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Salvation & Knowledge Of Truth
![Pastor Sheila R. Vitale](/images/articleimage/Sheila-300-dpi.jpg)
The salvation of the soul/personality requires a knowledge/understanding of esoteric doctrine/the doctrine of Christ because we are joined to God through Jesus Christ in our thoughts.
Question:
Regarding the message entitled, "The Woman In The Well" (Message #521, Part 1):
"Everyone who has matured into a knowledge of the Doctrine of Christ is challenged to understand that every holy man spoken about in the Scripture had two sides, his carnal nature (old man) and his God nature (new man). So why are we shocked when that Old Man is revealed in someone who has done a great work for the Lord? The answer is pride, brethren. Rebuke your pride and receive a knowledge of the truth so that you might live and not die..."
This last sentence gives me the impression that we are saved by the knowledge of the truth, but people believe that we are saved by the finished work of Jesus on the cross, and that this truth makes us free, and that the knowledge of truth is what we need to grow and mature into full stature. Would this mean that this knowledge is what will preserve our personality? But what people teach is that what saves our soul (personality) is the finished work.
Pastor Vitale's Answer:
The “finished work” is the spiritual seed by which the Lord Jesus Christ is reproducing his victory over death within humanity:
1 Cor 15:55-57
55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory [over death] through our Lord Jesus Christ.
KJV
The “common salvation” is “the salvation of the spirit:”
Jude 3
3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
KJV
The “knowledge of the truth” is the salvation of the personality (soul):
1 Tim 2:4
4 Who will have all men to be saved [spirit], and to come unto the knowledge of the truth [soul].
KJV
The salvation of the soul/personality requires a knowledge/understanding of esoteric doctrine/the doctrine of Christ because we are joined to God through Jesus Christ in our thoughts.
Thought is the only way to be joined a spiritual man and, of course, to God. God has no form. We relate to him only through thought (prayer is thought).
Jesus is a spiritual man. The people who form the Body of Christ are his Body.
We know each other by our fruit, but our fruit is NOT good works. The fruit of the Spirit describes the NATURE of Christ, which is only in Christ Jesus, the manchild, the spiritual offspring of the natural man.
Rev 12:5
5 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
KJV
Just as Christ is the seed and spiritual offspring of Abraham, the manchild is the seed and spiritual offspring (fruit) of the believer:
Gal 3:16
16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
KJV
Jesus, himself received the seed of David from the spirit of Elijah, and bare the fruit of the regenerated Righteous Adam:
Matt 27:46-47
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
KJV
Matt 19:28
28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
KJV
Rev 22:16
16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
KJV
Jesus is also the bright and morning star, which means that his seed (which is the seed of David) is the beginning of a new, righteous world called the Kingdom of God:
Jesus’ seed is the root/seed of life in the believer, and Christ Jesus, the son of Jesus Christ (the manchild), is the offspring of that seed in the believer.
There are five grades of soul:
1. The soul that is in the blood that is dead because of sin:
Ezek 18:4
4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.
KJV
2. The spirit that is saved through the “common salvation” that all men who believe in Jesus attain to:
Jude 3
3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
KJV
3. The spiritual intellectual soul that we receive from the glorified Jesus Christ, by which we can understand esoteric doctrine:
Eph 1:17-18
17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
KJV
4. The Spirit of Life:
Rev 11:11
11 And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
KJV
5. The glorified soul of Jesus Christ:
Rom 8:17
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
KJV
The first two grades, we are born with.
The third grade, we receive the seed of through the Holy Spirit, but it must be developed through study: First the doctrine of Christ, and, if the Lord permits the person to go on, then, Kabbalah.
The fourth and fifth grades descend from above and attach themselves to Christ Jesus, the manchild in the individual that he has been born in.
I do not know anyone today who has the fourth or fifth grades. Those of us who study esoteric doctrine have the third grade, and those who also judge between (and condemn) their sin nature and the nature of Christ Jesus, the manchild, are waiting and hoping for the fourth grade to descend into them:
Rev 6:9-10
9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them [WHO SLEW THEIR CARNAL MIND] were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
KJV
God bless you.