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We Go up as the Glory Comes Down

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , on August 3, 2011| 2 Comments »

Scripture reading: Revelation 19:1-10

Let me share with you very important truth: The glory of God is coming down to us and we are going up to meet Him.  We are being raptured (this is the right kind of rapture) – that is, we are being changed from glory to glory as we behold His face.  We are being lifted into the glory of God.  In this glory, we are going to see and hear things which we have never seen or heard before.  We will see clearly and walk and talk with those who are in the heavenlies.  Brother John said in Revelation 19:10 that an angel came to him and confessed that he was one of his brothers who was saved by Jesus Christ.

In Revelation 22, another angel came to him, and John said to himself that this surely must be Jesus Christ Himself, but this angel also confessed that he was not, but that he was “…of thy brethren the prophets,” (verse 9). It was only a man who had gone into the glorious presence of God.  God is saying that He is giving the glory to us, and that we are expected not to just receive it and say, “Yes” for next service, but we need to walk in it. 

Let us read Ephesians 1:19-20, “And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.”

Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” 

In other words, our power is in Christ.  Galatians 3:28 says that in Christ, “…There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” yet we know that there is “male and female” in the homes, in the Church, and in the world; and that male and female have to operate together in God’s divine order.  There is, however, a higher dimension in the Spirit, when Christ begins to speak through anyone and neither the male nor the female voice carries the greater authority – it is Christ speaking.  We are talking about children of God getting in Christ in order to get through the veil into the Holy of Holies. 

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, April 1997, pg. 13-14)

Thought for today: Let us meditate upon the glory of God that is coming down and lifting us up into the heavenly places. And let us remember that our power is in Christ only.

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What Is Life? – Part 2

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , , on July 12, 2011| 1 Comment »

Scripture reading: John 1:4-5

The devil must be really mad to know that there is such a thing named LIFE!  It is written in John 1:4-5, “IN HIM WAS LIFE AND THE LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF MEN.  And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” 

In this passage, the word translated “comprehended” could be better rendered “overcame.”  The devil cannot overcome life for the life is the light.  We are actually taking in more and more of the light and the life, which is more and more of Christ which is our resurrection.  BY OUR DAILY SPIRITUAL GROWTH, WE ARE ACTUALLY TAKING IN CHRIST.  WE ARE TAKING IN OUR RESURRECTION.  THE MORE YOU OPEN UP TO GOD, THE MORE THE CHRIST COMES IN.  CHRIST IS OUR LIFE!  (See Colossians 3:4.)

Imagine a picture of the Great Almighty God, Author and Possessor of this great reservoir called LIFE.  The name of God’s LIFE is Christ (Messiah).  He dipped into His bosom and took out “Messiah,” and let Him loose in the earth.  The life came down as an entity in the person of Jesus Christ.  God can divide Himself in as many parts as He wants to since He has power over all things and all things are subject to His will. 

In Luke 1, the Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary with her consent.  The conversation that the angel had with her was designed to get her consent.  When Mary accepted what the angel said, he departed.  He was only the messenger.  The Holy Ghost then came and overshadowed her, meaning to say that the Holy Ghost planted the seed of Life in her, and she became pregnant, because that was the will of God.  Some ignorant people felt this was a sexual thing.  God is the Creator.  He created Adam and Eve.  He created the first man, and He was in the process of creating the second man.  The first man, “Adam,” was a full-grown man; the second man was born in a manger, sired of God, born of a woman.  The first man, “Adam,” was a natural man, and the second man, “the Lord from heaven.”  (See I Corinthians 15:47). 

May God bless our understanding.  God put Jesus into Mary and Christ into Jesus.  Therefore, when Mary birthed Jesus as a babe, she brought forth Christ in the earth.  Since Christ is the Messiah, the second person of the Godhead from before the foundation of the world, then the birth of Jesus Christ was the entrance of God as a member of the human race. 

When we receive Christ in us through the action of the Holy Spirit, then we are on par with Jesus when He was born of Mary in Bethlehem of Judea.  Jesus, therefore, did not need to be born again, since He was never born of corruptible seed.  Because we were born of corruptible seed, we need to be born again. 

You were first born in Adam, then you were born in Christ.  A charge of LIFE came into the earth in Jesus Christ, and then the charge came into you as an individual.  This life is eternal; it cannot die. 

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, June 1996, pg. 4-5)

Thought for today: Let us grow daily in God in order to take in Christ, to take in our resurrection.  The more you open up to God, the more the Christ comes in.  Christ is our life!

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The Glory That Makes Us One

Posted in Being One, tagged , , on May 26, 2011| 1 Comment »

Scripture reading: John 17:1-8, 22-26

In order to save man, Christ had to lay down the glory that He had with the Father before the world was.  There was one time on the Mount of Transfiguration when Christ burst forth from the body of Jesus and the disciples saw the glory cloud as it shone through his body.  They heard the Father speak from within the glory cloud that also enveloped Moses and Elias.  But John 17:5 shows that even the great power we saw manifested in Jesus Christ while He was in His human body was not the power which He had with the Father before the world was, but much less. 

Let us look at John 17:22, in which He bequeathed to us not the glory of the Christ in the mortal body of Jesus, but the glory of the pre-existent Christ, which He had with the Father before the world was made. 

“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.” 

Our oneness in Christ exceeds all human union.  So then, what is this glory which He has given us?  And if it is given, is it received?  The glory is Christ.  Christ stands at the apex of a pyramid and we are all at different points along its side.  As we progress towards Him, we also come closer to each other, but it is the oneness of purpose that brings us closer to Him and to each other. 

The glory that we seek is Christ.  How do we get Christ?  It is one of those simple, yet hard answers: We get Christ by being in obedience to the Holy Spirit.  Of course, we cannot be obedient to someone whom we cannot hear and we can only hear by the Word of God.  Our first action, then, must be a tacit determination to believe the Word of God and to obey it without reservation.  Some of us believe this part and that part, but not the other.  When this happens, we instinctively seek other interpretations for the Word and, invariably, we fall into error.  Once we are in error, we cannot hear the Word of God clearly and we cannot act correctly, thus we miss the glory that was given and we cannot be one with those with whom we should be one. 

Let us look at the ending of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:24-26, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.  25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.  26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

The key in this prayer is expressed in the fact that Jesus is saying that we will have this glory in the natural and not just when we are dead.  He is praying not for a glory to come where He will be, but “where I am.”  In Chapter 14, Jesus explains that He is going to the Father and that He will come again and receive us unto Himself, “…that where I am, there ye may be also.”  God’s plan for us is that Christ Jesus, Who is with us now, should bring us into the place where He is with the Father.  He moved out of the place on earth and the Word declares in Hebrews 2:10 that He will bring “…many sons to glory.”  The time is close when we will come into this glory.  Pray that you do not miss it as the scribes and Pharisees did when Jesus first appeared. 

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, June 1991, pg. 6-8)

Thought for today: As we progress towards God, we also come closer to each other, but it is the oneness of purpose that brings us closer to Him and to each other.

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The Manifestation of the Living Word

Posted in The Living Word, tagged , , , , , on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Scripture reading: John 15:1-11

“…and the Word was God.” The Word is still God. He is still walking among us and living with us; and every utterance of God is God whether spoken through the Christ within or the Christ without; it will create or destroy as God Himself.

The person of Jesus Christ is alive and living with us in our daily operations. He says in Matthew 28:20, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” 

In our salvation experience, it is not just the will of God to give us the Blood of Jesus and the attributes of Jesus Christ, but He is creating in us the person of Christ Himself. Even as Mary became pregnant with the Christ child, so it is that God is impregnating our womb (soul) with Christ Himself in order to take us out of the human and incorporate us into the divine. Some of my readers might have some difficulty with this, but I am not speaking to you of some grandiose theory, but lessons which have been taught me by the Lord and which I have experienced. There is a Living Word, “Christ,” which the believer is destined to receive within his soul before he can enter into Christ. The Holy Ghost does this work. Even as He planted the seed of Christ in Mary, so the process is being repeated in the church. The apostle Paul confirms this in one of his letters to the Galatian church. Had they not been in a spiritual position to understand this, he would not write it to them:

“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

This speaks of the forming of Christ in the believer as a fetus is formed in the womb; as Jesus was formed in Mary. It would be safe to say that the church is pregnant at this moment. Revelation 12 speaks of the woman being pregnant and in travail to bring forth the man child. This man child is none other than the fullness of Christ as the head and the Church as His Body, which is destined to rule (shepherd) the earth with a shepherd’s staff of iron:

“And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule (shepherd) all nations with a rod of iron…” (Revelation 12:5).

This door is already open to us, but even as the tree of life was awesome to Adam, so that he did not eat of it when he could have done so, even so it is for us. The tree of life, which is Christ, is wide open to us at this time, but it is a dreadful and awesome place for us to enter. The Word in Genesis 3:24 says that an angel with a flaming sword was placed in the Garden to prevent man from returning into Eden:

“So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

The flaming sword that bars the four entrances of the soul will destroy anything human and carnal which tries to enter. The burning at the altar of incense must be complete before we can enter through the veil. Note that the veil has cherubim all over it. This is a symbol of the cherubim in the Garden of Eden. Anyone who dares to enter in will lose his life. If you think I mean he will just die, you are sadly mistaken. I mean he will lose himself totally and immediately would be persecuted by his own. He would be dubbed as absolutely crazy and his goods and estate would be taken and shared up among his family and friends as if he were dead. We had a friend who was so touched of the Lord that he began to give away large sums of his vast riches to the church. A restraining order was brought against him by his son and he nearly got himself thrown into the asylum as being demented.

You may call it the travail of the church, the burning at the altar of incense, or the great tribulation. All of these names would suffice, but our souls must be stripped of the body of this death (human thinking, feeling, hoping, and desiring) before we can receive the full power of the life of the Divine God in the soul. At present this power is in our spirits and by various means He is bombarding us to make the life (or, the Christ) come forth in the soul. The Word says that tribulation worketh patience, but I know now that it is not just patience that it works, but every grace given us of the Spirit. It is the fire that is promised by the Holy Ghost as a baptism of fire, which burns the dross out of the silver and the gold. Upon feeling the slightest sickness or pain, we run to the doctor, and our terror is complete as we hang upon the word of the doctor for his diagnosis. We are afraid of fire; we are afraid that God might burn us to cinders. In our trust and confidence in God, let us trust Him to burn the dross out of us so that when the prince of this world comes, he will find nothing in us.

At this time, just before the end of time, the Lord has begun to bombard all the souls of His people at once. This is called the great tribulation, or the travail of the Church. This bombardment has been continuing for a number of years now and it is getting worse every year. Finally, even as the plagues of Egypt got worse and worse until the culmination of the death angel being loosed at midnight, so shall it be for the world and the Church. The Church is being given the power to overcome just as Israel was in Egypt. In Egypt, they overcame the death angel with obedience to the Word and the blood. At this midnight hour, we will be overcoming with the power of the Word and the Blood:

“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11).

In concluding this part of the word, let me say that the Living Word, Jesus Christ, is in our midst, among us and within us; and when He speaks, it is the obedience to Him that brings the results. In the first miracle of Jesus after His baptism, Mary told the servants at the feast that whatsoever He tells them to do, they should do it. Jesus told them to fill the water pots with water. They did. Then He told them to take the water to the master of the feast as wine. The moment the word went forth from Jesus Christ and the men obeyed, the water became wine:

“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).

Here is the formula for spiritual authority: 

1.  Abide, abide, abide in Jesus Christ.
2. Let the Word abide in you.

The Word in you as a living person and you in Christ as a living organism – when these come together in divine unison, then every agent of God and nature must obey, for it is the Word of God.

 (Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 1993, pg. 7-9)

Thought for today: The Living Word, Jesus Christ, is in our midst, among us and within us; and when He speaks, it is the obedience to Him that brings the results.

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Being in Christ

Posted in The Living Word, tagged , , , on May 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Scripture reading: John 17:9-23

The Word of God is a great mystery which none of us can claim to fully understand, but more and more the Lord is revealing to us deeper things pertaining to Himself. As we draw closer to the light, we can see clearer and clearer some of the things which were hidden in the past.

The Word of God functions on many different dimensions and we relate to Him according to where we are in God. There are four basic planes upon which our understanding can reach. But beyond these, the planes of the function of the Word are within the spiritual and beyond the veil. Our Lord spoke to Nicodemus that if he could not understand natural things, how would he be able to understand spiritual things. We can easily understand the things on the flat plane, the horizontal plane. But on the vertical plane, there is both height and depth. On the vertical height plane we understand that God is above us, that the realm of heaven is above our realm, and that there are things too high for us. On the depth plane, we have to be in Christ to get deeper in God, therefore, the IN CHRIST situation is a whole new realm of human experience. This experience is beyond the Christ-in-us experience. This position is us-in-Christ as described by our Lord Himself in His prayer to the Father:

John 17:21, That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

The dimension of being IN CHRIST is the place of being overshadowed by Him in all things. When Christ becomes the Head of the believer, then the believer becomes a part of His body. Many believers claim to be in the body of Christ without having Christ as their head in their actual day-to-day life, which we will describe as a fourth dimension living. In order that we might fully understand this thought, allow me to show you by scriptural references the difference between the Christian who is IN CHRIST and the one who is not.

John 17:23, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

All those who are in Christ are one. This is the only solid united in the world. They do not have to know each other nor do they have to join any organization because they are joined of the Spirit and will never move one against the other. At present, the world does not know this. The world will classify Christians in one mistaken bundle and do not yet recognize that there is a vast difference between those who are in Christ and those who are not. If we are to be specific, then we must recognize that in the church there is an Outer Court, a Holy Place, and a Holy of Holies. (Note: For a more detailed description of these three areas in the Tabernacle of Moses, please read The Pattern.) The Christians in the Holy of Holies are those who are covered by the Shadow of the Almighty, who not only have Christ in them, but are themselves spirit, soul, and body – in Christ. Those who are in the Holy Place are the ones in the realm of the gifts of the Spirit, who have not yet made the supreme sacrifice of the offering up of their soul nature upon the Altar of Incense. This means that total death has not yet occurred in the soul of the believer, which hinders the life of Christ coming forth.

The Holy Place is the place of the soul. It is also the place where Christ enters into the believer’s soul through the ministration of the Holy Ghost. Previous to this, the believer had the Blood of Jesus in his soul, which gave him life. We call it the born-again experience. He was dead in trespasses and sins, and the Blood of Jesus Christ quickened him and brought him life. The next experience of baptism into the death of Christ is designed to bring him into the life of Christ. So, while the Outer Court represents death, the Holy Place represents life. This Life of Christ in the believer is designed of God to lead him through the two stages of the Holy Place: to experience union with Christ in the Lampstand operation, and to feed on Christ and His body, depicted by the Table of Shewbread. The next and final experience of the Holy Place is the offering which God demands before the believer can enter the Holy of Holies and find rest under the shadow of the Almighty. This offering is the most prized possession of a human person – his soul. When this sovereign act is accomplished, the believer loses all his rights. He loses his nationality, his pride, his ancestral endowments, his carnal identity as male or female, and he knows nothing but Christ and His crucifixion.

Galatians 3:27-28, For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

The baptism into Christ mentioned in Galatians 3:27 definitely could not be speaking of baptism in water; neither could it be speaking of anything humanly accomplished. In I Corinthians 12:13 we are told that we are baptized into Christ by the Holy Ghost. This baptism makes us a part of Christ, which part we call His body. The average Christian might read the above passage and think that it gives him or her license to get up and minister in the congregation, but this passage is written for those who are IN CHRIST and cannot be applied otherwise.

We must conclude that being IN CHRIST means that one is in that Fourth Dimension mentioned in Ephesians 3:18 as the depth of Christ.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 1993, pg. 1-3)

Thought for today: In order for an individual to be in the body of Christ, Christ must be their head in their actual day-to-day life.

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