I've always felt like people in our movement tend to undervalue and downplay the religious aspects of what's going on. Whether they want to admit it or not, Christianity is on the rise again, and in a big way.
Which is good, since that means God's hand is in all of this, and we all know it's impossible to beat God.
In my heart I testify this is true, and I repent of my racism here and now. I was a racist because of how I saw things and because satan used it as a door into my conduct. I wash it with the Blood of Jesus Christ. Racism be damned. I invite Jesus into my heart.
Some people call it Ascension and I think we are ascending towards our Father, drawing close to how He meant us to be. As our growth rises so does our vibration. Everything in the universe has vibrations and for so long humankind has been held back from our true potential as children of The King because they have kept us in fear, war, hunger, poverty, ignorance and on and on and on.
(A few ideas / concepts to chew on / to consider. See what sticks, and put aside what doesn't. Consider scripture (but not doctrine) when reading.)
"Resurrection" means to pass from death to life,
Physical death is a natural process, where the fruit (the spirit) is harvested from the soil (the flesh) and lives eternally in the eternal spiritual realm.
The death caused by the Fall is spiritual death.
The source of life, both in spirit and in flesh, is God, the Father.
Falling into a state where the heart cannot open to God, cannot connect with God, cannot receive God's light and truth and love freely and naturally is spiritual death.
Spiritual death caused humanity to be derailed from the process of naturally growing into maturity and oneness with God.
If the first human ancestors had maintained their faith in God's word to "not eat" then they would have naturally and automatically grown through the process of maturing their spirits (hearts) to come into complete and perfect oneness with God.
Through disbelief, humanity fell to BELOW the point they were created at, and this opened the spiritual realm of hell.
God's providence for the resurrection of mankind BACK to our original state (before the fall) occurs in three key stages.
Up until Abraham, the providence was simply to return a central person back to the original starting point, where the process of resurrection can actually begin, and the "Word" can be given. Resurrection requires the "Word" because belief is required.
God providence starts from a central person, and expands through a family, then a clan or tribe, then through a people (and ethnic group), through a nation, to the whole world.
From Moses, who came as the fulfillment of Abraham after 400 years of payment of Abraham's spiritual debt (because he failed in his first offering), resurrection could be achieved on the first stage, a formative stage. Israelites believing in God's word through Moses resurrected to this level, and enjoyed a master-servant relationship with God. (Their hearts became capable of that level of relationship.)
From Jesus, believers could achieve resurrection in the growth stage, by believing in the Gospels, and can enjoy a adoptive father - adopted child relationship with God. (Aka we are born of a different lineage - the fallen lineage of Adam and Eve, but through Jesus, we are reborn and adopted into God's lineage, God's direct family, of whom Jesus is the First Born.)
When Christ returns, and reveals all the hidden truths of history and providence, those who believe will be resurrected to the final third stage, growing beyond what Adam and Eve ever achieved, and complete the process of growing into full and complete oneness with God the Father, becoming the second born after Christ, and being able to enjoy a perfect True Father - True Child (no longer adopted) relationship with God, even as Jesus Christ does.
Revival, ascension, etc, are simply other terms that in the end mean 'resurrection' is taking place, where we move away from Satan's realm of death in spirit and in flesh, into God's sovereign realm in spirit and in flesh.
In the second stage, resurrection only takes place spiritually, because the flesh is still under Satan's dominion, because Christ had to sacrifice his own flesh in order to secure our spiritual salvation. When Christ returns, the flesh will also be liberated from Satan's claim, and we will experience full and complete resurrection in spirit AND flesh, as God's true (no longer adopted) children.
Interesting discussion on the meaning of resurrection. Thank you for taking the time to lay all that out.
One thing did jump out at me because it's not explained, and I would like to know your thoughts on it. In what offering did Abraham fail? It cannot be the offering of his son, Isaac, because that was a revealing test God didn't need to bring to a conclusion. This is obvious apart from religious teaching because God never required a human sacrifice from anybody before or since that singular event, and that one didn't even happen because God stopped Abraham from completing it, saying, "now I know your love/devotion/loyalty" (paraphrased, but also proof it was only a test––what we do proves our intentions).
The only other offering was the animal sacrifice Abraham laid out on the ground. He didn't participate in that except to kill the animals and arrange them according to custom. The smoking furnace and the burning torch passing between the pieces was God making a covenant with Himself on behalf of Abraham. This is not as obvious, but it becomes clear from logical assessment within the spiritual logic of the Bible. Everyone in Abraham's time took covenants like that very seriously, and God was making His promise more sure to Abraham's mind by that act. It is noteworthy that Abraham seemed to know instinctively what was happening because he didn't try to walk between the pieces himself, which was normally done in a binding ritual like that.
On a side note, I believe that the new covenant in Christ's blood has nothing to do with the national covenant of Moses in terms of how it works because Jeremiah prophesied exactly how it would work in chapter 31, and he said it would be "not according to the covenant I made with your fathers," which were in context the fathers of the Jews he was speaking to, and you see the idea of incompatibility expanded in the New Testament. I think it actually harkens back to the covenant of Abraham because believing on Jesus (trusting His sacrifice) is how you get in on it, and righteousness is reckoned to us for believing just like it was reckoned to Abraham. Actually it is more than just reckoned for us. Abraham's sin was merely covered, otherwise he would have gone to heaven immediately upon his death and not to the place where righteous people were sent to wait for their final redemption (paradise, where Jesus went first after He died to announce the new situation). The sin of a believer has been eradicated in Christ, and God is perfectly righteous and just to do it because of Jesus' sacrifice of Himself, which also harkens back to the Abrahamic covenant––God doing Himself what man was actually incapable of doing because of spiritual death. When we die as believers we go right to heaven, which wouldn't be possible if any sin was still attached to us. (Of course, this doesn't mean we are free to sin or that when we sin it's okay because sin is gone. It means that we are free from sin in a way that we can overcome it, and under the new covenant God freely gives us the grace––spiritual power from Him––to do that.)
Thanks for the question. Thanks also for laying out some of your views about the covenant between God and us, and the quality of the salvation afford to us through the Cross.
(Apologies for wall of text, btw.)
To give my answer to your question proper weight, I should lay out a few fundamental concepts that I believe will help to contextualize the issue at hand.
First is the principle in the Word that shapes how growth to completion is accomplished in God's creation.
Second is the nature of the ideal of God's creation which form the foundation for all the Father's efforts to restore that ideal after it was lost.
Third is the concept of indemnification, which is what our human responsibility was transmuted to in the Father's providence to restore and resurrect us.
That should provide a good context to address the question of how and what offering Abraham failed in.
One. God created the universe in such manner that all living things pass through a period of time when they grow to reach maturity and completion. In the case of some species of rabbit, for example, the period is about 6 months. After 6 months, they are physically mature, and are able to reproduce. In the case of some plants, they will mature and then seed fully after one season, while others (i.e. ginseng) take 7 years to mature.
In the case of human beings, physically, we can reproduce around 13, 14 years of age, but we really only fully mature physically around 20 or 21 years of age. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, their offspring - any pure child of God - would have matured both physically and spiritually (aka perfection, complete oneness with the Father) at the same time; around 20/21 years of age. So far, only Jesus lived that original design.
For all creatures that maturation process is automatic, as long as they are supplied with the right nutrients, the right environment (warmth) and exercise (action). Likewise our physical body matures automatically with those things. However, the spirit, and our hearts, are created to mature only when we exercises our own responsibility to believe in and embody (action) God's Word (spiritual nutrient), in the presence of God's love (warmth). If we disbelieve, and do not practice to embody the Word, then our spirit cannot grow to maturity. If we cannot experience or access God's love, likewise, spiritual growth stunted.
That maturing or growing period is actually comprised of three sub-periods, each with a distinct character and nature. Remember this. It's important.
Two. The core of God's ideal for his creation is His children: humanity. The design for us, to mature and grow our spirit and our hearts, is the God-centered family. In the family, you have 4 core participants: One, the Father, God. Two, the husband (male), God's son. Three, the wife (female), God's daughter. Four, the child or children, God's "grandchildren" as it were (but also God's children). When a husband and wife have children of their own, they can experience for themselves directly the heart that God has towards them, by loving their own children.
Thus, the family with God at the center is the design for us to experience four core dimensions of God's love: parent's love, spouse's love, children's love, and sibling love. This is key, because what Adam and Eve lost when they fell was their ability to create a family in which God, and God's love, was at the center and fully present. Thus, all children born in such a family are also disconnected from God's love, and are unable to grow to spiritual maturity. Adam and Eve also lost God's Word. God gave them the commandment not to eat the fruit. When they ate the fruit, they lost their ability to receive God's word and believe in it. In the hearts of Adam and Eve, Satan replaced God's word with the Lie (eat).
Because Adam failed to mature fully, he came to be controlled (governed) by the Angel, Lucifer, instead of maturing to become the Lord who had governance OVER Lucifer. He lost his ability to qualify as the Lord over the angels.
Three. By causing Adam to fall, Lucifer 'created' a second unimaginable reality: hell, where God's children became Satan's children, and where they are cut off from God's love and God's word. From the viewpoint of Adam, Adam became a fallen creature. Originally, Adam had only one master and one center: God, the Father. But in believing in and uniting with Satan's word, the Lie, Adam now became the embodiment of both good and evil. Good, innate and inherited from God, but also evil, inherited via relationship with the devil.
Adam failed in his responsibility to unite with God's command, and thus became unable to exercise his natural responsibility to grow. He left his correct position and went in a completely unlawful direction. To return to his original position, and then continue on to grow to completion (oneness with God), Adam and his descendants need to make some condition that God can claim and say to Satan: "Sorry. They have fulfilled their responsibility, so they belong to me, not you." That condition is the key. It's why we have to believe in Jesus and salvation through the cross (that's our small condition of responsibility) in order to access the salvation God offers us. Without that condition, Satan simply claims to God, "they have not fulfilled their responsibility, so they belong to me." and God cannot refuse that, because it's God's principle itself that says we grow to unity with Him via exercising our responsibility.
So, these three things are key to the reason why God had his champions make offerings to him: the offering represents the Word of God, that Adam lost. By making the offering correctly, the anointed person successfully makes the condition of fulfilling the responsibility Adam could not, and thus can come to stand in a place where God can claim that person.
This process unfolds in God's providence through different stages, which is what the scripture describes. That's why the nature of the offering changes.
(Note for future reference: the offering is not the only thing required to restore God's claim over us. We also must embody the Word (which Adam failed to do) and this is done through unity between God's representative and the ones to be restored. This unity symbolizes the unity Adam should have (but which he didn’t) achieved by embodying God's word and achieving governance OVER the angel, Lucifer.)
It should be noted that Jesus Christ is the one who accomplished substantially, spiritually, this embodiment of the Word (meaning He is the Word, but he brought that to perfection by his own efforts and sufferings), and thus gained victory over the fallen angel, thus becoming the author of salvation.
From this view, Jesus himself is the actual model for success in this area (the path each of us must go), but all the representatives chosen by God before Christ came are actually precursors or symbolic representations of Christ that God established to prepare the way. ("So Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does.")
And also, pomp and ceremony attracts gays. I've noticed this. They like robes, costumes, masks, mystique. Anyplace that is, they are. Beginning to think the plain pulpit Baptist church had it right the whole time. Islam maybe too. In the future, costumes and masks need a pyre burning. It all needs to go.
I've always felt like people in our movement tend to undervalue and downplay the religious aspects of what's going on. Whether they want to admit it or not, Christianity is on the rise again, and in a big way.
Which is good, since that means God's hand is in all of this, and we all know it's impossible to beat God.
In my heart I testify this is true, and I repent of my racism here and now. I was a racist because of how I saw things and because satan used it as a door into my conduct. I wash it with the Blood of Jesus Christ. Racism be damned. I invite Jesus into my heart.
We are pure as snow because of God's Grace fren!
We are in Revival.
Some people call it Ascension and I think we are ascending towards our Father, drawing close to how He meant us to be. As our growth rises so does our vibration. Everything in the universe has vibrations and for so long humankind has been held back from our true potential as children of The King because they have kept us in fear, war, hunger, poverty, ignorance and on and on and on.
The best is yet to come! 🙌
(A few ideas / concepts to chew on / to consider. See what sticks, and put aside what doesn't. Consider scripture (but not doctrine) when reading.)
"Resurrection" means to pass from death to life,
Physical death is a natural process, where the fruit (the spirit) is harvested from the soil (the flesh) and lives eternally in the eternal spiritual realm.
The death caused by the Fall is spiritual death.
The source of life, both in spirit and in flesh, is God, the Father.
Falling into a state where the heart cannot open to God, cannot connect with God, cannot receive God's light and truth and love freely and naturally is spiritual death.
Spiritual death caused humanity to be derailed from the process of naturally growing into maturity and oneness with God.
If the first human ancestors had maintained their faith in God's word to "not eat" then they would have naturally and automatically grown through the process of maturing their spirits (hearts) to come into complete and perfect oneness with God.
Through disbelief, humanity fell to BELOW the point they were created at, and this opened the spiritual realm of hell.
God's providence for the resurrection of mankind BACK to our original state (before the fall) occurs in three key stages.
Up until Abraham, the providence was simply to return a central person back to the original starting point, where the process of resurrection can actually begin, and the "Word" can be given. Resurrection requires the "Word" because belief is required.
God providence starts from a central person, and expands through a family, then a clan or tribe, then through a people (and ethnic group), through a nation, to the whole world.
From Moses, who came as the fulfillment of Abraham after 400 years of payment of Abraham's spiritual debt (because he failed in his first offering), resurrection could be achieved on the first stage, a formative stage. Israelites believing in God's word through Moses resurrected to this level, and enjoyed a master-servant relationship with God. (Their hearts became capable of that level of relationship.)
From Jesus, believers could achieve resurrection in the growth stage, by believing in the Gospels, and can enjoy a adoptive father - adopted child relationship with God. (Aka we are born of a different lineage - the fallen lineage of Adam and Eve, but through Jesus, we are reborn and adopted into God's lineage, God's direct family, of whom Jesus is the First Born.)
When Christ returns, and reveals all the hidden truths of history and providence, those who believe will be resurrected to the final third stage, growing beyond what Adam and Eve ever achieved, and complete the process of growing into full and complete oneness with God the Father, becoming the second born after Christ, and being able to enjoy a perfect True Father - True Child (no longer adopted) relationship with God, even as Jesus Christ does.
Revival, ascension, etc, are simply other terms that in the end mean 'resurrection' is taking place, where we move away from Satan's realm of death in spirit and in flesh, into God's sovereign realm in spirit and in flesh.
In the second stage, resurrection only takes place spiritually, because the flesh is still under Satan's dominion, because Christ had to sacrifice his own flesh in order to secure our spiritual salvation. When Christ returns, the flesh will also be liberated from Satan's claim, and we will experience full and complete resurrection in spirit AND flesh, as God's true (no longer adopted) children.
From His Peace to Your Strength.
Beautifully laid out fren! It will be JOYOUS! 🙌
Interesting discussion on the meaning of resurrection. Thank you for taking the time to lay all that out.
One thing did jump out at me because it's not explained, and I would like to know your thoughts on it. In what offering did Abraham fail? It cannot be the offering of his son, Isaac, because that was a revealing test God didn't need to bring to a conclusion. This is obvious apart from religious teaching because God never required a human sacrifice from anybody before or since that singular event, and that one didn't even happen because God stopped Abraham from completing it, saying, "now I know your love/devotion/loyalty" (paraphrased, but also proof it was only a test––what we do proves our intentions).
The only other offering was the animal sacrifice Abraham laid out on the ground. He didn't participate in that except to kill the animals and arrange them according to custom. The smoking furnace and the burning torch passing between the pieces was God making a covenant with Himself on behalf of Abraham. This is not as obvious, but it becomes clear from logical assessment within the spiritual logic of the Bible. Everyone in Abraham's time took covenants like that very seriously, and God was making His promise more sure to Abraham's mind by that act. It is noteworthy that Abraham seemed to know instinctively what was happening because he didn't try to walk between the pieces himself, which was normally done in a binding ritual like that.
On a side note, I believe that the new covenant in Christ's blood has nothing to do with the national covenant of Moses in terms of how it works because Jeremiah prophesied exactly how it would work in chapter 31, and he said it would be "not according to the covenant I made with your fathers," which were in context the fathers of the Jews he was speaking to, and you see the idea of incompatibility expanded in the New Testament. I think it actually harkens back to the covenant of Abraham because believing on Jesus (trusting His sacrifice) is how you get in on it, and righteousness is reckoned to us for believing just like it was reckoned to Abraham. Actually it is more than just reckoned for us. Abraham's sin was merely covered, otherwise he would have gone to heaven immediately upon his death and not to the place where righteous people were sent to wait for their final redemption (paradise, where Jesus went first after He died to announce the new situation). The sin of a believer has been eradicated in Christ, and God is perfectly righteous and just to do it because of Jesus' sacrifice of Himself, which also harkens back to the Abrahamic covenant––God doing Himself what man was actually incapable of doing because of spiritual death. When we die as believers we go right to heaven, which wouldn't be possible if any sin was still attached to us. (Of course, this doesn't mean we are free to sin or that when we sin it's okay because sin is gone. It means that we are free from sin in a way that we can overcome it, and under the new covenant God freely gives us the grace––spiritual power from Him––to do that.)
Thanks for the question. Thanks also for laying out some of your views about the covenant between God and us, and the quality of the salvation afford to us through the Cross.
(Apologies for wall of text, btw.)
To give my answer to your question proper weight, I should lay out a few fundamental concepts that I believe will help to contextualize the issue at hand.
First is the principle in the Word that shapes how growth to completion is accomplished in God's creation.
Second is the nature of the ideal of God's creation which form the foundation for all the Father's efforts to restore that ideal after it was lost.
Third is the concept of indemnification, which is what our human responsibility was transmuted to in the Father's providence to restore and resurrect us.
That should provide a good context to address the question of how and what offering Abraham failed in.
One. God created the universe in such manner that all living things pass through a period of time when they grow to reach maturity and completion. In the case of some species of rabbit, for example, the period is about 6 months. After 6 months, they are physically mature, and are able to reproduce. In the case of some plants, they will mature and then seed fully after one season, while others (i.e. ginseng) take 7 years to mature.
In the case of human beings, physically, we can reproduce around 13, 14 years of age, but we really only fully mature physically around 20 or 21 years of age. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, their offspring - any pure child of God - would have matured both physically and spiritually (aka perfection, complete oneness with the Father) at the same time; around 20/21 years of age. So far, only Jesus lived that original design.
For all creatures that maturation process is automatic, as long as they are supplied with the right nutrients, the right environment (warmth) and exercise (action). Likewise our physical body matures automatically with those things. However, the spirit, and our hearts, are created to mature only when we exercises our own responsibility to believe in and embody (action) God's Word (spiritual nutrient), in the presence of God's love (warmth). If we disbelieve, and do not practice to embody the Word, then our spirit cannot grow to maturity. If we cannot experience or access God's love, likewise, spiritual growth stunted.
That maturing or growing period is actually comprised of three sub-periods, each with a distinct character and nature. Remember this. It's important.
Two. The core of God's ideal for his creation is His children: humanity. The design for us, to mature and grow our spirit and our hearts, is the God-centered family. In the family, you have 4 core participants: One, the Father, God. Two, the husband (male), God's son. Three, the wife (female), God's daughter. Four, the child or children, God's "grandchildren" as it were (but also God's children). When a husband and wife have children of their own, they can experience for themselves directly the heart that God has towards them, by loving their own children.
Thus, the family with God at the center is the design for us to experience four core dimensions of God's love: parent's love, spouse's love, children's love, and sibling love. This is key, because what Adam and Eve lost when they fell was their ability to create a family in which God, and God's love, was at the center and fully present. Thus, all children born in such a family are also disconnected from God's love, and are unable to grow to spiritual maturity. Adam and Eve also lost God's Word. God gave them the commandment not to eat the fruit. When they ate the fruit, they lost their ability to receive God's word and believe in it. In the hearts of Adam and Eve, Satan replaced God's word with the Lie (eat).
Because Adam failed to mature fully, he came to be controlled (governed) by the Angel, Lucifer, instead of maturing to become the Lord who had governance OVER Lucifer. He lost his ability to qualify as the Lord over the angels.
Three. By causing Adam to fall, Lucifer 'created' a second unimaginable reality: hell, where God's children became Satan's children, and where they are cut off from God's love and God's word. From the viewpoint of Adam, Adam became a fallen creature. Originally, Adam had only one master and one center: God, the Father. But in believing in and uniting with Satan's word, the Lie, Adam now became the embodiment of both good and evil. Good, innate and inherited from God, but also evil, inherited via relationship with the devil.
Adam failed in his responsibility to unite with God's command, and thus became unable to exercise his natural responsibility to grow. He left his correct position and went in a completely unlawful direction. To return to his original position, and then continue on to grow to completion (oneness with God), Adam and his descendants need to make some condition that God can claim and say to Satan: "Sorry. They have fulfilled their responsibility, so they belong to me, not you." That condition is the key. It's why we have to believe in Jesus and salvation through the cross (that's our small condition of responsibility) in order to access the salvation God offers us. Without that condition, Satan simply claims to God, "they have not fulfilled their responsibility, so they belong to me." and God cannot refuse that, because it's God's principle itself that says we grow to unity with Him via exercising our responsibility.
So, these three things are key to the reason why God had his champions make offerings to him: the offering represents the Word of God, that Adam lost. By making the offering correctly, the anointed person successfully makes the condition of fulfilling the responsibility Adam could not, and thus can come to stand in a place where God can claim that person.
This process unfolds in God's providence through different stages, which is what the scripture describes. That's why the nature of the offering changes.
(Note for future reference: the offering is not the only thing required to restore God's claim over us. We also must embody the Word (which Adam failed to do) and this is done through unity between God's representative and the ones to be restored. This unity symbolizes the unity Adam should have (but which he didn’t) achieved by embodying God's word and achieving governance OVER the angel, Lucifer.)
It should be noted that Jesus Christ is the one who accomplished substantially, spiritually, this embodiment of the Word (meaning He is the Word, but he brought that to perfection by his own efforts and sufferings), and thus gained victory over the fallen angel, thus becoming the author of salvation.
From this view, Jesus himself is the actual model for success in this area (the path each of us must go), but all the representatives chosen by God before Christ came are actually precursors or symbolic representations of Christ that God established to prepare the way. ("So Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does.")
Continued below.
This is going to be like a Holy tsunami. No WONDER satan is angry and afraid!
And also, pomp and ceremony attracts gays. I've noticed this. They like robes, costumes, masks, mystique. Anyplace that is, they are. Beginning to think the plain pulpit Baptist church had it right the whole time. Islam maybe too. In the future, costumes and masks need a pyre burning. It all needs to go.