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We said that this is going to be questions and answers tonight because the Lord is meeting you right where you are. Would you like to start with the question you asked me over lunch?
COMMENT: From Matthew 13, the parable of the...starting from Verse 24. The Lord told a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven, and He likened it to a man sowing good seed in the field, and then later on from Verse 36, He starts to explain the meaning of the parable, and in Verse 39 He says that the harvest is the end of the world, and that is the part that really confuses me. What really is this harvest, because right now in the church there is a lot of talk about the harvest work, and I am just interested to know what really we are supposed to be doing?
PASTOR VITALE: Brethren, the whole focus of the church in this hour is away from the individual towards the so-called unsaved, but the truth is that we are the unsaved. As long as our body is capable of dying, and our mind is fallen we are just as unsaved as the people that do not have a relationship with Jesus. We have a relationship with Jesus. Lord willing, that relationship will result in the resurrection of our dead human spirit and the salvation of our soul.
Salvation is a process which begins with the impartation of the seed of the Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, which we call the Holy Spirit. The only thing we have that they do not have is the seed. The seed must engraft, the seed must bear fruit, and the fruit must destroy the wicked fallen mind in our person. This Greek word translated "world," well let me back up, are you aware that there is more than one Greek word translated "world?" There are, I believe, three Greek words translated "world." The Greek word translated "world" in this Scripture is the Greek word "cosmos" which means...you know, I may be mistaken on that, but I will speak on both Greek words. I will cover myself at both ends.
If this Greek word is cosmos, cosmos means "world system." The world that we live in is a system within a system within a system. We live in a body, within this body there is an endocrine system. There are many biological systems within our body. We live in a astronomical system called the milky way. Our whole existence is a series of world systems. If this Greek word translated "world" is "cosmos," it is speaking about the end of this world system within us which is fallen.
If the Greek word translated "world" is "eon" which means "age," it is speaking about the age of death which we live in, and that this age of death exists in our mind in the form of the carnal mind, and this world out here is a reflection of our fallen mind. I hope I have not confused you. I just do not know which Greek word this is, but I will make the same point no matter what Greek word this is. Even if it is the third Greek word that means "world," what I am saying to you is that the end of the world for the individual reading this Bible is the end of this fallen existence. That is what it is saying, the end of the world as we know it.
For years we have heard preachers saying that the planet is going to burn up, and the Christians will be taken away to another place of safety. The planet is not burning up, but the spiritual government that rules this world will come to an end. The name of the government in this world is hell, and it is ruled over by a prince, who we are told, is the prince of the power of the air. His name is Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind.
This existing world system is in our mind. It is a condition of mind, a state of being, and the state of being of humanity is expressed by the condition of our physical environment.
The end of the world is the end of the fallen mind of man which is projecting this terrible image of this whole world of sin and death and disaster and every form of illness. The end of the world is the beginning of the Kingdom of God. The end of our fallen carnal mind being our Lord and master is the beginning of the Lord Jesus Christ being our true Lord and master. In this hour, many of us have a relationship with the Lord, but to some degree everyone of us is saying, "Lord, Lord," but we do not do what He tells us.
The reason we do not do what He tells us 100% of the time is that we are not capable of absolute total obedience to the Lord. Christ formed in you, the hope of glory, growing out of your own soul is able to obey every command of the Lord Jesus Christ, and when He is your mind, and your carnal mind is cut off, when your soul is beheaded from the carnal mind, that is the end of this world, or this age, or this world system as you know it.
You see, death to the average man means cessation of existence, but that is not what the Scripture says. The Scripture says nothing at all about death being cessation of existence. We do not cease to exist when we die. On the contrary, the Scripture says the exact opposite. It says that death is a continuation of existence under most unpleasant, tormenting circumstances, and the Scripture is so obvious about this that we have many preachers today preaching that death is speaking about the death of this physical body, and the removal of our soul to a place of torment and destruction, where the flame never goes out, and the worm or the torment dieth not. Is that not what they teach you? It is not wrong except that the sequence is not correct.
We have already died, brethren. The Scripture clearly states that Eve ate of the tree, and her husband with her and Adam died, and in fallen Adam all of the offspring that came forth, subsequent to that act of disobedience, died. We died when we were separated from God. When we partook of that forbidden fruit, we separated from God, and our spirit died. Our spirit is death except in the cases where we are beginning to be resurrected. The living soul that died, in whom the spirit was dwelling, is still dying.
Now if you have an Interlinear Text and you look that phrase up in the Hebrew, it says, "God said to Adam, if you eat of the tree, dying you shall die." It will not be an instantaneous death. It will be a long, slow, drawn out death which will span many generations of humanity, and that is what the human race is experiencing now, death, and because our spirit died, and our soul is corrupt and filled with sin and dying, after a season, our body dies.
You see, this is a great mystery, but if our mind was alive, it would give Life to our soul, and it would preserve our body. The only reason our body dies is that our mind is already dead. You cannot kill a body whose mind is alive because, if you do that, the result of your action is that the Father will raise that body from the dead. The only reason our body dies and goes in the ground after 60, 70, 80, or 90 years, Lord willing, the only reason that happens to our body is that our mind has been dead through this whole existence, from when we were born as a baby. When your mind becomes Christ, the resurrected Christ, when the nature of God is engraved on your mind which is your heart, and He is born in you to the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, you too will say, "No man taketh my life, but I have the option to lay it down at the command of the Lord."
The death of this body is only the final stage of a death which began at the beginning of time when our righteous mind died and became an unrighteous mind. Our mind is unrighteous, it is our condition, it is our state of being. There is nothing we can do to make it righteous. There is nothing we can wear, there is nothing we can sing, there is nothing we can preach, and there is nothing we can do to make ourselves righteous. That, brethren, is why we need a Savior. When the Savior comes unto us, He is a spiritual Savior, and He adds Himself to us and He joins with the part of us which is spirit. Salvation is in union with the Son,"He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit," and the spirit of God is eternal.
Now a further witness along these lines is really a very simple one. If you take out an English dictionary, or if you take out a Greek lexicon, the word "harvest," in and of itself, means "separation." The Greek word translated "harvest" means what our English word harvest means. if you take out a dictionary, it is very clear that the word harvest means the separation of the fruit from the plant. The harvest is not a gathering into the Kingdom, but a gathering of the carnal fallen parts of our nature. I guess I said that wrong.
The harvest is not a gathering of unsaved people into a kingdom that is physical, the church world today, but the harvest is the gathering of our dead soul and body into the Living Mind of Christ, thus imparting Life. That part of us which is dead is being absorbed into the Life of God which is growing within us. It started out as a mustard seed, and as it increases it is absorbing and consuming everything that is not of God within us. When everything that is not of God or that is fallen is consumed, there will be no sin left in you, and you shall have been made righteous.
It is the impartation of righteousness through the destruction of everything in you that is not righteous, and it is a spiritual work. There is no religious act that we can do that will cleanse ourselves. God said to the prophet, "If the Levite priests touch something unclean, can he make it clean?" The prophet said, "No Lord." The Lord said, "If something unclean touches the prophet, can he be defiled?"
The prophet said, "Yes Lord, the Levitical priest could be defiled," but we have a new covenant, brethren, and our high priest, Christ Jesus, will not be defiled when He comes into union with your sin-filled heart. We have a new covenant which has a new set of laws. The unclean can no longer pollute the clean when the clean is growing inside of you, when He is rooted down in you like a spiritual plant, and when He is a three-fold cord. When the Christ in your own heart is the product of a union between the resurrected spirit of Jesus Christ and your own heart, and such union produces the son or the manchild of Revelation 12, this three-fold cord cannot be polluted by any sin known to fallen man.
I declare to you, there is a monster on the run in humanity, the carnal minds of men think He is evil. When the carnal mind of men translate the Scriptures, they think this move of God is unclean, but it is coming for your carnal minds. It will gather it into a threshing instrument, it will crush it, life as you now know it will cease to exist, and the result is that you shall live by the Life of the Son.
We have the carnal minds of men today reading many Scriptures about the evil that God does, and the destruction that God does, and either they are carnal and say, "Oh God is a monster, I do not want anything to do with Him," or they are the opposite extreme and deny the Scriptures, which clearly indicate that God is the destroyer. He is the angel of death, He does evil to men, but the evil that He does is righteous. It is morally righteous in that it is an honest judgment of sin, and when the Father judges your soul, finds it guilty and pronounces it dead, you will die to the death of this world, but you shall live forever with the Lord, because the presence of His mind in you shall be the resurrection of the dead for you.
The harvest is the separation of the fruit from the plant. I think I got off my path. If you follow this word harvest, if you look up your definitions, the harvest is the separation of the fruit from the plant.
Brethren, we are the plant. This does hurt the pride of man, but we are the chaff. Christ in you, the hope of glory, is the wheat. We are the chaff, we are the spiritual womb in which the Father is reproducing His life in the form of the manchild. I declare to you, this world is so far behind the glory of our God. In this world, when you reap your harvest, the plant that is still rooted in the ground withers and dies, and man comes with a knife and cuts down the dead corn stalk, does he not, and rips it up out of the ground. There is no use for it. Our God is greater than that. When His Son is fully born in us, He no longer needs us to survive in this world, but God does not cut us down like a used up corn stalk. He is going to impart His Life to us.
Those vessels which carried His Son will reap the reward of righteousness, but all sin must be purged out. No sin will enter into the Kingdom, brethren. Jesus is doing the work. He wants us to work with Him by confessing that He is God, He is righteous, that we are man, that man is a worm, and that we are unrighteous. If we would humble ourselves before Him, He will exalt us when He is exalted in us.
When He comes to full term in us, He will bring us up with Him. Just like a woman who was born into a bad family, the king falls in love with her, and when he joins to her in marriage, all of her family heritage is put aside. Everybody accepts her, everybody respects her, and her children are legitimate. This is what the Lord is doing for us. There is no good thing in us, brethren, we must see ourselves as we are. There is no good thing in us.
If you study the prophets carefully in the Hebrew, the Lord calls us nothing. We are nothing, that is what He says to us.
Have you ever seen Walt Disney movies, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse? You know, that is all we are. The only reason we are different than the ducks and the mice is that the Lord saw fit to breathe His breath into us. The reason He did it is that He decided to create a womb in which His Son would be formed, and He will not throw us away. I hear sometimes that happens in Nigeria. A woman produces children for a man and when she is old, he throws her away for a young woman. It happens in the United States too.
The Lord will not do this to us, but He will exalt us and set us in a high place as the mother of His child. Do not misunderstand what I just said. Exaltation is in the union, it is in the union. I do not want anyone to think I am talking about Mary. I am not talking about Mary. I am talking about you. When the manchild comes to full term, He will join with your carnal mind. That joining will destroy your carnal mind and will raise your soul from the dead, or will impart Life to your soul.
The harvest is a separation. It is not a bringing in, in the way it is taught. It is not a bringing into the church. It is a separation of the Christ which is growing in you, from you. At which point, He will have mercy on you and not throw you away but join to you, and there will be a combination, a mixing. See, right now we are separate. Christ is inside of us. We have a fallen mind, and we have the mind of Christ. All the elements of our spiritual being are about to be joined as you would join the elements of a cake, as you would take butter, and flour, and sugar, and whip it up and when you have your cake batter, you no longer have butter, or sugar, or flour. It has become one new substance, just as Jesus became one New Man, the creation of God. Did I answer your question?
COMMENT: I think there is something here that talks about the angels, let us see. It says that the reapers are the angels. That is in Verse 39. I just want to add here that the word world there is the Greek word eon.
PASTOR VITALE: Thank you. That means this age, the end of this age of death is the beginning of the age of the Kingdom for you. Did I make that clear?
Now before we can understand the phrase that says, "the angels will be the reapers," we must understand who the angels are. The angels are not fantasy beings that fly around heaven all day with white gowns and a halo and wings. Angels are spiritual beings, and spiritual things exist inside of men. This is a great mystery, but Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." We know the Holy Ghost is within us, we know Christ, the hope of glory, is being formed in us, and yet we have a tendency to think that Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, is outside of us.
I think, here in Nigeria, we even know the demons are inside of us. If they are there, they are inside of us. We think of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, outside with his pitch fork, and his horns, and his red tail, and we think of angels as outside of us. I want to suggest to you that this is not reasonable, because spiritual principles must apply to all spiritual concepts.
If spirit dwells within the mind of a man, that means good spirits as well as bad spirits dwell inside of the mind of a man. It means demons are inside of us, it means angels are inside of us. If Christ is in us, if the Holy Ghost is in us, if demons are in us, well then angels must be within us. We must be consistent in our search of the Scriptures. I would like to suggest to you that the angel is the Christ being formed in you. We have talked about being two men. James says, "The double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." The carnal man is inside of you, the Christ is inside of you, and they are sharing this body that we can see with our eyes.
You have a multiple personality. If Christ is being formed in you, you are two people. That is how you could be in church prophesying, and singing, and blessing and get in the car to go home and scream at your wife. That is how it happens. You are two people, and we are unstable in all our ways because one minute we manifest Christ, and the next minute we manifest the carnally-minded man. We frequently cause people who look up to us to stumble, and the world usually condemns the church at the first sign of weakness. They say, "Oh you holy ones, I thought you were Christians, how did you fall into that sin?" By and large, the church does not have the answer. The answer is that my conversion is not complete. I am two men. I am the old man, and I am the New Man.
My old man has a name. We could call him Cain. My new man has a name, and His name is Christ. That spiritual man that is dwelling inside of this flesh that we look at, which is a prison house, Christ Jesus in you is the angel of the Lord to you. He is your angel. When Peter was in jail, the church prayed and made intercession for him day and night, and he was...The young lady that answered the door was so shocked that Peter stood there because he was in jail, that somebody said, "Oh it cannot be Peter, it must be his angel." Well, what does that mean? It means that the early church had a revelation that there is a spiritual man inside of this fallen flesh, and that under certain circumstances He has the spiritual authority to leave the body. The angel of the Lord is Christ. There is only one angel. He is a many-membered angel, but the angel of the Lord is Christ.
Now, if Christ in you is young, newly-conceived, and the Lord has something that He wants to accomplish in you, He may send another angel to you, a believer whose Christ is a little more mature than yours. He may send an angel to you to give you a word of wisdom, to give you counsel that you need, and to help you understand the revelational truth of the Scripture.
I am an angel of the Lord to you tonight. I come with the message of God speaking from the Christ in me, hopefully to the Christ in you, wherefore, my seed which is coming forth from me, which is Christ, is spirit and life. However, If you are listening with your carnal mind, that Christ seed is fallen by the wayside, and the birds shall eat it, the birds in your own mind. As soon as Christ in you is mature enough, the Lord will not need to send somebody else to you. He will be sending you because there is much work to be done. The Lord has much to say to His people.
The angels are the reapers. What does this mean? It means the Christ in you is cutting Himself away from the plant which is our old man. Now be careful of doctrines that exalt man. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves. It is being taught today, it is a lie. Christ in you is doing the work. Our activity is passive activity. It is what we do in submission to the work of the Christ being formed in you.
Jesus said, "I do nothing except what my Father told me to do," and today I hear it preached that God emptied Himself out into us, and today the only expression of God is man as we see him in this hour. Have you heard that teaching? Have you heard that teaching? It is a blasphemy, brethren. It says that when God emptied Himself out so that this creation could be formed, He left none of Himself in a superior position, and this mess that we call humanity is all that there is of God, and that we must, therefore, raise ourselves from the dead. It is a blasphemy. Fallen man will never raise himself from the dead, but the Father, who retains His Lordship, even though He gave a part of Himself to form this creation, the Father who is outside the realm of time sends His Son to be born in the death of your heart so that you might be raised from the dead.
"The angel will reap." Is that what it says, "will reap?" The reapers are the angels. I am not sure what that Greek word says, but we did a word-by-word study in Revelation 14 which is the harvest, and we found out that there were at least two words that were translated "reap." One of those words means the separation of the fruit from the vine, and the other word translated "reap" means the destruction of the plant. I do not know which Greek word this is here, but I will give you the general teaching that came forth in Revelation 14, "the fruit will be separated from the plant." One Greek word, the fruit will be separated from the plant, and we are the plant. Everybody okay?
The second Greek word translated "reap" is "the destruction or the cutting down of the plant," and both will happen to us. Bear in mind, now stay in Christ, Christ will not be separated from you until He is in full stature. Then He will kill your carnal mind, and then He will raise you from the dead. After the harvest, the end of this world system comes, and the Kingdom of God will be present. Do not lose sight of this. This is a glorious thing that God is doing, but to inherit the Kingdom we must die.
There is a Scripture in the New Testament which says that in order for one to inherit a legacy that somebody must die, and the teaching in the church is that Jesus Christ died and, therefore, we have the inheritance. Brethren, if you study it in the Greek, this is not what the Scripture is saying. The Scripture says that there is treasure laid up in heaven for you, and when you die to the wickedness of this life, you shall inherit it. We must die to sin, We must change, we must admit that we are fallen and throw ourselves at the mercy of God and let Him kill us, knowing that every sin that He roots out of our mind, He is replacing with the corresponding righteousness of His Life. The carnal minds of men do not want to die. The carnal mind of man, the many-membered, corporate carnal mind of man does not want to give up the possession of these bodies, or the possession of this world system, and he is in the temple of God calling himself God. He is in the ministry, and he is in the pulpit, and he is out there spreading a lot of false doctrine in the last second of the last minute of this day.
Fallen man is not going to be made of God. Fallen man is going to die, and the Lord Jesus Christ is going to possess the possession. Did I answer your question?
We found a Scripture in Daniel 7, I believe the translation is "the ancient of days." When we studied that in the Hebrew, we found out that the phrase, "the ancient of days," is speaking about the one who no longer needs a physical body to abide in this world system, the one who has become so spiritually mature that he can exist in this world system without a physical body. You see, we only need this physical body because our soul is dying.
A soul which has received Life because his mind has been raised from the dead does not need a fallen body. This body is a prison house that is jailing the criminal, fallen carnal mind of man. The harvest is the separation of this captivity. Does the Scripture not say, "The son is no different than a servant, while he is a child, and he is under tutors and governors," and those tutors and governors are in the flesh. This body, this physical body is a restraint to our spiritual person. It binds us to the earth. It is like having cement blocks tied to our neck and to be dropped in the ocean. Everything we accomplish must be accomplished through labor because our spiritual authority has been crushed by God.
Now, we see some men raise up a spiritual authority which is illegal. We see it in witchcraft, and the Scripture says that every sin will have its just recompense. The judgment for witchcraft is death, but as far as God is concerned, God desires to give us power and dominion over our world. Did he not say, "Let man have dominion over his soul, over his body, over his environment?" Brethren, when a mosquito bites you and you get malaria, you do not have dominion over your body.
When the land of your field does not yield enough food to feed your nation, you do not have dominion over your nation. Man has some dominion. We see that we have accomplished some things with the labor of our hand, but there is always a side effect that brings destruction. God desires to impart to us the spiritual authority to meet every human need of our self, of our families, and for whoever God imparts responsibility to us. Just as Jesus fed the multitudes, we are to provide food and shelter and every physical need when our spiritual condition has been restored to righteousness, and it is not a work that is done through labor. Spiritual provision comes forth from the spoken word, "Let there be food."
Jesus said, "Pass it out among the multitudes." "We just have a couple of fishes and a couple of crumbs of bread, Lord." "Pass it out." His spoken word had the authority to feed the multitude because His mind was righteous.
Our condition is fallen, and for men, even men in the church, even men who have a relationship with the Lord, to say that we are the final product of God's creation is an insult to our God. Brethren, we are not in the image of God. We are in the likeness of God, which means that there is a part of us which is like God, and what is the overriding characteristic of God? Not the moral characteristic. He is spirit, and there is a spirit in man; therefore, we are in the likeness of God, but that spirit must have an image in it. Spirit in fallen man is female, and she receives the image of the male spirit that joins with her, and, in this hour, this creation is in the image of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind.
We are born with the mark of the beast. That is why we get sick and die. How can we be raised from the dead if we do not understand our condition? We will be in the image of God when the image of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, is removed from us, and the Father imparts or engraves His nature in our spirit, and then eventually in our soul.
To say that fallen man is in the image of God, forgive us Father. Lord forgive us for our blindness, that corruptible man should have so much pride as to say that we are in the image of God. We shall be in the image of God. We have the potential to be in the image of God. The Lord has promised to remake us or reform us in His image, but, brethren, to say that you are in the image of God now means that there is no improvement necessary to you.
If you say you see, you are blind, but you tell me you see, what can I do for you? If you are in the image of God then you must need nothing from me, or you must need nothing from God. Indeed, we are in the image of a God, the God of this world. Do not worry about getting the mark of the beast, you were born with it. You have to get rid of it, you have to get rid of it, and be remade in the image of God.
COMMENT: It is about what you said about being made in the image of God. I think what you are talking about, well, how do we explain that in light of Genesis 1:27 where it says, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." How do you explain that?
PASTOR VITALE: This Bible is a message from God to man. It is the story of the creation, but the creation is not completed. We are dead, we will not be completed until God raises us from the dead. The Scripture you just quoted is God speaking the command, but there is nothing there to indicate that it has already come to pass. If you have a servant or an employee and you say to your house person, "Prepare the luncheon," you know that in ten minutes you will come down and sit at the table, and food will be in front of you. Well God said, "Let us make man in our image," and in due season, indeed man shall be in the image of God.
If you say to your house person, "Put food on the table," and you sit down and it is not there at that moment, you are looking at an empty table, you must wait for the food to appear. To say that you are sitting there eating before the food is cooked is not realistic. It has not happened yet. Did I answer your question? God said, "Let us make, let us do it."
COMMENT: In Verse 37, it does say that "So God created," well before then in 36, He said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness," and then in Verse 37, it says, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." That is where I have a little bit of a problem.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, I do not know what the tense is in the Hebrew. I do have this on a message. I just do not recall what the tense is, but if the tense is as it is translated, then the explanation is that there is a literary style to the Bible, and the literary style is that God states everything that He is to do, and once it is spoken out of His mouth, as far as He is concerned, it is done. When you ask your house person to cook lunch, you know that in ten minutes you will have food. If a stranger walks in and the table is empty, they might think you never gave the commandment but, in due season, the food will appear. There is a literary style in the Scripture that when God spoke it, He considers it done, and He states the whole thing, and then the verses that come after it are an explanation of how this is coming to pass.
The following verses, let me just take a look at this. "He created them, and God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, bear fruit." Has the creation borne the fruit of Christ? The only fruit that God is concerned with is Christ.
We have not even done the first thing yet. God said, "Let us make man in our image, and this is how you are going to be in our image, bear fruit, bear the fruit of Christ." That is what we are doing now. This is how we are going to be in God's image, by bearing His son. Then He said, "Multiply, increase and replenish the earth," and if you look that word "replenish" up in the Hebrew, it says "Fill the earth with the fruit of Christ, and then you are going to be in my image." Can you hear that?
Well I will give you one more witness in Genesis 5. It says, "This is the book of the generations of Adam in the day that God created man in the likeness of God (not the image) in the likeness of God made he him, male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam." Verse 3, "Fallen Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begat a son in his own likeness after his image," after the image of fallen Adam. The creation in this hour is in the image of fallen Adam. Can you hear what I am saying? God commanded it, and He spoke it as if it was already done, but it is taking thousands of years. Remember, man at the beginning, Adam at the beginning was a Living soul in the image of Adam, and at the end he will be a quickening spirit in the image of God. It is a growing up, it is a growing up.
COMMENT: I want to know if I can ask a personal question that has been troubling me. I do not want my sister to get offended, I am just being honest, and I am careful not to be carried away. You said earlier that when we have fully been growing, that is Christ forming in us, we would not need anyone to teach us, that God would be sending us to, that there are many works to do, reach other people, but I guess you did say that none of us has come to the stature because... (comments inaudible). I see a contradiction and the question that I wanted to ask you, just two in one kind of...number one is the...(comments inaudible). I want to know what are, without the Christ in you is fully formed, now has to come to minister to us, and the second one is that, at least twice now when I listen to your message, like you said, maybe the Christ in one is not fully formed or something is wrong, it falls to the ground and the birds within the person are eating up, or so. When I listened to try to listen to two tapes, I get alarmed in my spirit, only manage to go through on, that is error in the ultimate reconciliation, I managed to go through that, and the rest has been, I will be unrest in my spirit that will be alarmed, and this is, it is like the spirit of God would not allow me to finish it. This time it is like that. I want to know why?
PASTOR VITALE: To answer your first question, I am not in full stature. What I do have is the Christ being formed in me, the three-fold cord, the Christ that is coming forth as a result of a union between the Holy Spirit and my spirit. There has been a conception, Christ is being formed in me, He is the one who is teaching, but it is a growing up, and I am not in full stature. I am very human, very much so, . You will have to forgive me, if there is something that I do not answer, you will have to ask me again. Sometimes my memory is not too good.
As far as your being alarmed, this is very common, and the one who is alarmed is your old man. He is alarmed because this is the message that is proclaiming the death of the carnal mind, and you will have to pray about this, but all that I could tell you is that many people have the same experience. I have had people come to me, saying that they have heard the message, and they flee from me. Two or three years later the Lord brings them back, and witnesses to them that it is of Him. I want to make it clear to you, what I am suggesting to you is that your carnal mind is terrified, that you are coming this close to the judgment of your soul, which is Him. You do not have to believe me, but do you understand what I am saying? Do you understand? This is very common.
Perhaps xxxx would be willing to give you a testimony. We have several people in New York that have been studying with us for a while, and this is very common. When Christ starts attacking the carnal minds of men, this is Armageddon, and the end result of it is the complete destruction of that carnal mind. Up until this point, even if you are a Christian, the mind in you is fallen.
You are a fallen man, brethren, that has a relationship with the spirit of God. When Christ means business with you, when He wants to put His mind in you, when he says, it is not enough to prophesy and sing. "I want to think through you, and in order for me to think through you, I am going to have to bounce your carnal mind out." The carnal minds of men quake with fear at the true doctrine of God. What you have to do and this is very important, is that you have to get before God, in all humility and say, "Father, I ask for you to show me which God will not let me finish this tape? Is it really you or is it the God of this world?"
If you want me to, I would be willing to pray for you. If not, then, I in all the strength I could muster, encourage you to get before God about this issue, because it is happening everywhere. This is the last battle, and the one who is possessing your temple does not want to be ejected from it.
Now I think there was a third thing that you asked me, but I was not even sure. You said there was a contradiction, but I did not hear the contradiction. No, I am not in full stature, but I am sent to teach you because there is resident in me the mind of Christ in some measure, and what we see in the church today are people whose minds are carnal, who have been experiencing God through a relationship with the Holy Ghost and prophesying and speaking in tongues. The Lord has been letting us become familiar with His spirit, but He has not yet begun to put His mind in you. He has sent someone in whom this process has begun to tell you about it, but I am in no way in full stature.
Is there anything that I did not touch? Xxxx would you like to give a testimony, anything that would demonstrate the fear that some people experience when they first start receiving this doctrine? You do not have to.
COMMENT: Well I know that when I questioned things, you know, I took it to the Lord and I said, "Wow, this is way off." You know, my whole thinking, I had her tapes before and I did not actually listen to them because my friend had listened to them, and she said she could not continue, and so I did not take them up right away, but then when we were going through the process of listening to her messages, it was hard for me to accept it. It was against my whole way of thinking, the whole process of thinking is completely different, because you are in, it is almost like a routine, a way of thinking for your life, and when something new comes like this, it just sets you against it, and you think, "Wow, this is wrong," but you have to try it, you have to try the spirits, and you also have to pray over each time that you find, you know, if you think it is wrong, you have to ask the Lord to show you in Scripture, or show you somehow that this is truth.
I know that I denied my, I denied a lot of things that I found true, that was coming truth to me. I denied them, I could not see them, I could not see the truth coming out, because I was blind. When she brought forth the truth, I said, "Oh no it could not be, it could not be," because my mind was denying the real truth as I was setting a pattern of that way of thinking all of my life. How could that be true? It did not sound right to my carnal mind, until I had an experience and in the experience, she counseled and she showed me how my mind was working and how I had to change the way the thoughts came into my mind. I had to change that thought, I had to reject the thought, and think it according to the way that Christ would look at a thing.
You know, the thought of the carnal mind is different than the thought of Christ. As you are living out your life, the pattern you are in, you do it over and over and over again, even though it is wrong, but you think it is right in your mind, but when you get the truth of Christ, it is totally the opposite, but the carnal mind does not want to hear it, so you keep denying it and you say, "No this is what I believe." and the carnal mind is so strong. That is what it is, you know, it comes down through generations, and it is just, it is implanted in your mind and you do not want to change that thought, you do not want to change it, but yet if you find that the truth comes out, you have to because you want to know the truth, and the truth sets you free.
PASTOR VITALE: I am going to elaborate on that a little. Xxxx and her friend did call me and ask me for tapes several years ago, and when they first heard the message, xxxx's friend xxxxx was offended and put them aside. Two years later, the Lord brought us together at a luncheon and dropped a heavy anointing on the luncheon and convicted the woman who had rejected the tape, xxxxx, and she repented at that point and has been studying avidly ever since, which is about a year and a half, and she is doing very well, and it was a real battle to understand this. There is a piercing through, your carnal mind will never accept this. There is a warfare and a piercing through of your carnal mind that is more intense for some people than for others, and I do not ask anybody to take my word for it. What I do ask you to do is honestly go before the Lord and be careful not to make a snap judgment, because the wisdom of God always confounded the fallen minds of men. He will always do it in a way that you do not expect him to do it.
When Jesus appeared on the scene, He was preaching a doctrine that no Pharisee had ever heard. He was breaking all of their Levitical laws, He was working on the Sabbath, He healed on the Sabbath, and He plucked the corn on the Sabbath.
He did everything that was contrary to their law. He rebuked them for fasting, He rebuked them for washing the outside of the cup and platter. He was radical, radically different to the Jew of His day, and they could not perceive that it was God in this man, for the reason that He was different than they expected Him to be, but in your case, I want to point out to you that we should never be governed by our emotions. Do you feel fear when you listen to the tape? Is it fear that you feel? Fear or just distress? Alarmed, well alarm is a fear reaction, it is a fear reaction.
COMMENT: (comments inaudible.) Hypnotized that it was, because I see that is, I am sorry I am using, you know, a strong voice, but that is the way I feel. I just want to be honest. I would not want to be...(comment inaudible) and hypnotized, using the name of the Lord, you know.
PASTOR VITALE: I do not blame you, but I will give you something else to think about, you must surely know that you are living in a corruptible body. I am sure at some time in your life you have experienced physical pain or discomfort and sickness. You know that your body is not indestructible, you must know that. You know that you have not been completely raised from the dead. This body can still die. Therefore, it is possible that what you believe now may or may not be true. There is no way I will try to convince you, but I encourage you to get on your face before God, and if your heart is truly honest, if you really want the truth, He will show it to you. I do not know how long it will take, it is up to Him, but some people say they want the truth and they really do not. If you truly want the truth, He will give you peace, but that alarm, that alarm is fear.
Some of us that have studied psychology have heard of the flight or fight reaction. When a human being confronts danger, when an animal is confronted by danger, and human beings too because we are animals, we do one of two things. Either we stand and fight, or we flee. Both reactions are a fear reaction because we perceive on an unconscious level that our very life is in danger, and we make a split second decision to either fight with that thing, or to run away. This is what is happening with your carnal mind, he is alarmed, he is alarmed. I want to tell you that the carnal minds of men are not afraid of the doctrine in the church today. It does not produce alarm.
We see many men laugh at it, they are not afraid of going to hell, they are not afraid of burning forever, they are not. Some people do not even react to the doctrine in the church today because it has no power. It has no power to kill the carnal minds of men. You see, the carnal mind does not mind if you go to church, it does not mind if you receive the Holy Spirit, does not mind if you fool around with Christianity, it does not mind if you read the Bible. You know, he does not even mind if you cast out demons. When you start fooling with the doctrine that is going to end in his death, he minds that, and he goes into a fear reaction. You pray about this. This is what is happening to you, your carnal mind is petrified. Yes?
COMMENT: By the grace of God, I want the truth, and I believe in what the Lord is doing creating a new creation man, and I believe He has started to walk in me, and as I yield I know he...(comments inaudible). When I yield to the Spirit of God, and He is moving me along, when I am kind of reluctant and want to do things my own way (comments inaudible) because I feel the same way, that something is wrong in my life, something is wrong. I need to repent, I need to go before God, that is the kind of alarm, because by the grace of God having His spirit, I am able to discern between good and evil to some limits. It is not the kind of fear that is...(comments inaudible). It is not that kind of fear you think, "maybe I am withdrawing my carnal mind not to be dealt with."
As a matter of fact, on a daily basis I present by His grace my whole life upon His altar that I might be consumed. When I do join in...(comments inaudible) and do things that the spirit of God might not want me to, I remember the Holy Spirit gives me an alarm, "stop it," and it is like I push it aside and continue. When I finish, it is like I am left, you know, continue now, I am left. Maybe you do not understand that kind of experience, it is the same kind of experience that I am talking about...(comments inaudible) or I listened to, like I would not listen to you last year, if you remember I asked you...(comments inaudible). You know, today I did not want to come, but you know the Lord...(comments inaudible).
PASTOR VITALE: Praise God, well I am sure that the Lord will continue in His faithfulness to you. I remember your testimony of last year, that you left sort of upset with me, and the Lord spoke to you on the bus and sent you back, and I believe that He will continue in His faithfulness to you. I just encourage you to not respond to your emotions, but respond to the spirit, and do everything that you are doing and He will witness to you the truth of His word.
Generally speaking, the carnal minds of men are failing with fear, is that not a word in the Scripture? Jesus said, "Men's hearts will fail with fear when they see the events that are coming upon the earth." Well is it not possible that one of these events is the destruction of the carnal mind?
The carnal mind is terrified of the Living Christ. Brethren, I in no way intend to insult the measure of God that is in your life. Everything that I say is designed to bring you higher, and I say unto you that the carnal mind is not afraid of the gifts of the spirit, he is not afraid of you.
Look, the first thing that he is going to do is try and convince you to not be a Christian. If he cannot convince you to not be a Christian, he will make a concession, "alright go to church, alright prophesy, alright speak in tongues, alright read your Bible." Satan goes to church, he is right in the church with the believers, but, brethren, when you start getting to the place where not the Holy Spirit, where not the gifts of the spirit, but the very Christ is about to appear in you, you are threatening the very life and kingdom of this world, and that kingdom exists in your mind. I wanted to say something to you when you walked away, Father, please bring it back to me. Yes, I in no way think or thought that you are afraid and denying the word.
Any reaction that you are feeling is unconscious. I do not believe that you are consciously rejecting me or anything that I am saying. All of this is coming out of one's unconscious mind, and the believer that does not have the opportunity to at least hear what I am saying and consider it will rise up and flee out in terror. Now as I told the group this afternoon, we are not saved by doctrine, we are saved through union with God. We are not saved by doctrine, so if your salvation is not in doctrine, therefore the loss of your salvation cannot result from wrong doctrine. Fear is not of God, is that what you needed to hear? Hallelujah. Do not be afraid because the Christ that is joining with your heart, He is going to lead you into all truth. Do not be afraid, listen with an open heart, going humbly before God believing that He will not let you be deceived, and if you are deceived, He will undeceive you. You will not lose your salvation because you have believed an error. The Christ that is growing in your heart will bring a correction. Praise God, do not be afraid, do not be afraid, take authority over your fear, take authority over your carnal mind, make yourself listen to that tape. I am not telling you what to do, but that is my suggestion.
If it is a false teaching, it cannot kill you, it cannot steal from you when Christ is fighting for you. Lay hold of your carnal mind and bring it into submission to the Christ in you. Well I have spoken to many people that have been led to these teachings, and they have had a varying degree of reactions, almost all of them violent and great distress, but those people who have faith in their God to bring them into all truth, have persevered, in particular, I think of xxxxs friend, after the Lord brought her back.
One day, totally agitated, I just looked up from my desk, I could not believe the stress on her face. I did not even know what she was talking about, something she had heard on a message that I had preached three years ago. I did not even know what she was talking about, and I did the best I could to calm her, and she left my office and I said, "Lord, if you do not do something for that woman, she is not going to stay on the path that I believe you have put her on." I think it was that night, or if not that night very soon thereafter, the Lord poured out an intense anointing in our service, and she pierced through, and she got her witness in her heart that this was God, that it was the spirit of the word, and the spirit of the word sounds as different from the letter of the word as black is from white, and she got her own witness in her own heart. She pierced through her carnal mind, and she has not stopped since.
I hope I gave you some peace, I will never try to convince you of anything that I am saying. God has to convince you. If I convince you, I have imparted an intellectual understanding to you. I have no desire to convince your carnal mind of anything I am saying, but Christ in you must perceive the Christ in me, and as far as what I said about the seed falling on the wayside, I am not sure that you understood what I said. What I said is that if the Christ in you, if there is no Christ being formed in you, to hear these words, the seed is wasted. There are some people that have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, but Christ has not yet begun to be formed in them. There is nothing for this word to cleave unto. The Scripture says that it falls on the wayside. If Christ is beginning to be formed in your heart, it is falling on good ground. The good ground is Christ in you, that is the good ground.
When I first read that parable, I said, "Lord what is the good ground? What is ground that one believer has and another does not have?" Every believer does not have the engrafted word of God, which is being formed into the person of Christ. Every married woman is not with child.
Every time you lie with your wife, she does not become pregnant. The Holy Spirit is the male seed. You can be in church for ten years, you could be exposed to the Holy Spirit for ten years, He can be around you, underneath you, through you, over you, but that does not mean you have conceived His son in your heart. If you have conceived His son in your heart, you have got some good ground in you, and I think you have got some good seed in you, some good ground in your heart. Why would I say that? Because that good ground spoke to you when you left my meeting last year, and He told you to come back, right? Praise God.
Most of all, do not be afraid. That is the key point. You cannot be saved by doctrine, and you cannot lose your salvation because of a false doctrine. Have faith in God, He will guide you into all truth. You know the Scripture says, the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth, or bring you into all truth. Brethren, all truth is resident in Christ. Now I just said it, the job of the Holy Spirit is to quicken the spirit in you and bring forth the reproduction of Christ in you, and truth is in Christ. Did not Jesus say, "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life." All truth is in His mind that is being formed in you, and I want to tell you that any false doctrine that I or anybody else speaks will not crush the Christ in you. The truth, if I speak by the word of the son of God, and my words are spirit and truth, it will increase the Christ in you.
There is only one way that the Christ in you can be crushed, and that is if you willfully sin, as we are told in Hebrews 6, I believe. If you willfully sin, you crucify the son of God afresh and tread him under your feet. There is no mistake that can cost you your salvation, just a turning away from God. That will cost you your salvation, a willful turning away from God. Your faith must be in Christ, who will bring you into the fullness as you depend upon Him to do it. Anybody else? Praise God.
COMMENT: When we were on that Genesis, I just went on to Chapter 2, and you know I was looking at the part that talked about God forming, and yes, maybe you can throw some light on that, "the Lord God formed man." This is after Genesis 1 where it had talked about "God created man in his own image." Then, this one talks about the Lord God forming man out of the dust of the ground.
PASTOR VITALE: Well I am not really sure what you wanted me to say. The difference between forming and creating? Oh yes, the man was not created, the man was not created, that which was created was the building blocks of this creation that we know to be the basic elements in the form of atoms. You may have heard some people talk about two creations. They read Genesis 1:1, and 1:2, and they will tell you that man as we know him was not God's first creation, and I say unto you that Genesis 1:1 is speaking about the creation of the atoms of the universe. Man was formed out of the existing substance.
Let me say it again, God created substance. God is spirit, it has no form, it has no shape, it has no substance to it. Well, it has a spiritual substance to it. It does not fill time and space, let me put it that way. It has no corporeal substance to it. God created matter, everything that is solid is made of matter, and then God took of the dust of the earth which was a part of the matter that was created and He formed a man. It is as if to say, there was no sand by the seashore, how could God make a man? He made the sand, and then He took the sand and He formed it. That is the difference. Praise God, Hallelujah, you look happy, you happy? Praise God.
COMMENT: There is a Scripture, I cannot really remember it off hand now, but it speaks about, speaking about the saints of old, maybe Abraham, you know, and it says, I cannot remember the exact words, but it says something about how they cannot enter in without us, or something like that, Hebrews yes. I would like an explanation of that.
PASTOR VITALE: Well the explanation is built on what I was teaching this morning, and that teaching is that there is a spiritual man. God formed a man, or He formed a creation, He was a spiritual creation that, in this hour, is living in a many membered corporate body, but God just formed one Living soul. You look at Genesis 2, I believe. God just formed one Living soul. He is a spiritual man. It is an illusion to think that we are many individual men inhabiting this planet. There is one man inhabiting this planet. The Scripture likens him to a spiritual plant, we talked about this, this morning.
The root of a plant is its substance, this root can put out many leaves, which can be pruned away without the death of the plant. Every human being that we see appearing on the earth is a leaf of the spiritual plant that is not seen. Why? Because the root is underneath the ground. The spiritual root of this plant, it has a name, it is called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It has a root that goes deep under the ground. It is one tree, it has one trunk, it has several branches and many leaves. When we look at a natural tree, we see that, and as I said this morning, I do not know about your trees here in Nigeria, but in New York we have trees that shed their leaves every fall.
In the spring time, the tree which has abided for many years, its root in the ground, its trunk and its branches puts forth leaves, and in the fall, those leaves fall off and die. These leaves are never again seen on the tree. Each season, a new crop of leaves comes forth. What was your question? Oh, Hebrews. We have a spiritual man who has died, he died when his mind died. I guess I am going to have to back up because we have people here that were not there this morning, so let me start from the beginning again.
God formed a man, the man was made out of the dust, and God put a mind in that man, and the mind that God put in the man was God's own mind. The only difference between us and the animals is that we have a mind which is made of the spirit of God, and it raises us up higher than the animals.
The Scripture says that God put the man in the Garden, and stood him upright, and what that means is that God said to his imperfect creation that the creation was good, but it was not perfect, and it was immature. It had, had no experiences yet and, in particular, it had, had no experiences with evil. God said to the man, "If you eat of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall surely die. Do not do it." The problem was the man did not know what death was. If you tell your two-year old, "Do not put your hand in the burning flame because you will lose the use of your hand," most two-year olds will turn around and do it, because they have no idea what you are talking about.
Therefore, we do not light a fire and say to our two-year old, "Do not do it." We remove the child to a place of safety, because they cannot comprehend the evil which will fall upon them because of their disobedience, and they cannot comprehend the evil that will fall upon them because of their lack of experience, and lack of maturity. God said to the man, "If you do it, you are going to die." Adam said, "Oh that is nice, I wonder what death is?" The moment the creation had a thought that was separate from the thought or the mind of God, a separation took place and separation...now let me back up. The man was one with God in his mind. Does the Scriptures not say that we are alienated from God in our mind? We are alienated from God in our mind.
Union with God is in the mind. It is in thinking the thoughts of Christ that we are in union with him. Separation from God is separation of thought. God said, "Do not do it," and the man said, "Wow, I wonder what this is?" A separation took place, and spiritual death occurred. The mind of God that was existing in the creation at that time died, and the reason it was capable of death at that time, this is offensive to many people, but listen to what I have to say. It was a temporary union, there was a temporary union of the spirit of God and the man.
The mind that was in this man did not exist because of experience, because of learning, because of teaching, or because of training. God just gave it to him. It is as if to say, "I have the power to manifest a twenty-five year old man in front of you right now, physically able, but he was not raised up by parents, he was not born as an infant, he was not taught, he was not educated, he was not academically educated, he was not socially educated, he did not even have language, he was taught nothing, but he was physically good, he looked good."
He had, had no experiences and, in particular, no experience with evil, and because of his inexperience or because of the disobedience which resulted from his inexperience, the mind of Christ that had been given to him fell apart. The mind of Christ in the creation that had no experience existed because of a union of God with the man, but when the man had his own thought, a separation took place and he died. The creation died to righteousness, fell down into hell and now our mind is death. Did Paul not say, "To be carnally minded is death."
Jesus, The Christ, had a mind, and that mind was Life. Fallen man has a mind and that mind is death, and depending on the mind that is reigning in the creation, the creation also known as the living soul is either dead or alive. God only made one living soul, when the mind in it was Life, the creation was alive and Adam was in the Garden with all provision, but when the mind in that creation became death, the whole creation died. We see in this hour a manifestation of the mind of Christ, which the Scripture describes as a three-fold cord. It is not a mind that exists in a man, because he has a relationship with God. In the man, Jesus of Nazareth, we see a mind which is righteous, because the spirit of the Father had joined so completely with the spirit of Jesus' humanity that an offspring occurred, and an implanted and engrafted mind of Christ that was not a gift, because God said, "Here you can have it," but it was something that was worked into Jesus.
Jesus grew up from seed, He was born as an infant, was he not? He did not appear as a full grown man as the original creation did, and, therefore, the mind of God was intertwined with the carnal mind that the man inherited from his mother. This three-fold cord, this three- fold Christ can never be destroyed, because the Scripture says, "Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more." Now if the Scripture can say that, that must mean that Christ died, because when He is raised from the dead, He dieth no more. I am getting all over the place here, let me try and pull this in.
What I am trying to tell you in answer to your question is that there is one spiritual man appearing in many members, just like we have many cells of our body. Every spiritual truth has a natural example. I look at you and I see one man, but most of us here know that you have many organs, you have many cells, many different functioning systems within this frame. There is one spiritual man in the earth, and each one of us is one of his cells.
Jesus help me, I am really having trouble getting this out. Christ is coming forth in the creation, and the way he is coming forth is by invading this world system, which is death, by His spirit and having spiritual experiences in the spirit of God in this world system. The man that was originally formed that died is being given experiences by the spirit of God, if you can hear this. I feel I am not reaching you, let me just pray.
PRAYER
Father, in the name of Jesus, I just pray that you give me the ability to explain this in a form that could be received, or be glorified in whatever you would do in this situation. Amen
At the beginning, the Eternal One was a Living Soul. At the end, He became or grew up into a quickening, Life-giving Spirit. We are talking about the development of a mind of Christ in the creation of God which will be incapable of being destroyed by sin, not a two-fold cord, not a gift, that is given without repentance, because He said, "Here I gave it to you, you do not deserve it, you have not earned it, you have not studied, you do not know anything, but here, you are king." That was what happened at the beginning of time, but in this hour this spiritual man in many members is having spiritual experiences with God. He is learning how to resist evil. "Submit yourself to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you." Christ in many members is having experiences which have resulted in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, of overcoming of the carnal mind.
Everyone of those people named in the hall of faith was a vessel for Christ to have an experience in that is resulting in the maturation of the creation, the spiritual maturation of the creation. Christ cannot appear in full stature without the others because Jesus Christ of Nazareth was the sum total of every spiritual experience that Christ had, had in the earth prior to Jesus of Nazareth. He was not a twenty-five year old man, or thirty-year old man that appeared out of nowhere that was perfect. Physically, He grew up from infancy, and spiritually He was the sum total of every experience that the spiritual man had in Christ to that date, and two of those experiences came in the form of Elijah and Moses.
If you have ears to hear, hear it. I am going to say it again. I think I am breaking through. Every lifetime in which Christ is glorified, every human being that has a spiritual experience in God is an increase or a contribution to the spiritual man, to the invisible spiritual man which is maturing through many experiences in this earth.
Am I starting to break through here? Jesus of Nazareth was the sum total of all of those experiences, to date. You, in this hour, are the sum total of every experience you have had as a human being in this lifetime. Whatever your relationship with your father is, whatever relationship with your mother, with your teachers, everything that you have experienced has contributed to what you are today. Every spiritual experience of the spirit of God that was ever experienced in mankind up to and including the man, Jesus of Nazareth, produced the glorified Lord Jesus Christ. He was the sum total of every experience that every man of God had ever experienced.
Remember, Jesus said, "If you can receive it, John the Baptist is Elijah." I want to take it a step further. I want to tell you or suggest to you that when the first fruits company of the sons of God manifest, does anybody not know what that means? There is a group of people whose mind is about to be made righteous, and that group of people will be the sum total of all of the heroes of the book of Hebrews, including Jesus of Nazareth. This is a never ending increase of the Kingdom of God. Every thing, every experience that Christ has had since the creation is going to become your experience when He is fully born in your mind. When your mind is carnal, you are limited to the experiences of this lifetime. When you become a spiritual man, there is no limitations to you. You will speak every language, there will be nothing that is hidden from you, you will understand the minds of men, you will know history, and you will know the secrets of science and mathematics.
All knowledge is in Christ. Did you understand what I said? I feel there is somebody here that does not understand. Do not be distressed if you do not understand. This was a very deep teaching. Do not be distressed. This is very deep teaching.
I personally would never teach this to people that I just met, that I do not know are prepared for it, but I am convinced that the time is very short, that the Lord has told me to do this, that He has brought you here, and that He wants you to hear this. Now I have spoken and He has got to do whatever He is going to do with you. The time is very short. The first fruits are about to appear in the earth, and the people that you expect to be in the first fruits company probably will not be in it, and there are a lot of people that in a million years you never thought would be in the first fruits company that will probably be in it, because he who is first will be last, and he who last will be first.
Do not worry about whether or not you have a formal education, do not worry about whether you have a history of intellectual achievement. It is Him in you doing the work, because He has found you faithful. There are going to be a lot of very surprised people as to who is in this first fruits company.
It has nothing to do with your intellectual or your spiritual ability. It is the election of God, and if He elects you to be a part of this first fruits company, He will do the work, and I declare to you that the one sin that is most grievous unto the Lord is pride. The Pharisees are not likely to enter in, brethren, not that God is a respecter of persons, but pride separates you from God, and if you believe that you have already arrived, if you believe you have everything there is to get, and you just have to die and go to heaven, if you believe that you are already in His image, if you believe that you have got the truth, and it is not possible that maybe in some area, you do not have it right, if that is how you feel, you are manifesting pride because, brethren, we are fallen.
Nobody knows everything, and I remind you about Elisha the Prophet who looked up, that saw the woman running towards him because her son had just died, and he said to his servant, "What happened here?" She threw herself at the prophet's feet, and she says, "I was barren, but you gave me a son and he dies." I think he was twelve years old. "What kind of a gift is this?"
Elisha said, "The Lord has hid this thing from me." Elisha, the prophet that had a double portion of Elijah's anointing, did not know that this woman's child died, because the Lord hid this knowledge from him. All knowledge is in Christ. That is how Paul could say, "There is no Jew or Greek, there is no male or female." It has nothing to do with your intellect. If you have a relative who was retarded or simple in any way, it does not matter because when Christ is raised from the dead in them, whatever the person's carnal mind was, will be dead anyway. You who are a great intellect will lose your great intellect, and you who are a retarded person will lose your retarded intellect when Christ is exalted in you.
I think it is clear that the retarded person, and the poor person, and the troubled person have much less trouble dying and letting Christ come forth and be their life than the person who is accomplished in this world. The people who are accomplished in this world have more difficulty giving up the things of this world, and that is why the Scripture says. There will be very few rich, very few intelligent, very few great ones. Why? Because they love what they have so much that they have trouble letting go of it. Jesus said, "All things are possible." Do not let me discourage anybody here, with God all things are possible.
How can the rich man enter into the kingdom of God? Jesus said, "With God all things are possible."
COMMENT: I want to ask two questions. The first one is, how is the mind of Christ being formed in us? Secondly, what do you understand as the sanctification, what is your view on sanctification?
PASTOR VITALE: The mind of Christ begins to be formed in us through a conception which is typified by human conception. The Holy Spirit is the seed of the Gather. It does not matter whether your body is male or female, spiritually speaking, fallen man is female in relation to God. God is the Father, there is none greater than Him. He is male in relationship to every element of this creation including the living soul. The Father comes to us by His spirit and engrafts Himself, joins himself to that part of us which is spirit. There is a union, there is a penetration, and the type of it is human reproduction. When a woman conceives, the male seed and the female seed join so completely that they become one cell, the first cell of the new baby. This is what happened in Jesus, and it is happening in us. The seed of the Father comes to us, joins with us, and the seed is implanted, and it begins to grow, and what makes it grow is spiritual ministry and the teaching of the word. Most important, I should not say most important, experiences, experiences.
God does not want us to be robots. He does not want to have to say to us, "Thou shalt not, Thou shalt not, Thou shalt not, if you eat of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will surely die." He is putting His law in your heart in the form of the mind of Christ. You will know by your nature what is sin and what is not, and you will not sin anymore.
Did I answer your question? As the mind of Christ starts to come forth in us, there is a warfare that ensues between the mind of Christ and the mind that you were born with which is called your carnal mind, and they are both fighting to be God of your temple. The Scripture says that the man of sin sits in the temple of God, and he calls himself God, and he frequently says to the person whose mind he is sitting in, "This is God speaking." Let me just say this again, Christ must be conceived in us. If Christ is not conceived in us we have a relationship with him, he gives us gifts, he gives us experiences, but these experiences and gifts do not necessarily produce the son, and we shall be saved in childbearing. We must bear the manchild of Revelation 12 in our own heart.
After the conception, just like a fetus in a pregnant woman, the Christ starts to increase. He increases as a result of rain and sun. Rain, the spirit of God, and sun, the word of God, coming forth from a believer in whom Christ is already manifesting, and He grows, and when He grows He wages war against the mind you were born with, and as He defeats the mind that you were born with, He increases. It is a simultaneous dismantling of your carnal mind and increasing of the mind of Christ. If God ripped your carnal mind out all at once, the Christ in you would not be mature enough to sustain the life of your flesh. God is not about to destroy your carnal mind until Christ is mature enough to sustain the life of your flesh. Did I answer your question? You have another one?
COMMENT: I think I understand what you are saying. What spiritual backing do you have for all you have said?
PASTOR VITALE: About the conception? James said, "We must receive the engrafted word," the formation of Christ. You mean the simultaneous dismantling of the carnal mind? What is my explanation? When you look in the back of the book of Revelation where it talks about Jesus with His many crowns, and it says, "He is the Lamb," I think it is Revelation 20, but I may have the chapter wrong, it talks about the Lamb on Mount Zion. If you look that word up in the Greek, it is specifically speaking about a lamb of less than one year old. It is a lamb that has been recently born, coming forth from a series of experiences, not someone that just appeared as He did at the beginning of time, and also my second witness would be the man, Jesus of Nazareth.
We have Him as our example, and He had many experiences in God. He said, "I do nothing except what my Father tells me to do," and He learned, and the Father exalted Him and raised Him to a higher life form. The glorified Jesus Christ is in a higher life form than the man, Jesus the Christ, was. He is now spirit, He is one with the Father. It is an evolution of spiritual maturity. Can you see that Jesus the Christ was a man who was God in a human body, and Jesus, our Lord Jesus Christ, is now one with the Father and is pure spirit? He evolved to a higher form. Even though He was God in the flesh, now He is God, pure spirit. Can you see that? It is an evolution, a growing up of spirituality. Did I satisfy you?
"Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Be not conformed to this age." Be not. We mentioned this earlier. The word "world" is talking about the fallen mind that is in mankind today. Be not conformed to it, be not in the image of this fallen mind, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We must ask, what is the renewing of your mind?
I suggest to you the renewing of your mind is the impartation of a new mind. What it is saying is, "Have the mind which is in you renewed, reject the old mind, put off the old man, and put on the new, and, therefore, the mind in you will be renewed when you start to think out of the New Man. Can you receive that? Well I guess the rest, "that you may prove what is that good and acceptable, perfect will of God." We cannot be in the perfect will of God when we are living out of our carnal mind. We must have an exchange of minds, God has a new mind for us. The King James says, "Renew your mind." I have not looked this up in the Greek, but I do know the principle is saying that the renewal of your mind is the impartation of a new mind and the death of the existing mind. Most Christians think that it means a renewing of your existing mind, but it does not. I have not studied this in the Greek, but I tell you, in general principle, it does not mean that. It is more likely a renewing of the creation, the soul. The living soul that died is being renewed by the impartation of a new mind.
I said it earlier, when the mind in the soul is death, the soul has no Life, when the mind in the soul is Life, the soul has received life, and I do have my...I will check this out. I do not know if I will see you tomorrow night, but I will look this up in the Greek. Frequently, there are mistranslations, and this is what I am getting...indicates that, that which we now possess will receive a renewal, but this is not true. The renewal is in the death of this mind of death, and it's replacement with the mind which is Life.
Sanctification. The true sanctification is the separation of the world which is in your mind. Now when Christ begins to be formed in you, you have two minds, the mind of Christ and the carnal mind that you were born with, and when you first begin to experience this you cannot tell the difference. When a thought comes into your mind, you do not know whether it is Christ speaking to you or whether it is the carnal mind speaking to you. The two are so closely related that as you grow up in Christ at the beginning of your experience in this area, you cannot tell the difference. Since I believe that people are the same everywhere no matter what part of the world they are in, I would dare to say to you, some of you must have heard at least one person going around saying, "God told me to do it," and it was not God. "God told me to make an investment," and they lost all their money.
"God told me to marry that woman," and it was a disaster. "God told me it was alright to fornicate." No, it was not. God never told you that. We have a preacher in the United States that calls this the "led" disease. "God led me, God led me, God led me."
Yes, God led you, but it was not the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the God of this world that led you. When you are a young Christian, it is difficult to distinguish who is thinking through you, the mind that you were born with, that you have an intimate relationship with, perhaps for twenty, thirty, or forty years, or is it the new guy on the block, and frequently we go through a period of crisis where we think the mind that we were born with is the real thing, and the new guy on the block who is Christ is the false one. We must have experiences in God to learn to distinguish between Christ and the carnal mind in our own minds. This is the true sanctification. The Scripture says, "Lay hold of every imagination, bring every thought captive," look at it, put it under a spiritual microscope and determine where this thought originates from. When you receive the ability to do this without error, you have been truly sanctified.
There are degrees of partial sanctification, sanctification meaning separation, not from the world out there, but from the world in here. We see many very well-meaning people changing their job, changing the geographical location where they live, giving up smoking, and giving up drinking. That is a good thing, but it is not sanctification. I see many good people removing themselves, breaking relationships with people who are not Christians. "I am sanctifying myself from the world. If I talk to that Jehovah witness, I will surely be destroyed." It is not true.
The Scripture says, "Do not eat with them." The Scripture is not talking about natural food, but do not eat their spiritual food. You can say God bless you, you can shake that person's hand. If you work with them, you do not have to stop talking to them and shun them like a demon is going to jump on you. These abuses exist in the church, brethren. It is just spiritual childishness, that is all it is.
We must grow up. The true sanctification is the separation and, therefore, the distinction and obvious notation of the manifestation of Christ as He is different from the manifestation of the carnal mind in us. If you can perceive Christ in your own mind, and you have your carnal mind held at bay, and you are rejecting him, and you are denying him and obeying and cleaving unto Christ, there is no man that can damage you, there is no doctrine that can pollute you. Christians must stop being afraid of people who believe differently. The only reason we are hurt by things out there is because our mind is dead. When sanctification occurs, that precedes the resurrection of the dead because, first, the two minds fall apart. As soon as they are completely separated, Christ rises up and treads the carnal mind underfoot, because surely the God of peace will bruise Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, under your feet.
Following sanctification is the bruising of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, underfoot, full stature. Nobody is sanctified. We have degrees of sanctification. I have a pretty accurate ability of discerning Christ both in my own mind and in other people's minds, but I want to tell you I am capable of being deceived and I know it, and I, therefore, pray very carefully about every word of knowledge I have, over every instruction that I have. I ask God to witness to me whether or not it is Him. I pray very carefully about my decisions, because I know that I am not completely sanctified, and that it is possible for my carnal mind to rise up and give me an instruction in the name of Jesus when it is not coming from Jesus. Did I answer your question?
COMMENT: I believe I should ask this. The beatitudes Matthew 5, 6, and 7, at the end it does say, "Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect." How do you see this, is this a state that is achievable here even before the manifestation of the first fruit company?
PASTOR VITALE: No, this is a command of Jesus saying, "Stand up in full stature because perfection is in Christ. Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."
Now Paul tells us in the book of Hebrews, "Let us go on to perfection if the Lord permit." My Bible says that the Lord permits, "Be ye perfect." Brethren, let us go on to perfection, and it is achievable in this life, but at the moment of achievement it is full stature. There are degrees of achievement. Everything we do that is a result of a motivating instruction from the Christ in our mind is perfection in that situation, in that crisis, in that decision. You have been perfect. If you have heard Christ, if you have discerned Christ, if you have obeyed Christ and followed through, you have been perfect in that experience.
We can be perfect in isolated incidents, but to be completely 100% perfect, 100% of the time will bring us to a condition of full stature. Let us strive for it, because it is the striving that will bring us in. We will be made perfect by overcoming our carnal mind.
Brethren, let us overcome, and if you fail, let us try again. Strive for perfection, and as you stretch yourself and strain yourself as with physical exercise, you will increase spiritually. You will become strong spiritually, and, Lord willing, one day, you will be fully perfect in all things. Amen? About the perfection?
COMMENT: You say we can be perfect in this realm. We cannot.
PASTOR VITALE: When the Scripture says perfect, that which is perfect is that which is Christ. If you have an incident in your life, a problem in your life, a decision to make, and you succeed in trying the spirit, understanding God and following through to do what He tells you, you have been perfect in that situation. It is possible to achieve perfection in a measure in this existence by seeking God, but to be completely perfect, at the moment that we become completely, fully perfect we will be in full stature. You cannot be fallen and raised from the dead at the same time.
To be completely perfect is the resurrection of the dead. Right now we are being raised from the dead. We are in the process, but, brethren, you do not have a baby until it comes out, until he or she comes out of your birth canal. The baby is growing in utero, increasing, but you do not have a child at your breast until it is born.
We are in the process of being raised from the dead, but we are still dead, and at the moment of our catching up to the perfection of Christ, we will have been fully born and raised from the dead.
COMMENT: I just want to make a point. I think what she wants to know is, if it is in this life of flesh that we are going to obtain the perfection, or you have to die before you attain perfection?
PASTOR VITALE: No, your body does not have to die. Perfection happens to you when Christ becomes your mind, when Christ is fully born in your mind and overpowers the mind that you were born with to such a degree that you become incapable of sin. That is perfection, and it happens right in this body. The resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of your dead human spirit. Jesus, the man Jesus was perfect, and He had a human body just like us. Yes, we can attain to perfection without this body dying. Yes?
COMMENT: We have been saved, and we are being saved, and we shall be saved.
PASTOR VITALE: Well I have heard that expression and I understand it. I cannot honestly say that God has brought me to a place where I am into such technicality that I cannot say that, because we have not been saved. We have received a salvation experience, we have been granted permission to experience God.
We have received the Holy Spirit of promise, we have received the promise of salvation. Where I am, I cannot honestly say we have been saved. I can say we are being saved, and we shall be saved, but it is just a technicality. Do you understand, it is just a technicality?
I would say you have had, or we have had a salvation experience, but we have not been saved. No, our spirit has been redeemed. Our spirit has been redeemed. The Lord Jesus Christ now has all power in heaven and earth, and our spirit belongs to him. It is just a matter of time until He gets to us, to raise our human spirit from the dead. The spirit is saved when it is raised from the dead, and our spirit is not raised from the dead yet. The soul is saved when our spirit is Christ. It is first the spirit, then the soul, then the body. We have received the promise, our spirit must be raised from the dead. That the spirit is not saved? What is the Scripture, just give me a second, what is the Scriptural backing?
COMMENT: What is the Scripture backing that your spirit is saved? You see because we had some understanding in the past, you understand, it may even be that very Scripture that you...(comments inaudible) that would shed some light into the person who is asking?
PASTOR VITALE: I am sure that there is, but I have been studying for so many years, sometimes it slips my mind how I got started on this, and I just pray for the Lord to give me a Scripture for you. At the moment, there is nothing in my mind. Our spirit is not saved. Yes, that is a good Scripture, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
Let me ask you a question. What does it mean to you to have your spirit saved or not saved? What does that mean to you? If your spirit is not saved, what does that mean to you?
COMMENT: If my spirit is not saved, that simply means that I am cut off from God, I cannot commune with God, that is what it means. If my spirit is saved, that means I have a spirit that is alive and responsive to God, that is able to commune with God. When I am saved in my spirit (comments inaudible). I do know that I am saved in my spirit because I have a spirit that is alive and that communes with God.
PASTOR VITALE: Do you admit that your spirit was dead before you met the Lord, and that your spirit has been quickened, you have had an experience, you have a relationship with God that convinces you that your spirit has been quickened, is that what you just said to me?
COMMENT: Yes, it has been quickened.
PASTOR VITALE: I agree it has been quickened, but there is much, much more for you, and by saying that your experience with the Spirit of God at this point is the salvation of your spirit is cutting yourself off from the fullness of the experience, because you are saying that is all that there is. All Life is in the Son, salvation is union with the son. "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit." Full salvation of your spirit would mean that your spirit is Christ, a fully mature manifestation of Christ, such as was in Jesus of Nazareth.
COMMENT: In the same measure that He lived in Jesus of Nazareth?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, all that I would say to you, brother, I am afraid I have upset you a little bit, all that I would say to you is that the salvation of any part of us is a process that increases as the salvation of our spirit is increasing and joining with the Spirit of God, and that, yes, your spirit has been quickened, but it is not completely one spirit with Him because if it was one spirit with Him, your body would not be in its corruptible form.
COMMENT: Inaudible.
PASTOR VITALE: It will quicken your mortal body, yes, but He...well, that is true, but we are talking about your spirit. The question is, has your spirit been quickened and in the process of being fully raised from the dead, or has it been fully raised from the dead? That is the question. Can we agree on that? That is what we have a dispute over.
We are going to have to agree on the question if there is going to be an answer for the question. What I hear you saying, and you please correct me if I am wrong, but what I hear you saying is that your spirit has been fully raised from the dead, and I am saying that your spirit has had an experience with God, it has been quickened, and it is in the process of being raised from the dead. Is that the issue that we disagree on?
COMMENT: That is the issue that we disagree on.
PASTOR VITALE: The Scripture is, "If that spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, it will quicken your mortal body." If your spirit was fully raised from the dead...no, that is Romans.
Let me say this to you first. There is a ministry of Christ to the natural man. It was present in Israel. They had the Spirit of Christ, and there were great blessings upon Israel, but they lost it. When Christ is raised from the dead, He dieth no more. If Christ is raised from the dead in you, He cannot die in you. Yet, we saw the Spirit of Christ upon Israel. There were great blessings to the natural man, yet they lost that anointing. What I am suggesting to you is that a man could be having an experience with God, interacting with God, being blessed by God, learning from God, but that does not necessarily mean He has been raised from the dead.
It is likened to having a relationship with a man as compared to being married to that man.
There is anointing in the church today that ministers to the natural man, but there is a new move of God coming which is not ministering to the man that exists, but is bringing forth the very nature of Christ and replacing the man that exists. It is a total dying to our humanity and being raised up in the fullness of Christ. That has not happened yet. My point is that you are experiencing a ministry of the spirit, and everything that you are experiencing is valid, but you are drawing the conclusion that it means your spirit is raised from the dead, and I am suggesting to you that it does not mean that.
COMMENT: Yes, we are.
PASTOR VITALE: Let me take you to Romans 5. Let me answer you with that. Thank you Jesus.
It is Romans, Chapter 5, Verses 9 and 10. Verse 9 says, "We are justified by His blood," but I want to jump down to Verse 10. We are talking about the difference between reconciliation and justification. Let me read the two verses for you. "Much more then, being justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him, for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His Life." Brethren, when the Lord Jesus Christ died for you, and that death permitted His resurrected spirit to touch you, you were reconciled unto Him. What you are experiencing is reconciliation with God, but salvation is by His Life. You have been reconciled. Justification comes from the formation of Christ in you.
You see, we are having a series of experiences, and it is very important that we understand the difference in the terms and the difference in the experiences. I thank God for this Scripture. I believe it is what you need to hear. I do not know whether you receive it or not, but I believe it is what you need to hear. You are experiencing reconciliation, that which is imparted to you because Christ died. Jesus the Christ could have lived forever as the man Jesus, but He sacrificed that existence so that He could return unto spirit form and pour out of the realm of the spirit upon your heart and quicken you and enter into a relationship with you. Brother, you have been reconciled unto God, and the result of that we are told right here. "For if, when we were enemies (that is totally having no relationship with God) we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son (that is all that it says, I am sorry), much more we shall be saved by his life." Much more than reconciled.
There is a further experience after reconciliation. You have been reconciled, and you have a genuine experience, and I do not mean in any way to diminish that experience, but it is just one of a series of experiences. Are you familiar with the book of Revelation where we read about the seven seals and the seven trumpets, and when we get to the seventh seal or the seventh trumpet, we find within that seventh, there are seven, there are seven. Within the seventh trumpet there are seven events within them. There is a spiritual principle in there that when God has three events which will produce a particular response, or seven events which will produce a particular response, when He gets to the last event, that last event is much more involved than the previous events. I will not make an issue out it.
Do you understand what I am saying? Let me go past that. What I am saying to you is that God has promised us salvation and within that experience to fully accomplish the promise of God in our life, we must have a series of experiences. Salvation is not one experience, and we see here in Romans 5 that the beginning of this experience is reconciliation to God which you have experienced. Now, we hear that there is also something called justification, and it says that we are justified by His blood. When His blood is in us, we become justified. We are reconciled because He died, but you are not justified until His blood is in you. The life of the flesh is in the blood. The blood of Jesus is His spiritual life.
Now we know that the red blood that poured out of the cross at Gethsemane, out of the man Jesus at Gethsemane, is not the blood that is in us. It is the resurrected life of Christ which is now pure spirit that is pouring out upon us, and when it engrafts to our heart...we have talked about this earlier, when the Life of Christ, when the word of God becomes engrafted, when it joins to your spiritual person, that is the impartation of His blood to you. You can be reconciled to God because of His death (without having received His blood, which is justification). There are two different experiences each of which is a part of the one experience called salvation. You, praise God, have been reconciled which is the first experience, but reconciliation is not the whole experience. Reconciliation is a part of the experience called salvation. Well, this is what the Scripture says here, that we are saved by His Life (not by His death). Reconciliation is not the same experience as salvation. The experience that you have had is reconciliation, which is valid and real. Everything that you said is true, but it is true about reconciliation, not about salvation. Yes?
COMMENT: Is he, like one man of God said that you think that God created you, that God did not create you, (comments inaudible). God never created us (comments inaudible).
PASTOR VITALE: I think that when I said it was a technicality, what I meant was that I would not argue with anyone over it because the walk that God has given me is extremely detailed, and I know that everybody is not where I am, so I would say to you, if you want to believe that at this time, believe it. I would not argue with you over it, or dispute it. That was what I meant by a technicality, but where the Lord has brought me to, I know that, that is not true, so I cannot agree with what you are saying.
What I would like to point out to you is that I believe with all my heart that what is behind this dispute here is a fear of not being saved. It is fear, brother. I say this with all respect. I perceive fear in you that you might not be saved, and I say unto you, "Peace be unto you," because the Lord has everything under control and that He has done a great work in you. I perceive a beautiful spirit upon you. He has reconciled you unto Himself, and He is working mightily in your life, and there is no reason to fear.
I say that unto you sister also that this issue is just rooted in saying, "Well I must have it, because if I do not have it, something disastrous is upon me," but I say unto you that the Lord Jesus Christ will not cease from His good work that He has begun in you unto the day of salvation, until the day of Christ appears in your heart, imparting salvation to your soul and your body. He will not cease from this good work, so be at peace.
COMMENT: The Scripture that talks...I think it was either Paul or Peter somewhere talked about purifying your spirit, and he was talking to believers, you know, by the spirit.
PASTOR VITALE: Amen, amen. Praise God, Hallelujah. It was good seeing you again. God bless you, I hope I see you again. God bless you brother, I hope I see you again. God bless you. God is faithful. He was afraid. I tried to bring it out of him earlier when I said, "What does it mean to you if your spirit is not saved?" I was waiting for him to say hellfire, but he did not say it, and I really did not want to get into that whole teaching, so the Lord just brought it forth this way.
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