THE LIFE THAT WAS, THE LIFE THAT IS

AND THE LIFE TO COME

(Part 2)

 

The Life That Was

 

Deep within every man there is a secret sanctum where dwells the mysterious essence of his being.  This inmost reality is that part of a man which separates him from every other living creature and makes him uniquely mankind.   This deep hidden power is what it is of itself  independent of any other part of the man’s complex nature.  It is the man’s “I Am,” a gift from the I AM who created him.  The deep-in human entity of which we speak is called in the scriptures the spirit of man.  “For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him?  even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:11).  As God’s self-knowledge lies in the eternal Spirit, so man’s self-knowledge is by his own spirit, and his knowledge of God is by the direct union of the Spirit of God with the spirit of man.  I cannot overstress the importance of this in our forward walk into our destiny as sons of God!  This truth denies that man is an earthly, physical being having a spirit and declares, rather, that he is a spirit having a physical body.  That which makes a man a human being is not his body but his spirit, in which the image of God originally lay.

Most people on earth have forgotten their beginning.  But the scripture is clear.  “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him” (Gen. 1:26; 2:7; 1:28).  What God actually did was that He imaged Himself in man.  God imaged Himself in man by forming Himself in a man of earth.  Thus man was created as a visible expression of the invisible God.  Now that hasn’t changed!  What has changed is our perception of ourselves because of the fall.  But before we discuss that, let us see just how it was that God imaged Himself in man, and how it is that man is a spiritual being having an earthly experience, instead of a physical being having a spiritual experience.

Quote by J Preston Eby from his book, “The Seed In Every Man”

            Every one of us had our beginnings in our Heavenly Father. We came from His eternal spirit and were created out from that Spirit as spirit. First and foremost, we are spirit. Anything else we may be in our present composition came about by the design of God’s plan for us, but our foundational plank and essence is spirit. As God is a spirit, so are we a spirit. If you are to know God, you must know Him by spirit and if you are to know me, you must know me by spirit. Otherwise, you are only knowing me by those parts that have been added to me, my body, my natural mind, my emotions and my personality. I am spirit. I am human. I am a new creature. I am being changed into something unique and original. What I am and what I am becoming is different than anything that has ever been before! I am a compound man, spirit, soul and body. I am NOT an angel, I am NOT a cherubim or any other heavenly creature. I am uniquely human, which is why God loves me so. I am bringing my humanity into God’s divinity and will know Him in complete union and oneness. This is my journey.

            Have you ever gone to one of the internet sites that give you directions to a location you want to travel to? If so, you will know that the first bit of information they want you to supply is your starting point. Then, they will want you to supply the destination of your trip. Without the starting point and the ending point, it is impossible to obtain an accurate account of your journey. It is the same with our spiritual journey in God. It is vital for us to know where our journey starts and where it ends. The Good News for us is that the scriptures clearly define these two points! Our starting point was in the Father and our ending point is in the Father.

 

Col 1:16-20

16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist .

18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

19 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;

20 And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.  KJV

 

The Message Version states:

Col 1:16-23

16 For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels — everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. 17 He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. 18 And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

He was supreme in the beginning and — leading the resurrection parade — he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. 19 So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. 20 Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe — people and things, animals and atoms — get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross.

21 You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. 22 But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. 23 You don't walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message — just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.

(from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)

 

I Corinthians 15 tells us the END of it all.

The Amplified Version states:

1 Cor 15:20-28

But the fact is that Christ (the Messiah) has been raised from the dead, and He became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep [in death].

21 For since [it was] through a man that death [came into the world, it is] also through a Man that the resurrection of the dead [has come].

22 For just as [because of their union of nature] in Adam all people die, so also [by virtue of their union of nature] shall all in Christ be made alive.

23 But each in his own rank and turn: Christ (the Messiah) [is] the firstfruits, then those who are Christ's [own will be resurrected] at His coming.

24 After that comes the end (the completion), when He delivers over the kingdom to God the Father after rendering inoperative and abolishing every [other] rule and every authority and power.

25 For [Christ] must be King and reign until He has put all [His] enemies under His feet. [Ps 110:1.] 

26 The last enemy to be subdued and abolished is death.

27 For He [the Father] has put all things in subjection under His [Christ's] feet. But when it says, All things are put in subjection [under Him], it is evident that He [Himself] is excepted Who does the subjecting of all things to Him. [Ps 8:6.] 

28 However, when everything is subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also subject Himself to [the Father] Who put all things under Him, so that God may be all in all [be everything to everyone, supreme, the indwelling and controlling factor of life].

 

            Now this is truly Good News, dear one! Our journey is mapped out by reason of these two certain points of our existence, beginning in the Father and arriving in the Father. He is our destination, the end of our travels that began so many long ages ago. There is quite a controversy in our circles of Kingdom Truth that involves our past beginnings, which I would like to address at this time. For many decades there has been conflicting beliefs of our pre-existence or the lack of our pre-existence. By this, we mean our existence before coming to this present state of humanity, with a physical body. It is true, that some have wantonly and mistakenly presented our existence prior to this life as an existence that was much like this present world, claiming that they “counseled” with God about the plan of the ages and some have even taken it to the point that they had to forgive God for sending them to this forsaken place of corruptible life, or He would not have been able to set this all in motion. Of course, I think this to be an extreme view and urge us not to view our pre-existence in the Father as some kind of alternative existence with the present world, living in towns and having children and a spouse. The world that we came from is not to be compared with our earthly life. However, I do believe that I existed in Him, before I was brought into this life. Now, what form I was in and what kind of life I had at that time, I cannot say. I like what Don Wilkins wrote recently, “Some folks tell me I was there in the beginning, singing with the stars of heaven before time began, but I cannot say for sure, because it is too far back for me to remember.” A grand answer for such a mysterious concept! I cannot say I wasn’t there, in the Elohim, as a part of the “let us make man” as recorded in Genesis, but neither can I prove I was there. I am not so sure that my knowing the details of my existence in the Father before this life would do me any good in the here and now of my journey, but I do know I was with Him and had a place in Him that I am being re-membered back unto by reason of this life’s journey. In truth, we cannot be in the process of being re-stored, re-newed, re-generated, re-vived, re-membered, re-conciled without having an original state and condition that we are being re-instated into. What I was in Him, I cannot expound upon with detailed information, but I can point to Him as my point of origin and as my point of destination.

            I find in this journey that we are traveling on that there is a tendency to try to get to our final destination quicker than the road is taking us. So many folks leave the path that the Father has laid before us by reason of their urgency to find a quicker and easier way to the journeys end. When I am traveling in my car to a certain place, I usually try to spend as little time on the road getting to that place as humanly possible. As a result, I rarely take in the sights of my travels, of which, if I had taken the time to capture those sights on discs, it would have made up a beautiful portfolio of some of the most majestic and unique scenes the Creator made for mankind to enjoy. Instead, my mind was totally on the destination and not on the journey to get there. In this spiritual journey of ours, I see that same attitude amongst many dear folks and it is regrettable that we carry over into our spiritual journey the same break-neck pace that I so regret in my natural travels. We have come quite a distance from where we began at, friends, and it is noteworthy for us to take in the sights of this journey into the vastness of God. I have some vivid memories of the past orders I have been a part of in my growing up years in the Lord. I do remember with great fondness the old, tear stained altar that I knelt at in my birthing place in Michigan, a tiny little building with a hand full of saints, where I first surrendered my life to Jesus Christ, my Lord. There were many tears I shed on that wooden altar, scarred and worn, upon which I poured out my heart to my new found Love and told Him of my innermost thoughts and desires. It was on that altar where I laid my mother’s soul before the Lord, praying for Him to reveal Himself to her atheistic mind and to let her know of His undying love for her. It was there, at the age of 15, that I committed my life to His service, never dreaming of what He had planned for me in the years down the road of life, but only knowing that He deserved my utmost for Him. It was there, on that altar, where I was immersed into His spirit, gushing out from the innermost parts of my being in a river of life and anointing. It was also on that altar where I came to the realization that I could not stay in that safe haven, but I had a destiny to fulfill and a path to travel upon, so I left that old familiar altar and carried it in my heart ever since. I still kneel at that altar of sacrifice and supplication, but now it is within me and with me wherever my journey takes me and it is still my restful haven, my port in the time of stormy troubles.

            The point is, even though it is in my past, I find that I can still refer to this simple time as a reference to where I have come, a place that gives my journey a perspective and a bearing in my life in case I find myself wandering off the path. We need these bearings in our life, these wonderful events and times in our past that we can refer to when we need guidance, and even though we are no longer attending to those events, they are still landmarks for us as we live our NOW life. Again, this is the continuity that we must have in our journey, so we do not mistakenly think that it doesn’t matter what we do NOW, or that NOW does not have any consequence in that time which follows after or any relationship to the time that is in the past. Because I am sure that I came from God, I am confident that I am on a mission that originated in Him and if He is the author of that mission, then I can totally rely on Him to be the finisher of that mission. I know Him to be my Alpha and my Omega, the First and the Last, as this gives me the continuity of faith to see this journey through to that end. I am not just an insignificant blip on the screen of organic life on this planet earth, but I have been SENT to this earth to bring glory to my Father. Truly, it is my knowing of being SENT by Him, rather than me just showing up mysteriously like some unplanned occasion, that gives me an assurance that the life that now is has come about by reason of a former life that was birthed in God before time began. This is why I do not discount a pre-existence in God, as I see it as a mandate that we WERE before we became what we are. What I Am now, is what I was in Him in the beginning, spirit. Furthermore, what I Am now is not only spirit, but I am also a kind of man, which I was not in the beginning. I am a hu-man, created in the image and likeness of my Father, formed from the dust of the earth by the hands of my Father and breathed into by the breath of God, having the same spiritual makeup as my Heavenly Father and the same chemical makeup in my earthly house as the earth from which it came. My physical DNA is of the same biological structure as other living things, including plants, animals and micro-organisms. However, I am more than just a physical being made up of genetic materials, but I also bear the genetic attributes of God Himself.

Just as I cannot deny my dusty heritage, it is impossible for me to deny my spiritual heritage. As much as I can readily admit to acting and behaving like my earthly image bearer, Adam, even so I can readily witness to the fact that I am acting and behaving out of another, original image bearer, Jesus Christ. He is my elder brother, my genetic kinsman, and He also partook of my earthly heritage in the days of His flesh. He overcame the limitations of our kind of man and became the First Fruit of a New kind of Man, a God-man, which is the union of that which WAS with that which IS, a new kind of creature in Christ that is eternally set in God. One thing I would like to make absolutely sure for us is the fact that whatever I was in God before the worlds were made, I will never be that again! I cannot just return back to what I was in Him before the disruption of the ages and end up with the same form and entity that was lowered out from Him. I have been forever changed by partaking of my earthly heritage and have left my former estate behind me, never to be seen again in that form and likeness. I am a NEW THING in God, a NEW CREATURE in Christ, in a likeness and image that is unique and original. As Brother Eby states above, God has IMAGED Himself in us and that embossment of His glorious nature and essence is at the root of our being. However, we are now on a journey to become something beyond that original design, by reason of our having been lowered into this earthly existence, of which we are even now swallowing and assimilating all of our earthly experiences into the life of Christ and being changed and transformed by those experiences. Again, I wish to express to you the importance of this earthly experience and to show you how vital these experiences are for us in our progressive transformation into the totality of the New Man. Every test and trial of this life is meant to reveal in us a greater LIFE, as that greater LIFE responds to each experience we go through. The greater LIFE within us only reveals itself when it is presented a need in our life that it can respond to, which causes it to increase and expand its borders and to actually grow in glory and fruitfulness.

It is this abounding increase of the new life within us that will act as a catalyst for our continuing change into that design that God imaged within Himself in the beginning. The scriptures state that as sin increases, so grace increases, in an exponential response to the amount of sin that is present. As the physical law of this world dictates, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”, then for every action of sin and death, God would be expected to provide an equal and opposite reaction to disannul that adamic phenomena. Ah, but here is the wonder and glory of God, in that instead of just providing an EQUAL and opposite reaction to sin, He goes above and beyond that original action of Adam and ABOUNDS in grace and love, overwhelming the action of sin and death with a deluge of life and glory in a proficiency that is the mark of the Supreme Being.

 

Rom 5:10-21

 

10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, it is much more [certain], now that we are reconciled, that we shall be saved (daily delivered from sin's dominion) through His [resurrection] life.

11 Not only so, but we also rejoice and exultingly glory in God [in His love and perfection] through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have now received and enjoy [our] reconciliation. [Jer 9:24.] 

12 Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death as the result of sin, so death spread to all men, [no one being able to stop it or to escape its power] because all men sinned.

13[To be sure] sin was in the world before ever the Law was given, but sin is not charged to men's account where there is no law [to transgress].

14 Yet death held sway from Adam to Moses [the Lawgiver], even over those who did not themselves transgress [a positive command] as Adam did. Adam was a type (prefigure) of the One Who was to come [in reverse, the former destructive, the Latter saving]. [Gen 5:5; 7:22; Deut 34:5.] 

15 But God's free gift is not at all to be compared to the trespass [His grace is out of all proportion to the fall of man]. For if many died through one man's falling away (his lapse, his offense), much more profusely did God's grace and the free gift [that comes] through the undeserved favor of the one Man Jesus Christ abound and overflow to and for [the benefit of] many.

16 Nor is the free gift at all to be compared to the effect of that one [man's] sin. For the sentence [following the trespass] of one [man] brought condemnation, whereas the free gift [following] many transgressions brings justification ( an act of righteousness).

17 For if because of one man's trespass (lapse, offense) death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive [God's] overflowing grace (unmerited favor) and the free gift of righteousness [putting them into right standing with Himself] reign as kings in life through the one Man Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

18 Well then, as one man's trespass [one man's false step and falling away led] to condemnation for all men, so one Man's act of righteousness [leads] to acquittal and right standing with God and life for all men.

19 For just as by one man's disobedience (failing to hear, heedlessness, and carelessness) the many were constituted sinners, so by one Man's obedience the many will be constituted righteous (made acceptable to God, brought into right standing with Him).

20 But then Law came in, [only] to expand and increase the trespass [making it more apparent and exciting opposition]. But where sin increased and abounded, grace (God's unmerited favor) has surpassed it and increased the more and superabounded,

21 So that, [just] as sin has reigned in death, [so] grace (His unearned and undeserved favor) might reign also through righteousness (right standing with God) which issues in eternal life through Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) our Lord.  AMPLIFIED VERSION

 

            Oh my! It makes my heart to rejoice and my feet to dance when I contemplate such a provision for our participation in this earthly experience. No matter how dark the day seems to be, regardless of how much emptiness fills our hearts at times of despair, in spite of the anguish of our afflicted bodies and minds, God has provided a response to it all, from deep within our being, and this response will not only restore our original joy and peace in God, it will surpass that original measure and heap upon us such a load of God’s infinite character and nature that those long days, months or years of suffering will seem like a moment of light testing. Don’t think you won’t have these kind of times, dear saint of God, and don’t condemn yourself when you find your faith weak and you don’t know which way is up. Stand STILL!! Hold your peace!! It is impossible for God not to have a response to this condition of yours. This reaction of Life and Restoration is much like a well known reaction in the natural world. The name for it is OSMOSIS and it is an action that MOVES toward a need. Osmosis is the chemical action that seeks to balance and equalize a chemical state that exists. A friend of mine has worked for many years in the irrigation field and was manufacturing and selling a rubber, porous hose that was buried in the soil to provide a sub-soil irrigation. What was unique about this type of irrigation, is that the amount of water that came through the porous material of the hose was dictated by how dry the soil was on the outside of the hose. The drier the soil, the more water that was drawn through the pores of the hose, until the soil reached a saturated state and then the water was no longer drawn through the pores of the hose, providing a constant supply and stoppage of water to the soil. This is how osmosis works and this is how the spirit of life in us operates. If there is no need, there is no response, if there is a little amount of need, there is a sufficient amount of supply, but if there is a great need, the response of the life of Christ in the heart of the believer is able to pour out upon us a super-abundant supply of His substance. We are a needy people, dear ones, but our God is more than able to provide a supply of healing, restoration, reconciliation, renewal, and much more to meet our need.

            Out of the need of fallen man, God responded with the only response that could meet such a need, the life of His only begotten Son. In so doing, He made peace with man through the cross and set in motion a plan of redemption and restoration that will bring all mankind back into union with their Father-Creator. As you know, the world is full of darkness and corruption. Man is in a constant state of self-destruction and his life is in constant turmoil. The true reason for the condition of mankind in our present time is that man is searching for his true self, having no recollection of his beginnings or why he even exists, man becomes more and more frustrated and cynical in regards to his earthly experience. When we left our former estate in God and were born of flesh and blood, we died to our spiritual reality in our Father and we became children of the earth, crawling through life like the caterpillar does in his worm form. We became totally identified with our earthly experience, shallow and disillusioned we lived an earth bound existence that removed us from our glorious true self, a spiritual man, full of light and glory. Our spirit became our “inner man”, buried deep within us, yet still there and still aware of our condition but unable to respond to that condition until a time appointed. Even after Jesus came to earth and finished His course of redemptive sacrifice and restorative resurrection, the world still was dark and dead to the ways of God. In fact, the so-called “church” became a mutation of religion, having the appearance of holiness, but only in a soulish and shadowy sense, remaining corrupted by the greed and lust of their adamic lineage. But, the seed had been implanted in the earth of mankind and it was only a matter of time before that seed began to work its way to the surface and to present itself to a generation that had been held back into God until a time of His destiny. This is that generation! Now, the germination of this incorruptible seed is taking place and out of the innermost sanctum of men’s hearts there is rising a New Man, fully aware of His true self and fully schooled in the proper placement of his sonship in the Father. Now, that which was once “the inner man” is being commissioned to become the “outer man”, as a great inversion of our state and condition takes place. That which once kept us imprisoned in a mind-set of fallen man is now giving way to the mind-set of the risen man and we are beginning to recognize ourselves again, as we are in the face and countenance of Jesus Christ, our elder Brother and our Lord and Master. Once again, we are visiting the throne room of our former habitation in the Father, holiness and righteousness are our natural state and we once again are gaining the command of the MIND that was in Jesus and now is returning to us.

            As the mists of our earthly mind give way to the clarity of the Mind of Christ, we are beginning to see what is really important in the scope of God’s plan and what is not important. The distractions of the world around us no longer hold our attention. We are gaining our single eye of purpose and vision. All of our parts are starting to communicate with one another, the lesser giving way to the greater in our being, not grudgingly, but thankfully and gladly, knowing that this is the Way and this will bring the Life. Even as the nerves of the human body can be damaged and then start to reconnect again with one another, we are starting to be joined with our many parts, becoming a WHOLE MAN, wholly alive and well. We are starting to sense the immensity of that which has resided in the depths of our being and the mountains of our earthly life are looking like ant hills in comparison. We are losing our fear of the unknown and we are becoming bold in stepping out into the water of our spiritual awakening. Beyond our ankles, beyond our hips, beyond our shoulders, swimming now and becoming one with the spirit. Our vision is becoming telescopic as we survey the land around us and we see past, present and future all at the same time. We no longer EXIST in time, but time is something we pass through. This is our awakening and we know we have been destined for such a time as this. We are pregnant with purpose and groan to deliver that which is within us and deliver it into the age we have been called to. We now know that we hold a New Covenant within the genetic writings upon our being. We realize we are the Ark of God, the true figure of which the physical Ark represented so many millenniums ago and we are called to hand deliver this Covenant to the lost children of God, soothing their raging hearts and calling them by their spirit names in the Voice that each one knows in the hidden volume of their book. Each human creature has a spirit name that is written in the Book of Life and that Book is written upon the genetic tables of the heart of the Melchizedek Priesthood. Because every man and woman was originally a spirit and joined to the Eternal Spirit of our Father, when their original name (nature, personality, essence) is called, their inner man will immediately cry out, Abba Father! There will be no need for kingdom seminars to introduce them to this new identity, as each one will KNOW the spirit and voice of their Lord.

            This is the essence of what the spirit is working in the hearts of the First Fruit company of messengers of Christ’s victory, which is not a signs and wonders ministry, but a ministry of SOUND, a trumpet blowing throughout the heavens and the earth, coming forth with a CERTAIN SOUND, whose pitch and frequency will be tuned to the inner ear of creation, deep crying to deep, spirit crying to spirit. Have you heard it, dear one? That certain sound that causes the heart to pound and the body to vibrate, raising the hairs of the nape of the neck, causing the skin to prickle and tingle? Can anyone that has heard such a sound deny it’s power to communicate to our being that we are being addressed by a realm beyond our natural environment, a sound that speaks of angel’s in our midst, a cloudy glory, heavy with the presence of the unseen host that abide in and around us? Then, surely, we can understand how such a certain sound and presence will present itself to each and every creature and bring instant recognition of an ancient KNOWING of such a place long, long ago. Creation has not responded to the voice that is resonating out of the religious systems of the Babylonian Church, because it is not the sound of the true spirit of their Father. His sheep will not follow another voice, even though it comes from a source that is dressed up in a camouflage of Shepherd’s clothing. The ones that do follow such an imitation of The Voice are only following it because of ulterior motives, escaping hell fire damnation, social graces, sickness of mind and heart. But, when The Voice is heard, the heart will leap in all men, everywhere, regardless of their present religious affiliations or non-religious affiliations. Whether they be Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Christians, Satanists, etc., none of this will prevent the spirit of man from hearing the original Voice of his genetic Father. The church buildings will not be bulging with fearful souls trying to figure out where this Voice came from, the religious leaders will not be inundated with inquiries with whether this strange phenomena is a sign of the end of the world, for each heart will re-member from whence this Voice first came in their beginnings. It will be much like the recovery of the amnesiac that has not been able to remember their past, with a burst of light and glory the Mind from which all mankind sprung forth will take creation over and there will be an instant recognition and reinstatement into that ancient memory, like lightning flashing from the east to the west.

            This is all resident in every man, right now. It has not made itself known because it has not heard the sound to which it can respond. It will not respond to any other sound made in earth or heaven, but the sound of the Voice of the Son of God. We were born in the midst of that Voice in God. We were raised in the midst of the presence of an Eternal Creator-Father and we breathed Him into ourselves like we breathe in the oxygen of this natural world. We weren’t just in the midst of Him, we embodied Him, we were in Him and He was in us, in total oneness of spirit. Now, we have been placed by Him into a divided existence, caught in the middle between a world of spiritual elements and a world of natural elements, in order to bring a new world into existence for Christ to be King over. Make no mistake about it, we are the catalysts of an elemental upheaval of such magnitude that the world as we now know it will not exist. Nothing will be destroyed, only rearranged into a divine composition, which will form a world that is elementally unique and original. In the Beginning, God had a plan. This plan entailed a lowering of elements out from Himself into a lesser environment, both natural elements such as wind, fire and earth and also spiritual elements, such as spirit, soul and body. As a result of this lowering, those elements are joined together into a sort of odd-couple relationship, opposites that attract and bonded together into a death and life struggle. Out of this results a degeneration of vitality, not only in man, but in all created things, the whole universe is bound to an eonian winding down of it’s sustenance. If nothing were to happen to change the present elemental degeneration of our world, the sun will eventually burn out, the planet will die and all biological life on earth will be extinct. But, all is well. God has a plan for us and all things created! The wonder of it all is that the Answer to this inter-planetary doomsday scenario lies in the heart of lowly and frail Man. Yes, that Man, the one that can’t balance his check book or reconcile his bank account. That’s right, that one right there, the one that is trying to make up his mind whether to get the triple decker Baconator hamburger in the Biggie Size or whether to go for the Humongous Size. Yep, you can sleep well tonight, because this Man is ready, willing and able, just as soon as he wheezes his way through a brisk walk with the dog and cuts his lawn and watches Monday Night Football, he’ll get the job done. Right. But, all is not lost! We must remember that this Man is only an earthly representation of all that he is about. He came from another world, he just doesn’t remember it yet. But, when he does, watch out!

            None of us are presently manifesting who we truly are, regardless of how some keep crowing about how they are the full manifestation of the Eternal God. Oh really? Then how about doing something about the price of gasoline, because it is getting way out of hand! Of course, they can’t do anything about that problem, nor any other problem, because it is only wishful words, fashioned out of a deluded mind of deceptive, self-serving ego mania. While we are on this subject, let me make it clear that we need to lose this notion that there are masters of the mystical arts positioned throughout the world that are already in their spirit form and are just waiting for the rest of us to join them in the collective oneness of their I Am-ness. No one, and I mean no one, is ready for what I have just written about. This is not some fanciful story to give us a little soulish thrill and chill and it is not a fictional account of some Star Trek astral-physical “beam me up Scotty” episode, but it is as real for us as the seat of our pants. The only hope for the degeneration of life as we now know it, is the power of an endless life, which has been accomplished by the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Of course, we must think outside of the parameters of this elemental world, of course we must use a language and terminology that transcends our usual speech pattern, but all of this is useless to us if we are not willing to follow on to know the Lord in humility and practicality. How long will it take for us to be able to allow the spirit to speak to our hearts from behind the veil of our understanding without taking those precious nuggets of truth and bring them down to a realm where we can manipulate them and use them for our self promotion? I pray we are all ready for such a display of maturity in spirit.

            We are being faced with a great challenge from our Father today. To become more than what we are. How do we do that? We take all of our elements that we can say we are, spirit – soul – body, and we allow the working of the Holy Spirit to bring all those elements into one compound of being, a New Man, a New Thing in Christ. By using the word “new”, I mean unique, not something being recreated out of another lump of material. Along with all of our corruptible parts, God has incorporated incorruptible parts into our makeup according to the design and purpose of our Father. All creation has been subjected by Him unto the vanity of the flesh, with a higher purpose in mind. God does not intend for His creation to be eternally imprisoned in such a world of contradictions, but His plan is to take that which IS, all of the parts in their individual makeup, and make something else out of it, a new composition of man and God. Everything within our present state and condition is necessary for us to be that New Man. What we must know and realize is that there is a hidden design in this chaotic being that we are, although we have only known the divided self life thus far, we have the stuff in our house that is necessary to form a Light Being, a heavenly Wonder that all the other elements of the heavens will marvel at. The true strength of our design is our complexity of opposites. God did not make us with grey parts, all of our parts are black and white, our natural mind of data gathering, (data in, data out), is what creates the grey areas of our condition. It is when these pure elements of death and life, light and darkness, become mixed into one another without divine influence that we become lost in our identity. I am human and that is a pure element of my design. I am also spirit and that is a pure element of my design. At one time, I was only spirit, with no human element to my being, but that changed when I was sent to my earthly existence. Now, I am more than one pure element, but I still bear the original IMAGE of my heavenly Father, who imaged Himself into me. I have also borne the image of the earthly identity giving me a duality of identity, which has caused me to create within myself a mis-identity of my real self. Christ came into this duality 2,000 years ago and brought union of oneness with our Father into this mistaken condition of man that has brought spiritual enlightenment unto the world at large, turning the world upside down with His resurrection power. However, God’s plan is not for mankind to be an enlightened duality, but to form one, whole New Man out of many divisive parts.

            We know God is able to do this, because we are remembering from whence we came and we know that whether in this body or out of this body, we are spirit and we are His. If this earthly house were to be dissolved, we know we have a resident, eternal spiritual house that we have always been. Now, we also know we cannot remain who we have been, but now we must BECOME that for which we have been sent to this limited, earthly dimension. The Life that WAS, must now become the Life that IS, bringing into this dimension a design that speaks of a New Beginning for a New Creation. In our next chapter, we will delve into that which IS and how that which IS carries on the lineage of abundant life from that which Was into that which IS TO COME.

 

By Robert D Torango