins with the spirit of man, which I believe is what is called a spiritual altar, and then the offspring comes forth and is on that altar, either the carnal mind or Christ. So Christ does not go to sleep. It is my c- -- I would not argue with anyone over this, you know. This is my understanding. Christ does not go to sleep; he is broken to pieces. He is ripped to pieces, as the Scripture says. His altar is torn down, and an -- and Satan builds his own altar, which is the spirit of Satan with the human spirit, and the carnal mind comes forth.
But to get on with what you were saying, I am sure this is th- -- really what you are concerned about, is, is it possible that what we are seeing now is a result of the carnal mind as opposed to the Christ mind? Yes. I believe that is exactly what happened, that this whole world that we are living in is an image. It is an image that could be likened to something you would see on a moving picture screen. And, by the way, this whole account we found in Daniel 8, and, if you are interested in pursuing it, I have some of those Alternate Translations in the book, “Mind, Hell and Death.” Did you get a copy of that? Yeah.
So this whole world that we are living in is an image, and this is a great mystery because you say to me, Sheila, how can it be an image? It is real. I can touch it. Things break. I build things. We have children. People are born; people die. Well, brethren, it is real because we are subject to it. And what does that mean? It means the mind which has created this moving picture, if you will, owns us. He is manifesting himself through us. He is in us, and he has projected this whole image out here, and we are therefore subjected to it, to the good of it and to the evil of it. And that is why we find in our Alternate Translation of Romans 8:20-21 saying that we are waiting. The whole creation is waiting for the one who subjected us, Satan, to -- for the one who is going to subject the one who subjected us, you see. And when the Christ mind throws out the carnal mind and becomes our mind -- when Christ becomes our mind, we will be able to say this is just a bad dream. This is just a moving picture, and it is not real for me.
But so long as the -- our own mind -- and we had that tonight. Our own mind is killing us. Our own foundation is killing us because it is thinking evil thoughts, and every evil in this world is a reflection of the corporate evil mind. You may not be doing evil. You may be just an average person trying to make it in this world. You are working from 5 in the morning until 10 at night trying to support your family. But, corporately speaking, the mind which is in this world is an evil mind, and it has more of an evil expression in some people than in other people, but all of the evil in this world, not only the murders and the rapes and the carjackings and all that, but the fires and the disease and the sickness and all of the pain and torment of this world is a moving picture of a spiritually sick mind. If you can hear it, hear it.
Paul said, in the King James translation, he says we are a gazingstock. If you follow that through, if you look it up in the Greek, what it is saying is that this world is a forum or a stage on which spiritual life acts out its thoughts. This whole world is a stage in which spiritual life has an opportunity to express itself in a physical form, if you can hear it, you know. I -- it took me -- I know I am sitting here teaching this, but it took me a while to -- I mean, God had to really spoon feed me to understand this stuff. It is just very difficult, but the truth is that we are spirit. Our true reality is spirit, and the form that you see is merely an image. We are living in a moving picture. I used to watch a lot of science fiction before I came to the Lord. I used to watch these programs, and I would say, wow, what way out fantasy, and now I realize that, in principle, it is all true.
So if you are living -- if your mind is fallen, if your mind is death -- and it is not just one person. All of humanity is one spiritual plant, or we are one man, a many-membered man, and the mind in us is a spiritually sick, fallen mind, and h- -- the world that he has projected -- he has projected an image like a moving picture camera flashing like a film going through a moving picture machine, flashing on a screen. And his thoughts are wicked, continuously, and, therefore, wicked and evil things happen in this world continuously.
So when the carnal mind is cast down, which has already begun to happen, praise God, and replaced with the mind of Christ, the mind of Christ thinks good, continuously. And this world will be an expression of good, continuously, both in the minds of men, in the physical appearance of men. Disease will disappear because disease is a reflection of a sinful mind. Disease is a result of sin. Now this is a little touchy. You have to really be careful about this because the wrong person gets a hold of this word and say, Sister Sheila said, God forbid, that poor man is dying from cancer, and they go to him and say, Sister Sheila said you are just a dirty, no good sinner, and that is why you are dying from cancer. No, Sister Sheila did not say that. Sister Sheila said that sin -- that disease is a result of sin.
Sin -- we have a sin nature; we are fallen. Sin goes back on our family line for generations. We are born into this world with a variety of curses and a variety of variables that make us what we are, and many of -- we are very sinful. Certain sins will produce disease. You know, you -- most of you heard my testimony. I was sick from my -- when I was 10 years old, so I have been down this road, you know, and I have been told I was not healed in a day because I had no faith, and you may have heard my testimony about the man coming into the hospital when I was in intensive care, half dead. Well, he came to see me, and I was sick. He came back a month later, and I was still in the hospital, and I was in intensive care. So he got so upset that his prayer did not get me up that he decided to rebuke me in intensive care, and he says, now, sister, have you confessed all your sins? And I said to him, either change the subject or leave my hospital room. I mean, you know, he was a dear friend. He was a dear brother, but this was the point I was pushed to.
Now this was my condition. Just for your information, I am talking from personal experience. I was born with a lot of inherited sin. I did every sin. I acted out, in my generation, pretty much every sin that I inherited, and I was dying from 10 years old, OK. And the Lord had mercy on me, and he healed me, but, nevertheless, it was very obvious to me that I met people through my lifetime who had the same sins that I had, people who did much more wicked deeds than I did who were as healthy as a horse.
So what am I saying to you? It is a variety of variables. To condemn anybody because -- well, we are not allowed to condemn anybody, but this teaching about sickens is really unfortunate because people that are ill -- usua- -- especially if they are chronically ill, they are broken-hearted, so to go to them and tell them that they are worse than the next guy who in this lifetime might be very much worse than they are does not make any sense at all. It is a combination of variables, and there is no condemnation anyway to anyone who is in Christ Jesus. We are supposed to be having mercy and pity on people, but the -- one of the problems in the church is that we would like to believe we have the power to heal everybody, and when the person does not get healed, rather than admit we do not have the power to heal everybody, we would rather tell them they are a no good, dirty sinner, and that is why they are not healed.
But the truth of the matter is that disease comes from sin, and family line sin -- you know, you never know. I have known such wicked people, and I even went before the Lord. I said, Lord, how could this be? You know, they are -- this person, nothing gets them sick. They are much worse than I am, and in this particular case, he did tell me that this particular -- he showed me where this particular man had certain blessings on the family line for certain reasons that I did not have, and that it is all checks and balances. It is literally points. How many blessings, how many curses? They cancel each other out, a variety of other factors, and you are the sum total of what you are. But, of course, there is deliverance in Christ. God is full well able to heal you, although in this hour he is not healing everybody, but every discomfort in this world is a result of a sin-filled mind. We are the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Everybody is not the same. Hopefully -- well, especially if you are in Christ, you have enough blessings to keep you continuously going upward, but this world is an image that is not real. To answer your question, it is not real, but it is real to those who are subjected to it. If you will, a temporary reality, if you will, OK.
We have some people who get into these deep spiritual truths, and they really do not know what they are talking about, and they go around and tell you, well, this is not real, so just confess that you are healed, and you are healed. Confess -- say you are healed. I to- -- well, I told you I was dying when I came to the Lord, and this was what I was counseled. Three times a day, you have to say you are healed. Get into the shower, and every time you shower, say this water is the blood of Jesus, and it is g- -- and I did it, you know, but I did not get healed. It is funny now, but when you are desperate for a healing, it is not funny, you know. I even got caught up in some idolatry. This preacher came to the church that I was preaching in, and her reputation was that the anointing on her would be so heavy that in the midst of her preaching, she would get slain in the Spirit, and there was healing in her when she got slain in the Spirit. So every time she got slain, everybody would go running up and touch her, and she got slain at least five times, you know, during her message, and I did it. And at some point, the Lord came to me. I had to repent. It was idolatry, you know.
[INAUDIBLE]
So the bottom line is, if you come to the Lord with a problem, whether it is a physical infirmity, whether it is a mental infirmity or if it is -- I know you have a very hard life here in Nigeria these days, whatever it is, financial or whatever your problem is, look, brethren, you serve God. You make a commitment to God, and you do the best that you can do, and you believe that he is going to keep you. I just encourage you all to believe that he is going to keep you, and I know that he has whispered that into my heart, that he is able to keep you. Just serve him, and just believe God. And I do not care what your circumstances are life -- like, he is able to do it, and he will do whatever he has to do. He is able to keep you. He is able to keep all of us. He is the one that keeps us from falling. He is our help in time of trouble, and it has to be true. If it is not true, we might as well all give the whole thing up, you know. And I have had some tough times in my life where I have prayed that to him, and I have said, Lord, well, let us see what you are going to do. I am going to find out if this thing is real now, you know.
[INAUDIBLE]
Because if you do not come through, I am finished, you know. And he has always come through.
[INAUDIBLE]
And he will come through for you. I do not know about Nigeria as a whole. I do not know. The whole world is collapsing, but in the midst of the whole thing, the sons are going to stand up, and he is going to keep his people. I know that; that much I know. So to get back to your question, this world is not real, but, for us, it is real. And to be honest with you, I do not know whether Jesus of Nazareth, who was Christ -- when he stood up in full stature, I do not know whether or not he had the power to change this whole physical world, whether one mind was great enough to override all of the manifestations of the carnal minds of men. I do not know, but I do know that he said he only did what the Father told him to do. So if he did have the ability to do it, the Father did not tell him to do it.
Then we come into the question, well, we are waiting for the second generation of Christ to arise. We are going to start off with a company of men whose minds are in full stature. At what point will the physical world convert? The physical world, this flesh, is a part of the physical world, and I have an answer that I am not sure I completely understand it myself, but I believe I have heard from God. I understand it somewhat, and he said to me that for the individual whose mind is in heaven, the world is not the same, that two people or five people can be standing physically next to one another with a mind -- one mind in full stature and the other mind down here, and the world will be a completely different place to the man in full stature as to the man who is not in full stature.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. It will actually be different for him. Now it cannot --
Can you say that again?
Yeah. I prayed about this for a long time. I said, Lord, when is this physical world going to change? Will it only change when every human being on the face of the earth has a mind of Christ? When is this physical, corrupted world going to change? And the answer that I have so far -- I waited for four years for this part of the answer -- is that the change is not coming externally; the change is coming --
Internally.
-- internally. Therefore, it is possible for two men to be standing side-by-side, one man with his mind in full stature and the other man with a fallen mind, and will both be looking out this window, and the man with the fallen mind will see one thing and experience one thing, and the man with the resurrected mind will actually see and experience something completely else, something completely different, standing right in the same place. So we are talking about issues of reality. You asked me if I thought this world was real. It is real for me, but if a man in full stature were standing right here, it is not real for him.
And another way to look at it, in a parable form, as a natural example, would be our children. If you see a 4-year-old child in some fantasy play, that their world is very real for them, but it is just a fantasy to us. If a child has a nightmare, he is scared, you know, but it is not frightening to us. So we stand in the same place, but we see differently, and the ch- -- the reality for us is the condition of our mind, but, of course, ultimately, the only reality is Christ.
Transcribed by Verbal Fusion 05/27/16
1st Edit 05/31/16 rh
