The Lord has “marked” His true sheep since not every sheep belongs to Him. The three main marks are these:
a) They follow the Lord because He goes before them (Jn. 10:4// Mt. 16:24). You may follow yourself, if there is no one going before you. Or, you may follow a man that may not follow the Lord. And if you follow any leader, ask him whether he is living the Word of God in Mt. 16:24. And if he believes so, what proofs does he have? Do you know? If he has no proofs, he might as well follow you.
b) They hear the Lord’s voice (Jn. 10:16) since they know His voice in their spirit (Jn. 10:4). The Lord’s voice can only be known and heard by an ear in spirit, not in head.
c) They know the Lord – their Shepherd (Jn. 10:14). Again, they know Him in their spirit, not in their head. They will not hear or follow others because they do not trust them. These are spiritual facts, not just words.
There are very few Christians that I know personally as being changed into Christ’s Image and bringing the fruit of His Spirit as undeniable proofs of their transformation. And none of those that I know is a leader in a church. Not one! The church leaders are usually changed in the volume of their intellectual knowledge, in mastering their sermons to be attractive, interesting, wise and persuasive explaining the Scriptures to fit the logic and their intentions, improving their preaching skills, running their church more wisely or other organizations. But there is usually no change in their spirit. If they began as proud, they usually continued their ministry as more proud (1Cor. 8:1b), if they began as stubborn, selfish, vainglorious, unrighteous or in other “virtues” of their flesh, they usually finished in the same character and with the same “virtues” except that they may have become more unjust, more carnal or more filthy in spirit. You see, there are only two ways to live and change, the right one and the wrong one. IF WE KEEP DECREASING AND HE KEEPS INCREASING, this is the right way (Jn. 3:30). But many church leaders keep increasing rather than decreasing, and they may be completely unaware of this fact.
We either walk on the narrow way or the broadway, there are no other ways for man to walk on. The narrow way leads to Life Eternal and few find it! The broadway leads to destruction and many walk on it (Mt. 7:13, 14). Is this logical? No. But if we walk on the narrow way, we are acquiring the Life and thus the Character of Christ. We are becoming more humble, more righteous, more holy, and we grow the fruit of the Spirit. If we walk on the broadway, we become more proud, more unrighteous, more unholy, more spiritually foolish and unacceptable to God. This fact is clearly voiced by the Lord Himself at the end of the Bible (Rev. 22:11). Here the Lord is not addressing pagans, but believers. It is hardly necessary to add, that the narrow way is painful while the broadway is comfortable. That explains the numbers of believers that walk on these two roads.
I am sure that nobody has ever guided you to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. (Mt. 6:33) True? Why? Because many leaders do not seek first the Kingdom either and the simple reason is that they themselves do not know where to seek it and how to seek it. Yet, I witnessed in many services how the preachers were screaming at their congregations: “Are you ready for the Kingdom? Are you ready for the rapture?” Yet, they themselves were not ready and were not aware of it.
I would like to ask you two simple questions:
a) Should you truly get to the Kingdom of Heaven, what are you going to do there? Do you know? The Kingdom will begin in few short years from now! Do you possess the required spiritual capacity, authority, wisdom and power to judge righteously the nations and rule them with a rod of iron for 1,000 years? (Rev. 2:26,27; 20:4) Do you really? This is not a sarcastic question, this should wake you up and bring you to reality and to ponder your future life as God planned it for you and you may have no clue what it is.
b) And what are you going to do in Heaven once you get there? Will you sit on a cloud and play a harp for the first one million years? What a miserable existence that would be. And what about the next one million years? The boredom would “kill you”. Seriously, do you know your calling and thus your duties for your eternal life? You will not be there as a pensioner choosing desperately what interesting things you should do. How will you serve God for ever? Any idea? How will you rule any part of His Creation unless you posses the absolutely necessary spiritual intelligence, knowledge and wisdom for such a monumental task? And God has been trying to prepare us for that task NOW during our earthly life, bring us up from a spiritual toddler to a mature son of God, who knows his Father and His plans for His sons. And God is doing it through discipline and instructions and reproofs, which we genuinely hate and resist (Pr. 5:12-14) because of the ignorance, which is in our natural soul. And here I might add a third simple question:
c) Do you know that this work of God and your working out of your own salvation (Phil. 2:12) cannot be done in Heaven? It must be done and finished HERE & NOW, BEFORE you get there! Nobody will enter Heaven without being perfected (holy, righteous, meek, wise, etc.), wholly prepared for that entry! And if we refuse to be prepared during our earthly life, we will be subjected to that necessary process after our physical death and before the Last Judgment. The “post mortem” place for that necessary process is in the Word of God called “the outer darkness or the furnace of fire – there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt. 8:12 + 13:42,50 + 22:13 + 24:51 + 25:30// Lk. 13:28). Would you prefer this latter process to reach your destiny?
Has any believer noticed these passages in the Word of God and understood who is going there and why? And how long a time shall such poor souls spend there and what will happen to them afterward? Has anybody preached about this and clearly explained these horrible things to his “sheep”? To my knowledge – NOBODY! I repeat, the Bible was not written for pagans, but for Israel and the Church.
You may live in a deep ignorance of these spiritual facts, but our ignorance will not excuse us from the Purpose of Our Father nor will it change or modify His Purposes in any way. Our only destiny is in the Eternal Purpose of Our Father for every one of us called by Him. The only question is which way we will choose to reach that destiny effectively and wisely! Our choice will depend on the level of our spiritual sensitivity to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, knowledge or ignorance, wisdom or foolishness, intelligence and faith or lack of them, diligence or laziness, fears or decisiveness, determination or carelessness, etc., and the last, but not the least, our ability to ask questions. To illustrate, here is a “stupid” example.
I live in Montreal, Canada, and Ottawa, its Capitol City, is west of it, about 200 km away. Now, if I had a sufficient knowledge and intelligence, I could get there in about 30 minutes by air, or in about 2 hours by car, or in about 4 days by bicycle, or in about 12-15 days walking.
Very loosely speaking, there are at least 25 million alternative routes to reach that City of Ottawa from Montreal. Depending on which “intelligent” direction I would choose, I may have to fly several air routes, cross several oceans, hire camels to cross Gobi or Sahara deserts, use elephants to cross some jungles of India, hire sherpas to cross Himalayas, use some huskies to traverse parts of Antarctica and then after some years end up in the middle of pampas in Argentina, when I might finally decide to ask my first question: “Where am I?… how do I get to Ottawa?” If I would ask this question a local gaucho, who would be just as intelligent as I, he would look at me and say: “Are you a nut?” (of course, in Spanish, which would help me even more).
Now, may I ask you these questions in English: “How many of you, born-again believers, are presently spiritually in the “middle of Argentina”? (and don’t speak Spanish?) Are you there alone or with your whole congregation? Maybe, even with your pastor and bishop? And if so, are you willing to ask the same important question to someone who knows where to find your true destination? But if you are, please, do not ask any local gauchos! You have to learn that even the person who is to answer your questions, must have the necessary level of spiritual intelligence.
Now, it is true that this example may be intellectually stupid and also funny, but its spiritual application is not only true, but absolutely devastating to our spiritual situation and intelligence so that it should transcend any intellectual stupidity of the example. Let’s now return to more serious matters of our spiritual pilgrimage in this world and a mindless roaming in our soulish world (see more on pages 87-90).
A very important fact is to be added to the first paragraph of this point c) and it is the following: Here, we are NOT talking about the catholic purgatory and all the associated strange doctrines about it. In the purgatory, the poor souls are to be cleansed from their “unconfessed sins” and their stay there may be shortened by the Pope (I truly do not know how, even if you pay for it).
In the outer darkness or in the furnace of fire, which are clearly described in the Scripture, the souls are given another chance to overcome their disobedience, laziness, foolishness, ignorance and, finally, obey the Word of God and die to their old natural life and to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit (not of sins!), perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2Cor. 7:1).
The fire is not to devour our soul, rather to burn our “flesh” with its filth and evil. These souls and spirits are there without their physical bodies and the “flesh” spoken above is not their body, but it is THE SINFUL-FILTHY-EVIL NATURE OF THEIR SOUL AND SPIRIT! Here we are not talking about sins, but about the crucifixion of the flesh, the sinful nature of man. Unless our flesh is crucified, we do not belong to Christ yet (Gal. 5:24) and we are not holy yet. And without holiness, no man shall see God! (Heb. 12:14)
OUR SPIRIT GOVERNS OUR SOUL, AND SOUL GOVERNS OUR BODY, NEVER VICE VERSA! SINFUL AND FILTHY SPIRIT MAKES SINFUL AND FILTHY SOUL AND THAT SOUL EXPRESSES ITS SINFULNESS AND FILTHINESS THROUGH THE BODY AND LEADS IT TO SIN! OUR BODY IS NEUTRAL AND DOES NOT SIN AS SUCH, IT IS OUR SOUL THAT SINS AND USES OUR BODY TO CARRY OUT OR EXPRESS ITS SINFUL LUSTS AND FILTHINESS.
Disobedience toward the Word of God usually comes from unbelief and it is the greatest infraction of the Law of Salvation of man. All pagans are marching to their eternal damnation because of this one infraction – unbelief with ensuing disobedience. All the people on the face of this earth – except eight (Gen. 7:13) – were drowned because of their unbelief and disobedience! And the Lord reminded them about it when He preached to them after He descended to the Hades (prison) after His crucifixion (1Pet. 3:18-20 + 4:6). And if we, here and now, consider the Word of the Lord comparing His soon coming with the days of Noah where He said: “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be…” (Mt. 24:37-39), we can see the same connection involving the unbelief and disobedience of His people before the Flood, and now also before the coming of the Tribulation, which is typified by the Flood. It is the same unbelief and disobedience toward the Word of God and toward His true servants that will determine, who from the currently living mankind will “drown” during this coming Tribulation and who will not.
And just as there were two kinds of people during the time of Noah who drowned and a third kind that went into the Ark, so it is today. One kind of people was from Cain and his cursed seed representing pagans of today, the second kind was from Seth and his blessed seed representing believers of today who do not believe and obey God, and the third kind were those that believed and obeyed God and were thus considered worthy of God (1Thes. 2:12). The Lord had granted me His Light concerning these facts and it is described in detail in the book “The Tragedy and Glory of Believers[9]” (pages 233-236), so I will not repeat it here. What I desire to underline is that the unbelief and disobedience in both pagans and believers comes from our flesh and not from the Spirit. The question of our flesh and spirit will be the topic of the next chapters.
I am led to conclude this chapter by a simple yet most profound fact of reality before God and us. It is expressed in one verse (2Cor. 3:6) and it divides the Old and New Testaments. This Word does not deal with pagans, it separates believers into two kinds, those that BELIEVE AND OBEY GOD and thus “walk with God” as Noah did (Gen. 6:9b) and those that DO NOT, which are those that perished in the Flood (they perished physically, not in their soul and spirit – 1Pet. 3:18-20).
I have never met any church minister who would not know this Word of God (2Cor. 3:6) and even be able to quote it by heart. Equally, I have never met any church minister who would be living and practicing this Word in his own “religious life and ministry”. Please, keep reading.
If God has made me a minister of the New Testament, then He could not have made me a minister of the letters! There would have been no need for God to make me a minister of letters. Why? Any man, who can read and has a sufficiently sound mind and logic, can minister letters from any book, including the Bible! Some ministers, like doctors of theology, have more knowledge and logic than others, thus, they minister more death. Please, keep reading.
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…” (2Tim. 3:16) Even this Word can be quoted by all ministers in the church since they understand it in their understanding, which means, in their mind, which means, in their SOUL. But this Word also means that every letter of every Word of God CONTAINS HIS SPIRIT, Who breathed His Life into those dead letters!
In the beginning, God formed man of the dust of the earth and breathed His Life into the dead man, the first Adam, and he became a living soul (Gen. 2:7). Is this not the same thing? The letters in themselves are dead and they need SOME KIND OF SPIRIT to bring SOME KIND OF LIFE AND MEANING into them. It then depends on the kind of spirits in the soul of the writer to fill those letters that he writes or dictates to someone else. Otherwise, his writings would be illiterate garbage without any meaning.
Even though there is a spirit in man, it does not have the understanding of God, His Life and Truth. It needs the INSPIRATION of the Almighty to receive such understanding. That is why great men, educated men, knowledgeable men, masters of the letters, graduates of religious schools, who do not have the Spirit of God living in their SOUL, are not always wise and do not understand Judgments of God (Job 32:8,9). They may have a lot of dead knowledge in their soul, but no Life of God.
If you are a minister of the LETTER, you minister your natural SOUL, you minister your FLESH (Rom. 2:28-29). You minister the understanding and the emotions of your soul, the reactions of your soul to those letters. Your natural soul would not see or comprehend or touch the Life that the Spirit “breathed into those letters”. YOUR NATURAL SOUL IS DESCRIBING TO OTHERS THE DEAD ADAM! THE LIVING ADAM COULD SPEAK FOR HIMSELF AND YOUR RENEWED SOUL WOULD UNDERSTAND HIM AND EXTEND TO THE OTHERS HIS OWN WORDS. (We will return to these facts later on.)
Here I often use an example where I compare a fresh and living food with a pasteurized food, which is dead because the process of pasteurization kills all living enzymes in the food and that very effectively and permanently. It may look the same, taste the same even cost the same, but it is NOT the same. The first one is living and brings to our bodies a living nutrition that it needs for a long and healthy life. The second one is dead; it keeps our body living a life which may be much shorter and unhealthy, open to sicknesses of all kinds.
It is similar with the Word of God, which in itself is living and giving us a spiritual nutrition for a healthy and useful life on earth and then the life eternal in Heaven. The Word of God “pasteurized” through the natural soul of man looks the same, tastes the same, but it is NOT the same, it is DEAD and gives us no spiritual nutrition.
That is the sole reason why today the Church of Jesus Christ is DEAD though it may be even overeducated in the Biblical knowledge. And this is also the sole reason why the Church of Jesus Christ FAILED as it is printed boldly on the very first page of this chapter. Please, keep reading.
The most important part of this whole book and of this chapter, in particular, contains the following truth:
I DO NOT BLAME ANY BELIEVER FOR THIS STATE OF THE CHURCH. I DO NOT BLAME EVEN MOST OF THE LEADERSHIP FOR THE HORRIBLE STATE OF THE CHURCH. I DO NOT BLAME OR JUDGE ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN CAUSING THIS HORRIBLE STATE OF THE CHURCH IGNORANTLY, UNCONSCIOUSLY, BEING UNAWARE OF THE SPIRITUAL REALITY, FACTS AND THE TRUTH.
BUT I DO JUDGE BY SPIRIT THOSE THAT DO IT PURPOSELY OR CONSCIOUSLY OR CONTINUE DESPITE BEING WARNED BY GOD ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. THEY SHALL GIVE ACCOUNT TO GOD AND RECEIVE ACCORDING TO THEIR WICKED WORKS. THEY KEEP REFUSING TO OVERCOME AND CLEANSE THEMSELVES FROM ALL FILTHINESS OF THEIR FLESH AND SPIRIT. WOE TO THEM ALL!
LET THIS TRUTH CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK AND REMAIN IN THE UNDERSTANDING AND CONSCIENCE OF ALL SINCERE READERS. FOR I WAS NOT CALLED TO JUDGE OR BLAME ANY MAN BY MY SOUL, BUT TO SPEAK HIS TRUTH AND PRESENT HIS LIGHT AS IT WAS SOVEREIGNLY GIVEN TO ME BY THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD FROM HIS WRITTEN WORD.
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To be continued next week in chapter 2
brother Hanola
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