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And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles. (Ezekiel 47:3) |
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The description of the Temple of Ezekiel portrays the transformed inner nature of the mature Christian just as the first chapter describes the outer image of Christ, the outer image we also will have when we attain His image. |
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The water coming from the south side of the gate that looks toward the East is the Holy Spirit of God. |
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The adamic man lives by the resources of flesh and blood. The new man of the Kingdom lives by the resources of the Spirit of God. If we are Christians, you and I are learning to live by the Spirit of God. |
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There are only two ways in which a human being can live. One is by flesh and blood. The other is by the Spirit of God. It is the will of God that every individual in the new world of righteousness live by the Spirit of God. |
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As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. |
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How do we learn to live by the Spirit of God? |
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We start off in water to the ankles. Don't try to be a hero. Learning to live by the Spirit of God takes a lifetime of experience. Easy does it! |
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First we must always keep in mind that when we were baptized in water we became part of Christ's crucifixion and part of His resurrection. We count ourselves as dead and we count ourselves as raised in Christ to the right hand of the Father in Heaven. |
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Each day God establishes our position to a greater extent. He faithfully brings incidents into our life that cause us to choose between our adamic nature and our new born-again nature. |
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These exercises keep us praying every minute. We have to keep on viewing ourselves as dead indeed unto the world and alive indeed unto the Lord. |
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In this world we experience numerous pains, dreads, accusations, fears, betrayals, frustrations, insults—just about every type of trouble imaginable. Has this been true of you? Probably so if you're human. |
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It is what you do with these troubles that will determine whether you are transformed into the image of Christ or whether you end up as decaying protoplasm. You will turn out to be a prophet or a cranky, selfish old person, complaining about everything, with nothing to give the next generation. It's your choice each day. |
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God wants you to live in the Spirit! Read your Bible every day. Pray. Give. Serve. Do what you can. Quit your bellyaching. Forget about retiring. Get out there and do something profitable. At least you can pray and that's one of the most valuable exercises of all. |
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Every problem you have will drive you either further into the flesh or further into the Spirit. Complain, complain, complain and you will grow old and bitter with a face like a pickle. |
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Pray, pray, pray. Give your troubles to God. Go through the veil to the Mercy Seat. Christ paid for your admittance to the very Presence of the Majesty in the heavens. Quit blaming the devil, people, and God, and pull down some grace to help yourself and those around you. |
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You are in water to the ankles. You can keep running back on the beach if you want to or you can move on out to deeper waters. |
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I am too old; I am too young; I am too sick; I am too poor. There always will be an excuse if you are looking for one. |
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For those who love the Lord there are no excuses. They are out there at every age fighting the good fight of faith. They are moving forward in the waters of God. They are learning to live in the Spirit of God. |
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You can lecture your children and grandchildren about proper behavior but it may do little good. But if you will bring God into your life they will see and feel the glory and it will change them. |
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Which is it going to be? Get up on your hind legs and press the battle! |
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Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees. . . (Ezekiel 47:4) |
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When we first are saved we are in water to the ankles, that is, we have a touch of eternal life on our personality. Then we are to move forward in the water and learn to live by the Spirit. We are to lay hold on eternal life. |
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To live by the Spirit is to commit every decision to the Lord. |
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We get up in the morning full of energy if we are young, stiff and tired if we are old. The problems of the day hit our mind and we begin to plan or worry. It is right then the decision is made. Do we immediately look up to God and give him the day along with our problems? Or do we begin to scheme and think about whether we should do this or that. |
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The Lord loves to hear your voice in the morning. Keep looking to Jesus. Keep looking to Jesus. As you do the Spirit of God will envelop you. You may not feel anything but He will be there. |
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Pray about what you eat in the morning. Pray about what you wear. Pray about everything. Pray without ceasing. This is how you go deeper in the Spirit. |
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Some will say, "I can't live like that. I don't want to be straining all the time to look to Jesus." You don't have to strain. You keep breathing don't you? Prayer is like breathing. The issue is not straining over prayer it's where you are directing your mind. You either are looking to God in every situation or you are scheming and worrying. |
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When you don't have enough money look to Jesus. When someone offends you look to Jesus. When the world goes crazy look to Jesus. When you get very bad news look to Jesus. Get out there in water to the knees! |
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The worst enemy you ever will have is your own mind. Your mind is an enemy of God. God did not give us a brain so we could plan our day. God gave us a brain so we can understand Him and His Word. Commit your way to the Lord. Let Him direct your paths. |
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I am not suggesting you should walk around numbly waiting for the great puppeteer in the sky to manipulate your arms and legs. Use the brains you have in order to do what is in front of you but in the meantime keep looking to the Lord. |
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Looking to the Lord gets to be natural and easy after a while. But you have to keep working at it. Right, saints? |
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When you are in water to your knees you can churn around but it is not as easy as when you are ankle deep. You can even go back to the shore if you want. |
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But there is a Voice farther out calling to you: "This is the way, walk ye in it." |
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Do you want to go deeper with Jesus? |
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. . . Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins. (Ezekiel 47:4) |
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You start off in waters to the ankles and then progress to waters to the knees. Before you go from one level of the Spirit to another there has to be a measurement. The measurement means God judges you before you go deeper. |
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There is an initial judgment of your personality when you first receive Christ. You have to repent of your ways in the world. When you do the Lord forgives you through the blood of Christ. |
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As you press forward in the Spirit there is a further judgment. Behavior that was not picked up on previously now comes to your attention. Some of the finer points of holiness and righteousness begin to be emphasized, such as gossip, criticism, talking behind people's back, bitterness, unforgiveness, anger. It sounds like the typical church, doesn't it? Well, all of these little foxes have to go because they ruin the Lord's planting. |
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If you have made it to the knees the Lord is ready to take you on to water to the hips. The hips are the area of cleansing, fruitfulness, and strength. God examines your motivations, self-love, self-seeking, presumption. This is where Jacob wrestles with the angel. |
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We go along for awhile in the Lord supposing we are Mister Faithful and True. Then we are brought to the Jabbok. God wants to change our name from the supplanter to "he who wrestles with God." All of our self-seeking and religious preening bursts into flame in the Presence of the Holy One of Israel. |
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If we have integrity we will come forth victorious, although lame as far as our own strength is concerned. |
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If you are in your wrestling match with God, don't let go. Are you a phony or for real? There are a lot of slippery characters in the churches, as Jude tells us. In the present hour God is casting about to see who really is part of the Lord Jesus. |
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It is time for God to give His churches a hot bath with strong lye soap. You know what I mean? Then you will see all the religious mascara come off and the saints will be scrubbed until they are fresh, all the churchy makeup gone from their faces. |
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What do you say we get real with God? He has great plans for the present hour but he needs men, women, boys, and girls who mean business. God wants the politics out and sincerity in. |
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We need a revival and we need one badly. Not an increase in ballyhoo but the real stuff. |
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How about you? Are you willing to seek God until Jacob dies and Israel is born in you? If so you will find yourself in the Spirit of God in a place of fruitfulness and strength you have not known before. |
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God is going to shake everything before He brings in everlasting righteousness. The Kingdom will be taken by those who are strong in the Lord. The available glory is fantastic! |
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It's for you but you're going to have to lay everything else aside if you expect to get God's best! |
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Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. (Ezekiel 47:5) |
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After we have been saved, filled with the Spirit, and have bowed before God in the surrender of our self-will, what remains? There is a judgment, and then a fourth area. What is it? |
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The fourth area is the fullness of God. |
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When Paul speaks of the fullness of God he mentions the love of Christ that passes understanding. The fourth area is the fullness of God. |
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Prior to the fourth level we are intent on attaining the fullness of redemption. When we have died to worldliness, bodily lust, and self-will, we have been redeemed from the hand of the enemy. |
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What remains after we have been redeemed from the hand of the enemy? Two main things. First to be the chariot of God. Second to be a tree of life. The first is for God's use. The second is for the use of other people. |
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God has decided to leave Heaven and govern His creation from within human beings. We are being made the throne of God. God doesn't like the idea of being confined to a temple in Heaven when His children are on the earth. So He has decided to live among His offspring in a temple made from people. The temple made from people is called the church because it has been selected from mankind for God's holy purposes. |
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But the nations are made up of people who are spiritually dead. Therefore the Church is being transformed from living souls to life-giving spirits. After the members of the Church have been redeemed they are planted along the banks of the River of Life so they continually can bear the fruit that brings eternal life to those who eat. Also their leaves bring healing to the nations. |
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It is as simple and straightforward as this. |
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How would you like to find your life in God and in other people? You will be more than happy to make this transition when you are filled with all the fullness of God, because you will feel within yourself the love of Christ that passes understanding. |
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The love of Christ grows in us until it is an all-consuming passion. All other aspects of our religion are seen as scaffolding. We would gladly lay down in the street and be run over if it would bring the Presence of God to those to whom the Lord is directing us. You will see what I mean when it touches you. |
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The Song of Solomon gives us a faint glimmer of the love of Christ. It is the flame of God's Being. Everything else is seen as of little value when compared with the love of Christ for people, especially for Israel. |
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You will have to experience it for yourself. I can only tell you it exists. |
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Water to the ankles, to the knees, to the hips. Redemption. And then the fullness of God. Waters to swim in. |
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O to lose our life in the fullness of God! |
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For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. (Galatians 6:15) |
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The new covenant results in the change from a filthy robe of immorality and violence to a white robe, a robe of righteousness and eternal life. |
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The Sabbath is fulfilled in us because we are entering God's rest, not one day out of seven but every day throughout eternity. God is resting, and we are becoming an eternal part of His rest through Christ Jesus. |
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To attempt to add to our rest in God the letter of the fourth commandment, or the dietary ordinances, or circumcision, or observance of the feast days, or any of the other statutes of the Mosaic Law, is not a sin. But it may bring confusion to what should be a simple following of the Lord. |
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There are believers, both Jewish and Gentiles, who keep the Sabbath-day commandment by doing no work of any kind on Saturday, who observe Passover, the Day of Atonement, and the feast of Tabernacles. These practices may be a blessing to them while Christ, who is the fulfillment of all these, is being formed in them. |
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The Lord loves His people who observe some of the ordinances of the Law of Moses, and a morality that works by the letter of the Law is better than the current teaching that produces little or no righteous behavior. |
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The new covenant of death and resurrection has a goal and a process infinitely higher than any previous covenant. There is no religious practice that can add to or improve on the process of death and resurrection. |
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Keeping the Mosaic statutes does not lead to the goal of bodily righteousness, immortality, and glory. Only the death and resurrection of the inner nature can produce the first resurrection. |
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Since the process of death and resurrection derives its authority from the blood of the Lord, no one can condemn the saint for failing to keep the letter of the Law of Moses. |
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He who has died to the world and is bringing forth fruit through union with Christ need not look back to a lesser covenant. He is without condemnation because the living Christ is justifying him. Yet he is not to despise his brother who does not have this understanding or faith. |
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Let not the one who is keeping the ordinances of Moses despise the believer who trusts in the Lord Jesus alone for his salvation, and let not the one who observes none of the ordinances despise his brother or sister who believes the observance to be necessary. |
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Are the Ten Commandments binding on the Christian? |
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No, in the sense he is under a superior covenant. |
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Yes, in the sense that as Christ is formed in him he keeps the eternal moral law of God to an exceedingly greater degree than is possible to the sincere believer who is seeking to go back and observe the letter of the Law. |
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Let us repeat: there is no sin in observing the several statutes and ordinances of the Law of Moses. Let the believer in Christ observe the Passover, the Sabbath, circumcision, bar mitzvah, Succot, the mikvah cleansing, or whatever else he or she desires to do before the Lord. Let him practice these according to the Scripture and rejoice before the Lord. |
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The believer also must keep in mind that all such ceremonies are pointing toward the day when Christ is formed in the believer. It is the forming of Christ, the new creation, that is the new covenant and the salvation of the Lord. All else is temporary and a scaffolding that will be done away when we come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (from The Christian and the Ten Commandments) |
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All these are the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24:8) |
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The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is not the Divine solution for the problems of people. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is the Divine solution for the problem of God, which is the bringing about of loving obedience on the part of God's creatures and the establishing of Christ Jesus as the Head, Center, and Significance of every creature and of every other aspect of the creation. |
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It is when people are exclaiming, "Peace and safety," a peace and safety brought about through means of their own resources, that the end will come. |
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Our afflictions are leading to redemption. Certainly sorrow has been the portion of mankind since the first century. Even in our time the famines, pestilences, and earthquakes continue. Heart disease and cancer are two of the principal pestilences of our day and in some instances overcome the most capable efforts of medical science to combat them. |
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"All these are the beginning of sorrows." Sorrows may be translated "birth pains," and some Bible editions have adopted this rendering. The wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, and other afflictions of the world are not the pains of death but of birth. The creation is not preparing to die but to live. The redemption of the righteous is drawing near. |
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The entire material creation is anxiously and hopefully awaiting the revealing of the sons of God because the material creation itself—the earth and those who are saved to dwell therein—will be released from the bondages of sin and death under the ministry of the sons of God. |
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We are not coming to the end of anything except sin and rebellion against God and His Christ. We stand now at the threshold of the glorious consummation of all that God has envisioned since He planned the creation. |
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All that God has sown in the earth is near to harvest. The Lord Jesus the Christ will return with His saints to bring in the Kingdom of God, that wonderful reign of God in Christ over the nations of the earth. |
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The earth and its resources belong to Christ as does every individual who has ever been born. Wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes—all are necessary because we build "Herod's Temples." Saints and sinners alike build for the glory of self more often than not. God in His goodness sends various afflictions on us and the rest of mankind so the works of self and flesh will be torn down before they do extensive damage to God's plan for the world. |
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God intervenes in our life before we are so strengthened in our self-will we no longer can be brought under the lordship of Christ Jesus. The only freedom there is comes to man when he accepts the absolute lordship of Christ Jesus over him. Only then is he free. |
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It is God's goodness that knocks down every stone of our life until there is not one left on another. All we have built for our self-glory is demolished. Then God in Christ comes to us and builds His own place of rest. We find our true rest in His rest. |
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The wars, pestilences and earthquakes are not the pains of death, except death to sin and rebellion. Rather they are the pains of life—the travail of the material creation to bring forth the Kingdom of God in the earth. |
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Glory is on the way. He who endures to the end in Christ Jesus will be saved into the eternal Kingdom of God. (from The Coming of the Lord) |
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Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (II Thessalonians 2:3,4) |
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Like Judas, Antichrist probably will start out as a somewhat sincere Christian. However, encouraged by the spirit of religious delusion currently infiltrating various branches of evangelicalism, including the Charismatics, Antichrist will become filled with self-will until he believes he is God. |
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The spirit of religious delusion is Christianity minus the personal cross of the believer. It is the attempt to use the things of Christ apart from the Presence and guidance of the resurrected Jesus. Self-governed people speak in tongues and are attempting to build the Kingdom. We see it on every hand. |
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Christians imagine that Antichrist will be hostile to Christianity in a manner similar to a Fascist or Communist dictator. They do not understand the wisdom of the enemy. It is true, rather, that Antichrist will invite the Christians to help him with the task of improving the quality of life of earth's multitudes. |
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Antichrist will not attack the professions of belief of the churches because Satan knows religious beliefs alone cannot destroy his kingdom. Antichrist will attack the manifestation of the Spirit of God. He will discourage prayer and all that has to do with life in the Spirit, and will teach the Christians (who are sheep) to emphasize the "good" they can do in the world—to use their resources and talents to help mankind. |
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That which is positive in terms of people is to be stressed, and talk about the coming of a Kingdom and a Day of Judgment is to be avoided as not being constructive and helpful. The churches are to be hospitals to "help sinners," not prophets that thunder denunciations of civilization and urge us to accept crucifixion with Christ Jesus. Antichrist will overcome many believers with his smooth words (Daniel 11:32). |
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Only a praying saint who walks with God will be able to see through the mask of the worldly "friends" of the church and perceive the face of the Hell-filled fallen cherub. |
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The Christian churches in their present condition represent no danger to Satan. It is God whom Satan fears. As long as we of the churches concentrate on our activities, ambitions ("for the Gospel"), programs, buildings, computerized analyses, seminars, rallies, conventions, Satan is safe. |
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Satan is safe until some saint goes to his knees in prayer, lays his life (religious and otherwise) at the foot of the cross of Christ Jesus, and then arises under the load of his personal cross and begins to walk in righteousness, holiness, and stern obedience to the Father. It is then Hell trembles. |
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The accuser of the brothers is overcome only when a saint trusts in the blood of the Lamb, reveals the Word of God in his personality, deeds, and words, and loves not his life to the death. |
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Such a saint learns from the Father that he does not need the help of the world and is not to seek it. His role in the world is not to solve the problems of mankind. His role is to bear witness of the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and of the Kingdom of righteousness that soon is to come to earth. |
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Take your gifts and lay them at the cross. Let the living Christ govern all that you do. (from The Coming of the Lord) |
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