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Please note that an explanation of the spiritual warfare which occurred while this message was being preached is explained in its own Message #286, “The Spiritual Root of Doctrinal Disputes.”
“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. More to be desired are they than gold! Yea than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
“The statues of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. More to be desired are they than gold! Yea than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold! Yeah than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
“I saw the Lord! I saw the Lord! He is high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. He is high and lifted up, and his train fills the temple. The angels cried, holy! The angels cried, holy! The angels cried, holy is the Lord!”
“We see the Lord! We see the Lord! And his face shines forth as a light in the temple, and his face shines forth as a light in the temple. The seraphs cry, worthy! The seraphs cry, worthy! The seraphs cry, worthy is the Lord!”
“We hear the Lord! We hear the Lord! And his word issues forth and resounds through the temple, and his word issues forth and resounds through the temple. The elders cry, amen! The elders cry, amen! The elders cry, amen, it is so!”
“We bless the Lord. We bless the Lord. And as incense goes up, so our prayers fill the temple, and as incense goes up, so our prayers fill the temple. The people cry, glory! The people cry, glory! The people cry, glory to the Lord!”
“With a voice of [?singing?] declare ye this, and let it be heard, alleluia. Declare ye this. Declare, and let it be heard, alleluia. O be joyful in God, all ye lands. O sing praises to the honor of his name. Make his praise to be glorious. With a voice of singing, declare ye this, and let it be heard, alleluia. Declare ye this. Declare, and let it be heard, alleluia.”
[INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
“My soul doth magnify the Lord. My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior. For he that is mighty has done great things, and holy is his name. My soul doth magnify the Lord. My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior. For he that is mighty has done great things, and holy is his name.”
“Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Oh, Lord, we magnify your name. Oh, Lord, we praise your name. Prince of peace, mighty God, oh, Lord, our God almighty.”
“Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Oh, Lord, we magnify your name. Oh, Lord, we praise your name. Prince of peace, mighty God, oh, Lord, our God almighty.”
June, could you hold it just one minute longer? This speaker needs to --
“Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. Thou are the potter; I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting yielded and still.”
“Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. Search me and try me, master, today. Whiter than snow, Lord, wash me just now, as in thy presence, humbly, I bow.”
“Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. Wounded and weary, help me, I pray. Power, all power, surely is thine. Touch me and heal me, savior divine.”
“Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. Hold o’er my being absolute sway. Fill with thy Spirit till all shall see Christ only, always, living in me.”
“In his time, in his time. He makes all things beautiful in his time. Lord, please show us every day, as you are teaching us your way, that you do just what you say in your time.”
“In your time, in your time, you make all things beautiful in your time. Lord, my life to you I bring. May each song I have to sing be to you a lovely thing, in your time.”
“In his time, in his time. He makes all things beautiful in his time. Lord, please show us every day, as you are teaching us your way, that you do just what you say in your time.”
“Jesus, born of a virgin, God of the highest, prince of peace. Jesus, lion of Judah, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Chief cornerstone, light of the gentiles, sweet Rose of Sharon, bright morning star. Messiah, Shema [?of?] Israel, [INAUDIBLE] [?father?], our soon coming king. Jesus, name above all names, beautiful savior, bearing the Christ mind. Emmanuel, God is with us. Blessed redeemer, living word.”
Praise the Lord. We do not have any amplification today, so if you cannot hear me, please wave at me. I -- at the last couple of meetings, there were a lot of questions that were not answered, and the Lord only let me research one of them, the question about Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, as in the context in which it is referred to in John, the Gospel of John. I think it is Chapter 3, so I did review the message on which I taught that, and I am going to make some brief comments on it tonight. And then the Lord has given me an interesting study with regard to Judas’ betrayal of our Lord with some interesting comments on it, and we will take it from there.
But when the Lord gives me a message for you, there is always a reason for it. Either somebody here needs to hear that, or it is a prophetic message. Even when I study at home, some people have asked me how I choose the topics for my messages. I do not choose the topics for my messages; I just do what the Lord tells me to do. So please forgive me if you have asked me questions and I have not had time to study for the answers. We should all want what the Lord has for us. And before I start it, I would like to pla- -- pray for Nigeria. I understand that you are having some political problems here, and I just felt in my heart to offer up a prayer.
So in the name of Jesus, we just bless this nation, oh, God, and we rebuke every power and principality, every force, every imagination, every demon, Satan himself, that would lift his head up against the perfect will of God for this nation. We rebuke you. We break the power of civil war and conflict, and we just utterly condemn you in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray for peace, Father, and we pray for the reconciling power of your Son to come upon this nation with great strength.
Lord, we know that there are heathens in this land, and we know that your purposes sometimes transcend our understanding, so we pray, nevertheless, Lord, that your will be done whatever it may be. And we commit ourselves unto you, Father, and your people commit yourselves -- themselves unto you, believing that no matter what you permit to come across this nation and upon this nation, that the faithful will be safely held in the palm of your hand and protected under your wings. And we thank you for that, Father, that you are able to keep your people no matter what the circumstance. In the name of Jesus, amen.
The Gospel of John, brethren, Chapter 3. For those of you who would like to hear these comments in more depth, I made them in the series called “Jesus in the Book of John.” It is Part 2. I do not think -- I will have to mail you the recent messages. You do not have them, but Sister Margaret [SP] has them.
Verse 14, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Now this seems -- always seemed to me very strange to be injected at this place. In the prior verses, Jesus is speaking about the ascension. Verse 13, the very prior verse, says, “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”
Well, this is -- most people think that this verse is referring to Moses’ formation of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, which was offered up as a -- which was raised up as an offering for sin. G- -- judgment was falling upon the Israelites. Men were being killed, and Moses told Aaron to fashion this serpent quickly, that the murder of the sons of Israel should cease. And we are told that even though this brazen serpent was fashioned as rapidly as possible, by the time it was lifted up by Moses, thousands of the sons of Israel had been slain by the wrath of God. So we see that this Scripture is used -- let me just put this on pause. So we see this Scripture being used to support the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth had to be crucified as the ultimate expression or fulfillment of the animal sacrifices which we see being offered up by the Levitical priesthood.
This question or m- -- the request that I comment on this verse was made in direct response to my comment that I do not believe that the physical crucifixion of the body of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was the ultimate fulfillment of the spiritual reality which is b- -- upon which the Levitical law was based. In other words, the teaching in the church is under the Levitical law, we offer up animals, bulls and goats, the blood of which cleanses Israel from sin. But in the New Covenant, we need the fallen blood, the red blood that flows in -- flowed in the veins of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, to be the ultimate sacrifice, and that because he was without sin, his sinless blood paid the penalty or satisfied the bloodlust of Jehovah, who, as pagan and demon gods required the shedding of blood for no particular good purpose other than they felt satisfied or he -- Jehovah, in this instant, would feel satisfied now that blood was shed, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the blood of his Son for the blood of his Son. This is the teaching in the church, and I declare unto that this is not the reason that Jesus of Nazareth’s physical body was crucified. I will also declare to you that the blood that flowed through the veins of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, is not the blood that cleanses us from sin, but it is his spiritual blood which cleanses us from sin. It is not the fallen blood which was in the veins of a physical man who was born of a fallen woman.
Brethren, my position is this. You can disagree with me. That is fine, as usual. This is my position. The man, Jesus of Nazareth, was born of a woman, a fallen woman. He inherited all of the fallen qualities of that woman. He inherited a fallen body, and he inherited a carnal mind, and he inherited all of the curses which came down on his mother’s line as well as the blessings. His mother came from a lineage of priests, but nevertheless fallen. What Jesus of Nazareth had that men do not have today is that he was born with the seed of the Father already operating or vibrating in a union with his human spirit. C- -- the mind of Christ was formed or beginning to be formed in the infant, baby boy, Jesus.
So we see, therefore, that Mary is the mother of the infant, baby boy, Jesus, but Mary is not the mother of God, you see. After Jesus had ascended unto full stature, when his brethren came to him and said thy mother is without, he said, who is my mother, and who is my brother? Well, why did he change his mind from the time that his mother went looking for him when he was visiting with the rabbis in the temple? His mother said we were looking for you. He never denied Mary’s authority over him at that time, but he did deny that she was his mother after he had ascended to full stature. So we see, once Jesus had become the Son of God, he no longer claimed Mary as his mother, but before his ascension unto perfection or until full stature as we know it, he did not object to her exercising a motherly authority over him. And I suggest to you that, when she went to collect him at the temple, despite his answer to her, do not you know I would be about my Father’s business, he went with her and his father. He returned with them. He submitted to them.
So what I am suggesting to you is that it is not -- is that the blood which was in the veins of the man, Jesus, was fallen blood. The body was a fallen body, and the blood was fallen blood. We know that he was born as a man which was flesh and blood, but after his resurrection, he was flesh and bones. There was no fallen blood, bones typifying spirit. He returned to a condition of soul and spirit. The creation at the beginning of time was soul and spirit or earth and spirit. It is just fallen man which has the w- -- actually, it is blue blood that flows in our veins. It turns red when it contacts oxygen. It was not the blood in the man Jesus’ veins that is saving you; it is his spiritual blood. It his spiritual life, the flesh and bones of the resurrected, ascended Christ, who poured out of his Spirit on the day of Pentecost and has rained upon your heart and is now joining to your spirit and is in fact the blood of the lamb which was slain that is now painted on the doorpost of your heart, if he is in there. He has to get in there.
That is why many mock Christianity. They say it is 2,000 years since the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. Where is the promise of his coming? Brethren, it is taking all of this time, 2,000 years so far, for the power of the resurrection of Jesus, who was Christ, to go up into heaven, do whatever needed to be done in heaven, come down back out of heaven and paint itself on the doorpost of men’s hearts and reproduce its life inside the hearts of men so that the Christ, the Son of the living God, who overcame the carnal mind that the man, Jesus, was born with, overturned that whole fallen personality, turned his world upside-down, and therefore the whole man, Jesus, could then call himself Jesus the Christ, gave -- giving him dominion over Satan and catching him up to a condition where he could legitimately call himself the Son of man and the son of God. That very same work, he wants to and is in fact doing in you and in me. So we see that it is his spiritual blood, and the spiritual blood is spirit. It is his bones that is coming to us, brethren, his resurrected bones. If you want to call it blood, you could call it blood. That is all right as long as you know it is not the red blood that went streaming down his physical body as he was crucified on the cross.
So just let me make it clear to you. My position is that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, first of all so that -- he was physically crucified so that men would believe. He was spiritually crucified, meaning his Christ mind, which was sinless, was joined to his carnal mind that he was born with, which he inherited from Mary, which was so bound up by his sinless Christ mind that that carnal mind could not sin, but it was still functioning, would -- could be likened to having a leg which does not work. It could be likened to having an appendix which has no particular known medical function. Jesus’ carnal mind was not functioning because his Christ mind had paralyzed it, and at the time of the crucifixion, while he hung on the cross in the natural, in the spiritual, the two minds were joined, the Christ mind, which was sustaining the flesh of the man, Jesus, plus the carnal mind which he was born with, who was now -- or which was no paralyzed and inoperable as a result of the spirit of holiness which was being exercising by the Christ mind which was in Jesus of Nazareth. Those two minds were joined, and of the two minds, of the twain -- of the two minds, Jesus made one new man, the beginning of the creation of God.
That is the reason he was crucified, so that the two minds could be joined and he would be the first cell of the creation of God and that that cell, that life which could have lived forever in this world system, was crucified. He did not have to die, but he died be- -- and he gave up his life willingly. He gave up his soul life willingly. You look that word up in your Strong's Concordance, he gave up his life, the Greek word clearly indicates his soul life as Jesus of Nazareth. He did not die spiritually on the cross. That is another whole story. Someone wrote a book once. I do not know whether it has reached here in Nigeria or not, trying to prove that Jesus died spiritually on the cross. That is not true. If he died spiritually on the cross, how would he have been raised from the dead? It was the Spirit of the Father, which was the Spirit of the man, Jesus, which raised him from the dead after his body died and his soul died.
So we see that the purpose for the crucifixion of the man, Jesus, was so that the two minds could be joined so that he could be raised from the dead by the Father in the form of the Spirit of Christ. If that Spirit which raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, it shall quicken your mortal body. The Spirit which was in the man, Jesus, raised the whole man from the dead, you see, and he did not raise the man, Jesus, back to the condition that he was in at the time of the crucifixion; he raised him to a higher place. And what is that higher place? He raised his body from the dead as well as his carnal mind, or, well, it would not be his carnal mind. The carnal mind was destroyed. He raised his body, his physical body, from the dead as well as his spirit and as well as giving life to his soul, and the way that he raised his body from the dead was to transmute the matter that that body was made out of. His physical body was, scripturally speaking, beaten to dust or broken down to its basic atoms and reformed into the spiritual material which -- of which Jesus’ glorified body consisted and, to this day, consists. So we see he was raised from the dead in a higher form.
So the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished at least these two things: His two minds were joined permanently and irreversibly. He became the first cell of the creation of God, the first man to truly be formed in the image of the Father. Despite everything you have heard preached in the church, you are not in the image of the Father. We are in the likeness of the Father. The Father is made of spirit. We are made of spirit, but the image of the Father is not in us, brethren. The image of the devil is in us, and that is why we are dead and down here in Hell, and that is why we need to be adopted, and that is why we need a savior. It is time to get real, OK.
So, number one, the purpose of the crucifixion was to join the two minds permanently. That is the victory which swallowed up death, the victory of Christ swallowing up the death of the carnal mind and swallowing up the image, this physical image, which is of Satan. So we see the image that was in the carnal mind was broken apart, and the image of Satan, which was in this flesh, was beaten to pieces, and all of the atoms were reformed into Jesus’ glorified body, and Jesus was caught up to a higher place than he was in the days of his flesh. He became glorified. He entered into the third stage of the resurrection. He became one with the Father. In the days of his flesh, he said, the Father and I are one, but the Father is greater than I. In his glorified condition, the Father is no longer greater than the man, Jesus. Why? Because they are flowed together like a river flows into an ocean. How can you tell the difference? How can you tell which water is of the river and which water is of the ocean? You see, God in the flesh will always be weaker or lesser than God which is 100 percent Spirit because it is the flesh which is weak. It is the flesh that that spirit which is complete is dwelling in that makes the God in the flesh weaker or lesser in authority than God which is pure Spirit. There is an evolution of the godhead. Jesus of Nazareth was Christ. He was the Son of God, but he himself said the Father was greater than he, OK.
So we now see -- also, the second reason for the crucifixion was that, in his glorified form, Jesus is now able to pour out upon all of humanity and save all of us almost simultaneously. It is not -- it is taking 2,000 years so far, but if you stop to think how many thousands of years mankind was in a fallen condition before it produced the seed which is Christ, you would realize that 2,000 years is a very quick work for the Lord to be reproducing himself to a point where he is about to pour out upon all flesh. He has just begun. What we see happening in the earth today is just the beginning. He is going to take all of humanity, I believe, within the next 1,500 years, which will mean from the time of Nazareth was crucified, raised from the dead and ascended and fell into the ground as a corn of wheat, as a seed, it is going to take f- -- 3,500 years. The Scripture says three and a half years, but we know it cannot be three n- -- and -- three and half natural years because they passed a long time ago. I suggest to you 3,500 years for all of humanity to come into a place of resurrection. That will be very fast. That is a very short number compared to the thousands of years that we have been down here in Hell, and I believe it is more than 6,000 years, brethren.
So the second reason for the crucifixion is that it was necessary to bring Jesus into a form that would complete the Father’s plan. And did Jesus not say that he came to finish the Father’s work? He came to finish the work of creation. And did Jesus not say that we would do the greater works? He came -- Jesus, he came to overcome the carnal mi- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] so that man could be raised from the dead by the power of God. He came to show, with Christ being added to fallen man, that we could overcome sin by the power of God which is in his Christ, which is being given unto us. He came as an example unto us. He came to identify with us, and he came to pour out of his Spirit upon all flesh and be a Father unto us. He shall always have the preeminence over the Christ which is being formed in our heart, which the Scripture says, we are told in Isaiah 53, are the offspring or the children which the Father has given him. The glorified Jesus Christ has now become the Father unto us or the Spirit of Christ, and he is bringing forth his Son in our heart, Christ Jesus, growing out of our own soul, the second generation of Christ. So where does this teaching, brethren, that bloodthirsty Jehovah needed to see blood spilled so that he could rest at night? The God of Israel, brethren, he does not slumber or sleep, and he only rests in his people. And if you have believed that, you have believed a lie, and you have believed a false d- -- teaching of the carnal mind.
So as I gave this opinion, someone came to me and said, Sister Sheila, what about the Gospel of John, Chapter 3? And this is my answer today. “And as Mose-” -- well, let me just back up a little. You'll see in the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, Jesus is speaking about being born again. Verse 9, Verse 10, OK. Let me just go on.
Verse 13, Jesus is saying, “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven,” meaning, brethren, that no devil is getting back up into heaven, that no carnal mind is getting back up into heaven, that Satan is not getting back up into heaven because they were never up there, and they never came down from there. That means, if we are the children of the devil, the only way we are going to get up there is if the Father adopts us because Jesus came down from heaven to get us, and when he reproduces his nature inside of us and we become his son, we will be that which came down from heaven because we will be his son, and we will be in a condition to go back up to heaven.
So then what is Jesus talking about, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness”? This Greek word translated “lifted up,” it has a different significance than the word used in the Book of Numbers. This Greek word is airó. It is the same Greek word used in Mark 16:16 [sic], which says you shall lift up or take up serpents. Now we have cults in the world, probably right here in Africa, who li- -- take that Scripture literally and lay hold of a serpent and lift it up and say, see, the sign is following me, OK. I believe. And sometimes they get bit, and sometimes they do not get bit. I am told sometimes they even die, and then they think they go to heaven. OK, brethren, listen.
It is a truth that Moses, at the Lord’s instruction, did -- I think he instructed Aaron to make the serpent, if I am not mistaken. He did lift up that brazen serpent, but that brazen serpent was a type. It was a type of the w- -- th- -- of the spiritual work which is happening in this hour. Now we have got to stop bringing these spiritual truths down into the flesh because we are killing the word of God, and we are killing ourself. This Greek word, airó, can be translated “exalted.” It means to be raised up to a high, spiritual place.
Well, what kind of a serpent would be -- would Moses be lifting up? I want to suggest to you that Jesus is saying and that, in fact, Moses did more than lift up a physical, brazen serpent, but that Moses had th- -- had crucified the serpent in his own heart. Moses had a carnal mind, and the only way this man could have possibly served God and done the miracles that he did was to put his carnal mind down under the authority of an imputed anointing Christ mind which had to be formed in him for him to go to Pharaoh and do what he did. There had to be a Christ mind formed in him for him to lead the children, the Hebrew children, out of Israel and through the wilderness.
And, in fact, we are told in the Book of Jude that there was a battle going on between Satan and Michael for the body of Moses, so everybody thinks it is the dead body of Moses, but this is an easy one, brethren. Just get out your Strong's Concordance. There is one Greek word for “dead body” and another Greek word for “live body,” and Satan was fighting with Michael for the live body of Moses. I suggest to you that Michael is a parabolic way of the apostle, Jude, telling us it was the formation of Christ in Moses’ mind.
He had a d- -- he did not have the form of Christ mind that is available to us today. It was not in a form, excuse me, that made him eligible for the resurrection of the dead that Jesus of Nazareth experienced. Why? Because Jesus is the first begotten f- -- of the dead, and no one before him was begotten from the dead or fully born into the spiritual realm of God. Jesus was the first, so we see that, in the world, prior to the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, there definitely were men in whom the mind of Christ was appearing, but it was not appearing in a form that enabled the man in which it was appearing to be fully resurrected from the dead or fully translated into the kingdom of God.
So this mind of Christ appeared in men, various men from time to time. It did the work of the Father. The mind of Christ appeared in the prophets, gave them the prophecies to write down. The mind of Christ appeared in David. The mind of Christ appeared in Abraham. The mind of Christ appeared in Saul. Yes, it even appeared in Saul. It is recorded in the Scripture that he was given a new heart, but this heart or this mind of Christ was not in a form that was permanent, so we see the mind of Christ was formed in Moses, and, brethren, wherever the mind of Christ is formed, only one mind can prevail.
You see, natural man just has one mind, the carnal mind. As soon as the mind of Christ appears, war breaks out. You have heard of natural enemies. In the jungle, certain animals are natural enemies. They just attack one another by instinct. I think the elephant is the only animal that does not have a natural enemy. The carnal mind and the Christ mind are natural enemies. Wherever the Christ mind appears, the carnal mind tries to kill him. That is why people in whom the mind of Christ is being formed become sitting ducks -- do not get all upset until I explain that -- for the carnal mind. What does that mean? We become members of the touchstone company. We become members of the company which expose the fact that the men which are attacking us are not Christ. Despite all their religious works and fancy clothes and fancy prayers and fastings and spiritual talk, we find out that they are not Christ when they come up against a man in whom Christ is appearing. And what is the purpose of this? That it should be exposed that they are the man of sin, that they might repent, that Christ might be formed in them too.
So we see the carnal mind is the natural enemy of the mind of Christ, brethren; that is why they crucified Jesus. They had no reason to crucify Jesus except that the carnal mind arose and revealed itself as the natural enemy of that man. He was killed without a cause, brethren, proving that the men who killed him were not Christ, proving that the Pharisees who killed him were not the genuine article. They were phonies. They fasted, and they tithed, and they washed their cups and their platters, and they kept the law of Moses. But when the very Christ of God himself appeared, they crucified him, thus proving themselves to not be the ones promised of God, not the church promised of God, not the body of Christ promised of God, proving themselves to be not the Israel of God because the Israel of God would not kill their leader, brethren.
So I hope I have convinced you that Moses had a Christ mind and that that Christ mind was at war with his carnal mind, and only one mind or one man can win in any conflict, but we see that Moses, being a natural man, had an ongoing conflict. He was a double-minded man, brethren, just like we are. One minute, one second, one day, one week -- although, not likely one week. From minute to minute, either our mind is carnal or our mind is Christ. It is a continuous, ongoing battle. One t- -- one mind is on top. Then the other mind flips it over, and they flip back and forth, back and forth.
But we see that in the wilderness, in order for Moses to go visit Pharaoh and do the works of the Lord in the wilderness of the soul realm, Moses, the Christ, crucified the serpent in his own heart and lifted him up because for the period of time that that serpent was inoperable, Moses’ mind was the kingdom of two heavens. For that moment, the serpent was exalted. Brethren, what are the seraphim that we read about in the Book of Isaiah? They are serpents with wings who stand around the throne of God, guarding the throne of God.
Now if you look th- -- if you look up the word, seraphim, if you ever get a hold of the supplemental lexicon that I use written by a man by the name of Gesenius, he has a comment in his lexicon that he cannot deny that this is the meaning of the word, seraphim, “redeemed serpents.” But the comment in the lexicon says he cannot even imagine redeemed serpents standing around and guarding the throne of God, not understanding that man, fallen man, is the redeemed serpent who will surround the Father. He is going to dwell inside of our flesh, and at such time that we are in this body and our mind is Christ and Christ has paralyzed our carnal minds so that it cannot sin, in that instance, our carnal mind or the serpent within us is lifted up.
This is the lifting up of the serpent, brethren, because there is glorification to Satan i- -- only in death, and when I say glorification, I do not mean in the way Jesus was glorified. We might say Satan only becomes socially acceptable, if you will, through his death, through his complete submission and joining to the Christ. He loses his infamy when he loses his power, and he becomes one with the Christ, and therefore, when Jesus ascended, brethren, he led captivity captive. And when you lay hold of your carnal mind and crucify him by the power of Christ within you and the Spirit of Christ in you raises you from the dead, the serpent in you will be exalted. He will go up into heaven, brethren. You see, only that which came down from heaven is going back up into heaven, but in the hour that the serpent is crucified to your Christ mind and there is no separating them, when your Christ mind is raised from the dead, the serpent is going up to heaven, and this is the lifting up of the serpent. Does anybody here not understand what I am saying? Any question on this issue? It is very important. OK.
You once told us that only that which was from heaven will ascend back there.
Yes.
Are you now saying that the serpent also came from heaven? Now that he is crucified, he can now go back to heaven.
No. The serpent -- only that which came down from heaven is going back up to heaven, but we see that the Christ mind has crucified himself to the carnal mind and, of the twain, has made one new man. So the serpent has died to everything that he is in this world system and has become a part of the flesh of the Christ in us, and therefore the Scripture says Jesus led captivity captive. He is not -- technically speaking, he is not going up -- well, he is not going up as the serpent as we know him now. His name changes. He becomes seraphim. He is going up as a part of the creation of God.
That means he was from heaven with [?a good nature?].
No. See, he is not going back up as the serpent. He has given up his independent identity and has become a part of the glorified man. He s- -- never came down from heaven, but now that his nature is changed -- his nature has been changed, OK. He has become redeemed.
Are you saying even if one was not from heaven, one was from the earth, if the nature changes, then he can now go back to heaven?
No. I am not saying the -- well, if his nature changes to Christ, you see. What I am saying is that he has become a part of the Christ. It is as if to say -- let me give you a carnal example. There was a murderer in the earth who could -- well, th- -- I have a better example. The Lord just told me to give you this example. Well, I think the Lord told me to give you this example. Some people would like to immigrate to the United States, and they c- -- let me just -- well, I think I will drop that example also. The p- --
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. You see, there was a joining. I just pray that the Father gives me an example that you could understand. It is not -- the serpent never came down from heaven, and, technically speaking, the serpent is not going back up, but the serpent has died to everything that he is in this c- -- in this -- inherent in this Greek word, “to lift up the serpent,” means that his nature has changed in that he is now inseparable from the Christ. He is inseparable from the Christ. He is a part of the zygote. He is a part of that cell which is the beginning of the creation of God, and he is going back up because he is now inseparable from the one who came down from heaven, OK. That is -- I think that is the crux of it. The only reason he is getting back up is because he is now inseparable from the one who came down. Can you hear that? OK.
And the other example I thought the Lord wanted me to give you, which may be appropriate now, is that, during World War II, for example, we had American forces over in Germany, and it was -- there were a lot of people desiring to immigrate to the United States. It was very difficult to get papers because many people wanted to come over, but there were some German women who married some American servicemen, you see. And once they became joined, because a marriage is a joining and nations recognize the fact that a man and his wife, they are one flesh, so from the moment this woman married the American man, there was no problem, just red tape. Just fill out your papers, and she went right over because she was now a part of him, OK. Praise God. OK.
There is this teaching that says that man was with God in the beginning and that man came down and that an -- it is like each person chose, you know, to come down of his or her own free will and that we were, sort of, assigned what to do and that -- you know, that this group of people -- are those people that are going back to God, I mean, that are going to be joined back to him? What do you feel about that?
I believe that it was -- that everything that is in this world is made out of the substance of the Son of God, that there was one Son of God that separated from the Father at the beginning of time and gave his life to this creation, which has now multiplied into a many-membered creation, but there was just one Son with the Father at the beginning of time. Just -- there was just one Son, and he is the one that came down. I know about this teaching that the -- that draws on Scriptures which say the sons of God sang, you know, with the Father. Yeah, but I do have -- I hope I have it in your Alternate Translation Bibles. I know I did an Alternate Translation on that. I hope, when I put that booklet together, I included that.
It really does not mean that at all, and there is only -- when we were with the Father at the beginning of time, we were with him, I believe, in seed form, just as if your children were seeds in your body before they were ever born. And our scriptural basis for that is Levi paying tithes while he was yet in the loins of Abraham. So this concept of the believers who believed that apparently think that they were adult spiritual beings in the heavenlies who incarnated as human beings, and I do not believe that is scriptural. I am fully aware of that teaching, but I believe everything God does is in seed form. I believe the Son of God was a seed in the Father, and he was planted in the earth, and he is still being formed into the creation of God, Jesus of Nazareth, in his resurrected form, being the first one to be a cell of this many-membered creation, which is fully formed in the image of God. You do not have to agree with me, but did you understand what I said? OK. Anybody else? OK.
When you were saying that, I wanted to ask, is -- if there was only one Son in the beginning and we believe that the heavenlies -- the earth is an example of the heavenlies, [?but?] a type of it. So are you saying that there was no activity? Like, there were, like, no [?lesser?] -- what people call angels, like, an activity [?taking on?] in the heavenlies at all? Like, you said they were in seed form, and I heard you also say once that, even though in seed form, it is quite glorified seed form in the heavenlies. It is like -- and even -- the seeds even in man, I believe they have activities --
Yes.
-- quite in man, so it is -- was there an activity going on there, like an activity [?just?] -- [?not saying?] that he was in seed form, that there was no existence at all because it is -- I believe, for him to make the earth this way, he had to look at the heavenlies, which had an activity. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [?I wanted to ask?].
That is a good question. I do not know what the answer is. I do not find anything about that in the Scripture, and it is -- I do know that it was -- I believe it was just the Father. Then it was the Father and the Son. They were one. Jesus was in the bosom of the Father. Then there was a separation, and Jesus was joined to the earth. The creation was then broken down into many members, just as one of the two of you gave the example a couple of nights ago that the white light was put through a prism, broke out into many colors, which is this world system, which is an expression of spirit. And in the end, all things are being reconciled back unto the Father. All the colors or the broad spectrum or the spreading out of the light is now being drawn back into the white light. So in answer to your question, I do not know what kind of activity occurred or occurs when the creation is purely white light, and Paul says eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard what God has in store for us, so I do not see the answer to that question in the Scripture. If the Father tells me, I would love to hear it. Did I answer your question? You have another one?
No. It is [?quite on that also?]. I wanted to ask, is -- the Bible says the lamb chosen before the foundation of the world, so what -- why? So it is -- you cannot choose if there are not many to make a choice out of. [INAUDIBLE]
I think it -- I thought it said the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth.
[INAUDIBLE] in 1 Peter --
Yeah.
-- it says the lamb chosen [INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. OK. I believe, if you look that up in the Greek, the chosen one is Christ, to the best of my memory at this moment. I was just looking at that the other day. The one who is chosen is Christ. You see, man would like to say, well, you are chosen, and you are not chosen. You are a wheat, and you are a tare, and this guy is good, that guy is bad. That is what the mind of fallen man would like to say, you see, and we see people doing that to each other within the church, and we also see nations doing that to one another, and we also see whole races doing that to one another.
And racism, brethren, is in the church, so I just want to give you people here in Africa something to think about. I guess, you all know that there are some people that are saying you guys are not getting into heaven, right? So when you start thinking along those lines with regard to the brother sitting next to you, remember that there are some guys out there that say none of you are getting in, and I encourage you to reject that thought and cast down that imagination and curse your carnal mind because he hates you, and he hates the beloved of God.
The one who is chosen is the Christ, and that is very interesting because this is my lead-in to the study of Jesus’ betrayal. I could not understand how God was going to connect these two studies. I just got it. Thank you for your obedience to God, OK. Christ is the one who was chosen. That means, if you are a human being in whom Christ is not appearing, you are not chosen, but neither does that mean that you are burning in Hell forever, neither does that mean that you are bad and the other guy is good. What it means is, excuse me, that the way this creation is being formed, according to God’s plan, is that he has a lump of spiritual clay that he is picking pieces out of, if you can hear this, and forming individuals, and he has formed the nations.
This is going to kill your pride, brethren, but, spiritually speaking, compare -- in God’s eyes, we are like the herds that used to roam here in Nigeria, the herds of animals. We are the human herds, and the Lord is picking out of us the ones that he will take to appear in. And the ones who he does not appear in will finish out their existence and will go back into the substance of the original creation. The human beings that we see today are temporary formations of a spiritual creation which was formed at the beginning of time. At the end of all things, brethren, when the Lord reconciles all things into one, nothing of that spiritual clay will be wasted.
So when you see a human being live their life and pass out of this world not having been raised up into Christ, that does not mean that they are in Hell forever, neither does it mean that their life was for naught. All that it means is that they were apart of God’s plan, that they were a temporary formation as God works everything together for his good, and at the end of all things, the whole spiritual lump of clay is going to be formed into its final formation, the whole spiritual man, the whole Son. The Christ of God will be completed and joined to the spiritual clay in a final formation which will be glorious.
Now you do not have to agree with me. Is there anybody that does not understand what I just said? You see, the form that we are in now is not permanent, OK. Now if it is upsetting you -- if what I am saying is upsetting you, you are probably manifesting pride, and now if you are twice as upset because I told that you are manifesting pride, you are definitely manifesting pride, so, everybody, rebuke your pride. I rebuke pride in this room right now.
Listen, brethren, you are valuable. Every one of you are valuable, but that does not mean this flesh is valuable. That within you which is valuable is your spirit. It is like taking a piece of gold ore and saying this gold ore is valuable, but the impurities in the gold ore are not valuable, brethren. The gold is valuable. The gold ore has to be smelted. It has to be separated from the impurities, and in this world system, the impurities are cast away. But in the plan of God, after the separation takes place -- what separation? Soul from spirit, spirit from flesh. After the separation takes place, God is not throwing away the impurities, this flesh or your soul, but being so great, by the greatness of his power, he is breaking this body and soul down to its basic atoms and somehow combining it with spirit in a form which will exalt the impurities. It will purify the impurities, if you can hear it.
The only way the impurities can go on, can exist as the creation matures, is if the Father purifies the impurities. Who holds onto impurities? You throw them away. When a woman has a baby, the impurities -- we c- -- I do not know what you call it here. We call it the afterbirth in the United States. It is cast away. There is debris that comes out when a baby is born, but with a spiritual birth, God wastes nothing. He exalts. He raises those impurities up into a place where he can use them. And do not we see the natural type of that in recycling? Are you doing any recycling here in Nigeria at all? Do you know what I am talking about?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. We are really -- yes. We are really into it in New York. We recycle everything. We recycle garbage. We recycle plastic bags. We --
[INAUDIBLE] [?water?].
Water. You are recycling your water?
Yes.
OK. We recycle plastic bags, paper bags. We are recycling almost everything in the United States. So we might even say that the serpent is being recycled. Do you know what we recycle? We recycle human excrement in the United States. Now you really have to do something with your mind to deal with that.
[INAUDIBLE]
They recycle human excrement, and they are using it for whatever -- all kinds of things that, if you knew it, you would not really even want to use. Yes?
I am still a bit confused. What happens to a personality, you know, a indivi- -- I mean, the individual? What happens to the personality? I do not know. I am so confused about that.
OK. The principle here is that the only part of us which would be considered the gold in the gold ore is those experiences that we have in Christ. The experiences that we have in our soulish existence do not carry on, OK. It is only those experiences which cause -- result in spiritual growth that go on, just as your experiences as a 14-year-old young woman and a 15-year-old young woman and a 16-year-old young woman, plus the physical body that you lived in for those years have been swallowed up by everything that you are today. They were very important. Whatever you learned in those years were very important, but you no longer have the personality of a 14-year-old teenager. That would not be appropriate, but everything that you learned in that year has been swallowed up and is actively contributing to what you are today.
So if you can just have eyes to see it and ears to hear it, each of us is a year, if you will for understanding’s sake, in the life of the Christ who is maturing in the earth, except that he is so great that he is not experiencing one year at a time. He is experiencing all the experiences that he is experiencing in all of us at one time because he is so high. Do you understand what I am saying? OK. And the problem that we have with this, that which is causing us distress, if you are being -- if you are feeling distressed, is that, because of our fallen condition, the Scripture says we have forgotten who we really are, and we think that this existence here is our primary existence.
It is as if to say you were born a queen of a great nation, and you were raised up as a queen for 15 years of your life, with a palace and servants and anything your heart desired, and then you were kidnapped, and you were taken to be a servant or a slave in some other nation’s house, and you spent 30 years in that other man’s house. And you only -- your experience as a queen or a princess was only a vague memory. For you, your total reality was this man’s house and your life there and your relationship with him and every other relationship that you had in this rich man’s house, in a foreign nation.
But then after 30 years of living in this foreign nation under these conditions, an army came from the nation from which you were kidnapped, and they invaded the land that was holding you captive, but even though you were captive there, they were kind to you. You had had children there. You see, it happened to Judah in Babylon, right? Many of the Hebrew men married Babylonish women, and when the call came to go back to build Jerusalem, they had to leave their wives and their children behind. Are you aware of that? OK. So this invading army comes in, and you were kidnapped when you were 15 years old. Now you are a mature woman, 40 or 50 years old. You may even have affection for this man. You have born his children. This is the only world that you know, and the invading army comes, and they are coming for you because you were the princess that was kidnapped 30 years ago.
But as far as you are concerned, they are invading your land. They are overturning your life. You do not remember life back there. You do not remember your mother. You do not -- they are just a memory, your mother, your father, the man that you were betrothed to, your nurse who raised you, just a memory. And I suggest to you that any human being in this condition would find it very hard to give up their present life, even though they knew they were going back to riches. That is what is happening to us, and this is why we are so concerned with this personality and this life, but there is a memory. There is another whole life back there that is far superior -- or not back there, up there, that is far superior to this, but not only is it a vague memory, most of us have no memory at all. And, therefore, when we think about losing this life or losing this personality, it causes us anxiety. What?
[?And sometimes?] fear.
Fear, f- -- absolutely, fear, because we have no vision of what is ahead. And to the carnal mind, the -- to the carnal mind, this understanding comes through as death, as annihilation, as no existence at all, but it is not true. There is an existence. There is the true life, and this will just be a shadow in comparison to the true life that you were kidnapped from all those thousands -- that your spirit was kidnapped from thousands of years ago --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- you know. Yes. I just want to say one more thing. I think something like that happened in history. Was Helen of Troy of not -- was she not kidnapped? And they kept here there in Ancient Greece somewhere. I forget the name of the city, and the war went on for 30 years. They were trying to get this queen back. For 30 years, Greece was fighting against Macedonia. I do not know. I am not too good at history, but this really happened, you know. This really happened.
Cinderella.
Cinderella, yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
[?This?] really happens, and, you know, there was a movie. I mentioned it -- I think I mentioned it before. There was a movie in the United States called “A Man Called Horse.” He was a -- it was about a British nobleman who had everything but was bored with his life. He was hunting in the American frontier in the 1700s or whenever -- the American frontier, whenever that was, and he was captured by a tribe of Indians who decided not to kill him but to make him a slave, and they treated him -- they stripped him of his manhood. They gave him female status, and they put a noose around his neck and tied him outside the queen’s -- the mother of the king’s tent like a he was a dog. And after -- and they fed him, but they treated him like an animal.
And after a season, when they felt he would not run away because he just did not know where he was and he had no way to survive, they had tamed him. They let him lead the life of a woman, and he went out with the women. They collected berries. According to this tribal law, all men did -- were -- the men were the warriors. The women did everything else, so he went with the women. He collected berries. He collected the firewood. He prepared the food, and he was very content with his life. He was completely translated until he fell in love with one of the young women, and his only hope of marrying her was to become a warrior because a woman cannot marry a woman, right?
So he started seeing if he would not be permitted the privilege of becoming a man, and the king of the tribe told him, if he could past the testing which was physically painful, that they would accept him as a man in the tribe. It was torturous, and he did it. He went through, and he succeeded. It was a graphic movie. One of the things he had to do was scalp somebody. Do you know what -- do you -- the -- take the -- they take the top layer of the skin of the head off with all the hair, and it showed you in the movie. He was revolted because all the blood was gushing out, and this was a sign of manhood in this society, and he -- it revolted him, but he did it. So we see we -- if you are watching the movie, you go through -- with him through all of these steps, and after he succeeds, he really likes what he had become, and he had developed an intense pride in being a warrior in this tribe, and it was no longer just to marry this woman. He had finally found himself. He was so unhappy and bored as a British nobleman, and he had found that some deep need within himself had been satisfied as he overcame and lived this lifestyle.
So -- and then he gets the opportunity to go back to Britain, but, of course, the story I am telling you now is a little reverse because the -- he decided the life was preferable with the Indians, so I reversed it a little. But my point is that he was transplanted into a totally different lifestyle and a totally different mentality, and that is what has happened to us, and we found Scriptures. I think, specifically, the one I have in mind in the Book of Matthew, which in our Alternate Translation, it says, “In that day that the sons of God come and break the bondages off of the people’s minds, they will remember that -- each of us will remember that we were Christ and what it was like in the glorious, high place of God’s Spirit, and we will voluntarily turn away from this world.” So right now we are resisting it because of the unknown, the fear of the unknown. Well --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- it is very legitimate, and --
[INAUDIBLE]
It is very legitimate. And because, in this hour, so few of us ha- -- most of us, our life is 9/10ths carnal, you know. Very -- I have a life that is pretty spiritual because I have no family obligations anymore. My whole life is ministry and God, and even me, I am engaged in all kinds of carnal activities. But if you are an average person, if you are raising children, if you are a father, if you are working 10 hours a day, your whole life is carnal. You just have a couple of moments of a spiritual life. So your carnal mind says, my goodness, this woman is preaching she is going to take my whole life away from me. There is going to be nothing left of me. That is what the carnal mind is saying to you. That is what is registering in your emotions, and it is legitimate.
But I am challenging you, every one of you. I am here to challenge you to ask the Lord if this is not true, that there is a memory in the back of your mind that is so far superior to this life, and knowing that God is a benevolent God, he is not going to kill your children or do anything like that. Every detail is going to be worked out, and you are going to be restored to your royalty, OK. If you could just believe it or ask God to help you, if it is true, to help you to believe it, it will give you some peace because that is the reality of what I am telling you.
[?The?] -- when you were giving the explanation of -- you said y- -- we came from -- the heavenlies came to the earth, I, kind of -- how you sai- -- how you were saying it is that we are going we- -- you see, when Christ comes, we will find out that we are actually Christ, and we will willingly give up ourself to [?this thing?]. And the explanation you gave was -- I do not know. You said someone came from a different town somewhere --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- but he was a king. The person was a king, came to a different town, but it -- due to the fact he l- -- he d- -- he cannot remember what he was, he actually chose the other life --
Yes.
-- in this place.
Yes.
So it is what -- the way you said it, it sounds what -- you do not agree with it, but the way it was sounding, it is -- you sound like you are saying [?instead of mistaken identity?] --
[CROSSTALK]
-- personality, so how do you reconcile that?
OK. This is how I reconcile that. There is -- well, let me just fill in the people who may not know what you are talking about. There is a doctrine in the church today, which I do not agree with, which says that if we cannot -- if we identify with this lifetime, in the exact scenario that I just gave you, that our only problem is that we have a case of mistaken identity, therefore, all we have to do is remember that we are a prince or a princess, and we shall be back where we were, right? Is that correct? OK. And I still cannot your name, Shay [SP]. Is that right? Shay, OK, just asked me the other day about that, and I told him, no, I do not agree with that, and this is my answer to you. There is no way that we could remember who we are because we died to everything that we were, and all memory is in the resurrection of that in us which died, so we have to wait for the army to come and join himself to us. You know “The Sleeping Beauty”? You know the -- we have to wait for the kiss.
[CROSSTALK]
You have to get kissed, brethren. All memory is in Christ, and so long as the dead Christ abides in us, OK, we w- -- shall not remember. This is my opinion. I believe it very strongly because -- and I am trying to put it across as strongly as I can because I believe with all my heart that if you believe this doctrine, that all you have to do is remember who you are. Since I believe that you cannot remember without your Christ being raised from the dead, what is going to happen to you is that your carnal mind is going to devise a memory. We call it mind control; we call it fantasy. And you are going -- an image will appear in your mind, which will be devised by your carnal mind, which will make you think that you have been raised from the dead, and it will be a lie.
And in the hour that Christ publicly appears, which is coming very soon, in that hour, if you believe that -- if you are deceived by this, I believe with everything in me that you will be one of those people locked out saying, Lord, Lord, why did you not take me? And the Lord will say to you, I never knew you, meaning I never joined with you. I am the army. The Lord will be saying, I am the army that came to kiss all the maidens and join with them and raise them from the dead, and I never contacted you. And why did I not contact you? Because you thought you did not need me. Do you understand what I said? OK.
I do understand what you are getting at, but I want to ask this. When Christ comes into us, y- -- the Holy Spirit comes, unites, forms the Christ in us. Now he is grown up. It is -- let us say he is still in the stage of a child. He is still a youth, for example. [?It is?] -- and resurrection means to stand up again, to recall ones [?faculty?]. So it is -- is it -- when the Christ comes in, now it is the [?faculty?] with the Christ is recalled back together again, and it is like the Christ now remembers your identity for you. What I am getting at, it is a mistaken identity, and it is wrong to use it if you are [?yet in?] your carnal mind. But when the Christ is formed in you, the Christ now remembers, to you, your identity, so you could actually say it is still an identity, but what you are getting at is we should not desire it with the carnal mind, but with the Christ mind we can actually desire it, having the right identity. So is that --
Yes. I hear what you are saying, and that is correct, but I exhort you very strongly that it is -- I do not at all advise you using that expression because people are going to misunderstand you, and believers for whom Christ died are being killed with this doctrine. So between you and me and between anyone else here who has ears to hear, yes, it is true, but to go around using the jargon or using the way that movement expresses itself is surely going to kill somebody, and you do not need that on your head, OK. But what you said is correct, yes, but it is a very fine technicality. You understand what I am saying? OK. Anybody not understand what we -- what just happened here? OK.
You see, this is the danger of anti-Christ doctrines: There is truth in them. If the doctrine is completely false, most true Christians will just turn away from it, but the danger of the false doctrine that is in the church today is that there is truth in it; it is a mixture. And further to this issue, of course, I do not know everything that is going on in the church. I do not -- I cannot tell you that, but every ministry that I have ever come in contact with that is preaching that doctrine is preaching that you do it out of your carnal mind. I have not found one ministry who has the understanding that you just described. Do you understand what I am saying? OK.
So in this hour, the Lord is challenging us to make this issue very clear. He wants the lines of truth and error clearly defined. Why? Because the time for the resurrection is at hand, and he wants you to be translated into his kingdom, truth. He wants you to be overcomers. He wants you to know the truth so that you can recognize the lie, and you cannot [?recognize?] the lie unless you first know the truth. The -- OK. This is another good way to put it. For the person who knows the truth -- you see, that doctrine is not going to kill me. I can sit here and say to you, amen, that is right, and that is not going to kill me. But the man who cannot distinguish between the truth and the lie will be killed by this kind of a conversation. Can you hear what I am saying?
I have received mail from all over the United States -- well, not really from Nigeria, telling me that -- the people writing the letters, that they cannot perceive any difference between the doctrine that I preach and by preachers who I know are preaching the exact opposite of what I am preaching. But if you read our material or if you listen to our messages, we use a lot of the same language, and the people who are not discerning or evaluating the doctrine with the mind of Christ within them cannot tell the difference.
The Lord has clearly shown me, if you are looking for a test as to whether or not the mind of Christ is functioning in you -- and you should be testing yourself, not to condemn yourself, but if he is not functioning in you, you need to be praying for him to be functioning in you. If you are looking for a test, the acid test is can you tell the difference. Can you see the fine lines between all these doctrines? Because if they all sound the same to you, the chances are excellent you are understanding them to whatever degree you understand them with your carnal mind, and that is death. That is anti-Christ. You cannot tell the truth from a lie. Does that make any sense to you? OK.
So in this hour, Jesus is clearly distinguishing between the truth and the error, therefore those of us who are responsible in Christ should be willing to lay our own pride down and speak in language as plain as possible so that the Lord can never come to us and say you caused this one to stumble, you caused that one to stumble or you caused this one to stumble because for three years you believed that doctrine, and you are trying to justify those three years. The only thing -- if it is truly Christ in you, brethren, the only thing that will matter to you is that the truth of the doctrine of Christ is clearly made known to his people so that they can hear the trumpet and enter in.
And if anything else is important to you, if the fact that you believed a wrong doctrine for any amount of time -- if it is important to you to compensate for that or to justify that or to cover that up, I suggest to you, you are manifesting pride, and I tell you this without condemnation. Lay it down because, if I am right and you do not lay it down, judgment is already at your door because the Lord Jesus Christ is coming for his church, and he is coming after everyone that is causing these little ones to stumble. And I want to tell you there are many little ones out there, mostly little ones. There are very few in the church today that can rightly divide the word of truth. The responsibility is enormous, so be careful. I exhort you as strongly as I can; be careful. Any -- OK.
Y- -- when you minister, you talk about we are in Hell, and when the Christ is formed in us, we go out of Hell. I just -- oh, you do not.
[INAUDIBLE] no.
OK. [INAUDIBLE]
We do not -- we are not out of Hell until we are glorified. We get out of Hell in three stages, and when the Christ begins to be formed in us, it is a procedure, that the Christ is being formed in me for years. I am not out of Hell yet, OK. You are not -- you do not begin to asce- -- well, you begin to ascend out of Hell as you begin to reject your carnal mind and live more and more out of your Christ mind, and you do not really exit from Hell at all until you ascend to full stature.
[CROSSTALK]
OK.
The question I wanted to ask is, is this Scripture that says -- when Jesus was praying for the disciples, it says that, Father, I do not pray that you take them out of the world. And the -- and that Scripture in John that says -- it says that no man can ascend unto heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven. So he was -- and he used the word, Son of man, there, and he said he was down from heaven but yet in heaven. So I wanted to understand why [?it said that?] w- -- he says while he was yet in Hell, he said he was in heaven, and what he meant by I do not believe that you should take them out of this world.
What he was saying was -- he was not praying that we should be physically raptured, but he was praying for us to take the victory over this world system while still in the flesh. That is what we are doing. We are supposed to be overcoming this world. We are not supposed to be waiting for a rapture. We are supposed to be taking every victory by the spiritual authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. That answers your first question.
And we can be in he- -- well, and he did not say not to take them out of Hell; he said not to take them out of the world. This world system, which is presently Hell, in due season shall be converted into heaven, so, you see, we are not escaping the world. The world will be converted. We will not be overcome by evil, but we will overcome the evil with good. We are not fleeing from the wickedness or the pestilence of this world system. We are to stand here and convert it into the kingdom or the image of the kingdom of heaven, so that is what he was speaking about there. This world is not passing away, brethren, but its nature is going to be changed from Hell unto heaven.
And as far as being in heaven and in this world, you can be in this world -- your body can be in this world while your mind is in heaven, and that is what he was talking about, but your mind has to be in heaven. And the only extent to which I ascend out of Hell at this stage of my development is that when my soul -- which, in this hour, the walls of my soul are coming down. What does that mean? It means, as Christ is formed in us, the walls of our carnal mind come down, and we start receiving a lot of knowledge and sharing emotions of other people, and sometimes that can be painful when you start feeling other people’s fears and pains and torments. The only way out for me is I flee into these Scriptures. I flee into heaven, so I am in Hell. My body is in Hell, and my soul is in Hell, but I am in heaven, when my mind is completely absorbed into the things of Christ, and that is what Jesus was talking about. Did I answer that question? OK. You have one more? OK, one more.
I want to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- I just -- I wanted [?to give you?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [?about something?] when the Bible talks about worlds to come. I wanted to -- if Christ is the sun of righteousness, if -- Christ being the sun of righteousness, and not the S-O-N, the S-U-N now, of righteousness, and as the planets orbit around the sun. So is it [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- can we say it is -- when the Christ in us is formed, that we actually -- and the physical -- the people around us being [?earth, earthy?], when this Christ, the sun, is within us, do we inf- -- can we say we influence the orbit around us, that there is, kind of, a distance within something, so it is like [?the heaven?] [INAUDIBLE]?
Yes. That is true, but it is only temporary. That is true. When we are moving in Christ, we influence everyone around us, negatively, when their carnal mind rises up and tries to kill us just because we are present, and on an unconscious level, their carnal mind recognizes his enemy, the Christ. We can also positively affect people around us. If -- you do not have to be Christ. If you are just a natural man and you are continuously kind to a wicked person, that person, at some point, will have a change of heart of at least some measure. So if it is Christ in you continuously returning good for evil, yes, you will affect all of the people around you, both as a conviction of sin and a modifying influence for good, but it is only temporary. The end of all things is that Christ is the one who is chosen, and he is appearing in the flesh bodies of humanity. And I really warn you against this doctrine because I really hear what is coming out of you, and I know what is being preached. It is a lust for power, and it is preached by a mind that wants to be higher than his brethren, and I am warning you. You know, you have picked up --
[CROSSTALK]
-- some false doctrine.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. Well, I am telling -- you do not have to agree with me if you do not want. I am telling you what I perceive in you, and I know what I am talking about. If you want to reject it, that is all right, but I hear the point that you are pressing, and I am telling you that you are pressing this doctrine, whether you are aware of it or not, that is saying one category of man is higher than another category of man, and this is my response to you, that that is true, but it is just for a season. And for the men for whom this is true, for the men in whom Christ is appearing ahead of the other element of society, and therefore they will have an influence over the other men surrounding them. If you are truly Christ, you will be their minister, and if you are truly Christ, you will show them the love of God, and if you are truly Christ, you will raise them up to where you are.
But we have men in this world system that are saying, here is the Christ, and there is the Christ, and they are influencing men who have weaker spiritual abilities, and they are enslaving them. And that that is the mind that is bringing forth this doctrine because Jesus does not focus on temporal conditions, and the ultimate goal of the Christ is to bring the whole creation back up to heaven. So I do not know how to exhort you any more strongly to start resisting and rebuking your pride, OK. I cannot --
[INAUDIBLE] bring them in. That is what I was talking about [INAUDIBLE] bring them in. Like, the Christ in them [INAUDIBLE] bring them in. That is what I was talking about.
I know that that is what you said, but I am telling you that I am discerning a wrong spirit in you. I do not know how else to say it to you. I hear what you are saying, and I just responded to it, but I am telling you I perceive a wrong spirit in it. What you are saying is true, but it is a wrong spirit, OK, and it is a spirit that is looking for position. And I repeat our masters words unto you, the greatest amongst you shall be your minister, and I exhort you to submit yourself to the Lord. You have gotten a lot of understanding very quickly. You are a very young man. I know how much he loves you, but put yourself before him in prayer. I cannot do any more th- -- for you than that, OK.
The Scripture says that, if it were possible, even the very elect would be led astray. What is the implication of that Scripture because we have been taught that means the elect can never be led astray?
Well, I do not believe that. I believe that the very elect can be led astray, and there is one thing that is going to lead the elect astray, and that is pride because the Scripture clearly states that, if we are deceived, we are deceived by the pride of our own mind, and that is why. You see, the natural condition of man is pride, so you will hear me talking a lot about pride. I am never against anybody, and I am never picking on anybody, but I am warning you, if you can hear it, your pride will destroy your walk with the Lord and will steal all of the precious promises of Christ from you, and that is why it is necessary for judgment to come to God’s church because everybody has pride. Some people has it a l- -- have it a little more than others. Some people who are more mature, you know, ha- -- you know, I was so filled with pride when I first came to the Lord, I had people tell me several years later they were afraid for my life. They thought God was going to really just strike me dead, so I am in no way lifting myself up above anybody. Just God has killed me. I -- he has utterly crushed me over these years, and I still have pride, but what I have is pretty much under control.
So I am in no way trying to harm anybody. I am giving you counsel that is really going to help you, and you need to hear it. Your pride will separate you from God, and the younger you are chronologically, the more likely you are to fall in, and the younger you are in Christ, the more likely you are to have this condition. Why? Because it is your natural state of being, and this is the reason for the judgment. In case anybody is wondering or has a question in their mind right here, why must this judgment come, the answer is because we do not have the power to kill our own pride. We will not do it. It is our state of being. The Father has to come and crush us so that he can exalt us, you see.
Getting back to John 3, we are the serpent who is in the wilderness of the soul realm, and it is the Father’s intention to take us back -- excuse me, to take us back up with him. Jesus is telling -- who was he talking to, Nicodemus? Yeah. I think he was talking to Nicodemus, yeah. He is telling him, Nicodemus, you are a carnal man. You have the word of God. You are a Pharisee. You d- -- have the law of Moses. You do all the rituals. You fast. You tithe. You do everything, but there is no way you are getting into heaven in the condition that you are in, and this is what God is saying to his church right now. The only way you are going to get into heaven, everybody, including me, is to lift up your serpent, which is in the soul realm, the wilderness of the soul realm. And the only way you are going to lift him up or exalt him or make him socially acceptable, if you will, is to kill him, and the way you kill him is by bringing him into submission to the Christ in you, and this procedure is known as judgment because it is a very rare person, if he exists at all, whose Christ, at inception, is strong enough to bring the carnal mind into submission. That is why the Lord Jesus Christ must come and wound your carnal mind because Christ Jesus, who is being formed in you, is not full grown, and your carnal mind is pretty strong.
So we need our big brother to come and wound our carnal mind, and sometimes even then, Christ Jesus in us is not strong enough to take the victory, so the Lord will send a believer to you, someone who has had a lot of overcoming victory over their own carnal mind. He will send someone to you like me or any other elder, and I will come, and I will tell you the truth, and most of the time your mar- -- carnal mind shoots me, but that is OK, but that is what the judgment is all about. And if you are still not taking the victory, he will send someone else to tell you, and if you are still not taking the victory, he will someone else to tell you, and if you are still not taking the victory, he will send someone else. But as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the day is coming that that last warning is coming, and when the last warning comes, he turns you over to Satan, that you should learn not to blaspheme. And Satan does not come like me and say, I love you, and I am telling you as gently as I can. When he turns you over to Satan, you will probably get hit over the head in some way or another. And if you still do not learn, the Lord might pronounce you reprobate silver and go and turn to somebody else, so resist your pride, brethren, because your spiritual life is on the line. Amen. Anybody else on this issue? OK.
Still on this issue. You have just told us that the enemy has a purpose, that you can turn somebody over to the devil so that the person would learn not to blaspheme. The devil, I mean, is the enemy. That is -- we can throw somebody over to -- or the -- God can throw somebody over to the devil so that --
[INAUDIBLE]
[?And?] would you also say that the pride that the devil produces, what is the purpose?
[?What is the purpose?]?
Purpose of the pride. That is -- do you get my question? If the -- if Satan has a role, what is the role of pride?
[INAUDIBLE]
The role, R-O-L-E.
Role.
Role.
Role?
Yes. [INAUDIBLE]
Well, I am not really sure what you mean. I know that pride is the g- -- overriding characteristic of our fallen nature. Did that answer your question? Then I do not understand your question.
[INAUDIBLE] Satan has a purpose in this world. Then what is the purpose of pride in this world?
What is the purpose of --
Of pride?
[?In this world?].
[INAUDIBLE] [?asking?] if pride comes up from Satan and Satan has a purpose, so what is the purpose of pride that comes up from Satan?
I do not see any purpose in pride. Pride is the nature of fallen man. So you are saying what is the purpose of turning the man over to Satan?
[INAUDIBLE]
Right.
[INAUDIBLE]
Right.
[INAUDIBLE]
Uh-huh.
[INAUDIBLE] purpose of pride.
So y- -- are you saying that, if a man is turned over to Satan to learn not to blaspheme, that the product of that chastisement will be pride? Is that what you are saying?
So pride comes up from Satan, and now Satan [INAUDIBLE] chastising your pride.
Right.
[INAUDIBLE]
Uh-huh.
[INAUDIBLE]
I see.
[INAUDIBLE]
I see.
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, bre- -- that is the characteristic of Satan’s kingdom. He just is -- it is irrational. [?He divide it?], and he just destroys. Satan is the accuser of the brethren. He is the accuser of the brethren. He will tempt you to sin, and then, when you sin, he will accuse you and kill you to the fullest extent that he is allowed by law. That is the operation of Satan.
But I did not want to use that word, [?accuser?] [INAUDIBLE] do you understand what I mean?
Accuse God?
[INAUDIBLE] accuse God.
Mm-hmm.
Because Satan is the [INAUDIBLE] pride. Do you understand my question? I do not want to accuse God. God is righteous. Now Satan produces the pride in the individual. Then the individual has that pride. Then God turns the individual over back to Satan, not to -- so that the person will learn not to blaspheme. So I am saying, what is then the purpose of the pride? He produces it and accuses you, then [INAUDIBLE]
What is the purpose of it?
[?The pride, yeah?].
There is no purpose of it. This creation has been turned over to destruction. We are under the wrath of God. Satan is the b- -- is the chief honcho policeman over this world system, and the wages of sin is death. There is no purpose in it except destruction because we died when we sinned. OK?
[INAUDIBLE]
I --
[CROSSTALK]
I think --
[INAUDIBLE] I think we should be redeemed [?from him?] because he is the one that produces pride.
Well, there is some y- -- there is something wrong with what you are saying about producing pride. I just cannot put my finger right on it.
[INAUDIBLE]
Satan is not prod- --
[INAUDIBLE] carnal mind --
Yes.
[CROSSTALK] causes him to steal.
OK.
Then how come the person is turned over to Satan to now learn not to do that thing?
Because that is the irrationality of Hell, you see. We fell down here into Hell, and there is a policeman over this place, OK, and Satan is not -- well, Satan is producing the pride. The pride in man exists; it exists. Satan is the policeman. He is the accuser of the brethren, and he executes God’s law, you see.
[INAUDIBLE] [?image within man?].
Yes. It is the condition of the fallen creation, OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, we are being taken away from him, but when God uses -- exercises a gentle method to take us away from him and we are so in love with him that we will not come, OK, we are turned over to him because he is insane, you see. Satan is insane. Do you know what sadism is?
[INAUDIBLE]
Sadism?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes. No. Sadism is a love of inflicting pain on someone, sadism, OK. Satan is a sadist. He is a maniac. Do you know who Bluebeard is? He is a Bluebeard, and he is married to us, but he hates us, and he tortures his wife. He is a wife abuser. And I do not know what is going on here in Nigeria, but as the United States comes out from under the hand of God, we are seeing more and more satanic manifestations in human beings, people found -- or we find men -- oh, they have been in the newspapers over years, who captured both men and women walking down the street, chained them to walls and abused them and tortured them for years before they killed them.
This is what Satan is doing to us. He produces -- well, I would not say -- I cannot say he produces the pride in us. Pride is our nature, and he, Satan, is our husband, and he hates us, and he tortures us at every opportunity that he gets. And if you know anything along these lines of psychology, this is -- when you get into destructive relationships, this is very common, that you find two people involved with one another, a man and a woman, and you think, well, if they are living together, they should love one another. Frequently, they hate each other. We have all kinds of great literature, if that is what you want to call it, about hateful relationships between men and women, between mothers and children, between fathers and children, where the relationship becomes destructive, and that which is supposed to be producing life produces death. You do not know any of this?
[?Yes?].
You do know this. Well, whenever you come across people in this condition, they are manifesting the satanic mind, and their relationship is an expression of the satanic mind. So the Lord is saying I have come to save you from Satan, but you are so reprobate that you will not come when I call you. And when I show you that part of you who is contributing to your own bondage, you still will not come, therefore go back to your lover. Now after you tasted of me, after you tasted of the good word of God and the miracles of this age to come and of the gentleness of my love and my life, if you still choose pride, go back to your old husband and see the contrast. And then after you see the contrast, if you cry out to me and repent, I will take you back. If you do not cry out to me, go the way of a brute beast. Did I answer your question?
[INAUDIBLE] [?innocence?]. This doctrine that we have been taught in churches that these wrong things we do is of the devil, it is not that he is the one, but that fallen man has these inherent attributes within him. Satan or the carnal mind only strengthens it. Hmm?
[?Only strengthens it?].
[?That is the church?] [INAUDIBLE] we do.
Yes.
It is the devil that is causing us to do it.
I see.
But with this [?light?] now you are saying that fallen man has this inherent ability --
Yes.
-- to do these things.
Yes. We are the devil. You are the devil. Look, if your daddy is --
[CROSSTALK]
-- the devil, that makes you a devil.
[INAUDIBLE]
If your daddy is the devil, you are a devil.
[INAUDIBLE]
You are devil junior. If your daddy is the beast, you are the beast. We are the beast, brethren. We are the beast. We are the devil. We died to our righteousness and became the serpent in the wilderness. How did we become the serpent in the wilderness? We married him, and we became one flesh with him, and this is a great mystery, but a man and a wife, they are one flesh, so for all intents and purposes, we are Satan.
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. His nature is so much a part of us that the Scripture likens it into the dye of a garment, OK. We are one with him, OK. We are the devil.
I thought you were saying [INAUDIBLE] that when he gets joined to our human spirit, then we have the carnal mind. Am I right?
The devil?
Yes. When the devil joins to the human spirit, that is when we have the carnal mind.
Oh, I see [?where you are coming from?].
[CROSSTALK]
OK. We were not always the devil. We used to be Christ, you see. We used to be the righteous of Christ, but we died. We died to our righteousness, and we became the devil. We were Lucifer, you see, the light bearer. We walked in the high realms of the spirit. We were the vessel in which the light of God was appearing. We were the carrier or the candle of the light of God, but we died to our righteousness, and we became evil, and now our name is the devil. So it is not some devil outside of us that makes us wicked; we were good, and we became evil.
And this -- there are three Greek words translated “evil.” I believe this one is ponéros. It -- the implication is we were good. You were good, and you became evil, and therefore the potential to become good again is inherent. That is what we are talking about here. Only the one who came down from heaven can go back up to heaven, so what Jesus is saying is the only that was in heaven was Christ, and Christ died, and in his dead form, his name is human spirit, and your human spirit is now married to Satan. So the only way we are going to get back up into heaven is for -- to get our human spirit married to the Father again and to produce Christ again. And the only way that our human spirit is going to get free from her husband, Satan, to marry the Holy Spirit and become Christ again is to crucify that serpent. Can you hear it? We are back to square one. OK. D- -- could you wait just one second? Did I m- -- did I --
[CROSSTALK]
-- answer your question?
[CROSSTALK]
OK. Praise the Lord.
The question I want to ask is how does God see us now. Does he see us as belonging to the devil or belonging to him? Because I know that when there is a walk that he has started in us, it is true that we are still joined to him, but to the devil in, maybe, actions, but he knows that this is against our will, and he talks of adoption. It is a process. Now does he still see us as, you know, like you say, the devil or he sees us as, you know, potential children whose spiritual, you know -- whose spiritual, maybe, atmosphere has changed due to the fact that he is now in us and he is, you know, growing in us?
It depends on what we are doing. I think it is his desire -- it is the Lord’s desire to see us as his perfected Son, and we see this principle in the Song of Solomon where she is crying out to her lover. How could you even look upon me? I am -- in so many words, she is saying, I am so vile. How could you look upon me? And the Lord is saying to her, you are my beloved, and no matter how she says to him I feel ashamed d- -- he is saying, you are my beloved, and you are beautiful, and he sees her in her resurrected condition.
So overall, God sees humanity in our resurrected condition, however he is determined to erase sin from us. You see, the only way he can get us back up into heaven is to erase the mark of sin from us, so he comes to us, and he talks to us. And if we resist him because our mind is overtaken by the devil, at one point, he will turn us back to our husband to learn not to blaspheme so we could see the contrast and cry out to God. But he s- -- clearly said to Peter, when Peter said to him you will not be crucified, he said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”
So, you see, when we are fully yielded to Satan in our mind, at that moment, we are the devil. When we are yielded to Christ in our mind, we are Christ. God sees us, overall, as Christ, but at any given moment during which we are yielded unto the devil, he is treating us as the devil and rebuking us accordingly, that we should receive punishment in the flesh, that we should learn to live after the Spirit. You see, if -- for any one of us to be expressing the devil, what that means is we have been overtaken by the devil, and the Lord will execute judgment [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?flesh?] of our soul. The Lord will permit punishment, sometimes physical punishment, sometimes emotional punishment to the soul or the physical body because it is so -- because the carnal mind is so strong in us that we cannot find the strength within ourselves to live after the Spirit of Christ, and I mentioned that earlier.
If th- -- if Christ Jesus in us is not strong enough to arise and take the victory, the Lord Jesus Christ, our elder brother who has already overcome, will come and wound our carnal mind, OK, so that Christ Jesus in us stands a better chance of overcoming. And if we still cannot overcome, the Lord will send a prophet or a son to join with Chri- -- with the Lord Jesus Christ in us to wound our carnal mind. In some people, the carnal mind is very strong, so to just -- to relate myself directly to your question, God sees us as sons, but when we have -- when the Lord perceives that we are failing to live as a son, that means we are overtaken by the devil. He treats us like the devil and executes judgment against us as the devil so that the devil is wounded so that Christ Jesus in us can rise up and we can live as sons.
Then I am not so comfortable with the fact that, you know, you say that we are Satans. Sometimes it could have a negative effect on us in the sense that, you know, we could develop an attitude, you know, in the -- of the mind that, you know, we belong -- you know, the way you said it, actually. So, you know, I am -- I believe that, you know, strongly, that, when, you know, the Lord sees us, that we are struggling, there is a struggle going on, you know, and sometimes we fall. Sometimes, you know, there is a rising. You understand? It is different from, you know, a man that is totally on, you know -- not even -- Christ has not even start- -- I mean, [?on?] believers. Maybe I should put it that way. You know, so some- -- you know, the way you said it was so strong that, you know, it could have effects. You know, it is that sometimes you say, well, since I am the devil, I mean, you know, like you say, it is not -- you know, it could have a negative effect. That is what I am -- you know, I had that feeling, you know.
Well, I am sorry it has a negative effect, but it is the truth.
[?That we are?] Satans now. [?That is what I am saying?]. [CROSSTALK]
Well, Paul --
[CROSSTALK]
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE]
There is a process going on, but Paul says -- he says, resist your present husband, and live by faith unto your new husband, Christ. But the reality is that we are still joined to our present husband, and the rebellion which will separate us from him has begun because, if we were not joined to him, we would not be dying, Sister Delly [SP]. You know, so the truth is that we are still joined to him.
[?But it is?] a process, [?you know?]. [?It is?] going on now. I -- you know, [?I cannot?] say, fully, that we are Satans, you know.
[CROSSTALK]
-- there is a change [?in us?] [INAUDIBLE] there is something that is --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- [?screening us?].
Yes.
[?But it is not a struggle?].
Yes.
[INAUDIBLE] [?totally now?] because we are now aware of the fact that [CROSSTALK]
I see.
-- Christ. Even sometimes now, the ene- -- the devil uses [INAUDIBLE] uses us because we are used to it. [?The fact that we have done it?] before we even knew that [CROSSTALK] done something wrong. Do you understand my [CROSSTALK]
Yes.
There is a mixture now, that we cannot now say totally.
I hear what you are saying, and I und- -- my only answer to that, as far as I know, is that you are not raised from the dead until you are raised from the dead. We are in the process of being raised from the dead. I hear everything that you are saying. God blesses it; God honors it. But the truth of our condition is the truth of our condition, and there is no condemnation in it, you see. I perceive that you are perceiving condemnation in it. There is no condemnation in it; it is just the truth. It is like if someone is told you have been diagnosed with cancer, and if you take this treatment for 20 weeks, at the end of 20 weeks, you will be well. After 10 weeks, you still have the cancer, and you will not be well until the end of the 20th week. So to say to you at the end of the 10th week that you are not sick anymore is not really the truth, OK. Now I personally would not emphasize that we are the devil, but there was a point that was being made here, OK, and that was why I did it. But we are the devil, and we are in the midst of being translated into the kingdom of his dear Son, but there is no condemnation in it. It is just like --
[CROSSTALK]
Well, some people need to hear it. I am sorry if it upset you, OK.
[CROSSTALK]
But --
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes, OK. But do you remember last year when I was here and there was one woman who was very fearful and I ministered very gently to her? And then another woman stood up and was very offended at my gentle ministry. Remember? And I said one ministry to you and another ministry to you. Well, what was coming forth here now required a strong word, OK, but that does not mean that e- -- there was any condemnation or that you require that strong word. For what was coming forth, that was what needed to be said, so we have to listen with a discerning ear, OK, and ask the Lord to help us to understand in the same way that that one lady needed gentle ministry and the other lady needed strong ministry. That was what I believe was required to be said under the circumstances of the discussion, but it is no way meant to harm you or condemnation you or make you fearful -- or anybody, or make you fearful or make you concerned or in any way weaken your resolve to overcome or weaken you in your belief that you can overcome. It was not meant that way at all. Sometimes when people are not perceiving the reality of their condition, a strong word is necessary, so I hope I comforted you. Did I? OK. Praise the Lord. OK.
I just wanted to add to the comment. There is this animal called in biology euglena. It has a plant quality, and it has an animal quality, and depending on the circumstance you find it, you can either identify it as a plant or as an animal. So just like you said, you have -- Peter said, Lord, you do not have to be crucified. It is the devil talking to him, so he rebukes him as the devil.
Yes.
And if the Christ quality is manifested, he identifies with him, so the individual identifies based on the circumstance it is, whether it is with God or you are manifesting the devil. Am I right?
Well, I am not sure what you are trying to say. I am -- are you trying to take away man’s responsibility for sin? I am not sure what you are trying to say.
No. I am saying that there is an animal in biology euglena.
I understand that.
It has two qualities.
I understood that. I am just not sure what your point is.
OK. What I am saying is this, that the individual identifies either as a son of God or as a devil based on his activity. [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
Yes, I see. OK. But the point here is that we do not have the power to identify as a son unless Christ is being formed in us. You see, I really do not know to what degree you two young men are aware of it, but there is a spiritual war going on here right now, and it is a war over which doctrine is going to prevail. So I do not know whether you are just ho- -- if you are just honestly seeking to understand, then you need to know that there is something happening in the spirit here right now, and it is warring against the Christ in me, OK. So --
[?I am asking in relation to a question?].
Yeah, no. Listen to what I am saying. On the surface, you are just asking questions, and this is a forum where you are free to ask questions, and I answer questions. But every other night that we have been together, we have all been in the Spirit of Christ, but I am telling you that there is another spirit operating here tonight, and it is trying to bring down the Spirit of Christ. It is no longer just a pursuit of truth; it is a spiritual warfare that is trying to knock out the Spirit of Christ. Now you do not have to agree with me, but do you know what I am talking about? You do not? You do? OK. Let me try again. Let me pray. We are going to pray.
Father, in the name of Jesus, we just rebuke every spirit manifesting which is not Christ. We curse you, every spirit that has come in to destroy this meeting, to bring down the Spirit of Christ, to steal disciples for Satan, to lie about the truth and make the truth a lie. We defeat you in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I command that you bend your knee to the truth and that you release the minds of everyone that you have captured in this hour. In the name of Jesus, amen. OK.
Now I told you when I first came -- when I first met you, when I first came to Nigeria, when I first started holding meetings here, I will answer to the best of my ability any honest question, and the word honest means something that is asked in Christ. But what I perceive is operating here right now is a -- whether you are aware of it or not -- I do not know, but God knows -- is that you are trying to bring down my doctrine and exalt a doctrine that I am convinced is not of God, and I have to put a stop to it because there are th- -- some things that the Lord wants me to tell this group, OK. Can you understand that a line was crossed over, that you are no longer just asking questions, but you are pushing a doctrine? You are trying to prove a doctrine that I will not bend on. You have to kill me. I will not bend on it. It is a false doctrine.
[INAUDIBLE] I am saying you said Peter said [?something?] [CROSSTALK] the individual becomes a devil depending on [?his actions?]. [CROSSTALK]
And what I hear you saying -- this is what I hear you saying, OK. Right identification, OK, that is what I hear you saying. Well, whatever it is --
[INAUDIBLE] identify [INAUDIBLE]
OK.
[INAUDIBLE] Peter says, Lord, you do not have to die.
Yeah.
Jesus rebukes him --
Right.
-- [?on that occasion?].
Yeah. So listen to what you are saying then. Listen to what you are saying. You are saying that man, whether he has Christ or whether he does not have Christ, OK, can either identify with the devil or identify with Christ. If you do not understand what is coming out of your mouth, try to understand what I am telling you. It is a wrong spirit, OK, and this spirit is preaching a doctrine, and the doctrine says that you can be good without Christ, and the doctrine says that you can ascend up to heaven by what you are born with, that you do not need Christ formed in you, that you do not need Christ added to you. And whether you know it or not, God knows, OK, but that is what is happening here right now, OK, and there is no place to go from here but to drop it because I will declare unt- -- with my dying breath that that is a lie. Now if you choose to believe it, you believe it. It is between you and God, but I am responsible to the Father for what is coming forth here, and I am declaring it as loudly as I can as a false doctrine. You cannot ascend into heaven unless the Holy Spirit --
[CROSSTALK]
-- joins with your human spirit and forms Christ in you and takes you back up. You cannot ascend into heaven with that with which you were born alone because the Christ that you were born with is dead, and he has to be raised from the dead, and I am not backing down on it. So it is turning into an argument. Can you not see this, that you are trying -- it is turning into a pharisaical argument.
[INAUDIBLE] [?go back to what I said?]. You said that Peter -- when Peter met Jesus Christ and Jesus said he was going to be crucified, Peter said, no, and Jesus rebuked him. That means Peter was Satan, uh-huh, and that is what I am saying, that when a Christian who has Christ in him begins to manifest the opposite, which is Satan, you are identifying as a child of the devil at that time.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes. Did I get you right?
[INAUDIBLE] Delly’s [SP] question.
[INAUDIBLE] Delly’s [SP] question.
[INAUDIBLE]
Because you were saying where are we now.
[INAUDIBLE] clarify.
Yes. She was asking where are we now. How do we -- where do we [?fall in-between?]?
OK.
Are we Satan permanently, or we are Christ permanently?
OK.
So [INAUDIBLE], and I used euglena, which is in-between.
OK.
And I said, depending on where you find the animal, it either becomes a plant or an animal.
OK.
So I am not referring [CROSSTALK]
OK, Brother Rex [SP]. I love you, Brother Rex, but I am telling you that a wrong spirit has come into this meeting, OK, and I am going to ask you to please sit down as we go on with this message. And I love you just as much as I loved you before this happened, OK, but there is a wrong spirit here, so we are just going to wait on the Lord for a minute to see if the Spirit of Christ will not come back, and then we are going to try to go on. How about having a song? Will someone raise up a song, please, anybody? Jesus.
“Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and power, the glory, the victory and the majesty: for all that is in heaven and the earth bow down. For thine is the kingdom, O Lord, our God. Be exalted above us all. Be exalted [INAUDIBLE].”
“Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in heaven and the earth bow down. For thine is the kingdom, O Lord, our God. Be exalted above us all.” [INAUDIBLE]
Well, I just suggest we keep on singing until we see what the Lord is going to do. If anybody else has a song, just come up here. [?Oh?], Jesus.
[INAUDIBLE] [?my king, dear Lord?] [INAUDIBLE]
OK, brethren. The word of the Lord to you tonight is that there is another Jesus proclaiming himself to be the Christ in the earth today. He has a doctrine. In fact, he has many doctrines. There is one true doctrine; it is called the doctrine of Christ. If you choose to embrace a false doctrine, that is your business. I have enough problems without trying to force you to embrace what I believe to be the true doctrine.
But I am here tonight, and I am here in Nigeria for five weeks to proclaim the true doctrine of Christ to you, and that doctrine of Christ states that John -- the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, in which Jesus spoke about Moses cruc- -- lifting up the serpent in the wilderness is referring to the fact that Moses -- that the only way Moses could have done the miracles that he did by the power of God was to crucify his own carnal mind, which is one with the serpent. The serpent is Satan, acting as spirit, and the carnal mind is his offspring, and the two are one. And I suggest to you my proof being the Book of Jude, which says that Michael wrestled with Satan over the live body of Moses, that, in fact, Moses, on many occasions, specifically when he visited Pharaoh and led the Hebrew children into the wilderness, did succeed in crucifying his carnal mind, otherwise he could have never done those deeds.
However, it was not a permanent condition. This condition of a crucified carnal mind was not a permanent condition, and, in fact, we see Moses striking the rock a little further on. The carnal mind got out from under him and caused him to disobey God, so we find many Christians believing that God viciously punished Moses and said, look at the land, Moses, and you will never enter in, and I am not going to repeat that whole study. I told you we have it on the series entitled “Jesus in the Book of John, Part 2,” but I will tell you briefly that what the Lord said to Moses was, Moses, you are an incarnation of Christ. My Christ is in the earth ever since the fall of the creation, trying to rise up and take dominion over the carnal mind and put that carnal mind back down under his authority again. I have had several people or several manifestations of Christ, and you were one of them, and you have failed. The Christ in you has failed to permanently bind up and paralyze the carnal mind, but you will have another chance.
When we looked up every word in the Hebrew of this account that I am speaking about now in the Book of Numbers, we found, I believe, three words that were not translated. And the translation of the dialogue between the Father and Moses was, Moses, the Christ in you failed to take the victory over the pestilence in the earth, but you will have another chance when the Christ incarnates has Jesus of Nazareth a couple of thousands years hence. And I am not sending you into the physical land; I am sending Joshua into the physical land because it is given unto Christ to overcome the spiritual land. So I am drawing you back with great honor and with great love as my son. You will make it the next time. You did not overcome the flesh 100 percent this time. You will make it the next time, but the fact is that you did fail, so therefore I am calling you back. Let Joshua take the carnal church in, and in your next opportunity, for the Christ to incarnate, you will overcome as Jesus of Nazareth.
And, in fact, we see Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, showing Moses as one of his experi- -- one of the experiences that he had, which we might call his spiritual childhood. The person of Moses no longer existed. The body no longer existed. The personality no longer existed, but we find that every experience that Christ had in the man, Moses, swallowed up into the sum total of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. And I declare to you good news today, brethren, that when Christ is formed in you and he arises to full stature, you shall be the sum total of every experience of Christ in the earth to date, including the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Can you hear this?
Just as the adult person here is the sum total of every learning experience you have had in your life, good experiences, bad experiences, they have made you what you are today. When Christ is fully formed in us and swallows up our carnal mind, we shall be Christ, and we shall be the full expression, the sum total of every experience that Christ has experienced in the earth over these thousands of years, and we shall rule over the pestilence in the earth. And Christ shall be our mind, and the purpose of God for this creation shall be completed, and Satan shall go down under the feet of the Christ, and the creation shall be glorified, and God shall be glorified, and his purposes shall be completed. And this creation shall be in order, Christ on top, Satan on the bottom and Satan’s carnal mind on the bottom.
No matter what you are masquerading at -- as, no matter what you look like, no matter what you call your doctrine, no matter how much wisdom of men you have, Christ shall be exalted, and his word shall be exalted, and his truth shall be exalted, and this whole creation shall be translated, the spiritual substance of this creation, your spirit, your spirit, your spirit. Everything that is in you that is Christ shall be exalted, and everything in you that is flesh shall be burnt, shall be cast into the lake of fire and burnt, that righteousness shall stand on the earth, and men shall be delivered out from under their own carnal minds and the wickedness that they are subjected to in this system because God loves us.
He loves us; he loves us. He loves us enough to plead with us with blood and pestilence, that we lay down our pride and let him live his life through us, and man does not want to lay down his pride. Some are fighting harder than others. Even those who are agreeing with Christ because the Christ mind is in them, we are at war with our own carnal minds. So the one to whom you lend your members, brethren, that is who you serve. The one to whom you lend your members, brethren, that is whom you serve. Serve God, and do not be a vessel of dishonor.
Let me just see if there is anything else on this -- John 3. I do not know that I will go on with the betrayal of Jesus today. It is 9 o'clock already.
And as Moses l- -- crucified his own carnal mind in the wilderness of the soul realm, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.
So what Jesus is really saying -- you see, back to my major point, the whole church world is telling us -- is using this Scripture as a proof that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, was physically crucified as a blood offering for the rest of humanity, blood for blood, no more goats being crucified, but a man being crucified. And I declare to you that this concept of a physical man being sacrificed is pagan. We see the king of Moab doing it when he is losing the battle, and I suggest to you that when God sacrifices his Son, it is because he offers his o- -- he offers him up to a greater purpose. You see, the king of Moab sacrificed his son. He gave up his son’s life as an offering to their god, hoping that victory in battle would be given, no productive purpose. The young man’s life was lost.
But the Father permitted his son, in fact, sacrificed his own son so that he could raise him from the dead and bring him into a higher place and give him back to us so that he who came down from heaven on the day of Pentecost could join himself with us and bring us back up with him, leading captivity captive. It was not just the blood flowing out of Jesus’ veins that satisfied Jehovah. Do you see the subtlety of it? That is what the church world is saying, that it was the blood flowing out of the veins of this man that Jehovah needed to redeem humanity. No. It is the blood that came down from heaven on the day of Pentecost that humanity -- that is needed to save humanity. It is that blood that came down, that glorified life of Jesus when it joins with you. So God sacrificed his Son to raise him up to a higher place and put him inside of your heart, was not that red blood that satisfied Jehovah. So I hope I made that clear. Le- -- I think I have some more comments on this.
“So that whosoever believeth in him would not perish, but have eternal life.”
Let me comment on that phrase, believeth in him, once again. It sounds, in the King James, like all you have to do is believe with your intellect, but I suggest to you, brethren, that the devils believe, and I do not see them redeemed. The Greek word translated “in” can also be translated “into,” so those of us who believe into him will be saved.
We believe with our spirit, brethren. When we believe with such an intensity that our spirit vibrates out from us and touches the one we believe in and touches the one we love and pierces him, pierces his life and joins with his life, we shall be saved because he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. So it is not who believes in him. I believe in him. The cats believe in him; the dogs believe in him; workers of witchcraft believe in him. You have to believe into him, and when you believe into him, when you become one spirit with him, you shall be purified and cleansed by his spiritual blood. You have to pierce into his life, and those who have pierced him will see him, and when we see him, we will be like him. It is not an intellectual believing. So we see the following verses continue to be consistent, if you can see it. It seems to me to be so.
Verse 16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth into him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
And that is what I have been talking to you about, the blood that was shed. The Lord did not require the red blood. The whole purpose of the crucifixion was that we should believe into him when he was dwelling in our own heart and not perish. Brethren, the red blood that poured out of Jesus’ veins on Calvary will not stop you from perishing. This great salvation must be reproduced inside of you to save you. It has got to touch you. That which happened on Calvary has to touch you and reproduce itself inside of you for you to be saved.
The principle is electricity. If it was working and you were sitting here in darkness because you did not that all you needed to do was switch the light on, you would be in darkness. The work that was done on Calvary is available to all men, but the switch has to be thrown. It has to get inside of you. Lord has to join with you, and it has to do its work in you for you to be saved, and this is an essential point because it is not preached. What we hear is the work was complete on Calvary. Well, brethren, the work was complete on Calvary. Now it just has to be given to you. If you are starving to death and the food is on the other side of a locked door, if you cannot get the food, you will starve to death. He has got to get inside of you and be reproduced inside of you. It is an essential point. OK.
So I am not going to go on with this point. I hope I covered it, for whoever asked the question. I do not even remember who asked the question, and I repeat, if you would like to hear it in more depth, in particular how I got the translation that I mentioned to you on Moses not being allowed into the Promised Land, it is on the series, “Jesus in the Book of John, Part 2,” pretty much right at the beginning of the first message. It is 9:04. I do not know that I want to start this teaching on Jesus. Well, maybe I will start it, and we will just pick it up tomorrow.
I was in the Book of John. Sister Dele, is your driver taking us home, or is Sister Margaret’s co- -- Dotan, you are taking us home, so it looks like Margaret is not coming tonight. Is that correct? OK. So would you like to leave now, or would you like me to preach another half an hour? Would you like to call it quits now?
[INAUDIBLE]
It is up to you. You are the one that has to take us home and come back. Maybe we should just -- what do you think?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK. I finished this teaching on John 3. I will not have enough time to complete what I am starting now, so maybe we should stop now.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes, OK. I will take -- well, maybe I will take 10 minutes or so of general questions. Anybody have a general question on anything that I preached on? OK.
There is a statement that said [?heaven and earth?] shall pass away, but my [?word?]
[CROSSTALK]
-- but my [?word now?] shall not pass away. Now in that statement, you know, what does it mean by heaven and earth?
That is a good question. First of all, let me remind you that his word is another heaven. There is more than one heaven, and his word, the kingdom of God, is the other heaven. So the heaven and earth which will pass away is the heaven and earth of this world system. It is the heaven and earth which is being spoken about in the Book of Revelation when the Scripture says, “And the sun shall be covered with sackcloth, and it shall become darkness, and the moon shall become blood.” It means that the sun of this heaven, which is Satan, will be covered over with the sun of the other heaven, which is the Spirit of Christ, and the moon shall be covered with the blood of Jesus.
So we see the kingdom of heaven covering over the heaven of this world system, which we will call the carnal mind for clarity’s sake. It is the joining together of the two heavens, and that is the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God is the mind of Christ or the Christ being formed in you. Let me give you the three. Let me give you the analogy. Men are born -- well, a kingdom is a mind, OK. Men are born with one kingdom, their carnal minds, and they are single. When Christ begins to be formed in them, the kingdom of God begins to be formed, and they become double-minded men or men who have two kingdoms within them, and each kingdom has a king, and the two kings are fighting with one another for dominion over your person. You become a double-minded man.
You have two heavens in you, so the kingdom and the kingdom of God is singular, and the kingdom of darkness is singular, and the two are fighting against one another. The kingdom of the two heavens is that single kingdom which exists when the kingdom of heaven captures the carnal mind or the kingdom of darkness, brings it under submi- -- under subjection and paralyzes it and crucifies it, and the two minds are functioning as one mind under the authority of Christ. That is the kingdom of the two heavens, so that Scripture that you quoted, “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” where is it passing to? It is passing, I suggest to you, underneath the kingdom of God. It is being overshadowed by the kingdom of God to the point that you cannot see it anymore. That is why the Scripture says heaven and earth are passing away. All you will be able to see is the kingdom of God, which is binding the two kingdoms together, and therefore the name changes from kingdom of God to the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of the two heavens. Did I answer your question?
[INAUDIBLE]
Did you understand that?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes?
[?Yes?].
OK. One more. Anybody else have a -- OK.
I just wanted to -- an understanding of the blood of Jesus. Now when we n- -- the -- [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- when -- you know, coming up along the line, [?we?] thought that, you know, I cover myself with the blood of Jesus. I covered my -- you know, the surroundings with the blood of Jesus. Does it mean that, when we say the blood of Jesus, we are really talking of the life of Jesus --
Yes.
-- not the physical, you know --
Correct.
-- blood. So when we say, you know, like, you know, we cover the li- -- the wall with the blood Jesus, we are talking of the life. So how does he, you know, fill up? You know, like, we say that s- -- filling the atmosphere with the blood of Jesus. Does it mean filling the atmosphere with the life of Jesus? How does it really --
[CROSSTALK]
-- you know -- yes. How -- what do- -- what happens when you say I cover -- like, you know, there is a saying, and you are like, cover the floor, the walls, the ceiling with the blood of Jesus. I mean, what --
You see, actually, the Lord hears that, and he honors our faith, but what is happened when he honors our faith is that Christ arises in us. Did you hear the expression, to stir up the spirit? The Spirit of Christ is stirred up and vibrates out from us and forms a cloud, just like happens in this corporate meeting. And it will defeat -- if -- when -- if God honors your prayer, it will defeat any enemy spirit that is present in your house. It swallows it up. The Spirit of Christ will swallow up that enemy spirit. So we were taught to say I put it on the walls; I put it on the ceiling. That is OK. God knows what you mean, you know, but, actually, what is happening is that the Spirit of Christ is coming forth to wage war against an enemy spirit and defeating it, and that is all we need to know. God i- -- he loves us so much.
[INAUDIBLE]
It is OK.
[INAUDIBLE]. Whether it is b- -- now better to have the life of Christ in us, that we vibrate into, you know --
Yes.
-- touching people. I mean, that is the ultimate.
Yes.
But for now we could use that just --
Yes.
-- you know --
Yes. You can use whatever words you want. My famous story with response to a question like this is a job that I had many years ago. There was a young woman there that, every time she looked at me, called me Arlene, and she kept thinking my name was Arlene. And every time she called me Arlene, she was very embarrassed until, finally, I said, look, I know you mean me. I will answer to anything. It is OK if you call me Arlene, you know. And in -- along the same lines, I believe with all my heart that, when it comes to people who are seeking the one true God, people who are not Christians yet -- they could be Hindus; they could be Buddhists; they could be idolaters; they could be Muslims; they can -- they could be any religion at all. But something in their heart, and that something that is in their heart, it is always the human spirit, always. It is the dead Christ crying out for the truth, crying out for the one true God. I believe in the midst of your paganism, you can touch the Lord Jesus Christ, but, see, people, they do not hear me -- anything that I say after this, and they get very upset with me. After you touch the Lord Jesus Christ, he comes and reveals himself to you, and then you have to do it his way, you see. You have to lay down your idols. You have to lay down everything that is not of him and go his way, but he will -- you can touch Christ from anywhere if that spirit in you is really reaching out for truth.
Transcribed by Verbal Fusion 06/13/16
1st Edit 06/14/16 rh
