Part 6 of 7 Parts
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
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Praise the Lord. I've been told that some of you have expressed some distress over a lack of praise and opening and closing prayer. So this is what the Lord has to say to you. He has much to say to you and praising and prayer that does not come out of His Spirit, but out of your need to pray, you always have, but this word you have not always. Unfortunately, we're living in the realm of time. We are limited. I am here all day. The hours that we begin is restricted because of your employment. The hour that we end is restricted because the conditions at night here are not safe plus my host desires his wife to be home at a reasonable hour. So we are limited by carnal commandments and the Lord has asked me to tell you that you should choose and you could have it however you want it. Your praise was beautiful when I came in. I love to hear you sing. This is my very first trip to Nigeria and I am very impressed at how beautiful your music is without any instruments. I have never heard anything like it in the United States. So the Lord says, you think about it and He'll know your thoughts and you could have whatever you choose; one or two songs at the beginning and more of the Word or an hour or more of praise and less of the Word. Praise God. He loves you very much and as long as I've known Him and to the fullest extent that I know Him, I have never seen Him force Himself on anybody. What He does is convince you that He is right. So praise God. Shall we continue with the Word?
Does anybody want to say anything to me about this? Let me say one more word about opening and closing prayer. One thing that the Lord has taught me and shown me over these last few years as He has drawn me closer to Him is that everything that we do, no matter how good it sounds, no matter how good it feels, it either comes out of His life in us or out of our human life. There's nothing wrong with praising God or singing a song or praying out of your human life. There's nothing wrong with it, but once the reality has come, once Christ is being formed in you, the power is in Him. What you could pray for, for weeks and months and years out of your own humanity, if you just turn your life over or turn the service over to Him, when He prays through you, He prays it with power that you cannot even comprehend in one moment. He has brought me to a place where I pray very rarely unless it's Him praying through me. Let me give you an example of my prayers these days. I believe that this is the true prayer without ceasing. All I do is state my observations to Him. I say, Lord, this appears to be a problem for me or I have observed such and such. What would you have me to pray? What is your answer to this problem? That's the extent of my prayer. Sometimes He acts on that. Sometimes He prays through me with great power. Frequently, there's no response to my prayer at that moment, but two weeks or a month later, a prayer will arise in me that will literally shake the area wherever I am praying for.
So this is where I am, if you can hear what I'm saying. But if you have a need to pray with an opening prayer and to close with a closing prayer and to praise for whatever extent of time you would praise, He says you have the choice. One other thing that He has shown me is the Spirit is flowing so strongly through you when Christ matures in you (and I don't know that it's not happening in you now. It may be happening in you now and perhaps you're not aware of it). But I know, in me, and where I am, you too will come. When I say, in me, I don't mean that I'm here and you're there. I mean that I'm here as an example unto you and the provision for you to be where I am is in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Maybe you're there and I don't know it. All I know is that I'm the teacher for today. That's all that I know. So where I am, He has taught me that there is such power in His life in me, that just Him walking through the door in my flesh, has brought more blessings into this house than any prayer that I could pray that He has not put in my mouth. Now if He puts the prayer in my mouth, that's a different story. I found that I have much more energy to study and bring forth the word, now that He's relieved me of (what for me are carnal endeavors) so that His anointing and His power can come forth in the area, in this hour, that He is emphasizing.
It's not that there's anything wrong with singing. I just love music, but you could do that at any time. You could do that on your job, you could do it in the shower, you could do it when you're walking here. This is where I'm at and I believe I've heard from the Lord. I believe this is what He's told me. So I'm going to, in accordance with His instructions; I'm going to leave this largely up to you. I'll be here until June 6th. I expect to be here five days a week up until that time, with one exception. I have just made a commitment to go to one place. It's not this Sunday, but the following Sunday. I'll be here this Sunday and we'll give you the address if you would like to come. So I'm going to be here five days a week for the next three and a half weeks. It's your service. I cannot pray unless Christ in me is praying. When I try to pray when it's not Christ in me praying, it's just a dry dead sound. I will make an exception under these circumstances, if somebody comes to me and they say, Sister Sheila, I have a problem and I really need help. If I do not perceive the anointing on me to pray, I will pray in faith, whatever their problem is; Father, I bless this person and I rebuke the devourer over their life. I'll pray a prayer that I know how to pray, asking God to help them, believing that God will honor my prayer because I have had a specific prayer request and I will never refuse to pray for anybody.
But so far as an opening or a closing prayer or any non specifically requested prayer or a prayer in response to a need that has been called to my attention, aside from that, I don't pray unless He prays through me. He has shown me time and time again that He's there and He's gone before me. His anointing is moving and His presence in me is doing it. Jesus said, when He raised Lazarus from the dead, He said, Father, I'm just praying this prayer so that these people hanging out here can hear you. He said, I know I don't have to pray this prayer. Why did Jesus not have to pray the prayer? Because He also said in another place, I don't do anything of my own. I only do what the Father tells me to do. So if I only do what the Father tells me to do, why do I have to ask Him to do it? See, this is the difference between the carnal Christian and the Christian in whom Christ is being formed. I don't say carnal Christian in any bad way. Maybe someday God will give me a lesser offensive word. I don't mean to offend anybody, carnal Christians are just people in whom Christ is not yet being formed. They don't have this anointing in them, that goes before them, that sanctifies the house before they even get there. So they pray continuously on the level that they're able and God meets them there and blesses it and He honors them. But you see, brethren, when that which is greater comes, that which was there originally, must fade away. When the greater anointing comes, when the reality of Christ in you comes, your carnal mind must stop praying. But when Christ is not in you, God honors your carnal mind because He's a great God. So this is where I am. If there are any questions on this issue, I'll do the best I can to answer you. Are there any questions?
COMMENT: Praise the Lord. I just wanted you to give us some tips when the Christ mind is formed in us. Sometimes it is easier to commit sin, maybe to do something wrong or not to do something wrong. But when He comes to really adjust some activity, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the carnal mind and the mind of Christ. I just wanted you to help us by giving us some practical examples that could help us along the way.
PASTOR VITALE: All that I could tell you, based upon my own experience is that when I try to pray and it's not the anointing, I describe it as dry and without life. When the anointing rises in me, it's with power. The only way that I know of that you could learn to tell the difference is for the Lord to show it to you. Once again, most of what I teach you about spiritual things which are not clearly outlined in the Scripture, I'm teaching you from my own personal experience. Let me give you a testimony. I use to pray a lot in the church I was raised up in, in what we call praying in the Spirit. I don't know what you would call it. But I would pray with emotion. It would be my prayer; it wouldn't be Christ in me, but it would come forth with rhythm like the gift of prophesy. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Then one day, I felt that gift drying up in me and I couldn't pray with that anointing anymore and I was very upset. I thought I was losing my anointing. I was really upset. It got weaker and weaker and weaker. All of my other brethren in the church that had that gift continued to pray in the Spirit and I couldn't do it. My mouth was quiet. So I sought the Lord with very serious concern for several months. Then one day a brother in the church came to me and handed me a magazine that I would normally never read. He said, Sister Sheila, I just feel led to give you this magazine. So I looked at it and said thank you, brother. I took it home and I said, well, if this brother felt led to give it to me, I should at least leaf through it. So as I leafed through it, there was an article on this very experience that I was having. It was explained, to me, in the magazine that the first is taken away so that the second anointing could come and that there's a wilderness period in between where if no one teaches you, you think that you have nothing and that you've lost the first and the second hasn't come yet. If you're not educated about it and I'm educating you right now, it can cause you great anxiety. So the only tip that I could give you is if it feels like you're forcing it in any way, just drop it. My prayers are largely just glory unto God and forgive me my sins and let your mind be my mind and let me be obedient and help me to hear your word. Help me to express your life, show me, teach me, and forgive me. I pray that way all the time. Then when He wants to manifest through me, He just rises up and manifests through me and I have had many glorious experiences in Christ. I'm sorry for not being more specific, but I just don't know what to tell you. Did that help at all?
Any other questions? I will say one more thing. He will lead you. It's a laying down of your own will even in the things of God, even in the direction of the meeting. I'm so used to walking into my meetings in New York usually with some prearranged idea as to what I'm going to preach, but my meetings are very open for the move of the Spirit because I don't come in with a prearranged plan. We do have a musician and if the Lord doesn't intervene, we play some songs and I preach what I believe He taught me to preach. We have testimonies and if He prays through me or through anybody, we have body ministry. He does it. So I have this very casual attitude about me because I've been ministering like this for years. That's where I'm at. So I personally do not want to pray any prayer other than I bless you all and pray that you should not go home empty or ashamed and that if you don't have Christ, by the time I leave here, you should have Christ, and that if you have Him, He should be increased in you. That prayer is prayed without me speaking it. So that's all I have to say to you because that's why I'm here, that Christ should be formed in you and increased in you.
So if there's anybody here who would like to open this meeting with a prayer that would be acceptable to the brethren here in Nigeria, it's no problem for me at all. Would anybody like to open the meeting with prayer? It's alright, really. I hope I haven't offended you. You know, we're different over there on the other side of the world. We do have some different things about us. I was telling somebody recently that I am of the opinion that people are the same wherever you go. Our cultures might be different and we might do little external things differently, but when you get down into the root nature of people, we're all the same. The bottom line is we're all the same. We all get embarrassed. We all get our feelings hurt. We all want power. We all suffer from the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. We're all rebellious in some way. We're all the same. It just shows differently. The culture that you're raised up in teaches you to direct your fallen human attributes so they're directed differently, but we all have the same fallen human attributes. Glory to God. So is there anybody who would like to pray?
Okay, we are going on with the Gospel Of Thomas (the devil). I'm very excited with what God is doing here. In case you haven't noticed it, He's not just disproving this gospel, but He's using it as a jumping off point to minister the deep truth of the Scripture to you in an informal way. He's contrasting it with the error. I think it's an excellent teaching tool. I'm just very excited at what He's doing here. So we shall continue, Lord willing. I would like to review what I was talking about when we ended on Tuesday. That is Chapter 85 of the Gospel of Thomas, beginning with verse 22. Jesus saw children who were being suckled and He said this to His disciples; these children who are being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom. Now we found out that the true scripture doesn't say that everyone who suckles enters into the kingdom, but those who are? Does anybody remember? Those that are "converted" enter into the kingdom, suckled naturally and spiritually.
The fact that you're sitting under this anointing and that you're hearing this deep doctrine, does not assure that you shall enter into the kingdom. This doctrine must do its work in you. It has to convert your heart. Conversion means a total overhaul and for all purposes, a new heart. So before the old can be taken away in you, you must receive the new. Christ must engraft to you. You must receive the Spirit of Adoption in that engrafting and He then begins to be formed in you. When He is strong enough, He will overthrow your carnal mind and you shall be converted. You shall be amongst those who have turned their own world upside down. In the book of Acts, we're told that the common people said these are those who have turned the world upside down. Did you ever wonder what that meant? They turned their own world upside down. Their carnal mind was on top and it was now on the bottom. They were evil and they were now good. So this glorious gospel that's coming to you and the power by which its being preached unto you has an objective and that objective is to overthrow your soul and turn your world upside down.
The scripture which says if you endure to the end, you shall be saved; that Greek word translated endure means to overthrow. Christ has come to overthrow you. He's not come to make you rich. He has not come to give you marriage. Although you may receive these gifts along the way, He has come to overthrow your soul and turn your world upside down, that you might be a full unhindered manifestation of the righteousness of Christ. When you attain to that position, all these other things that you think you want shall be added unto you. Except by the time that happens, you probably won't want them anymore. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, brethren, and His righteousness and everything that you need and things beyond your imagination to ask for, shall be added unto you, because you shall inherit all things when you become righteousness, because every good and precious gift is in righteousness and holiness. Any good thing that you could attain in this world, if you obtain it in unrighteousness, you could lose it at any moment, because sin is what destroys. Sin is what steals from you. So seek for the real thing and then what you obtain, based on the foundation of righteousness, no man can take from you because what God gives to you, no fallen man can take from you.
Jesus answers His disciples with this very mysterious parable. When you make the two one. Then the children said, how can we enter into the kingdom? I remind you, of course, that the word, kingdom, is not modified. If you have drawn the conclusion that Jesus (the devil) is speaking about the Kingdom of God, you are mistaken. Jesus (the devil) is speaking about the Kingdom of Darkness. So your first mistake was assuming that the Gospel of Thomas (the devil) was speaking about Jesus the righteous. But we have found many scriptures in this gospel indicating otherwise. First of all, the word Jesus is not modified. The gospel does not even claim to be speaking about Jesus, the righteous. It doesn't even claim it. It claims to be speaking about Jesus. We're told in another place, by Paul, I believe, that there is "another Jesus." I mentioned to you also, that Jesus is a very common name for a man, especially in the Hispanic societies, but they pronounce it differently. People that aren't familiar with that culture become offended. How could you name your sons Jesus? But you see, the power is in Christ. When you find the word Jesus (alone) in the Scripture, it's talking about the man. The power is in Jesus who is Christ; Christ, the Son of the Living God.
So this Gospel of Thomas, I suggest to you, is speaking every time about Jesus (the devil) and therefore we have absolutely no reason, whatsoever, to even think for a second that the unmodified word, kingdom, is speaking about the Kingdom of God. Why would Jesus (the devil) speak about the Kingdom of God? Jesus, the Christ, speaks about the Kingdom of God and Jesus (the devil) speaks about the Kingdom of Darkness. So this is the riddle. This is how you can enter into the Kingdom of Darkness. First, you have to make the two one and then you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male won't be both male and female, but only female. When you make eyes (plural) in the place of an eye and a hand in the place of a hand and a foot in the place of a foot and an image in the place of an image, then you shall enter into the Kingdom of Darkness. Brethren, each human being is a kingdom. Each individual man is a kingdom. Your king is either Christ or the carnal mind. The mind in the man is the king. The god of that man is the god of the whole city and the king is his high priest. Is not Christ the High Priest of Jehovah? We're told in the book of Hebrews that Jesus the Christ is the High Priest. He's an everlasting High Priest who doesn't die like the members of the Levitical priesthood die. He is an everlasting Priest, always interceding and making sacrifice for us.
What is He sacrificing? Jesus, the Christ, now a Glorified Spirit, reproducing His nature in the individual man in the form of Christ Jesus; what is His sacrifice? The carnal church tells you that the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was the sacrifice because Jehovah has a blood lust and when He saw that blood flowing down on the physical earth, He said, yummy, I'm satisfied, you don't have to sacrifice that goat or that cow anymore. How ridiculous!!! God is a Spirit and all those that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and Truth. Those who worship Him in Spirit and in Truth offer spiritual sacrifices. Now we know what some of them are, like the sacrifice of praise. As I told you earlier, I love to hear your singing, but if you think that's the spiritual sacrifice; you're mistaken. If you look up that word, praise, in your Concordance and you follow it back to its root, the true praise is submission to Christ. So if you stand here singing out beautiful sounds for twenty-four hours straight and you walk out the door and the Lord says, go left, and you go right, you haven't praised Him. Now don't let me give you an example that would discourage anybody that's bound by a familiar spirit or a spirit guide. The Lord doesn't usually tell you to go left or right, but He does very much want to influence your life, your decisions, your choices, your behavior. If you go out of here and you hate your brother, if you make a mistake and you offend in word or deed, and you don't move to correct the situation; all of your beautiful songs will not do you any good at all. Now if you sing and you're obedient to Christ, that's wonderful. You should do both. It's good to sing. It's good for the heart. It's very good. But the true praise is submission and obedience to Christ.
To be able to submit to and be obedient to Christ takes practice and it takes failure. You must fail because nobody can submit to Christ without experiencing missing the mark. You can't do it. It's a trial and error experience. Lord, I thought you were telling me to do such and such and I didn't do it. I didn't recognize what you were saying to me; I didn't recognize the move of the Spirit; I just didn't see you; I didn't hear you; I didn't understand you. I made a mistake and now I realize you told me to do such and such a thing and I didn't do it. But the next time you speak to me in that way, if you help me, I'll recognize that it was you. That's what it's all about. So you must get your pride in check because you will surely be making many mistakes. You must remember there is now no more condemnation in Christ Jesus. No matter how many times you fail, you confess your sin, you repent, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and you say, Lord, what would you have me to do now? He'll most likely send you right back to (if not the same person) the same situation and He'll keep sending you back or sending that problem into your life until you learn how to overcome by the power of the internalized indwelling Christ, which is growing out of your soul. This is why we must become as little children. We have to learn to walk all over again. We have to learn how to talk all over again. We have to learn how to obey our elders all over again. It's a whole new world. We need spiritual ears, we need spiritual eyes, we need a spiritual language. It's a whole new world.
We have much to learn. The method of learning is largely trial and error, especially when it comes to spiritual things. I could give you all the testimonies in the world and when your opportunity comes, you won't remember a thing I've told you. (Laughter) But after you mess up, after you mess up, you'll say, oh Sister Sheila told me about that. That's what she was talking about. Then you'll take your experience and put it together with my testimony and whatever else God gives you at the moment and you will have had a learning experience in Christ that will become a part of you. I don't know about you, but I don't like to make mistakes. It makes me mad and I do the best I can to learn from every mistake that I make. I don't like to make mistakes because sometimes they make me uncomfortable. Sometimes they give me problems. Every mistake you make, you will bear fruit; nothing devastating, but who needs it? Who needs to be embarrassed? Who needs to lose money? Who needs to trip on a crack in the street and skin your knee? Who needs it? But we must know that we will make mistakes. My Bible tells me a righteous man can fall seven times, but he will never be destroyed, never ever be destroyed. So we will be defeated and when my carnal mind defeats me, I really get mad. I go after him with a vengeance when he tricks me and he succeeds. I don't like it, but I go on. I go on for the prize of the high calling because I believe the Scripture and I believe there's a prize and that that prize is spiritual power in Christ Jesus over all "all" of the power of the enemy and I want it. It excites me. See, you can lust for God's power.
See, it's okay to lust for God's power. It's okay to like power. It all depends where you're getting your power from. If it's coming out of your carnal mind, no, no, no. If it's Satan's power, God is not going to like it. You'll reap inequity. But it's okay to lust for God's power. If you're willing to go through the training which will bring you into obedience so that your mind is at one with His mind. God is power. He's the Captain of the Host. He's a mighty warrior and a great God and King and He rules and exercises power continuously, but He does it with righteousness. To all those that overcome, all those who complete the training that will result in their becoming righteous, shall rule as kings and priests. But the exercise of the righteous power of Jesus Christ will impart life to your fellow man.
That's why it's okay. You lust for it, you pant after it. I pant after it. I pant after it. I've tasted it, you see. It's good. It tastes good; satisfying. I like it. I really do. It's good to know the devil can't kill you. It's good to know He can't kill you. Even when he trips you up and you make the biggest mistakes, you just get up and you keep on walking. He can't kill you. So there's nothing wrong with lusting for power if you're doing it the right way. The corresponding word in the English language, to lust, is desire. If you look it up in the Greek, it is just as strong a word as lust although in the English it sounds much weaker. But in the Greek, desire for the things of God, which are legal unto you is just as strong a word as lust and it's yours, if you're willing to pay the price.
I believe man was made to exercise power. Many modern societies today are stripping us of our power. When man lived on the land, he had power. He farmed, he hunted, he fished, he had power over his own life. Now modernized industrialized society makes almost every man, except for a few very rich, makes all the other men subject, not to nature over which he could exercise his skills, but makes men subject to other corrupt men. The spiritual effect on you is not good for your person, for your ego. It's not making you what God wants you to be. But for a season, we must submit to it because this is the society that we're living in. In the United States we have postal workers killing their supervisors. Have you heard about it? People rebelling against this corporate structure that crushes man's creativity and his individuality and his desire to be all he could be and forces him into some role that crushes him in his mind and in his emotions. But you see, in Christ, you could be all things. Even if for a season you are trapped in a job that crushes you, Christ cannot be crushed. Even while you're working, even while you're caught in the backup, "even when the power goes out." Life is stressful here in Lagos. (Laughter) It's stressful here. But Christ is never bound, you see. As long as you're abiding in Him, you are free and all things are possible. Deliverance from any situation is possible. So until the Kingdom of God comes into the external world of your life, you stay in your liberty within. You stay in your liberty within. There's liberty where the Spirit of God is.
Okay, we have this incredible riddle that says, when you make the two one. Now you may recall that a little further back, the Gospel of Thomas is talking about making the one two; making the one into two. Now he's talking about making the two into one. What in the world is he talking about? He's talking about the spiritual reality of our condition, brethren. That man, the man that God made, he was one. The man was a creation that had a negative and a female pole to it. The Scripture calls them male and female; male meaning positive, negative meaning female. What does that mean? Male is the power source that has enough to generate and give to others. Female has nothing to do with our roles in our society. Female meaning that which receives because she is not complete. That's what it means. So God made a creation, male and female, and the two were one. The negative and the positive were one flesh under the dominion of the positive authority and there's power in this negative and positive, just like in electricity.
We see in Daniel, Chapter 8, a ram standing. When we pulled that Chapter apart, we found out that the ram is a type, a symbol of God's original creation or the form that that creation was in originally. It has two horns. A ram is a male sheep, a mature adult male sheep, which has two horns. Horns in the Scripture typify spiritual power; negative and positive. The creation at the beginning of time, which by the way, God didn't call man. He called him Adam. He was neither male nor female. He was Adam, made out of the dust. He is not called man until further on. So the creation had two powers in it; two sources of power. The power of God, which was positive, and the negative power, which was found in the earth. The creation was spirit and earth and there was an authority in the Spirit (Christ) and in the earth (Satan.) Both authorities were under the headship of the immovable rulership of the Christ. The two were joined together so completely that the negative authority wasn't even obvious. All we see standing there is one ram, one animal. But something happened and that negative authority got loose and manifested on her own base as we're told in the Book of Zechariah. As you go down the verses in Daniel Chapter 8, all of a sudden there's a goat looking at the ram and she's furious.
Although the Scripture does say he-goat, because at this point, Satan had manifested on her own and stolen a male role and she challenged the ram, the Christ. The Scripture calls her a he-goat. She exalted herself into a position of authority that is only for the male. She stole it. God didn't give it to her. But when she took it, the Scripture acknowledges that she was functioning as a male and she challenged the ram head on. When we looked up every word in the Hebrew, we found the Hebrew very descriptive. Those alternate translations are in your Alternate Translation Bible. As I was writing them up, I would feel chills going up and down my spine, that she (the goat, Satan) he attacked the ram with such a fury of hatred (for what? For His authority!) that she killed him. You see, it's not enough to have authority. It's not enough to even be armed. You must have a driving force that is propelling you to fight. You have to be fighting for something. You see, the man, he was like an innocent child. If you recall, the creation at the beginning was spiritual and visible. Satan's creation was visible and physical. So Adam, when he was appearing as a ram was visible, but he was spiritual. He appeared to be mature; a male sheep in his form, but in his understanding, he had no experience. He had no experience with evil. He had no experience with death and evil manifested itself unto him in a visible form. The evil one was filled with fury (we're told in Daniel Chapter 8) furious that the ram had authority over him and the ram was like a lamb led to the slaughter; had no idea.
It's like going up to a poisonous plant and no one has taught you that if you put your hand in that plant, it's going to close up on your hand and rip it off. The ram looked at the goat and said, wonder what that is and where he came from? Maybe he would like to play with me. Of course, you know I'm exaggerating to make a point. He got real close to the goat. Maybe he even sniffed him and the goat killed him without a second's hesitation. So you see, in Daniel Chapter 8, we first see a ram, then we see a ram and a goat and then there's just a goat. There was one and then there were two and then there was one. That's what this riddle is speaking about. First there was Christ, then there was Christ and the carnal mind, and then there was just the carnal mind. So I suggest to you, it is Satan's goal to completely reverse the plan of God and to manifest a visible creation with the negative authority ruling; if you will, a reverse universe. How does that sound? A negative universe, the exact opposite of God's intention. Satan's plan to lay hold of the substance of God's creation and form it in his own negative image, with himself as god of this world, unchallenged. Now I know that the Scripture says that Satan is the god of this world right now and he is the god of this world, but this world is the world of good and evil. Satan would not be satisfied with this. It's his intention to be the god of the world of evil. This world is the world in which the ram and the goat live together. He doesn't want the ram at all.
So we see that the one has already been made the two. Satan's plan is moving along. We now live in a dual world of light and darkness, of good and evil. I believe there has always been a manifestation of Christ in the earth always: at least one man, through whom Christ was revealing Himself somewhere. Even in the dark ages, somewhere in some corner of the earth, Christ was manifesting Himself whenever He wanted to. It is Satan's intention to put a stop to that. Of course, today we see many manifestations of Christ. But I suggest to you that it is Satan's intention to bring the Kingdom of Darkness to this physical world, to manifest God's creation, not as a dual creation of good and evil, but as a creation of one hundred percent evil, so completely formed in the image of Satan that the Lord would have no choice but to wipe us out and destroy us. There would be no room for rehabilitation. That is Satan's plan and that is the basis for the war that is raging in the heavenlies today. So if you could hear it, it's much more than God taking back His creation. The negative creation hasn't fulfilled its evil. It's a race. Doesn't Paul talk about a race? Did you ever wonder why it was a race? It's a race, brethren, to see who is going to fill up humanity with himself, first; Christ or the carnal mind. This race is being run in each individual. It's happening in all of the individuals at the same time, although not at the same rate of maturity. It's a race. Who's going to get you? Christ or the big bad wolf?
It's amazing, you know, I had a very difficult encounter this past year and the Lord spoke to me through many people in visions and in dreams. In one dream of one sister, the word to me was, get up and hide in the tree because if you come down the wolf will get you. That was His word to me. So don't come down because that wolf is too strong for you. If you have pride and think you can take him on, he's going to have you for dinner. I stayed in the tree. But somebody who had pride might have said, oh, that's not for me. I can take on that wolf. I believe that until we are fully expressing Christ (which I am not) we could lose it. I think that if I would have yielded to pride, which I didn't have (I was very glad to stay in the tree) but if I had any pride that came up at that time and I had come down and taken on this battle (that God, not only didn't tell me to go up and fight, but specifically told me, don't fight) if I had gone forward with this battle, I think that there's a possibility I might have been knocked out. Nobody is indispensable. He can raise up someone else to do what I'm doing. That's why you have to be careful about idolatry. So we see the beginning of this parable is that the way Satan is manifesting the Kingdom of Darkness, is that he's making that which is two into one, not with Christ on top, but Christ on the bottom.
I mentioned the Kingdom of Heaven to you the other night. Let me go over that again. The difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven is this. The Kingdom of God is Christ in you: Christ Jesus, that mind which was in Christ, growing in your own soul. Not just present within you, as the Holy Spirit is, but actually a spiritual plant growing out of your own soul; a very part of your own person. That's what the Kingdom of God is. The Kingdom of Heaven, as I told you the other night (I did not do an exhaustive study) which means I would have looked for every single scripture in the Concordance (I didn't do that) but I did a substantial study of the various scriptures speaking about the Kingdom of Heaven. I went through many of them and I could not find one in which the word, heaven, was singular. The word, heaven, was always plural. The correct term is the kingdom of the heavens, of the two heavens; the kingdom of the two heavens.
What is a heaven? A heaven is a mind. What is the earth? The earth is our soul. We are spirit and soul; mind dwelling in the earth. That's what we are. So the two heavens, I suggest to you, are the two minds. The kingdom of heavens or the kingdom of the two heavens is a man who has two minds functioning as one, with Christ in charge, with Christ on top and the carnal mind on the bottom and they're joined so completely that the carnal mind is paralyzed, still alive but brain dead, incapable of making any one of us who is having this experience sin either in their thoughts, their emotions, or in their deeds. I believe he could still talk. He whispers, but he has no power whatsoever to influence us away from the faithful control of Christ in our life. So we see the Kingdom of God is the mind of a man in whom Christ Jesus is being formed. The Kingdom of Darkness is the carnal mind, which is growing out of the soul of a man who has the carnal mind. The kingdom of the two heavens is the mind which is in the man who is in full stature.
Let me do it again. The kingdom of darkness is the carnal mind, which is a spiritual plant growing out of a man. That's an unregenerate man. There's the kingdom of darkness; that's his mind. The double minded man in whom Christ is being formed is a double minded man. He has the kingdom of God and he has the kingdom of darkness. He has two minds. The reason he is double minded is he keeps bopping back and forth between the two minds. How long are you going to halt between two opinions, brethren? Let's get that carnal mind underfoot because the God of Peace has promised to shortly bruise Satan under your feet. So we're in this war. The carnal mind is telling us to do this and the Christ mind is telling us to do that and as if that weren't enough of a problem, we're having trouble deciding which mind is which. It's not always obvious which is Christ speaking to you. So then we see a third kind of man in the earth. He's the man whose mind is the kingdom of the two heavens; the double minded man whose Christ mind has captured his carnal mind, put her under his feet, and utterly dismantled her. She has no power over him whatsoever. That is the man whose mind is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus of Nazareth had a mind which was the kingdom of heaven and therefore He could call Himself the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
He made the two, one, in His mind. He attained to the first stage of the resurrection of His whole man. He brought His carnal mind into subjection, into a permanent condition whereby, consistently, hour to hour, minute to minute, second to second, He did not sin. Now we all have moments when we don't sin. Every time we're tempted or tested and take the victory, we don't sin. But to have a mind which is the kingdom of heaven, you must consistently refrain from sin. How will you know? You will know as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, when that power arises in you, which is the result of your firm capture of your carnal mind. Your soul shall be quickened because that Spirit which raised Christ from the dead, dwells in you, in your mind; it shall quicken your mortal body, which is your soul (your soul which is capable of dying) it shall quicken it. It shall give life unto it and it shall preserve this fallen flesh. Even if they put a bullet in you, you won't die. You'll know. Jesus said, someone touched Him and He knew that virtue had gone out of Him. Believe me, brethren, when you stand up in full stature, you'll know. I've had a couple of experiences where I was very high, but it was temporary. It was marvelous, it was heaven, it was heaven. I had about four experiences like that, each one very different.
Every time God gives you an experience like that, however, it is to glorify Him. He doesn't waste anything. He doesn't do anything frivolously. Every time I was caught up that high, it was to either cast out a demon, heal somebody, or do some miracle for somebody. One time it was to minister to a man who was out of his mind. I hardly knew the man, so I don't have all the details, but he was not in his right mind. I met him at a fellowship that I had no intention of even going to and I kept looking at the man. Something about him bothered me. He looked very successful. He looked very intelligent, very well dressed. He appeared to be an executive and he had a wife, but there was something just not right about their relationship. I was trying to look away, saying, well, it's none of my business. I'm here to fellowship. But something was really wrong. She was hovering over him. She was just way out of order. I kept hearing this in my head, but I thought it was me, you see. God was just bringing me into a place where I was finding out that every thought that arises in my mind is not my thought. Sometimes it's your thought. I heard somebody's question the other night when I was here. Now I'm at a place where when thoughts come into my mind, I wonder whose thoughts they are.
Depending on whether they're thoughts that could get me into trouble or not, I spend a lot of time praying about whose thoughts they are. So if they're unrighteous thoughts I have to go to war with them immediately. Has anyone here entered into that yet, where you're thinking other people's thoughts? It's a real challenge because you would not want to be manipulated by a thought that is not Christ. So I'm sitting there in this fellowship and I'm hearing myself say (only it wasn't me, it was his mind) he's going to kill her. He's going to kill her. He's going to kill that woman. I said to myself, why would I be thinking this crazy thought? It wouldn't go away. Finally, I realized that I was hearing his thoughts. If he didn't get a miracle he was going to kill that woman because she was out of order, but he was insane. You don't kill a woman that's out of order. You deal with it in Christ. But he was on the verge of committing murder. Within an hour or so, the Lord had brought down an anointing that I had never experienced before and I have never experienced since. He did something to the man's brain. He told me that He wasn't connected. I heard the Lord telling me the man is not connected. I want you to reconnect his brain. So I said, that's nice, Lord, how do I reconnect his brain?
As I was standing there trying to determine what the Lord wanted me to do, his wife came over to me and she was aware at this point (I'm skipping over a large part of it) she was aware that I was ministering to him and she just rose up and came over to me and said, he's just not connected. He's just not connected. That was what I needed. It was a second witness that I had heard from the Lord. I just went over and laid hands on him and said, I reconnect you. It was like it was raining in the room. There was power coming out of my fingers. It was like something you would see in a movie. It was pulsating, vibrating out of me. It just filled the whole room. After I prayed for that man (it wasn't even me. I didn't pray for him. Jesus prayed for him) I was just going around just saying helpful things to everybody and it was Him in me. It was Him in me. It wasn't me. Everybody was standing there with their mouth open. I left the place and the man looked the same. I didn't see him until two years later. The Lord wouldn't let me approach him, but He did get word to me that the man had had a miracle. I heard it from like a fourth person. They didn't know that God had anointed me to pray for him. See that man over there. he had some kind of a miracle. He just got his sanity back and he divorced that woman and he's got a job and he's on his feet.
I don't believe in divorce, brethren, but there are occasions where divorce is legal. Divorce is legal on the grounds of fornication. Well, adultery is a part of fornication. The Greek word translated fornication has a different definition than the English word, fornication. The Greek word translated fornication means any form of legitimate perversion. Any form of legitimate perversion is grounds for divorce. If you have prayed for that person and there's no change, there is permission from God to divorce. I'm going into this because I don't want anyone to stumble on what I said. There is a legal divorce when you have permission from God. When there is a legitimate perversion present that's destructive and God says you can get divorced; it is legal. Well, his whole life turned around. The other two times I experienced it was to cast out a demon and to heal someone who was having a heart attack. One time I was caught up so high, I stayed up for two weeks. I was hoping He would forget to bring me back down, but He didn't.
I don't even know how I got on that.
I'm talking about the creation. It was one; it became two; and it's Satan's intention to make this world, not a world of good and evil, but a world which is wholly evil; a full stature of evil. This Gospel of Thomas is giving the instruction as to how you do that. First you have to take that which is on the inside and bring it to the outside. Well what's on the inside that's coming to the outside? Brethren, there's a whole world inside of our mind. It's a world of spirit in which there is no time and no space. I want to honestly tell you (I still struggle with this) I just believe it's true, that there's a whole universe inside of each of us that requires no time or space. How could universes be inside of my mind? But somehow it's true because spirit can fit inside of me. Does anybody here understand? I believe the Bible teaches that and I believe it on faith, but I still really don't comprehend it. So there is a whole world inside of us and there's a whole world inside of the carnal mind, which is possessing this creation at this time. I did touch briefly on aliens one night last week. I believe that when we see aliens appearing in this world that we live in, with their spaceships and whatever else they come with, I believe they're not coming from Mars or Venice, but they're coming from the world within the carnal minds of men.
There's really one carnal mind manifesting in a many membered body. It's a whole world. It's a world of fully manifested evil. It's a world in which there is no spirit; it's all soul. See, this world out here has some spirit in it. Satan has stolen God's wife. She is the human spirit of the creation and he has mixed himself with her and produced this physical visible world of good and evil. But there's a world inside, a devilish world, and it's all evil. It's all soul. There's nothing of spirit in it. It is Satan's intention to bring that world (which is hidden from most men because we couldn't bear it if we were to see it) Satan's intention is to bring that world, which is inside, to the outside. The only way he can do it is to completely wipe out Christ. In this hour, except for Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, who is no longer in the flesh in full stature, is in our flesh, but He's not in full stature. Christ is dead. He is in the process of being raised from the dead.
The Christ who was killed at the beginning of time by the carnal mind is in humanity. He died and he became a skeleton and one of his bones, one of the bones of the dead Christ is resident in every human being on the face of the earth. When he died, his name changed. God doesn't call him skeleton; He calls him human spirit. When the human spirit is raised from the dead, she is called Christ again. Let me review that for you. The reason for this is, that the way she is raised from the dead is that the Spirit of the Father, the Holy Spirit, the male seed of God, joins with her and she bears His child. The offspring of a male spirit and a female spirit is a mind. So when the Holy Spirit joins with the human spirit, the mind of Christ, the Son of the Living God, begins to be formed, in the same way as a new child begins to be formed in human reproduction. The male seed joins with the woman seed and we're told in our biology studies, they join so completely, the male and the female seed, that they become one seed or one cell; the first cell of the new baby. So when the Holy Spirit joins with the human spirit, both the Holy Spirit and the human spirit cease to exist. What do we have left? The first cell of the Christ child in you, which is your hope of glory, that He will mature completely and save you from your sins, which are in the form of your carnal mind. How shall He save you from your sins? He's going to kill your carnal mind. Alleluia!!!
So you see, as long as the human spirit resides in man, even dead, there is always the potential for the seed of the Father to get in there and raise her from the dead. Satan knows this, so it's his intention to bring forth a form of a creation (a takeoff on the Lord's creation if you will) that is totally soul with no spirit in it at all. I suggest to you that that creation, if you will, or that manifestation of existence is what we are seeing appear on the face of the earth as aliens. You could see pictures of them. People who have been abducted draw pictures of them. They all look alike. They're short (four feet or so, I believe) very skinny, straggly bodies, big heads, no hair, and coincidentally, hair in the Scripture is a type of spirit. They're without spirit. So that which is within has already begun to appear on the surface of the earth. Satan's plan is very advanced. But Christ is coming up from behind and He's going to come up speedily. I read the back of the book. I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about it.
So this is Satan's subliminal instruction to whoever is reading this Gospel of Thomas. It's a message bypassing your consciousness, going into your carnal mind, saying this is what you have to do. This is what you have to do and this is how you're going to do it. Whoever can hear the riddle, whoever has the devilish wisdom, let him understand; we're going to get that inner world of spirit and manifest it on the outside and this is how we're going to do it. We're going to start by making that which is above as below; that which is above as below. He's speaking about the kingdom of the two heavens. We're going to make that which is above (Christ); we're going to put Him underneath. That one which was underneath (the carnal mind); he's going to be on top. We're going to have a negative kingdom of heaven. To be honest with you, I don't know what the name is. I believe it has to be in the Scripture. God just hasn't shown it to me yet. We have the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. So that means there has to be another name besides the Kingdom of Darkness. I just haven't found it yet. It's in there. I know it's in there. I'll find it. So you see, the plan is to reverse everything that God has done. We've got to reverse that kingdom of heaven. For the time being, we'll call it a negative kingdom. So, the soldiers of the carnal mind say, how do we do that? Then we get the next instruction. You're going to make the male and the female into a single one. No more separation of the male and the female; So that the male will not be male.
Now this is what it says here. I'm going to read it to you. So that the male will not be male and the female not be female. Since I'm not working in the original language here, I'm going by the Spirit and I'm telling you that this is what it's saying. When you make the male and the female into a single one in a form, that the male will not be male, but female. When you make the two minds one in a form that the male (which is Christ) will not be male, but female. How? By forcing Him underneath the authority of the carnal mind. As I mentioned on Tuesday night, the Scripture says, first in the natural and then in the spiritual. In certain parts of the world (in the United States I am very sorry to have to report to you) I see this beginning to come to pass in certain elements of the society. We now have an androgynous army; no power given to what sex you are. Men and women are treated exactly the same. We have in New York, an androgynous police force; men and women treated exactly the same. Homosexuality is rampant throughout the United States. This perversion now has legal status in many areas of the country. We have a war going on. They've been given legal status in certain areas. In other states, which have laws against homosexuality, they are now being subject to Federal laws which say it is legal. We're in a total crisis.
We're in a total moral crisis in the United States. But for the purposes of this discussion here, this scripture is coming to pass in the natural in the United States, I'm sorry to tell you. They're making the man and the woman as one, so that there is no more manhood; but there is a woman. First in the natural, then in the spiritual. You see, there is a spiritual manhood in Christ. There's no male or female in Christ; that's for spiritual purposes. When Christ becomes your mind, it doesn't matter whether your body is male or female; when Christ is your mind. But we're not suppose to drag this down to the flesh. There is male and female in the flesh. There is most certainly male and female in the flesh and you're suppose to be able to tell them apart. When you have a natural marriage (if you are married, if you're hearing this tape or reading this transcript, if you're here) you're not equal. The woman is not equal to her husband in marriage. The man is the head of the woman. He's the head of the family. He's the head of the children. He's the head of the household. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives.
But we see in the United States, they've taken this principle and they've brought it down into the flesh and it's producing perversion in our society. We have women who say they're equal partners with their husband. What is the result? There is no man in the marriage. You see, to be a man is much more than the body that you're walking around in. To be a man, in human society, is a spiritual office of authority. You're suppose to be a leader. Men are suppose to be the leaders of their families, wherever, according to where their life is, they have authority. You're not suppose to be an authority over the woman walking down the street. You're an authority over your wife and other female members of your family. Now some men have gotten confused about that. They think that they're the head of all women. No, you're not the head of all women. You have authority where your authority is functioning. That doesn't mean that women cannot go to school. That doesn't mean that women cannot be professionals. This does not mean that women cannot have authority in business. We're talking about human family relationships. I don't care if you have ten PHD's and you're a millionaire in your own rights (speaking to the women) if you choose to get married, that man is your head. So you better think twice about who you're marrying. Now you could marry anyone that you want to, but you better know that you're going to have to submit to him. So you better not marry and be unequally yoked.
So this is Satan's plan for manifesting a creation that is purely soul with no spirit at all. He's going to put Christ under the authority of the female mind. It's your mind that makes you male and if you have a male body and your mind is female, you're a manifestation of perversion. See, you don't have to be a physical homosexual, but if you're a man and you're not acting like a man, you need to confess it as sin and ask God to make your mind line up to your body. I don't care what's happened in your life. I don't care what's happened in your country. I don't care if you're in a male body. In this hour, if you're a Christian, you have an office. If you're yielding to a female mind by not taking your authority, you need to repent. Whether we're talking about your relationship with your mother or your sister, or your cousin (anybody) you have to ask God where your manhood is suppose to be manifesting in your family. If you're not taking your responsibility, take it and if you cannot take it, then you need to ask the Lord to help you to take it. How can you be a spiritual male in Christ if you're not even walking in your manhood in the flesh?
You see, being a spiritual man in Christ is much more than sitting here talking about exciting doctrine. This is nice and it's fun and I enjoy it, but this is what you see. You don't know the warfare I've been going through to even be sitting here. A man fights. A man is a warrior. If you want to be a spiritual man, you have to be able to deal with problems in the spiritual world without having sin imputed unto you. You have to receive instruction in righteousness. You have to learn how to do it God's way and He doesn't usually start training you in that (although He might do it simultaneously) if you're lacking in human righteousness. Now look, there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus. But if you're immature, if you're not walking in your proper responsibility, I'm here to tell you that the Lord wants you to do it. Now that you've heard me tell it to you, He's going to send somebody to you, after I leave, to point out to you the areas of immaturity (if you have them) that need to be improved. God is not just spiritual.
He's bringing forth a whole man; a whole spiritual man that's standing tall in every area of life, ruling where he has authority and being quiet where he has no authority and having full mental recognition of where he has authority and where he doesn't have authority. You might have authority over your wife, but when your father walks in, you know you have to respect your father or your employer. So we switch back and forth, changing spiritual sexual roles or changing spiritual authoritative roles. You have to go with the flow. So God is making you into a fully mature man on every level. Brethren, I tell you, in all truth (I don't really know anybody here that well) I'm just going on my experiences with other men in the United States and wherever else I've met men; if you think you're going to be a mighty warrior in Christ and you're not willing to learn how to do everything that's required of you in the flesh, you're entertaining a fantasy. The Lord is not about to give you spiritual responsibility if you're not meeting your human responsibility. He's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. You have to be a whole man; a whole completed man. Amen.
So he's going to make the male female. Satan is going to bring forth a spiritual creation and he's starting with a change of mind in the unfortunate way that I've described seeing in the United States. We're going to see men in human bodies, whose minds are female; men who can't make decisions, men who don't know how to rule, men who don't know how to love their wives, men who are children in physical bodies. Eventually, there's not a doubt in my mind, that this perversion will be made manifest in the physical form of the man. The beginning of it is when this condition of female mind drags the man down to a condition of physical homosexuality. It could take several generations from the point where the man's mind begins to be dragged down to female. It could take two or three generations for that family line to produce a man who will engage in a physical homosexual lifestyle. Right now we see some of the men are very effeminate in their behavior and their actions.
I have no problem believing, whatsoever, if things continue the way they're going, if the Lord doesn't intervene, we will see men who look like women, physically. They're going to change physically because what your mind is, is reflected in your appearance. Your body is a reflection of your mind. That's why we're in these vile fallen bodies, because our mind is death. Our mind is death, therefore our bodies die. I tell you the truth. These bodies are just clay. So we see that homosexuality is a part of Satan's plan and we see that the destruction of manhood, wherever she can do it, is a part of Satan's plan. It's very hard to be a man. It's very hard to rule in righteousness; to be righteous, to be fair, to manifest love and decency and be strong at the same time. It's very hard to say no to someone that you love because they're asking you for something unrighteous. It's very hard. You have to be strong. So we see Satan bringing weakness wherever she can; weakness.
You make the male and the female into a single one so that the male will no longer be male and female, but female. Now we're told in the Scripture that God made them male and female. This goes back to what I said about Satan bringing forth the creation with no spirit in it. So long as we're male and female, that means there's spirit present in us. I did want to go over those scriptures with you. I seem to have gone way ahead without my notes. If you'll just give me a minute. Genesis Chapter 1 verse 27; So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. I use to think that that meant that God made men and women like we see here, but I don't believe that anymore. I believe God formed a creation and that that single creation was both male and female. It was both positive and negative. It was in a form that didn't look like we look today. I don't know what it looked like. We talked about this last week. I asked the question, where's the bones of that creation? No one can find the bones. It didn't look like we look. I don't know what it looked like. Glory to God. It was a single creation and it had two sides to it, male and female, spirit and soul. Either way, that's how you could say it.
The second scripture I'd like you to turn to and read out is Genesis Chapter 5:1 thru 4 from the King James Translation. This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters. My point is that God created man in His own likeness and in His own image and He made the creation male and female. We're told in verse 1; This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him. It doesn't say anything about image. It doesn't say anything about image.
Now in Genesis 1:27 the command was to make man in His likeness and in His image. I want to suggest to you that that Genesis 1:27 was exactly that; a command. When God commands, it begins to happen. We are not yet in God's image. We are in His likeness. This is the difference between the two. To be in His likeness means to be made out of the same substance. God is Spirit. We are spirit. That's to be in His likeness. To be made in His image means to have His nature. Despite what many preachers are preaching today, I regret to inform you, we are not in God's image. We do not have the nature of God. He is good. We are evil, brethren. That is why we need to be adopted. That is why we need the judgment. That is why we need to be cleansed. We are not in His image. We are in His likeness at this point of time and Genesis 5:1 was written after the fall. So we see now that Adam in verse 3 lived an hundred and thirty years and begat a son in Adam's likeness after Adam's image; not God's image, but Adam's image, and Adam was fallen and in the image of the serpent at the time.
Verse 4; And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years and he begat sons and daughters, not male and female, but sons and daughters. I don't know about you, but I used to think they were the same thing, but I know that every time the word changes, God is saying something else. I don't draw those conclusions anymore. I looked up those words for you, just to give you some backup. Male and female; the Hebrew word translated male is Strong's #2145 and it means, he through whom the memorial of parents is continued. I suggest to you that that means spirit. That means spirit. Someone through whom spirit is passed on to the next generation is a male. The word female is Strong's #5347 and that is merely referring to her physical sex. According to this Hebrew definition of male and female, the woman is incapable of passing the spiritual heritage on. Now Adam speaks about sons and daughters. He brought forth "sons", Strong's #1121 and that's speaking about sons of God; men who have spirit. Daughters is Strong's #1323 and he's speaking about human daughters. We find further on in the book of Genesis that the sons of God looked upon the daughters of men and found them fair. What this says to me is that fallen Adam, at the beginning of time, right after the fall where he still was filled with the power of God, had the ability to bring forth beings (whatever they looked like) who were spiritually male and were still carrying the seed of God, but he was also bringing forth human offspring. He was bringing forth two kinds. He was double minded. Adam was double minded.
He brought forth Seth, the single son, Seth, a being who had his wife within him; a male offspring. If you follow through the genealogy, the only genealogy that God lists are the descendants of Seth because that was the spiritually male offspring of Adam and it took all of his strength that was within him after the fall. Now remember, the fall meant that Adam had separated in spirit from God. He died spiritually. That's what the fall was. Adam died spiritually and he had all of the spiritual strength within him that was with him at the time of the separation and he passed all of that spiritual strength on, all of that reproductive strength on to Seth. Then he had many children after that, but his spiritual substance was draining out of him and because he was no longer joined to God, it wasn't being replenished. So the spiritual strength of his offspring was getting weaker and weaker and weaker. He brought forth some beings who were spiritually male. What does that mean? They were sons, sons of God, spiritually male. They had the ability to pass on the Spirit of God. But then, maybe every third or fourth offspring was male (just for an example) and all the others were coming out as fallen human beings. I still don't know in what form, whether they looked like us or whether they were the bones of Neanderthal man; I don't know. But he brought forth two different kinds of offspring, not sons and daughters as we would expect in our present society.
As I said earlier, a little further on we read that the sons of God found the daughters of men fair. What I believe that means is that those beings who were brought forth on a high spiritual level who had the potential to pass the Spirit of God along were tempted to engage in the form of procreation of human men and women and they mixed. God said that the earth was filled with violence because I don't believe that the sons of God reproduced as we reproduce today. We reproduce today like the animals reproduce, brethren. Sons of God on a high spiritual level bring forth after their own kind, some form of cell division. I don't have any more information than that, other than to tell you the offspring is fully mature. This condition of bringing forth human offspring in a weak condition that our infants are born into, where they need care, sometimes into their twenties, if we're talking about education, also. They certainly need care up until their teens and they would not survive without parents. This is not God's best. Our offspring, being so weak at birth, is a visible sign to all those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, of our spiritual condition. Sons of God reproduce and we find a fully mature son of God standing next to him, fully furnished and equipped to deal with the world. So those men who were on that high spiritual realm were tempted by the form of reproduction that the human offspring were engaging in and they mixed their seed. Sons of God, spiritual men, mixed with the human offspring, thus corrupting the seed of God and the earth was filled with violence. Who's the violent one? The carnal mind!!!
So the earth in which Christ was appearing was corrupted and the carnal mind began to rule, even through that line where Christ was appearing, even after the fall. By the time we get to Noah, the Scripture says, Noah was the only righteous one. What does that mean? Every other man on the face of the earth was manifesting the carnal mind. Satan had succeeded with his plan and he put that which was above underneath and the carnal mind was on top and had made the two, one, and was moving forward with her plan to manifest this creation in a one hundred percent evil form. God said, before you could do that, I'm going to take my Spirit back and I'm going to wipe out all of your flesh beings. But there's one man left in the earth that this hasn't happened to, in his mind; that which is suppose to be above is above and that which is suppose to be underneath is underneath. He (Noah) resisted this temptation and therefore I will let you be the seed that will carry over to the other side of the flood because you must have some spiritual strength in you that the others didn't have. Have you heard about the survival of the fittest? Out of all the men on the earth, you are the only one who resisted the carnal mind and the temptations of the carnal mind. So you're the survival of the fittest. I'm going to start my new world with you. We are the descendants of Noah. We did a couple of studies today. So Adam begat some double minded people, some sons and some humans. We don't really know what it was like.
Okay, let's go on with the Gospel of Thomas. After you do that, then the next step is to make eyes (plural) in the place of an eye. We did a little study on eyes for you. Matthew 6 verses 22 and 23 from the King James Bible. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! I've done a word study on that word, body. I think I mentioned this the other day to you. Don't assume it's speaking about your physical body. The definition of body is container. The physical body is the container for your soul. Your soul is the body for your mind. The mind is the body for your spirit. You have to read the whole verse and look for modifying indications. I suggest to you here that the light of the body is the eye. I believe the light of the body is the eye. I believe the light that Jesus is referring to is the spirit, saying the spirit is that which lights up the mind. If your spirit is Satan, then your light is darkness, you see. Verse 23: If thine eye be evil; it means if your spirit be evil, then your whole body, your whole mind and your whole soul will be full of darkness.
Then the other witness to that is Luke 11:36; If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. Now please notice, if thy whole body (and the body of the spirit is the mind) therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light. The whole what? The whole mind, the whole soul and the whole person. The whole person with the whole body of the spirit (which is the mind) be light, then the whole man (mind, soul and body and of course, spirit) will be full of light. When your spirit is Christ, there's life in every part of your being, but when your spirit is the darkness of Satan, how great is that darkness. It's in your spirit, it's in your mind, it's in your soul, and it's appearing somewhere in your flesh. At the very least, your physical flesh is dying. Some people are sick and lame and crippled. So we see Satan saying, that his plan calls for making the single eye double. The word, single, is Strong's #573 and it means complete. We're told in the Scripture, we are complete in Him. Now a lot of Christians preach that you're complete the minute you say some human language words, but it's not true, because that which completes your spirit is the ascendancy of Christ Jesus in you to a place of full stature. You have to go through the whole process that I've been preaching here.
Brethren, you can't be complete by saying a word. It has to happen to you. A woman is not pregnant because she says I'm pregnant. It has to happen to her. A woman cannot come home from her wedding night and say she's pregnant. Either she's pregnant or she's not. It's an experience. Pregnancy is an experience. It has to happen to you. Spiritual completion is an experience. It has to happen to you. You have to receive the seed that's going to do the work of completion. It has to engraft to you. The two have to become one. The new creature within you has to begin to multiply and grow and when he ascends to full stature, you are complete in Him and you are no longer evil because the evil is bruised under the feet of the mature Christ in you. So to have a single eye or to have a single spirit means to have a completed spirit. Our natural example is a human woman feeling incomplete. In some cultures (we don't really see it in the United States anymore) but traditionally speaking, a woman is not complete without a child. We are not complete without a child and the name of our child is Christ Jesus. He's that holy child that was in the man, Jesus, who was Christ. He's the manchild of Revelation 12 and we are the spiritual women who shall be saved in childbearing. We are the woman, God's wife.
All of humanity are the many membered woman who shall be saved when we bear the Christ child because He shall complete us. When we have a completed spirit, we will no longer be weak or evil. We'll be strong and we'll be spiritual warriors and our warrior shall kill the carnal mind and forever we shall be with the Lord. So to have a single eye is to have a completed spirit. Now this is a mystery. Why doesn't the Lord say, let your eye be single or let your eye be double? Why doesn't He say, let your eye be completed or why doesn't He even say, let your spirit be completed or let your spirit be not completed. He doesn't say that because you would not have existence if your spirit was not completed. You wouldn't have existence. For you to have existence, your human spirit, somewhere along the line, had to join with a male spirit or something or someone acting like a male spirit, and that something or someone is Satan. Therefore, you have received a child, a child of the evil one. Therefore, the comparison is not a single eye to a double eye, but the single eye of completeness in Christ as compared to the eye which is not complete in Christ, which is evil. Can you hear it?
Let me say it again. To have a single eye means that your spirit is fully joined to Christ in full stature and you're completed in Him. For you to not be completed in Him, you would have no existence, but yet we have an existence. How could this be? Satan has joined himself to us, making us evil. Lack of completeness in Christ makes us evil. Now this is a new definition of evil. I used to get upset when I was told I was evil. I didn't like that. There are three Greek words translated evil. This Greek word means evil in influence or effect. What it's saying, brethren, is that when your spirit is not completed in Christ, when you're not fully filled up with righteousness, the effect that you have is evil; death, destruction and is that not the condition of fallen man? So we must understand what the Scripture is saying. We are evil in influence and effect and this word which describes fallen man clearly indicates a fall from grace, which means that if we came down from heaven, we're qualified to go back up to heaven. There's another Greek word that means to be evil by nature with no redeemable quality. This describes Satan. There's no hope for him of ever being made righteous. We are evil in effect because we have separated out from our completeness which was in Christ. In this separated condition, we have joined with Satan and God calls us evil. He doesn't call us incomplete. He doesn't call us double. He calls us evil. Now we're not evil in full stature with Satan; we're still both evil and good and that makes us redeemable. Did I make that clear? I hope so.
So in the Gospel of Thomas (the devil) he says, if you want to continue on your program to make this person a fully manifested kingdom of darkness where there's no hope of Christ ever getting them back, you have to take that eye or that spirit that's completed in Christ or in the process of being completed in Christ (the man in whom Christ is being formed) and you have to break that up. Don't let that happen. Break that up before Christ stands up in full stature and you can't do it. Do it now. Get that man. Get him however you can. Get him to sin. Get him to trip. There are three major ways in which man is seduced to sin; sex, power and greed and lust for money. Those are the three major areas in which fallen man is susceptible. We are not ignorant of the devices of the devil, brethren. Make your covenant with God when you're not in trouble. Then if you start going off and Satan blinds your eyes (because if you're blinded, you're blinded by the god of this world; amen) so make your covenant when you see. Then if you slip, God will ignore you no matter how you scream or yell or kick or no matter how blind you are; He will save you despite yourself. Make your covenant now. It may be too late otherwise.
So we see the next step is to dismantle the mind of Christ in the man in whom He is being formed. That's wicked, brethren. Satan is doing it. Now it's not just Satan in your mind; it's Satan in your brother's mind, it's Satan in your wife's mind, it's Satan in your mother's mind, it's Satan in your father's mind and the problem is these people don't know what they're doing. You can't hurt them. You can't sin against them. It's just their carnal mind coming to snare you, manifesting through them without them having any understanding whatsoever. That's why Jesus said, that we will see brother against brother and that the members of your own household will be your enemy. That doesn't mean that you abandon your family. You don't abandon your family. You must learn how to discern the workings of the carnal mind in other people and not be snared by them and you must learn how to do that without sinning against the person.
Every case is individual, but the bottom line is you cry out to Jesus for help. If someone says something hurtful to you and you don't have an answer that is in kindness and love, shut your mouth; withdraw, withdraw. If you don't perceive righteousness arising in you, withdraw and don't sin. Jesus will defend you and He's never late and if you experience a loss, perhaps a financial loss, if you experience a loss because you don't know how to fight in righteousness, don't worry about it. Worry about your salvation. Go speak to an elder. Ask the Lord who has the counsel that you need. You know, the elder that you need to speak to is not always someone who you perceive to be an elder. It could be someone who doesn't look like an elder, doesn't act like an elder, doesn't have any office, but has had experience in this one area; someone who has had an overcoming experience in this same kind of problem. They are an elder in this kind of problem, so ask God who to speak to about this problem, who to pray for you and how to deal with it. He'll never let you down. He will get the information to you. He will get the wisdom to you.
Our biggest enemy is our own carnal mind, who holds us to the man who our carnal mind thinks is the elder. Even me, there are areas in which I have no experience, but I'm in a place, where if you come to me with a problem, I know whether I have counsel for you or not. If I don't have counsel for you, I will pray for God to send you the counsel. But some people don't know when they have counsel and when they don't have counsel, so they counsel you, but it's not Christ counseling you. It's their carnal mind counseling you and you could live without that. So you ask the Lord who to go to for every situation. If the person is truly a minister of Christ, they would not be offended. We have to be aware of our religious backgrounds, brethren, which sometimes might say to us, how can I go to a member of the congregation without offending whoever is in charge. This is all carnality and religiosity and your spiritual life is on the line. You must cry out to God.
You know, I use to be very ill. I don't know if you've heard my testimony or not. I was dying for many years and one of the last things that I was healed of, or the last major torment in my life that I was healed of was a severe allergy condition. The torment in my throat would wake me at two o'clock every morning. I had a secular job in those days and I was hardly sleeping because I couldn't sleep lying down. Somehow when I sat up it was easier, so it must have been a nasal drip. I was just exhausted and in total torment. No store bought prescription would work. I tried every kind of medication over the counter that was available. Nothing worked. I knew that if I went to a doctor, they would give me a strong drug, one of the cortisone derivatives and it would clear up. But I refused to go. I cried out to God. At the time, I didn't even have a church. It was the period after the Lord pulled me out of my training ground and had not yet established this ministry. He sent me to a church about an hour's ride from my house.
To emphasize the point that I made when we first started, they had a format. They sang and they prayed and if you were dying, you had to wait until the end of the service to get prayer. I'm just making a point, brethren. Don't get caught in it; don't get caught in it. You should be open to the Lord telling you the minute you walk in here, one of the brethren, God forbid, is sick. Forget your format and go pray for him. So I waited for three hours and was in torment. They praised and they prophesied and they preached and I noticed that in this church there was a male pastor and his wife who was an assistant pastor. She was a very anointed woman of God and she had power to heal, but they had made a decision that they didn't want the congregation to idolize them, so they chose several people from the congregation to pray for the brethren. But I could see with one look, as well meaning as they were, the power wasn't on any of them. So I said, Lord, I'll go to anyone you send me because I know you're my healer and that you could heal through a cat or a dog if you wanted to.
He said to me, go to the pastor's wife, the assistant pastor. So I sought her out and I know that she saw me seeking her out and she perceived it to be a form of idolatry and was very unhappy with me. But you see, if God sends you, it's not idolatry. I submitted myself to the Spirit. I would have gone to any person on that prayer line. She prayed for me and I wasn't healed. Well, I cried out for a whole week in torment. The Lord said, go back. He was using me to teach this woman a lesson. I went back and said Lord, who shall I go to? I went through the whole thing again. They praised, they prayed, and for three hours I sat in the church. I said, Lord, who do you want me to go to? He said, the same woman. Well, she saw me coming down the aisle and she fled from me. This is what's called being used as a thorn in somebody's side. She saw me coming and she ran. I actually saw her call two or three of the brethren to the front of the church where the prayer line was and she withdrew to the back and didn't even make herself available to anybody. So I said, well Lord, I'm in your hands. I submitted myself to these two young men who had no power. The Lord must have spoken to her and she came forward. She laid hands on me and the power came down. The Lord gave her a word of knowledge and she got all flustered. She said, oh my goodness, God didn't tell me this last time. I didn't have any such information. She prayed along that line and the power came down. Everybody started yelling and I was healed. That's the last time I've ever had an allergy attack and that was seven or eight years ago. So you go where God sends you. It doesn't matter if it's the youngest believer in the congregation. If you believe that it's God, you go and you'll get healed. Praise the Lord.
So we were talking about single eyes and being evil and influenced. So this is the solution to the mystery of why God says that if your eye is single on the one hand or your eye is evil on the other hand. Single is likened unto completeness meaning righteousness because completeness in Christ is righteousness. Not being single or double eyed or double spirited means a spirit which is separated from God and what's not stated is that you wouldn't be here if that separated spirit wasn't joined to Satan. So therefore, if you're separated, you must be joined to Satan. Therefore, you must be evil and influenced in effect; nevertheless redeemable. So Satan's plan continues; break up that Christ mind in that man while you can. Trip him, snare him, give him false doctrine, build up his pride, seduce him where he's weak, find out his weakness and lay a snare for him so that he'll sin and the Christ in him will break apart. That's what the Gospel of Thomas (the devil) is telling your carnal mind, if you're reading it. It's dirty fighting because the average Christian doesn't know about this. They don't know. They could lose it. You could have Christ being formed in you and He could be broken up.
We found out that that happened to Elijah. We have a whole series on it called Elijah. You know that account about Elijah running in terror from Queen Jezebel; it's a lie. He didn't run in terror from Queen Jezebel. It's true that she threatened his life and I drew the conclusion that he ran in terror from her because she threatened his life. So you see how you can draw false conclusions. She threatened his life, but he ran from all those wonderful sons of Israel that were hating him because he convicted them of their idolatry. We found it when we looked up every word in the Hebrew. When he went to them and he said, how long are you going to halt between two opinions? Well first they said not a word. Then they helped him to kill the prophets of Baal because he took authority over them. But as soon as the deed was done, they were enraged at him for pointing out their sin and he fled from their carnal minds. He was a strong prophet, but not perfect, and he couldn't take on all Israel because all Israel was in sin. They were all worshiping Baal; just like the church today. Very few are not worshiping Baal today, brethren. When God sends you with a son to show them their sins, they're going to stone you. Some of them will know that they're doing it and others won't know that they're doing it, but when you get hit in the head, you'll know you were stoned. You have to learn how to deal with it without sinning against your brethren because you're sent to save their life; even though they're crucifying you.
So you have to forgive them and pray that God have mercy on them, that the seed of Christ should be imparted to them; that they should come out of the darkness which is covering their minds and see their sins that they might repent and be converted. This honor have the saints. So if you think that being a son of God is going to exalt you in the eyes of men, there's the door. Forget it. Forget it. Jesus said, they hated me. Do you think you're better than Him? They hated Him and they're going to hate you. They told Him that He had a devil and they're going to say it to you. They accused Him of an illegitimate birth and they're going to scan you, brethren, and they're going to look for any sin in your life they could find and they're going to rub your face in it. They're going to use that weakness to reject every good thing in Christ that you have. They're going to use every carnal strength they have to bring you down out of your authority, to weaken you, to make you unsure of yourself, to make you insecure, to make you think that you've sinned against them. They'll do anything they can to make the male in you a female. Then when they make you a female, they're going to jump on you and kick you to death until your Christ mind breaks up. Then they'll tell you that they knew all the time you were a phoney. I'm telling you the truth. You have to learn how to handle yourselves because these are the people you are sent to save. You have to love them and not let them do it. You can't let them do it. But you can't stop loving them.
Lots of the time, when a son has an encounter with someone he is sent to, to save, frequently, the relationship might come to a hostile end. But what you need to know is, that if Christ really sent you and that person has tangled with you and you have maintained your Christ mind, if that person was tangling truly with Christ in you, no matter what the circumstances look like, they have departed from you with the seed of Christ. You have to believe it, because if Christ really sent you, it's true. In due season, that seed will sprout and that's the only thing that counts; that the seed was imparted to them. It doesn't matter that they hurt your feelings, it doesn't matter that they lied about you, it doesn't matter that they hated you or blasphemed against you. You get used to it. You're there to save their lives. You're not there to be a king over them. You're not there to point out their sins so that you could feel like a big man or be grieved because they've wounded you. You're there to save their life.
So we see that Satan has quite a plan to get the man that's moving into Christ, at any cost. Several people have come to me recently, having had dreams or visions, in which they perceive one person speaking to another person, saying, get her, just get her; meaning me. I've gone pretty far. Just get her. I don't think they're going to get me because my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, has received my covenant with Him, you see. No matter how I scream and yell and kick, when I'm in trouble, He's going to get me out. I believe it. So, what a wicked doctrine this Gospel of Thomas is. Make the eyes double in place of an eye. Break down the Christ mind and separate that human spirit from Christ, so that Satan can grab a hold of her and bring forth his carnal mind and a hand in the place of a hand. Hand in the place of a hand. I've got a whole bunch of stuff here. Well maybe I didn't write it up. I said that a hand refers to a lifestyle. I guess that's what I did. Change a hand for a hand and a foot for a foot. Scripturally speaking, the hand signifies ministry. So we'll see that that means behavior. Now when you break down the Christ mind in that person, when you break it up and the union goes towards the carnal mind, you're going to change their behavior. This is how you change somebody's behavior. This is how you have a change of mind. Have you heard that repentance is a change of mind? Have you heard that your mind needs to be renewed? Your mind is suppose to be renewed in the spirit.
I've heard all kinds of things preached about renewing your mind, but brethren, there's only one way your mind can be renewed and that's when your human spirit is broken away from the power and authority of Satan and the carnal mind and she joins with the Holy Spirit and Christ is conceived in you. The renewing of your mind is the breaking down of your mind into its component parts, separating or saving your spirit from the clutches of Satan in the carnal mind and completing her in Christ. The renewal of your mind is really the renewal of your human spirit; be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind. I used to think my carnal mind was being renewed. It's not. The spirit in my mind is being renewed. She's getting divorced from her husband, Satan and her offspring, the carnal mind. She's getting a new husband and a new child and she shall be made whole and new in Christ. So we see the renewal of your mind requires the breaking down of your mind. How are we going to do it? With the Word of God. The Scripture says the Word of God is sharp and it's quick and a two edged sword and it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. I use to say, Lord, why in the world would you want to separate my soul from my spirit? It never made any sense to me. Because that which is soul is Satan in the carnal mind. She's really soul; Satan. So the Lord is separating soul from spirit.
The spirit is the human spirit. She's married to Satan and the carnal mind and joined to the soul. So first, He's separating her, pulling her away from the soul, but she's still joined to Satan now and that's the separation of the joints and the marrow. It's a double separation. The mind is pulling away from the soul and then that mind which is formed in the image of Satan is being broken down and reformed. That's the renewing of your mind. It's not enough to sit in a meeting like this. God has to take a hammer to your mind. It takes tribulation; it takes trials; it takes overcoming experiences. God will never tempt you, but He will test you. You will find yourself in circumstances where you must choose between the good and the evil. You must choose what you will do and I'm telling you right up front, if you choose to do righteousness, don't think you will do it easily. Your carnal mind will oppose you every step of the way. She will put pressure on you. If she can't succeed, she'll send your wife, she'll send your mother, she'll send your brother, she'll threaten your job, she'll threaten your finances, she'll threaten your health. You stand fast in Christ, brethren, and she will surely die. The God of Peace will shortly bruise her under your feet and she shall be ashes thereat. She's not going to take this lying down. It won't be easy, but you could do all things in Christ, who strengthens you.
So we see the end of the plan is to replace a hand with a hand. She wants to change your lifestyle from whatever in your life is good in Christ, she wants you to not continue that behavior and change back to Satan's choice of behavior. She wants to change a foot for a foot. Let's see what the foot is. I guess she's speaking about your hand is your behavior and your foot is that which walks on the earth. It has to do with our flesh and our appearance. Then she's going to change an image for an image. The image is this whole physical world system. That's the image. She's going to pervert everything. We talked about that earlier, about a man who's falling into homosexuality and his actual appearance changing. That's the flip. Of course, we have women doing the same thing. They're called lesbians. Some of them are very masculine. Over the last few years, the situation in the United States (at least where I live on Long Island, New York) has gotten very bad. I have seen both males and females and I'm not sure who they are. I can't tell whether they're a man or a woman. It's not just me. I've been riding in a car with somebody and they said to me, did you see that person who just passed? What were they, male or female? I'm not sure. I really honestly couldn't tell.
So right now, if we don't have this spiritual education, we say, well it's just one pervert over there and another pervert over there. But it's going to be more and more. I don't know exactly what will happen, but I know it's going to get much worse before it gets better. You see women going by with such a masculine gait, you know, such a masculine walk, that I just sit there and shake my head. Most people are not disturbed because they think it's just a few, but it's very serious. The more people that Satan can do this in, the more spiritual strength he gathers to influence others. I think I mentioned last week, that in many of our schools in the United States, homosexuality is being taught as a good thing. Of course, fornication is being taught. The young people are being encouraged to experiment and we have an epidemic of very young people still in our high school (you would call it college) just finding themselves in their emotions to be homosexual and they're very distraught. It's very serious.
I would like to read an alternate translation of these instructions to your carnal mind. Then we'll cast it down, okay? You shall enter into the kingdom of darkness or we could say, you shall be an expression of the kingdom of darkness, when Satan's divided spiritual world appears. Now remember, Christ is not divided and Satan is many members. That's why we have many demons or many aliens. When Satan's divided spiritual world appears in this physical realm, this shall come to pass, when the kingdom of God is buried underneath the kingdom of darkness, both spiritually as well as visibly in every man on the face of the earth. When every manifestation of Christ is brought into submission to the carnal mind, that means there won't be one man on the earth manifesting Christ. This will happen when the dominant spiritually male and the submissive spiritually female minds are made one in such a form that the creation is neither both male and female (is not both male and female as God intended) but only female. When the eye or when the completed Spirit of Christ breaks down into the human spirit and the Holy Spirit and their thoughts and behavior become soulish rather than spiritual and the image of the good and the evil become the image of evil. That instruction is being given to the carnal mind of every man who reads this gospel.
So we cast it down; Amen. We curse your plans, Satan, and we pronounce failure upon you and destruction and death and we pronounce light and exposure everywhere you're operating. We declare that you should fail in every snare and plan that you have laid for anyone listening to this tape or reading this transcript and for everybody here. We curse your works in their lives. We expose your lies and we bring destruction upon every fruit of your spirit and we pray, Father, that your Spirit should arise and scatter our enemies, Oh God, and leave us not ashamed, but that we should be in the image of righteousness and that we should be full expressions of the kingdom of your dear Son, of life in Christ Jesus and that no one should snare us, Lord, and that your glory should be revealed through us and in our families and in Nigeria and in the world. We pronounce you defeated, Satan, and your carnal mind and we pray that these tapes go wherever you send them, Lord, because we know you have this whole thing under control. Glory to God. Does anyone have any questions?
COMMENT: Praise the Lord. I believe Adam was perfect in the beginning, but after the fall, he became separated. The reason I'm saying this, if you check where you read in Genesis Chapter 1:26 we're told that in the day that he made them, he made them male and female in His image. After the fall in Chapter 5, we find out that He made them in his likeness. So please explain to me.
PASTOR VITALE: My response to that is that everything that God does begins with a thought and then it begins to happen. So when God thought about man, He thought that He would make him in His likeness and His image, at the end of the whole procedure. That's how I know Satan is going to fail because God said that man would be in His likeness and His image. But we're not in His image yet. In the realm of God's Spirit, we are, but down here in hell or even at that time, it had not yet come to pass. Genesis 1 was the creative word. It is the creative word sending forth the commandment, but it hadn't happened yet. Before it could happen, the fall occurred. God made Adam and Adam was good. It says God looked at His creation and it was good and before He could perfect it, the fall occurred. So we're having this lapse. Everything we know of humanity is a lapse between God's beginnings of the creation and the end of the final image. Okay? Praise the Lord.
COMMENT: You were talking about the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the heavens. You said the kingdom of God is Christ being formed in us. I see the kingdom of the heavens is the union of both producing a new thing all together. But in the gospel it states that from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of God suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. It says the law and the prophets have been from John. Since then the kingdom of the heavens suffer violence and the violent press into it. It says that like a little child you enter into the kingdom of God. Some other translations says the kingdom of the heavens, not the kingdom of God. So I don't know.
PASTOR VITALE: You're asking me to clarify that, is that it? Actually, I haven't studied that, but I would think it's not impossible to find errors if it was studied in the Greek. It would not be impossible to find errors. That's an interesting study. Maybe the Lord will let me do it. I would have to go into each case and read the surrounding verses to find out why God says the Kingdom of God in one place and the Kingdom of heaven in the other place.
I just have one comment with regard to the scripture that says, ever since John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. The Kingdom of the heaven is in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That means in this hour He's in the form of the Holy Spirit and men are trying to take Him (violent men, fallen men) are trying to take Him against His will, such as Simon the Sorcerer. He wanted to pay money to purchase the Holy Ghost. That's what it's speaking about. The kingdom of heaven does exist in this hour in the form of the Holy Ghost, but it's not (oh God, help me to explain this). I hear what you're saying, but it's not the kingdom of the two heavens in us. That's the best I could do unless the Lord gives me more. I'll pray about it for a future meeting, but I hear what you're saying. I believe that the gospels do harmonize. I went through a similar study with regard to the Christ. We have a very intense series called the Christ, where we went through almost every scripture that's translated Christ. We found in many of them the article "the" before Christ. There's a difference between Christ alone and "the" Christ. There's a difference. We found in many scriptures the article "the" was missing and we found scriptures where, in the Greek, it clearly states "Christ Jesus" and was translated in the King James as "Jesus Christ" and there's a difference. So the King James Translation is far from accurate.
Although I believe it's the best translation around, we really have to check it out in the Greek. I have a second Greek Lexicon that I only go into when I'm not satisfied when I use the one that I generally use because it's so difficult. The Greek letters are even in a different format. It's very hard to use and sometimes I even find that the Greek in the lexicon that I use commonly is not accurate. So, we just go by the Spirit and do the best that we can. At least, I do the best that I can and when the Lord shows me a proof, I pass it on to you. You just have to investigate every particular scripture. That particular one about the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence; I'll try to have something on that for you before I leave here.
COMMENT: At the last meeting you said something about the reason why the archaeologists and the amphibologies did not discover the bones of the men who lived before the flood was because maybe they didn't have bones. So I just want your comments on this and Genesis Chapter 2 verse 23; And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
PASTOR VITALE: Bones in the Scripture are a type of spirit. We know that fallen man is flesh and blood, but resurrected man is flesh and bones. The Scripture says the life of the flesh is in the blood. That which gives fallen man existence is in our blood. But in the resurrected man, that which gives him existence is His bone. If you don't have that understanding, you would say where is the life? Did I make that clear? Let me say it again. The life of the flesh is in the blood, so if resurrected man doesn't have blood, where's the life? Fallen man is flesh and blood. Resurrected man is flesh and bone. I give you that as a witness that bone is a type of spirit in the Scripture. I believe that in Genesis 2 we're talking about a very high spiritual creation and that bone typified spirit. I think there's something else the Lord wants to say. Just give me a minute on that. I lost it. I lost it. Sorry, Lord. Flesh and bone. Yes, okay.
Another example is Elisha. You may recall the dead man who was thrown into the same grave with Elisha and there was so much life in his bones that the man came alive. I'm not saying that didn't happen. It may have happened, but it's a type to indicate that bone is a type of spirit and the life is in the spirit. Even Ezekiel saying, oh you bones, live again. It's a type of the human spirits of men coming alive. I mentioned earlier that each human spirit is one bone in the skeleton of the immature Christ, who was killed at the beginning of time. When Ezekiel is told to prophesy to these bones, he's being told to prophesy to the human spirits of Israel. We're told in another place that one is not a member of Israel because of a circumcision of the flesh, but of the circumcision of the heart. We're Israel here today; we are spiritual Israel. Ezekiel's prophesy is for us; oh ye bones, live again. Let Christ arise in you and let Christ arise in you and let Christ arise in all of us. Together we shall have a corporate manifestation of the many membered joint body of Christ. Bone is a type of the spirit. The early manifestation of Adam, that you showed me from the scripture, was one spirit with his wife. They were one spirit and one soul; bone and flesh. Okay?
COMMENT: I just want to add to what Sister Sheila said. Actually she didn't say we didn't have bones. She said we didn't have bones like the ones we have now. The example in the Bible, when Jesus passed through the house after his resurrection and he said unto Thomas, come and feel me. He was definitely flesh and blood. Bones can't pass through the wall, so it has to be a Spirit that can dissolve, but it looks like bone. So she didn't actually say it was bone.
PASTOR VITALE: Thank you. That was excellent.
COMMENT: I just wanted to ask about the breastplate on the high priest, the stones of fire. Checking up, I found out it was lights, plural, and perfections. So in trying to think on it, I was seeing and came to this conclusion that if it was lights and perfections, that makes like fallen man rising up to the state of completeness or perfection, that there are levels of the priests, of perfections actually attained unto. But like the fullness of the stature of perfection that the Father has ordained us for will not yet come into it. I just want to say, "if" I'm right in what I'm thinking is that the perfections, personalities shall also be perfect. It's like we come into this place that some personalities shall actually be made perfect, where like other personalities in the fold have not been made perfect.
PASTOR VITALE: So you're asking me if there are men who have already been made perfect? Let me have someone here explain it to you.
COMMENT: Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's talking about different aspects. He used the word personality, different personalities within us, attaining to perfection. So it means for one individual who'll go through a series of perfection, maybe at a time, a particular personality will also be perfected, then we will rise from there and then another personality is perfected until all the personalities within us are perfected because the Urim and the Thummim, he says, they are pure perfections and lights.
PASTOR VITALE: I don't believe that the personalities that we have within us are perfected individually. I think they have to be fused. They have to be fused. Christ is not divided. The fallen creation is divided and this divided condition is a condition of spiritual perversion that must be rectified through fusion. Christ is reconciling the all into one; one joint body of Christ. That is my belief. Based on that belief, I would have to say no, I don't believe the personalities are being perfected because they're all partial personalities.
The personalities within us are partial personalities and to take it a step further, each and every one of us, spiritually speaking in comparison to Christ, is a partial personality. We are all partial personalities in Christ. Christ, when He died, broke down into a multiple personality which is a perverse condition. That's why all the personalities of humanity are being reconciled into the one Christ. So whether it be on an individual level within us or whether it be the whole creation, we're being reconciled unto one. If you followed any psychiatric study about multiple personalities, you'll find that the treatment is fusion. Now when the creation fell, we experienced an atomic fission. When the son separated from the Father, there was a big blast. The world calls it the "Big Bang Theory." The scientists know there was a big bang. They just don't know what caused the "Big Bang." We know what caused the "Big Bang." The son separated from the Father and caused a big bang and it was atomic fission. Tremendous energy came forth, but atomic fusion gives off much more energy than atomic fission. So we're going to be seeing some power around here.
So we're going to be seeing some power around here as this creation is fused back together, both on the individual level and on the corporate humanity level. I did read your papers and I don't agree with you, but that's okay. It's okay with me and I hope it's okay with you. Okay? Praise the Lord. We can still be friends, amen. What was your second question? Yes, but I haven't studied that, so I would rather not comment. If the Lord lets me, I'll try to do it before I leave, but I won't promise you.
(Audio problems and language comprehension are present in the following comments and are transcribed in a sketchy manner)
COMMENT: How come when we come into Christ, some people have some problems in a particular area, while some don't have that. Do you understand what I'm saying?
PASTOR VITALE: Do you mean problems that newly arise when they come into Christ or problems that existed before they came to Christ? Please give me an example so I can answer.
COMMENT: I don't know how to explain it now. It's like saying that there's some areas in life, different aspects of life, where I might have a personality problem in a particular area and the other person doesn't have it. Let me say, some people can be noisy. What resulted in a quiet person that already watches what he says even before he came to Christ? What is that thing in him that makes him to be careful of what he says while the other person just talks (you know) anyhow. Do you understand? So it's like they're two different personalities, but somehow it is perfected in one, while it is not perfected in the other.
PASTOR VITALE: I would say just for my own clarification, I would call that a personality trait. What each individual is in this world is the product of our spiritual and emotional heritage. These traits come down on the family line just like we tend to prominently physically appear like one of our parents. Most of us have some characteristics of both parents. It's very common to look at a child and say you look just like your parent.
In the same way, we have an emotional heritage and this emotional heritage is formed largely by variables, which are made up of curses and blessings which have gone down on the family line. So we inherit an emotional potential to start with. Then we are effected by other variables that comes in our upbringing; who our caretakers are who raise us and how they influence us. We are the sum total of our emotional inheritance and our experiences in this world. One's upbringing is very important because if someone has a character trait to be noisy, that's not a particularly good character trait. It needs to be subdued. So if you're raised up by caretakers who will teach you that this is not acceptable behavior, who will rebuke you and correct you every time you practice it, Lord willing, by the time you're an adult, you'll get it under control. If you're too shy, and you're raised up by caretakers who are sensitive to you, they'll give you experiences and counsel that will help bring you out. Now everybody doesn't have a good childhood. Some children have qualities that would be a determent in their life. Let's say they're critical and their caretaker never told them that that's not a Godly thing to do; to be criticizing everybody that you see. People don't like it. You can lose your job over it. You can anger your boss. You can anger your teacher. It could affect your opportunities in life. Don't do that. Put your eyes on yourself. Be quiet and sit there. Why are you criticizing that man or that woman? If you don't have a caretaker that teaches you that, you're not given the opportunity to learn how to restrain yourself. See, you need to be given the information that this is not socially acceptable.
We have a world full of people who have problems in their life and they don't know what they're doing that makes people mad at them. They don't know what they're doing that makes people not want to be friends with them. They don't know how they're offensive. We use to have (just to lighten this up a little) there used to be an ad on American TV that said, do you have body odor? Your best friend won't tell you if you have it. It would make a joke out of it and show all their friends walking away from the person and they wouldn't know why. But there's a truth in that. Basically, to answer your question, it's your emotional heritage plus your upbringing. If you have a caretaker who doesn't correct you, either because they themselves have the same trait, and are ignorant about the damage that trait is doing to the person or if you have a caretaker that doesn't care. That is a curse to grow up with a negative quality and no restraint put on it at all. That's a curse. A caretaker who helps you to overcome it would be a blessing in your life. Did I answer your question? Okay.
COMMENT: Could you explain a bit more? In relationship to Christ, those personalities or personality traits (the traits of the carnal mind) when we put on the mind of Christ (develop in Christ) is it like the person who was noisy and now is okay and doesn't have that trait, but that's not saying anything about him or her having Christ. What's the relationship?
PASTOR VITALE: We are the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We see people in our society trained and tuned up or even homed, you might say, to the highest degree of being a positive human being that they could be. They've been taught social skills, they've been educated, they've been loved, they've had every positive influence on their life and they're a high manifestation of the good side of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But they're not righteous. They're good; there's a difference between being good and being righteous. The difference is that no matter how good you are, you still have a sin nature. Did I answer your question? No matter how good you look, no matter how kind you are, no matter what your deeds are, no matter how much compassion you have, you still have a sin nature. You can't get back into heaven with a sin nature. Your righteousness is still as filthy rags. You have to get the righteousness of Christ, which is without sin. See, you're still a manifestation of Satan in the carnal mind.
COMMENT: I understand that, but I feel it needs to be made clear that there's a difference because it appears like if you have no problems and you were just the tree of good, you're okay. I think, the problem is all we're trying to do is relate it to Christ, you know. The understanding appears that if you have no problem in a particular area, you're okay, so what's Christ in practical terms? No, no, you don't understand what I'm saying. You know, we're saying this man has to die (okay) and Christ has to come in. But now we're talking about the realistic issue of you lacking some personality traits. Let's say, because of your upbringing or heritage or whatever, you are basically the Tree of the Knowledge of Good. I know that the sin nature is there. From the question that she asked, it looks like the understanding is that there is a bit of confusion as to Christ and this tree of good. If you had problems with anger, hate, bitterness, it's obvious those are things of the carnal mind and they have to go and Christ has to come in and fill us up with His own attributes. But when they're positive things, the thinking is not that they have to go too, but Christ still has to come and fill them up. How do you cover the gap there? You don't get what I'm saying, still?
PASTOR VITALE: I think what you're saying to me is, are there qualities that appear to be positive that could still be a part of the sin nature? I'm still missing it, huh? Can someone else explain this to me?
COMMENT: I think what she's asking is if I am a quiet person, then I get into Christ, Christ does not have to deal with making me quiet, but somebody else who was not quiet, when he receives Christ, then Christ has to deal with that carnal mind. That would now make the person quiet. Now she's asking, do you now mean that the other person is now better perfected than the other individual who was noisy. Do you get what I'm saying now? It's like asking if that quietness has already helped to perfect him somehow?
PASTOR VITALE: I don't think so. Just let me think for a minute how I'm going to answer this. I don't believe so. My answer is no. Lord, what do you want me to say in this area? Maybe it could be true. I see what you're saying. You use to be a noisy person and Christ came in and He gave you overcoming power in this area and now you don't open your big mouth anymore where you use to. So are you perfected in that area? Is that Christ in that area? Ok, I'm getting there.
It's the opposite? Oh, were you perfected in Christ? Well, I would say so, if you have an area of your personality, which the Lord decides needs no work at all. I see what you're saying, but there's something about the question that's not sitting right with me, but I can't put my finger on it. But I do understand what you're saying and that's true; He won't have to deal with that aspect of your personality. But something about your question is bothering me. I just can't put my finger on it. So if the Lord gives me anything about it, I'll bring it up at another meeting. But the answer, to the best of my knowledge at this point, is yes; when you come to the Lord and you have acquired a particular skill of knowing when to talk and when not to talk, there's no reason for the Lord to work with you in that area. But no matter how good you look, the whole carnal mind has to go. This quality, if it's coming out of the carnal mind, it won't carry over. That's correct.
COMMENT: The Scripture says a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. Neither can a bad tree bear good fruit. So it's like if your root is evil, there's no actual way you can actually put this. Like you were saying once on your tape, you said spiritual is spiritual. Even the witches perform good things, but due to the fact that what they do is out of the carnal mind, it is yet evil in them doing it. It's like me standing in the mirror. My right physical, actually my left in the mirror, so the carnal mind becomes the upper side, actually expressing the same thing that you're saying, but actually it's going to be trying to be the left side.
PASTOR VITALE: I don't know why I couldn't answer that question, but that's correct. There's no good thing in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
COMMENT: I had a problem with that. I don't know. If somebody that is not regenerated and hasn't engrafted to Christ, I don't think they can manifest any kind of Godly trait in him because he is fallen. So whatever corrects our personality or whatever brings us into the kingdom like it's still subject to the Spirit of God. Sometimes we think you have a personality trait that's perfect and okay, but the Spirit of God will come to you later on and tell you that thing you think is okay is a problem. When I was young, I use to get very quiet and I soon discovered that was a problem for me because often times when I need to talk, I don't talk. So it's like a problem, but my teacher had a good personality trait and he's very quiet and a lot of people admired my teacher when I was young. But it became a problem that's wrong. So I don't really think anyone can manifest anything of God unless that is a translation into the kingdom of God. God has to check all those traits again. God can make use of those things later on and redefine it, mortify it, correct it or prune it. It's like a life who still needs pruning, no matter how good it is. That's just my feelings.
PASTOR VITALE: That's correct. The Lord just reminded me of something He told me on this issue quite a while ago. He told me that no matter how "perfected" you appear and I use that word in quotes, no matter how perfected you appear to be in your carnal mind, when enough pressure is put on the carnal mind, you will break because that perfection is just coming basically out of socialization and out of training. But if the trait is in Christ, unto the point of crucifixion, you will not break. Yes, body ministry tonight; that's good. Okay.
COMMENT: Matthew 5:48; Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Coming back to the question that the brother asks about the Urim and the Thummim. He said he checked it out and it means lights and perfections, not single lights but plurals. Now we see that what Jesus Christ said, was admonishing some people concerning correctness that is in their life or personality or traits; maybe to have long suffering, to have a chance in some areas. At the end of it all, said if you dare to be perfect. The Scripture says that Noah was perfect in his days or righteous, so also Job. But later on we find out in the Scriptures it is not the ultimate perfection that you are talking about. But in that generation, they are perfect to God. Now the question about lights and perfection is maybe when somebody overcomes some character in his life, in some certain area, maybe God perfected that character in him and filled it with his light. That makes a different character now. You'll be perfected in different areas. Maybe that's what Urim and Thummim mean; perfection and light. I want you to throw more light on it.
PASTOR VITALE: The truth is I haven't really done much studying on the Urim and the Thummim. The only thing that I could tell you about the breastplate is that it's a type of the righteousness of Christ and I believe that the stones on it typify spirit. But I'm sure you wouldn't want to hear what my carnal mind has to say. I really haven't studied it. Lights and perfections; off the top of my head, what I would say is that the lights typifying unperfected spirit and the perfection is the completion in Christ.
We have two anointings that the Scriptures speak about. I call one the imputed anointing, which is a temporary formation of Christ, which is not in a configuration which can bring forth a lasting perfection, such as we see in Jesus of Nazareth. It was such a manifestation of Christ which we saw in natural Israel and we see it in the carnal church today; an imputed Christ. It's without repentance. It's a gift which is given from God for a specific purpose. In the case of natural Israel, the imputed anointing was given for one ultimate purpose, originally or firstly for the bringing forth of the natural law and then ultimately the bringing forth of the spiritual law in the person or the fulfillment of the law in the person of Jesus Christ. So this is what is striking me for whatever it's worth. The lights are speaking about spirit that is not completed or not made perfect; anointings which are imputed without repentance for God's purposes. The perfections, speaking about the many-membered Christ, many-membered Israel, many membered Christ, the many-membered perfected spirits. The Lord just gave me that scripture from the book of Revelation about the 144,000. In the Greek, it really says thousands of hundred and forty fours. That's what it says in the Greek; thousands of hundred and forty fours. We found in our studies that one hundred and forty four is the symbolic number for the perfected man. Number six is the number for the earth man. Number twelve is the number for the spiritual man and number one hundred and forty four is the number for the perfected man. So we see in the book of Revelation, thousands of one hundred and forty fours; thousands of perfected men. But it's the same principle as Ezekiel saying, I saw many trees. There's just one Tree of Life. It's a many membered tree and it's a many membered perfected man.
COMMENT: I read a book a long time ago called The Spirit Controlled Man. In the book it talked about overcoming power being given to Christians. It's also an ability that comes in meeting one another in fellowship and being around a matured people who have the character of the Lord, where Christ has already become their lifestyle and just being around them, their spirituality helps to kill our carnality. That book, The Spirit Controlled Man and the spirit controlled mind really helped me a lot. The question I want to ask is about the present situation now and at the end of the age. What about the violence all around us and can a Christian defend himself?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, that's a very difficult question. I do have one comment that I would like to make on it. Let me say this first and maybe the Lord will give me an answer for the other part of it. Conversion to Christianity is not passive. You go to the people and you talk to them and if they're not interested, they go away. That's the ministry of the carnal church. That's the Jesus who is a gentleman. But it's not Christ.
In the hour that Christ is appearing in full stature, men will be taken against their will, but it's not physical. The method that Christ is using is spiritual. The way men will be taken against their will is that they're going to have the seed of Christ planted into their minds through a verbal encounter with a son; sometimes hostile, sometimes not. But once that seed engrafts, all of humanity that doesn't come willingly is going to be taken by Christ against their will because we belong to Him. We're His property. He is our Lord and Master and when the time comes, He will take us. But the pressure is not physical violence. The pressure is spiritual power and authority. This is not a passive religion. The only reason it is passive in this hour is that there's a qualification for taking a man against his will. Only a righteous man can take you against your will. If a fallen man tries to take you against your will, it's witchcraft and it's punishable by death. The Lord will not have that sin in His holy mountain. Only a righteous man can take another man or force another man into Christianity against his will. None are righteous, no not one. So the world and most Christians perceive Christianity as a passive religion and they come up with all these fables that Jesus is a gentleman. He's not a gentleman. He's just not in perfection in the flesh in this hour. Everybody is coming.
As I mentioned the other night, I'm of the opinion that it's going to take approximately 1500 years to go through the whole earth, so those human beings whose bodies die without a son of God having gotten to them, they will pass out of this world system. But in due season, every human being on the face of the earth will be a manifestation of Christ, whether he wants to be or whether he doesn't want to be because we have a master and He owns us and we're His. In addition to that, my Bible tells me that when He sets us free from our carnal mind, we'll be glad that He did it. The only reason that we don't want it is that we're joined to Satan in our mind. Now for the second part of your question, what should a Christian do when he is faced with physical violence, I really haven't asked the Lord that question. I don't believe in a Buddhist type passivity where you stand there and say shoot me. I don't believe in that and I don't know what the answer is. But I would like to believe this, that for those people who are maturing in Christ, that there would either be a supernatural move to deliver them or the Lord would clearly fight for them, possibly on a physical plane. For Christians who are not that mature that they would hear from the Lord, I don't believe you stand there and get shot. But I really can't tell you that I've heard from the Lord. Not living in Nigeria, I've never asked Him that question, but I will. If I have an answer before I leave, I'll share it with you. I should write some of these questions down that you've given me.
COMMENT: What I believe a Christian in this time should do is if you have not come to the realm where the Lord either delivers you supernaturally by disappearing, you take off because the baby Jesus was informed Herod was after His life. The Lord told the parents, take this baby and go away. I think it was a time for Him to go away that He should not be killed and that the prophesy might come to pass. But at a certain time when Jesus Christ arrived at that point, He said, no man can take away my life. Now why was it necessary that the Father would have to say, take this baby to Egypt? I believe if you are a Christian and you know you have not arrived at that point where you can disappear, you better get out and not stay there and say just shoot me.
PASTOR VITALE: I hear you, but as I told you earlier, I'm sure that you don't need to hear what my carnal mind has to say. So what I'm saying to you is that I haven't heard from the Lord on this issue. That's what I'm saying to you. My personal feeling is that you're not suppose to stand there and get shot. So whether or not you run or you take up arms, I don't know. I'd like the answer to that question myself. Anybody else? Praise the Lord. God bless you brethren; see you tomorrow.
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