Part 3 of 11 Parts
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation
By The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.
Exhortation
It is just been an incredibly intense -- what is going on here. I definitely believe that we are ascending. I do not know how long it is going to take to become ascended, but we are ascending. We are going up. Everybody may not be going up at the same rate of speed. My personal observation is that everybody in this group has had an increased -- certainly since I am back from Africa. It may have started before I left for Africa. And if you are sitting there in your seat saying I cannot see it, and I rebuke your carnal mind because whether you could see it or not, I -- last time I looked, I was still the head of the ministry, and you are not supposed to be setting your opinion up against me. If I have an opinion, you are supposed to say, well, Lord, if it is true, show it to me. You are not supposed to be tearing me down. And you need to know that when you come against my opinion that you are tearing down the Spirit in the end. You are making my life more difficult, OK. So if we are not talking about outright error, if we are talking about a matter of opinion, you are not supposed to oppose me. That is the spirit of Jezebel that is fighting me for dominion, and all that it can get you is kicked because I have to come against you. Cannot di- -- I cannot let it stand. Why? Because if I let it go, then the next day it will be stronger, it will be stronger, and it will be stronger until you are the pastor and I am sitting in the congregation, and the problem with that is you are not qualified to be the pastor. Now, if you succeed in putting me down and putting yourself up there, the whole congregation is going to be without a pastor. Therefore, I am required by the Lord Jesus Christ to fight you with every ounce of strength in my body and my mind unto my death to stop you from opposing Christ in me. So I ask everybody to take inventory and ask the Lord -- if you are the one or one of the people who is doing this, please ask the Lord to help you to stop because it is not good for anybody. It is not good for you. It is not good for me. So let us start pulling together.
The pressure has been incredible. The -- we are told -- one of the prophets, I think it is Isaiah, that we are being boiled in a cauldron. We are being boiled, and the pressure is just intense. But as a result of this boiling, we are ascending. It is my educated opinion -- you see, everybody is entitled to an opinion, but my opinion is an educated opinion. It has more weight than your opinion, you see. You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is not equal to my opinion. And at such time as you should be right and I should be wrong, I will tell you, and then if you like, I will say it in front of the whole group. But until such time as the Lord witnesses to me that this is one of those instances, as the man who trained me used to say, I have got the microphone so sit down, OK. You are not qualified to call your opinion official, and everybody that walks in here needs to know whose opinion is coming forth under the authority of Christ, and whose opinion is just an opinion in the congregation, and there is a difference, OK? Hallelujah.
So I would just like to make some comments on this war and share with you a couple of the things that the Lord shared with me today. I saw a mad scramble from the moment that I woke up this morning. I was under a heavy pressure, and the pressure has a name. It is called a tribulation. Jesus said, “The world has never seen a tribulation like this before and [?will?] never see it again.” Carnal minds of men assume that he was talking about a physical war that would be the worst war ever to -- or that mankind will ever experience, but I suggest to you that is not what he meant. He meant that no one has ever seen a tribulation of this kind. It is a spiritual tribulation. He did not mean it was going to be the worst physical war the world has ever seen. He said, “It is going to be a new kind of tribulation, a spiritual warfare between Christ and the carnal mind.” And he said, “The world has never seen anything like it, and they will never see anything like it again.” Why? Because once Christ is raised from the dead, he is not going to die anymore, and we are not going to have to go through this again.
Well, today I had an awareness of a mad, mad scramble. Brethren, the race is on and it is raging. What race? The race for Christ in you to get your carnal mind down underfoot and punch her senseless. She is to be stunned, paralyzed, totally stripped of all power to function, and we cannot stun her until you get her down. And I saw this tremendous movement in the spirit. As I mentioned in a previous meeting, what is happen right now has a natural example in this physical world. It is called the survival of the fittest. God has no respect [?for?or?] persons, brethren, but we are running a race, and the ones who get there first are the ones who are getting their first, and it is not impossible for you to use your -- to lose your grip, and if God gives you the chance, to have to start all over again.
Now, I am not here to put fear in you, but neither am I here to baby you because you have to know the truth, and the truth is this. That the race has begun, and that there are people out there who are fighting this war with such a fervor that I am amazed. I have gotten reports from people that they are spending their whole waking day casting down sin in their own mind. That is exhausting them. We are told to bring every thought into captivity. Brethren, you cannot cast down sin in your mind if you cannot recognize it as sin. So if you still cannot recognize sin in your own mind, you have got a very real problem. That is like a marine that does not know which end of the gun shoots, and I exhort you to cry out to Jesus to help you. If you cannot see the sin in your own mind, that is your only recourse, and it is no small recourse to be able to cry out to Jesus and say, Lord, surely you did not bring me this far to leave me here. Get me going in this race, but I -- the Lord told me to tell you this, brethren, that there is a mad scramble in New Jersey. They are going like wildfire, and it is just the truth. What we have been taking years to get go- -- moving here. People are coming in. Just -- they have not even been reconciled to the Lord, brand-new converts, and they are casting down imaginations, and having confrontat- -- eye contact with witches and moving it wh- -- and having visions and trances and just moving right in. And God has no respect [?for?or?] persons.
For a while now, there has been a missing link in my doctrine. There has been something that just has been missing. I could not put my finger on it. My observance would be, for example, a believer who was, on occasion -- on a frequent occasion, manifesting Christ. I knew it was Christ. I knew I saw righteousness in them. And then from time to time, I would see demonstrations of unrighteousness. I went before the Lord and I said, Father, I just do not understand this. I do not understand. What does it mean? Does it mean that they are entering in? Does it mean that they are not entering in? I just could not put the two and two together. I could not put the polarity of good and evil in one person together. I could not get it right in my mind. I did not know whether it meant that they were making it or they were not. Could not get it straight whether they were Christ or an angel of light. So I just put it on a shelf, and I just took everybody a day at a time, a conflict at a time, asking the Lord to explain this to me. And he is given me the answer, brethren. He has given me the answer, and I am going to share it with you now. The answer is the same reason that Israel did not enter in, and this is the answer.
We are all double minded in this hour. No, matter how developed Christ in us is, you can understand this doctrine. You can be manifesting righteousness, you can be seeing visions, going into trances, [?look?] for Christ, walking in the Spirit, doing all kinds of higher things, and he can have his carnal mind under control by the power of his own will and look really good because he is not letting himself act out sin, and he looks really good. But this is the hidden truth, brethren. If your carnal mind is under control because of willpower, the chances of you falling are very strong. I am going to say it again. If your carnal mind is under control because of your willpower, the chances of your not entering in are very strong. Why? Because there is a world of darkness which corresponds to the Kingdom of God. Everything you read in this book is happening on the negative side. A trumpet is about to sound out of Satan’s Kingdom, and power is going forth to the carnal minds of this world, and if your carnal mind is quiet because of your willpower, she is going to receive enough strength to overturn you. So you see, you think you have got her down and your foot on her neck, and you do, but when Satan comes to strengthen her, she is going to flip you over, and that is the Word of the Lord to me, and there is only one way this could be avoided, and that is to paralyze her. It is not enough to be holding your foot on her neck. You have to stun her. She has to lose her consciousness, and there is only one way to do that. That is through the confession of sin and repentance.
So here is the missing link for the person who is truly manifesting Christ, who is truly manifesting righteousness, who has got a grip on this doctrine, who is judging righteous judgment, but who has another personality, the personality of the beast who has not been knocked unconscious. Who is just laying there because Christ has his foot on his -- on her neck. When the strengthening of Christ comes out, when the trumpet sounds on the negative side, she is going to get out from under your foot, and she is going to kill Christ in you, and that is what happened to Israel, and it is going to happen to many believers in the church in whom Christ is appearing. So you see, while you have got her down on the mat, and you have got your foot on her neck, you better start the process that is going to paralyze her. She needs to be broken apart, brethren. The Scripture says she is going to be chopped like a piece of soup meat. Chop up the bones and boiled in a pot until the flesh separates from the bones and until the marrow comes out from the bones. Is that not what happens when you make soup, brethren? The flesh separates from the soup bones and the marrow separates from the bones. That is what is happening to the carnal mind. It is only when she is completely dismantled in this manner that she will not be able to respond to Satan’s trumpet.
So the key here, brethren, is confession of sin and repentance. You cannot confess what you cannot see. Cry out to Jesus. I exhort you with all the strength I have to throw yourself on the mercy of the Lord, to forgive you the sin of pride, and to help you see your sins, and when they are exposed, to not justify them, but to confess them and repent as -- you cannot do it unless the Lord gives you the grace, so pray the prayer. I am praying the prayer. I have experienced a lot of confession and a lot of repentance, but I am not willing to take the chance of being shipwrecked. If I am shipwrecked, it is not going to be because I failed to cry out to Jesus to show me any sin that I may not be seeing and to help me confess it and repent. That is the key. That is the missing link. We have believers all over the church world in whom Christ is appearing. You see, the fields are white to harvest but the laborers are few. There are believers all over the church world in whom Christ is appearing, and in Christ is righteousness, but their carnal mind is still alive and of full strength. They just have her under control, and they think that is all that it takes. But the trumpet is about to sound, and she is going to rise up and kill you if you do not kill her first. Now, you can believe me or you cannot believe me, but that is the Word of the Lord to me, and I for one am not taking any chances. I did not come this far to die now.
So evaluate yourself, brethren. Some people have a greater ability to confess their sins than others. It does not mean one is good and the other is bad. It is just you are born that way. It is no -- that is just the way you are, but the more problem that you have confessing your sins, the more pride you have that hinders you from doing that, the more denial that you are in. Why? Because of the way you were raised. I do not know. There is no condemnation in this. But if you cannot hear this message, you are the only one that you are hurting. So evaluate yourself, and if you recognize a difficulty in confessing your sin, I encourage you to throw yourself on the mercy of Jesus to help you because there is no way that you are going up denying your sins or justifying them. There is no way you are entering into the Kingdom. And not only will you not enter into the Kingdom, Jesus clearly said, “If you are not for me, you are against me.” The carnal mind will rise up and kill Christ in you, and I prophesy that to you. The Lord has told it to me. I will show it to you in the Scripture. We have been talking about it. This revelation has come down only this last week or so, and the Lord is really hitting it home. Now, I personally thank God for the information.
So when you are in your right mind, when your pride is not manifesting, make your covenant. Make your covenant. Ask God to help you. He is able. He is able, and this is where the believers who are rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ are going to fall in the ditch because Christ Jesus, the God which we are becoming but who has not yet perfected himself in us, is not strong enough to overcome the carnal mind who is sitting on our soul at this time. We need our elder brother who has already been completed, who has already overcome the world, to help wound or stun or paralyze our carnal mind. We are not strong enough to wound her, and we need to know that. We cannot do it alone. We need the Lord Jesus. I do not care how spiritual you are. We are not talking about visions here. We are not talking about words of knowledge. We are talking about muscle. We are talking about spiritual muscle. That is what we are talking about.
As I was working at the computer today, I guess I saw a vision. I guess it was a vision. And I seemed to be -- I am not sure whether I was under water or I was in the fiery furnace. It felt like I was in the furnace, I will tell you that. But I was in something. I could just see it was a sea. Maybe it was just the spiritual sea that we have talked about [?here?near?] the cosmic sea. I saw the energy surrounding me on all sides, and there was witchcraft coming from every direction. I had some discernment as to where [?the?] sun was coming from. I believe the Lord told me that if I could see, if I could accurately see what was coming against me, I might die from the fear. I believe that is what he said to me when he said he is bringing it down, and when it crumbles, when it is dead on the ground, then I will know what he gave me the victory over. That is how intense it is. It is on every side, and the answer is for us to learn for us to not fight with soul, you see.
Those of us that have been around for a while, when we began our training in old order deliverance, we were fighting with our soul, with our emotions. I rebuke you, Jesus, you dirty, no-good thing. Well, how long can you continue with that, brethren? You get tired. The Lord began to teach me that years ago. Do not pray out of your soul; pray out of your spirit. It is not a question of soul power. It is a question of spiritual muscle. If you have the spiritual muscle, all you need to do is speak the Word in a quiet tone just like I am speaking now, and that which you say is done.
Not one word of Samuel the Prophet fell to the ground. Everything he said was done. Jesus said unto the sea, “Be still,” and it was still. He did not scream at the sea. He did not use his soul. His word had power. How do you get this power? You get this power, brethren, as you ascend, and you ascend only as you confess your sins and repent. As you kill the carnal mind, you become stronger and stronger in Christ.
The Lord showed me myself in this cosmic sea with this witchcraft or spiritual power on every side, and he showed me what he has brought me to, and I have been very still. I am learning how to abide in the fire. I know by now that it is not going away. I know that I cannot control it. I know that I have to flow with it and pray in faith in a calm voice. The fervent, persistent prayer of a righteous man, that is the man who is praying in Christ, availeth much. And as the Lord showed me this sea and spoke to me along these lines, he had me to pray against the witchcraft, and the prayer he put in my heart was something like this. May your arm wither. Now, arm does not mean necessarily someone’s physical arm. That is a scriptural expression for spiritual power. May your arm wither and your power dry up and come to naught. And the Lord said that he honored that prayer. So wherever this junk is coming from, I expect it to dry up and wither. I prayed a few other prayers along those lines. Brethren, the sharper your knife is, the less muscle you need. You cannot be exhausting yourself. Pray out of your spirit, quietly believing that your word has power, and that where your word fails, so long as your prayer is in Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ is filling up. He is on your back.
I believe we are ascending. I do not know how much longer this is going to take, but I see a mad scramble in the Spirit. I believe all signals are go for those who are willing to fight this war. The power is available for those who are willing to lay hold of the Lord Jesus Christ and those who are gutsy enough to actually look in their own heart, yucky poo, and admit what they see there and ask the Lord to help them to change. The door is open, all signals are go, and there is a mad scramble because God has a people in this earth that are going for it.
I met one woman in Nigeria who has been engaged in casting down imaginations in her own mind, or who was not -- who -- let me put it to you this way. She began the war a year before the Lord brought me into town three years ago. She had never heard anything about it. She had never read anything about it. She could not even find it in the Scripture. She just knew that there was severe spiritual trouble in her life, and she cried out to Jesus, and he told her what to do, and she had been doing it. Well, doing what? Waging war with the powers and principalities in her mind for one year before w- -- before I blew into town. So I was just a confirmation for her. She was doing it without the technical knowledge that I brought into town. Now she has the technical knowledge also. So God has a people. He has a people that are going to confess their sins and repent, and he has a people that are going to kill their carnal mind, and he has a people who is going to stand up in in full stature. It is going to happen. If you would like to be one of those people, ask him to help you. Do what needs to be done.
Praise the Lord. The Scripture is very clear. It is going to happen to a small group of people first. If you do not want to be one of them, the Lord says it is OK to go home. Is that not what he told Gideon? Ask the people who does not want to be in the army? It is OK. Go home. Did he not say that? He said if you are afraid, go home. You do not want to pay the price? Go home. It is OK. It is OK. If you really do not want to be here, go home.
So the battle is absolutely raging. I have never seen anything like it in 15 years, and I am personally aware of the ascension. There is a fire inside of me, brethren. I am becoming a burning [?scorch?], and it is the Spirit of Christ. It is not sin. It is Christ. If it is not Christ, I will tell you.
So this is what is going on. I believe there is going to be a breakthrough. Something has been very intense in the Spirit. I believe that sin is being exposed. Some really, really deep sin is under a lot of pressure right now. We have a couple of people -- I do not know. But people in our f- -- you know, in our fellowships [?beach?] -- we are really just one fellowship between here and New Jersey. I mean, it is probably more than one person. Maybe it is all of us. I am -- you know, I am not singling out anybody. But there is a tremendous pressure in the Spirit, and that pressure is Christ, and what he wants to do is expose your sin. Why? So that you will have an opportunity to confess it as sin and repent. Why? So that by the power of Jesus Christ you can kill it. Why? So that you can enter into the Kingdom and live forever. Why? Well, if you do not want to, do not do it. Why? Because it is good. But if you do not want it, it is OK. Go home.
So we have some people who w- -- are without understanding, and they have got their fig leaf on, brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ has his hand on their fig leaf, and he is trying to pull it off, and they have got their hand on the other end of their fig leaf, and they are trying to cover up their sin, and they are having a tug of war with the Lord. I have got a flash for you. You are about to be disrobed because you cannot win a tug of war with the Lord. He is going to expose you, and your sin is going to be on the rooftops for all to see, and it is going to be made so obvious that you will not be able to deny it anymore. You can lie all you want, but it is going to be laying right out there for the whole world to see. Why? Because Jesus loves you and because somewhere along the line, you must have made a covenant with him that you really, really, truly wanted him to help you despite your wicked self, and much to your shock apparently he believed you, and he made a covenant with you, and now you think Satan is after you, but it is not Satan; it is the Lord, and he is ripping all of your defenses down and exposing you and putting all kinds of pressure on you, you Pharisee you, trying to push your sin down so everybody thinks you are holy. We all know you are not holy. Why? Because none of us is holy. You are the only one you are fooling. No one else believes you, especially those that have discernment. Everybody knows what is in your heart. You are the only one you are fooling, so your -- the reason you have to be publicly exposed is because you are in denial, and the Lord loves you enough to strip you of every defense that you have because he is faithful even though you are not faithful, and he remembers the covenant he made with you when you had no idea what you were talking about. The day way back when you said, Jesus, save my life. I will do anything. Just save my life. And of course, you had no idea what was required of you. He made a covenant with you, and he has not forgotten it, even though you have changed your mind because you never thought it would be this painful. It is too late.
So there is a lot of pressure in the Spirit. Sin is being exposed, and there has got to be a climax to this thing that has been going on for a couple of weeks now. It is -- the pressure is incredible. There has got to be an explosion, and there will be an explosion. So we are about to see a lot of sin exposed in the near future. There is no place to run, brethren. There is no place to run. Everybody is about to see you naked. Hallelujah.
And just in closing of this exhortation, I would like to tell you that we received a letter today from Kim [SP], the soldier that came into the fellowship in Nigeria. He reports that he was in a car accident which produced devastating effects on everyone else in the car. Crushed bones, flesh everywhere, an absolute disaster, and he got up and walked away without a scratch. He did not say -- in his letter, he did not say that anybody died, but he said the injuries were severe, and when he got up -- the car went into a ditch. He got up and walked away and looked back and just saw flesh and flesh everywhere, pieces of flesh and bone and blood. When he realized he did not even have a scratch on him, he said he just stood there and laughed.
Time is very short, brethren. You are out of time. I have been telling you this for -- it is a word of knowledge. I have been telling you this for a couple weeks. You are out of time. You are out of time and I am coming after you like I never came after you before to show you your sins because you are out of time, and if you cannot see them, I am Christ to you giving you this opportunity to enter in. If you really cannot see your sins, I am the mercy of God to you. So if I tell you something, no matter h- -- no matter how way out it sounds to you, it would behoove you to say thank you, Sheila, I will pray about it. If you cannot do that, you really do not stand much of a chance unless you get a miracle. If you cannot even do that, really, you know -- you really need a miracle.
So I rebuke pride here. I rebuke everybody’s pride, and I rebuke everybody’s carnal mind, and I continue to tear down your walls of denial and strip the blinders off of your eyes and circumcise your stony heart. I circumcise your stony heart and cut it away from you, and I pray that the Lord should give you a heart of flesh, that everyone here should enter into the fullness of the glory of God. And I bless you all, and I will fight with you to the death, but I am limited as to what I can do. You have to fight too. I cannot carry you all the way. I can lend my strength to you, but I cannot carry you. You have got to carry yourself, brethren. Your legs have to start working. Your wings have to start flapping. You have to start working the work. You have to get up and walk, brethren. Hallelujah.
There is tremendous movement in the Spirit. The cloud is moving. The pillar of fire is moving. That means pack, brethren, pack. You have to get ready to move. Start breaking down your tents and get in a mindset that is ready to move anywhere at any time at no notice, zero notice. Break every ungodly tie to people, to things, to places, and ask the Lord to help you strengthen your tie to him and strengthen whatever Spirit ties he has given you. But pray that he focus your spiritual eyesight, that he stabilize your emotions, that he sharpen up your spiritual senses because if you do not have any spiritual senses, for all intents and purposes you are blind. Now, if you are blind, brethren, all is still not lost because, you see, Christ in the flesh is standing here right in front of you. If you are spiritually blind, and you choose to follow me in my imperfection, that is another option. If you are blind, I am all you have got.
So batten down the hatches. We are about to take off to points unknown. It is very exciting. So if anybody is feeling fear, rebuke your fear because fear is just the other side of pride. If you are so afraid that you cannot function, your carnal mind has succeeded in stopping you from working the work of digging up sin. If you are telling yourself I will never make it; I am not worthy, your carnal mind has succeeded in stopping you from even trying. No matter what excuse your carnal mind is using, if you are taking this exhortation as a negative exhortation, your carnal mind has prevailed over you because this purpose of this exhortation is to stir you up, to give you confidence, and to give you hope, and to tell you that the Lord wants you, he is warning you, he is equipping you with information, he has attached you to a group of other believers where there is some power, and there should be a joy in your heart. If there is negativity in your heart, would you please start fighting this war and ask the Lord to help you cast down that imagination because it is a lie in your mind that does not want you to enter in.
And we will see as we get to the message tonight, we are told in Zephaniah chapter 3 that the Lord is telling the church that he has done all that he is going to do. He has given us the mind of Christ. If we do not pick him up and start to fight with him, the only thing left unto us is heavy judgment, and some men will come out of this judgment by -- as a -- the result of the judgment will be that they will ascend and other men will abort. So fight the fight, you see. If you do not use what the Lord has given you, you are turned over to Satan for judgment, and sometimes Satan destroys you. But if you are working with the Lord, there is nothing that can pluck you out of his hand.
So choose ye this day, brethren, who you shall serve. Choose life or choose death. Start right now. If you have a negative reaction to this exhortation, this is your opportunity to wage in this warfare because this is a positive exhortation. It is the love of God to you. He is not against you; he is for you. I am not against you; I am for you. And he wants you to make it, and I want you to make it. We are just trying to set a fire under you. That is the whole purpose of this exhortation, to get you moving. It is called pushing you out of the nest.
Beginning of the Message
Zephaniah, Chapter 3 - Part 2
Recap, Verses 1 - 4
Alternate Translation, interspersed:
“Woe to the soul which is unclean because of her rebellious mind. She did not obey Jehovah’s voice or benefit from his instruction because her carnal mind was not overthrown, and her carnal mind was not overthrown because she was not sacrificed to Jehovah, and her carnal mind was not sacrificed to Jehovah because she would not confess her sins and repent. Therefore, because she would not confess her sins and repent, her priests have committed treason” -- meaning the carnal mind rose up and overtook them. “Her priests have committed treason by violently prostituting Christ Jesus and tearing away the Spirit of Christ” -- which is the altar of the Lord Jesus Christ. “And Satan, the fallen, dead soul’s unconscious mind, is like an army of fierce, young soldiers executing the sowing and reaping judgment upon herself because of the sins of her carnal mind. But Satan shall be cut off because of Christ’s righteousness when her many-membered human spirit is boiled so that she can be freed from Satan, the one who is possessing her and expressing the death of his existence through her, and then bound to her true husband, Christ Jesus, the one who is strong enough to make her confess her sins and repent.”
Now, the danger here, brethren, is that some people will hear this with an ear that has been trained in ultimate reconciliation which is saying everybody will make it, do not worry about it, and if you cannot confess your sins and repent, the Lord will judge you and you will come around and you will be OK. Well, that is the message, brethren. The message is to the spiritual creation which God made. [?This?His?] whole creation will be saved. The spiritual substance of it, the spiritual clay which was here from the beginning, every last drop of it, will be saved, but not necessarily every formation of that clay. Each one of us is a pinch of that clay that has been formed into a personality, a human being, the name that we are, the person that we are, but we are told that if the Lord makes a judgment, that this vessel is just not shaping up, he mars the clay, brethren. That means that is the end of you. And he takes the spiritual substance of which you were made, and he will form you and that spiritual substance into another individual which will not be you. He will take the spiritual substance of which you are made and make another out of you. So that is a mystery in the Scripture.
Do not be deceived. Your sin will -- you will not enter into the Kingdom and take your sin with you. Do not be deceived from a literary style in which the Scripture is written. His whole creation will be saved, but every temporary formation of that clay will not be saved. The promise we have just read is to the spiritual substance of the creation, the spirit that is in man, and the soul that God made, not the individual personality. So do not rest easily, brethren, unless you know that you are moving with Christ. You have to be in sync with Christ, brethren.
I would like to give you a couple of witnesses to this Alternate Translation. I did not have time to pull them out when we taught part 1 of Zephaniah, and specifically I am referring to the part of the Alternate Translation which says in verse 3 that the carnal mind is being judged by the -- I am sorry. That the soul that God made, which is now fallen and dead, is being judged by her -- by Satan because of the sins of her carnal mind, but nevertheless Satan shall be cut off because of the righteousness of Christ. I have two scriptural witnesses for you on that. At least I thought I had two. I only see one here.
Romans 5:18 -- Romans 5:18-19: “So then, as through fallen Adam’s deviation from righteousness, all men were subjected to the wrath of God. Also through the righteous act of Jesus Christ which resulted in acquittal or pardon from sin, all men were granted freedom from guilt and the life of God because through the disobedience of fallen Adam, the many members of humanity were appointed to be exceeding sinful, and death because of that sin, so by the submission of Jesus Christ, the many members of humanity shall be made guiltless or righteous.”
Now, you may have heard it taught that Jesus Christ’s obedience was that he just loved it when they strung him up on that cross. He was obedient unto death. And you have been t- -- even the death of the cross and all these years, you have been taught and you believed that that Scripture is talking about that piece of wood that they strung up in Calvary 2,000 years ago. But I want to tell you that the cross that Jesus was obedient to -- that the death that he was obedient unto was the death of his humanity, the death of his carnal mind, and his Christ mind was nailed to the cross of his carnal mind. Of the twain, we are told, of the two minds, he made one new man, the beginning of the creation of God.
If you are willing to hear me through, I am going to tell you very plainly, men were crucified all the time in Rome. Not only were men crucified all the time, but they hung there in torment many more hours than Jesus of Nazareth hung there. The great sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for you is that his righteousness is now nailed to this sin-filled soul for the like of -- for the life of the ages. He said in another place, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” Brethren, there is a spiritual cross because the wood cross that Jesus was nailed to, he was only nailed to for six hours. His flesh was only nailed to it for six hours, but his sinless, spiritual life is nailed to the sin-filled carnal mind for the life of the ages. He was obedient unto the Father to the degree that his carnal mind died.
Listen, brethren, the carnal mind wants you to obey her. The Father wants you to obey him. That is how come you are double-minded. The Lord says do it; your carnal mind says do not do it. The Lord says do it; your carnal mind says do it and I will hurt you. Jesus did everything his Father told him to do, and he did everything that his Father told him to do so completely that it resulted in the death of his carnal mind. He was obedient unto death. He obeyed the Father no matter what the cost until this obedience resulted in the death of his carnal mind.
Can you hear it? His great sacrifice for you was that he could have lived forever. He gave up his soul life as the man Jesus of Nazareth so that he could be converted into pure spirit form and enter in the sin-filled hearts of the many-membered man, trillions of people, and go through the same experience all over again. What experience? The experience of obeying the Father, no matter what kind of pain the carnal mind was throwing at him, with such faithfulness that it resulted in the death of his carnal mind. And anybody, anybody, who has even a toe in this war and has experienced the retaliation of the carnal mind for obedience to the Father has some revelation of what Jesus of Nazareth went through. And he overcame, and he obeyed the Father until the carnal mind died, and that means his warfare was accomplished, and he was entitled to peace, and there was no reason for him to have war anymore. But despite that, he is now engaged in the very same warfare in your body and in my body and in the bodies and in the souls of the trillions of members of humanity. He is going through it again and again and again. Why? Because we are not strong enough to overcome our carnal mind. We are not strong enough to obey the Father to the extent that it will kill our carnal mind. We cannot do it without him.
That is his sacrifice for you, brethren. Not that he hung on a wooden stake. Not that his physical body hung on a wooden stake for six hours, but that his spiritual body is hanging on a spiritual stake for thousands of years having this painful experience over and over and over again in the many members of humanity so that we can be delivered out of hell. And if you think that is blasphemy, you have a religious spirit because you do not have to have a Ph.D. to recognize that it is an easy trick, hanging on a cross for six hours, compared to being joined to a sin-filled mind trillions of times over for thousands of years.
I rebuke your fear. I rebuke your fear and I rebuke your carnal minds. He does not have to be stuck in your body, in your sin-filled body, in your sin-filled soul battling with your carnal mind that is trying to kill him. He already overcame his own carnal mind as Jesus of Nazareth. His war is over, but he is in your mind, and he is in your soul, and he is in your vile, prison-house body, and he is going through it again, and he is going through it again, and he is going through it again because the Father told him to do it. So we see that he was obedient until his carnal mind died, and that the way you have heard it preached up until now is incorrect. Hallelujah.
Continuing with Zephaniah 3:5: “The just Lord is in the midst thereof. He will not do iniquity. Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light. He faileth not, but the unjust knoweth no shame.”
“The just Lord is in the midst thereof.” Just Strong’s 6662 is speaking of the one who has a just cause. It is speaking about righteous motives. Brethren, the Lord is concerned with your motives. Your behavior is only the surface. Of course he is not telling you to go out and engage in sinful acts. Of course not. But the Lord is concerned with much more than your behavior. He is concerned with the condition of your heart. You cannot enter into the Kingdom because of clean behavior. And if you are all hung up on cursing and smoking and you think that you are OK because you do not curse or smoke, or you are not offensive in your word, well, you have a religious spirit, and your righteousness is as filthy rags, and if your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, you shall never enter into the Kingdom of God.
The Lord is trying the motives of your heart. The new covenant requires the cleansing of your heart, and the only way that you can enter into life everlasting is through the new covenant, and the new covenant says you have to have a clean heart. Not just clean behavior, you have to have a clean heart. Your thoughts have to be clean. Now, is that not a joke? Your thoughts have to be clean. Well, you say, who can clean their thoughts? Nobody. That is the whole point. You need a Savior to clean your thoughts, and when you get that Savior, he is a weapon unto you, and you have to pick him up and use him to kill the sinful thoughts in your mind. It is a warfare, day by day, minute by minute. Warfare. It is called the casting down of imaginations. It is a war against the sins that are raging in your mind and in your emotions, and the Lord is requiring you to deny them and to kill them and to overcome them by the power of Christ. She will never into righteousness based on your behavior. You are wasting your time. Go home.
“The just Lord is in the midst thereof.” Just, righteous motives. Lord, Jehovah. The Lord Jehovah whose motives are righteous, whose thoughts are holy, whose heart is pure and without sin. He is in the midst thereof. The Hebrew word translated thereof is really sh- -- is really she. We are speaking about the soul which God made which is God’s wife. The Hebrew word translated in the midst, Strong’s 7130, speaks, we are told by Gesenius, especially of the heart or the mind, and I suggest to you that this phrase, “The just Lord is in the midst thereof,” is saying that the mind of Christ is in the midst or in the heart of the people who he has a covenant with. He gives you his mind. “The just Lord in the midst thereof,” is the mind of Christ.
“He will not do iniquity.” The Hebrew word translated do means to produce by labor. Iniquity is Strong’s 5766. It is a feminine word. It is used with regard to a judge and referring to the act or the commission of iniquity. It is speaking about an unrighteous judge, an unrighteous, female judge which I suggest to you is the carnal mind. So we see the phrase, “The just Lord is in the midst thereof,” speaking about the mind of Christ, and the phrase “He will not do iniquity,” speaking about the carnal mind. I have two witnesses for you [?jump out?] with regard to the Lord not producing the carnal mind. “He will not do iniquity.” What this is saying is that the -- there is no sin in God. That is what it is saying. It is impossible for the carnal mind to be formed by the Spirit of God. He is incapable of doing unrighteousness. Here are two scriptural backups.
James 1:14-15. This is how the carnal mind is formed, brethren. This is why God will never produce the carnal mind. “But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.” Drawn away from whom? Drawn away from the commandment of the Lord. Drawn away, but we are told that Jesus Christ was obedient unto death. He was never drawn away because of his lust. That does not mean he did not have lust. And we are not just speaking about sexual lust here. We are speaking about all forms of lust. And what is lust? It is desire that is not lined up with the desire of God. It is desire for something that the Lord is not desiring. It is separation in mind from God. So we see that the Lord has no lust. He has desire. Christ has desire. As long as what you are craving is what God is craving, it is not lust, but it is desire, and it is legal. It is fine to lust for Christ. It is fine to lust for the things of God. It is fine to have an intense desire and craving for righteousness. Against righteousness, brethren, there is no law. There is no punishment for lusting for righteousness.
Excuse me. Did you close that door in there? OK, thank you. OK.
But every man -- every carnal man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and after you are tempted and you choose to obey your lust and not Christ -- there is the key. You see, you have a choice. Who will you obey? When you obey your lust and not Christ then you become enticed.
Verse 15: “And then when lust hath conceived” -- and in case you had not picked it up, I will clarify it for you. Lust is your human spirit. She is the one that conceives. She is the harlot. She is the girl who cannot say no. “When lust has conceived, it bringeth forth sin” -- the carnal mind is sin -- “and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” I think I said that wrong. “When lust has conceived, it bringeth forth sin” -- sin is the act -- “and when it is finished” -- when the conception has come to the end of itself, its final product, is the fullness of the carnal mind, which is death.
So we see, brethren, that the Lord is incapable of producing the carnal mind, which is death. Why? Because the Lord is -- excuse me. The Lord -- excuse me. The Lord is incapable of being drawn away in mind from the Father. Christ is incapable of separating from the Father in his thoughts. Therefore, it is impossible for him to conceive sin or death. That is why we need the Lord Jesus Christ. He is incapable of sin. If you think that you are incapable of sin at this point because Christ is being formed in you, you are mistaken. Why? Because you have two minds, and although Christ in you cannot sin, your carnal mind can sin. And if you do not believe that, you are deceived.
Romans 6:19: “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness” -- see, he is saying the same thing as James said. “As you have yielded your members” -- your mind, your human spirit -- “servants to uncleanness” -- Satan is the uncleanness -- “and to iniquity” -- after your human spirit joins with Satan, sin is born unto iniquity and unto iniquity and eventually death. “Even so now, yield your members servants to righteousness” -- which is Christ. I am sorry. “Yield your members servants to righteousness” -- which is the Holy Ghost -- “unto holiness,” which is Christ.
So we see that there is something being born in us continuously. It is the mind which is in us, and the Father is incapable of producing the carnal mind because he is incapable of being drawn away from obedience through us.
Alternate Translation, the first third, Zephaniah 3:5: “The mind of Christ is in the midst of her because Jehovah will never form the carnal mind. The mind of Christ is in the midst of God’s creation, this soul, because Jehovah will never form the carnal mind. He is faithful.”
Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,” brethren, “Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” The Father cannot bring forth a carnal mind. He can only bring forth the good fruit of his life, and Satan cannot bring the go- -- forth the good fruit of Christ. He can only bring forth the evil fruit of his carnal mind.
1 John 3:9: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.” “Whosoever is born of God,” brethren, does not commit spiritual adultery with Satan. His seed remains in him. He does not make the union, brethren, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. It is Christ who is born of God, brethren, and until Christ is married to your soul, you are capable of sin, and so long as you sin, you are going to die even if you have a fully-formed mind of Christ in you.
This is the message of the hour. Hear it. If you have Christ in you in full stature, and that Christ has not put down your carnal mind, and you yield to sin, you are not going to be in full stature anymore. Your carnal mind is going to turn you right over. He has got to be paralyzed. He has got to be paralyzed or he will turn over a fully mature Christ in you. That is my understanding of the Scripture. You have got to [?sting?stun?] him until such time as you kill him. If you are just ignoring him, if you believe in that lie that is circulating in the church, he will come up one day when you are not looking and knife you in the back, and it will be all over for you. You do not believe it? That is OK. I am not fighting with you.
Continuing with the second third of Zephaniah 3:5: “Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light. He faileth not” -- still speaking about Jehovah. “Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light. He faileth not.”
The word every is not in the Hebrew. The Interlinear shows that the Hebrew word translated morning is repeated twice. It says, “Morning by morning.” Strong’s 1242, as the word appears in the Hebrew, that exact spelling appears in Gesenius who tells us that the correct translation for that spelling for that form of the word is the next morning. So we see the Scripture saying the next morning or from morning to morning, speaking about the next age, brethren. Morning refers to the rising of the sun, a new day, a new age.
“Every morning” -- or from age to age -- “he” -- Jehovah -- “doth bring his judgment to light.” The Hebrew word translated bring is Strong’s 5414. It can also be translated to give, to set in place or to apply the heart to anything. And I suggest to you that the Lor- -- the Scripture is saying here that the Lord incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age. He is always there. He is always had a people in the earth. I believe it. The mind of Christ has always been appearing somewhere. The problem is men do not use the gift that God gives them. We have failed to use the gift that God has given us. Why? The carnal mind has been too strong for the best of us. That is why we need the Lord Jesus Christ. The double portion, the two of us together, the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus in us are strong enough to overcome the carnal mind. We cannot do it alone. She is too strong. You do not believe it? It is your funeral.
“He doth bring his judgment to light.” The word judgment is Strong’s 4941, and this word means the sentence of a judge, the act of a judge. Now, you may recall we had a word just up above. The word translated just in verse 5 which is also speaking about the act of a judge. Is that the right word? I am sorry, not the word translated jud- -- [?just?adjust?] -- the word translated iniquity -- I did not even comment on that. It is translated iniquity, and it really does not mean it. Well, it means an act of iniquity or the act of an unrighteous judge. The word translated iniquity, Strong’s 5766, and then we have the word translated judgment, Strong’s 4941, which is the sentence of a righteous judge. Talking about that which is right and that which is lawful.
“He doth bring his judgment to light.” This is the Hebrew word 216, and it is speaking about diffused light. It is speaking about light that is everywhere such as the light of day or sunlight. Diffused light, light that is spread out. Not just a flashlight shining in a room, not just a lamp over there in the corner. But it is the kind of light that is everywhere: daylight, sunlight.
John -- 1 John 1:5 says, “This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light. God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” He is incapable of producing the carnal mind, there is no darkness in him, and we see that God is the light which he is bringing -- which Jehovah is bringing. He is bringing himself, brethren.
Ephesians 5:8: “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” So the Lord is light and we are the children of light.
Matthew 5:14: “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”
1 Thessalonians 5:5: “Ye are all the children of light and the children of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.”
The judgment Jehovah brings to light, brethren, I suggest to you, is the mind of Christ, and we have been seeing this judgment in this ministry. It is very exciting because righteous judgment is not in Pentecost. Righteous judgment is only in Christ, and we have seen it begin to be manifested here, and some of us are very [?exciting?]. Some of us are recognizing what is actually happening here, that Christ is really beginning to rule and reign in the hearts of his people and over this ministry. We are not completely brought in order yet, but we are coming into order, and when we come into order, that is when he really pours out his blessings. God only knows what is waiting for us. Tremendous miracle-working power, brethren. Exciting experiences in Christ.
But you must come into obedience. He does not bless rebellion, brethren. He does not bless wrong thinking. He does not bless pride. He does not bless hatred and refusal to reconcile with your brother. He does not bless it, you see, and when you are still doing these things, the Lord leaves off the blessing and puts all his energies towards getting your thoughts straight, towards putting down your rebellion and your pride in showing you the error of your ways, and you cannot go on to the next grade, which is blessing, until you get your head straightened out, and if you will not take the correction then he really has to wait until he beats you into submission to give you the blessing. However long it takes him to beat you into submission, then you sit in your seat and get your mind renewed, and then he gives you the blessing. So you are just spinning your wheels and wasting your time. It takes some people longer than others. Jesus.
“Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light.” His righteous judgment. Every morning, his righteous judgment. Every age, from age to age, the mind of Christ is available to men. “He faileth not.”
“He faileth not.” The Hebrew word translated faileth is Strong’s 5737. It means or can also be translated to desert, to be lacking, to be wanting. It can also be translated to set in order, to arrange or to dispose of as an army in battle array, and it can also be translated to weed. I suggest to you that this is one of those situations where the Scripture is speaking about Jehovah, speaking about Jehovah, speaking about Jehovah, but this phrase, “He faileth not,” is speaking about Satan, and that the Scripture is not using proper nouns. It is using the pronoun he.
So how would I know that the Lord has switched over from speaking to Jehovah -- or speaking about Jehovah to speaking about Satan? Well, it is because of what the word means, brethren. “He doth not weed.” Does that make any sense? God does weed. He weeds the weed of the carnal mind out. “He doth not put in order or dispose of enemy armies.” Yes, the Lord does do that. So by reverse inference, I am going to suggest to you that this phrase is speaking about Satan, and as we have done in the past, as I have shown you in the past, this Hebrew word translated not, “He doth not,” or, “He faileth not.” The Hebrew word translated not is Strong’s 3808, and I have told you we have a word study on it, a usage study, where we found that the Lord uses this word to describe Satan. Satan is as nothing unto God. He is emptiness. He is a vacuity. He is nothing. God does not even consider him. He laughs at him. So we find a great mystery in the Scripture, Lord. Something this very same word is in fact translated not, and sometimes it is a mysterious way of God saying that nothingness, that not-ness, is really Satan. I am really speaking about Satan. This is what it sounds like. You do not have to believe it if you do not want to, but this is what it sounds like.
Well, let me just read you my note, just in case I missed something here. I suggest to you that the word not as it is used in the phrase, “He faileth not,” is referring to Satan. Satan is the he, or rather the she, that is to be deserted. By whom? By the human spirit who he is married to or who she is married to. He is the one -- or she is the one who will be found wanting or lacking when the human spirit leaves him because Satan is nothing without the human spirit. Satan is not spirit, Satan is soul, and all of his spiritual power is through the woman that he has stolen. So when the Lord separates the human spirit from Satan, Satan shall be found lacking. In what? Lacking in spiritual strength. And the carnal mind is the one is -- which is being weeded out of the soul, and Satan is the one who shall be returned to the correct moral order. Remember, one of the translations of the word faileth is to set in right order or to arrange. Satan is being returned to the correct moral order, and thereby his army is being disposed of. Satan is out of order. She thinks she is a man. She is all messed up in her head. She is in the wrong place. She is on top and she is supposed to be on the bottom.
Alternate Translation, second third, Zephaniah 3:5: “He incarnates” -- who? Jehovah -- “incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age. The carnal mind is weeded out of humanity, and Satan is returned to the correct moral order.”
Could someone get me a pen, please? Thank you.
[INAUDIBLE]
Thanks [UNINTELLIGIBLE], OK.
“He incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age.” “He incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age. The carnal mind is weeded out of humanity, and Satan is returned to the correct moral order.” Thank you, Jesus.
Please note that I have used two translations of the Hebrew word translated faileth. I said, “The carnal mind is weeded out of humanity, and Satan is returned to the correct moral order.” This is legitimate if I chose to do it on the authority of amplification. You may remember the principle of amplification. We have a whole Bible on the market.
-- called the -- when the translators put in three translations or three meanings frequently of every word in the hopes of giving the reader a better understanding of the Scripture. So on the basis of amplification, I could choose two of the translations from the Hebrew lexicon. J- -- I have used two translations of this word -- of the Hebrew word translated faileth. I have used two translations of the Hebrew word faileth on the basis that I found two subjects [INAUDIBLE] [?verb?] -- two subjects and only one verb. I will show it to you in a minute. Just let me explain it to you.
Satan and the carnal mind are one. They are really one, the conscious and the unconscious mind. So this is a great mystery. There are two subjects with one verb, and I suggest that the hidden meaning of that is that one translation of the verb is for Satan, and the other translation of the verb is for the carnal mind, and the King James translators, not understanding this, did not translate the word as a subject. Let me show it to you.
The word translated no -- in the phrase “The unjust knoweth no shame,” that Hebrew word translated no is -- we are translating it either Satan or the carnal mind. It is the second subject. And when we get down to the word shame, you will realize that it is a shame. So to say it is not a shame is incorrect, and that is how I came to that conclusion. I know it is not clear. Let me go over it with you.
I will explain further on that. This phrase, “The unjust knoweth no shame,” is referring to Satan and should therefore be positive. That is, Satan does knoweth shame. Satan is a shame, and he is ashamed. So we are going to take the word translated no and make it the s- -- a second subject of the word faileth, and therefore we have two translations of the word faileth, one for Satan and one for the carnal mind. And on the other hand, we have exposed of the Hebrew word translated no, when we translate that word in its positive sense. Let us do that now.
Continuing with the third third of Zephaniah 3:5: “But the unjust knoweth no shame.” The unjust knoweth. It is Strong’s 5767. It -- this word is translated as a verb, but it is not a verb. It is a noun. There is no -- and it means “the wicked one.” It is not a verb. It is a noun that means “the wicked one.” There is no indication in our lexicon, in the Gesenius lexicon, that this word may be translated “the unjust knoweth.” There is no indication that you could use the word knoweth. It is merely the unjust one. And the King James translators put in the word knoweth because they could not figure out what was being said here. The word knoweth is not -- it just does not exist. The word is “the unjust.” It is speaking about the wicked one.
The Hebrew text has the same exact spelling as the nominal form of the word. That means the form of the word that is a noun. Sometimes I can find the exact spelling in the lexicon and sometimes I cannot. What does that mean? When I find the exact spelling in the dictionary that I found in the interlinear, it means that I have strong authority to say to you, this is what that word means. I found the exact same spelling in the lexicon, and this is how Gesenius translates it, and it is different than how the King James translators translate it. On the occasion that I cannot find the exact spelling, I have to pray about it, and it is then circumstantial evidence, and you could agree or not agree.
So what I am telling you is in this instance I found the exact spelling in the lexicon, and Gesenius says that this word which the King James translators have translated “the unjust knoweth” -- he translates it -- and I lost my place. I am sorry. He translates it -- oh, Jesus. The wicked one [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- what did he call [?it?]? Could you put that on pause for a minute, please?
OK. Praise God. This word translated unjust, it is not a verb. It is a noun, and it means “unqualified wickedness.” It does not have anything to do with knowing anything. It just means plain wickedness. The very next word in the lexicon, Strong’s 5768, is the masculine form of a word we have already used in this verse, Strong’s 5766, and we translated it “carnal judgement” above, that is, the act of a wicked judge. Listen, 5766 is the act of a wicked judge. 5767, it is just plain old wickedness. It is not qualified. It is not the act of a wicked judge. It is not the act of a wicked woman. It is not the act of a wicked spider. It is just plain old wickedness. It is unqualified. It is unmodified.
So to translate it “the unjust knoweth,” there is just no sound basis for it at all. Therefore, we are rejecting the translation, “The unjust knoweth no shame,” because the no does not belong in there. It is saying, “Because the wicked one no shame.” It does not make any sense. So I am taking that no and I am using it as a second subject for the verb which is translated “faileth not,” and we have two selections -- two translations of that word, one for Satan and one for the carnal mind.
And we are translating this last phrase -- “But the unjust shame,” we are going to translate that, “The wicked one is shamed.” Can you hear this? Let me give it to you again. I did not make that clear. “The wicked one is shamed.” You see, the King James translators could not make any sense out of it, so they added the word knoweth to say, well, the wicked one, he does not know shame. He does not know enough to be ashamed. But the word does not mean that. The true translation is, “The wicked one is shamed.” He is put to shame by Christ. That is what it means. If you did not follow that, do not worry about it. That was a very deep grammatical problem. Do not worry about it if you did not follow it.
The Hebrew word translated “shame” is Strong’s 1322, and it is speaking about the shame that the carnal mind will experience when she recognizes her powerlessness. It is the kind of shame that, excuse me, a soldier experiences when he is utterly defeated in battle, or that a policeman experiences when his gun is taken away from him. That is the kind of shame the Scripture is talking about, humiliation.
We have a New Testament Scripture on that, that the Lord just flashed through my mind. “And he made an open show of them.” Jesus, he made an open show of the powers and principalities when he j- -- when he rose from the dead. What does that mean? The powers and principalities, Satan and the carnal mind, the god of this world had no power to kill him. They could not keep him in the grave. He rose from the dead, and he showed to the whole world that the god and the prince of this world had no power over him. And the Scripture says he made an open show of them, and utterly humiliated and shamed them. That is what this is talking about. Jesus.
Alternate Translation, Zephaniah 3:5: “The minds of Christ is in the midst of her” -- of who? Of God’s soul -- “because Jehovah will never form the carnal mind. He incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age. The carnal mind is weeded out of humanity and Satan is returned to the correct moral order. The wicked one is ashamed.” Amen. Hallelujah.
Amplified translation, Zephaniah 3:5: “Jehovah incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age but shall never form the carnal mind in the midst of the creation. The wicked one shall be ashamed when the carnal mind is weeded out and Satan is returned to the correct moral order.”
“Jehovah incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age but shall never form the carnal mind in the midst of the creation. The wicked one shall be ashamed when the carnal mind is weeded out and Satan is returned to the correct moral order.”
It is coming to me. I do not know whether it was somebody here or not, but somebody in my past had asked me a question at one time, that they could not understand that Scripture. I keep hearing the question in my mind. It may be somebody here right now. Why -- how did he make an open show of them? They could not understand how Jesus made an open show of the powers and principalities. He showed them to be powerless, brethren. He embarrassed them, and if you know anything at all about men in this world that exercise power, the worst thing you could do is to show them powerless. A man who has exercised power, who you show to be powerless in front of other men, is a dangerous man. He is capable of doing anything to get his prestige back. So loss of face, he might even kill somebody under the wrong circumstances just to show that he is still in control.
A criminal boss, for example, in charge of a gang, if he is shown up to have no power, if he does not do some desperate act to convince his enemies and the o- -- his own men that he is still powerful, he could lose his life. He could lose his position. At the very least, he could lose his money, but he could lose his life. Once your enemies perceive you to be weak, you are in trouble. Your image is very important. You could be very weak, but if you have everybody believing that you are strong, that is a defense. Even if you are strong, if you have a whole army believing that you are weak, they will come against you with five times as much force as they would if they believed you were strong. Then even if you are strong enough to defeat them, you have got a war on your hands.
Continuing with Zephaniah 3:6: “I have cut off the nations. Their towers are desolate. I made their streets waste, that none passeth by. Their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.”
“I have cut off the nations.” The Hebrew word translated “cut off,” Strong’s 3772, another possible translation on that word is “to make a covenant.” To make a covenant. This meaning is derived from the fact that in Bible days every agreement or every contract that was made was sanctified by the shedding of blood. Animals were sacrificed. So this concept of “to cut off,” under the -- if the rest of the Scripture supports it, can be translated “to make a covenant,” and I believe the rest of this verse supports that translation.
So we will translate the Hebrew word translated “cut off” as “to make a covenant.” And I suggest to you, the Lord is saying not that “I have cut off the nations and murdered them and dropped them off the side of the world and boiled them in oil and put them in hell forever.” He is saying, “I have made a covenant with them.” And please note that he is not speaking to Judah yet. He is speaking to the nations. That means, right now, he is speaking to the church.
There are two categories of people, as far as the Lord is concerned: the Jew and the Greek, or the Jew and the Gentiles. This Hebrew word translated nations, it is frequently translated Gentiles. So the Lord is saying right here he made a covenant with the Gentiles. When did the Lord make a covenant with the Gentiles? In Genesis, brethren, 8:20-22: “And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast and every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor, and the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will not again curse the ground anymore for man’s sake, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I again smite anymore everything living as I have done previously. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.’” The covenant that the Lord has made with the Gentiles, brethren, is that this world will not come to an end.
The problem is this world is under the judgement of death. We are under the wrath of God because of sin. So how could this ha- -- how could this be? How could we be under the judgement of death and have a promise from God that this world will not come to an end? Jehovah must be a liar.
No, brethren, your mind is carnal. The Lord can do it. If you have been studying here for a while, you have heard me tell you over and over, if you think there is a contradiction between two Scriptures, all that is happening is that you are missing a piece of information. The two Scriptures have to be reconciled one to the other, and the reconciling link of these two Scriptures is that God is going to give you his son. He is going to give you righteousness so that he could stop killing you, because if you continue in your sin, he cannot keep his word that this world will not come to an end, because his righteousness requires that the judgement of death be executed upon you. So the Lord has a dilemma. What will he do? So that he should not be thought a liar like a man, he is going to make you righteous. He is going to cleanse you from your sin, so he no longer has any reason to kill you.
Is not -- does that not make sense? Makes sense to me. Does not make sense to the carnal mind. The carnal mind would rather believe that you are going to burn in hell forever because God said this world will never come to an end. So burn, baby, burn. But you are forgetting about the other Scripture that says you are under the condemnation of death for your sins. You cannot live forever when you sin. You cannot live forever when you sin. Why? The soul that sins shall die, therefore the Lord has only one choice: to clean you up and make you righteous so that he can keep his word to you. He is not a man that he should lie.
Now, the Lord’s covenant -- excuse me, my voice is going. Now, please note that the Lord’s covenant with the Gentiles is the second stage of the second expression -- [INAUDIBLE] I think [?it was --?] this is the way I was putting it. The Lord’s covenant with the Gentiles is the second expression of the first stage of his covenant with humanity. Jehovah has made a covenant with humanity. This covenant, excuse me, or this contract, it is in two stages. The first stage is frequently called the Old Covenant, and the second stage is called the New Covenant, but it is really just one covenant, part A and part B.
Part A of Jehovah’s covenant with humanity is that he will give us righteousness that we do not deserve. He will let us have a relationship with him. He will reconcile us unto him. He will say, “I will give you something to do that I know you are capable of doing,” just like you give your small child in kindergarten some small task to do. He says, “You keep this law, you keep this carnal commandment, and I will have a relationship with you, and I will count it as righteousness unto you.”
The second stage of the Lord’s covenant with humanity is, “I will make you righteous. I will not treat you like you are righteous because of your carnal act, because of your behavior. I will not treat you like you are righteous because you stopped smoking and you stopped fornicating and you dress conservatively. Now, I am going to really make you righteous, and I am going to do that by going into your heart and ripping your sin out of your very mind. I am not interested in your behavior anymore. I am after your heart, and I will not leave you alone until I have purged it from every sin. I will not leave you alone until I have cleansed your thought life, your mind, your thinking from every sin.” Why? “Because I have promised to make you holy,” says the Lord. Why? “So that I do not have to kill you,” says the Lord. Why? “Because I have promised you that I will not kill you anymore, and my word is very high,” says the Lord.
So we see that the Lord has made one covenant with humanity, part A and part B, and just to make things more complicated, part A is in two stages. The first part of God’s covenant with humanity, which says, “I know you are still filthy in your sins, but I am going to treat you like you are my friend anyway. I am going to impute righteousness to you anyway and have a relationship with you. But I am going to give you, the Jew, one carnal commandment to keep, and the Gentile a different carnal commandment to keep.” It is like saying a man has two children, and he has one emptying the garbage pail and the other one shutting off the lights every night, and they both get the same penny at the end of the week.
To the Jew, Jehovah gave the Law of Moses and everything that went with it. To the Gentile, the Lord has given the Law of the Holy Spirit: “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, thy mind and thy soul, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” And on these commandments hinge all of the spiritual law of God.
The reason the Gentile has it so much easier than the Jew is simply because the younger child is walking in the path that was tread down by the natural Jew, the seed which came out of natural Israel. The Lord Jesus Christ has been sacrificed for us, brethren, and because he has been sacrificed for us and has returned to the Earth in spirit form, the second stage of the covenant, which came several thousand years after the first stage, which the Lord made with the Jew, is now raised up to a higher level whereby the spiritual world -- whereby the contribution of the nations is less grievous than that contribution which was required of the natural Jew. What contribution? Their contribution to the covenant with Jehovah. Covenant, contract, both people have an obligation. The obligation of the natural Jew was grievous under the Law of Moses, and their contribution resulted in the easier contribution which is required from the younger child, the Gentile. If you can hear it, hear it. If you cannot, just leave it alone and go on. Do not let anything stop you from going on, brethren. Keep on going.
I would like to read you my note, please. Bear with me. The Lord’s covenant with the nations is in effect with the church. This covenant is the second expression of the first stage of the Lord’s covenant with humanity, the first expression of the first stage with Israel. The Lord will fulfill the second stage of his covenant with humanity to both Israel and the church at the same time. It is called the New Covenant. And this is the New Covenant: “And in that day,” saith the Lord, “I shall take away your sin.” “And in that day,” saith the Lord, “I shall take away your sins from the midst of you and you shall be holy,” saith the Lord. “And I shall receive you as my people, and your sins shall be remembered no more, after I do it to you. But while you are still filthy, you are still filthy. You are just alive because of my mercy, and you are not righteous until you stop being filthy.”
And your filth is not in your behavior. Your filth is in your mind, and your filth is not only in your conscious mind; your filth is in your unconscious mind, and you are responsible for every speck of filth in your unconscious mind. And you are not off the hook because you cannot see it. And your denial are [sic] just vain sounds that sound like noise to the Lord because he knows you are filthy. Why? Because you are still dying. Not fooling anybody but yourself. Even the world knows you are lying. Glory to God.
“I have cut off the nations. I have cut a covenant with the nations. Their towers are desolate.” Towers, Strong’s 6438. Another translation of that word is prince, and I am going to suggest to you that the Scripture here is speaking about the mind of the creation. The prince is the mind; either it is Christ or the carnal mind. Michael, your prince, is the Christ mind in the individual. The Lord Jesus Christ is the king. He is the corporate unconscious mind of the body of Christ. The prince is Christ Jesus in the individual. On the negative side, your prince is the carnal mind of the individual.
“And your princes, or your minds, are made desolate.” The Hebrew word translated desolate, 8074, means to destroy, to stun, to make solitary. Brethren, Jehovah has promised to destroy your carnal mind, and the way he is going to destroy her is by first stunning her and then making her solitary. What does that mean? Your carnal mind is the union -- well, your carnal mind is the product of the union between your human spirit and Satan. The Lord is going to destroy your carnal mind by separating Satan from the human spirit, and he is going to separate Satan from your human spirit by first stunning the carnal mind. It is hard to operate on somebody when they are squirming around trying to get away from you. That is why your sacrifice has to be bound to the altar. That carnal mind has to be bound up, paralyzed and eventually killed, and Jehovah has promised to do just that. This is his covenant with you, brethren, that he shall take away your sins from the midst of you, and he is laughing at your denial. He is laughing at your squirming around on the operating table. You are not fooling him.
Webster says that the word stun means “to deprive of consciousness or strength.” The Lord has promised to deprive your carnal mind of consciousness. She is going to cease to exist. If you have no consciousness, brethren, you have no existence. Your existence is rooted in your ability to think, to reason, to relate to other people, and the Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am going to take her consciousness away.” So, you see, the removal of the consciousness of your carnal mind is a requirement for the fulfillment of the New Covenant. So all you kingdom people out there in whom the mind of Christ is being formed, who think you are going to enter in by merely ignoring your carnal mind, you are mistaken. The promise of Jehovah, as to his part of the New Covenant, is that he will render your carnal mind unconscious. You cannot just ignore her. Jehovah has promised to render her unconscious, to paralyze her and to kill her, and you cannot change the rules of the contract. Therefore, you have not entered in until your carnal mind is dead, and she is not going to die until she is stunned, and you are not about to stun her or paralyze her until you knock her down on her back and jump on her. Jesus.
Alternate Translation, the first third of Zephaniah 3:6: “I have made a covenant with the nations, that I shall destroy the carnal mind’s consciousness.”
Continuing with the second third of Zephaniah 3:6: “I made their streets waste, that none passeth by.” The Hebrew word translated streets, Strong’s 2351, means “whatever is without.” Whatever is without. Well, what is without, brethren? I suggest to you that Satan is the one that is outside. Satan was relegated to the outer realms when Jehovah cursed the creation.
Our Alternate Translation of Genesis 3:14 reads as follows: “And Jehovah said to Satan, ‘Because you have polluted Adam’s wife before she brought forth the seed which is revealing my image, and have caused a curse to appear in Adam’s unconscious mind, which has authority over his soul and body, you shall be joined to man instead of God and exist in the outer darkness of the physical world for so long as the creation is a beast.’” Satan is on the outside, and we are the beast, in case you have not gotten that revelation yet.
“I made their streets waste.” The Hebrew word translated waste is Strong’s 2717, and it means “dried up.” We have had that phrase a lot over the last couple of months. Does anybody remember who is being dried up? Anybody? Who is being dried up? Satan is being dried up. Satan, typified by the Salt Sea, is being dried up. Amen.
This Hebrew word, Strong’s 2717, we are told by Gesenius, can be used to describe water, rivers or earth. Now, remember that Satan typifies the earth. She is the intelligence in the earth, and the water that is making the earth into clay is referring to her spiritual power. So to say that the earth of Satan will be dried up means that she is going to be returned to her cond- -- her true condition of soul and lose her spiritual power.
“I made their streets waste, that none passeth by.” None is passing by. The word to be -- the verb to be is in there, “none is.” Strong’s 1097, “none is passing by.” This Hebrew word translated “none is,” it means “failure, defect or nothing.” Failure, defect or nothing.
The Hebrew word “passeth by,” Strong’s 6574, means “to pass over or pass through.” Pass through what, brethren? Pass through what?
I would like to quote you a paragraph from our book, “Mind, Hell and Death,” on page 5, speaking about this world’s system and the body that we dwell in, which is part of it; the body is made from the dust of the earth: “An image of a body or world is formed when spirit” -- speaking about Satan here -- “when spirit, which abides in the innermost center of one’s being, penetrates the mind and pierces through the soul. He forms a fourth circle beyond mind and soul, which is this body and this world.” So Jehovah is promising that he is going to dry up Satan’s spiritual power so that she cannot pierce through the soul. And if she cannot pierce through the soul, she cannot form this corruptible world system. And of course the unstated implication here is that if she does not pierce through, then Christ is piercing through and bringing forth his world, the image of the kingdom of heaven.
And another way to look at it is that, if Satan’s spiritual authority is dried up, once Christ establishes his world system, neither can Satan pierce through Christ and bring him down again as she did at the beginning of time. Satan’s power to pierce through, Satan’s power to form the carnal mind, is going to be dried up permanently by Jehovah.
Alternate Translation, the second third of Zephaniah 3:6: “I dried up Satan’s spiritual authority, so that she could not pierce through Christ and form her carnal mind.”
Continuing with the third third of Zephaniah 3:6: “Their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.” A city is a small fortified place or a watchtower, and we have had this word a lot recently. I suggest to you that the mind is the fortified place. Hmm. That the mind -- I used that word before. How do I use it? OK, I said that the tower is a prince or a mind, and now I am saying that the city is the fortified place. I guess I am going to have to go over that. I will give you my comment on that at the next meeting. Let me put a question mark here. I will let it go for now.
“Their cities are destroyed.” The Hebrew word translated destroyed is Strong’s 6658. It means “to lie in wait for blood.” That means to be premeditating murder.
“The cities are destroyed so that there is no man.” The Hebrew word translated no is Strong’s 1077. It means “nothing,” and I refer to you -- I suggest to you that this negative refers to the carnal mind. Further on in this verse, we see the word Strong’s 369, also another negative referring to Satan. So we see Satan and the carnal mind referred to again in this verse.
“No man.” The Hebrew word translated man is Strong’s 376. It means “male offspring, husband, manly mind or valor.” Christ is the only spiritual male; therefore, this Hebrew word translated male is referring to Christ.
These last few phrases are -- they are difficult translations, so just try and bear with me. Then we have a second negative “none,” Strong’s 369. Gesenius says this word can also be translated “so that not.” Well, what does that mean? So that Satan. We are translating the “not,” the nothingness, Satan. So that Satan.
And the last word is inhabitant, Strong’s 3427, meaning “to sit down, to dwell, to be inhabited.” Now, let me give you an Alternate Translation. That last phrase was -- the last couple of phrases were really difficult. This is what I am suggesting to you.
The third third of Zephaniah 3:6: “The carnal mind lies in wait to murder Christ so that Satan can inhabit Jehovah’s soul.” Brethren, wherever the carnal mind is appearing, she is trying to kill Christ, and the reason she is trying to kill Christ is that only one mind can inhabit this soul. Right now, those who have the mind of Christ being formed in them are a perversion. We have two minds. Only one mind can prevail in each individual, and only one mind can prevail in the creation as a whole, and the carnal mind is out to murder Christ wherever she finds him. Therefore, if you are taking the murderous nature of your own carnal mind lightly, you are naive; you are a spiritual woman and/or a spiritual child because you cannot even see the enemy.
Your own carnal mind is trying to kill Christ in you, and your own carnal mind is trying to kill Christ in any other believer where Christ is ruling and reigning. And if it is not your conscious carnal mind, it is your unconscious carnal mind, and if you do not believe it, you are in denial because it is a fact of life. Jesus said, “They hated me, and they will hate you.” And Jesus told the Pharisees they were out to kill him, and they told him he had a devil, but he knew what he was talking about, because he saw into the hearts of men.
And we are told in another place that Jesus committed himself to no man. Why? Does anybody know why? He knew what was in the hearts of men. Does that mean he did not talk to them? Does that mean he would not go out to dinner with the- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
Why? Does anybody know why? He knew what was in the hearts of men. Does that mean he did not talk to them? Does that mean he would not go out to dinner with them? Does that mean he persecuted them? No. He did not have any ungodly soul tie with them. The only relationship that Jesus Christ had with men that was on an intimate level was a Spirit tie in Christ. Every other man that he related to, he related to from a position of authority downward. Brethren, he controlled that relationship. Everyone, every man that Jesus had a relationship with, or every relationship that Jesus had with a fallen man, Jesus controlled.
The righteous mind of Christ that was in Jesus of Nazareth ruled in every relationship with the fallen man. What does that mean? It means that the righteous mind of Christ which was in Jesus of Nazareth had a modifying effect on the mind of the other person, and that the carnal mind of the other person in the relationship never ever had a modifying effect on the man Jesus of Nazareth. He exercised a control over men which was not sin, and, on the contrary, if Jesus of Nazareth had let the mind of a fallen man modify his Christ mind, it would have been sin unto him. And, therefore, the man Jesus of Nazareth who was Christ was continuously rebuking his disciples, and correcting and chastising and pointing out sin, and not taking any junk from them whether they were in denial or not. He told them the truth, and the result of it was that they all received a spiritual increase. He did not yield to the lies of their mind for one second.
Alternate Translation. Let me give you the third third again. Alternate Translation, the third third of Zephaniah 3:6: “The carnal mind lies in wait to murder Christ, so that Satan -- for the purpose that Satan can inhabit Jehovah’s soul or Jehovah’s wife, or be married to or dwell with or possess Jehovah’s wife, this soul.”
Alternate Translation, Zephaniah 3:6: “‘I have made a covenant with the nations, that I shall destroy the carnal mind’s consciousness,’ says Jehovah. ‘I dried up Satan’s spiritual authority, so that she could not pierce through and form a carnal mind. The carnal mind lies in wait to murder Christ, so that Satan can inhabit my soul.’”
Amplified translation, Zephaniah 3:6: “‘I made a covenant,’ says Jehovah, ‘with the nations that I would destroy the carnal mind’s consciousness and dry up Satan’s power to pierce through and form a carnal mind -- or to pierce through Christ and form a carnal mind. And I have kept my word, but the carnal mind still lies in wait to murder Christ, so that Satan can live with my wife.’”
What does that mean, brethren? It means that Jehovah has done everything he said he was going to do, but we have not killed our carnal mind. Jehovah has made a covenant with us. He said he is going to wipe out the carnal mind’s consciousness, and the way he is going to do that is by drying up Satan’s spiritual power, and the way he is going to do that is by giving us his Christ mind, so that we can do it by his strength. He says, “I have done it. I have given you my Christ. I have given you everything you need to dry up Satan’s power and wipe out the consciousness of your carnal mind. But despite everything that I have done, despite the work of Jesus of Nazareth at Calvary, despite his pouring out of his Spirit upon all flesh, despite the free gift of the Holy Ghost, despite everything that the Lord has done, your carnal minds are still strong as ever, lying in wait to kill Christ wherever he is appearing.”
Now, most likely, -- this is the last verse that I did -- in the next verse, or the next verses, it has to say -- the Lord has to indict the church as well as Israel. The reason for this is that you have refused to confess your sins and repent. Why? How do I know that? If you confessed your sins and repent, your carnal mind would be dying. You had your weapon. I have given you your muscles, but you will not use it because you love your sin, because your deeds are evil, and you will not come to the light for those reasons. Your deeds are evil and you love it.
We are told in the Gospel of John -- just to jump ahead for a minute, we are told in verse 7: “Jehovah said, ‘Surely, thou wilt fear me. Thou wilt receive instruction’” -- you have not received instruction -- “‘so that their dwelling should not be cut off. However, I punished them; I gave them righteous judgement, but nevertheless they rose early and corrupted all their doings.’”
Now, despite this, the Lord is going to save humanity, and the next verse talks about him rising up to take the prey, to set the human spirit free, but as I told you at the beginning of the message, brethren, it does not mean every individual. If you choose to walk away from this great salvation, the Lord is letting -- well, in most cases, he is letting you go. Some people, he is keeping against their will in this hell. If you choose to walk away from it, you go, but do not be a fool. Do not think that you are entering in, and then wake up one morning and see all your brethren shining with the glory of Christ, and you are locked out because you lied to yourself, and you believed your own lie. That is a shame. Let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay. If you want to go, pack up and go. Do not deceive yourself. Either get on the boat or get off. You either fight the fight or get out of the war.
Recap, Zephaniah 3:5-6: “Jehovah incarnates the mind of Christ from age to age, but shall never form the carnal mind in the midst of the creation. The wicked one shall be ashamed when the carnal mind is weeded out, and Satan is returned to the correct moral order. ‘I made a covenant with the nations,’ says Jehovah, ‘that I would destroy the carnal mind’s consciousness and dry up Satan’s power to pierce through Christ and form a carnal mind, and I have kept my word. But the carnal mind nevertheless still lies in wait to murder Christ, so that Satan can live with my wife.’”
Hallelujah. This is the condition of the human race, and the Scripture clearly tells us in another place that there are vessels of honor and there are vessels of dishonor. Choose ye this day who you will serve. You have a choice. You have a choice. If you are hearing this message, you have a choice. You are no longer a victim, but know that if you choose to be the victor instead of the victim, you have got one war on your hands. But the Scripture tells us that if we choose to fight, we must be victorious. Just do not think you are fighting while the whole time you are collaborating with the enemy. There is no glory in that, brethren, to God or to you. Know thyself, know what you are, who you are, [INAUDIBLE] doing, and if you take a good long look at yourself one day and you find out that you are so ugly that you cannot even stand to look at yourself, tell the Lord that you want a facelift, that you are ugly and you would like to be beautiful. He has the power to do it for you, but not without pain. It just hurts for a little bit, brethren. Joy cometh in the morning. Hallelujah.
You know, some of the ugliest people that have ever walked the face of the Earth -- and I do not mean physically ugly, brethren, I mean spiritually ugly. Some of the ugliest people that have ever walked the face of this Earth have become beautiful and are becoming beautiful in Christ. And then there is thousands, if not millions, of average Joe people, just average G.I. Joe. They are not particularly ugly. They are not particularly filthy, but they are fallen. And they look at themselves and they do not think they are all that ugly, so they accept themselves as they are rather than desiring the beauty of Christ. And they are going to stay right where they are, while some of the ugliest and vilest people that have ever been on the face of this Earth are going to be made beautiful in Christ. And these average everyday G.I. Joe people, a lot of them are going to be really mad, but the truth is that they were not willing to pay the price because they were too content with their life. The guy that could not stand himself, he was willing to pay the price. It is a mystery, brethren, but the Scripture says, “He who was first shall be last, and he who was last shall be first.”
Any questions on this message? You want a microphone? It is over here.
You had said before that people who have a mature Christ formed in them can have their carnal mind overcome them. I thought the process of having Christ mature in us paralyzed our carnal mind, the first stages of resurrection, onto the second stage and so on.
Testing, OK. That is true, but that is what we are talking about. You cannot go on to the second stage -- second and third stage of resurrection, without confessing your sins. That is exactly correct, except you have to realize that we have not even attained to the first stage of resurrection yet, and we shall not attain to the first stage of resurrection without confessing our sins and repenting. Did I answer your question?
I would assume then that it is not a mature Christ in us then?
No. No, it is not. But the maturing of Christ is a process. From the moment the seed, which is the Word of God, engrafts to us, at the very beginning we re- -- at -- when we say we experience the conception of Christ, from that point on the maturing of Christ is a continuous, ongoing process, but I do not believe we can say we have a mature Christ until we have attained to at least the first stage of resurrection, which is full stature. Well, it was possible that Christ in one man can be more mature than Christ in another man, but I think the most mature of us at this time are just young teenagers because Christ Jesus, at the back of the Book of Revelation, on the white horse, is less than a year old. Christ Jesus sitting on the white horse with the many crowns, which -- and he is in full stature at that point -- is o- -- is less than a year old. So we are not even born yet. We are still in utero. So [?talk?talking?] about maturity, no, not at all.
[INAUDIBLE]
Please use the microphone. What? [INAUDIBLE] If you will just wait one second, if there are no more questions on this message, I will take questions on anything. Any more questions on this message? OK, I will take questions on anything.
I was -- I want to know in -- what is the Hebrew tongue meant by in verse 2 in John 5?
The Hebrew tongue?
When they say that, what are they talking about there? What is the Hebrew tongue? I never heard --
The Hebrew language. They are speaking about the Hebrew language. A tongue is a language. OK? Did I answer your question? Anything else? Any more? Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord. I have been asked to comment on Hebrews -- let me give you the exact Scripture -- Hebrews 10:10: “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all.” And this question was asked in response to my statement that Jesus is being crucified over and over and over again in each member of humanity. And this is the answer to that question.
He was crucified once, but it is a many-membered crucifixion. He has one body, but it is a many-membered body. He has one Spirit. Christ is not divided, but that Spirit is appearing in many human beings. It is a many-membered Spirit, and, therefore, every experience that he has and every work that he does is a many-membered experience and a many-membered work. So, therefore, Jesus of Nazareth who was Christ was only the first member, the beginning of the creation of God, the first to -- the first one to be begotten from the dead. He -- Jesus of Nazareth the man was the first member of a many-membered humanity. He was the first member of a many-membered soul in which the spiritual life of Christ is being nailed -- or to which the spiritual life of Christ is being nailed to. The resurrected spiritual life of Christ is being nailed to the many-membered living soul, and Jesus of Nazareth was only the first human being in which the resurrected Christ was nailed to the cross, the cross being the very soul itself. And remember, the soul that God made was cut out of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is in fact wood. So, therefore, it is legitimate to say that Jesus Christ, who was crucified once for all of us, was crucified in a many-membered crucifixion which is still going on and will continue to go on until such time as every cell of his body is nailed to his glorified resurrected life. Amen and amen.
05/19/17 Transcribed by VerbalFusion
05/23/17 1st Edit rh
