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Saturday, May 26, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"
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I have heard from several voices this morning people who say they are Christians expressing judgment and hatred toward the "Muslims and Fags" marching in the streets as seen in this video.
Saying horrendous things about them and toward them.
If they really only knew what they were saying they would HOLD their tongue of fire.
Let us see what Jesus says about this in Luke 9:51-56
51When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem;
52and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him.
53But they did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem.
54When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"
55But He turned and rebuked them, [and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of;
56for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.
I do not justify their actions or lifestyle, but shall such condemnation come from us who are NO JUDGES but who have been or are being judged.
For whence did we come... were any of us without sin?
Oh! I get it my sin is comparative.
You know like man's law, or the Old Covenant.
Well man's law changes from day to day according to the flesh, and God's law is an administration to death for ALL OF US.. thus Jesus went to the cross to redeem us from the law.
To what do you compare your sin or righteousness to?
To man's concept of good and evil, or the holiness of God?
If it is the holiness of God, then this stands true.
Romans 3:10
as it is written," THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
Judgment begins with the household of God,
Truth is truth.
Christ died for us while WE WERE YET SINNERS - while we were YET HIS ENEMIES - not after we got saved.
It is because of Him we are saved, being saved and will be saved not because we do good, or follow Him, or any of that,
The heart must be changed by the inner presence of Christ taking His rightful throne in our hearts, taking down the temple of the flesh, casting the false prophet, the Beast, the anti-Christ out into the outer darkness, it is not that which goes into a man, that defiles him but that which comes out!
Thus Jesus could say to the demons, COME OUT!
Look inside your heart, who is there:?
Who reigns 24 and 7?
Is it the Son of God, or the BEAST, the Adam man?
19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
The temple of the flesh must come to crucifixion, before we can know and experience resurrection life, and then have the Son take His rightful throne of our hearts.
The law is there as an administration of death. Thou shall not..but you did and I did anyway.
So thus sin becomes exceedingly sinful and destroys us, these people are in destruction under the wrath of God for the moment, their flesh will bring them to death, so that Christ can raise them up, give them new life in the Spirit.
They must come to know as we all need to come to know, that the FLESH PROFITS NOTHING...
It is the Spirit that gives us life.
God WILL move into every man's life - He will take all that flesh and do as Paul said to the Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 5:5
I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
But note Paul did not speak of eternal torment, damnation, though this young men was in grievous sin.
He said for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
Note: Paul did not appeal to the authorities of this world to do this, or men's law to take care of the problem as the ekklesia has so been blinded to do, but He said for the Ekklesia to do this, those in the assembly of the "called out one's of God".
Jesus said whatever YOU SHALL BIND ON EARTH SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAVEN.
I hear Christians say all the time about this person or that person.
"They need to go to jail forever or need capital punishment or we need to send the powers to kill them, drop bombs on them and all such foolishness which is of the flesh of men."
But He turned and rebuked them, [and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; 56for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.
Paul told the Corinthians even in simple matters this:
1 Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?
2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?
3Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life?
4So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church?
5I say this to your shame Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren,
6 but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?
7Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?
8 On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren.
Note even though he spoke to those who seemed were already suppose to be saints.
YOU DO THIS EVEN TO YOUR BRETHERN!
What brethren?
He goes onto say this:
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,
10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
and here is the final blow that brings this into context who all our brethren are:
11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
The very one's to which he spoke of in verses 9 and 10.
Yes, you see, we have brethren both who are saints and sinners, and since, those who are still children of disobedience which if we are walking with Him now, we are now children of obedience, sons of God, but it never changes our relationship to that which Christ has brought us from and where we are now. We are all children just the same.
Though some are Son now and some are not, but it is the faith of Christ to which we have been graced, that not of our own. It's all grace.
God is revealing here, what his wrath is upon the unrighteous, they are a in a state where they know not the Kingdom of God, and we His people often bind and loose, but it is always God's work though. We were all bound in sin it is He that loosed us from it's power but it's been given to us, to loose others from it's sting, death in this life, by prayer and intercession for our brethren that are yet may still be, children of disobedience. How are we to do this?
By Forgiveness that to which we received and love that to which we received, we didn't get it by our own efforts it has BEEN GIVEN TO US AND ALL MEN - JUST ALL MEN DO NOT KNOW IT YET and HOW SHALL THEY KNOW UNLESS SOMEONE IS SENT.
Forgiveness and love- not by calling down fire upon them!
We present the Gospel the GOOD NEWS OF JESUS CHRIST not so much by what we say we believe but by how we treat others, both children of disobedience and children of obedience, Israel of the Spirit, Israel of the Flesh.
In this case of the young man caught in sin, Paul is about to demonstrate the very truth of God. We His people should follow Paul's example, we are not to use the world's authority to correct our brethren any of them children of disobedience or those who were in obedience for a time.
The world will take care of it's own but we are not of the world, we are only in it.
We are to see what Paul is demonstrating here is how God works upon ALL HIS CHILDREN, not a form of doctrine of church practice but of spiritual realities.
Remember Paul is giving a carnal people spiritual lessons here less we become confused by it, and begin a whole new age of inquisition and torture..
but wait isn't that exactly why so many "christians" support the ideas of capital punishment, war, hatred, racism, etc.?
Those that are in disobedience right now, are not experiencing, enjoying living in the presence of God's love for we know that, for the Kingdom of God is not a place but a state of being, whereby it is righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.
Their due punishment is upon them even now, they are under the wrath of God. They are only looking for a fleshly way out and none shall be found, they are as Sodom and Gomorrah was, they want others to join them in their flesh so that they might justify their flesh, but God will justify no man's flesh, but crucify it!
God delivers such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
There is no such thing as a carnal Son, there are carnal children,(children of disobedience) the church has mislabeled these even in their churches as carnal Christians.
As if they were Sons but living like the devil... SORRY NO SUCH THING
they are are sons but only adopted sons because the Father's love for all of us expressed in Christ for all men, in His reconciling all of us to God.
Forgiving us all our trespasses.
ALL MEN HAVE BEEN RECONCILED TO GOD AND FORGIVEN THEIR SIN AND THE LAW IS REMOVED AS A CURSE UPON US...but not ALL HAVE YET BEEN CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF HIS SEED - HIS SON~ Jesus Christ.
The promise was to the Seed, not the seeds, there are millions of seeds but without the SEED we are just seeds. God implanted the SEED within us ALL.
Though still His creation, still loved by Him. He will not lose one of us seeds because of the SEED!
Gods Will is for us ALL TO BE CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF HIS SON and not just being any child, adopted children, but A SON OF GOD by His blood and union of LIFE!
Thus His seed is implanted in our hearts as the incorruptible SEED so that SEED can grow up into the very tree of Life within us to HIS GLORY.
God did this when He poured out His Spirit upon ALL FLESH.
Done deal-. God came to dwell with men.
We can no more activate that germination of ourselves-our seed to become like the SEED then we can by our own will power have THE SEED put in their in the first place.
Unless God do the watering, by the washing of the WATER OF THE LIVING WORD our seed is there, and His SEED, but until God germinates HIS SEED, then we remain seeds, that may be yet in rocky ground, or often the flesh (the power of death- the diabolos,the devil) steals it for awhile, the cares and the riches don't allow it to grow,so the Father has to turn the soil, remove the rocks, take out the other cares, cast off the evil, and the good SEED Jesus Christ inside will germinate and it IS THE FATHER THAT REPLACES THE SOIL AS WELL by removing the flesh from us, AND IN DUE TIME, and THEN HE THAT IS THE GOOD SEED WILL GERMINATE and the other seeds will be like seeds of the SEED.
The soil is all that old flesh and nothing more, God has to remove that soil so that HIS SEED THAT HE HAS PUT INSIDE OF EVERY MAN may come forth and produce.
this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty."
Matthew 13:37
And He said, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man,
- Romans 1:18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
See my blog: http://joeblackblogs.blogspot.com/2011/01/evil-spirits-in-old-testament-and-satan.html
Was this young man in Corinthians to be in that place forever of destruction of course not! Eternal Torment?
Of course not. He was yet a child of disobedience, a child all the same because of creation and God seeing him through His eyes, not the eyes of men. Judging according to the flesh!
Paul makes it very clear that his being turned over to destruction has purpose, will and God's counsel in it.
Some must go through this all the way to physical death until the day of the Lord comes for them as well in God's eternity, God's time, not ours or for some it comes in their lifetime, regardless they will repent, either in this life or the life to come when the day of the Lord comes to them.
The carnal man looks to the future in carnal things for that which is called the day of the LORD. You must see it's spiritual relevance and meaning which goes way beyond those ideas of men's imaginations.
Jesus comes (appears) as HE did for this young man before he died, we read in 2 Corinthians this:
5 But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree--in order not to say too much--to all of you.
6 Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority,
7 so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
8 Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.
9 For to this end also I wrote, so that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things.
10 But one whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ,
11 so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
See God puts ALL MEN of FLESH TO THE FIRE of the ADVERSARY, over to that which will oppose the very flesh of men... The serpent would eat dust for now on - men, flesh man is mere dust -thus all men die, physically, and aging is nothing more then disease, sickness that which is our due punishment, but not our due state of eternal presence for it is God that brings us immortality in due time.
All of us must endure a time in the wilderness, either here or over there, the temporal punishment of the flesh, but the sin nature which would condemn us all to that eternal state of death was dealt by the work of God in Christ at Calvary. Christ delivers us into the promised land, for you see HE IS THAT PROMISED LAND!
The Spirit of life is that which God breathed into all of us, that He may show His forgiveness and bring restoration, and thus we then praise Him, love Him because we find this to be true.
Who among you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.
1 John 4:19
We love, because He first loved us.
It is when God has brought you through the fires of his love, through the destruction of the flesh, where you cry out to Him, then the Word of God says this will transpire, there my friend is repentance!
Romans 10:13
for " WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED."
and see this,please may your eyes be opened by the Almighty One, and your ears to hear, it is important everything I am writing here is spiritual truth the carnal mind cannot grasp it, understand it.You may even now object to it. The carnal mind cannot receive that which is spiritual, it can't comprehend it, even a little.
God has to open your eyes and ears.
# Romans 9:25
As He says also in Hosea," I WILL CALL THOSE WHO WERE NOT MY PEOPLE, 'MY PEOPLE,'AND HER WHO WAS NOT BELOVED, 'BELOVED.'"
# Romans 9:26
" AND IT SHALL BE THAT IN THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS SAID TO THEM, 'YOU ARE NOT MY PEOPLE,'THERE THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF THE LIVING GOD."
Go in peace, yet knowing our story is Jesus story and if not I promise it will become thus.
Joseph Black
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Universal Exchanged Life in Christ
What is the "Universal Exchanged Life in Christ?"
In a nut shell, the exchanged life is Christ living His life through us, in us and as us, and we living in Him, rather than us trying to make life work through our own efforts and resources.
It is made possible by our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.(Romans 6-8).
All men were in Christ at the cross and the resurrection,
2 Corinthians 5:19
...namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
There is the Good News, this is the Gospel, not what is being preached.
God created man with certain essential, or basic, needs. Among them are the need to be loved and accepted and to have value and worth. The moment Adam quit trusting God he was on his own, to try to obtain these, Adam chose to quit trusting and start trying, thus all men are driven to get these needs met. The unique ways in which you try to meet your basic God-given needs for love, acceptance, value and worth is your "flesh."
The reason you often live and think this way, is because from the day you were born into this earth, you have followed the patterns of this world, because you were taught to obtain these things by your own selfish means.
Your particular versions of flesh are the unique ways that you have lived by and depended on to meet your needs.
Your flesh "patterns" were developed based on the messages that you received about yourself as you were growing up. These messages helped form your "identity." Your identity was formulated by the same concepts Adam had after the fall, that “whatever his behavior was that was what his identity was.”
He could no longer see God’s love, mercy and compassion, and even imagine God, as pure love and holiness, one to simply trust again, Adam could only see as all men usually see is God and himself in terms of good or evil, and even though he desired to do good, he could not.
His nature had changed, he now had a “sin nature”. He could do no righteousness. He could not be righteous. His mind was blinded in darkness.
The “flesh” and the” sin nature” are two different things.
The sin nature is that which made us incapable of holiness, trust, love, righteousness, knowing peace, so on.
The flesh, is those things that have been habitually used by us to form our identity.
To obtain these God given needs, found only in His hand of grace.
Christ came and crucified the sin nature for all men! He reconciled the world unto the Father.
This is what I refer to Universal Reconciliation or Justification.
Man was no longer under the law, Christ fulfilled the law, and with the law gone, there is no sin, or it’s penalty based on the Mosaic Law.
Can you sin? Well yes, sin is no longer based on the breaking of the law, but the mistrust of this new exchanged life given to us by the Father by the Spirit through the accomplished work of Jesus Christ.
Romans 14:23
23 But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.
So, you ask why do men, still sin? If all men have been reconciled and given this deliverance from the sin nature?
They aren’t sinning in the sense of breaking the law, they are living out of their old identity, doing good, doing evil, the flesh, moving from one end of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, to the other, but it's fruit is still all the same- poison, we all still have that ability and are the only choices he can make, man cannot by human will choose to be saved, man must be chosen to be saved. Previously he was chained in darkness, in capable of seeing the light. Now when the God chooses He chooses them by the hearing of the Gospel which gives birth to that seed which has been planted in the heart of all men in this new creation. This seed then brings forth life, what we often have called being born again. It is by the incorruptible seed of God that a man is born again, and God does the illumination, God does the choosing, God does the saving, and the Father alas bears His fruit into the life of one, who He enlightened with the Gospel, thereby making that person a partaker of divine nature. Spirit life. Man could not hear, or see, unless the Father had already made this New Creation for we would be yet like Adam unable to see or hear. Prior to Christ, death on the cross, the Pharisees could not hear or see, but Father by His divine grace chose those who He chose to do come into the Light of His Son.
No man can choose God, God has chosen us, through the reconciliation of the world unto Himself in Jesus Christ, and it is this message when spoken to a man, when told in the truth of the TRUE GOSPEL that brings forth this new birth. How shall they hear, unless someone preach THIS GOOD NEWS TO THEM. That all men have been reconciled to the Father in Jesus Christ, and that God has poured out His grace among men, making them New Creations in Christ, and poured out His Spirit upon ALL MEN.
The sin nature was destroyed in Christ at the Cross of Calvary for all of us., it holds no more power, over us, you or me or anyone.
Mankind has been freed, into liberty. They no longer have to sin.
The true Good News of Jesus Christ will reveal that to anyone when presented to them, this is what shall give birth to that incorruptible seed of God who waters it by the washing of the water of the Word, and brings the seed to germinate and break forth from the ground producing a tree of righteousness that bears fruit to God of God which results in holiness!
For far too long the church has taught that a man still has that Old Nature.
He does not, but how shall a man be saved if He is not to hear the GOOD NEWS?
All that all man have is the leftovers of the fall, before hearing the Good News and after hearing the Good News, it is called the flesh.
So thus those that have come into the knowledge of Christ can still live fleshly as any other man, but in so doing, he is being "faithless" to the very work that Christ accomplished in his life, death, resurrection, ascension and pouring out of the Spirit unto all flesh.
We have believed the lie, too long, and often because we don’t understand the difference between the two. The Sin Nature and the Flesh.
This has resulted in ineffective body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who more rely on sin consciousness then Christ consciousness.
You will always struggle with the flesh, God will have you on a journey until you breathe your last breath here, to learn to trust in Him versus the old way of doing things.
You will be on a planned journey by Him to discover life is not in that which was born from the sin nature- the flesh, but life is found only in the Spirit. He that is spiritual is he that is born of the Spirit.
‘The wages of sin is death.”
Complete and absolute separation from the Father is the wage of sin.
No man prior to Christ experienced this death of separation from the Father, nor will any man, because Christ was slain before the foundations of the world. Man merely died prior to the cross and the breath of life, returned unto God whom gave it.
The Old Testament people were in hades " sheol," the grave awaiting the resurrection of life that would come through Christ resurrection. In death, they had no remembrance, they were asleep yet. With the close of Christ work, they were awakened to glory to ascend to the Father to be forever with the Lord.
Psalm 115:17
The dead do not praise the LORD,Nor do any who go down into silence;
Proverbs 9:18
But he does not know that the dead are there,That her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten.
BUT WAIT THERE WAS THE PROMISE THAT JESUS CHRIST BROUGHT FORTH
Isaiah 26:19
Your dead will live;Their corpses will rise You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy,For your dew is as the dew of the dawn,And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.
Jeremiah 31:40
"And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the LORD; it will not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever."
This entire passage in Jeremiah speaks of the day of consummation, not just Israel of the flesh, but ALL ISRAEL, the Israel of the Spirit, the chosen sons of God now ( Gentile and Jew who are presently walking in the Light of Jesus Christ, and ALL MEN then the ISRAEL OF THE FLESH.
Thus ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED.
Less we forget that we are all HIS CREATION.
Perhaps then you can grasp the significance of why the ETERNAL ONE- Jesus struggled with knowing what He was about to undergo, for which no man ever had or ever will have to undergo, because He did for all of mankind. He suffered the wages of sin - DEATH real DEATH. Separated from His own divine self.
Jesus experienced what the Old Testament people righteous or unrighteous did not.
For you see they had never known holiness. Some had been positionally granted righteousness because of their faith, but none had known holiness, and no man can see God without holiness for God is holy.
Jesus purchased Holiness for the entirety of humanity.
Those in trust know it now, but there is coming a time, "when no man will say to another man, know the Lord for ALL SHALL KNOW HIM!"
The glorious day, when all flesh shall come to God. Did you know that all flesh will?
Socrates didn't fear death, because he believed that matter was evil and this is what kept men in bondage, he believed that by dying he would be spirit and then be released from evil for spirit was good.
Jesus knew and most men have never comprehended why He struggled with his coming death.
I mean He was the Son of God, right? Surely he knew it was only for three days, He tells the disciples this.
Why was Jesus death so difficult for Him in comparison to that of Socrates, who gladly chose to die even by his own hand?
I tell you why, because in that death, HE would truly die and experience absolute, total darkness, no presence of love, separation from the Father, separation from that which was within Him.
Until you really grasp this you will hold to false teachings about hell and other matters that have nothing to do with the wages of sin or God's love expressed fully in the Son.
We know He did not die separated from the Father forever as some like to say the Second Death is in Revelation.
If this Death and eternal one is the penalty of sin, then Christ would still be there in death, or in hell, but He is not!
For God never intended nor does He intend to destroy or torture His creation forever and ever, as the false teachers have proclaimed.
We know He did not enter some burning torturous place of damnation called Hell that is eternal,
No, the wages of sin is DEATH but He would undergo not just any death.
He would experience total absolute separation from the Father. Thereby experiencing the plight of men, because of the sin nature, incapable of seeing God, incapable of experiencing God, incapable of fellowship with God because of the Old Adamic nature-- the sin nature.
We were in Christ, and Christ at that moment was in us.
He experienced every bit of our darkness outside of fellowship with the Father, Our Creator. But not just our experience but imagine this, that of the WHOLE WORLD! What a burden, what a terrible thing to undergo, just so that the world be reconciled unto the Father, what love, that He would identify Himself completely with His creation.
Complete and Absolute absence from the Father. Think about it, that my friend is the wage He took upon Himself, when He cried out, "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?"
What Jesus accomplished in the death and resurrection, was eternal, meaning it had no beginning nor an end.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. God speaks clearly in the last Chapters of Revelation on this matter, and John repeats, Christ words here, “IT IS FINISHED, as “IT IS DONE”
Christ has died in time and space for you and I, He became flesh for you and I, he lived, and suffered, for you and I, and all along what drove Him to the cross wasn’t God's need for someone to punish for our sins/ The church has falsely proclaimed this as well in error. We still mistakenly think that today in “church circles”, but what drove Jesus to the cross was the His love and the Father’s love to remove the curtain of separation for us from entering the Holy of Holies so we could once more all of mankind be in fellowship with Him and the Father again, to erase the old nature, the sin nature, the life of Adam. He brought forth a New Creation as the LAST ADAM.
Man no longer is under the power of that sin nature, an exchange took place that day at the cross, we were in Him, all of mankind - the old man, the old Adamic bloodline, that old sin nature whereby man could never be holy, was crucified and killed there at Calvary.
But it wasn’t enough to just kill or remove that which was against us, the Father still desired children, so Christ was raised from the grave, as a NEW CREATION- and we all of mankind were in Him.
Christ not only took away and removed the old man out of the way, he birthed a brand new creation to which all men were in Him.
Do you know that all men are brand new creations in Him?
I did not say, that all men know this or experience this, or live it out. Even yet many who claim to be Christian do not know this, for their way of life says different.
What any of us do, is not our identity, Christ forever settled our identity at the cross and the resurrection, yes HE REDEEMED US!
If you and others are still “trying” to meet your needs independent of Christ with the only resources you have available to you: your mind, will, emotions and your physical body that is called “the flesh”.
The reason so, Christ did not change our minds, he changed that which put us into bondage, the reason no man could ever see God’s love and acceptance since the Fall.
He wiped out forever, that sin nature, for which held us in bondage to the flesh.
The flesh is the primary thing that hinders us from knowing and experiencing the victorious Christian life.
Living in the flesh is also known as the self-life.
It is not the sin nature, but all those things that have formed your identity in this world of sin. That is FLESH.
Striving to meet those God given needs by trying versus just trusting.
Because we were all born in Adam as well , we initially were born without this knowledge of the work of Christ.
Thus our spiritual faculties, our mind which influences all our actions were dead to to this knowledge of the Good News and our Father who the Bible says, God is love.
For some it seems still so.We however are not to judge but to look at all others through the eyes of God.
Paul said this, that he preached all men complete in Christ.
Those that do not yet see the Father as God is love still will persist with the whole Adamic view that God is wrath. But, we have been given the mind of Christ. Our thoughts will effect our behavior.
So we are given an admonishment by Paul.
They forget the verse is balanced with:
Philippians 2:13
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
So they keep the people returning to the same tree to eat from as Adam, rather then resting in Christ and seeing that it is GOD AT WORK IN YOU both to WILL AND WORK for HIS GOOD PLEASURE!
There is little taught about that GOD accomplishes all that He has set out to do in you, versus what YOU CAN DO, NEED TO DO, and MUST DO.... that gets pretty tiresome, for it is no different then going to a job and a boss demanding the same of you. When shall they rest, where shall they find sanctuary from the world, when the very place they attend is proclaiming the same message as they are? Is Christ not our rest from the efforts of the FLESH?
Since we did not yet know this truth, and many yet do not, we were forced to live out of our own resources. Many Christians today still suffer under this burden of the flesh, and have not come to know the rest there is, in the Spirit of resting in Jesus Christ alone as our TRUE SABBATH.
As a result of dealing with the impossibility of getting our needs met, we are driven to make up for this deficiency.
The desire to have our needs met is so great that it consumes our energy; we become solely focused on that longing.
We become thoroughly and intensely self-centered in our quest for love, acceptance, value and significance.
The main result of this is the loss of our true identity. We were created to have the life of God within us, (in our human spirit) and us in Him, yet we don’t know this.
Therefore, our very reason for existence is not apparent to us.
We are born in a condition of not knowing who we are, but being driven to find out.
There are only two kinds of inner life, Adam-life (trying- by good and evil) or Christ-life (trusting- receiving this Grace from God) (Romans 5:14-19).
But the nature that held us all in chains- the sin nature has been not only brokem but destroyed through the Victory of Jesus Christ.
All of us are born in a world that teaches us and acts out of the old Adamic-life (thought life effects our lived life) ; an identity of ourselves without the life of God.
It was the identity of himself and God that Adam lost in the garden for all men.
Therefore, our behavior is not our only problem, but rather our minds effecting our hearts and our actions. Which in turn our behavior arises. It is from our very center of being, the heart that the old Adamic life attempts to arise again from the dead, but it cannot, IT HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST, it can only make us believe that we still ARE that old Adam, and when we trust that, then our flesh, our old habits then begin to rule and cause our behaviors that are contrary to the Spirit, this is because we lack trust...and whatever is not of faith, is SIN.
Our identity is the problem that keeps us from living godly. It is when we fail to identify ourselves with the New Creation that Christ made us all, and that He has given us a new heart, and wrote his law upon hearts of flesh instead of upon stone. (Old Covenant law) that we can be carnal Christians, in other words living as if Christ had no effect to change the inner man.
It is the bondage to this lie, this illusion, this disregard for God’s work of love and grace that we yet wrestle with, not the old sin nature, but the old sin, stain, Who Am I?
The blood of Christ washed away our sin, it destroyed the sin nature, but the identity for which we have been taught not only in growing up, but in much of religion and even “christian religion” has kept us blind to the truth, of the completed work of Jesus Christ, so we often find we live out of that old identity until God by His grace reveals to us, by the TRUE GOSPEL, our new identity. This continually revealing, Christ coming, Christ appearing to us, is a lifetime Journey in which we learn to overcome the flesh, and the lie that we are that old man. WE ARE NOT- HE IS DEAD- CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST AT CALVARY.
THERE IS A NEW MAN THAT GOD HAS CREATED OF ALL OF US. SAINT AND SINNER ALIKE. IT is He- Jesus Christ within, wherein lies the Kingdom of God, that desires to remain on the throne of our heart, and HE will, HE shall not give up that which is rightfully His, Your will or a Devils will shall not thwart His will!
The Universal Exchanged Life that took place then becomes our new identity, and we now see ourselves as God has made us, New Creations, not just forgiven, but the old nature, that old identity ERASED in Christ at the cross. We begin to experience life, the abundant life, the godly life, the redeemed life, this new life, no longer based on what I do, but who I am.
A walk of trust in God and no longer trying.
I am the beloved of God my Creator, who has never quit loving me, but loved me so much, he removed out of the way that thing which kept me from knowing Him, and knowing He is love. I am not that old sin nature but a New Creation in Christ, quite capable of living in His righteousness, not my own, but His, given to me freely by His love and Grace! I am capable because He is capable, I live now because He lives!
This is how the inner life is changed? It has been exchanged. Trust it, rely on it, God is now the center of your life, He is your Father, Jesus is your brother, the Spirit is YOUR LIFE!
Galatians 2:20 states, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me."
The reason people don’t come to understand this, is they have been taught wrongly that salvation is about escaping something you deserve after death. Hell! and Jesus went through all He went through just to get us to heaven if we will just believe that! Then we are saved!
Thus many of God's sheep are left there to hang in oblivion asking but what can I about this flesh, this way of life, all this I have grown to hate about myself. They are told, only to TRY HARDER, PRAY HARDER, READ HARDER, ATTEND CHURCH HARDER.....and they DIE!
THE LIE!
God did not send Jesus to go to hell for us, but to drag us out of the hell that we were already in! Remember the Wages of Sin is death- not hell, as pagan and catholic tradition have twisted the whole Good News to be.
This is what happens when a person comes to know this fact, to know this new identity given to us freely by His grace. Then he is saved, from his old identity, his old thought process, his old trying tree, rather than trusting tree for this life here and now- this is salvation.
It has nothing to do with after we die, and everything to do with while we are alive!
Jesus reminded the Pharisees of this.. they wanted to talk about the afterlife.
He blows them away with this statement.
Matthew 22:32
" I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB"
He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
Mark 12:27
" He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken."
Luke 20:38
" Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him."
Salvation (keep the heaven and hell thing out of it) is when a man realizes he is no longer the same type of human, possessing the sin nature of the Adam life, but is a child of God, that He has the life of Christ, and thus is a new creation, and one with a brand new identity. He is a Child of the living God.
This is salvation, this is the delivery of this new spiritual faculty understanding of who we are, because of Christ, and that we are not that old Adam, but we are in the last Adam, Jesus Christ - the life giving spirit.
We come to understand, salvation isn’t about getting to go somewhere when you die, but being somewhere while you are alive.
Thus heaven comes to earth. Thus His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Not the heaven of I get everything I want or could imagine, like some have distorted it to be, that’s no more than the first identity trying to squeeze the work of Christ into selfishness and foolish imaginations of men.
No that is not it at all!
What we obtain is freedom of the fellowship of the Father and the Son, again, and to relax in that presence, and live by simple trust every minute of our lives, in His love for us.
This is not just for us, but His love IS FOR ALL MEN!
We quit trying and start trusting.
We quit defining ourselves in what we do, but now define ourselves in WHO WE REALLY ARE!
We believe the Scriptures that Christ was crucified for us. Do we not also believe the same Scriptures that teach we were crucified with Christ? God has created something completely new inside of you.
This is a spiritual reality, not just positional truth. This NEW CREATION is your true identity.
This son of God is who you are in Christ, and because He is in YOU!
"If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it."
Jesus says the way to life is through death, and if anyone is to follow Him, they must deny self.
I hope you understand with much more clarity.
To really understand, you must understand, that going to hell was never the problem God had to overcome.
Man was in hell the moment, Adam turned from trusting to trying. Christ did not come to deliver us from some punishment of a cruel God of men’s imaginations and fallen carnal mind, but He came that we, all men, might have life, and that life was in Him and is still in Him. He is the light of the world.
WE WERE DEAD AND WITHOUT HOPE. BUT LIFE HAS COME! HE IS HERE!
Men still don’t come to Him, they turn to religion, they turn to good works, some give up and just do evil.
They do not know who they are yet, they don’t know and have never heard the true GOOD NEWS, they are still trapped in their old identity but they don’t have too be.
Thus Paul said again above in Scripture at the end of the first verse I provided here.
He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:19..... This is the GOOD NEWS not the false gospel that men have been presenting of Christ.
Let us present the true Good News of the work of Jesus Christ for all mankind, that He is the Victor, the Triumphant One, who has purchased this for us, which belongs to ALL MEN.
Watch your life, and the life of others change. I mean REALLY CHANGE
PREACH the GOSPEL not religious tradition. LIVE the GOSPEL, not religious tradition.
LOVE GOD and OTHERS because He first loved all of us....from the very beginning, God wasn’t mad at us, man just couldn’t see it, and sad to say, there are folks today who still do not see that “God is love.”
Christ Victorious, this is the GOOD NEWS. Thus the angels said on His incarnation into this world our world, the earth- PEACE and GOODWILL TO ALL MEN on EARTH.
Men today are like all the pagans, asking but what of death?
What then?
I say to you, What of Life?
What of now?
Jesus destroyed sin and (spiritual death) so that all men may be with the Father forever.
How God reveals His love to those that didn’t get it here, is His business, but no matter what, you didn’t get it here, either on your own, that was the Sovereign will and act of God, if you have come to understand reconciliation and salvation like I have just explained here, God gave you the light by His grace, and the faith of Jesus Christ. Nothing that you have obtained from God or in God, came because you willed it so.
Let no man boast but in the Lord. God has not chosen some men for hell and others for heaven, he has only chosen some to understand and have life here and some to understand and recieve life over there, so that His plan can be worked out for all of us.
Ephesians 1:11
also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
Note: WORKS ALL THINGS... not just some things and leaves the rest up to mankind to mess up.
He does so AFTER THE COUNSEL OF HIS WILL.... not ours.
So, that “every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, Jesus Christ is LORD!
I pray that in reading this, if you are not a Christian by your identification, that you will see that Jesus has given all you will ever need to accept what I have told you here, he has removed that sin nature that would keep you blind to this knowledge.
I pray if your identity is that of a Christian, that you would come to understand what that really means, outside of what you do, and see who you REALLY are.
To both, the mercies, compassion and love of the Father has been given freely to us, in Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of ALL!
Joseph Black D.D.
In a nut shell, the exchanged life is Christ living His life through us, in us and as us, and we living in Him, rather than us trying to make life work through our own efforts and resources.
It is made possible by our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.(Romans 6-8).
All men were in Christ at the cross and the resurrection,
2 Corinthians 5:19
...namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
There is the Good News, this is the Gospel, not what is being preached.
God created man with certain essential, or basic, needs. Among them are the need to be loved and accepted and to have value and worth. The moment Adam quit trusting God he was on his own, to try to obtain these, Adam chose to quit trusting and start trying, thus all men are driven to get these needs met. The unique ways in which you try to meet your basic God-given needs for love, acceptance, value and worth is your "flesh."
The reason you often live and think this way, is because from the day you were born into this earth, you have followed the patterns of this world, because you were taught to obtain these things by your own selfish means.
Your particular versions of flesh are the unique ways that you have lived by and depended on to meet your needs.
Your flesh "patterns" were developed based on the messages that you received about yourself as you were growing up. These messages helped form your "identity." Your identity was formulated by the same concepts Adam had after the fall, that “whatever his behavior was that was what his identity was.”
He could no longer see God’s love, mercy and compassion, and even imagine God, as pure love and holiness, one to simply trust again, Adam could only see as all men usually see is God and himself in terms of good or evil, and even though he desired to do good, he could not.
His nature had changed, he now had a “sin nature”. He could do no righteousness. He could not be righteous. His mind was blinded in darkness.
The “flesh” and the” sin nature” are two different things.
The sin nature is that which made us incapable of holiness, trust, love, righteousness, knowing peace, so on.
The flesh, is those things that have been habitually used by us to form our identity.
To obtain these God given needs, found only in His hand of grace.
Christ came and crucified the sin nature for all men! He reconciled the world unto the Father.
This is what I refer to Universal Reconciliation or Justification.
Man was no longer under the law, Christ fulfilled the law, and with the law gone, there is no sin, or it’s penalty based on the Mosaic Law.
Can you sin? Well yes, sin is no longer based on the breaking of the law, but the mistrust of this new exchanged life given to us by the Father by the Spirit through the accomplished work of Jesus Christ.
Romans 14:23
23 But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.
So, you ask why do men, still sin? If all men have been reconciled and given this deliverance from the sin nature?
They aren’t sinning in the sense of breaking the law, they are living out of their old identity, doing good, doing evil, the flesh, moving from one end of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, to the other, but it's fruit is still all the same- poison, we all still have that ability and are the only choices he can make, man cannot by human will choose to be saved, man must be chosen to be saved. Previously he was chained in darkness, in capable of seeing the light. Now when the God chooses He chooses them by the hearing of the Gospel which gives birth to that seed which has been planted in the heart of all men in this new creation. This seed then brings forth life, what we often have called being born again. It is by the incorruptible seed of God that a man is born again, and God does the illumination, God does the choosing, God does the saving, and the Father alas bears His fruit into the life of one, who He enlightened with the Gospel, thereby making that person a partaker of divine nature. Spirit life. Man could not hear, or see, unless the Father had already made this New Creation for we would be yet like Adam unable to see or hear. Prior to Christ, death on the cross, the Pharisees could not hear or see, but Father by His divine grace chose those who He chose to do come into the Light of His Son.
No man can choose God, God has chosen us, through the reconciliation of the world unto Himself in Jesus Christ, and it is this message when spoken to a man, when told in the truth of the TRUE GOSPEL that brings forth this new birth. How shall they hear, unless someone preach THIS GOOD NEWS TO THEM. That all men have been reconciled to the Father in Jesus Christ, and that God has poured out His grace among men, making them New Creations in Christ, and poured out His Spirit upon ALL MEN.
The sin nature was destroyed in Christ at the Cross of Calvary for all of us., it holds no more power, over us, you or me or anyone.
Mankind has been freed, into liberty. They no longer have to sin.
The true Good News of Jesus Christ will reveal that to anyone when presented to them, this is what shall give birth to that incorruptible seed of God who waters it by the washing of the water of the Word, and brings the seed to germinate and break forth from the ground producing a tree of righteousness that bears fruit to God of God which results in holiness!
For far too long the church has taught that a man still has that Old Nature.
He does not, but how shall a man be saved if He is not to hear the GOOD NEWS?
All that all man have is the leftovers of the fall, before hearing the Good News and after hearing the Good News, it is called the flesh.
So thus those that have come into the knowledge of Christ can still live fleshly as any other man, but in so doing, he is being "faithless" to the very work that Christ accomplished in his life, death, resurrection, ascension and pouring out of the Spirit unto all flesh.
We have believed the lie, too long, and often because we don’t understand the difference between the two. The Sin Nature and the Flesh.
This has resulted in ineffective body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who more rely on sin consciousness then Christ consciousness.
You will always struggle with the flesh, God will have you on a journey until you breathe your last breath here, to learn to trust in Him versus the old way of doing things.
You will be on a planned journey by Him to discover life is not in that which was born from the sin nature- the flesh, but life is found only in the Spirit. He that is spiritual is he that is born of the Spirit.
‘The wages of sin is death.”
Complete and absolute separation from the Father is the wage of sin.
No man prior to Christ experienced this death of separation from the Father, nor will any man, because Christ was slain before the foundations of the world. Man merely died prior to the cross and the breath of life, returned unto God whom gave it.
The Old Testament people were in hades " sheol," the grave awaiting the resurrection of life that would come through Christ resurrection. In death, they had no remembrance, they were asleep yet. With the close of Christ work, they were awakened to glory to ascend to the Father to be forever with the Lord.
Psalm 115:17
The dead do not praise the LORD,Nor do any who go down into silence;
Proverbs 9:18
But he does not know that the dead are there,That her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten.
BUT WAIT THERE WAS THE PROMISE THAT JESUS CHRIST BROUGHT FORTH
Isaiah 26:19
Your dead will live;Their corpses will rise You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy,For your dew is as the dew of the dawn,And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.
Jeremiah 31:40
"And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the LORD; it will not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever."
This entire passage in Jeremiah speaks of the day of consummation, not just Israel of the flesh, but ALL ISRAEL, the Israel of the Spirit, the chosen sons of God now ( Gentile and Jew who are presently walking in the Light of Jesus Christ, and ALL MEN then the ISRAEL OF THE FLESH.
Thus ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED.
Less we forget that we are all HIS CREATION.
Perhaps then you can grasp the significance of why the ETERNAL ONE- Jesus struggled with knowing what He was about to undergo, for which no man ever had or ever will have to undergo, because He did for all of mankind. He suffered the wages of sin - DEATH real DEATH. Separated from His own divine self.
Jesus experienced what the Old Testament people righteous or unrighteous did not.
For you see they had never known holiness. Some had been positionally granted righteousness because of their faith, but none had known holiness, and no man can see God without holiness for God is holy.
Jesus purchased Holiness for the entirety of humanity.
Those in trust know it now, but there is coming a time, "when no man will say to another man, know the Lord for ALL SHALL KNOW HIM!"
The glorious day, when all flesh shall come to God. Did you know that all flesh will?
- Psalm 145:21
My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD,And all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever.
- Isaiah 40:5
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,And all flesh will see it together;For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
Socrates didn't fear death, because he believed that matter was evil and this is what kept men in bondage, he believed that by dying he would be spirit and then be released from evil for spirit was good.
Jesus knew and most men have never comprehended why He struggled with his coming death.
I mean He was the Son of God, right? Surely he knew it was only for three days, He tells the disciples this.
Why was Jesus death so difficult for Him in comparison to that of Socrates, who gladly chose to die even by his own hand?
I tell you why, because in that death, HE would truly die and experience absolute, total darkness, no presence of love, separation from the Father, separation from that which was within Him.
Until you really grasp this you will hold to false teachings about hell and other matters that have nothing to do with the wages of sin or God's love expressed fully in the Son.
We know He did not die separated from the Father forever as some like to say the Second Death is in Revelation.
If this Death and eternal one is the penalty of sin, then Christ would still be there in death, or in hell, but He is not!
For God never intended nor does He intend to destroy or torture His creation forever and ever, as the false teachers have proclaimed.
We know He did not enter some burning torturous place of damnation called Hell that is eternal,
No, the wages of sin is DEATH but He would undergo not just any death.
He would experience total absolute separation from the Father. Thereby experiencing the plight of men, because of the sin nature, incapable of seeing God, incapable of experiencing God, incapable of fellowship with God because of the Old Adamic nature-- the sin nature.
We were in Christ, and Christ at that moment was in us.
He experienced every bit of our darkness outside of fellowship with the Father, Our Creator. But not just our experience but imagine this, that of the WHOLE WORLD! What a burden, what a terrible thing to undergo, just so that the world be reconciled unto the Father, what love, that He would identify Himself completely with His creation.
Complete and Absolute absence from the Father. Think about it, that my friend is the wage He took upon Himself, when He cried out, "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?"
What Jesus accomplished in the death and resurrection, was eternal, meaning it had no beginning nor an end.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. God speaks clearly in the last Chapters of Revelation on this matter, and John repeats, Christ words here, “IT IS FINISHED, as “IT IS DONE”
Christ has died in time and space for you and I, He became flesh for you and I, he lived, and suffered, for you and I, and all along what drove Him to the cross wasn’t God's need for someone to punish for our sins/ The church has falsely proclaimed this as well in error. We still mistakenly think that today in “church circles”, but what drove Jesus to the cross was the His love and the Father’s love to remove the curtain of separation for us from entering the Holy of Holies so we could once more all of mankind be in fellowship with Him and the Father again, to erase the old nature, the sin nature, the life of Adam. He brought forth a New Creation as the LAST ADAM.
Man no longer is under the power of that sin nature, an exchange took place that day at the cross, we were in Him, all of mankind - the old man, the old Adamic bloodline, that old sin nature whereby man could never be holy, was crucified and killed there at Calvary.
But it wasn’t enough to just kill or remove that which was against us, the Father still desired children, so Christ was raised from the grave, as a NEW CREATION- and we all of mankind were in Him.
Christ not only took away and removed the old man out of the way, he birthed a brand new creation to which all men were in Him.
Do you know that all men are brand new creations in Him?
I did not say, that all men know this or experience this, or live it out. Even yet many who claim to be Christian do not know this, for their way of life says different.
What any of us do, is not our identity, Christ forever settled our identity at the cross and the resurrection, yes HE REDEEMED US!
If you and others are still “trying” to meet your needs independent of Christ with the only resources you have available to you: your mind, will, emotions and your physical body that is called “the flesh”.
The reason so, Christ did not change our minds, he changed that which put us into bondage, the reason no man could ever see God’s love and acceptance since the Fall.
He wiped out forever, that sin nature, for which held us in bondage to the flesh.
The flesh is the primary thing that hinders us from knowing and experiencing the victorious Christian life.
Living in the flesh is also known as the self-life.
It is not the sin nature, but all those things that have formed your identity in this world of sin. That is FLESH.
Striving to meet those God given needs by trying versus just trusting.
Because we were all born in Adam as well , we initially were born without this knowledge of the work of Christ.
Thus our spiritual faculties, our mind which influences all our actions were dead to to this knowledge of the Good News and our Father who the Bible says, God is love.
For some it seems still so.We however are not to judge but to look at all others through the eyes of God.
Paul said this, that he preached all men complete in Christ.
Those that do not yet see the Father as God is love still will persist with the whole Adamic view that God is wrath. But, we have been given the mind of Christ. Our thoughts will effect our behavior.
So we are given an admonishment by Paul.
- Romans 12:2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect
They forget the verse is balanced with:
Philippians 2:13
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
So they keep the people returning to the same tree to eat from as Adam, rather then resting in Christ and seeing that it is GOD AT WORK IN YOU both to WILL AND WORK for HIS GOOD PLEASURE!
There is little taught about that GOD accomplishes all that He has set out to do in you, versus what YOU CAN DO, NEED TO DO, and MUST DO.... that gets pretty tiresome, for it is no different then going to a job and a boss demanding the same of you. When shall they rest, where shall they find sanctuary from the world, when the very place they attend is proclaiming the same message as they are? Is Christ not our rest from the efforts of the FLESH?
Since we did not yet know this truth, and many yet do not, we were forced to live out of our own resources. Many Christians today still suffer under this burden of the flesh, and have not come to know the rest there is, in the Spirit of resting in Jesus Christ alone as our TRUE SABBATH.
As a result of dealing with the impossibility of getting our needs met, we are driven to make up for this deficiency.
The desire to have our needs met is so great that it consumes our energy; we become solely focused on that longing.
We become thoroughly and intensely self-centered in our quest for love, acceptance, value and significance.
The main result of this is the loss of our true identity. We were created to have the life of God within us, (in our human spirit) and us in Him, yet we don’t know this.
Therefore, our very reason for existence is not apparent to us.
We are born in a condition of not knowing who we are, but being driven to find out.
There are only two kinds of inner life, Adam-life (trying- by good and evil) or Christ-life (trusting- receiving this Grace from God) (Romans 5:14-19).
But the nature that held us all in chains- the sin nature has been not only brokem but destroyed through the Victory of Jesus Christ.
All of us are born in a world that teaches us and acts out of the old Adamic-life (thought life effects our lived life) ; an identity of ourselves without the life of God.
It was the identity of himself and God that Adam lost in the garden for all men.
Therefore, our behavior is not our only problem, but rather our minds effecting our hearts and our actions. Which in turn our behavior arises. It is from our very center of being, the heart that the old Adamic life attempts to arise again from the dead, but it cannot, IT HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST, it can only make us believe that we still ARE that old Adam, and when we trust that, then our flesh, our old habits then begin to rule and cause our behaviors that are contrary to the Spirit, this is because we lack trust...and whatever is not of faith, is SIN.
Our identity is the problem that keeps us from living godly. It is when we fail to identify ourselves with the New Creation that Christ made us all, and that He has given us a new heart, and wrote his law upon hearts of flesh instead of upon stone. (Old Covenant law) that we can be carnal Christians, in other words living as if Christ had no effect to change the inner man.
It is the bondage to this lie, this illusion, this disregard for God’s work of love and grace that we yet wrestle with, not the old sin nature, but the old sin, stain, Who Am I?
The blood of Christ washed away our sin, it destroyed the sin nature, but the identity for which we have been taught not only in growing up, but in much of religion and even “christian religion” has kept us blind to the truth, of the completed work of Jesus Christ, so we often find we live out of that old identity until God by His grace reveals to us, by the TRUE GOSPEL, our new identity. This continually revealing, Christ coming, Christ appearing to us, is a lifetime Journey in which we learn to overcome the flesh, and the lie that we are that old man. WE ARE NOT- HE IS DEAD- CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST AT CALVARY.
THERE IS A NEW MAN THAT GOD HAS CREATED OF ALL OF US. SAINT AND SINNER ALIKE. IT is He- Jesus Christ within, wherein lies the Kingdom of God, that desires to remain on the throne of our heart, and HE will, HE shall not give up that which is rightfully His, Your will or a Devils will shall not thwart His will!
The Universal Exchanged Life that took place then becomes our new identity, and we now see ourselves as God has made us, New Creations, not just forgiven, but the old nature, that old identity ERASED in Christ at the cross. We begin to experience life, the abundant life, the godly life, the redeemed life, this new life, no longer based on what I do, but who I am.
A walk of trust in God and no longer trying.
I am the beloved of God my Creator, who has never quit loving me, but loved me so much, he removed out of the way that thing which kept me from knowing Him, and knowing He is love. I am not that old sin nature but a New Creation in Christ, quite capable of living in His righteousness, not my own, but His, given to me freely by His love and Grace! I am capable because He is capable, I live now because He lives!
This is how the inner life is changed? It has been exchanged. Trust it, rely on it, God is now the center of your life, He is your Father, Jesus is your brother, the Spirit is YOUR LIFE!
Galatians 2:20 states, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me."
The reason people don’t come to understand this, is they have been taught wrongly that salvation is about escaping something you deserve after death. Hell! and Jesus went through all He went through just to get us to heaven if we will just believe that! Then we are saved!
Thus many of God's sheep are left there to hang in oblivion asking but what can I about this flesh, this way of life, all this I have grown to hate about myself. They are told, only to TRY HARDER, PRAY HARDER, READ HARDER, ATTEND CHURCH HARDER.....and they DIE!
THE LIE!
God did not send Jesus to go to hell for us, but to drag us out of the hell that we were already in! Remember the Wages of Sin is death- not hell, as pagan and catholic tradition have twisted the whole Good News to be.
This is what happens when a person comes to know this fact, to know this new identity given to us freely by His grace. Then he is saved, from his old identity, his old thought process, his old trying tree, rather than trusting tree for this life here and now- this is salvation.
It has nothing to do with after we die, and everything to do with while we are alive!
Jesus reminded the Pharisees of this.. they wanted to talk about the afterlife.
He blows them away with this statement.
Matthew 22:32
" I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB"
He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
Mark 12:27
" He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken."
Luke 20:38
" Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him."
Salvation (keep the heaven and hell thing out of it) is when a man realizes he is no longer the same type of human, possessing the sin nature of the Adam life, but is a child of God, that He has the life of Christ, and thus is a new creation, and one with a brand new identity. He is a Child of the living God.
This is salvation, this is the delivery of this new spiritual faculty understanding of who we are, because of Christ, and that we are not that old Adam, but we are in the last Adam, Jesus Christ - the life giving spirit.
We come to understand, salvation isn’t about getting to go somewhere when you die, but being somewhere while you are alive.
Thus heaven comes to earth. Thus His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Not the heaven of I get everything I want or could imagine, like some have distorted it to be, that’s no more than the first identity trying to squeeze the work of Christ into selfishness and foolish imaginations of men.
No that is not it at all!
What we obtain is freedom of the fellowship of the Father and the Son, again, and to relax in that presence, and live by simple trust every minute of our lives, in His love for us.
This is not just for us, but His love IS FOR ALL MEN!
We quit trying and start trusting.
We quit defining ourselves in what we do, but now define ourselves in WHO WE REALLY ARE!
We believe the Scriptures that Christ was crucified for us. Do we not also believe the same Scriptures that teach we were crucified with Christ? God has created something completely new inside of you.
This is a spiritual reality, not just positional truth. This NEW CREATION is your true identity.
This son of God is who you are in Christ, and because He is in YOU!
"If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it."
Jesus says the way to life is through death, and if anyone is to follow Him, they must deny self.
I hope you understand with much more clarity.
To really understand, you must understand, that going to hell was never the problem God had to overcome.
Man was in hell the moment, Adam turned from trusting to trying. Christ did not come to deliver us from some punishment of a cruel God of men’s imaginations and fallen carnal mind, but He came that we, all men, might have life, and that life was in Him and is still in Him. He is the light of the world.
WE WERE DEAD AND WITHOUT HOPE. BUT LIFE HAS COME! HE IS HERE!
Men still don’t come to Him, they turn to religion, they turn to good works, some give up and just do evil.
They do not know who they are yet, they don’t know and have never heard the true GOOD NEWS, they are still trapped in their old identity but they don’t have too be.
Thus Paul said again above in Scripture at the end of the first verse I provided here.
He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:19..... This is the GOOD NEWS not the false gospel that men have been presenting of Christ.
Let us present the true Good News of the work of Jesus Christ for all mankind, that He is the Victor, the Triumphant One, who has purchased this for us, which belongs to ALL MEN.
Watch your life, and the life of others change. I mean REALLY CHANGE
PREACH the GOSPEL not religious tradition. LIVE the GOSPEL, not religious tradition.
LOVE GOD and OTHERS because He first loved all of us....from the very beginning, God wasn’t mad at us, man just couldn’t see it, and sad to say, there are folks today who still do not see that “God is love.”
Christ Victorious, this is the GOOD NEWS. Thus the angels said on His incarnation into this world our world, the earth- PEACE and GOODWILL TO ALL MEN on EARTH.
Men today are like all the pagans, asking but what of death?
What then?
I say to you, What of Life?
What of now?
Jesus destroyed sin and (spiritual death) so that all men may be with the Father forever.
How God reveals His love to those that didn’t get it here, is His business, but no matter what, you didn’t get it here, either on your own, that was the Sovereign will and act of God, if you have come to understand reconciliation and salvation like I have just explained here, God gave you the light by His grace, and the faith of Jesus Christ. Nothing that you have obtained from God or in God, came because you willed it so.
Let no man boast but in the Lord. God has not chosen some men for hell and others for heaven, he has only chosen some to understand and have life here and some to understand and recieve life over there, so that His plan can be worked out for all of us.
Ephesians 1:11
also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
Note: WORKS ALL THINGS... not just some things and leaves the rest up to mankind to mess up.
He does so AFTER THE COUNSEL OF HIS WILL.... not ours.
So, that “every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, Jesus Christ is LORD!
I pray that in reading this, if you are not a Christian by your identification, that you will see that Jesus has given all you will ever need to accept what I have told you here, he has removed that sin nature that would keep you blind to this knowledge.
I pray if your identity is that of a Christian, that you would come to understand what that really means, outside of what you do, and see who you REALLY are.
To both, the mercies, compassion and love of the Father has been given freely to us, in Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of ALL!
Joseph Black D.D.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Does God Learn? Where Did God's Wisdom Come From?
New Video: Does God Learn?
From where did God's Knowledge & Wisdom come?
Click here: http://www.bible-truths.com/video/WhereGodsKnowledgeL.wmv
This video and with what L. Ray has to say here, should blow your mind, and spiritually touch your heart to see some truth as it did me, even more then just what is said here.
Here is what the Spirit of the Lord showed me, in what he says. He doesn’t say what I saw here in what He said, but this is what the Spirit of the Lord showed me in what he said, but which is what I believe he means to teach here spiritually.
Colossians 1:16
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him.
Who? Wisdom that's who. Who is Wisdom - Jesus Christ- that's who.
I Corinthians 2:6-16
6 Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away;
7but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory;
8 the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;
9 but just as it is written,
"THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD,
AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN,
ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM."
10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.
11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.
16For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM?
But we have the mind of Christ.
Can you see it, Christ is the Wisdom that he is speaking about here.
This will help you to see what I see how God sees.... God in seeing Jesus (his created being, the man -Jesus)- by His foreknowledge of ALL THINGS IN MAN’S HISTORY that He (GOD THE CREATOR) would bring about. (that He the Father would come and give birth, to Jesus by His Spirit through a young maiden named Mary) and in Jesus- the man, would be the full expression of HIM- God.
Jesus -the man, Christ- the God.
Yes, Christ *Anointed One, has always been- He is pre-existent, and Jesus was already with the Father, for Wisdom (Jesus the man, his created being) came forth out of the Father by His foreknowledge of what He was going to do, in creating the man Jesus that He would send forth to suffer, and die, and redeem all of His creation. Thus GOD SUFFERED by His foreknowledge, and Wisdom came forth to create what we read in Genesis - In the beginning!
This Jesus, the man, born in human flesh but by the Spirit of God, is, was and always has been, though he had not been in human history yet,so He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End, of creation - man's history!
Yet, people do not believe, that since all creation began in Him that it won't end in Him- the great consummation that Scripture is so clear about, where "God will be all in all."
There are not THREE GODS but only the one TRUE God, from which Wisdom (the Son) was birthed from and that came and is and always was!
Thus GOD WAS IN CHRIST, of course He was!
Thus, Jesus would be and is- the Son of God and Son of Man.
Who now sits at the right hand (authority and power) of the Father, Our Creator.
God realizes and experiences suffering.... GOD DID AND DOES AND HAS SUFFERED.
Christ “learned” obedience through suffering,
Christ suffered so that we might live!
but more than that, what I see now is because God knew and experienced those same sufferings in complete reality, He suffered, and this suffering, produced the Wisdom that came forth from Him which created all things.
See the circle of how God sees, it is infinitive, and immortal, it has no beginning and no end. God is, and always will be. God was and is now. Thus this Wisdom that came from within God to create was there already but was birthed out of the foreknowledge of Him, knowing from within Him, within His very self, He would bring forth the man Jesus, who would be the full expression of Him, who would suffer and God would suffer with Him, so God experienced that suffering as well, and out of that suffering, Came wisdom- Christ, and out of that came "In the beginning".
What a paradigm mind blowing, spiritual blessing understanding.
I got from this one thing that L. Ray went after to seek an answer for. Like a child with a simple child like question. Mommy does God learn?
Jesus said:
Mark 10:15
"Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all."
Does God Learn?
Yes! but no, not in the sense He learned from something outside of Himself, but from within, He suffered, and foreknowing, and from within that foreknowing, He suffered and from within that suffering, WISDOM came forth, and all things were created for Him and by Him
I hope you see this one! It will rattle your cage, and bless you spiritually beyond bounds!
Here is something else to see out of this, nothing is REALLY learned from outside of you- exterior- letter of the word, everything is learned experientially from within you Spirit.
We learn what we really learn, not by what someone else teaches us, but what we learn from our own experiences.
Thus we experience thus we learn. That is why NO man can really learn from just the letter of the word, He must experience the Living Word , to learn, the WISDOM!
“Intelligent answers may come from outward teaching, but Wisdom comes from within.”
I am so thankful for the things I have undergone all my life, all the suffering, all the problems and pain, all my failures, all my missing the marks, because from it, I gained experience which has given me His Wisdom, not just some “book” knowledge” but life knowledge. I only love like I love, because I have experienced His love, which burst through from His Wisdom which too came by pain.
If you suffer, if you are in pain, my message to you, is God HAS SUFFERED AS WELL, and HE IS SUFFERING EVEN NOW in patience, until the plan is revealed as COMPLETE IN CHRIST, which many yet want NOT to see or believe, but someday soon, the plan that Jesus saved all of that which is HIS, His creation will be revealed, and my heart as His heart suffers in patience of awaiting for that glorious day, when Jesus will be revealed to all men, as the ALPHA AND OMEGA!. The beginning for us and the end for all of us.
BTW- L. Ray Stevens is one of most discerning Scriptural teachers I have ever read, that has tremendous Wisdom as well. If you have not ever read anything he has written I challenge you to do so. You can find all of his writings at:
www.bible-truths.com
Ray has been battling stage IV terminal prostate cancer which metastasized a year ago throughout his skull, spine, arms, legs, shoulders, hips and pelvis. His PSA (which should be .5, or certainly no higher than 1 or 2) has risen from 107 last summer, to a staggering 740 by December, 2008.
He is under the extensive care of a local Naturopath, (who has two doctor's degrees) and is following a rather ponderous protocol involving nearly a hundred daily doses of a wide variety of supplements along with daily ozone treatments and various other procedures.
Ray has deeply appreciated hearing from those who have known of his condition. But let it be known that Ray trusts in God for any healing, not in supplements.
March 2010, Ray is still alive and here is the last post, I have found on his condition.
Greetings to God's Elect, Forum members, and bible-truths readers:
I am encouraged by all the emails I receive from many who are praying for my recovery. I wish that I had a better report to give than I am able at this time. Today starts the third week that I am confined to a wheelchair. I cannot walk or stand. Part of the problem is gout. Hospice checked my blood for Uric acid last week, and it was very elevated. Since then, the massive swelling of my feet, right knee, and left hand and fingers, along with the pain has diminished somewhat, but I am still unable to walk or stand. I am not discouraged, however. My trial is not greater than I can bear. The Emphatic Diaglott and the Concordant New Testament renders I Cor. 10:13 better than the King James:
"Now, faithful is God, Who will not be leaving you to be tried above what you are able, but, together with the trial, will be making the sequel also, TO ENABLE YOU TO UNDERGO IT."
I am able to sit and work at my computer on most days. My latest paper: "HELL is a Christian Hoax" is nearing a hundred pages. I thought it would be finished by last Fall--hopefully sometime next month. Look for it at the top of our home page. In fact, below is a reproduction of the first page of my paper:
HELL is a Christian hoax
L. Ray Smith debunks the Christian/Muslim doctrine of an eternal hell while giving a Scriptural critique and commentary on New York Times best selling book: "23 minutes in Hell" by Bill Wiese.
You can read some of this critique at: http://bible-truths.com/23-minutes-in-hell.html
May the God of heaven and earth, grant you His Wisdom, and may you come to know the full breath and knowledge of His encompassing love and mercy toward all of His creation through Jesus Christ His Son.
Joseph W. Black D.D.
From where did God's Knowledge & Wisdom come?
Click here: http://www.bible-truths.com/video/WhereGodsKnowledgeL.wmv
This video and with what L. Ray has to say here, should blow your mind, and spiritually touch your heart to see some truth as it did me, even more then just what is said here.
Here is what the Spirit of the Lord showed me, in what he says. He doesn’t say what I saw here in what He said, but this is what the Spirit of the Lord showed me in what he said, but which is what I believe he means to teach here spiritually.
Colossians 1:16
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him.
Who? Wisdom that's who. Who is Wisdom - Jesus Christ- that's who.
I Corinthians 2:6-16
6 Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away;
7but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory;
8 the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;
9 but just as it is written,
"THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD,
AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN,
ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM."
10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.
11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.
16For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM?
But we have the mind of Christ.
Can you see it, Christ is the Wisdom that he is speaking about here.
This will help you to see what I see how God sees.... God in seeing Jesus (his created being, the man -Jesus)- by His foreknowledge of ALL THINGS IN MAN’S HISTORY that He (GOD THE CREATOR) would bring about. (that He the Father would come and give birth, to Jesus by His Spirit through a young maiden named Mary) and in Jesus- the man, would be the full expression of HIM- God.
Jesus -the man, Christ- the God.
Yes, Christ *Anointed One, has always been- He is pre-existent, and Jesus was already with the Father, for Wisdom (Jesus the man, his created being) came forth out of the Father by His foreknowledge of what He was going to do, in creating the man Jesus that He would send forth to suffer, and die, and redeem all of His creation. Thus GOD SUFFERED by His foreknowledge, and Wisdom came forth to create what we read in Genesis - In the beginning!
This Jesus, the man, born in human flesh but by the Spirit of God, is, was and always has been, though he had not been in human history yet,so He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End, of creation - man's history!
Yet, people do not believe, that since all creation began in Him that it won't end in Him- the great consummation that Scripture is so clear about, where "God will be all in all."
There are not THREE GODS but only the one TRUE God, from which Wisdom (the Son) was birthed from and that came and is and always was!
Thus GOD WAS IN CHRIST, of course He was!
Thus, Jesus would be and is- the Son of God and Son of Man.
Who now sits at the right hand (authority and power) of the Father, Our Creator.
God realizes and experiences suffering.... GOD DID AND DOES AND HAS SUFFERED.
Christ “learned” obedience through suffering,
Christ suffered so that we might live!
but more than that, what I see now is because God knew and experienced those same sufferings in complete reality, He suffered, and this suffering, produced the Wisdom that came forth from Him which created all things.
See the circle of how God sees, it is infinitive, and immortal, it has no beginning and no end. God is, and always will be. God was and is now. Thus this Wisdom that came from within God to create was there already but was birthed out of the foreknowledge of Him, knowing from within Him, within His very self, He would bring forth the man Jesus, who would be the full expression of Him, who would suffer and God would suffer with Him, so God experienced that suffering as well, and out of that suffering, Came wisdom- Christ, and out of that came "In the beginning".
What a paradigm mind blowing, spiritual blessing understanding.
I got from this one thing that L. Ray went after to seek an answer for. Like a child with a simple child like question. Mommy does God learn?
Jesus said:
Mark 10:15
"Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all."
Does God Learn?
Yes! but no, not in the sense He learned from something outside of Himself, but from within, He suffered, and foreknowing, and from within that foreknowing, He suffered and from within that suffering, WISDOM came forth, and all things were created for Him and by Him
I hope you see this one! It will rattle your cage, and bless you spiritually beyond bounds!
Here is something else to see out of this, nothing is REALLY learned from outside of you- exterior- letter of the word, everything is learned experientially from within you Spirit.
We learn what we really learn, not by what someone else teaches us, but what we learn from our own experiences.
Thus we experience thus we learn. That is why NO man can really learn from just the letter of the word, He must experience the Living Word , to learn, the WISDOM!
“Intelligent answers may come from outward teaching, but Wisdom comes from within.”
I am so thankful for the things I have undergone all my life, all the suffering, all the problems and pain, all my failures, all my missing the marks, because from it, I gained experience which has given me His Wisdom, not just some “book” knowledge” but life knowledge. I only love like I love, because I have experienced His love, which burst through from His Wisdom which too came by pain.
If you suffer, if you are in pain, my message to you, is God HAS SUFFERED AS WELL, and HE IS SUFFERING EVEN NOW in patience, until the plan is revealed as COMPLETE IN CHRIST, which many yet want NOT to see or believe, but someday soon, the plan that Jesus saved all of that which is HIS, His creation will be revealed, and my heart as His heart suffers in patience of awaiting for that glorious day, when Jesus will be revealed to all men, as the ALPHA AND OMEGA!. The beginning for us and the end for all of us.
BTW- L. Ray Stevens is one of most discerning Scriptural teachers I have ever read, that has tremendous Wisdom as well. If you have not ever read anything he has written I challenge you to do so. You can find all of his writings at:
www.bible-truths.com
Ray has been battling stage IV terminal prostate cancer which metastasized a year ago throughout his skull, spine, arms, legs, shoulders, hips and pelvis. His PSA (which should be .5, or certainly no higher than 1 or 2) has risen from 107 last summer, to a staggering 740 by December, 2008.
He is under the extensive care of a local Naturopath, (who has two doctor's degrees) and is following a rather ponderous protocol involving nearly a hundred daily doses of a wide variety of supplements along with daily ozone treatments and various other procedures.
Ray has deeply appreciated hearing from those who have known of his condition. But let it be known that Ray trusts in God for any healing, not in supplements.
March 2010, Ray is still alive and here is the last post, I have found on his condition.
Greetings to God's Elect, Forum members, and bible-truths readers:
I am encouraged by all the emails I receive from many who are praying for my recovery. I wish that I had a better report to give than I am able at this time. Today starts the third week that I am confined to a wheelchair. I cannot walk or stand. Part of the problem is gout. Hospice checked my blood for Uric acid last week, and it was very elevated. Since then, the massive swelling of my feet, right knee, and left hand and fingers, along with the pain has diminished somewhat, but I am still unable to walk or stand. I am not discouraged, however. My trial is not greater than I can bear. The Emphatic Diaglott and the Concordant New Testament renders I Cor. 10:13 better than the King James:
"Now, faithful is God, Who will not be leaving you to be tried above what you are able, but, together with the trial, will be making the sequel also, TO ENABLE YOU TO UNDERGO IT."
I am able to sit and work at my computer on most days. My latest paper: "HELL is a Christian Hoax" is nearing a hundred pages. I thought it would be finished by last Fall--hopefully sometime next month. Look for it at the top of our home page. In fact, below is a reproduction of the first page of my paper:
HELL is a Christian hoax
L. Ray Smith debunks the Christian/Muslim doctrine of an eternal hell while giving a Scriptural critique and commentary on New York Times best selling book: "23 minutes in Hell" by Bill Wiese.
You can read some of this critique at: http://bible-truths.com/23-minutes-in-hell.html
May the God of heaven and earth, grant you His Wisdom, and may you come to know the full breath and knowledge of His encompassing love and mercy toward all of His creation through Jesus Christ His Son.
Joseph W. Black D.D.
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