Part 2 of 4 Parts

 

The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For

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Thank you, Jesus. We will be picking up with verse 14 of Ezekiel, Chapter 39 tonight. But before we start that, I did tell you that I would try to associate the weapons listed in verse 9 with the armor outlined in Ephesians 4. And this is what I have for you.

 

Ezekiel 39, verse 9 says: And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years:

 

And these are the weapons: shields, bucklers, bows, arrows, hand staves and spears. Six weapons, and there are six parts of armor outlined.

 

Ephesians 6:14-17: Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with the truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

 

So this is the comparison that I made for you, brethren. We will start with verse 14, having your loins girt about with truth. That is the girdle of truth. And I suggest to you that, in Ezekiel 39, the word arrows means truth. If you look up the Hebrew word translated arrows in Gesenius, it is Strong's 2671.

 

And there is another translation of that word in Gesenius. I do not have the exact word that appeared in Gesenius, but there is some definition in Gesenius that indicates truth.

 

The second weapon, in Ephesians 6, is the breastplate of righteousness, and that can be likened to the word in Ezekiel 39, bucklers. That is Strong's 6973, and it refers to a shield that shields the whole body. Then we have, in Ephesians 6, the feet being shod with the gospel of peace, and this is compared to the word bows in Ezekiel 39. The Hebrew  word translated bow, as in bow and arrow, is Strong's 7198. And we are told in Gesenius' Lexicon of the Hebrew and Chaldee Language, that one of the uses of this word, poetically used, in any event, is the song of the bow.

 

In other words, it could be said, the bow sings. I guess, when you twang the cord, the bow sings. So this may be a little hard for you to swallow. You just pray about it; it is a parable. It is hidden. The armor of God is hidden in Ezekiel 39, and it is explained more clearly in Ephesians 6. So you do not have to agree with me if you do not want to, but if you do look in up in Gesenius, you will see that one of the translations is the song which the bow makes when you twang the cord.

 

And that, I suggest to you, is the gospel of peace because a message, a spiritual message, is called a song. We have the Song of Solomon, and in the Book of Numbers, I believe, we have the Song of Moses. So songs are spiritual messages. And actually, I have had dreams of someone singing from the pulpit. The word song, it is talking about a message that is truly being preached out of Christ.

 

That is the spiritual significance of the word song. It is not necessarily referring to the melody of the instrument as it is referring to the song, the verses, the message of the song. Everybody OK? The message of the song, not necessarily the melody, which comes from the instrument, but the message of the words of the song.

 

Then we have the shield of faith, which lines up with the word shield in Ezekiel 39. Then we have the helmet of salvation, which lines up with the word hand staves in Ezekiel 39. And one of the definitions of the Hebrew word hand staves, which is Strong's 4731, is the Hebrew word translated staves, and then the word hand, Strong's 3027.

 

An Alternate Translation of that in Gesenius is rod and staff. And there is a symbolic meaning of that term, rod and staff, in one of the psalms. I believe it says, His rod and His staff comfort me. It is speaking about the salvation of Christ, the rod of authority. It is speaking about the salvation of Christ, if you can hear it. If you cannot, that is OK too.

 

Then we have the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. And we likened that, in Ezekiel 39, to the word spear, Strong's 7420, which is speaking about a lance, which is a long, powerful, penetrating instrument, which is long enough to pierce you all the way through and come out on the other side.

 

One of Jesus' titles is the Jagged Rock. The significance of His piercing us is that is He is going to pierce us through and stay in the midst of us. His sword, or the lance that He is, is not going to be withdrawn. He is going to pierce us through, and together we are going to spend the life of the ages being pierced through by Christ because it is His presence in the midst of us that is giving us life.

 

And this is the whole message behind the ransom of the Lord Jesus Christ. His Father is ransoming Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the ransom which is being paid. The Lord Jesus Christ is the ransom which is being paid by the Father.

 

Who is the thief? The thief is the Devil. What has the Devil stolen? The Devil has stolen the Father's wife, the creation that He made, Adam. The Devil has stolen him, and the ransom that is being paid for the Father to get us back, is that the Father is giving His Son to us. And He is giving us His Son in the form of a piercing, a sharp, piercing instrument that is being joined to us permanently because the legal ground that the Devil has to continue to possess us is that we have fallen into a condition of sin.

 

And Jesus Christ is our righteousness. So it is only the presence of the righteousness which is in Christ which is being nailed to us. We are a tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are lacking righteousness, which is the Devil's legal ground to keep us and continue to use us.

 

So the Father has given His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, nailed Him to us, and the nail is penetrating through the midst of us, and He is our righteousness. And it is the presence of the very Son of God within us which is stripping the Devil of his righteousness to continue to possess us.

 

Now, a lot of you have heard that message, but there is a second half to that message, brethren. Once the Lord Jesus Christ penetrates you, and He penetrates you initially in the form of the Holy Spirit. But that is only the first penetration; there are two penetrations. We are being sewn back together. We are being sewn back together with God. So to make a stitch that is going to keep you joined, the needle has to go in one way and come back out the other way, so that you have got a stitch in there that is holding you together.

 

And the first penetration is in the form of the Holy Spirit. And that is called the crucifixion of the dead Christ in the midst of you, who in His dead form is called the human spirit. And the result of that penetration raises the dead Christ from the dead. And when He is raised from the dead, it is no longer the Holy Spirit or the dead Christ in you, but now we are calling Him Christ Jesus.

 

And then Christ Jesus turns around and penetrates you again going through the other way, and the second penetration kills your carnal mind and makes righteousness no longer a promise, or a righteousness by faith, or the righteousness which is a gift, but which makes righteousness a reality in you in view of the total absence of sin.

 

And the process of your resurrection from the dead and your condition of everlasting life is not fully imparted to you or secured unto you until the whole process is completed. So we have a whole Church world that knows something about the first stitch, but you are not sewn back together until the second penetration, brethren.

 

So the sword of the spirit pierces your carnal mind and must kill it. Every drop of blood in you must drain out because you, who are flesh and blood, must become flesh and spiritual bone, flesh and bone, because the life of your fallen flesh is in your blood. And when every drop of your blood drains out, and your flesh is sustained by the spiritual life of Christ, you will have entered into everlasting life. As long as you need this fallen, sin-filled, cursed blood to sustain the existence of your flesh, you have not entered into everlasting life.

 

And if you are believing the fantasy that your current mind has conjured up, that you will enter into it after the death of the body, you have received a doctrine of devils. So you had better pray about what I am saying. And if you stop reading this message without asking the Lord whether or not it is true, you are a fool because nobody has all the truth. Everything that anybody says to me, any piece of literature I get in the mail, I ask the Lord if it could possibly be true. You are a fool if you do not do that. What is another word for fool? It means you are a big baby; it means you are immature. Foolishness in the Scripture is the equivalent of immaturity. You do not have to be foolish forever; you can grow up and become wise. Do not stay a fool.

 
Verse 14, Ezekiel 39. I do not have any Alternate Translations to read you, so the people in the service today are in a bit of a disadvantage. The people reading this message hopefully have listened to part one first, so you pretty much know what we are talking about.

 

Well, I will just tell you briefly that Ezekiel 39 is speaking about the cleansing of humanity from the pollution which is killing us.

  

PASTOR VITALE: And what is the pollution that is killing us? Does anybody remember? What is the pollution, as far as God is concerned?

 

COMMENT: Pollution is sin.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Pollution is sin. But more specifically, if you look up that Hebrew word which is translated pollution, the specific kind of sin that the Scripture is talking about is idolatry. Now, I wondered for a long time, why is idolatry such a big sin? So someone bows down to a wood idol. I mean, of course it is not right. But why is that a bigger sin than murder or adultery or anything like that?

 

And this is the answer, brethren, that the true idolatry is not the bowing down to a piece of wood. The true idol, the idol that the Scripture is talking about, is the idol which is in your own heart. And we do have a Scripture (I believe it is either in Isaiah or Jeremiah; it is probably in Isaiah) that says the idols that are in your heart, and the true idol, that which is carved out of wood, is your carnal mind.

 

It is speaking about the image, which is appearing in your humanity. What typifies humanity? And there is an image carved in your wood that is the image of the Devil, which is really the image of the Serpent. It is supposed to be the image of Jehovah, but the Serpent got his image carved in the wood of your humanity. That is why Jesus said to the Pharisees, Your daddy is the Devil, the Devil being the present offspring of that Old Serpent which appeared in the Garden at the beginning of time.

 

So every idol that we see, wood, metal, clay, every idol that we see out here in this world, this visible world, it is just an expression, as is everything in this visible world. It is just an expression of what exists in the invisible world. Even when God gave Moses instructions on how to build the Tabernacle in the desert, the Lord said to him, Make sure you build it in accordance with the pattern that I have shown you of the true Tabernacle, which is in heaven, which is in the spirit world.

 

So we see that every visible idol is just an outward expression of the idol that is such an offense unto God, which is the idol which is carved in the wood of your humanity, the very image of the Serpent himself. That is the pollution of your whole person. It is the pollution of your soul; it is the pollution of your mind because, when the Serpent is carved in the wood of your humanity (your humanity has two parts to it. It is part clay and part spirit); so when the idol in your humanity, or whatever is it is, whether it is Jehovah or the Serpent, that image, the one whose image you are in, is appearing both in the clay of your soul and the metal or the gold of your spirit.

 

And we see that the Old Testament speaks about the molten image, the image that is formed in metal, and the only way you could put an image in metal is you have to melt the metal and pour it into a mold. You cannot chisel away at a piece of metal, right?

 

And that is what is done to the spirit. That is why we are going into the Lake of Fire, brethren. You have a spirit that has been melted and formed in the image of the Serpent, and it is solid. And there is only one process that will enable the Lord Jesus Christ to change its form from Serpent to... Does anybody know what we are going to be called? From Serpent to...

 

COMMENT: A Son.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, we are going to be a Son. But what is the name of the form that our spirit will be? It begins with a C.

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Cherub, cherub. We are Serpents. Our spirit is in the form of the Serpent, but we shall be a cherub after we are thrown in the fire and melted and poured into a different mold. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

 

So why are you surprised, brethren, that the fiery trial is upon you? I thought you wanted to be a Son of God. I thought that was you that I saw dancing up at the altar saying, Lord, change me. Got to change, got to change, got to change, got to change. And here comes the fire, and you are running for your life. Something is not consistent. Jesus said, The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. You want the change, but you do not want the pain. Cannot say I blame you; neither do I.

 

The only problem is that Jesus heard you asking for the change, and He is deaf to you yelling from the pain. He has turned a deaf ear unto you when you yell from the pain.

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: And thank God for it.

 

So we see that our humanity is typified by wood. It is in two parts, spirit and soul, that our spirit is metal. And according to the Levitical Law, spoils of war must be purified. All spoils of war which are metal are purified by passing them through the fire. And all wooden instruments, which are spoils of war, are purified by washing, washing. And the Scripture says we are washed with the water of the...

 

COMMENT: Word.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Word. Hallelujah.

 

So we are being purified on two levels. The Spirit of Christ in me and, when you get to that point, in you, when He is purifying you (if you want to know why you want to run out of here or why you hate me from time to time, it is because Christ in me is burning you alive, and the teaching that is coming forth from my mouth is purifying your thinking process).

 

The teaching that you are hearing with your ears is putting another thought in your mind, so that now you have a choice. You do not have to obey that commandment, which is the only way you know of how to deal with that problem. You now know that there is another way to deal with that problem, and the Spirit of Christ is coming right at you to burn away the spirit of the Serpent, which is forcing you to make a wrong choice. You are purified in your knowledge, and you are purified in your spiritual power which controls your life.

   

This is the basic message of Ezekiel 39. The Scripture says it is war. Your spirit and your soul are the spoils of war, and the prize of the war is you. The Devil has lied, has told you that God hates you, and that God is punishing you for punishment's sake, and that the punishment of God will end in your absolute destruction. And all of these doctrines of devils have terrified you all of your life. But today, brethren, the truth is manifest in the flesh.

 

The righteousness of God is appearing to you in the truth of His message to you. That He is punishing you to save your life. That He is cutting you open to give you a new heart which will save your life. That the pain is necessary to save your life. That He loves you more than you could ever love yourself. That He loves you more than any man or woman could ever, ever, ever love you because human love is selfish. You do not like to hear it, all you idealists, but I am telling you the truth, that human love is selfish.

 

And I will give you my example. You show me the man (and it could go the other way, woman to a man); you show me the man that loves a woman enough to go to work, to support her, but knowing she does not love him, that he is going to watch her love with another man, bear that other man's children, cook for him, shop for him, clean for him, make a life with him, and this other guy's going to support them because he loves that woman so much. Either the man is in a mental institution, or he does not exist.

 

Love as man knows it is selfish, brethren. I do not care how much you tell me you love that woman; there is something in it for you, and probably a whole bunch of stuff in it for you. And the same thing goes for the woman. You love that man; there is a whole bunch of stuff in it for you. Are you going to keep his house and shop and cook and clean and never marry another man, and give him children, and let him go live in another house with another woman and your kids? Your loving him is giving something to you. No man or woman will ever love you like Jesus loves you. You will never experience it in this life.

 

Marriage is acceptable to God. It is an acceptable lifestyle for people down here in hell. But I am telling you what Paul told you: Marry if you must, but you shall surely have tribulation. You want to live in a fantasy? You are going to wake up with a big, loud bang to the side of your head right after the honeymoon, if not before it. Women, you are going to have to submit to that man that is imperfect. And men, you are going to have to love that woman who is trying your patience like Christ loved the Church. And if you think that is easy, you just try it.

 

So God loves you, brethren, more than any human being could ever love you. And He is ready, willing and able to forgive you more than any human being is capable of. But His forgiveness does not leave you in a condition where you can continue to sin. His forgiveness cleanses you. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

 

Let us continue with Verse 14: And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land, to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it. After the end of seven months, they shall search.

 

And they shall sever out men of continual employment. That is not a particularly good translation, brethren. As I looked at it in the Hebrew, what is it really saying: And those who are passing through the land shall continually separate. Now who are those passing through the land? Well, what is the land? What is the land?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, the soul. The land that our spirit man is dwelling in is our soul. As I looked at it in the Interlinear, what it is really saying is, those who are passing through the land (that is us; that is our true reality of spirit), that are passing through this soul realm, we shall continuously separate. What? Those of us who are in this process of being purified and being cleansed, we shall continuously separate. Anybody know what is being separated?

 

COMMENT: The carnal mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: From what?

 

COMMENT: From Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: From Christ, amen. Amen. And why will there be a necessity to continually separate? Because the carnal mind is continuously trying to pollute the Christ mind in us. We get a thought from the Christ mind, and the carnal mind is right there with the opposite thought, trying to put confusion on you.

 

God said, Now hear this, Son, now hear this: thou shalt not go to the left today. Did God not say it would not be a good idea to go to the left today? You really have a choice. Did not God say that? Well, I thought God said to me not to do it, but I guess He said the choice was mine. Oh, really?

 

Did God not say forgive? Well, God told me to forgive, but did God not say, When the other person does not forgive you, you do not have to forgive. What did God say about that? Guess I do not have to forgive in every circumstance. Confusion.

 

We must continuously be separating our carnal mind from the mind of Christ. Those who are going on with God, those who are passing from death unto life, must continuously be sorting out the thoughts of the carnal mind from the thoughts of Christ because the carnal mind is continuously polluting God's communications unto us.

 

So, you see, the ultimate idol is that which is appearing in our humanity. The nature which we have is the ultimate idol. If it is the nature of the Serpent, it is an idol that is causing you death because the judgment for idolatry is death. If the image in your humanity is the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are a cherubim. Did you ever wonder why the God who says, Thou shalt make no graven images, commanded that the two images, two cherubim, should be in the Tabernacle? Did you ever wonder about that? You see, images are legal if it is the image of Christ.

 

So what the Scripture is really saying: Thou shalt make no graven image of anyone other than Christ. See, thou shalt make no graven image. Brethren, you cannot engrave your own soul with Christ. For your humanity to be engraved in the image of Christ, who must engrave your humanity? The Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who has the power to form your humanity in the image of the Father.

 

You are not doing it yourself. Thou shalt make no graven image because, when you do it yourself, brethren, it is not going to be the Lord Jesus Christ, it is going to be the Serpent. So you cannot do it, but the Lord Jesus Christ can do it.

 

Boy, this Bible is complicated. Somebody once told me this is a simple message. That is why the Jews have been studying for thousands of years, and the Church has been studying for two thousand years. You think that you get on an altar call line and you receive Jesus Christ and you are ready to go out and convert the world. You do not even know what you are talking about. How could you teach what you do not know? Neither can you teach but you have not experienced. The best teachers are the teachers that preach out of experience.

 

And the people who are passing from death unto life, they shall continuously separate the thoughts of the carnal mind from the thoughts of their carnal mind. The scriptural word for this is sanctification. I am really sorry, brethren, but you are not sanctified because you stopped smoking. You are not sanctified because you stopped hanging out at the bar Saturday night. You are not sanctified because you stopped having dinner with your worldly friends. That is a good thing, you know; it is a good step in the right direction, but it is not your sanctification. Your sanctification is in the mind. Your true spiritual reality is in the mind.

 

And those who are passing through the land shall bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth (the face of the earth typifying the surface of the earth). Spiritually speaking, the surface of the earth is this visible world. It is that which is on the surface. What is the part of the earth which is not on the surface? Anybody? What is earthen within us that is not...

 

COMMENT: The soul.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The soul, amen. The face of the earth is the body. That is what you see. And underneath, the earth which is underneath is the soul. It is like two sides. This is my hand; this is the surface of my hand, and this is underneath my hand. The palm is underneath my hand. Most of the time, you see the surface. You do not usually see my palm. In my normal position, you do not see my palms. That is what is underneath; it is the other side.

 

Two sides, we can also relate that to the conscious and the unconscious mind. There is a surface of the mind and the lower part of the mind, conscious and unconscious mind. You have to read the whole verse to find out whether it is speaking about the body and the soul, or whether it is speaking about the conscious and the unconscious mind. And I find that, most of the time, the carnal mind thinks the Scripture is talking about the body and the soul. But most of the time, it is speaking about the conscious and the unconscious mind. So let us try that here in verse 14.

 

Verse 14: And they are passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it.

 

I do believe, in this instance, we are talking about the carnal mind, which is the conscious part of the mind. The unconscious part of the fallen man's mind, I remind you, is Satan, the unconscious mind. So we are speaking in verse 14 about the cleansing of the carnal mind by burying it. And what is the carnal mind being buried underneath? Anybody? What is burying the carnal mind?

 

COMMENT: Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Christ. Yes, Christ is layering on top of the Devil. The new man, Christ Jesus, is laying on top of your old man, the Devil, and fastening him, binding him underneath him so that the two minds are operating as one single mind, translating us from a condition of double-mindedness into a condition of single-mindedness. And in double-mindedness, there is death, and in single-mindedness, there is sinlessness. When that single-mindedness is under the dominion of the new man, Christ Jesus, that is the covering by Christ of the multitude of sins, which is in the carnal mind.

 

When Christ covers your carnal mind to such a degree that it prohibits her from sinning, this is the true reality of the Scripture which says, The love of God (not the rule of man but the love of God) covers a multitude of sins. Because the covering of your sins is a military action, the covering of your sins is not a denial of sin which gives you a license to repeat that sin over and over and over again. But the true covering of sins, which is in the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, is a military action which prevents your sin from continuing, so that all legal ground to kill you is stripped from you, that you might live and not die. So we see here the burying of the carnal mind underneath our new man, Christ Jesus for the purpose of cleansing it.

 

After the end of seven months shall they search. And in the Interlinear, that phrase, shall they search, it seemed to read, those who remained shall make a search. Those who remained shall make a search.

 

I refer you back to the Scriptures in 1 Thessalonians, where it says, And those of us who are alive and remain. We have several commentaries on those Scriptures in which I give you my opinion that what the Scripture is really saying is not those of us who are alive and remain but that part of us which is alive. And which is the only part of us which is alive? What part of us is alive?

 

COMMENT: Christ in us.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Christ in us is alive. Christ, who has now joined with our human spirit, is alive. The body is still dead. He who has the flesh is dead because of sin. But our spirit is alive because it is joined to Christ. I know I did not quote it exactly, but there is a Scripture that emphasizes that. So we see that those of us who remain, that part of us which is now in Christ, is going to make that search for the sins of the carnal mind.

 

Brethren, Ezekiel 39:14 is speaking about the purifying of our soul, speaking about the process which will end or result in a condition of sinlessness, also known as full stature. Now, if you think you are going to go to sleep one night and have your body raptured, most of us reading these messages would know that is not true. Also, if you think you are going to go to sleep one night and wake up in the morning sinless, neither is that true.

 

And if you believe that, you have a rapture mentality; you just think it is happening in the spirit and not to your physical body. Brethren, the ascension, the process which results in a condition of sinlessness known as full stature, is just that, a process. And the name of that process is the purifying of your soul.

 

Now, remember, to enter into the Holy Tabernacle, we have to enter in with the blood of our carnal mind. And that means the sacrifice of our own carnal mind. That is the sacrifice we are entering in with. But, brethren, the Lord will not receive a sacrifice with spot or blemish in it. So it is not enough to enter in with our carnal mind on a plate. It has to be a purified carnal mind.

 

There is a process which leads up to the point where we can offer up our carnal mind as a sacrifice to the Lord. It is a process of purification, and this process of purification is accomplished through the confession of sin and repentance, which will lead to the Lord Jesus Christ uprooting and ripping that. That is what those of us in this fellowship are going through now. We are going through a purification process which is going to give us a sacrifice, which the Lord will receive. The Lord does not want our dirty sacrifice. He wants a pure sacrifice, a beast that has no spot or blemish.

 

So everyone who has this hope of his coming (does anybody know the Scripture?) purifies himself. So not only can you not get into the kingdom by offering an unclean sacrifice, but I suggest to you that this beast is not about to be sacrificed. You are not even going to be able to get him on the altar because sin gives him strength. I suggest to you, you could not even get that monster on the altar.

 

So we see that this principle is being preached here in two different ways. It is being preached in this way. If you want to sacrifice your carnal mind, you better begin by paralyzing him. You better begin through the confession of sin and repentance. You better get him, while he is in his weak condition, through confession and repentance. Otherwise, he is going to rise up one day and turn around and kill you. That, if you do succeed in getting him strapped to the altar, before you can put that knife through his heart, he is going to break his bands and turn around and kill Christ in you. That is preaching it from one point of view.

 

But there is another point of view, brethren. Even if you could put the knife through his heart, once you got him bound to the altar in an unpurified state, the Lord Jesus Christ would not receive your sacrifice. You are giving him a sacrifice that is spotted and blemished. You have got to do it the Lord's way. You have got to purify yourself before you sacrifice your carnal mind. You have got to repent. And before you repent, you have got to confess your sins.

 

And we are not talking about a general confession or repentance. We are talking about specific, blow-by-blow sin as the Lord reveals it to you. Everything that is hidden will be exposed. Is that not a Scripture? Everything that is hidden will be exposed. Every sin in your conscious and unconscious mind will be exposed, and your challenge is to confess it and repent of it as it is exposed. It is the only way. So make your covenant. Cut your covenant with the Lord.

 

Before He shows it to you, there may be some horrible skeletons in your closet. Cut your covenant before you even look at it, that in principle you confess and repent and pray that the Lord gives you the power and the strength to overcome your pride and face whatever wickedness He is going to expose in you. And tell Him that all you want is to enter in no matter what it takes, and to ignore you when you scream and yell and kick, just to get you through. Cut your covenant, brethren, because you are not going to get in under your own power. I am telling you, you are not going to do it.

 

And they shall search for seven months. A month is referring to the cycle of the moon, the moon referring to this soulish world, seven being the general number of completion. So I suggest to you that this term, seven months, it means after the fullness of whatever human generations it has been ordained it will take for mankind to come to this place.

 

I do not believe anybody knows how long it is going to be, not even the Son. The Father in heaven knows how many human years it is going to take for mankind's experience, or how many human generations it is going to take for mankind to experience whatever he has to experience to overcome his carnal mind.

 

We are not dealing with the condition of karma. We are not dealing with reincarnation. We are talking about a spiritual man. The Father formed a man at the beginning of time and breathed the breath of life into him. That part of the man, which is the Son of God, is the breath that the Father breathed into the man, which birthed the mind of Christ into that man at the beginning of time.

 

Christ is the Son of God. The clay is not the Son of God. The clay is not the Son of God. The Son of God is the mind which was born into the clay, the offspring of the Father. The Father is Spirit. Clay alone is not the Son of God. That which is an expression of the Father is the Son of God. So we are talking about the Son of God, which was breathed into the clay at the beginning of time, which was killed by the what?

 

What killed the mind which was born of the Father? It was the clay. The clay killed the spirit. The creation was a mixture of clay and spirit, with the spirit formed in a condition of mind and king over the whole creation. And the clay rose up and killed the rightful heir.

 

That is as if to say you spent your whole life riding on horseback, and you took good care of that horse, and you fed it, and you groomed it, and you trained it. And when you called it, it came. And when you tied it up, it was obedient. And then one day, that horse rode up and made you the horse and started riding on your back. I know that is a bizarre example, but that is what happened.

 

The clay rose up and took dominion over the true heir to the totality of the creation and made the spirit that was in that creation a slave. Just like in the account of Samson and Delilah. It was true history, a natural example. What happened to Samson? He was a mighty champion of God. He was a judge of Israel. He had supernatural power, and he was defeated by his humanity. You see, all of his power was in the spirit.

 

The Scripture says the secret of his power was in his hair. The hair is just a type of the spirit. The secret of his power was that his spirit was joined to the Spirit of God. That was the secret of his power. And what happened was that his humanity, the clay part of him, rose up and yielded to that part of his life in preference of the spirit life. And the spirit life died, and he became a slave. His sight was taken from him. And whatever strength was left in him, which was not spiritual strength but human, animal strength, was harnessed and tied to a gristmill, and he was used to thresh out the corn.

 

This is what happened to humanity. The creation of God consisted of two sides, spirit and soul, or spirit and dust, or spirit and clay. Clay, dust, soul, different aspects of the same thing. And spirit was in charge, but the clay rose up and killed the spirit and took over the throne.

 

So we are talking about the term seven months, and I am suggesting to you that seven months is typifying the completed amount of time that it is necessary for the spirit man, for the true heir to the rulership of this whole creation, to rise from the dead and assert his authority through the help of the Lord Jesus Christ, and through his crucifixion by the Lord Jesus Christ, to once again arise in his dominion and in the power that God gave him and rule the beast side of this creation, or the clay side of this creation, to get that horse back into submission.

 

Let me put this in at this point. We see that the restoration of the creation to the true heir is in two parts. The restoration to the true heir is in two parts. The first part is the impartation to the dead creation by the Father of the spiritual strength that will raise this creation from the dead. And that mechanism which is given by the Father to whole creation, that power which has been injected into the dead creation to raise it from the dead, has a name, and that name is the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

That was the first stage of the Father's plan to raise this creation from the dead, the second stage being the maturation of that strength. You see, the strength to restore creation back to a position where the Son of God, the Spirit, is having dominion and ruling over it, that strength was imparted to the creation in seed form. Therefore, the second stage of the restoration of the creation to its true rulership, which is the spiritual Son of God, is in the maturation of that seed. And the maturation of that seed itself is in two parts. I guess it all depends on how you look at it; it could be three stages.

 

The ongoing process of maturation of that seed, which results in the fully mature seed rising up and rending the kingdom back from the dust, or from the clay. Let us make it three stages. The creation is dead. The spiritual king has been enslaved by the dust of the earth.

 

God's plan of restoration of dominion to the spiritual Son in three stages: the impartation of power in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ, but in a seed form; the maturation of that seed, that continuous, increasing, overcoming experience of that seed as he learns to overcome the wickedness in the earth, little by little; and the final raising up to a position of power of the spiritual Son, that seed grown to full strength, and the overtaking or the overthrowing of the powers and principalities of this world system by that mature Son, which was originally imparted to the dead creation in seed form.

 

Three stages: the impartation of the power; the maturation of the power; the overthrowing of the existing powers and principalities by the Son of God, which was originally introduced into the dead creation in seed form.

 

Verse 15: And the passengers that pass through the land (that is the spiritual man) when any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-Gog.

 

The passengers is the spiritual man. Bone typifies spirit. When Christ Jesus sees any aspect at all of the carnal mind, He is going to mark it, and He is going to bury it. Christ Jesus is going to jump on top of it and render it powerless. It says, He is going to set up a sign by it.

 

Another translation of that word, set up a sign by it, is to stab it to their side. Now, hear this, brethren: when Christ Jesus in you sees any aspect of your carnal mind, He is going to stab it to his side. He is going to crucify it. He is going to pierce it through, penetrate it, kill it. That is the sign He is going to set up by it; He is going to penetrate it and kill it.

 

And every time you recognize sin in your mind, you are challenged to kill it. Do not tell it to go away; do not ignore it; do not deny it; do not press it down. Turn around and kill the thing. How do you kill it? With your mind, which is in Christ. You have to tell it to die. You have to hate it.

 

You have to have a recognition that it is ruining your life. Your sin is ruining your life. Your pride is ruining your life. Your rebellion is ruining your life. It is not the other person. The other person is there and permitted to be there, and sometimes even sent by God to show you what is in your own heart, because the other person's sin is not ruining your life. Your sin is ruining your life. And the way you find out that your sin is there is when God lets somebody sin against you, and you check your reaction to that sin. It is called, in the Scripture, the line and the plummet.

 

God is testing you. He will let all kinds of sin come against you, and He is watching your reaction. Is it Christ, or is it the carnal mind? Brethren, psychologists do that every day. They set up situations for rats and pigs and rabbits, and they watch their reaction. And they write their reactions down in books. And then the psychologist writes a book or writes a paper, and it gets published, and he becomes famous. Man is a god to rabbits and rats and guinea pigs. And I am telling you, our Father in heaven is arranging stressful situations for us, and He is watching our reaction, and He is writing it down on our chart.

 

He is finding out whether we are Christ or whether we are the animal, or the beast. And what is that for? Is it because He is having fun with us? No. But He is not raising us from the dead until we have passed over from bestiality or death unto the spiritual life of His Son.

 

And when any seeth the man's bone, he shall pierce it to his side, until the buriers have buried it under Christ in the valley of Hamon-Gog.

 

And that valley of Hamon-Gog, it is basically where all this is happening. Which mind is going to prevail, the Christ mind or the carnal mind? It is a spiritual place where only one mind can survive.

 

Verse 16: And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.

 

Hamonah, my margin says, means multitude. So I am not sure what that means. It probably means that the whole human race is going through this cleansing at the same time.

 

Verse 17: And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord God, 'Speak unto every feathered fowl and every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh and drink blood.'

 

Fowls in the Scripture, brethren, are speaking about that part of us which is spiritual; and the beast of the field is speaking about that part of us which is animal, which is bestial. And the Lord is speaking to both of them. He is saying, Speak unto every spiritual man, Christ Jesus. Speak to the whole spiritual man, Christ Jesus, who is in many members, and to the whole beast of the field, to the whole soul. And say to them, 'Assemble yourselves and come and gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you.' And what is the sacrifice that is being sacrificed? It is your own carnal mind.

 

So when the Lord Jesus Christ says, I sacrifice it for you, what He is saying is, I am giving you the power to sacrifice your own carnal mind unto Me. That is what He is saying. Gather yourself to the great sacrifice. He is saying, Come on, brethren, offer up your carnal mind. It is time to slaughter your own carnal mind that you might cross over from death into life. It is time. The door is opening, but you cannot come in without a sacrifice.

 

Even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel (the mountains of Israel indicating that it is a spiritual sacrifice), that you may eat flesh and drink blood. So the presence of flesh and blood indicates that it is the blood sacrifice. It is not the bloodless sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ being spoken about here but the sacrifice of that part of you which has blood, the sacrifice of your humanity. He is saying, Come. The Lord Jesus Christ is saying, Come, sacrifice your humanity that you might enter into the kingdom of God and dwell in the spirit or the kingdom of My dear Son for the life of the ages.

 

You cannot have both. You cannot have a life of flesh of blood and a life of flesh and bone. You must choose and you really do not have a choice. It is time to come up higher into the life of the Spirit.

 

PRAYER

 

I just rebuke every manifesting spirit right now. I rebuke rebellion, rage, wrath, Jezebel, witchcraft, fear, rebellion, anguish, every form of torment, Jezebel, any spirit that is driving people out of here. I curse you, and I strip you of your power, and I utterly penetrate you through. And pride, I condemn you, and I just pray for an anointing of the Spirit of Christ, which will rise up above all enemy spirits and control this meeting in accordance with the vision and purposes of Christ. Thank you, Lord.

 

Verse 18: Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs and of goats, of bullocks, and all of them fatlings of Bashan.

The mighty one is speaking about the Devil. You shall eat the flesh of the Devil, and the flesh of the Devil is the carnal mind. And you shall drink the blood of the princes of the earth; the princes of the earth are the human beings that are expressions of the Devil. So to drink the blood of them means to swallow up their humanity. The Lord is speaking to Christ Jesus in every human being: Come and eat of my sacrifice; swallow up these people's humanity.

 

The Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to Christ Jesus in the individual, saying, Now is the time. Arise, and overcome the carnal mind of the man that you are dwelling in and drink up his blood. To the carnal mind, this sounds like you are some kind of a monster. But I just refer you to the Scripture where Jesus said to His own disciples, You must eat my flesh and drink my blood. And we are told that all of those disciples left Him because they thought He was a cannibal, but Jesus was talking about His spiritual life.

 

And I declare to you that this Scripture is the Lord Jesus Christ instructing Christ Jesus in the individual to swallow up their humanity on a spiritual level (we are not talking about cannibalism here); to swallow up the humanity of the individual and let them cross over from a soulish existence unto an existence as the Son of God.

 

Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams (rams are male sheep with horns that have power to wage war. We are talking about mature Christians), of lambs (young, male Christians, not quite that developed), and of goats (we are speaking about the carnal mind in the individual), of bullocks and fatlings and Bashan (to be honest with you, I do not really know what bullocks and fatlings mean).

 

Verse 19: And ye shall eat fat until you are full (fat is a type of Christ). And ye shall eat fat till you are full and drink the blood of your own humanity until ye be drunken on it, of my sacrifice, which I have sacrificed for you. We are talking about the complete consumption of your own carnal mind and your own humanity. And there is death in your humanity, you see.

 

We are not going to remain in our present condition and enter into eternal life. Eternal life is in the Spirit; so for us to receive eternal life, we have to become Spirit. It is as if to say, if you migrate to a foreign country, you have to learn the ways of that foreign country. You have to assimilate into that foreign country if you want to be a part of them. Well, if you want to enter into the kingdom of God, if you want eternal life, if you want the peace and the contentment and the joy and the prosperity, and all of the good things which are in Christ, you have to enter into Christ.

 

Now, there is a perversion which exists in this country right now, and it is a mentality that is trying to do the reverse, that says that many things that are high and good and worthwhile in this nation, we are going to bring them down to give people of a lesser estate a chance.

 

No, brethren, it does not work. It does not work, you see. If you bring everything that is high and lofty down to where you are, it will not raise you up, but it will destroy all the high and good and worthwhile things that are available. You must ascend. You must ascend. When that which is valuable, when that which is moral, when that which is ethical is brought down to where the man of low estate is, that which was high, becomes low.

 

If you are dealing with the word of God, for example, which is in a high spiritual realm, and you cannot understand it because your mind is not up there, and you drag it down to where your carnal mind is, you will kill it. You bring the spiritual word of God down into the flesh, you bring it down into the letter, and the letter of the word kills. This word has a high spiritual meaning, which imparts life. But when you try to understand it with your carnal mind, it gives death.

 

And that is what is happening in this country today. We have large numbers of people that, for whatever reason, have not partaken of the goodness of the prosperity of this country. I am not going to get into this now, whose fault it is or why it happened. I am not going to get into that, but a lot of people are saying, We are going to pull this prosperity down to our level, which means we do not have to obey your laws. We do not have to do it your way. We do not have to get the grades. We are not going to work 14 hours a day; we want a handout. All kinds of things going on in this country, and it is destroying the country.

 

You cannot bring it down without killing it. You have got to come up. You have got to obey the rules. You have got to change. You want to be a part of upper-class society? Become upper-class. Learn how to talk, learn how to act, learn how to dress, learn how to fit in. Do not pull down upper-class society down to where you are, because the whole society is going to die.

 

Verse 20: Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men and with all men of war, saith the Lord God.

 

I think we are going to stop here.

 

Transcribed by VerbalFusion, 8/24/21

1st Edit, 8/27/21, rh