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Numbers in Scripture

Posted in Spiritual Food, tagged , , , , , on December 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Revelation 7:4

Brother John said in Revelation 7:4, “And I heard the number of them which were sealed.” Any time you see numbers in Scripture, it is a revelation God is giving you. God is NOT telling you how many people were sealed. GOD IS GIVING YOU A REVELATION. The revelation is that “and there were sealed AN HUNDRED AND FORTY AND FOUR THOUSAND of all the tribes of the children of Israel.”

Numbers in Scripture form a very important part of the dimensional gospel. They lend depth to the gospel; things are being said by the numbers that are not expressed otherwise. For instance, the number ONE is the number of God. The number TWO is the number of witness. The number THREE is the number of divine fullness (good, better, best). Number FOUR is the number of tribulation and when the tribulation comes three times, it comes to the fullness of tribulation which means victory. For instance, Moses’ life was divided into three forty-year periods. The first forty years he spent in Pharaoh’s palace preparing and training. The second forty years he spent in the wilderness, and the third forty years he spent leading the children of Israel out of Egypt to the borders of the Promised Land. That was the victory. His work had been accomplished.

FIVE is the number of ministry or the number of grace. SIX is the number of man. SEVEN is the number of perfection. Man cannot go further than six in all his endeavors. Therefore, seven is God’s perfection. EIGHT is the number of new beginnings. NINE is the number of judgment. Sometimes this number is used for Satan. TEN is the number of divine order, and ELEVEN is the number which marks the undoing of divine order and falls short of twelve, which is completion. I say all this to bring you to number twelve. TWELVE is completion of God’s government.

Let me give you a basic outline of the Word of God. The Word of God is written as no other book on earth or no other that man could write. No man could write one page of the Bible. This is why we know it is divinely done. The Bible is written in Greek and the Hebrew.

Let us look at the Hebrew. The Hebrew has a numeral for every letter in the alphabet. Each letter has a value, a numeric value. The whole of the Bible is written in this way. Every thought brought forth can be divided by seven equally. It is sevens, sevens, sevens, right through the whole Bible. Every thought, every sentence, every idea, every word, when put together with other words, can produce seven, seven, seven – always divided by seven. This is not humanly possible. I believe some time ago, somebody put out a $25,000 reward for anybody who could write anything in this manner and nobody could. I am sure no one can. This is what makes us know the Bible is absolutely authentic. Any part of it that does not match this trial of sevens is not true, it is not of the Bible, it is not of God. We know that what we have here is of God.

The Apocrypha and other books which were taken out as being noncanonical do not come up to this standard and that is one of the reasons that they were cast out. On the other hand, all the books of the Bible (for instance, the King James Version) have been certified by Jesus Christ and the apostles. They quoted these books. Jesus would not have quoted Moses if He did not believe that Moses was of God. If what Moses wrote was not of God, Jesus, the son of God, would not have quoted him. Jesus and all the apostles quoted from all the books of the Old Testament and that makes them authentic.

Let us look at this number 144,000. This number is derived by multiplying 12 x 12 x 1,000. Twelve is the number of completion. There are two completions: the completed man who is in a completed church. So if the completed man is right, according to God’s order, then the completed church will be right, according to God’s order. We have 12 multiplied by 12 which equals 144 followed by three zeros, for the end result of 144,000. The word “zero” is derived from the Hebrew word for seed “zera.” In Genesis 3:15 the Lord cursed the serpent and told him that the seed of the woman would bruise his head – which seed is Jesus Christ.

In the Old Testament, there were 12 persons anointed, 12 patriarchs, and 12 tribes of Israel. Exodus 28:1 speaks of the 5 anointed priests who were Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. The 7 kings that were anointed were Saul, David, Absalom, Solomon, Jehu, Joash, and Jehoahaz. This makes up the 12 anointed persons. Notice the sixth anointed person, king Saul (1 Samuel 10:1) proved to be a failure, but he was number 6. Six is the number of man. David was number 7 and he was God’s perfect choice. We can see the whole thing working according to numbers and according to Scripture. In the New Testament, there were 12 apostles, 12 foundations in the heavenly Jerusalem, 12 gates, 12 pearls, and 12 angels.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pages 145-147)

Thought for today: The Word of God is in three dimensions. Let us be good Bible students in our understanding of the numbers in Scripture.

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The Voice of God without

Posted in Spiritual Food, tagged , , , on November 29, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: 1 Samuel 3:1-10

We have been talking about the voice of God speaking within the believer, but we have to know that we also have the voice without. GOD HAS A VOICE. I do not know if many people know that. I heard a preacher say that God cannot speak, that He has spoken already and He is finished speaking. He said that these last 2,000 years God has not spoken anything. I feel sorry for that preacher. I do not know where he would get a message to tell me if there is no one giving him a message. That means that he is making up the message himself. I say, brethren, that God has a voice. I have heard the voice of God many times. It is not His usual way but sometimes He speaks. Remember the boy Samuel? He never knew God. He did not know God’s voice. He was in bed and he heard, “Samuel, Samuel,” and he ran to Eli. Eli sent him back to bed. After this happened a few times, Eli said, “If he call thee (again), that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” He knew that it was God speaking to Samuel (1 Samuel 3:9).

In Matthew 28:19-20 we read the words of Jesus as He was leaving. The last thing He said to the brethren was, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am WITH YOU alway, even unto the end of the world.” He said, “I am with you.” Christ is with us, not just in us. Christ is in the Body, speaking through prophecies, words of encouragement, and preaching. Jesus Christ is right in our midst, when we sit down together. Matthew 18:19-20 says, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, THERE AM I IN THE MIDST OF THEM.”

It is necessary for us to learn to feed on Christ in all three dimensions – Christ in the church, Christ within, and Christ in Jesus among us. Then we will begin to grow strong in the Lord. Feeding on Christ is the fourth seal. When the fourth seal begins to break forth, some other things are going to happen in the world. This seal is already broken and is available to us to walk in the truth.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pages 122-123)

Thought for today: Our strength lies in feeding upon Christ in all three dimensions.

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Jesus Christ: The Living Substance

Posted in Spiritual Food, tagged , , , on November 25, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Hebrews 10: 18-25

WE MUST FEED ON CHRIST. Hebrews 10:25a, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” “Ourselves” is the chief word here. You can assemble with the wrong people. If you assemble with the wrong people, you do not feed on Christ, you feed on something else. Isaiah says the people are FEEDING ON “VOMIT.” Isaiah 28:7 and 8, “But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.”

The Lord was saying that the people who fed the people of God were using their own ideas of the Word. Truth is not necessarily what I think about the truth. In other words, what I think about the truth is not necessarily the truth. The truth is Christ Jesus. God has priests, prophets, and ministers to tell the people what He says, and not what they think He says. God called it “vomit” and it is a horrible thing to think of going to the dining table and eating vomit. Forgive me if I have turned your stomach, but it is a terrible thing, and we need to consider it in the most serious light that God shows us. The food today from the seminaries and the churches is filled with error and man’s ideas. I hear many preachers say that THE WORD is literal. The Word of God is not literal. THE WORD IS SPIRITUAL. If you take the Word literally, you are just as wrong as someone who does not believe the Word at all.

In John 6, Jesus came right out and told the Jews that they should eat Him and drink His blood. Some people believe that, because Jesus said this, they have the license to pray over the wine and say that it becomes the Blood of Jesus Christ. They also believe that when they pray over the bread it becomes meat. Thus they disfigure the Word of God. Jesus did not tell us to eat meat. He said that they should eat Him, and there is only ONE WAY you can eat Christ and that is to eat Him spiritually.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites had natural bread and natural meat. They had a lamb. The lamb was not turned into Christ but they ate it, by faith, believing that Jesus Christ would come one day. NOW HE HAS COME, we no longer eat the lamb for that purpose, but we begin to see Christ Jesus as a LIVING SUBSTANCE within that gives us strength and makes us grow in the Spirit. We are NOT looking for a transubstantiation. We are NOT looking to turn the wine into blood. We do not want to drink blood. We want to DRINK CHRIST and the only way we can drink Him is in the Spirit.

Eating the flesh of Jesus Christ would not make you holy. Man is sinful from his HEART and he needs something in his heart to destroy the power of sin. Man does not need wine and bread to destroy the power of sin. The doctrine of transubstantiation destroys the communion, a beautiful thing that God set within our midst. 1 Corinthians 11:26 says, “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” We cannot break bread with someone we hate. Therefore communion brings a unity among the people of God as well as a unity with Christ. It is not eating the bread and drinking the wine that makes us holy. THE HOLY GHOST MAKES US HOLY.

Christ comes into a person in one way – when a person accepts Jesus Christ as His Saviour. He was a dead soul and God brought the Blood of Jesus Christ into him. A part of God entered into his soul and immediately it quickened the soul and the soul became a living being. Adam was formed “a living soul.” When God made him, He breathed His breath into him and Adam “became a living soul” (see Genesis 2:7). When God breathed into my soul, my soul came alive. Being alive, I wanted living food. I could not feed any longer on the dead things that I used to eat, spiritually speaking. The soul cries out to God, “Give me more that I might be filled.” God sends the Holy Ghost.

There is a time in the life of every believer who receives the Holy Ghost, that he knows it. When He comes in, you know it. He makes a noise, He moves up and down. God said that He wants to walk in us and talk in us, and THEN we would be His children and He would be our God. There is a walking and a talking. I think He moves things around. When I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, it was something that came into me. Christ came in and there was a quickening, a newness, prophecy, understanding; something new happened. If you have never had this, you do not have the Holy Ghost. Some people speak in tongues and they do not have the Holy Ghost. It is possible to speak in tongues from your mental effort (a psychological thing), from the devil (which I have seen), or from Christ. We need to feed on Christ and there is a Christ within. When Christ comes into the believer, He does not come in until the second work of grace is done. He comes in and that pushes you into the Holy Place (see 1 Corinthians 12:13). When Christ comes in, He is in your spirit and not in your soul. Your SOUL is not filled with the power of Christ, or else you would not act normally or naturally. YOUR SPIRIT IS FILLED. He comes in and He fills your spirit and this spills over into the soul. The Spirit WORKS in the soul. Proverbs 20:27 says, “The spirit of man is the candle (lamp) of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly (which means the soul).” The spirit of man is God’s lamp that searches the soul. When God fills the spirit of man with His Spirit, then there is a powerful work in the soul, and generally the believer prophesies or speaks utterances that he really does not know anything about. God speaks through him.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pages 119-121)

Thought for today: Let us feed upon Christ today so that His Spirit can make us Holy.

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Feeding on Christ

Posted in Spiritual Food, tagged , , , on November 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: John 6:53-58

When Jesus spoke in John 6 about the need to eat His flesh and drink His Blood, some of His disciples misunderstood Him completely and left Him immediately, because they said that He was teaching them cannibalism! God is always teaching us SPIRITUAL THINGS and not carnal things; if He takes carnal things to give us natural understanding, then it means that that understanding must be translated in spiritual terms.

Jesus is saying that we should eat His flesh and drink His Blood. Feeding on Christ is the fourth stage in the Tabernacle of Moses or in the gospel, and it is the fourth seal. When we learn how to feed on Christ, we begin to understand the fourth seal. That seal is open and that trumpet is blowing. To understand this, we must first understand the three dimensions in which we feed on Christ.

1. Christ in the church,
2. Christ within, and
3. Christ in Jesus among us.

First, we feed on Christ from the Word. The Christ WITHOUT comes to us through the Word. We are told that the Word is life. John 1:1 and 2, “In the beginning was the Word (the Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” We are talking about God being with God. That is, the person we knew as the Word, manifesting in a man, Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is God. Verse 3, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” We find out here that the Word is a creative being, a creative person, this Word of God that we are dealing with. God translates Himself into Word form and issues forth this form to us and we capture it by faith. Verses 4 and 5, “In Him was life.” We spoke of the Word and now we say, “Him.” “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not (could not overcome it).”

We read the Word from the pages of the book and lift it off the pages by our consciousness of who God is and we receive the Word by faith. Believing the Word brings life to us. It is not that life is in the book and when we shut the book we shut up God in the book. The Word is life and the Word is hovering around us waiting for us to accept it. When we do, it becomes Christ, a person, a being, inside of us. Christ without is manifested to us through hearing and reading the Word.

Another person can manifest Christ to us. Christ is in us, therefore, He is in other people also. Being in other people, He manifests to us and we must have Christ in us to be able to receive Christ from someone else. Sometimes you do not have Christ IN you, but you can receive Christ, because Christ is WITH you. There are two manifestations. In John 14:17c, Jesus, speaking about the Holy Spirit says, “For he dwelleth WITH you, and shall be IN you.” There is a Christ with us and a Christ in us. The Christ in me will recognize the Christ in another person. This is why criticizing people destroys you as well as the other person. Criticizing means that you are not looking at Christ in the other person.

Some people do not have Christ in them and when they speak, you must be able to discern that it is not Christ speaking. The Christ in you will respond to the Christ in others. When a message is delivered, the Christ in the speaker will touch the Christ in you; it will bring a quickening in you and you will believe that the Word is true. The truth of God has to be believed by those who want God and by those who reach out towards God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pages 116-118)

Thought for today: Let us feed abundantly this day on the Word of life and see His creative power come forth in our midst.

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What Are You Eating?

Posted in Spiritual Food, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: John 4:31-34

Leviticus 11:4-8 speaks of the cud chewing animals which are unclean in spite of their agreeing with the word and chewing the cud. If they do not have cloven hoofs along with the cud chewing, they are UNCLEAN. Here is a basic lesson in discernment by observation. One cannot walk in the Word except by the Spirit of God. SATAN CAN PREACH THE WORD, but neither he nor his angels, nor sinful carnal man can WALK in the WORD. It takes the Spirit of God in man to walk in the Word. If we preach the right word, but do not walk or live that which we preach, Leviticus 11:4 likens us to the camel. On the other hand, if we imitate Christ by our walk only, scripture likens us to the swine who walks with a cloven hoof, but does not achieve the distinction of chewing the cud.

Our pastures are well prepared by God and those who obey the Word of God, which is His revealed will to us, will know the truth and the truth shall make us free. Here is a scripture which beautifully illustrates this thought:

John 7:16-17, “Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. 17 If any man will DO his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”

Let us be reminded here that the word “eat” has the meaning of becoming one with that which we eat. So that even as our bodies feed by taking in natural food, which supplies energy for our lives, the soul feeds on spiritual food either from God or from elsewhere. Many times, Jesus made reference to natural and spiritual food in the same utterance. When Jesus was being tempted of the devil to make stones into bread, He shifted the argument by one utterance from the natural to the spiritual:

Luke 4:4, “And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”

Again, there was another occasion when His disciples left Him with the woman at the well in Samaria and went to procure meat:

John 4:31-32 & 34, “In the meanwhile his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. 32 But He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. 34 Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.”

Remember, we are becoming one with that which we eat.

(Excerpt from The Pattern, pg. 89-90)

Thought for the day: Just as we need to eat healthy food in the natural, let us eat the true Word of God that brings forth life in the spiritual.

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