195 - Part 2
ROMANS CHAPTER 7

Part 2 of 2 Parts

 

This Message Has Been Transcribed And Edited For

Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By

The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.

 

 

Immediately following is the answer to the last question on the message from the previous evening. The name and number of the message is Message No. 195, “Chapter 7, Part 1.” The question was asked at the very end of that message. The following is the answer, and immediately following that, we begin Part 2 of Romans, Chapter 7.

 

And I have two messages on it. It’s called -- the series is called “Jesus in the Jordan.” You probably never heard this before. We looked up every word in the Greek. We went into the Scriptures on the account of the baptism, and we wrote it up -- the account of it in the four gospels, and we looked up the words in the Greek, and we found out, revealed in that, that when Jesus went down into the water -- well, let me tell you this. Well, when Jesus went -- I -- this is another. I’m going to tell this briefly. I can’t go into the whole thing tonight. I’m too tired, OK?

 

But I believe that God has told me that Jesus was born a natural man. He was not perfect from birth. He ascended to full stature at the time of His baptism. The whole point of Jesus being the Christ is that He would not die again, like the creation died at the beginning of time. He had to go up from seed. He had to have a series of experiences. He had to overcome His carnal mind, and we see the testing taking place in the temptation. OK, so I’m not going to go into the details. You’re free to disagree with me, if you want to. I’m just going over this quickly.

 

This is what the Lord has shown me, that He was born of the -- a man of the seed of David, a natural man, but He had something in addition to what -- excuse me, could you just sit back a little, because I can’t see his face? Thanks. OK.

 

He was born a natural man who had everything that human man has. He’s inherited a physical body and a carnal mind from His mother, but He also had the seed of the Father. And that seed grew into the mind of Christ. He was raised and dedicated in the Temple. He was trained up as a Hebrew youth. They start teaching them at three years old. He was under the rabbis. He was instructed. He had social instruction from his parents. He had everything that the Christ at the beginning of time didn’t have, and eventually, He came to a place where He was taught of God, and we found in this series, in one of the gospels, it’s indicated that He went into the water, knowing that He was about to be caught up in full stature, praying for it.

 

So I encourage anyone that’s receiving this word, pray for full stature, because the man Jesus went into the water praying for it, and when He went down under the water, He not only was water baptized, He was baptized in the Holy Spirit, and He was caught up to full stature, and it happened to Him all at once. He went down a natural man who had a mind of Christ, in a very similar condition that we’re in now, except more mature. He was a man that had two minds, that was raised up under the Hebraic law. He went down under the water in full obedience to God. He came up out of the water, baptized in the Holy Spirit, caught up to full stature, all at once, and walked away the Son of God.

 

And, immediately, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness, where He was tempted by Satan, because God tests everything. God tested the creation at the beginning of time. We touched on it earlier tonight, and at the beginning of time, God let Satan loose on the creation, and the mind of Christ did not prevail, and it died. OK, you remember we talked about that.

 

Well, Jesus of Nazareth became Jesus the Christ, and immediately, He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. Did you ever wonder why He was led of the Spirit? God tested His Christ, and Satan, the carnal mind that the man Jesus inherited from His mother, tempted Him. He was led into the wilderness. Does it say the wilderness or the desert? It doesn’t matter. The wilderness is the living soul. The desert is the dry place. It’s the soul without the rain of God. The temptation was in His own mind, and when He passed the test, God said, “This is My Christ.” And He went forth, doing the works of the Father.

 

So I have a lot of controversial teachings, but they’re the word of the Lord, you know. It’s grow-up time. You see, let me just tell -- let me just -- I don’t want to leave you here. Let me tell you this. The church world would call this blasphemy, but I say unto you that what the church world is teaching you is blasphemy, because the church world is saying that He was born perfect. How does that encourage you in your warfare? How does being told that He was born perfect encourage you? I thought the Scripture said that He knows what we’re going through, because He’s experienced everything that we’ve gone through. He overcame, just like we’re overcoming. That’s how He understands everything that we went through.

 

And I declare to you, it’s not a blasphemy. You see, the church -- what I -- now listen to this. What I’m saying is that He wasn’t perfect at birth, but from the baptism on, He was perfect. OK. And I want to suggest to you now that the church teaches that He wasn’t perfect after the baptism. They don’t know that that’s what they’re saying, but if you analyze what they’re saying, when they tell you that the man Jesus was down on His knees in the garden, so scared of going on that cross that He sweat blood, begging His Father to get Him out of that trial, I want to tell you. That’s not what God does. And I want to suggest to you, that although they don’t know they’re doing it, that any church that teaches you this doctrine, which is every church, is telling you that at the time that Jesus was on his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was behaving like a carnal man. I want to tell you, if God told me that I was going to be crucified tomorrow, I’d be down on my knees, crying out to get out of that trial.

 

But that man was God, and I don’t believe He did that. And we looked up every word in the Greek, and He didn’t do it. You’ll have to ask me tomorrow night what it was all about. It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s a lie. I just want to say it one more time. I say He was weak at birth and became God at the baptism, and the church says He was strong at birth and became weak before the crucifixion. Choose ye this day. Praise God.

 

 

ROMANS, CHAPTER 7, PART 2

 

Romans, Chapter 7, Part 2. Praise the Lord. OK. We’re going to start with the 25^th verse of Romans 7, and then we’ll go into Romans 1, and Lord willing -- Romans 7, verse 1, and Lording willing, go right through verse 14.

 

Romans 7, verse 25. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with the mind, I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh, I serve the law of sin.”

 

And the subject that God has been bringing to Lagos and to us in New York these last months is the dichotomy of the human personality. We are dual. We are both carnal and spiritual. If Christ is in your life, there is a spiritual side to you, and there is a carnal side to you. And the Lord wants us to be exercised in our spiritual man, so that he becomes strong enough to dominate the carnality of our flesh. And the reason for this is that in the flesh is death. When we think with the carnal mind, which is in our flesh, it produces death in us. When we think and live with the mind of Christ, it produces life.

 

So the Lord has told us that he has formed a creation which is designed to express the nature of the Father God in a visible form, and His plan includes covering that spirit with a layer of clay. And the in -- one of the elements of the clay is the dust of the earth, and in that dust is a spiritual pestilence. It -- there is an existence, there is a -- I don’t want to say there’s a life in the dust, because life is only in the Son, but there is an existence in that dust, and that existence is morally impure. The reason the Father has permitted this is that He is revealing Himself -- yeah, that He is becoming visible by means of contrast. He is invisible. He is covering Himself with visible clay. He is righteous, and He is revealing His nature by contrasting Himself against unrighteousness or moral impurity, or we can say moral uncleanness.

 

So He has made a creation. The Father has made a creation that has a righteous side to it, that is called spirit, and that has an unrighteous and impure, morally impure side to it, which He calls the flesh or the soul, or as we discussed last night, the woman in relationship to God. The living soul, apart from God, is morally impure. Her only hope for righteousness is through union with the Spirit of God. And what has happened to this living soul to date is that the Father formed him, and he was good. We are told in the Book of Genesis that the creation, the living soul, he was good. And there was a side of him which was spirit, and there was a side of him which was earth, and it was soul, and the soul was under the domination of the spiritual side of the creation. And it was good, but it wasn’t tested. Neither was the spirit interwoven with the soul in a permanent, which -- if the spirit was interwoven with the soul, it would have brought the creation to a condition of -- to a permanent condition of spirit dominating soul.

 

It’s just like saying, man has a lower nature. Everybody knows that we have a lower nature. If you get mad at your neighbor, no matter what he has done to you, you know that if you murder him, there will be life-ruining consequences. You control yourself, and you don’t do it. If you see a woman walking down the street, and she’s attractive, you know that you cannot knock her down and engage in any kind of sexual activity with her. We don’t do these things. There are life-damaging consequences to them.

 

Well, there is a spiritual side to us, brethren, that if we yield to the influence of that soulish side of us, there are life-damaging consequences, and in reality, the cur- -- the man at the beginning of time yielded to his lower nature on a spiritual level. I’m not talking about murdering somebody now. I’m not talking about taking a woman against her will. This was a spiritual creation, and he yielded to his lower nature, which was soul, and there were life-changing consequences which resulted from it.

 

The creation died. It died to its righteous existence. When the man yielded to his lower nature, he did not cease to exist, but he died to his immortality. He became a mortal man. When he yielded to his lower nature, his spirit separated from God. The soul side of the man separated from the spirit side of the man, and in that separation, he died to a life in the realm of God’s spirit, but he did not cease to exist. He entered into or embarked upon an existence which was purely soulish, and soul is sin and death. And the creation fell down to this place that we inhabit, which is called hell, and we became subject to the prince of the power of the air. We lost the protection of God in our willful separation from Him, and I say, our willful separation from Him, because the law of God says that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children, unto the third and fourth generation. And we are the offspring of the original man. We are the offspring of Adam, and in Adam, all died. When he sinned, we all sinned. When he died, we all died.

 

It may -- many people have difficulty dealing with this concept of God’s laws, that a future generation should be bearing the consequence of their ancestor, but I declare a mystery to you, brethren. The Scripture states that even though many generations have passed since the offense was committed -- spiritually speaking, of course, on the soul realm, because we’re soul, OK -- we are the same man that existed at the beginning of time, just in a different form. Brethren, your children are you. Are they not carrying on your name? Are they not carrying on your nature? Your children are you in another form, and we are the original creation in another form, but we have no memory of it because of our fallen spiritual condition. God is a righteous God. Therefore, He can say the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation, because it may be a mystery to us down here in this place, but spiritually speaking, the offspring are this -- are the parents in another form. It’s the same soulish life. Does anybody not know what I’m talking about? OK.

 

So we find ourselves in this condition because our original ancestor failed. Well, let me -- I don’t think I covered this. Let me go back. So, if God made the man, and the man had two sides, spirit and soul, and so long as the spirit dominated the soul, the creation was alive, and it was protected, and its every need was met. So God put the man in this condition. Did you -- do you know what a handicap is? Do you use that word here in [UNINTELLIGIBLE]? God gave the man a handicap. He gave him authority over the soul that wasn’t 50/50. God did not say, I give 50 percent authority to the soul and 50 percent authority to the spirit. Now, spirit man, take authority over the soul. He didn’t say that. He made the soul weaker than the spirit. He gave the spirit authority, and He said to him: now rule your lower nature, because if you yield to it, you shall surely become a mortal man. The King James says: If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil -- if you agree in your mind with the thoughts of your lower nature, you shall surely become a mortal man.

 

And then the Father withdrew Himself from the creation, and He said, all right, Adam, let’s see you do it yourself. It’s just like you’re taking your child, or you take a young child, and you hold both their hands, and you help them to take left, right, left, right, and then one day you say, well, son, let’s see if you’re going to walk by yourself. You see, up until that point, the influence of the Father had been very strong upon the creation, and He was backing up the man in the area of restraining his lower nature, just like we do with our children. We do not expect our 2-year-old to be able to restrain themselves in every area. We don’t expect them to be able to discipline themselves. So that’s why we will, when necessary, take them by the hand and insist that they go to the doctor when they’re sick, insist that they go to bed at a reasonable hour, insist that they eat something that is nourishing.

 

This was the condition of the creation at the beginning of time. The Father was a strong influence in assisting the man in restraining his lower nature, but the man reached a point in his maturity where the Father said, I am withdrawing my restraining hand. Let’s see you walk by yourself. I’ve given you a handicap -- you’re already on top of that thing -- and I’ve given you the commandment.  Don’t yield to the whisper of the serpent. Now let’s see what you’ll do. And the father withdrew His adult, restraining hand, and the man heard the voice of the serpent, and he yielded to it, and what the Father had said to him came to pass. He died to his immortality, and the spiritual side of the man, which had dominion over the carnal side of the man, or the soulish side of the man -- that spiritual side came down underneath the authority of the soulish side of man, and the soulish side came into a position of dominance.

 

And thus we find the whole human race today in a condition where we are dominated by our soulish passions. Mankind is dominated by his passions. We raise our children to discipline themselves, and we discipline ourselves. We know we cannot yield to every passion and every thought of our mind. We would have no society. This is not the condition that the Father made us in at the beginning. We are fallen because of the conditions that I just described to you.

 

So, yesterday, we went through verses -- Romans 7, we went through verses 15 through 24, where we hear Paul crying out, describing his desperate condition, which has resulted from the impartation of Christ to him. You see, when you’re 100 percent carnal, you don’t really have much of a problem. You just live your life. You’re used to the ungodly thoughts in your mind. You know from some social training what you can do and what you can’t do, and life isn’t too complicated in that area. But when God imparts Christ to you and starts convicting you of the ungodliness of your thoughts, and when you become two men -- when you have one mind in you crying out for righteousness, seeking to worship God and to please God and be clean in your thoughts as well as your behavior -- but on the other hand, you have a soulish nature filled with lust and influences towards lust and passion -- and this is not just sexual lust. This is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. It includes any and every evil work known to man, coveting something that your brother has. It’s much more than sexual lust.

 

When we -- when Christ becomes imparted to us, we become a dual man, a two-sided man, and James says that the double-sided man is unstable in all his ways. One minute, we’re fleshy or soulish. The next minute, we’re spiritual. One minute, we’re yielding to our passions. The next minute, we’re guilty over what we thought. And Paul has cried out in Romans 7, saying what a -- confessing openly in a letter how miserable he is over this conflict in his emotions.

 

And this is the condition that we find ourselves in today when Christ has been imparted to us, but as we go through the writings of Paul, we find out that eventually he stood up in full stature. Eventually, the spiritual man in him took the victory that the man at the beginning of time failed to take and brought his carnal, soulish nature into submission. Now this is where we left off last night, listening to Paul’s -- Paul speak about his woes, about what a wretched man he is, crying out in verse 24, “Who shall deliver him from the body of this death?” Who shall deliver him from the domination of his carnal mind?

 

And I want to very strongly make a point to you, because this is not commonly preached, that even though Christ was in him, he was an apostle at the writing of this letter, and he is clearly stating that he is dominated by his carnal mind, that to serve Christ was a warfare for him -- that even as an apostle, he was not dominated by Christ. He was dominated by his carnal mind. And I point this out to you because we have two teachings in the church that I must disagree with.

 

One condemns the believer who is controlled by his carnal mind, puts condemnation on him and says, now that you have Christ, you should be having no problem walking in victory, and if you’re not walking in victory, there must be something wrong with you. But, you see, my Bible says God has called us to a warfare, and if you’re waging that warfare, there’s no condemnation in Christ Jesus. It is to be resisted. Condemnation is the enemy of the spiritual man. It will bear no good fruit unto you.

 

The other teaching that I must disagree with is the teaching that says we shall take dominion over our soul without this warfare, if we just ignore it, if we make believe it’s not there. Just live out of the righteousness of Christ. Just do what’s right, and you’ll ascend into full stature. I don’t believe this is possible.

 

We discussed, two nights ago, that the Scripture clearly states that the carnal mind is a weapon -- it is a spiritual weapon, your mind is a weapon -- and that Christ also is a weapon, and that the reality of the battle of Armageddon is the battle of these two minds taking place on two levels. The battle of Armageddon takes place on two levels in your own mind, Christ waging war against the carnal mind, and once you reach a certain level of dominion over your carnal mind, there will be other carnal minds, other men, not necessarily knowing what they’re doing, but manifesting their carnal mind towards you, and it’s a spiritual thing. You must not -- you must be careful not to have ungodly attitudes towards your brethren who are used this way, because they don’t know what they’re doing. It is our responsibility to recognize the carnal mind wherever she is manifesting and reject her counsel and reject her provocation and submit to Christ. Christ can be manifesting in our mind. He can be manifesting in the mind of a prophet that God sends you to with a word. So the bottom line here is, we must learn to distinguish between Christ and the carnal mind, if we’re going to fight this war. Otherwise, you wind up bombing the wrong enemy.

 

OK, so let’s try and get into this word tonight. So, verse 25, Paul is saying -- now, he had just -- he has just cried out, who’s going to deliver him from this carnal mind? The body of death is the carnal mind. And now he says, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

 

Now let me review for you why he’s thanking our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, our Lord Jesus Christ is the man who was crucified. Jesus of Nazareth, who became the Christ, whose mind was Christ, this man made the sacrifice of his soul life. He o- -- was obedient to the Father. He was crucified. He was raised from the dead. He ascended. He was glorified. He became spirit, and he is in this hour pouring out of His spirit upon all flesh, and when He pours out or sprinkles on your flesh, He comes in the form of a male seed, intending fully to raise from the dead the Christ in you, your human spirit. He comes to join with it, that Christ might be raised from the dead.

 

And Paul is thus saying, I thank God for the Lord Jesus Christ, because the One who’s going to deliver me from this body of death is Christ Jesus in me, and the reason Christ Jesus is being formed in me is because the man Jesus of Nazareth obeyed God, even unto the death of the cross.

 

But we must understand that the death of the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was the Christ on the cross, is of no account to us unless His glorified spirit has sprinkled on our heart, and his nature, or the mind which was in Him, is now growing in you. It’s just like saying that you have light in this room, but if you don’t know that you have to flip the light switch on to get the light, what good is that light doing you? Jesus said, “If the light in you be darkness, how great is that darkness.”

 

So we have a provision that has been given unto us, a great gift, that our Lord and Savior should be formed in the midst of us, that our God should dwell in the midst of us. So our primary activity should be the petitioning of the Lord to have this mind imparted to us. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, that’s the first thing you have to do, and the way you get it is by reading your Bible, exposing yourself to the spiritual ministry of the Holy Spirit that gives you the spirit. You can ask someone to pray for you, but once Christ is formed in you, the primary thrust of God in your life should be towards the increase and the maturation of that mind of Christ in you, because when He gets big enough and strong enough, He’s going to crucify your carnal mind. And at the death of your carnal mind, you shall enter into full stature. The death of your carnal mind is the over -- well, I jumped ahead of myself. Before your carnal mind is killed, he must be overpowered, and the overpowering of your carnal mind we know as full stature.

 

So Paul is clearly stating that he is in a hopeless condition in verse 24. “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? But I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” that Christ Jesus has been imparted to him, so that because Christ Jesus is imparted to him, so then, with that mind, Christ Jesus, he serves the law of God, but with the flesh, he serves the law of sin. If he didn’t have that of mind, if Jesus Christ is just a story to you, if that mind is not in you, you do not have the weapon that God wants you to have, which will give you the ability to overpower your carnal mind. You’ve got to get your weapon. You’ve got to get your weapon.

 

You’ve got to get your weapon, and everything that we’ve seen in the church world today -- the dancing, the singing, the receiving of the Holy Ghost -- all beautiful, but all to a very specific end. That spirit must bring forth Christ in your heart. And when Christ begins to be formed in you, the battle is on. The war is on. Fight the war.

 

OK, so we see in verse 25 that, for Paul, the war is on. Now, going back to verse 1 of chapter 7, he is now speaking to us and to everyone else who would read that chapter. And he’s saying, don’t you know, brethren, for I speak to them that know the Lord. He’s not speaking to the heathen. He’s -- in this hour, he’s speaking to the Christian. He’s speaking to the one that knows the law, how that the law have dominion over man as long as he lives. Well, that’s not a very good translation, and what it’s really saying -- this word, this Greek word translated “have dominion” -- it means trample down. And what it’s really saying -- what Paul is really saying, brethren, is that the law has dominion over the man who’s alive. The man who’s alive is Christ.

 

Now let me talk to you a minute about the law. This is a very difficult chapter. I just pray that God gives me the ability to impart what He has shown me to you. I’d like to review what I told you yesterday, the difference between the law and the commandment. A law is a principle. A law has an ability to regulate. Your policemen carry guns. That is their authority to regulate the civilian population. A spiritual law has the ability to regulate the behavior of men. The commandment merely tells you what you are permitted to do and what you are not permitted to do. There’s no power in the commandment. It’s just a statement saying you shouldn’t do this. And when you transgress that commandment, then the law comes after you, because you’ve gone off the line, so the force comes to push you back into line.

 

And let me just review for you. We did go over this yesterday. At the end of Romans 7, Paul made it very clear that there are two laws operating in us, if we are a spiritual man. Well, I just mentioned it, that with the mind of God, he serves the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. So we see that there are two laws, very clearly, and I just said that. A law has the ability to regulate. The law has force behind it. So we see the law which is in our carnal mind has an ability to influence us, and the law which is in Christ also has an ability to influence us.

 

Now the law which is in Christ comes on two levels. It comes written down in this book, and it comes in the form of spirit. And we will find, as we go on with chapter 7, that when Paul speaks about the law, we have to ask ourselves -- which law is he speaking about? Is he speaking about the law of sin and death, which is the law which operates in our carnal mind? Law, power to enforce behavior. Law, power to enforce thought. Is it the law of sin and death, which is in our soul, or is he talking about the law of the spirit of God, which imparts life, or is he speaking about the written law?

 

So I’m going to give you some suggestions as to which law he’s talking about as we go on with Romans 7, and I want to suggest to you that in verse 1, he’s speaking about the written law. He’s saying, I speak to all of you that know the written law of God, that you should know that the law -- OK, now listen. There’s two -- the word law is in verse 1 twice. The first time, he’s talking about the written law, and the second time, he is talking about the law of sin and death. Let me read it to you.

 

“Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to those that know the law).” They know what’s right. They know what sin is. They’ve read this book. And the law tells you that the law of sin and death has dominion over the spiritual man, not over a man as long as he liveth, but if you look at it in the Greek, you’ll see that it’s saying the law has dominion over the spiritual man. What Paul is saying is the law of sin and death has dominion over Christ in you.

 

Now, at the first hearing of this, it sounds like blasphemy, but if we don’t understand our condition, how can we wage this warfare? And this is why I read the last verses of chapter 7 to you first, because Paul clearly states that the carnal mind had dominion over him and that he was battling a vicious battle between the mind of Christ, which was imparted to him, and that carnal mind. So here we see Paul going into a very deep teaching in chapter 7, and he’s starting out by telling the Romans that it’s a fact that the carnal mind has dominion over your spiritual man.

 

I want to talk about that a little more. And the reason the carnal mind has dominion over the spiritual man is that, in this hour, in our fallen condition, the carnal mind is the god in the midst of us. I’ll repeat again the Scripture. I’ve been giving it to you for two days. “And I saw the souls of them which were beheaded for Christ.” I saw the souls -- each of us has a soul -- that were beheaded, the souls from which the carnal mind was cut off for Christ’s sake, so that Christ could be the head of that soul. Before Christ can be the God in the midst of you, the god which is presently in the midst of you must be cut off. This is what the battle of Armageddon is all about.

 

So this is our condition. The carnal mind, which is ruled by Satan, is the god in the midst of us, and that’s why we struggle with sinful thoughts in our mind, and that’s why sometimes these sinful thoughts even overtake our behavior, because we are bound with spiritual chains of darkness, the Scripture says, to the god which is in the midst of us. We are his servants. We are in subjection to him. Christ is the invading force who has come to save us from our captor. Now, for years, it was taught to me that the church is going to crash into hell and get all those dead people out. Brethren, this is hell, we’re the dead people, and no one’s coming from out there to crash us out. Christ is coming from in here to break us out, from the inside out.

 

Christ has broken through the gates of hell in our heart and our mind. He’s reproducing himself inside of our hearts, and he’s going to break the gates out from the inside. This is our condition. Christ is the invading force. That is why the law of sin and death continuously treads down and tramples over the spiritual man. You know what the law of God says. You desire to serve it, you seek God, you pray, and you fast, and that thing overtakes you, time and time again. Why? Because the god in the midst of you has more authority because of your complete union with him than the immature, invading Christ at this point.

 

And I declare to you, brethren, that you should be encouraged, because Christ is undefeatable. You just have to hang on to the horns of the altar until He matures to the point that He’s going to take authority over your carnal mind. But you have to know this, so that you can work with Him, so that you can resist sin, and so that you will not receive condemnation on the occasions that you -- that sin treads you down.

 

Is everybody following me? OK.

 

So Paul says to the Romans, you who know the law, you should know. You see, this knowledge is imparted in the law. It may not have been taught to you before now, but it’s in the law. It’s in the Bible. You should know that the law of sin and death treads continuously, treads down the spiritual man. And now, in verses 2 through 3, Paul gives us a parable to explain our spiritual condition. He says, look at it in the natural, brethren. When a woman hath a husband, she is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth. But if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law or the regulating force of her husband. So then, if while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called adulteress, an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is freed from the law of her husband. He is a fourth law. This is the law of her husband, so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

 

Paul is saying in parable form that we are married to the carnal mind. It’s just another way of saying we’re joined to him with chains of darkness. That’s what I just said to you a few minutes ago. Paul puts it in parable form. He uses our humanity as an example. We’re married to the carnal mind, and we’re bound unto him until he’s dead.

 

So this is Paul’s advice to us. Verse 4, “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law of sin and death by the body of Christ.”

 

He’s saying here -- Paul is saying here, that even though you are still joined to your carnal mind, God, in His Christ, has the authority to say to you, “Now that I am present, you are dead to this marriage.” Even though the carnal mind is not dead yet, this is called the promise. It’s called the -- well, it’s called the promise of God. God has the authority to break the law of the husband. The husband’s not dead yet. We’re still attached to him. By human standards, we would be adulteresses, joining with Christ, but Paul is saying: No, this marriage was an illegal marriage. God never intended it to be. If I rip the carnal mind out of you before I replace -- before I put my Christ mind in you, you would cease to exist, and therefore, in the authority of the Father, which is in Christ, I say unto you, from the moment Christ begins to be formed in you, you have my permission to count your carnal mind dead. Therefore, it is all right for you to cleave unto Christ. Marry Christ, cleave unto Christ, disobey your husband, rebel against your husband. This law has no more dominion over you, because there is now another law in your mind, the law of God, which is a higher law, which has just disannulled the law of your husband, the carnal mind, called the law of sin and death.

 

This is what Paul’s saying to you. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ.”

 

Now let me review the body of Christ to you. I touched on it last night, but it was late. You may have been tired. Praise God. The body of Christ is your soul when it’s expressing the mind of Christ. I remind you that there is a celestial body, and there is a terrestrial body. Every time you read the word body in the Scripture, you have to ask the Lord which body He’s talking about. Is he talking about this physical body, or is He talking about your soul? This physical body is the container of your soul. The soul is the container of the spirit. So, when Paul speaks about the body, and the context of the verse indicates he’s speaking about the soul, we find that this soul is either the body of life or the body of death, depending on which mind is being revealed through it.

 

You only have one soul, brethren. When the carnal mind is expressing himself through your soul, which is your personality, you are revealing the body of death, also known as the carnal mind. When the mind of Christ expresses himself through that same one soul that you have, that soul becomes the body of life or the body of the mind, the body which is possessed by the mind called Christ. So Paul is saying, because of the existence of the body of Christ in your soul, you can count your carnal mind dead. You don’t have to obey him, as the law requires you obey your husband, anymore. We’ve received special dispensation from the Father.

 

Now, please note that it’s the body of Christ that gives you this permission to disobey the carnal mind. If you have received the Holy Spirit, you can hear this word, and you can try to disobey your carnal mind. You see, the carnal mind would read this and say, God is a respecter of persons. He’s only giving His gift to people in whom Christ is being formed. No, the reason Paul is saying this is that, because if all you have received so far in your spiritual growth is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not strong enough to wage this warfare. The Holy Spirit is not the warrior. The Holy Spirit comes with gifts and blessings and healings, but His ultimate goal is to penetrate your heart and join with your human spirit and bring forth the warrior, which when that warrior is being revealed through your mind, becomes the body of Christ to you.

 

Now, there is also a corporate body of Christ. When your soul is revealing the mind of Christ, and my soul is revealing the mind of Christ, and everybody whose soul is revealing the mind of Christ, we are the corporate body of Christ.

 

But the body of Christ exists in your own mind. Paul said many are sick and die because they cannot discern the body of Christ. That means that, in their own mind, they can’t hear from God. They can’t recognize that there’s one voice in which there is life and another voice in which there is death, and they’re still obeying the death of their carnal mind. That’s what Paul meant. They’re sick and they’re dying, because they’re still in subjection to their husband, the carnal mind, even though the body of Christ is functioning in them. Why? Because, probably, they never heard this message, and they don’t understand. That’s what Paul meant. He didn’t mean they’re sick and dying because they don’t eat crackers and grape juice. He didn’t mean that.

 

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law of your husband, because the body of Christ is in your mind. And the reason God has permitted you to become dead to that law is that ye should be married to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead. If the body of Christ is appearing in you, if Christ is being formed in you, it is the resurrection of the dead Christ in you.

 

Let me remind you of what I told you yesterday, that the mind of Christ, which was in the creation at the beginning of time, died. And when He died, his name changed. In the dead condition, the mind of Christ is called human spirit. There is a skeleton, a spiritual skeleton. We read about it in the book of Ezekiel. It’s called Ezekiel’s bones or the valley of dead bones, and this is this great mystery, brethren, but each one of us, inside of our physical body and our soul, has one of those bones of the skeleton of the glorious Christ that lived and expressed itself through the living soul at the beginning of time. And God is raising His Son, Christ, from the dead, one bone at a time, an individual at a time. So, if Christ is being formed in you, He’s in the process of being raised from the dead in you.

 

So God is giving us permission to rebel against our husband, to count ourselves dead to the law of that marriage. When the body of Christ appears in our mind for the specific purpose that we should be married to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, which is Christ, for the purpose -- for the further purpose that we should bring forth fruit unto God, and that fruit is speaking about the fullness of the life of Christ in our mind. When Christ begins to be formed in you, He’s not fully raised from the dead. This resurrection from the dead is a process. You will know that He has been fully raised from the dead when the Lord witnesses to you that you have fully overpowered your car- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

 

I don’t know, but I do know this, that this battle that I’m fighting, this warfare that I’m engaged in, I have enough temporary defeat for God to be consistently reminding me that I have not yet attained to full stature. Full stature is sinlessness. OK, I don’t know anybody that’s attained to it yet. We’ve got to take such an authority over our carnal mind that she becomes incapable of influencing us to sin in our mind. We will still hear the thoughts, but she will become powerless to influence us consistently, with no exception. If there’s one exception, you’re not in full stature. Don’t be deceived. There’s no glory to God, or there’s no help for yourself in deceiving yourself in this area.

 

OK. So, you see, we’re finding out that God has purposes in what He’s doing in the church today that transcend our immediate needs. God’s purposes transcend our needs for a place to live, for food to eat, for clothing to wear. He will provide these things, because He knows we have need of them, but His purposes in our life way transcend our individual needs.

 

He is concerned with the resurrection from the dead of this whole creation and the reformation of this planet back into Eden. Right now it’s hell. You can also call it the Land of Nod. He wants to reconver- -- -- He wan- -- He’s converting our mind, He’s converting our flesh, and He’s converting this world system. That is His long-range plan. When you have an army, and you send them in, your long-range plan is to defeat your enemy, but of course, you feed and clothe and meet the needs of your soldiers.

 

Now, brethren, we have to know this: that the be-all, end-all of God’s program is not to put us in a nice house with nice clothes and a good job and a car. His program is way beyond that, and He’s challenging us in this hour to start looking outside of ourselves. Now it’s understandable that you’re concerned about your own needs and the needs of your family. That’s understandable. But ask God to help you to start looking outside of yourself, to give you an assignment. Who would He have you minister to? What would He have you to do? What is your contribution to this great plan of the resurrection of this dead creation?

 

Because as you start to look outside of yourself, spiritually, you will grow. Spiritual growth occurs in a very similar manner to physical growth. If you want -- well, not necessarily physical growth in height, but if you want to become stronger, you may get some barbells and start exercising, lifting weights. You have to strain yourself. One day you could do five sit-ups. The next day, you can do 10 sit-ups. Well, spiritually, we must strain ourselves, and to abide in a condition of full stature is the -- is a condition of mind which is the exact opposite of a mind that looks inward towards self-preservation.

 

So I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m in no way telling you to not be concerned about your needs, your human needs, and the needs of your family. But ask God to help you to start looking towards others, what He wants you to do, who He wants you to minister to, where He wants you to go. And as you start expanding your horizons in this area, you will find the Lord really moving mightily to meet your personal needs, because all of this is an activity that is lending towards resurrection.

 

You see, the resurrection is not a rapture. We all gave up this physical rapture -- we know that’s not true -- but many of us think that the resurrection is a spiritual rapture, that we’ll wake up one day, and we’ll be in full stature. But it’s not true. It’s a growth experience. It’s a maturation. It’s an overcoming. So, if you can hear this word, ask God to begin to expand your horizons, because as you expand your horizons, Christ is increasing in you. As you turn away from yourself, your carnal mind is shrinking.

 

OK, let’s go on. Verse 5, Paul’s speaking. “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law of sin and death” -- remember, you have to ask the Lord which law He’s talking about. Now, in verse 4, He was speaking about the law of the husband, but in verse 5, He’s speaking about the law of sin and death.

 

For when we were in the flesh -- when the soul was ruling our life -- the motions or the influence of sins, the passions, the influences of sins, which were by the law -- what that really means is the influences of sin which were revealed by the law. If the law didn’t say unto you, thou shalt not, you wouldn’t even be aware of the influence of sin. If you were completely yielded over without any punishment, without any negative reaction, if you just sinned every time your -- the desire rose up in you, and there was no hindrance to it, there was no repercussion, there was no ungodly reaction to it, you would never know it was sin. But when the law came and said, thou shalt not, and you tried to not do it, it was revealed to you that there’s a law in your soul that’s trying to influence you to do it. This is the function of the commandment, to make us know that there is a law of sin and death in the soul, which is working opposite to the law of God. It’s in opposition -- the commandment is in opposition to the spiritual law of sin and death.

 

Let me tell you this now. Christ is another law, which has the strength to wage war against the law of sin and death. The commandment reveals the operation of the law of sin and death, and then Christ comes in and wages war with the full intention of killing it. Before sin can be rooted out of us, brethren, it must be exposed. The commandment exposes the sin. Christ or the law of Christ or the law of life has the authority to kill that law of sin and death. The commandment does not have the authority to kill it, nor does the commandment have the authority to regulate it. The commandment merely exposes it.

 

We’re still at verse 5. For when we were in the flesh -- meaning, when we were completely ruled by our carnal mind, because Christ was not in our heart -- the motions or the influence of sins, which were revealed by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death -- our members being our human spirit, which is connected to the carnal mind and Satan. We are the harlot of Revelation, brethren. Our human spirit is the harlot of Revelation. She is engaged in an ongoing spiritual-sexual union with the carnal mind and with Satan, and she cannot say no. We’re told the wages of sin is death. She doesn’t even want to do it. She’s in bondage. You could it a white slave ring, if you want. It’s typif- -- our condition is typified by Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, who was taken captive and brought to the tent -- oh, I think it was [?Sheesha?]. I might -- may have the name wrong.

 

This is the -- this account in the Scripture of Dinah is the condition of fallen men. We are captives. Now we may not know it, if you’re living in a nice place like this and you have many comforts, but spiritually speaking, as far as God is concerned, we have been taken captive into the tent of the carnal mind. And we’re held here against our will, and the act of harlotry is that he -- who he? The carnal mind has the use of our bodies and the use of our minds, and we do not have the strength to resist. This is our spiritual condition.

 

So, fornicating or committing adultery with Satan, we have brought forth the fruit of the carnal mind, and of course, our original union with Satan took place back in the garden, when he joined with Eve, when he joined with the woman. The Scripture says the woman. Excuse me. So -- but when we were completely dominated by the carnal mind, the influence of sins, which were exposed by the law, by the written law, did work in our members to bring forth the fruit of the carnal mind, which is death, which has killed us and which con- -- causes us to continue to abide in this realm of death.

 

Verse 6, But now that we are delivered from the law of our husband, that being -- our husband being dead because Christ has given us permission, when the Body of Christ is present, to count him dead for the purpose of serving in the newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Let me go over that with you again.

 

“But now we are delivered from the law of our husband.” Now the law of -- remember, our husband has us in an involuntary bondage, whereby he has the use of our minds and our bodies against our will and against the will of the Lord. “That being dead, wherein we were held” -- just give me a second; I think I had another translation on that for you, if you’ll excuse me a minute. No, I guess I don’t.

 

“But now we are delivered from the law of husband.” He -- our husband, the carnal mind -- “being counted as dead from the moment that Christ is conceived in you.” That husband, which held us against our will, wherein we were held -- that’s what that means -- we’re now delivered from the law of husband who held us against our will, because we can count him dead now that Christ is being formed in us. And all this is being done for the purpose that we should serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

 

And that Greek word translated, oldness, it means antiquity -- or antiquated, not antiquity, antiquated. And what this phrase is saying is now that Christ is being imparted to us, we have a better covenant than the Hebrew children had. They had the letter of the law, which was able to impart many blessings to them, but we have more than they had. So let us not operate in the antiquated law, which was just able to keep us going. You know, the Hebrew children, they would sacrifice animals and it made them holy before God, but they were still fallen men. We have imparted to us an ability in Christ, which is being formed in you, to not be fallen men who are forgiven and purified by the blood of bulls and goats, but we have been -- there has been delivered unto us, in the form of Christ Jesus, an ability to have our spirit renewed. What spirit? Our human spirit, which is now forcibly -- she has been captured and she has been seduced, and she has been forcibly joined to Satan and the carnal mind against her will. The renewal of your spirit is in her deliverance, or her being free from the carnal mind in Satan, and being joined to Christ and the spirit of Christ, which is the Father. She’s now -- our human spirit is now joined to Satan and the carnal mind, the warfare of Christ that we know as Armageddon, as he attacks our carnal mind is breaking down that unholy union separating the three elements.

 

Peter calls it the melting of the elements, because Christ is fire, and when He attacks the carnal mind it’s the -- even the casting into the lake of Fire, and those three elements are separating the carnal mind’s breaking away, Satan’s breaking away, and when Eve is freed, she’s entering into a union with the Father in Christ. And this is the renewing of our spirit. It’s -- you have to ask the Lord, which spirit? It’s talking -- Paul is talking about the renewing of our human spirit.

 

Whenever you come across a word in the Scripture that could have several meanings you must ask the Lord to modify that word for you. If it’s not clear which spirit He’s talking about, if it’s not clear which body He’s talking about, ask, He will tell you. Either He will tell you directly, or He will send someone to tell you. This Scripture, this whole Bible from cover to cover is a parable. Paul clearly stated even the account of the history, which is a realistic history, of the Hebrew nation is a parable that we might understand deep spiritual things. It’s a great mystery. Let us go deeper, if the Lord permit, let us go all the way onto perfection. Let us understand this thing. God has much to tell us. Jesus said, but you can’t bear it now.

 

Why couldn’t the people that were following Jesus bear it? What did He mean when He said you couldn’t bear it? You know what He meant? You’d never understand what I’m talking about, because you can’t understand Me until the eyes of your understanding are open. And the eyes of your understanding cannot be opened until they’re imparted to you. Christ is your understanding, brethren. Christ is your understanding.

 

When Jesus appeared in the days of His flesh the spirit of adoption had not yet been poured out. The anointing that He gave to His disciples -- the Scripture says He gave them authority to heal the sick and cast out demons, this was the anointing that is in -- I hate to say the carnal church. I don’t know what else to call them. I don’t mean to insult them in any way. But the unconverted church, they have the same anointing that Jesus’ disciples had, to heal the sick and to cast out demons. But the Holy Spirit in and of itself, is not the indwelling Christ, it’s a different anointing. For you to understand this doctrine you need Christ.

 

And as I told you last night, I want to say it again, I don’t want anyone leaving here discouraged. If you’re not following me, if there are things that you don’t understand, if there’s confusion, don’t let it distress you. The most important result of your attending these meetings is that the seed of God should fall on your heart that you should be fertilized, that Christ should start to be raised from the dead in you, that the understanding should start to come forth in you so that Christ can open the eyes of that understanding. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand now. Submit yourself to a message like this and you’re submitting yourself to an anointing that, Lord willing, will cause your human spirit to start to be raised from the dead. It will quicken your human spirit, that’s the most important thing. This is not an intellectual exercise, I’m not here to tickle your ears; I’m here to raise Christ from the dead in you, that’s what my mission to you is. That’s what the Father has sent me to do. It’s the most important thing. And when Christ begins to rise from the dead in you, you will understand, and you will be able to bear the truth and all of the understanding and revelation that Jesus wants to give you. But you must be prepared, by the impartation of His heart, to understand or to bear, what He has to say to you, and that’s the most important thing that can happen to you at this meeting.

 

OK. So we were talking about the phrase in verse 6 that we should serve in the newness of the spirit, we should serve in a renewed human spirit, which is now joined to Christ, and not in the oldness of the letter. The oldness of the letter implying an understanding that is available to the carnally minded man. The oldness of the letter, the understanding, which is a measure of understanding. The carnal man can read this Bible and can be blessed by this Bible. There’s wisdom in this Bible. There’s help for your life in this Bible. There’s deliverance and healing in this Bible, when you are a carnal man. But there’s also more that’s available only when you’re a spiritual man. And Paul is saying now that it’s available to you to be a spiritual man, let’s go on. Let’s go on to perfection. Let’s go on, brethren. Let’s not stick here, the trumpet is sounding, the cloud is moving, the pillar of fire is up, let’s move. Everyone that doesn’t go shall be left behind.

 

Verse 7, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I have not known sin, but for the law.” So we see this whole first sentence modifying that first word, law. Because, to be honest with you, when I read, is the law sin, I didn’t know what law Paul was talking about. But he goes on to say, “No, I wouldn’t have known what sin was but for the law.” And I suggest to you he’s speaking about the written law that was delivered to the Hebrew’s. And then he goes on to say, “For I had not known lust except that the written law said, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’”

 

Now, verses 8-11, I want to suggest to you is a parable. Now, you may or may not have noticed -- I hope that you’ll notice after I tell you this -- that Paul is a very prophetic writer, and if you read through his books -- I just pray that God will show it to you after I leave you -- he will speak a few verses speaking about carnal things and then he’ll switch into spiritual things, and then lots of times he switches back to carnal things. And the way I’ve been teaching it in New York I -- sometimes I like to use computer language, you know, he goes from the carnal mode into the spiritual mode. Do you know that word, mode? M-O-D-E? He just switches back and forth from the carnal mode, to the spiritual mode, to the carnal mode, and there’s no warning whatsoever about whether he’s speaking about carnal things or spiritual things.

 

Now, the first verses of chapter 7 has been very clear to us that he’s speaking to the carnal man, he’s speaking about spiritual things but he’s speaking -- I shouldn’t even say carnal man -- he’s speaking to us in a condition of reality, he’s not in a parable, he wasn’t in a parable. He did use an example of human marriage, but he was directing himself to our human condition whereby we are engaging in this warfare called Armageddon. He was directing himself to a real experience that human beings, which are Christians or which are believers, are experiencing. So I am saying he was directing himself in a realistic way, not in a parabolic way, even though he did give us the example of the married wife. But as we go on, I want to suggest to you that in these next few verses Paul is speaking prophetically not for himself, but he is speaking as the man in the garden who experienced the fall.

 

Now, I told you earlier that for all intents and purposes, spiritually speaking, we are Adam, the one who fell in the garden, just as your children are you. It’s just that we’ve forgotten, because of our fallen condition and because we’re in these bodies that only last for a short period of time, but spiritually speaking we are the same living soul that existed at the beginning of time. That’s how Jesus could say to the Pharisees, I know that you are the children of the one who killed the prophets because you’re doing the same thing. We are the children of the one who let his carnal mind overtake him. And are we not overtaken by our carnal mind? We are the offspring of the one who was overtaken by his carnal mind. And these next few verses Paul if speaking prophetically of his experience in the garden. So I pray that God helps you to follow me with this.

 

This is an account of what happened. We’re starting with verse 8. “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought me all manner of concupiscence,” or all manner of desire. “For without the law sin was dead.” Paul is speaking about his condition -- or it wasn’t even Paul anymore, let’s say -- well, OK. I don’t want to get too confusing. Paul was speaking about what happened at the time of the fall when he said sin took occasion, or took the opportunity, of the commandment to work lust in him.

 

Now, what is he speaking about? I mentioned it earlier. He’s speaking about the time when God said to the man I’m going to withdraw my restraining hand because you should be mature enough to be able to deal with your lower nature. Now, you have two sides to your Adam, your spirit and your soul, and the reason I made you this way is because I’ve decided to reveal Myself through a visible creation. The clay contrast -- the clay which is visible is revealing My invisibility by covering Me over. And the moral impurity, which is your lower nature, is revealing My righteousness by contrast. So He’s there, it’s there, but you’re not to partake of it. You’re not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it’s just there. He’s supposed to be under your control. So God withdrew His restraining hand to test the creation. He said Adam I’ve given you a handicap, it’s not 50/50, sin is under your feet, I put him under your feet; righteousness is dominant. Now, don’t listen to the whisper of the serpent. And Paul tells us, but sin, meaning the serpent or the lower nature, taking the opportunity of God’s commandment to Adam, which said now that I’ve withdrawn My hand, don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or you shall surely become mortal. You shall die to your immortality.

 

Satan took the opportunity of God testing the man to do the greatest, strongest effort he could put forth to bring forth lust in the man so as to tempt him to yield to his lower nature. Sin seizing the opportunity of God’s testing the man by giving him the commandment, went forth and did everything he could to influence that man to yield to his lower nature.

 

I’m going to go very slowly and I’m going to repeat myself a lot. “But sin,” that’s the soulish nature, “taking the opportunity of God’s testing the man by giving him this commandment, worked in me all manna of lust. For without the law sin was dead.” Or that word without -- the Greek word translated without, it really means apart from. In my King James Bible, in the margin, it does say apart from. Or apart from the law sin was dead. Now, that’s not a good translation. Let me give that to you. OK. Apart from the law the creation becomes dead.

 

The law was Christ in the man. Remember, God withdrew His hand. He said there’s two sides to you, Christ which is righteousness and the moral impurity in the earth. That Christ was a law -- let me review because a lot of people came in late. A law is a regulatory force, a law has the ability to restrain. That mind of Christ, in the creation, had the ability to restrain the lower nature. God did not test His creation -- OK I’ll wait a minute. Praise God. God did not test His creation hoping it would fall. God gave man everything he needed to take the victory. And in Christ, in that spiritual mind, in that righteous mind, was the ability to overcome and keep that fallen -- not fallen -- but that lower nature under authority, and therefore Paul calls it a law. Christ in the man was a law, and when the lower nature separated from that law, which was the mind of Christ, it resulted in death.

 

Now, when I look this phrase up in the interlinear -- well, let me tell you this first. I have found -- I’ve been studying in prophecy for years, in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation, and it has certain overriding characteristics. See, prophecy is a mystery, it’s not for everybody. It’s not for everybody at every time. It’s only for those whose eyes and ears God opens. And it’s very common when it’s a deep spiritual truth, either in the Hebrew or the Greek, God will put in just a few words that if you don’t have this revelation in your heart you would never know what God is saying. We found this specifically in Revelation chapter 14, which was a very deep revelation, and in Daniel 8 at the end of the verse. If I didn’t have this revelation in my heart, if God hadn’t brought it forth already, I would look at those few skeletal words and I would say, what in the world is this Scripture talking about? And I see -- I saw the same principal in the Greek here. There’s no verb in the Greek. Let me give it to you more clearly.

 

At the end of verse 8, “For without the law sin was dead,” it says in the King James, sin was dead. There’s no verb. There’s no verb to be. The interlinear says sin is dead. The King James says sin was dead, but there’s no verb there. All it says is sin, dead. And the world isn’t even dead. I don’t have all my reference books with me here in Nigeria, so I really couldn’t look for that form of the word -- I didn’t have the books to do it. But it’s not -- if you look up in your Strong’s concordance, the word which means to die, OK, it’s not that. It’s not the form I saw in the interlinear. Neither is it in the form which says dead or death, so it’s some other form. And what I’m suggesting to you is that Paul, in parable form, in a mysterious way, is giving you the truth that when the lower nature separated in his mind from the authority of the spiritual man it resulted in the death of the creation. It’s a great mystery. Prophecy -- the deeper the revelation, the harder it is to get it out of the way it’s written.

 

And the King James translators -- I think I mentioned this to you before -- they were scholars, they were not prophets. And they looked at these few skeletal words and they just made whatever sense out of it they could. But when we get down to this kind of revelation, the form of the word is very important.

 

And let me also tell you that the Greek word translated, dead, here, it’s one of three Greek words that can be translated death. Let me briefly go over them with you. This is the Greek word nekros, nekros. I believe that’s the form of the verb nekroste [SP], to die, dead, dead, corpse. Then there is the word, thanatos, which means the death which occurs when the soul separates from the body, and it implies a continued existence after death. This is where the church world gets the concept of the existence going on after the death of this body. But what the word is really implying, the existence, which is this existence, which continued after the creation separated from God. After the creation separated from God and we died, we fell down into this existence, this is hell and we’re dead, because when your mind is carnal you’re dead, Paul said it.

 

The Scriptural definition of death is to be carnally minded, but the church world reads this book and says well, we can’t be dead because we’re walking around, and talking, and having babies, so we can’t possibly be dead. They don’t understand we’re spiritually dead, but we have not ceased to exist, but we’re spiritually dead. So they draw the conclusion, the mistaken conclusion, that the import of this word thanatos, which implies existence after death, is an existence that continues after the death of this body, but it’s not true. This is the existence that continued after the death of our spirit in separation from God. Is everybody OK? OK.

 

So I was telling you about the three Greek words that mean death. So that’s thanatos. Then the third Greek word that means death is apotnesko. I may not be pronouncing that right, but I think it’s apotnesko, that’s the general sound to it. And this word means a violent death. It means to die violently, or to die unconverted. And this is the word used to describe the death of the Christ mind in the early creation. He died a violent death, the carnal mind killed Him violently and viciously. And if you would like to get some kind of a feel for the violence with which the carnal mind killed the immature Christ, you might want to read Daniel chapter 8, which is a parable of this account. And when you read about the viciousness with which the goat attacked the ram that was the viciousness with which the carnal mind attacked the immature Christ, and killed it without mercy. And this death is described by the Greek word apotnesko.

 

So in the verse that we’re involved in here, in Roman’s 7, verse 8, the last phrase, “For without the law sin dead.” That’s what the Greek says, “For without the law,” or for apart from the law, “sin, dead.” And I suggest to you the intent of the Spirit of God is to say, for apart from the law which is Christ, apart from Christ, the lower nature or the soulish nature, which is sin, results in death.

 

Let’s take the whole verse. Verse 8, Paul saying, but speaking prophetically about what happened to the man at the beginning of time, but sin -- but the soulish nature of the creation taking advantage of God’s testing of the man by speaking the commandment thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, took that opportunity to work in me every manner of lust. Knowing that a part, or a separation, from Christ the soul, led to death. The existence on the soulish realm without Christ is death. And what he’s saying is that the lower nature of man knew it and didn’t care. He knew it. The lower nature took advantage of God’s testing of the creation, did everything he could to make him fall and succeeded, even though she knew that existence apart from the law which is in Christ -- what law? The law which regulated the moral impurity, which is in the soul realm, leads to death. Separation from that regulation of the moral impurity leads to death.

 

Verse 9, speaking prophetically, “For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” Now that’s a mysterious thing to say. I was alive without the law once? What is Paul talking about? Well, let me tell you what I think he’s talking about. Now, the law, we said, is Christ. I thought Christ was life, and carnality was death. So how could the creation be alive without Christ? Back at the beginning, brethren, we’re told that God formed the man out of the dust of the earth, and He breathed the breath of life into the man. When God breathed the breath of life into the man, that life touched every atom of the clay infusing it with life. It would be as if I had the power to touch this table and impart life to every atom of this table. And the man became alive, because the breath of God’s life touched every atom of his being, and he was enlivened, he was invigorated.

 

We’re told in Romans, I believe it’s 8:11, I may have the verse wrong. I may have the reference wrong, but I believe it’s Romans 8:11. “If that spirit which raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, it will quicken your mortal body.” Now, your mortal body is your soul. If the spirit in you was life, it will quicken -- different Greek word -- quicken, give life to, not raise from the dead but impart life to your soul. The breath of the Father gave life to the clay. His life, His breath, was not in the form of Christ at this time. This is at the very beginning. He invigorated, He enlivened, He quickened; He gave life to the clay.

 

The next thing that He did, or we’re told later on, that the Father took one of Adam’s ribs and out of it He made a woman. Well I want to suggest to you that Adam was not a man like we are men. The bodies that we live in are fallen. We are a fallen creation. At the beginning of time we did not look -- I mean, the creation did not look like this. So when you look up that word, rib, in the Hebrew, you’ll see that the word means -- as well as rib, it can mean one side. So if God took one of Adam’s sides, what in the world is he talking about? What were the two sides that Adam had? He was spirit and he was clay. What God did was He took this creation that was clay, which had the breath of life completely mixed in it, just as if He would take dust and water and mix it completely and get clay, the breath of life was completely distributed throughout the creation. No separation between the clay and the spirit. God separated them. He pulled all the spirit to one place, and all the clay to the other place, but the clay remained enlivened. The clay remained enlivened. He polarized the creation. He put the spirit over here, and He put the soul over here.

 

Now, the Scripture says He formed the woman and brought her unto the man. But in the Hebrew, that word unto, can easily be translated, into. God took everything that was spirit, the side of the man that was spirit, and He formed it into the man’s reproductive parts and put it -- brought it not unto the man, but put it back into the man.

 

It’s God intention to reproduce Himself. God is spirit. He will join to that aspect of the man which is spirit to bring forth a mind in the creation, which is the spirit of God being expressed through a man. So at the beginning of time the man was alive without the presence of a law. The soul was invigorated before Christ was formed in him, and that’s what Paul is prophetically saying. Does anybody want me to repeat this? OK. Paul speaking prophetically, Adam was alive apart from the law at one time. I did have some notes in here. Let’s see what I did here. OK. OK. I told you all that. OK, I guess I told it to you already.

 

OK, so Adam was alive without the law, which is Christ, at one time. Once means at one time, "but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Now here we see another s- -- another literary principle. I see it in the Scripture a lot. We came across it in another area, where God has skipped over an event. He skipped over an event. Let me point it out to you. That's a good idea. We'll do it like that.

 

"For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived." Now if you were following me with what I just told you, the commandment means the test. Before the test, Christ had to be formed. This verse does not speak about the formation of Christ. Do you see? This is a parable. In Verse 9, Paul tells us that he was alive without the law once. I just explained to you how the soul was enlivened and then how the Christ was formed in him, but he doesn't tell you that here. He goes on to say -- or to describe the next event as the testing. When the testing came, sin revived, and I died.

 

So what is he talking about, sin revived? I looked that word up in the Greek. It means came alive again. Well, that word would imply that at one time sin was alive, and he died. And I want to suggest to you that sin was alive at the beginning of time when God first put this creation together, just before God put the creation in the garden. The Scripture says He put the man in the garden. He stood him upright, means He gave him dominion, OK.

 

Before that time, even before the joining, before the quickening of the clay, sin -- it's the moral impurity in the clay. It existed even before the breath of life was breathed into the clay. When God breathed the breath of life in and then when he stood the man upright in the garden, this was all the regulation of God's spirit suppressing the moral impurity.

 

Sin was alive before he came in contact. He was alive, living in the clay just like earthworms live in the ground. If you take a stick and turn over the ground, you'll see all the insect life in the ground. Sin was there, but when the breath of life was added to them and then when Christ was formed in him, he died. He came under authority. He died. He was completely controlled by the spirit of God. For all intents and purpose, he was dead, but when the Father withdrew His authority to test the man and replaced His au- -- the Father's authority with the commandment, thou shalt not. Let's see what you're going to do, Adam. Are you going to keep this moral impurity under your feet or not? Sin took the A- -- that opportunity of Adam's testing to work the deepest lust he could, to tempt the man, and sin came alive again. God let sin come alive for the purpose of the test.

 

"For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived." Sin revived so that the man could be tested, and then Paul says, "I died." Now listen to this. The man was alive because his mind was Christ and sin was dead, but when sin came alive, the man who was alive died because he was seduced by the sin. Do you see the flip? The man was alive. Sin was dead under his feet. When God tested the creation, sin came alive. The man failed to ward off the seduction, and he died. And now, in our fallen condition, we see a sin which is alive and a man which is dead. That's us; that's our condition. Can you see that? OK.

 

I do want to go over one issue with you that may be confusing you if you thought of it. I just said the man was seduced, and we know the Scripture says that the woman was deceived, so I'd like to go over that with you. We touched on this a little bit over the last two nights, changing spiritual sexual roles. The one who is in authority, for spiritual purposes, is male. The one who is in subjection is female. The creation, at the beginning of time, was the man, was male to his lower nature. He was an authority to his lower nature. His lower nature was in subjection to him.

 

When sin came alive and tempted the man, in the split second that the man yielded to that temptation, he disobeyed God, and he yielded up his authority. You see, when he dis- -- he had a choice, to either obey God or obey the suggestion of the serpent. When he chose to yield to the suggestion of the serpent, he -- I can't think of the word I want to use. He lost the authority over the creation, and the serpent came to a position of authority. Can you hear what I'm saying?

 

If you're having a conflict with somebody and you're right on top of that debate, if you're negotiating a price even, whatever, your dominant in the debate, and then your partner or whoever this other man is, he just says something where he just defeats you, and you yield. You give it up. He has become the dominant one in this interaction, and you have become the one in subjection. This is what happened to the man. God had given him a dominant position, but when he chose to disobey God and respond to the whisper of the serpent, he yielded up the authority God had given him, and the serpent rose up to a position of dominance, and the man was subjected to the serpent, making the man the woman in relationship to the serpent, spirit -- changing spiritual sexual roles. The serpent who was under the domination of the man, rose to a position of dominance. The man who had the dominance came down to a position of subjection, and the Scripture says, "And the serpent said to the woman."

 

So what am I saying to you? I'm saying there was no Adam and Eve like there's a mister and misses here. There was one man. He had spiritual reproductive parts. We went into this last night. Just like many plants can bring forth an offspring from within themselves, he had a spiritual reproductive part, and God said to the man, guard your spiritual reproductive parts. The spiritual reproductive part is in the mind. Paul said, "Gird up the loins of your mind." Your mind is capable of giving birth to thoughts. If they're ungodly thoughts, they can be demons. If they're the thoughts of Christ, they can be the food of the spirit.

 

There was just one man. He had his reproductive part within him, waiting for the Father to join with him and bring forth a mature manifestation of Christ that would weave Himself together with the lower nature so completely that that lower nature could never rise to a position of dominance over the man. And the Lord said to the man, guard or keep the garden, the garden being his reproductive spiritual parts, and that Hebrew word that's translated keep means guard. Militarily guard your reproductive parts. Don't let the serpent seduce you because if you join with the serpent in your mind, there will be a birth. I will perceive it as spiritual adultery, and you will give birth to an illegitimate child, the carnal mind, and you shall die. That's what God said to the man. There was no male and female separate beings.

 

So when the serpent or the lower nature received the freedom to tempt the man. Why? Because God withdrew His restraining hand and replace it with the commandment and said, son, let's see what you could do by yourself. The serpent came alive. He tempted the man. The man received the temptation. He was seduced in his mind. He said, what do I need God for? I can be God? The serpent rose to a position of dominance, became the spiritual male. The man was put down underneath the serpent, subjected to him, became the spiritual female, "And the serpent said to the woman."

 

So we're told, in another place in the New Testament, that man was not deceived, but it was the woman who was deceived, OK, so let's deal with that a little bit. It was not Christ. It was not the mind of God which was deceived. The man is the mind of Christ. Your husband, brethren, is the Christ in your mind. Christ wasn't deceived, OK, but it was the passions and the lust of the lower nature which was deceived.

 

When Adam was tempted by the ungodly thought, he ceased to be Christ, and he became the woman. So what God is saying to you is that as you live out of Christ, you are a spiritual man. In the in-between moments that you're seduced by your carnal mind, because it's happening to all of us, in those moments, you are spiritually female. And this warfare will go back and forth until one day the Christ in you shall take complete authority over your carnal mind.

 

So we're in Romans 7. Does anybody want to ask me a question about any -- this is very deep, you know. OK. Would you mind putting it on the message recorder for the people?

 

COMMENT: You said just now that when Adam was -- it -- you said it was not Adam and Eve, that when the serpent tempted Adam, it was not a -- [?there are no?] separate entity. There is one. Am I getting you right? [UNINTELLIGIBLE], but now when God was giving out the judgments, He gave out the judgment first to Eve, then to the serpent, then to Adam. And in one of -- I mean, the punishment that He gave out to Eve was that in -- I mean, out of her soul. She would give up -- she would give birth. Is God talking about physical birth or what, since you say that they are not separate entities?

 

PASTOR VITALE: That's a good question. This creation, at the beginning of time, it was on a high spiritual plane. It was much higher than we are now, and it was in parts. And the type for it is, even though we're fallen, if you've taken any psychology at all, you -- or if you've read any books, you can read this if you want to. It's established in the literature, that the mind of man is in three parts. We have a conscious mind. We have an unconscious mind. We have an id, an ego and a super ego, OK. Well, this creation, which was on this high spiritual level, had three parts to it that can be likened to the id, the ego and the super ego of modern man, and I talk about that on message number 2. I call it "The Seduction of Eve," if you'd like to borrow that message from Sister Margaret.

 

So the creation was on a high spiritual plane, and God dealt with each element of it in a separate way. But this creation was on such a high spiritual plane that as we go deep into these Scriptures, we find out that what happened with this creation that produced the carnal mind was a form of spiritual incest. It was a form of spiritual incest that had the ability to bring forth life from within itself.

 

Now when Jesus talks sometimes, when He tells us His parables, He -- in one of the parables, He says, the sower sowed the seed, but something sprang up from the ground of itself. It sprang up from the ground not from a seed that was sown by the sower. The Father intended to sow His seed on this creation and bring forth the mind of Christ, but the creation, somehow, joined with itself and brought forth a fruit, which is likened to a weed called the carnal mind, from within itself, and God dealt with each element of the creation separately. Did I answer your question at all?

 

He dealt with that part of the creation which was the man. The man was the mind of Christ. The woman was his fertile parts, and the serpent was the lower nature. It would be as if I could go to you or to any man and say, look, I'm going to pronounce a judgment on your lower nature. From now on, I'm giving this man full dominion over you. You're not going to be able to make him sin anymore. And then I went to you, the whole man, and I said, look, now you're in charge of your lower nature. I gave you control over him, OK. Yet you had a reproductive part in you, and I gave a different command to that reproductive part. Does that make any sense to you at all? That's what God did.

 

Now we have to ask God to help us. The creation is not like [?we were now?], but yet we see the type of it in our own mind, which as I said is in three parts, id, ego and super ego. So the man wasn't deceived. It wasn't Christ who was deceived. The Scripture is saying it was the woman who was deceived. It was the reproductive part which was open to a union with the Father. It was that lust within the creation that was made to respond to the advances of the Father that was deceived. And what does that mean to us? God was saying, well, when you have a desire to lie with a woman, you just can't do it every time you want to. You have to wait for your husband, or you have to wait for your wife. But this creation, at the beginning of time, the woman, which was t hat part of the creation which was prepared to join with the Father, didn't have whatever it would take to discipline herself.

 

It's like you, if you have anybody here, if you have a 13 or a 14-year-old daughter, how much freedom do you give her? Do you let her go out with a 25-year-old man and come back five hours later? You put restraints on her. So the reproductive organ in the creation at that time did not have the ability to restrain itself, so God said to the man, who had the mind of Christ, don't yield to those yearnings, but wait for the Father. And when he yielded to those yearnings, he became the woman unto the serpent. You see, the serpent came and stirred up the yearnings, and the man, instead of taking dominion over his passions, yielded to them and became a woman unto the serpent. And when God pronounced the curse, He pronounced a curse on each of the three parts of the creation. OK, did I satisfy you? OK. Yes?

 

COMMENT: So I still don't understand, you know, the separation that you are talking about. Are you saying that there was no physical separation of the man and the woman like we have today when the Lord separated Adam and Eve? Is that what you are saying? I still don't understand.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, I'm saying that the creation, at the beginning of time, OK, was one man with an ability to reproduce, and the scriptural references that I'll give you on this are the giants -- excuse me, the giants that appear in the Book of Genesis. And I want to suggest to you that before the fall, man was very large, and he reproduced by some form of cell division. These bodies that we're in are fallen bodies. The original creation was not in a body like this. He was a creation that appeared male, whatever that means. I don't even know what he looked like, and God built into him an ability to reproduce, and the Lord told me that it was by some form of cell division. And we see the giants appearing in the Book of Genesis, and we're told that Og was the last of the giants and that he was barren, and there's nothing said about any female giants.

 

All of the -- there are several giants mentioned in the Scripture, and I don't think that was in the Book of Genesis. I gave you the wrong book. We don't hear anything about female giants. All the giants were warriors. And why is -- why would the Scripture say that he died and he was barren? He was the last of the giants, not because there was no female giant but because he was barren. So you don't have to agree with me, but y- -- do you at least understand what I'm saying, that there was a superior being that was both male and female? We're told in Genesis 5 that God made them male and female, amen. And we think that it was male and female, but, not, He made one creation that was both male and female, and we see, in this hour, spiritually speaking, now that Christ is being formed in you, you are both male and female. Your male side is the mind of Christ, and your female side is your carnal mind, OK.

 

COMMENT: I agree to what you are saying spiritually, but, physically, you know, I can't seem to comprehend because, in the beginning, when God put Adam to sleep, when the separation took place, the Bible records that, you know, Adam saw the woman and said, this is bone of my bone, and, you know, the woman would be called the woman. And then after they fell, the Bible talks of -- they're -- you know, they're Adam and Eve now reproducing to bring forth, you know, this son that they had. You know, I still feel that, you know, there's still a physical, you know, separation somehow, you know.

 

PASTOR VITALE: You're free to feel that way. That's perfectly all right. You don't have to believe everything that I say. I just pray that whatever the truth is, that it should be imparted to all of us, OK. Don't be distressed. I am giving you so much deep revelation. I'm even surprised that God is telling me to do it, you know. You have to realize that, in New York, we study. We've been bringing -- working for five years to bring this forth, several times a week, and it must be very shocking to you to hear this, so don't be upset, you know. You don't have to believe it. It's very extreme. I do have messages where I go into it in detail, and I give you scriptural references if you desire to study them, but, if not, just forget about it until such time as God makes it real to you. OK? OK. Anybody else? OK.

 

COMMENT: Praise the Lord. Yesterday you said, you know, we are experiencing Hell already in the world. Is it -- can I say, if, you know, we are already experiencing Hell, you know, your ministration now, you know, stands to mean that, you know, if you are -- if God has formed in you, you know, you are already experiencing heaven or something like that.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes. That's not just true of me. That's true of all of you. Did not Jesus say the kingdom of God is within you? The kingdom of God is within you. The way the Lord is translating us into heaven is by putting it inside of us, and that seed that it starts with is going to grow up to be a great tree, and, Lord willing, it's going to fill all the earth of the soul, and every part of you which is Hell is going to be absorbed into heaven, which is coming forth within you. It's not coming out from outside of us. It's coming from inside of us and swallowing up everything that is Hell. Does that satisfy you? No, OK. So we're -- ask me another question so I can say something to you. Where are you distressed?

 

COMMENT:  You know, the [?word, of course?] is heaven and earth [?shall pass away?], but [?My words remain?]. Now, you are saying that, if God is formed in me gradually [?one will, you know?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] get to the full stature, which is, you know, very -- still very rare now,  for an individual [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Or are you now saying that it's when one gets to the full stature that you are experiencing heaven or something [?like that?]? [?I don't know?].

 

PASTOR VITALE: Father, in the name of Jesus, I just pray that You be glorified in this meeting, oh, God, and I pray that You open the eyes of our understanding, that You impart wisdom to me to bless everybody, Father, [?or?] to the fullest extent that they can receive it in this hour. OK.

 

Heaven -- well, which one shall I answer first? "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away." OK, once again, we have to ask the Lord which heaven and earth He's talking about. There are other Scriptures. They're alluding me right now, but there is another Scripture where God says that this earth won't pass away unless My word fail. Unless My word fail, this earth won't pass away, OK.

 

So what I'm suggesting to you is that there are two different heavens and earth. There's the heaven and earth of the soulish realm, and there's a heaven and earth of the kingdom of God, and that's why the Scripture says, and the sun will be covered with sackcloth, and the moon -- and stop it shi- -- and the stars will give up their shining, and the moon will be covered with blood. What that is talking about is the heaven and the earth and the stars of the world as we know it being covered over with the heaven and the earth and the stars that are in Christ. So the heaven and earth of this world system is passing away, OK, but the heaven and earth which is in Christ is not passing away. OK? OK. Let me see what else I can tell you now. Praise God.

 

This attaining to full stature, I perceive that you are feeling that it's unattainable for you. Is that true, that you're frustrated at the thought of it, that it's too difficult for you? That's what I think you're feeling, and I want to tell you that all we have to do is submit ourselves to Christ and try. All He's requiring us to do is that which we can do, and He will carry us the rest of the way. He knows that you are but dust, and He is longing for you like a bridegroom longs for his wife on the wedding night. That's what the Scripture tells us. He loves you with a love that you cannot even imagine, and He does not require of you more than you could do, and He's not here to tease you with something that's unattainable. It's attainable, and you may not be able to comprehend it right now, but it's attainable, and He's going to do the work. He's the one that has to do the work.

 

Now there's an attitude frequently preached in the church world that we have to do it, and this is a terrible burden. How can we do it? How can we see cease from sin? It's impossible. It's putting a burden on the people that they can't bear, and I don't agree with that burden. I'm not preaching anything of the sort. I'm here today to announce to you that the Lord wants you to turn towards Him. He wants you to understand what He's going to be doing in you. He's the power; He's the strength; He's your husband who's rescuing you from a man that has taken you captive, OK. So there's no reason for you to worry that you're not going to be able to do it. He's going to meet you right where you are, and He's going to take you by the hand, and He's going to bring you in, OK.

 

But He wants you to hear this message because He wants you to be in agreement with Him when He comes for you. He doesn't want you to by lying in the house of the carnal mind saying to the Lord, I don't want to go with you. He wants you to be opening the windows getting ready to jump out when He comes to get you. OK, that's what this message is all about. The strength is His; the work is His; the plan is His; the glory is His, amen. So be at peace. Would you come back here? I'd like to pray for you. Would you mind coming up to the front again? Do you feel better?

 

            [INAUDIBLE]

 

OK. Father, in the name of Jesus, oh, God, I just bless this woman, Father. I pray that you put her heart at peace. I wound her carnal mind because fear is resident in the carnal mind. I rebuke fear, and I rebuke every measure of carnality that is opposing this] glorious word, and I pray, Father, that you give her the fullness of Your promise, and if You have not already started, that You start right now. May the seed of Christ enter into her heart, oh, God. May He grow up to be a big tree and [?fill all of her?] earth, Father. And may your glory be revealed in her and all of her [?house?], dear God. Let her see you, Father. Let her understand, and let her be at peace. I pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

 

Anybody else in this area? This is very deep teaching, OK. Time must be very short.

 

COMMENT: Praise the Lord. You mentioned that God is going to work [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [?He knows that you bring us?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE],  but I believe that there's something we have to do on our path as Christians because if we have to go with this [UNINTELLIGIBLE] every possibility that we'll be complacent and relaxed that, OK, since God is going to work it out, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [?to work it out?]. So what are we supposed to do on our path as Christians?

 

PASTOR VITALE: You see, before I start to answer this, sister, I'd just like to try to impart to you this understanding that your carnal mind -- our carnal mind is totally without mercy. His very existence is being threatened, and he will attack every believer wherever he can to turn them away from God's purposes. So we see what you just mentioned, and I know that this belief is widespread throughout the church world, that believers are complacent, thinking that there's nothing they have to do, and this is not true. What you have to do is the warfare that I've been speaking about for three days. You must resist the sin in your mind. Cry out to God confessing that that sin is your lower nature, that you're married to that sin, that it has a strong influence on you, but that you're resisting, asking and confessing it is sin and repenting, and God will bring you through.

 

But then we have a group of believers that Satan is putting fear on, so I have to talk to them differently than I speak to you, so I say it to all of you here and everyone listening to -- who will be listening to this message, if you are a believer who is fearful, fear not, for the Lord your God shall come with a recompense, and He shall surely save you, but for those of you who are in that area, perhaps a little stronger, without fear, I say unto you, don't be deceived by the pride of your mind.

 

So here we have an excellent example of God ministering to the woman, to the serpent and to the man in a different way. Here we have two believers sitting in the same meeting, one woman needing a ministry to help her to overcome her fear which, if He could have succeeded with her, would have taken her away from the warfare completely. I don't believe God allowed it. I believe He heard my prayer, and I don't believe He allowed it, but what the intention of her carnal mind was, to so overwhelm her with fear that she wouldn't even enter into the battle, so she needed one kind of ministry. You needed a different kind of ministry. You need to hear that you cannot be complacent. Two members of the body of Christ, two totally different ministries, OK.

 

So don't believe that lie that's in the church that you will ascend automatically. You will not ascend automatically. You must fight this war, but I have seen various levels of warfare. God knows your nature, and I pray for boldness in this sister, but should it be that she cannot attain much more boldness that she has now, the Lord will meet her right where she is. You see, Jesus is the judge, and He wants us to do all that we could do, so that's why some carnally minded believers look at somebody else and say, now why am I having all these trails and God is going so easy on this one? You see, and this is a line of thinking that we should -- that should be rebuked. We should not pursue it because God goes right into the depths of our heart, and He knows what we're capable of, and if we're really not capable of fighting this warfare on a level that's up here, well, He'll take us from down here, OK. Praise God. Are you OK? Yeah, OK. Anybody else?

 

OK, let's try and finish this up then. So is this amazing, that Paul is giving this prophetic word right in the middle of Romans, Chapter 7. I bet you never knew that before.

 

Verse 10, "And the commandment," thou shalt not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil -- well, let me just review Verse 9 for you. "For I was alive -- Adam was alive without Christ being in him at the beginning of time when God infused the living soul with His life, and then the mind of Christ was formed in him. But when the test came, God let sin revive, and Adam -- I, as Adam, failed to contain my lower nature, my passion, and I died."

 

Verse 9, And we all died in him. In Adam, we all died. If I'm not mistaken, that Greek word, died, is apothnesko, that [AUDIO CUTS OUT]. So what the Scripture is saying is that sin revived, and the creation died a violent death. The word -- the Greek word apothnesko means to die a violent death. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] -- they experienced spiritual death.

 

Verse 10, "And the commandment, the test, which was ordained unto life." Well, what does that mean? How could the commandment be ordained unto life? Let me tell you that if Adam had taken the victory -- God said thou shalt not yield to your lower nature or to the passions of your reproductive parts. If Adam had taken the victory, it would have resulted in the weaving together of the mind of Christ and that lower nature and the passions.

 

Now let me remind you that the lower nature was just lying there. The passion was just lying there, and Christ was just lying on top, but the mind of the creation wasn’t joined yet. It's like someone making a dress. You cut out all the pieces, and you baste it together, but if a strong wind came along, that dress would blow apart. Everything was just lying in its place, and it was God's intention, through this testing, for Adam, by the mind of Christ, to take the victory over his passions, over the moral impurity in the clay, and by taking the victory over it, there would have been a weaving together or a binding together of those three elements of the creation, the mind of Christ, the man; the reproductive parts, the woman; and the lower nature, the serpent. And when that binding together had taken place, the creation would have been incapable of death.

 

So as I mentioned to you yesterday, God built it into the creation that if Adam messed up, the creation was only capable of dying once, and after this, the judgment, which we're all going through now -- the judgment of what? The judgment of our carnal mind, pushing it back down under the Christ in you. That carnal mind must be judged. Go down under the feet of the Christ in you, and, shortly, the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet, in your mind, OK. So the way God's doing it now is through this judgment. We're doing what Adam failed to do at the beginning of time where, by the Christ in us, we take authority over our passions and the moral impurity in our flesh. We're binding the whole three elements of the creation together.

 

I mentioned it -- I believe I mentioned it to this group. I called it the threefold cord that is not easily broken. The formation of Christ, which is just a twofold cord, it's a temporary, immature formation of Christ. It can be broken, but this threefold cord, this manifestation of Christ where He is literally born as a plant out of the earth of our soul, putting down deep roots -- see, as Christ binds together the three elements, the Scripture likens it to putting down deep roots into the soil. The deeper the roots go, the stronger the tree is, and with this procedure, the creation will never die again because the end of this procedure is the death of the carnal mind. Bound up, first he's overpowered, and then he's killed, and the creation will never die again. It was God's intention to let this threefold -- a mind that was a threefold cord exist in the creation at the beginning of time.

 

It wasn't God's intention that we fall, and I know some people preach that, that God planned it that we would fall, and I want to declare to you that this is not true. But God said to the man, look, I've made you. There's three parts to you. I've done all that I could do for you. Now you've got to do something for yourself. I've given you a handicap. I'm putting you in control. Everything's the way it's supposed to be. Just resist that sin and wind this thing up, and Adam failed to do it because he did have that lower nature, and he failed to do it.

 

Brethren, we're down here in this condition because man has sinned. Adam sinned. We're in this fallen condition. We fell down into Hell because our original ancestor sinned. That is a lie that God has done this to us. I don't believe it. It's not true. You see, the pride of man will come up with any false doctrine necessary to justify himself. We're down here in this condition because God did it to us. Every wicked thing that happens to you in your life, God has done it to you because He's testing you. I don't believe it. My Scripture says that -- my Bible says that Satan will tempt you. God will not tempt you. He will test you, but if you fail that test, you have failed it because there is something lacking in you. And God tested the creation, and we, in our ancestor, were found lacking, and now God is fixing the lack.

 

But I exhort you to not pronounce God unrighteous because the one sin that will destroy the spiritual man is pride, and when you pronounce God unrighteous, you have separated yourself from His delivering power. Man, in his attempt to pronounce himself righteous, has pronounced God unrighteous, and this doctrine is in the church. It's not true. God is righteous. He has not sinned against us. We have sinned against Him, and even though we've sinned against Him, He's still saving our life. We are the unrighteous ones.

 

Let God be true, and let every man be a liar, but if you call God unrighteous, you're opposing yourself, and all you could do -- all such an attitude could do is turn you away from God. And I remind you that that is what Job did. He pronounced himself righteous. He said, how could God let these troubles come upon me? I don't deserve it. Now if someone had said to Job, well, you know, do you realize that you're pronouncing God unrighteous by saying this? He might have been shocked, but ignorance is no excuse.

 

We must all know that when we pronounce ourselves righteous, we are, at the same time, pronouncing God unrighteous. If we don't deserve what happened to us, we are pronouncing God unrighteous, and this attitude separates us from God. Brethren, without God, we are dead. We need God, so let us not be lifted up in pride against Him because is the one that has the power to save us. This thinking is the foolishness of man, and it will result in our death.

 

So we're in Verse 10 of Romans 7. "And the commandment, which was the test, which was ordained to life" -- it was intended that Adam would bind up the three elements of the creation and make them one. "I found it to be unto death."

 

Now this is Adam speaking prophetically through Paul. The test was ordained by God to finish off the creation and make it invulnerable against sin, but it didn't work that way. There was a fault found in the creation, and instead of bringing forth life, the creation died. And this Greek word, death, I think it's thanatos, spiritual separation from God.

 

Verse 11, "For sin, taking occasion, or taking the opportunity of God's testing of me [AUDIO CUTS OUT] "For sin," that's the moral impureness in the soul. Taking the opportuni- -- "taking advantage of God's testing of me, deceived me, and by that deception, slew me." 

 

Now let me point out to you here that this is Paul speaking prophetically as Adam. He's not saying that he's Eve, so if you still have questions in your mind about who was deceived, if you had trouble receiving what I told you, that it was Adam who was deceived when he yielded to the passions of his reproductive parts, becoming the woman, just pray about this verse, Paul speaking prophetically as Adam, saying that he was the one deceived.

 

Let me go over that for you. There was a man. When he was in submission to the mind of Christ that was in him, he was the man, but when he yielded to the passions of his reproductive parts, he became, for all intents and purposes, his reproductive parts. You have the mind of Christ, and you have the carnal mind. When you are revealing Christ, when you are thinking with and doing the behavior of Christ, at that moment, brethren, you are Christ.

 

If you are ministering to somebody and it is truly the mind of Christ coming through you, if this is truly the man of sin speaking to you -- for this ministration, every word that I speak to you that is truly out of the mind of Christ, in that instance, I am Christ unto you. That doesn’t mean, when I walk out of here, that I can't speak a carnal thought to you because I'm not in full stature. So at this moment, I'm Christ to you, and when I go home and I make a joke and kid around, I may be -- I'm the woman. I'm the carnal person, and I become the woman, same body, same name, same person, same family, same Sister Sheila, but when I'm ministering out of the mind of Christ, I'm Christ to you, and when I'm doing something silly because I feel like laughing, I'm the woman.

 

There was one creation. When he was obeying God, when he was in agreement with God in his mind, he was the man, and when he chose to yield to the passions of his reproductive parts in response to the moral impurity, which was the third part in the creation, he put all of his being into the woman. He became the woman. When you act like a woman, you're a woman. When you act like a man, you're a man. That's the principle for that encounter, for that action. I'm not talking about your life in this earth. That's the spiritual principle in the Scripture. By yielding to the passions of his reproductive parts, for that moment, he became the woman, but all it took was one moment.

 

Brethren, if you're a young woman, if you're that 14-year-old girl going out with that 25-year-old-man, it just takes one moment. That's all it takes, and you're pregnant, and it's too late to say, oh, I didn't really mean to do it. My father told me not to do that, but I went out anyway. You've still got the baby. No matter what you say, no matter how you justify it, no matter what excuse you make, you've still got a baby and no husband. And Adam, God's wife, has a baby, and it's not the Father's; it's the serpent's. That's what happened, but God, in His greatness and in His glory, has not -- or, well, is taking His wife back. He did divorce her for a season, is taking her back and adopting her offspring. That's us. He's adopting us.

 

Now why would He want to adopt us if we were originally His child? We are the offspring of the serpent, brethren. That's why He's adopting us. Did you ever wonder why He's adopting us? Did you ever wonder why he said, if you're not chastened, you're a bastard? Because when He adopts you, when He receives you as His son, He chastens you because you cannot be His son and have the nature of the serpent. Adam, God's wife, made a mistake and wound up with another man's child, and we can proclaim our innocence. Fallen man can proclaim our innocence all we want, but she had the baby.

 

08/11/14 – Transcribed by VerbalFusion

08/13/14 – 1^st Edit CAS/BP