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I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know God knows. And I know that this man whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. (II Corinthians 12:2-4 NIV) |
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Since neither the Hebrew nor the Greek language distinguish between Heaven where God's throne is, and the space above the earth, it might be profitable for us to be more specific when referring to Heaven and Paradise.. |
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We know from what the Apostle Paul said that there are multiple heavens and that Paradise is in the third heaven. |
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Actually we humans are not interested in merely leaving the earth and entering the spirit realm. What we desire is Paradise, the garden of God, and we refer to this as "Heaven." Paradise was on earth at one time in the region of the Persian Gulf. It was not in the third heaven or even in the spirit realm. It is remarkable that so much trouble is emanating today from the original location of the Garden of Eden. |
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We humans remember the garden of Paradise. This is why we enjoy gardens and why we think of a garden when we think of Heaven. The truth is, Heaven is the Throne of God, the origin of government. Paradise is a place of delight, the natural home of human beings. Who wouldn't want to return to Paradise! |
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However, the issue today is the Throne, the doing of God's will. Heaven is God's Throne. Paradise is not God's throne but the garden of God. Jeremiah tells us that one day Jerusalem will be the Throne of God, that is, Heaven. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart. (Jeremiah 3:17 NIV) |
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Jerusalem will be the Throne of God that governs Paradise on the earth because the Law will go out from Zion and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. |
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Today there is war in the heavens. Satan is a great sign in the heaven. He accuses us before the Throne of God. We do not want to go there. We want to go to the garden where the godly wander about with flowers in their hands, enjoying the beauty of God's Paradise. We had Paradise and we lost it. Paradise cannot be regained until God develops rulers who will keep the snakes out of it. Each of God's rulers must become a part of the Throne of God. |
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If God is dealing with you about rulership, seek His face earnestly. God cannot restore Paradise to the earth until He has created a royal priesthood that can teach, bless, guide, judge, heal, and govern people. Will you let God work with you until you can help with the establishing of |
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the Kingdom of God on the earth? |
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How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; (Hebrews 2:3) |
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The other day at the Divisional meeting I mentioned to the pastors that I hoped to live another fifteen years. Jim Rich asked, "What do you want to do in that time?" I answered, "I have something I want to say to the Church." |
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After I got home I thought, "I know I want to say something but exactly what is it?" |
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The main thing I wish to do over the next few years is to explain to the Christian people the program of salvation as I believe the Lord has explained it to me. It doesn't matter how many revivals God sends, if we don't get hold of the program of salvation the good that is done in the revival won't last. |
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I know I've said these things before and probably will keep on saying them for fifteen years. |
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Today we are viewing salvation as a ticket to Heaven. Jesus is our ticket to Heaven. If we take the "four steps of salvation" we will escape Hell and go to Heaven when we die. |
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People, this is not the program of salvation. |
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The program of salvation is a Divine operation that takes the adamic personality and re-creates it until it is in the moral image of Christ and at rest in God's Person and will. The re-creation is not so we can go to Heaven but that we may have fellowship with God and participate in the work of the Kingdom of God which soon is to come to the earth. |
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While these two views of salvation may appear to be similar, or it may seem that the second is some kind of improved or enlarged version of the first, the truth is they are poles apart. One is a change of location. The other is a change of personality without reference to location. |
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There are several considerations or aspects of the program of salvation that we discussed last night in the Discipleship class that might be helpful to our readers. |
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The goals. Deliverance from destruction in the Day of Wrath is a primary goal of salvation. This part of the goal includes the forgiveness of our sins. |
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The second part of salvation is the transformation of our personality in line with God's calling on our life. I do not mean our calling in this world but our eternal position in the Kingdom of God the mark that has been established for us by the Lord. The second part of salvation includes the removal of the power and presence of sin in our personality, the forming of the Divine Nature of Christ in us, the coming of the Father and the Son to dwell in our transformed inner nature, and the gift of a body of resurrection life that will clothe our resurrected mortal frame. |
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To be continued. |
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So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. |
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(Hebrews 9:28) |
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None of what we mentioned in the previous essay has anything to do with going to Heaven when we die. Rather it is involved with our position in the Day of Christ. If we preachers would be scriptural we should be preparing people for the Day of the Lord, not for life in Heaven. The Apostles prepared people for the Day of Christ! |
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As we have said, the supreme goal of salvation is to be in the moral image of Christ and to be abiding in untroubled rest in the Person and will of God. |
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The program of re-creation. The program of re-creation refers to the operation of the new covenant. The goal of the new covenant is the writing of God's eternal moral law (of which the Law of Moses is an abridged, negative, covenantal version) in our mind and on our heart. This is another way of saying that Christ is formed in us and we are at rest in God's Person and will. |
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The forming of Christ in us is the forming of the Kingdom of God in us, for Christ Himself is the Kingdom of God. When we are in Him we are in the Kingdom and the Kingdom in us. |
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Here is how it works. When we truly receive Christ (not just go through some religious formality), believing in Christ and being baptized in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our sins are forgiven. We are touched with the Spirit of God, which is eternal life. Also, Christ is born in us. This is not a figure of speech but an actual spiritual happening. |
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Now we are to pray, read the Bible, attend church, serve, give, and do all else associated with Christianity. As we read the Bible we find many commandments given to us by the Apostles of Christ. We are to obey them. We are to present our body a living sacrifice to God and do all else we have been directed to do. |
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Please note that Christ does not do this in us. We, in our natural adamic nature, have to pray to God continually for the strength and wisdom to obey the Apostles. If we are not willing to rouse our natural man to seek God so we can keep the commandments of Christ and His Apostles we have no chance of entering the Kingdom of God. |
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As we walk in the light of God's will, faithfully obeying God's will as we understand it, the Spirit of God enables us to gain the victory over sin one step at a time. The Spirit pulls the garbage out of us. At the same time Christ is formed in us. This is a lifelong program. The garbage goes, Christ comes in. The garbage goes, Christ comes in. The garbage goes, Christ comes in. |
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This is how the new covenant operates. The old nature dies on the cross and the new man sits with Christ at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. |
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As we are dying and Christ is living, the blood of Jesus keeps us righteous in the sight of God. |
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To be continued. |
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Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. (I Corinthians 15:34) |
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The monumental error in Evangelical thinking is that the blood of Jesus keeps us righteous whether or not we are walking in the light and undergoing the program of exchanged life. This point of view is totally unscriptural. It is only as we follow the law of the Spirit of life that the blood keeps atoning for our sin. The blood of Jesus is not a ticket to Heaven! Divine grace is not an eternal, unconditional amnesty! You can blow the program. Please don't try to prove me wrong. |
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The new covenant does not consist of our obeying the Apostles. But it is only as we obey Christ and His Apostles that we enter the new covenant. |
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The part of our personality that has been formed from the Divine Nature of Christ does not sin. Christ does not sin and that which is born of Him does not sin. |
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Our goal is to be filled with Christ. Then we have attained the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. |
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When we die there probably will still be some of the old sin in us. Whatever there is in us will be removed by the Lord. To those who look for Him will He appear the second time without sin unto salvation. The salvation is the removal of whatever sin still resides in us. |
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Those who are walking in the light, obeying God in all that they know, are the overcomers. An overcomer simply is a believer who is doing all he knows to do. That is all there is to it! |
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One can see at a glance that some overcomers will die after a short Christian life and Christ will have to remove a great deal of sin from them if they are to receive the rewards assigned to the overcomer sin they did not live long enough to gain the victory over. Or perhaps they simply had not been taught that there was such a thing as a program of deliverance from sin. |
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We are not including here the average American church-attender who is neglecting his or her salvation in favor of attending to the materialism of our culture. That individual will not escape the wrath of Christ whether or not he or she has taken the four steps of salvation! |
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Is there a difference between the victorious saint who has had many years to achieve the new creation and the victorious saint who has had little opportunity to achieve the new creation? In both instances the Lord will remove the power and presence of sin from them and give them a body of indestructible eternal life. |
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Yes, there is one great difference and it will no doubt be reflected in the capabilities of the body they receive and also in their position in the Kingdom of God. |
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The difference is that the saint who has spent many years gaining the victory over sin has had developed in him or her a conquering spirit, a wall against sin. These are God's rulers and they have suffered! They will govern the creation. |
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The saint who has had but a short time or little teaching will probably never throughout eternity have the opportunity to develop a conquering spirit. But he will have sin removed from him and will receive a body of life. He will be totally pleased with his position in the Kingdom. |
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To be continued. |
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And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. (Matthew 20:23) |
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It is our point of view, and we believe there is supporting Scripture, that our position in the Kingdom is governed largely by predestination. It is not our responsibility to strive to be a great one in the Kingdom of God but to press toward the mark that has been set for us as an individual. We will not find perfect fulfillment and joy if we undershoot or seek to overshoot that mark. We will be most happy if we are content with our calling and are diligent in fulfilling it. |
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In every case, the believer in Christ who is doing all he knows to do, obeying God according to his knowledge, is absolutely without condemnation. He is not on probation because of not having attained perfection. |
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The blood of Jesus Christ is not a ticket to Heaven, it is a provision God has made so that sinful people can enter the program of re-creation. Whoever would seek to play games with God, live in sin, and then "plead the blood" for protection against God's judgment, will find God to be an expert game-player and will always lose. He takes the wise in their craftiness! |
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There is a negative side of redemption which is the removal of the guilt, power, presence, and results of sin from us. |
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There is a positive side of redemption which is the recreation of our personality and our entrance into the rest of God. Included is the gift of a body that reflects in itself the type of Christian life we have lived. |
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The idea that every individual who has taken the four steps of salvation will receive a body like that of Christ is not scriptural. Our body will reflect the things we have done in this world. As we sow we shall reap. |
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Some members of the Kingdom of God will reap Christ a hundredfold. Some, sixtyfold. Some, thirtyfold. The hundred, sixty, and thirty are multipliers, not percentages. |
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There will be greatest and least in the Kingdom, and the determining factor is the practice and teaching of the commandments given by Christ. |
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A naked spirit or an oak of righteousness. All true Christians build on the one foundation, Jesus Christ. On this foundation they build gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, and straw. One of the differences among these materials is their response to God's fire. |
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Every person's work will be revealed by the test of fire. Our God is a consuming fire. That which is wrought in Christ is made more precious by the fire of God. That which is wrought in the lusts and ambitions of the flesh is burned away by fire. |
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If in the day of fire a believer's works stand the test of fire, he or she shall be rewarded with glory, honor, authority, power, and nearness to God in the Kingdom. |
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If a believer's works are burned up by the Presence of God, he or she will suffer a staggering loss of inheritance. |
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The Apostle Paul delivered a sinning Christian over to Satan that his flesh might be destroyed, the idea being that his spirit could be saved in the Day of Christ. |
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To be continued. |
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If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. (I Corinthians 3:15) |
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Sometimes this verse is used to support the idea that everyone will be saved. This concept is not true, being denied by the description of the white-throne judgment in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelation. |
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Other times it is advanced by careless Christians who take the attitude that even though they get a smaller mansion in Heaven they still will be saved. |
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People love to deal! "I can fool around in the present world and still 'make it.' " |
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This is why we inveigh so strongly against the lawless-grace-rapture-Heaven model of salvation. It is incorrect and leads to destructive conclusions. |
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To consider being saved as by fire is, first of all, to flirt with the idea that perhaps Christ will decide you are not worthy of the Kingdom and leave you outside the great doors. When you see the massive doors begin to close and have the last glimpse (for eternity) of little children playing before the Lamb, and you are forced to remain in the darkness with people like yourself, no more praying mother or grandmother to cry over you, you will experience an anguish more intense than any known on earth. |
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Don't be proud, matey, it will happen to some! |
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If Christ decides to admit you to the Kingdom, and you have lived in the flesh, all you have accomplished plus much or most of your personality will be removed. There will be no reward. You will have to start life again as a small child, being governed by those who were more diligent. |
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In the Day of Resurrection you may see some of the believers clothed with glory until they are great mountains of fire while you yourself are huddled in a corner experiencing the contempt of those who see you. |
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Not so? |
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And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2) |
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To be saved as a naked spirit is not such a dandy idea. |
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It could never happen to you? Why not? Why are you so special? |
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There have been (and yet are being) more Christians killed for the Gospel in the present century than in any other of the Christian Era. How does God feel when He looks down on the Peruvian, or African, or Chinese Christian and sees the anguished wife looking at the body of her husband, the Pastor, while you are spending your time on football, golf, vacations, and your stocks and bonds? |
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Hey, God is speaking to us in America today. We had better hunker down and start serving the Lord like we mean it. What are you called to do? Do you know? Why don't you know? Is it because you have never come before the Lord Jesus and presented your body as a living sacrifice to God? |
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The party is over in America. A few short years and then the day of reckoning. Get your house in order. Prepare your family to the best of your ability to stand when everything we count on begins to shake. |
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God has all power. If you want to be a victorious saint you can, by His power. Press forward in the Kingdom of God! If you do not take advantage of the present opportunity you will regret it for a long time. |
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Only one life you have and it will be over soon. If you miss Christ's will for you, you are going to have a long time to think about it. It's not necessary that you end up in torment so for Heaven's sake and your sake get with it! |
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For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26) |
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The new covenant provides for deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. Also the presence of sin is to be removed from the camp just as the scapegoat was removed from the camp of the Israelites during the Day of Atonement. |
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The procedure is simple. After we have put our faith in the blood atonement, have been baptized in water, have been forgiven our sins, have passed from death unto life, and are living as a disciple of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit will begin the program of removing the graveclothes of sin and death from us. |
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The worldliness in our personality is destroyed as we turn away from involvement in the world system and behave as a soldier of Christ. |
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The sins of the flesh are destroyed as the Holy Spirit points them out to us and we confess them clearly and renounce them firmly, resisting them through the grace Christ gives. We do this in anticipation of the Day when the Lord appears and finally removes the very presence of sin from us. |
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Our self-will is destroyed as we patiently bear our cross behind Christ. We remain in the prison of the Lord. We accept situations that are painful to us. We wait for the fulfillment of our intense desires, we do not break out of prison and grasp what we think we want. |
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We always give thanks to God and ask for what we want. But we do not budge until the Lord tells us what to do about our wishes. We put our treasures, our hopes, our intense desires, in Heaven. We love not our life to the death. |
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Our will and character must be transformed if we expect the Lord at His coming to remove the sin that is resident in us. Our sinful nature comprises both the sin that dwells in us, that is alien to us, and also our own disobedience, worldliness, and self-love. These are transformed into stern obedience and love for God as we fight against the sin resident in us. |
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The above three deliverances, from the world, from sin, and from self-will, constitute an eternal judgment on our personality. The evil is removed and will not be brought up later. This is the Judgment Seat of Christ and it prepares us for our part in the first resurrection from the dead, the resurrection of the royal priesthood. |
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Once having been saved, filled with God's Spirit of Life, and having experienced the program of removing sin from our personality, we never are to turn back to our old life. If we do we are in danger of not finding an opportunity to repent. We may not be able to turn to the Lord and begin the program of salvation again. |
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The days of babyhood are over for some of us. The real thing, the taking of the Kingdom of God, has begun. It is for you if this is what you desire. But once you put your hand to the plow you never are to look back, not in this world or the next. (from Eternal Judgment) |
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