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Illustrations:
Part 2 of 14 Parts
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
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I am going to recap verses 1 through 6 of chapter 4 of the Book of Revelation, and then we are going into a study on the new creation man in the Book of Ezekiel 1.
This is Revelation 4:1-6: “After seeing the glorified Christ and writing down the messages he directed me to take to the seven churches, I looked and perceived that Christ was the entranceway into the spiritual realm of God, and the first thing I heard was an utterance, which sounded like a trumpet speaking to me, and it said, ‘Enter in behind the veil, even the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ, into the spiritual realm of God, and I will show you the course of events which are about to come upon mankind.’ And in response to the invitation I immediately entered into the Christ within me, and I perceived that I was dwelling within a soul which had utterly prostrated itself before God and which was sitting upon my soul.”
“And the one who sat upon John’s soul had the appearance of a perfected spiritual man who reflected the ruddy soul-life of God and the Spirit of the Father, which was round about the soul” -- oh, I am sorry. I read that wrong. “And the one who sat upon John’s soul had the appearance of a perfected spiritual man who reflected the ruddy soul-life of God and the Spirit of the Father, which was round about the soul, and this supernatural spectacle was glistening with the life of God.”
“And around the soul there were 24 thrones with footstools, and I saw 24 mature spiritual men sitting upon the thrones, and they were covered all over with a pure and holy garment, and their minds had been intertwined and made one with the mind of God. And visible signs of the spiritual power of the Father, the roar of Jesus’ victorious soul-life and the voices of the many-membered body of Christ came out of the soul, and the containers which hold the life of Almighty God, even the fullness of the manifestations of his life in the flesh are in front of the soul, even redeemed man.”
“And there was a many-membered, transparent, dead human soul in front of the soul of Christ and the middle of the soul of Christ, and all around it there was a many-membered animal life.”
OK, ver- -- this verse 7. We are still in chapter 4 of the Book of Revelation: “And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.”
And as we mentioned last week, this is one verse describing the new creation man, but in the Book of Ezekiel 1 I think we said we have 24 verses going into the new creation man in detail, and we are going to do that study. It is Ezekiel 1 starting with verse 4.
“And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud and a fire infolding [sic] itself, and a brightness was the color of amber out of the midst of the fire.” Glory to God. And so Ezekiel is saying he looked up and he is -- and his spiritual eyes are opened, and he perceived a whirlwind. This was in -- well, I do not know if you could see a whirlwind. I know you can see a tornado, but he had a vision -- Ezekiel had a vision. He saw something that he described as a whirlwind, and a whirlwind typifies power.
And it came out of the north. And we are going to go into this in more detail in a second. The north generally speaking is judgment, and he saw a great cloud and a fire infolding [sic] itself, and out of the midst of this -- out of the midst of all of this he saw something that was the color of amber. So we had a whirlwind coming out of the north. We had a great cloud, and we had a fire infolding [sic] itself, and a brightness, and in the midst of all this was something that looked like glowing metal, amber.
OK. The word for whirlwind is Strong’s 5591, and it means hurricane, storm or a tempest. It is from a root fi- -- Strong’s 5590, which means to rush upon, to toss to be sore troubled, to scatter, to be violently shaken. It also means to be dispersed. And I am suggesting to you that the whirlwind in the Scripture is the power of God that brings tribulation.
And we have been studying here for a while now that when the power of God contacts the soul of natural man he comes as a man of war with judgment. Why? Because the soul of natural man is sin. His state of being is sin. If you are a natural man, you have sin because that is your state of being.
Jeremiah 23:19-20: “Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in a fury, even a grievous whirlwind. It shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked, and the anger of the Lord shall not return until he hath executed -- until he hath performed the thoughts of his heart.”
So we hear in Jeremiah that he is saying that the whirlwind of the Lord is the anger of the Lord. And what is the Lord angry at? He is angry at sin, and natural man is filled with sin. So this is the anger of God that fills the Old Testament that puts so many people off because they say that it makes Jo- -- God look like a judgmental, condemning God.
But these people do not have the spiritual sight to see in the Old Testament the restoration that follows the destruction of the sin. If you have a cancer and if you do not -- if you are not in the spiritual realm where God heals you, you will go to the doctor and let him cut the tumor out. Well, that is what God is doing. He destroys sin, and he does it with a mighty indignation and wrath and anger and power, and he does it for the specific purpose of saving our lives.
So the major problem with the human race today is that they do not know God. They do not know him, and they have conjured up some fantasy or series of fantasies in their mind as to who or what he is and as to who or what his motives are. They do not know him, and the reason they do not know him is that he has not revealed himself to them.
He has not revealed himself to them. He started to reveal himself to man through the nation Israel. The program of God is moving on. He has provided us with his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and now the provision is made for God to be revealed to every man in the face of the earth. The provision is made. The way is open, but it has not happened yet. It is in the process of happening. Glory to God.
And man cannot choose God; God must choose man. God has to reveal himself to you. So if you are praying for someone for 20 years and he is not saved, you cannot say that person is stubborn or that person is anything. It is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to reveal himself to the individual. We have nothing to say about it. Glory to God.
I have another witness for you. It is -- another witness. It is Job 32:2-3: “Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram; against Job was his wrath kindled because he justified himself rather than God.”
Now, I would like to remind you that through almost the whole Book of Job right up to chapter 32 -- Job’s friends have come to look upon his misery, and they have condemned him. And for years I believed that what his friends were saying to him were untrue, but the Lord has revealed to me that what his friends say to him in the Book of Job is true. It is spiritual truth.
Their error -- their sin was that they did not understand God’s purposes in permitting these things to come upon, and neither did they glorify God. We just said that man does not know about God or about his motives. Well, Job’s friends were saying, yes, God does all these things to you because he is a judgmental, punishing, unfeeling, unsympathetic God. OK. And this young man -- his name is Elihu, the Buzite -- after listening to all these friends, the Holy Spirit rose up in him. A righteous anger rose up in him and he said to them that his wra- -- and the Scripture says his wrath was kindled because [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Job justified himself rather than God. He said that he did not deserve what was happening to him.
And we have been teaching one of many very controversial words in this ministry. If it is happening to you, you deserve it. If you did not do something personally to deserve it, one of your ancestors did. Your only hope is to ask God for mercy. The entire living soul is cursed unto death. Everything that happens to us we deserve, but we who are in Christ have access to the throne and the mercy and the deliverance and the healing of God. We are not innocent, OK. So Job’s sin was that he declared his -- he -- because he justified himself rather than God because if Job did not deserve what was happening to him, then God was unrighteous, OK.
Now, this is what the righteousness of God said in this situation. Point 1: Job was self-righteous. He justified himself rather than God. Point 2: The wrath of God, which had risen up in Elihu, was also kindled against the three friends of Job because they had found no answer. They could not help him, and they had condemned job. They had condemned Job, and they found no answer. They could not help him, and they said that all of this is just coming upon you because God is everything that you say he is. He is unrighteous and he is unfair and he is unloving.
And the whole reason that I am -- I picked out these Scriptures is that I am -- I cannot really take the time now, but if you want to study this out, there is really proof here the God -- that the whirlwind of God is man.
Now, in Job 32:2-3 I just read you that the righteous anger of God rose up in this young man Elihu, and he spoke the truth. He said that Job was self-righteous and that the three friends condemned Job -- and we are not to judge any man out of the soul, amen? -- and he did not see i- -- then they did not reveal the truth about God.
Now, if you will skip over to Job 38 -- do not -- when you do this at home, do not skip over it. Just run it down with your finger, and you will see that it continues to say Elihu said, Elihu said, Elihu said, Elihu said, and then when you get to Job 38 -- this goes on for six chapters. When you get to Job 38:1 it says: “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘And I declare unto you that Elihu the Buzite manifested the righteousness of God and has continued until the Christ within him rose up and spoke out through Elihu’s mouth.’”
It started out as the righteousness -- it was -- as the righteous indignation of the man Elihu, and then as it continued the Spirit of God stirred up and took over Elihu’s personality and spoke out through the man, and the Scripture says “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” The whirlwind of God rose up in Elihu and spoke out of the man. So when we are saying that the whirlwind came out of the north to bring judgment, what we are saying is that God manifested in a man with a prophetic anointing and executed the judgments. That is what we are saying. The only time God does not use a man is when there is no yielded vessel available, and in this hour, brethren, there are yielded vessels all over the world. God moves through men. Hallelujah.
So the word north is Strong’s 6828, and it means hidden, dark. It is used only of the north as a corridor. It means gloomy and hidden, and it is from a root that means to keep secret, to hid by covering over. So the Scripture that we are dealing with is that the whirlwind came out of the north. Is that correct? “The whirlwind of the Lord has gone forth in a” -- that is the wrong Scripture. “And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north.” The whirlwind came out of the dark, hidden, covered over, secret place, and what is that? It is the soul of Elihu. Amen? Amen.
Ezekiel 26:7-8: “For thus saith the Lord God: ‘Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses and with chariots and with horsemen and companies and much people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field, and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee.’” Judgment comes from the north, and in this Scripture God sent a king of kings. He sent Nebuchadnezzar.
But in our account in Job 38:1 God sent a man, and the judgment was spiritual, and the king of kings was Jesus Christ himself manifesting in this man, and the judgment came forth by the spoken word out of the mouth of Elihu the Buzite.
And I re- -- I just remind you that we are talking about a glorified man here, as you are going to hear in the next Scripture, that this whirlwind and everything else describing it had the appearance of a man -- had the appearance of a man. No man that we know, except the man possibly described, I believe, in chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation, the glorified Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah.
OK. Now, it says he also came with a cloud: “A whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud.” It was a whirlwind, and it was also a cloud. The word cloud is Strong’s 6051. There is more than one Hebrew word translated cloud. This word is what they call the nimbus or the thundercloud. It is a very large, dark cloud. It is the anger and the wrath and the judgment of the Lord.
Isaiah 4:5: “And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night, for upon all the glory shall be a defense.”
This cloud is a warfare cloud, and if you are Israel, he is defending you. If you are not Israel, he is coming against you. There is two faces to God -- well, there many more than two faces, but we are going to be simplistic here. There is two faces to God. It all depends on who he is looking at, OK.
If you are his son, he is smiling at you with kindness, and even if judgment is upon you, it is correction. If you are repentant and you are his son, his heart is kind towards you -- forgive me, Father. We know that we do not know what God looks like. He is smiling at you, and he is correcting you. If you are not repentant, he is very unhappy with you. He is angry with you, and his judgment is directed to destroy in most instances your pride, and secondarily your rebellion. That is the square root of all your problems, pride and rebellion. That is the square root of the problems of the human race.
This is both God. It all depends on who he is looking at, and we talked about this with the unisex hairdresser. He has the same shop. He is the same man. He has the same tools, and depending on who comes in and sits down in his chair, he does different things. He even says different things. He even behaves differently.
Well, even in your own life, do you not react to who you are talking to? You will talk one way to a man. You will talk another way to a woman. You will talk one way to your children. You will talk another way to your parents. You will talk one way to your employer, and you will talk s- -- another way to somebody that you are employing. And we are all the same person. Glory to God. We react to what we are dealing with. Hallelujah.
So in Isaiah 4:5 we are told that the nimbus or the thundercloud is the defense of Israel. In Nahum 1:3 the Scripture says: “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.”
So we have everything here. We have the whirlwind, and we have the storm, and we are told that the clouds are the dust of his feet. Now who is the feet of the Lord? Does anybody remember who the feet of the Lord is? The believer. Amen. That part of him that is standing on the earth. We are his feet. We are his members upon the earth, and we are the dust of his feet because we are made of dust. We are natural man. His feet are natural man.
So the clouds are the believers. He is the whirlwind that dwells in the cloud of our spiritual makeup, amen. And we have talked in this ministry about the fact that we look like we are a whole -- one whole, but we are not. We are made up of many parts. Just like inside of the shell of our skin we have many organs -- a heart, a lungs, a spleen, a liver -- in our spiritual make up we are made up of many parts. I do not know what it looks like. We are just made up of many parts, and Christ is in the middle of us. Only because of our condition right now we are in a body that has a solid line, but within we are made up of many spiritual parts. So we are the dust of his feet. We are many pieces individually, and there are many of us. So, therefore, we are the dust of his feet.
Hebrews 12:1 says: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” -- so great a cloud of witnesses. And in a previous meeting I had gotten Webster’s definition of the word cloud for you, and it said that what a cloud is -- that a cloud was made up of many particles in vapor. So the vapor would be the Spirit of God, and the many particles would be the souls of men.
The body of Christ is a great cloud of witnesses, and what do they witness to? What do they attest to? Anybody. Jesus Christ, amen. Because we cannot see Jesus Christ. He is invisible, but when he speaks through my mouth and the Spirit of God in you witnesses that this is the truth, you know that he is here. Amen? And when we go out to the world with the permission of the Lord, when we do miracles of healing and deliverance, or just the imparting of wisdom or blessings to people, we have witnessed to them that our God reigns, that the Lord God liveth and that he has mercy upon the humble and upon the brokenhearted. Hallelujah.
OK. So we are still on verse 4: “And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding [sic] itself.” Now, I could not get anything on this at all -- a fire infolding [sic] itself. The only thing I got -- I did get one thing, that it was a massive fire. And what I believe that word infolding [sic] itself means was that it was pulsating. You know how sometimes a fire flares up and it goes down, and it flares up and it goes down? That is all that I could -- that is the only information I could get on that.
OK. So he looked, he perceived in the spirit -- in his spiritual [?life?eyes?]. He saw a whirlwind that came out of the north, a great cloud, a fire infolding [sic] itself and a brightness -- and a brightness. And that word brightness means brilliancy and shining, and I am suggesting to you that the fire and the brightness are the Father and the Son, hallelujah, two manifestations of the life of God.
And now we [sic] [?say?see?] and a brightness -- and in the midst of all this was something that was the color of amber. And this word amber is Strong’s 2830. It means bronze or polished metal. There was a polished metal in the midst of the cloud -- let me put this down. We had a whirlwind that came out of the north. We had a cloud. We had a fire infolding [sic] itself.
[AUDIO CUTS OUT]
We had a brightness, OK. So we had judgment. The fire from the north was judgment. The cloud is a witness. The fire infolding [sic] itself is the Father, and the brightness is the Son. Glory to God. We had the judgment of God coming in a man, then we had witnesses that the whirlwind is a man and that the cloud is a man, and we had witnesses to what? To the righteousness of the judgment. The cloud was the witness to the righteousness of the judgment, and we had the presence of the Father and the presence of the Son.
OK. I have an Alternate Translation for you. Ezekiel 1:4: “And I looked and perceived the presence of God appeared unto judgment in the form of glorified man, and a massive fire, even the life of the Father, and the brilliancy of the Son was about him, and in the middle there was what appeared to be the shining metal of polished bronze, even the redeemed serpent, which is natural man, abiding in the midst of the fire.”
Now, I thought I put this down. Either I put it in the wrong place, or I did not do it, but the word for -- what did I do here? Was the color of amber -- the brightness was the color of amber. That word amber, if you take it back to its root, it is the serpent. And we have had teachings in this ministry before that the word copper refers back to the serpent, and it comes from the copper color -- if you look down a serpent’s throat when he is hissing, it is a copper color, and all of our words that are derived from copper refer back to the serpent. So this word bronze or polished metal refers back to the serpent.
So in the midst of the judgment of God, the cloud of witnesses, the Father and the Son, was what? It was a redeemed serpent because God had to be judging somebody. What was he judging? Or who was he judging? He was judging the serpent.
And we know here that the serpent is man. The serpent was the object of the prior four things. He was the object of the whirlwind from the north. He was the object of the witness. What was the witness saying with regard to the serpent? He was saying sin. God is judging the serpent, and the witness is saying God is righteous; the serpent, natural man, is filled with sin, and he deserves the judgment, and the presence of the fire, the Father and the Son, were performing the work.
I am going to read it again.
“And I looked and perceived the presence of God appeared unto judgment in the form of glorified man, and a massive fire, even the life of the Father, and the brilliancy of the Son was wrapped about him, and in the middle of all of this glory was what appeared to be the shining metal of polished bronze, even the redeemed serpent, which is natural man, abiding in the midst of the fire.”
I do not know where I put this research. I was not feeling well last night, but I looked up something that is not here. I must have put it in the wrong place. And that word polished metal is the -- it means that they were made smooth. It means that natural man was made smooth. Can I take this off the board? OK.
And we have been talking here for many months now that the condition of natural man is that he is made up of valleys and mountains. He is made up of valleys and mountains. That the condition of the living soul, I guess for intents and purposes of this discussion, you can almost say it looks like this -- this being a valley and this being a low place. I am sorry. I still do not feel well, I guess.
This is the valley, and this is the mountain. And what God has promised to do is make everything even. He has ma- -- he has promised to make these valleys low, to bring them down, and to raise up the high places -- [?cut off?] the valley and raise up the high place, and what we are going to wind up with is a smooth exterior. And, of course, the mountains are pride, and the valleys are -- I really do not know whether they are rebellion or they are just -- I really do not have any word on that. I am not going to guess at it, but it is not godly. Whatever it is, it is not godly.
It is a lack. OK. Thank you, Lord. The valley is the lack, and what is natural man lacking? He is lacking Christ. So natural man has pride in the mountain, and he is lacking Christ in the valley. So God is going to add Christ, Christ is going to fill in all of the spaces, and we are going to become smooth.
So when we talk about a polished, bronze serpent, we are talking about a totally redeemed, purified serpent that has been made godly how? Anybody. By j- -- by Christ having joined himself to him. Christ is going to over-layer him. He is going to fill him in. He is going to purify him. He is going to make him righteous, and he is going to be what was -- once was an ugly, evil, wicked serpent is going to be a glorious or a part of the glorious creation of God.
03/20/17 Transcribed by Verbalfusion
1st Edit 03/21/17 rh
