Part 2 of 2 Parts

 

The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
 The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.

 

-- -ual employment will be traveling through the earth, looking for men’s bones. And we know that in the Scripture, bones are a type of spirit. And a man’s bone would be the spirit of a man. And what is the name of the spirit of man? Somebody?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Well, the human spirit is married to whom today? She has her husband’s name.

            Satan.

 She is married to Satan, yes. The spirit of man -- of the natural man -- is Satan, and he appears in our conscious mind, in our personality under the name of the carnal mind. And there shall be men of continual employment, meaning men who are not yet perfect but who are serving the living God, who will spend their days looking for signs of the manifestation of the carnal minds of men. And wherever they see a manifestation of the carnal mind of men, they shall mark it. That is what we are told in the book of Ezekiel.

That is why we have this sign. If we hear a carnal word out of you, the sign goes up, carnal mind, to make you aware that you are speaking out of your carnal mind because that carnal mind must be covered. It is the hour for the appearing of Christ in the minds of men. And He must arise and cover over your carnal mind if you are to live.

Now before Christ can arise in you and cover over your carnal mind, Christ must be formed in you. And for Christ to be formed in you, usually you have to have a spiritual experience by exposing yourself to the Spirit of God and the word of God, which, if you are hearing this message or if you are at this meeting, is what you are doing. So you have every reason to hope that Christ is, or in the near future, shall begin to be formed in you so that He can arise and cover over your carnal mind so that you can cease from dying and enter into life.

Because this existence is not life. It has a name. What is the name of this existence?

            [?Death?].

 It is death; it is death. The scriptural definition of death is not a lack of existence, but the scriptural definition of death is -- anybody know?

            [INAUDIBLE]

 Separation from God is death, amen.

OK, we are going to review the teaching from Sunday night. I think I gave you an awful lot, and I would like to go over it. And then I am going to draw some comparisons between the Gospel of John, the first 18 chapters, and Genesis 1:1 through -- I think -- I could [?not even tell you?] -- verses 1 through 13. Glory to God.

So we are starting in the Gospel of John. We are going to do a review, and I am going to make some additional comments in a few areas where the Lord showed it to me a little deeper. And I will take any questions on this area that you might have, and we will go on. I felt that towards the end, I rushed it a little because the hour was so late. Glory to God.

The Gospel of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

And I am -- what I am going to do is read from the Alternate Translations that we formulated at the last meeting and just make some comments or -- and I will take questions at the end of each verse. As I finish my comments on the verse that we are speaking about, I will take questions on that verse as we go along.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Glory to God. “In the beginning” -- and I remind you that Jesus Christ is the beginning. He is the alpha and the omega, and He existed in the beginning. And His name is Logos. If you recall the teaching, He is the living spiritual life of God, not a word written on a piece of paper. But the word that is written on the piece of paper is merely an expression or a type of the reality.

God told Moses that he was to make the tabernacle according to the tabernacle was a pattern of the true, spiritual realities. So this book that we study, it is a pattern of the true, spiritual reality, which is the living word: a word that is alive.

OK, so our Alternate Translation of verse 1 and 2 -- we put it together, “At the beginning of time, the living thought, which the God spoke into existence, was projecting forth from the side of the God. And that living thought was an extension of God, and He was God.”

So let me remind you that when we are speaking about Jehovah, the Father, the way the Scripture indicates that is by calling Him the God. And when he is speaking about Christ or the Son, he is -- the Scripture describes Christ or the Son of God. The Son is not as great as the Father.

Now on the surface, this sounds like blasphemy, but Jesus [?Himself?] said it. He said the Father is greater than I. And that leaves a big question mark in your mind: How could one administration or manifestation of God be less than another administration or manifestation or expression of God? And the answer is that there is an evolution of the godhead. There is an evolution of the godhead.

The Father, who is pure Spirit, is reproducing Himself in the earth. And at the beginning, the Son, which is the reproduction of the Father in the earth, He starts out as a seed. This is a great mystery, but Jesus Himself said that the kingdom of God begins with a seed, which can be likened to the mustard seed. It is the least of all seeds, but when it grows up, it becomes a powerful, full-grown tree.

So we see a great mystery, an evolution of God, a variety of expressions of God, which vary from the least unto the greatest, all of which are God. Behold, I show you a mystery, but it is nevertheless the truth.

And we see that the beginning of God, in the seed form, is not an aggressive manifestation of God. It is not a defensive manifestation of God. It is not a warlike manifestation of God. But it is a curative manifestation of God. It brings with it some ability for healing and deliverance from spiritual, physical and emotional torment.

But it is the full-grown or the more mature -- not necessarily the full-grown, but the more mature manifestations of God -- which are the warrior, which carry weapons, which are defensive and which kill God’s enemies. And God has one enemy. It has nothing to do with what sex you are. It has nothing to do with what color you are. It has nothing to do with what religion you were raised in. It has nothing to do with what nationality you are. God has one enemy, and his name is -- ?

            [?The carnal mind?].

The carnal mind. Satan and the carnal mind, they are one. The carnal mind o- -- that is appearing in all of the men across the face of the earth. The enemy of God is spiritual, and his name is the carnal mind, whose god is Satan.

You have heard that Christ is the high priest of Jehovah. Has anybody not heard that? The carnal mind is the high priest of Satan. Christ, conscious mind. Father, unconscious mind. Carnal mind, conscious mind. Satan, unconscious mind [?of fallen man?].

OK. “At the beginning of time, the living thought, which the God spoke into existence, was projecting forth from the side of the God. And that living thought was an extension of the God, and the very thought itself was God.”

You see, Christ was the Son of God, but He was not the God. The Father always was and always shall be greater than the Son. OK, if I do not see your hands, I am going to assume that there is no question on that verse. Going on -- well, you might want to call my name because I cannot see in the dark here. Praise the Lord.

Verse 2, “The same was” -- oh, I see. I did verse 1 and 2 together because the King James says that verse 2 says, “The same was in the beginning with God.”

And when we formulated our Alternate Translation, we found out that the two verses really should have been [?written?] together. So going on with verse 3, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

Alternate Translation, “All things came into existence through the living thought, and nothing that came into existence came into existence apart from Him.” And I would just like to review that concept to you. The living thought -- the word of God, the living thought -- I hope I am conveying this to you. God is life. He is so alive that when He thinks something, it appears.

God had a dream. Did Martin Luther King not used to say, “I have a dream”? It has not really come to pass yet, but you see: Jehovah God, He had a dream. He had an imagination. The Scripture calls it a cherub. And it appeared. It came out of His mind. Something that was in His mind, the thought, it separated from Him, and it appeared.

Well, this is in my mind, so I am going to say it to you now. For all of you people out there, listening to this message, that are having a problem believing my teaching that a demon appears in front of you after he vibrates out of your mind, I want to put it on the message at this point because that is how the Lamb who was slain appeared. He was a thought in the mind of God, and He took form in front of God. And why do I say He took form in front of God? Because the living thought of God took form in the soul realm. Does anybody have a problem with that? He took form in the soul realm.

And those of you that have been studying it for a while, I hope that you know that the soul realm stands opposite of the realm of the spirit. The soul realm is the mirror image of the realm of the Spirit of God. God had a thought, and it appeared in front of Him.

Brethren, Satan has a thought, and it appears in front of him. And all demons originate in the mind of man. And if I could say to you God had a thought, and He was God, I can say to you that the Satan had a thought, and he was Satan or a demon. And it came right out of the mind of man. And Jesus said, the Father and I are one. And I say unto you: The demon and Satan are one.

            [INAUDIBLE]

 OK -- just one second, OK? And I suggest to you that anybody that does not truly open themselves to God about this truth is deceiving himself. If you choose willfully to believe that demons are free-floating spirits that have nothing whatsoever to do with men without honestly saying to God, if what she is saying is true, I want to know it, you have done yourself a disservice.

            You mentioned a word. I would like to know the definition: cherub.

 And if you look that word up in the reference books, what it means is an imaginary creature, an imaginary creature. And that is pretty much what I was saying: that God imagined a creature, and He called it a cherub. But it is us; it is the human race. We are the creature that God imagined that the Bible calls a cherub.

OK, now we see in a lot of history books and in a lot of religious pictures, they picture a cherub as a chubby baby. Have you ever seen that? That was what we saw on the wall in that restaurant tonight. It was a cherub, OK. But that is the carnal mind’s concept of the cherub. The cherub is humanity, [?the?] manly creature.

            Pastor Sheila?

 Yes, just let us try and get this --

            [INAUDIBLE]

 OK, I appreciate that. I get exhausted jumping up and down.

It is good to say a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Is that a person [?that jumped?] from the carnal mind to the mind of Christ? Or is that the conscious and unconscious mind [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

 No, it is the man who goes between the carnal mind and the mind of Christ, which is everybody who has the mind of Christ. This is a great mystery. The man who does not have the mind of Christ is stable. He is stable in his fallen condition, OK? It is the man who -- in whom the mind of Christ is being formed that is unstable because from second to second, from minute to minute, from problem to problem, from day to day, from conversation to conversation, he can either be manifesting Christ or the carnal mind. And he is unstable as far as God in concerned. The man in whom Christ is not being formed --

I think someone might have misunderstood what I just said, so let me clarify it. He might be a very unstable man, but we are talking about spiritual things. So when James said the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, he is referring to stability or -- a better word than stability is consistency with regard to manifesting or to thinking with the mind of Christ. The double-minded man, the man who has the mind of Christ and the carnal mind, is inconsistent in thinking with the mind of Christ. One minute he is thinking with it, and the next minute he is not.

So what does that mean? It means that no matter how spiritual somebody is or how much you know that they love God -- because they have witnessed to you that they can think with the mind of Christ, that they have the wisdom of God, that they have access to the oracles of God -- do not assume that every word out of their mouth will be Christ before they are in perfection.

And what does that mean? Do you walk around paranoid, not trusting everybody? No. It means that you just have to have an ongoing relationship with God where you are asking Him to reveal it to you if someone, who you have the greatest respect for or the greatest love for, may be manifesting the carnal mind. Why? So you could kill them? So that you could condemn them? No, hopefully so that you can strengthen them and help them and pull them up out of it especially if it is a leader.

And the tendency of the church -- I am sorry to say. It is just human -- it is just our human tendency, because we are carnal, is that when you see a carnal manifestation in a leader is to jump on them and kill them the rest of the way. But that is not what Christ does, OK. If you see a carnal manifestation in anybody, especially in a leader, and you are in your Christ mind, you are going to rebuke that thing. You are going to pray for them, and you are going to drag them back up. So by your reaction to the leader who is being carnal, you know whether you are carnal or whether you are Christ in that instant. Does anybody not know what I am talking about? OK, praise the Lord.

So we are on verse 3. “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” “All things came into existence through the living thought of God, and nothing that came into existence came into existence apart from Him.”

I would like to make one more comment on that. I would just like to try and make it clearer to you that that thought that God had that took form -- it took form and became soul. And we might call him our original ancestor. And everybody is a descendant of our original ancestor. His name was Adam, and when God made him originally, he was good, which means that the mind in him was God and it was righteous.

We do have an original ancestor: God. And that is what this Scripture means: that God the Father is pure Spirit. We are soul, and the soul man came out of God, but we came out of the soul man. It is an interme- -- the soul man, our original ancestor, is in a position of mediator.

Now we all know -- most of us know that that original ancestor fell. He died spiritually; he was separated from God. But now we have a new mediator, a new original ancestor. A new [?order?] man [?who is?] going to stand between us and the Father, which is pure Spirit. And His name is --

            Christ.

 Christ Jesus, the only mediator between God and man.

Verse 4, “In him was the life” -- in that living thought was life -- “and the life was the light of men.”

Now I made some changes on these Alternate Translations. To start with I would like to tell you that Webster’s definition of light is: that which makes vision possible. And I want to suggest to you that the Spirit of God, which was in the man -- remember he was mixed with the clay. It was the Spirit in the man that made spiritual sight available to the man. And when the man died, he lost his spiritual sight.

And except for those who are being awakened from the dead and whom the eyes of the understanding are being opened, everyone in this world is spiritually blind. You cannot see without Christ in your mind. So if the only mind that you have is the carnal mind -- because that is the one that you were born with -- if that is all that you have, you are blind. And you have to get a new mind, which is the light of your person.

You have to get a new mind, which will be your spiritual vision and help you to understand spiritual things, because the carnal mind cannot understand the things of God’s Spirit. That is what the word of God said. And I personally know that it is true.

Brethren, if you want to go to a university in another nation, if you want to go to university in Russia, you may have the intelligence to understand all of the course material, but if you do not understand Russian, how are you going to go to university in Russia? You may or may not have what it takes to understand the things of the Spirit. I am not going to consider that question at this time. But if you do not understand God’s language, there is no way that you are going to understand the things of His Spirit.

And there is only one way that you are going to learn to understand His language, and that is to get His mind inside of you. You have got to get His mind inside of you to understand His language, to understand how He thinks, to understand His ways and to understand all of the glorious truth that He not only has but desires -- He desires to give it to you, but you have got to learn His language. You have got to link up with Him.

A connection between you and Him must be made. And the way this connection is made is that the Spirit of Christ travels from a human being, in which it is presently residing, and it travels into you -- into your mind, and it touches you. And Lord willing that same mind that was in the person who spoke to you in His Spirit will be reproduced in you. Because the Scripture says one can plant, and the other can water, but only God gives the increase. The only one that has the power to cause the mind of Christ to be formed in you is the very Christ Himself. So what do you do? You ask for it. You tell Him you would like it.

So we are working on verse 4, and we find that the word light is speaking about spiritual vision. So we can also say that the Spirit of God was the eye of the man, was the eye of the man. And that is interesting because in some deep studies that we have done recently -- I will just review it for you -- we found out that in the realm of the spirit, the two eyes that we see in the body -- in the physical body of fallen man -- well, let me put it to you this way. The two eyes that we see in the physical body of a fallen man, they are side-by-side. They are divided, and they are separate.

But in the realm of the spirit, the eyes are one lying on top of the other. And it is really only one eye. We found Scriptures that indicate that the eye that is on top is like an eyelid. It is like an eyelid. It is two eyes: one on top of the other. One is superior, and one in subjection.

So the fact that our two eyes are separate and apart in the fallen man is a witness that we look at every day of our life. Every time we look at a human being, it is God saying to you: You are a member of a fallen race. What should have been one has become two. Your spirit of man has separated from the Spirit of God, and therefore you are spiritually dead. And of course this double vision -- we have two eyes. It is double vision. And a sister just asked a question about double-mindedness. This all ties in together.

First our Alternate Translation, “Spirit was in that living thought.” That living thought that came out of God’s mind, it was Spirit. “And the Spirit” -- now remember: The living thought was Spirit, but “the Spirit” -- meaning the Spirit of the Father -- “became the sight of the man-faced creature.” “Spirit was in the living thought, and therefore, that Spirit of God, through the living thought, became the spiritual sight of the man-faced creature.”

Verse 5, “And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Now when we did this message a few days ago, I told you that the Greek word translated comprehend could be translated to take possession of, but I would like to give you a further definition today. Whatever I told you a few days ago, it was correct. We are just going a little deeper today.

Webster says that that Greek word can also mean to control: to take possession of or to control. And I want to suggest to you that in verse 5, the Scripture is saying that the darkness in the earth could not control the righteous mind of Christ.

Now, brethren, we have talked a lot here about reverse inference. If the Scripture says that the darkness could not control the righteous mind of Christ, by reverse inference we must assume -- you see, there are legitimate assumptions. There are illegitimate assumptions and legitimate assumptions. If you make an assumption that is not based on any fact, you are just wasting your time and spinning your wheels, but there are legitimate assumptions. Scientists make them all the time. They do research, and they look at their findings. And they draw conclusions. I guess I should not say assumption; I should say conclusion.

If the Scripture says that the darkness, which is Satan, could not control the Christ, then we must draw the conclusion that the darkness in the earth was trying to control the Christ. Is anybody not following me? Is anybody not following me? Why would the Scripture say that the darkness could not control the righteous mind of Christ if there was not, built into the darkness, a desire to try to control the Christ? We might say, the darkness failed to control the Christ.

I want to suggest to you that built into Satan was a nature, whose very nature it was to try to overtake authority. And I remind you that Satan is the moral impurity in the earth. God put her there. The Scripture clearly states that God created evil. And the reason He created evil was that the Father decided to reveal Himself.

The invisible God desired to be seen. And He will be and is being seen in -- by covering His Spirit over with clay in the physical realm. And His personality is being seen as He contrasts it against unrighteousness. The righteous personality of God is being revealed when He contrasts Himself against the moral impurity in the earth.

So we have an Alternate Translation of verse 5. I have changed it a little bit. And this is what it says, “And the spirit that was in man exposed Satan’s evil nature, but Satan could not dominate him.” The righteous spirit that was in man -- I just said it to you -- exposed Satan’s evil nature. Only I said it the other way. I said God put evil in the creation because by contrasting His righteousness against evil, God’s righteousness was being exposed.

But here in John 1:5, we see it is saying when the Spirit of God entered into the earth or the darkness of the living soul, what it did was reveal the moral impurity named Satan. We are told in other places in the Scripture: Where there is no law, sin is not imputed. Brethren, if righteousness is not present, God is not bringing judgment on sin. You must have an opportunity to choose.

I would like to read it again. Gospel of John 1:4 - 5, “The living thought was Spirit because the Spirit of the Father was in him. And the Spirit of the Father became the sight of the man-faced creature. And Christ exposed Satan’s evil nature, but Satan could not dominate Him.”

Well, the Scripture clearly states that Satan could not dominate righteous Adam. So how did the creation fall? How did the creation fall? What happened to the creation? Well, I would like to review that for you. I would like to review that for you.

Let me start by saying that the creation was made out of earth. And we are told that the earth was filled with darkness, and it was dominated by a moral impurity. But when God caused the mind of Christ to be formed in the early creation, that righteousness dominated the unrighteousness.

So we find that there are two spiritual laws in the creation. We know that Paul talks about the law of sin and debt and the law of life. And we know that in Daniel 8, the ram had two horns. There were two spiritual authorities in the original creation: one greater, one lesser. And at the beginning, God set it up so that the righteous mind of Christ was stronger than and dominating the moral impurity in the creation.

So after God established the creation this way, He did not make it evil -- He did not make it equal. He did not make it 50 percent evil and 50 percent good. He gave the righteous mind of Christ the advantage over the moral impurity. There was no question about it that righteous Adam had Satan under his foot. His foot was on hi- -- on Satan’s neck.

And God withdrew from the creation. The restraining hand of the Father withdrew from the creation. God said to the man: It is time for you to be tested. I have done all that I intend to do for you. And I do not want you to think that I am making God sound weak. God is not weak, but He was not creating a robot. He was creating a thinking, functioning man with self-will and self-determination.

Our natural example could be our children. You can take your 1-year-old or your 2-year-old and stand them up on their feet and say, now, walk. You cannot stand there and move their legs for them. There comes a time when your children must walk by themselves. They must talk by themselves. You can teach them, but you cannot do it for them. You cannot speak for them. And the day comes that they must feed themselves. You can clean up their diapers for a year or two, hopefully not more, but the day comes that they have got to go on that toilet bowl by themselves.

And this was the relationship between God and Adam at the time. He said to him, I have done all that I intend to do for you. Now you have got to start functioning. And the Father withdrew His restraining hand, and He said, all right. That moral impurity is under your feet, but when I withdraw my hand, he is going to try to tempt you to get your foot off of his neck.

And the Scripture says, God said to the man: If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. And that Hebrew word translated die does not mean to cease to exist. It means to die to immortality. God said to the man if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely cease to become immortal. You shall die to your immortality, and you shall become a mortal man, capable of death. To be immortal means to be incapable of death.

So God withdrew his hand, and sin revived. And we find this described in Romans -- I believe it is Romans 7. Sin revived, and he seriously tempted the man.

Now we are told in another place that it was the woman who was deceived and not the man. Now we have had a lot of people bashing women over the centuries saying that Eve brought down Adam and attributing all kinds of evil to her. But I declare to you, brethren, the whole world knows, if they will just stop to think, that it is the one in authority that is responsible. If you are in the army, if you are the president of the country, if you have an elected office, it is the one in authority that bears the responsibility. And I am sorry all you male chauvinists out there, but it was Adam, the man, who had the responsibility to control his wife.

And what happened was that the man had several aspects to him. He had a mind of Christ, which made him the man. He also had a lower nature, which can be likened to the human sex drive. And then he had a moral impurity in his flesh that would tempt him to sin. And the mind of Christ, the rational mind -- just look at human beings today. The rational mind that says, if you do that, you are going to go to jail -- that rational mind that was in the man was supposed to be controlling the lust, which wanted to do whatever it wanted to do. I am giving you a natural example that would put the man in jail. But the man, at the beginning of time, stopped thinking with his rational mind, and he turned himself over to his lust.

We see it in human beings today: lust for drugs, lust for alcohol, lust to steal, lust for anything that will bring destruction into your life. It is a type of what happened to the man at the beginning of time. He had a rational mind that he -- that had the power to say no to his lower nature that was lusting, but he did not say no. He yielded to his lower nature. And at the moment that he fell into agreement with his lower nature, he ceased to be the man, and he became the woman.

And the Scripture says, and the serpent said to the woman -- now I am not going to take any more time on this. I know you really have not heard it much here, but I preached it two or three times in Nigeria. And I am going to get the messages to you as soon as I can. I will take a question if you have it, but I am not going to spend any more -- much more time on this because I have done it on at least -- well, I did do it for you. I did do it on one message for you, back last summer.

So that was how the man fell. And as our famous Ross Perot says, the rest is history. Brethren, it all has to do with your mind. When you are thinking rationally -- let us take our national -- natural example right now. When you are a human being and you are thinking rationally and -- if you are an ex-drug addict and you know that one shot of heroin is going to just catapult you back down to the pits again and your mind is saying to you, I cannot take it once or I am going to wind up down in the hellhole again, but your lust for this heroin is saying, oh, just take it once, it will not hurt you, you can handle it, for so long as your rational mind is in control, you are a man. But I want to tell you -- no insult to anybody; we all have to know what our condition is that at the moment that you yield to that lust, you become spiritually female.

Now if you have a problem in your life, if you can identify with what I am saying, if you are spiritually female because you have been, at some time in the past or are now, subject to a passion or a lust that is destroying you, do not be condemned, but listen to what I have to say. You need a male mind. You have become female if you have become subject to this lust that is now running your life and controlling your life and ruining your life -- does not matter whether it is adultery, whether it is compulsive spending, whether it is alcoholism, whether it is drug addiction, whether it is anger that keeps getting you fired from your job -- it does not matter. Any ungodly behavior that is ruling your life that another part of your mind knows is ungodly but does not have the power to take dominion over -- if that ungodliness is in charge of your life, even a part of the time, your mind is female.

And what you need is a male mind, and there is only one male mind in the universe.  There is only one male mind. Mind is spirit, and there is only one male spirit. And His name is the Father in he- -- the Spirit is the Father, and the Son, which is the actual mind, is Christ.

Now we have some people in this world whose mind is not Christ, but they have been disciplined since a young child, and they are living a reasonable life. Their life is in order. Their life is not out of control. But compared to God, their mind is still female, but they have got their life together, so they do not know that they are lacking something.

But if that female mind that is throughout the whole creation has really risen up and is destroying you, to you it should be obvious that you are lacking a male mind. You need a husband. You need a savior. That is what our savior is. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are the bride of Christ. The church is the bride of Christ.

Every human being, whether you are in a female body or a male body, in comparison to the Lord, you are spiritually female. It has nothing to do with your natural manhood. It has nothing to do with your ability to marry or have children or have a natural wife in this world. We are talking about spiritual things. And man, in relationship to God, is female.

And if your mind is destroying you against your will, you need a husband or you need a savior. You have got to get a new mind. His name is Christ, and when He enters into your mind, He will begin to bring your female mind into submission to His righteousness that you might stop dying through your destructive behavior and live.

So we see that the creation fell despite the fact that verse 5 of chapter 1 of the Book of John says, “And Christ exposed Satan’s evil nature, but Satan could not dominate Christ.” Nevertheless the man fell when he yielded to the passions of his lower nature, when he came into agreement with them.

You see -- I want to make one more comment on it. I do not think I got my point out. The way you think determines whether you are -- whether or not you are spiritually male. The way you think determines your spiritual sex. If you think with the mind of Christ, spiritually you are male. If you think with the carnal mind, spiritually you are female.

And behold: I show you a great mystery. Paul says a woman should not teach a man. Someone with a carnal mind should not be teaching the person that has the mind of Christ. It has nothing to do with your body whatsoever. Spiritual things have nothing to do with your body. They have to do with your mind.

Going on with verse 6 -- now I spent some time on it in the last message. This is very interesting, but the Gospel of John completely ignores the fall. You find verses 1 - 5 speaking about the Christ at the beginning of time, or we might say the immature Christ. And then starting with verse 6, we find that he is speaking about the Christ in the last day. And he completely leaves out that negative experience of the creation known as the fall. It is like a bad dream. All of these thousands of years that the creation has been fallen, as far as God is concerned, is a bad dream.

He is concerned with raising the whole creation from the dead in this hour, and it is for whosoever will. It is for everyone that hears this message and wants it. If you are crying out to God, He will not refuse you.

So we go on to verse 6, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”

Alternate Translation, “There was a company of spiritual men sent from God, whose name was John.” And I spoke about this at the last meeting: that John was just the first of a company of natural men who have what we call the imputed anointing. It is the anointing which is described by the Scripture that says the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. It is typified by re- -- by the -- by -- well, let me leave it that way. It is typified by the imputed anointing.

The gifts of the Spirit -- we see it in the church today. People who are preaching about Christ out of their carnal mind -- remember the carnal mind is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is not all bad. People who do not know Christ are not all bad. They have good and evil in them. And we find natural man preaching about the Christ. And John the Baptist typifies the whole company of men who do this.

And that is why we have this Alternate Translation of verse 6 saying, “There was a company of spiritual men sent from God, whose name was John.” Everyone who does this -- everyone who does what? Everyone who is a natural man who preaches about the Christ is, spiritually speaking, John.

Verse 7, “The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.”

Alternate Translation, “The same came as prophets, witnessing” -- what same? This company of spiritual men. “They came in the office of prophet, and what they did was witness about the Christ, so that all might believe through the Christ.” God is sending a company of men because we are told we will be saved by the foolishness of preaching.

Brethren, if you want to be saved, you have to hear this message. So God has sent preachers to you, because how can you hear without a preacher? You have got to hear the message, and then the Spirit of Christ must make it real to you. But how will you know if you do not hear?

Verse 8, “He was not that Light” -- John the Baptist was not Christ -- “but was sent to bear witness to that Light.”

Alternate Translation, verse 8, “They were not the true Spirit.” This company of men, they are not preaching out of the Spirit of Christ. They are natural men delivering a message, but it is not the very Christ within them preaching the message. “But they were sent to witness about the true Spirit, saying the true Spirit is coming, and He is coming in you.”

There is another company of men. We are not going to be preaching this message out of a carnal understanding, but there is another company of men. There is someone coming after us, whose mind will be Christ. It may be Christ in His immaturity. It may be Christ that is just starting to come up, but this message is going to come forth as a living word.

Now, brethren, when the natural man preaches this message, it is not by a spirit that imparts life. You see, everything is spirit. A natural man could say exactly what the man in whom Christ says. And when the message comes from the natural man, the spirit propelling the words can give you information, but it cannot give you life. What does that mean? It cannot cause the seed of Christ to engraft in [?you?].

But the man who is preaching this message out of an engrafted seed, which is within himself, out of the very Christ, which is within himself -- that man, with the very same message, can impart the mind of Christ to you. It is not the intellectual message. It is the spirit. It is the spirit that preaches the message. Everybody understand that? It is essential.

And in the same manner, I can say to you: Two people can say the same thing. No- -- I am not talking about Scripture now. One person can have an evil motive, and another person will not have an evil motive, saying the same exact words. We must learn to recognize what spirit is speaking because the spirit of the world goes into our heart and produces what? Death. And the Spirit of Christ goes into our heart --

            Life.

 -- and produces life. So Paul said: After this we know no man anymore by the flesh, but we know the man by what spirit he is speaking or by what spirit is generating his speech.

Verse 9 -- well, let me read 8 -- verse 8 together with it, “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness to that Light, which Light was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” So there is a company of men -- they are still in the earth day -- that are not of the true Spirit. They have an imputed anointing, but they were sent to witness about the true Spirit: that the Christ was the true Spirit of the many-membered man who is appearing in this world system.

Brethren, if there is a true Spirit, there must be a --

            False.

 -- a false spirit. Brethren, you cannot be alive if you do not have a spirit. You cannot be walkin- -- well, you are not alive. I should not say that. You cannot have existence. You are only alive when the life of God is sustained in you. You cannot have existence without a spirit because the spirit is your mind. You cannot have an ex- -- have existence without a spirit. Your spirit is therefore either the true Spirit, or your spirit is the false spirit.

Now do not anyone hear what I am hearing and get -- mistranslate what I am saying that someone is good and someone else is bad. The whole human race has the false spirit with the exception of the man Jesus of Nazareth. That is why we are a lie. This whole humanity, this whole world that we live in with all of its torment and its hellishness, this is not God’s creation. It is a lie. If you believe this is God’s creation, you have believed a lie. This is not the truth.

So the mind of Christ, the true Spirit, is the Spirit that gives spiritual sight to this whole many-membered man coming into the world. And there is a company of fallen men, whose mind is carnal, preaching this exciting message: Get ready because the mind that is going to take authority over your carnal mind and crush it and deliver you out of the death of this world system and impart the true life to you, which is peace and contentment and joy in the Holy Ghost, is coming. That mind that is going to give you life, that is going to give you victory over every compulsion, that is going to give you victory over every destruction in your mind: It is coming.

And this message is being preached by men that do not have that mind. Is that incredible? I find that incredible. That is incredible. And why would God do that? Why would he give this message to a group of men who do not have that mind? Because there is nobody that has the mind. There is nobody around that has the mind -- the full mind -- of Christ.

We do not have the mind of Christ. We have access to the mind of Christ. I pray frequently: Father, what is Your mind on this issue? And when the Lord chooses to bless me, He will put His thoughts in my mind. And I know how to deal with that problem with the mind of Christ. But I must ask for it. My automatic reaction is not Christ. My automatic reaction is the carnal mind because I am still fallen.

And we can call it down and take that counsel and that wisdom and cover over our carnal thoughts with it. But it is only ours when we ask for it because our nature, in this hour, is still fallen. Your automatic reaction -- unless you are very mature in Christ or at least, you have some maturity in Christ -- you should assume that your automatic reaction to anything and everything that happens to you is your carnal mind.

Every reaction you have, every thought you have, every answer to every problem that you have, you should assume that it is your carnal mind and go before the Father and ask for His wisdom, ask for His mind, ask for His counsel. And then if it turns out that your first reaction was Christ, well, praise the Lord. But for your own safety, you should assume that every immediate reaction was not Christ.

And you should know -- I cannot pound this home hard enough -- if you do not ask for the mind of Christ specifically in every instance, on every issue -- He will not give it to you unless you ask for it. He wants you to ask for it in every circumstance. Why? Because to give you His mind in every circumstance requires a warfare, and we see that demonstrated in the Book of Daniel.

Daniel prayed, and it took the angel 21 days to answer him. And if you do not ask for the mind of Christ, the warfare is not even initiated. It does not even begin. You have to ask when you are dealing with your carnal mind.

Now do not be deceived. Your carnal mind has some wisdom. There is lots of worldly wisdom in the carnal mind. There are lots of people that do not know Christ who know how to get their needs met, who are living in this world victoriously. But you want more than that. You want to answer to your problem that is going to be -- as far as God is concerned -- without sin. You want the righteousness of His mind if you intend to be raised from the dead.

So we have verses 8 and 9, Alternate Translation, “They were not the true Spirit but were sent to witness about the true Spirit that He was the true Spirit of the many-membered man who was appearing in this world system.” And let me remind you that the true Spirit will expose the sins of the carnal mind.

Verse 10, “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.”

Alternate Translation, “The world system came into existence through the living word, and even though He was in the system, it did not engage in an intimate relationship with Him.”

Verse 11, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

Alternate Translation, “And he desired that their minds should be Christ” -- whose mind? Our mind. He wants it to be Christ -- “but they did not submit themselves to His mind.” Because, brethren, to have the mind of Christ, your carnal mind must lay down and die. You cannot have two minds. At any given moment, only one mind is thinking through you. And if you truly want the mind of Christ, you must give up the thoughts of your carnal mind.

And that is why the world did not submit to His mind: because they want to be in control of their own life. And to receive the mind of Christ, we must relinquish, we must give up control of our own life. And most of us, if not all of us, brethren, cannot do it. We are not capable of giving up control of our own life, so we see a demonstration of what the Lord will do for us in the Book of Genesis, where we see Jacob struggling with the angel. And the angel has to do what to him?

            [INAUDIBLE] wrestled him [INAUDIBLE]

 Yeah, he cripples him. The angel crippled Jacob’s leg.

            Thigh.

 Thigh -- well, the thigh is the symbol of our reproductive parts. And our reproductive parts of the fallen man are whom?

            [INAUDIBLE]

 The carnal mind -- Satan and the carnal mind. So the angel crippled Jacob’s carnal mind. Brethren, man is not capable of laying down and dying. We just do not do it. We talk a good game. We hear the message. We believe it. We want to do it. That sin that is bringing destruction into our life, we hate it. We know that we are doing it, and we cannot seem to stop doing it.

So Christ has to come and cripple it. He has to cripple our carnal mind, cripple our will, cripple our control. And then when He cripples us, He gives us Himself. He cripples death in us, and He gives us His life, but our very nature fights against Him. Flashlights are -- now let us try this on. OK.

So I put verses 10 and 11 together. I combined them. Verses 10 and 11, John 1, “The world system came into existence through the living word. And even though He was within them, desiring to give them the mind of Christ, they did not engage in an intimate relationship with Him or submit themselves to His mind.”

“The world system came into existence through the living word. And even though He was within them” -- within the individual members of His world system -- “and desiring to give them the mind of Christ, they did not” -- or they would not -- “engage in an intimate relationship with Him” -- with who? The living word, [?very?] Christ -- “nor would they submit themselves to His mind.”

Verse 12, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to those that believe in his name.”

Alternate Translation, “But as many as joined themselves to His mind” -- that is the believing Him: joining to His mind. When you believe Him, you are joined to His mind. “But as many as joined themselves to His mind, He gave authority over their carnal minds so that they could become the true offspring of God.”

Brethren, you are never going to overtake the destruction in your carnal mind. You might do it by willpower for a season, but you can only hold that flood back for so long. You have got to get Christ in your mind because He is the wall that is going to hold back the flood -- not only hold it back but dry it up. You have got to get a new mind. It is the only answer for you: You have got to get a new mind.

Verse 13 goes with verse 12. I will read them together. “But so many as receive him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which men were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of men, but of God.”

“But as many as joined themselves to His mind, He gave authority over their carnal minds so that they could become the true offspring of God. Which men were not born into this world because of the reproductive force of this world system.” That means because a man and a woman came together and they just happened to have a baby, that is the way it happens in this world. “Nor were they born into this world because the carnal mind or the spiritual force of this world desired to incarnate. Nor did they come into this world because a man desired” -- a physical man desired -- “to have a child. But these came into the world” -- these true offspring came into the world -- “because God called them forth.”

And, of course, let me make this clear to you that everybody starts out being a carnal man. Everybody in this world -- OK, I should not say everybody. The majority of people in this world have come into existence for one of these three reasons. Either a man and a woman just laid together, and a baby was born. Or the spiritual source of this creation desired to incarnate. Or some human man somewhere deliberately set out to lie with a woman to give her a baby because he wanted children.

Most people in the world have come into existence for one of those three reasons. But what this Scripture is saying, that despite all those reasons for us being here, the Spirit of God is coming forth to the bodies, to the human beings already existing, and birthing a new mind in them. And therefore you shall be in this world because you came out of God. That is what this Scripture is saying.

Verse 14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” Now that was a difficult verse. We spent some time on it last Sunday.

The Alternate Translation is, “And the living thought, which God spoke, was made into a personality and liven in one of the fallen human bodies, which are generated by this world system. But we saw His mind” -- that is the apostle speaking. You see, they looked at His body, and it looked like everybody else, but in the spirit of their mind, they saw His mind. When they looked at Him physically, He looked like everybody else, but they recognized that His mind was different than everybody else’s mind. That is what that Scripture means.

And they saw that it was a mind that could only possibly come from the Father. No human being -- this mind was s- -- what He was thinking, what He was saying: It was so great that no fallen human being could possibly be making up these things. It was a mind that could only come from God.

Have you ever heard something like that? Spiritual truths that are so incredible that you say, what man could make this up? Is that not what we are hearing? What man could possibly make up this story that is being preached? It must come from God.

And that mind, in the man Jesus of Nazareth, it was so completely expressed through His speech that every word He spoke revealed the nature of the Father. The Scripture says in another place there was no darkness in Him. There was no shadow of turning in Him. There was no thought or no word or no deed in the man Jesus of Nazareth that came out of His carnal mind.

So we see in the church today, a company of men in whom the mind of Christ is beginning to be formed. But they are not in full stature, which means that there is a shadow of turning. There is darkness that is still in them. Their carnal mind still is capable of speaking through them. Yet they have the mind of Christ, so we will say it is an immature mind of Christ that is not fully born.

So we see a group of men with an imputed anointing, where the mind of Christ is not being formed in them at all, but they have the gifts of the calling of God. And then we see a company of men with the imparted anointing. The mind of Christ is being formed in them, but it is not completely born in them. We will call it an immature imparted anointing. And then we have the mature imparted anointing or the fully born mind of Christ -- the man who has the fully born mind of Christ. And that man is God.

Just as I can say to you or as the Scripture says, and the God had a living thought, and that living thought was God, I can say to you: The man whose mind is completely, fully born into Christ is a Son of God. Because Christ is the Son of God; therefore the man who is in that mind dominates is a Son of God. The God brought forth a thought. And when that God is completely ruling your mind and your life, you shall be a Son of God.

Everybody OK on that? A lot of people stumble on that. They get all upset, and they start thinking that people that preach this is saying that fallen, murderous, reprobate man is going to be a Son of God. No, when the mind of Christ comes into your mind and kills your fallen, reprobate, destructive mind and becomes your mind and when that mind that was in the man Jesus of Nazareth is in you, is fully born in you and has totally overtaken your fallen, reprobate mind, you shall be a Son of God. Why? Because the mind which is God shall be completely dominating you. You have a question?

            Why is it so hard for men who are anointed, as you say --

 [INAUDIBLE]

 Why is so hard for men who are anointed, as you say -- why is it so hard for [?them to understand this?] if they are teaching and preaching to a congregation or to people all over the world?

 Well, the Scripture says in another place, we see through a glass darkly. All information -- the men that preach and teach, they do not have all the truth. They do not have all the knowledge or understanding, and this seems to be one area in which they need some more information. But it is imperfect -- the church is imperfect in this hour.

But, you see, Christ is not imperfect. You see a lot of people in this hour being hurt by ministers, by churches. But God is not imperfect. It is just that man is imperfect, and there is a joining coming between the perfection of God and the imperfection of man. And when that joining is complete, the imperfection of man will be wiped out, and he will be perfect. But in this hour, the church is imperfect.

The ministry is imperfect, and therefore we must all be very careful to make sure that we do not idolize any minister. No matter how knowledgeable they seem to [?have?], remember that Christ is the Son of God. OK, because if you direct all of your prayers towards Christ, when the man that you are looking towards starts to fail, that Spirit that you are praying to will take you to a safe place. Do you know what I am saying? He will take you to another man. But if you are worshipping the man and the man starts to go bad, you are going to fall down with him. So you must remember to worship God. You can respect the teacher, but God is the God, OK?

Verse 14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” And I was very blessed by what the Lord revealed about that phrase, “full of grace and truth.” It had never sat right with me up until then.

So our Alternate Translation is as follows, “And the living thought, which God spoke, was made into a personality. And He lived in one of the fallen human bodies, which are generated by this world system, but we saw His mind: a mind that could only come from the Father God. And that mind was so completely expressed through His speech” -- that is the word that mean- -- that is translated grace -- “was so completely expressed through His speech that every word that He spoke revealed the true nature of the Father.” That is what grace and truth means: that His speech revealed the true nature of the Father.

Verse 15, “John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.”

Verse 15, Alternate Translation, “John witnessed to the Christ and preached about Him, saying, this is the one that I told you about, who existed before I was born in the realm of the spirit. And this is the one who has the imparted anointing or a mind which is fully born as Christ.”

Verse 16, “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” This is another mysterious verse. I never knew what that meant, “grace for grace,” but let me remind you that we have all received of his fullness. We are incomplete.

The man Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whose mind was Christ, was complete. And His completed, glorified life -- Lord willing -- is dwelling in you. And therefore you are partaking of His completion. And because He is dwelling in you, He is doing the same thing in you that was done in the man Jesus of Nazareth. He is bringing forth the mind of Christ that is going to kill the death of your carnal mind and give life to you.

So that is how we are partaking of His fullness or of His completion. And this phrase, “grace for grace,” we found out is speaking about the two covenants. As I said we went into this in detail last Sunday. I will have the messages for you shortly, Lord willing.

Our Alternate Translation of verse 16 is, “And we have all received of His completeness.” And what is His completeness? “It is the grace of the new covenant in addition to all we can say on top of the grace of the old covenant.” Jesus Christ of Nazareth had the double portion: the old covenant plus the new covenant, the imputed anointing plus the imparted anointing.

And we see that verses 16 and 17 flow together. I will read you Verses 16 and 17. “And of his fulness have we all received, and grace for grace,” meaning we have received of his fullness plus both covenants. “For the law was given by Moses” -- because the first covenant was given by Moses, but the true nature of God -- “came by Jesus Christ.”

What does that mean? It means, brethren, that you need both covenants. You need grace for grace; you need both covenants. Because Moses, all he can give you is the law. But the true nature of the Father only comes with Jesus Christ. And I am not talking about the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the seed, which is sent so that Christ can begin to be formed in you through the engrafted word. The Holy Ghost is not the end of it. You got to get out of Pentecost. You are going to die in Pentecost if you do not go on.

Alternate Translation, verses 16 and 17, “And we all received of His completeness, which” -- and what is His completeness? His completeness “is the grace of the new covenant on top of the grace of the old covenant, because the grace which is of the law” -- old covenant -- “was given by Moses, but the true nature of God was revealed through Jesus Christ.”

Verse 18, “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”

Alternate Translation, “No one has seen the mind of Christ, the only Son of His kind, the one in whom the Father dwells, but that man Jesus of Nazareth, whose mind was Christ. He explains Him.” When you look at Jesus of Nazareth, you can fully see an expression of the mind of Christ. When you look at the man Jesus of Nazareth, you see a man whose life is in the order that it is in, a man who has the power that He has because His mind is Christ.

Jesus had power over His whole life -- His own life. He had power over other men’s lives. He had power over the elements. He walked on the water. Why? Because His mind was Christ. Why can you not do it? Because your mind is carnal.

He had a body just like you did. He was born of a woman just like you were, but He had a different mind than you have. How do I know you cannot do it? Neither can I. We cannot do it! All these Christians running around, saying that they have arrived -- brethren, if you are in full stature, you would be walking on the water. Better put a bathing suit on and learn how to swim because I expect you to go down.

Now I would like to point out to you, in case you have noticed it yourself -- well, I guess I did not write it down. Where did I put [?it at?]? OK, verse 14 -- I said to you the -- well, let me read it to you for a minute. Verse 14 says, “and we beheld his glory.” And I translated it that the apostles saw His mind. And now in verse 18, we read, "no one has seen the mind of Christ." No one has seen God at any point. And the reason I am saying, no one has seen the mind of Christ, is that in the Greek, it does not say the God. If it said the God, we would know he was speaking about Jehovah, but it says in the Greek, God, meaning Christ. No one has seen Christ, the only begotten Son.

Now this is a great mystery. We go into this on our series, “The Mind of Christ.” Yes, Jesus of Nazareth in His resurrected form is Christ, OK. But the man Jesus of Nazareth, before the crucifixion, was just that: the man Jesus of Nazareth. He was a man just like you and me, but He had a mind, which was Christ. And the mind was separate from the man.

When He was crucified and raised from the dead -- when the Father raised Him from the dead, He completely combined the mind and the man. There was no more separation. And Jesus of Nazareth, who was the Christ, became our Lord Jesus Christ, a glorified Spirit.

He no longer had a physical body like we have. He had the ability to take the form of a physical body, but He was no longer restricted to one identity. He could appear as a ball of light as He did to Paul, or He could take the form of a man. But for the time that He was a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, the man who was born of Mary, the Christ was the mind that was in Him.

If you can hear me, Lord, help them to understand. The Son of God is a mind. The Spirit of the Father, male, joins with the spirit of a man, female, and produces an offspring, which is a -- ?

            [?Mind?].

 -- a mind. Now, brethren, especially when you witness to the Jews, you have got to know this because they freak out. How can a spirit have a human son? You got to tell them that the Son of God is a mind. And the mind that is in the man is the spirit of the man.

And there is a Scripture -- we have it on the Christ series. Christ is the Son of the living God. Now when that mind completely swallows up the human body, then that human being, who existed with a human identity, becomes Christ. He is swallowed up into Christ. His human identity is swallowed up into Christ.

So we see in verse 18, it says, “No man hath seen Christ at any time.” The only begotten Son Christ, the only begotten Son of God: no man has ever seen it. But the man Jesus of Nazareth explains Him or declares Him. When you look at the man Jesus of Nazareth, you see the mind of God. You see what it did to this man, and you know, as we are told in verse 14, that we beheld His mind, a mind that could only come from the Father.

And it is two different Greek words in verse 14 and in verse 18. The Greek word in verse 14 that says, we beheld Him, it is a word that specifically means spiritual sight, spiritual sight. We were talking about that tonight. You could only see Christ with spiritual sight. You have to discern Him. You have to discern Him. You cannot recognize Christ with your carnal mind. So the apostles beheld Him. They discerned His Spirit.

But in verse 18, it says, “No man hath seen.” And that Greek word translated seen, it is talking about physical sight. No carnal mind has ever seen the Christ, because he is blind! The Christ is a Spirit. The carnal mind cannot see Him.

But when that mind is being revealed through a man, when that man is a perfect man, when there is no darkness in Him, when there is no thought of sin in Him, when there is no word of sin spoken through Him and no sinful behavior, that man declares or reveals to carnal man the nature of Christ. So the apostles spiritually discerned Him, but no natural man has ever seen Him before Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

So when the Sons of God appear, brethren, one of our major functions will be to reveal Christ to carnally minded people who cannot discern Him. Because He is in the earth today. Christ is in the earth today. He is not fully born, but He is there, so Christ is in the earth today. The imparted anointing is in the cr- -- in -- is in the earth today. Christ is manifesting today, and He is manifesting in a mature measure but not in a fully born measure, to the best of my knowledge.

And we are going to take some time to do Genesis 1, the first -- if the Lord lets us, the first 13 verses. And we will see it witnessed in those Scriptures that Christ is appearing today, that in the church today, there is a company of men with an imputed anointing and a company of men with an immature imparted anointing. It is imparted. It is the mind of Christ, but there is some darkness in it.

And we are waiting for the fruit-bearing tree, whose seed is within itself, which is the fully born, fully mature Christ in which there is no shadow [?of time?]. But Christ is here, and He is manifesting. And if you have spiritual sight, if you can behold Him, you can get from that tree. And there is life in that tree. There is life in it; there is healing in it. There is deliverance in it from every bondage and from every trouble if you can behold Him. You got to lay hold of Him.

And I am -- I remember when we did this Scripture on Sunday night in verse 12, “But as many as received him, to them he gave power” -- the Greek word is saying, but as many as lay hold of Him, to them he gave power to overcome their own carnal minds and become the true offspring of God.

Because right now we are the false offspring of God. And how could we be the false offspring of God? Because the mother, which generated us, is out of God. Where everything is out of His life, everything is out of His substance, but we are the wrong offspring. God’s wife has had an illegitimate child. And that is why we are bastards, and that is why we need to be adopted.

If we were not bastards, we would not need to be adopted. And the Scripture says God only chastens His sons. He does not chasten you if you are a bastard. So you will be corrected from the moment that the Son of God, which is the mind of Christ, begins to be formed in you. How will you be chastened? Your thinking will be corrected. When you get a new mind, which is Christ, He will begin to oppose the ungodly thoughts in your mind, which are killing you.

11/26/14 Transcribed by VerbalFusion

12/04/14 1^st Edit CAS/BP