CHAPTER 5
OUR DREAMS AND REALITY
From day one of my redemption, I had my dreams about Christianity. They were all false and I had to learn this simple fact through a lot of sufferings and disappointments. The spiritual reality has almost always proved to be different whether it touched God, Christians, pagans… or myself. Yes, I was also “dreaming” about myself and it must have taken the Lord quite a time to finally show me that I was NOT who I thought I was! But when I truly started to see myself, I began to walk into my reality. And this is an excellent place to state the following important truth:
THE GREATEST TRAGEDY OF CHRISTIANS IS THAT THEY ARE NOT WHO THEY THINK AND BELIEVE THEY ARE! AND THIS APPLIES FOR ALL AGES OF CHRISTIANS. THE SIMPLE REASON IS THAT THEY DO NOT SEE THEMSELVES AS THEY REALLY ARE IN THE EYES OF CHRIST! AND WHEN THE LORD STARTS SHOWING THEM THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THEMSELVES, THEY CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY SEE! THEY ALL BELIEVE THEY ARE RIGHTEOUS AND HOLY AND FULLY ACCEPTABLE TO GOD RIGHT AFTER THEIR REDEMPTION AND BAPTISM BECAUSE THEIR “FAITH, LOVE AND DEVOTION TO JESUS” ARE SINCERE, HONEST AND TRUE – SO THEY BELIEVE.
Your beliefs about your faith, love and devotion to Jesus may be very sincere, honest and true, but there is vastly more to your soul (mind, heart, will) and to your spirit (conscience-perception, intuition-discernment, communion) than just your newly found faith and devotion to the Lord Jesus. The vast territory of our soul and spirit had been a kingdom of Satan all our previous life, and Satan will not start dismantling his kingdom in us just because one day we believed in Another Master and even desire to follow Him. If you believe such a dream, you are in for mighty surprises and disappointments and future revelations about your true soul and spirit and about the true powers therein. Are you ready for your reality? NO, you are not! You see, nobody can prepare you for it just as you cannot prepare yourself for what you are going to dream tomorrow. Your dream comes out of nowhere and without being invited to appear! So it is with all those revelations about your spiritual reality! They all come out of “nowhere”, unexpectedly and without your invitation. The Holy Spirit is not waiting for your invitation or your readiness to present you the “light of your reality” or even the “light of His reality”.
You see, we also dream about the Lord and imagine what He must be from what we read in the Bible. His spiritual reality we do not know either. We will never be “ready and prepared” for His revelations about us or about Himself. And when they do come – we are usually STUNNED, to say it politely. And not only stunned, but very often offended, confused, angry, disbelieving – this cannot be me! This cannot be the Lord! Well, why not? Where is it written that the revelation about you cannot be true? The LORD knows our heart, we do not! (Jer. 17:9) And unless our eyes are opened by His Spirit, we do not even recognize the Lord though He may be walking with us! (Lk. 24:13-16,31)
If we do not know what is in our heart, then why are we surprised when the Lord shows us things that are therein and we never knew them? Why should we be offended when the Lord starts pulling out of our heart a “foul smelling proud, arrogant, fearful, self-righteous, foolish and sinful creature”, which He hates and will never fellowship with? Should we not rather thank Him for it and kiss His hand? And praise Him for His light and work? What do you think? You see, this is how we ALL have been before and after our redemption and also after our water baptism! For how long after our baptism? I truly do not know for others, I only know it for myself. The pulling out of that horrible, proud, arrogant, sinful creature from our soul is the true process of OUR SALVATION, and we are called to work it out with the Lord with fear and trembling. For it is He, Who works in us that we would be willing to do this “dirty job” with Him as it is His good pleasure. (Phil. 2:12b-13) He primarily died to take out of us THIS CREATURE, THIS ROOT OF OUR EVIL and sinfulness and not just to forgive us our sins!
Have you ever had an opportunity in your Christian life to do this kind of “dirty job” with the Lord? If yes, than this was THE BEGINNING OF YOUR OVERCOMING AND OF YOUR OWN SALVATION. If not, then this creature has still been living in your soul, whether you are aware of it or not, and your destiny is uncertain, at best. In chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, the Lord judges the seven churches of Asia Minor, which represent all the churches to the very end of this Dispensation, to the last days of this world. And in His Judgment, He is giving promises to the Overcomers only (Rev. 2:7,11,17,26; 3:5,12,21), it means, to those only that worked out their salvation as commanded in His Word (Phil. 2:12b-13). The destiny of the other believers non-overcomers must be searched out from other passages of the New Testament.
The Christian that dreams is basically the Christian who is deceived and does not know reality. And one very important part of his overcoming will include his dreams. Dreams about himself, about the Father, about the Son, Our Saviour and Lord, about the Holy Spirit, about the Church, about the brethren, about the Word of God and just about everything touching the spiritual world! He will have to reject all his dreams and imaginations and deceptions and make-believe desires and embrace the reality which is, or will be, shown to him by the Holy Spirit after his baptism… IF his heart is open to Him. IF his heart is not open to the Lord and to His Spirit, he will be spending his Christian life traveling through a “religious Disney world” and his old man will have fun. But at the end of the day, the fun will turn into a nightmare and tragedy. Disney world is a fairytale, but the above fact is not a fairytale by any stretch of imagination. Unfortunately, there are too many born-again Christians who are presently enjoying their “religious Disney world”.
We also dream about prayers. We pray for many things and receive probably few answers and then we say, “Well, the Lord turned away from me”, or “He did not answer my prayers” or something similar. The truth is, the Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayers of the righteous (Pr. 15:29). Three facts are to be mentioned here:
a) It is not just pagans, but also born-again believers that may be proud, arrogant, wicked, unrighteous, abominable and evil (Mt. 7:11), hence, the Lord will hear what they pray, since His Spirit is Omnipresent and Omniscient, but He will not answer them, rather, He resists them (Jam. 4:6// 1Pet. 5:5) with their unacceptable foul smelling spirits.
b) He hears and answers all prayers of the righteous; we should never doubt this fact. In principle, His answer is: YES, NO or WAIT. But we may feel many times that He did not answer our prayers. Some of the main reasons, contrary to our feelings and reasonings, are shown in the next point.
c) We may pray and then not wait for His answer. Also, we may pray without faith, we doubt that He is going to answer or answer positively. Quite frequently the Lord may seem not to answer our prayers because He does not answer them the way we expect or imagine. If this happens, we either “miss” His answer or do not recognize it or do not receive it since it did not meet our expectations or imaginations or our logic. In these cases, we always fail to thank Him for His answer(s) and our prayer life may be affected badly and negatively. We have to learn not only how to pray, but also how to wait and receive His answers. Since we usually do not wait for His answers, He is often answering our prayers in our daily living experiences. Do we see them there? Not many of us do. Most believers would need someone, who can discern and interpret their experiences and draw the right spiritual conclusions.
We may pray for ourselves or for others, very often for the healing of our bodies or of our souls (broken hearts, fearful minds, indecisive wills, insecurity in our soul, lack of faith or wisdom, inabilities to do what we know we should do, etc.) We may also pray for our livelihood, our relationships, our general situation or for various problems in our life or in the life of our brethren or family members. But generally, we have no clue what the Lord must do in order to answer our prayer especially when it involves our free will or the free will of anyone else for whom we pray. We almost never realize that whenever we pray and also pray for others, all of the persons involved in such a prayer may be automatically involved in His answer to our prayer. The Lord may have to ask any of such persons to do something, go somewhere, speak or write something, call somebody, repent or ask someone for forgiveness, etc. All these persons must exercise their free will to any such request of the Lord. You say, the Lord can do anything! True – but He will never do anything against the free will of man, which is one of the very basic Principles of His Creation! Only Satan does not ask your permission and is always willing to violate your free will and force you into his decisions! God never does that.
For example, number of times I initiated prayers for marriages, which were “on the rocks” and we asked the Lord for their recovery and healing. In some cases the Lord answered rather quickly, in other cases it took one or two years, and in some other cases it has not happened to this very day. Why? In one such case, one of the spouses was absolutely unwilling to take the way the Lord established for their recovery and healing. Unwillingness and the associated unbelief bind the hands of the Lord (Mt. 13:58). Therein are usually all the difficulties and time delays in His answers, which we cannot understand. If He allows millions of pagans to perish eternally because of their unbelief and disobedience, then He can certainly allow your proud and disobedient spouse to perish in the same way and for the same reason. Here I must note that the Word of God in Acts 16:31 does not apply to every “house” in Christianity. Apostle Paul assured the jailor specifically about his salvation and those living in his house. Though it is the desire of God to save the whole family, it is not a rule or a law!
Also, the Lord will not answer positively any prayers, which are against His Will or Purpose.
Another kind of dreams is being dreamed by most leaders in the church – pastors, preachers, teachers, elders. I believe the majority of them are honest, sincere and quite knowledgeable. They believe, or at least hope, that their preaching, teaching or counseling will be helpful to their listeners and might resolve some of the problems in their Christian life. Well, it might… or it might not. Nobody knows. But this is not the real problem or any part of their dream.
Their dream is in the simple fact that these ministers do not seem to see, know and realize what their listeners, their sheep, their students, their congregations truly need IN SPIRIT! Such a thought may have never crossed their mind. Why? They may not see or understand any difference between human soul and human spirit and God’s Spirit. And those among them, which are honest and not proud, will admit to it. What is an even deeper truth is that these leaders may not know, not see and not understand whether they themselves have in their own SPIRIT (not in mind) what their listeners so desperately need in their SPIRIT (not in their mind)! Then, what is the result of this dream?
a) After 2,000 years, the churches have become intellectual religious merry-go-rounds where many ministers are feeding themselves on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then they are feeding their listeners with the same fruit. And the result is DEATH! They are continually feeding their congregations with death. THERE IS NO LIFE OF CHRIST IN THE CHURCH TODAY! After 2,000 years the Church has apparently not discovered that when we feed ourselves or others with the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we CANNOT, at the same time, feed ourselves or others with the fruit of the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22-24)!
b) After 2,000 years, the Church has not discovered that our biblical knowledge is NOT our salvation, that an increase in our biblical knowledge is NOT an increase in our salvation or in our spiritual growth. The biblical knowledge is an important tool for our salvation, but when it is not used in “working out our own salvation” (Phil. 2:12b), then it becomes useless. The knowledgeable men are able to speak, teach or preach truth, but if they are spiritually dead, they cannot live that truth, thus it remains a dead truth! This also means that today’s congregations are like unto school classes where teachers and professors come and lecture their students increasing their knowledge. When the students leave, they leave with more information in their head, with increased knowledge, but unchanged IN THEIR SPIRIT!
What is worse, they might leave more deceived in themselves than when they came in because they might have received spiritually false information. If they believed it, because it was more palatable or more logical to the expectations of their souls, then it produced more deception, which made them more spiritually dead. And even if they received truth from the Scripture, they might still leave deceived! Why? Neither listeners nor such preachers can see and understand that they cannot DO, cannot LIVE in their natural life the truth that was preached. The Lord spoke in parables because human souls were not able to comprehend or live the spiritual meaning of His words.
The spiritual “new man”, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24) may remain the same “newborn babe” as he was at our redemption, which was his birthday! He has not been fed with the right food and thus did not grow up. We are born-again believers, but we keep living in and feeding our natural soul! We may not care about our “newborn babe from Heaven”!
c) After 2,000 years, the Church has not yet discovered, that the Scripture has not been written for our natural man! This covers not only all pagans, but also all the carnal believers. They cannot receive and understand anything spiritual from the Scripture (1Cor. 2:14).
The Word of God only shows to man the WAY! To pagans, it shows the WAY to Redemption and to believers the WAY to Salvation-Perfection after they were redeemed. The WAY to Redemption has been preached to pagans during evangelistic rallies, but the WAY to Perfection has not been preached and explained to the born-again believers! Preachers are educating their congregations how to be “better Christians” in their natural life, while that natural life should not be further educated, but crucified! (Gal. 5:24)
NO MAN IN HIS NATURAL EARTHLY CREATION IS ABLE TO LIVE THE WORD OF GOD AS IT IS WRITTEN, WHETHER PAGAN OR BELIEVER! (Jn. 15:5b) BUT EVERY NATURAL MAN IN HIS RIGHT MIND IS ABLE TO READ, WRITE, PONDER, ARGUE, TEACH, OR PREACH THE WORD OF GOD. YET, NONE OF THESE ACTIVITIES WILL ENABLE THE NATURAL MAN TO LIVE THE WORD!
d) After 2,000 years, the Church has not yet discovered that there is a vast difference and an unbridgeable abyss between our “old natural creature” and our “new creature in Christ”; between a carnal and spiritual believer! THEY LIVE DIFFERENT LIVES! Hence, they behave differently, talk, act and believe differently, desire and understand differently, have different or no visions, different or no obedience to their Father in Heaven and to His Word on earth!
This new creature IN Christ is not interested in logical explanations from the Scripture; he has no taste for any dead food, biblical food “pasteurized” in the minds of men. He desires primarily to know whether what is being taught, preached or done is the true Will of his Heavenly Father or the will or desire of men! This also means, whether that “food” comes from the Holy Spirit or from the natural souls of men! Whether it is living or dead – pasteurized. We have already described at the end of chapter 1 the difference between a fresh and living food and the food pasteurized which is DEAD. All living enzymes in the food were killed – and that very effectively and permanently.
The MOST DANGEROUS DREAM that almost the whole Church believes, teaches and preaches is that WHEN WE BELIEVE IN JESUS AS OUR SAVIOUR AND ARE REDEEMED, WE ARE UNCONDITIONALLY SAVED AND ARE AUTOMATICALLY IN CHRIST JESUS AND THUS A “NEW CREATURE”! Unfortunately, this is not only a dream, this is a MASTERPIECE OF DECEPTION from Satan himself! It puts all such believers in the danger zone of losing their salvation! Why is this deception so very easily and vigorously believed?
OUR CARNAL SOUL lusts for easy and comfortable Christianity. Satan knows it too and it gives him endless opportunities for a wide variety of deceptions. Example: “You believed, are baptized, sit in “your” church, sing (if you like), listen to sermons (if they are interesting), give some offering (if you are expected) and repeat this until you die. And then you go straight to Heaven and the loving Heavenly Father will welcome you with open arms.”
But the moment you die, this dream of your carnal mind will be shattered to dust. And then, when you open your eyes, you may see darkness and what you may hear around you will be weeping and gnashing of teeth – not exactly Heaven (Mt. 8:12/ 22:13/ 24:51/ 25:30). The whole New Testament speaks against such a dream, but not the church leaders.
The Holy Spirit declares clearly: “… IF ANY MAN BE IN Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, ALL things are become new” (2Cor. 5:17).
True? Of course, true! Now, what does this Word of God truly mean? How is it to be interpreted and believed? This is what the Holy Spirit of God says:
● ANY MAN is ANY BELIEVER since ANY PAGAN could never have been IN Christ Jesus! And there are no other kinds of MAN in this Creation!
● “IF ANY MAN BE IN CHRIST” thus means “IF ANY BELIEVER BE IN CHRIST”. This Word proves that NOT EVERY BELIEVER IS AUTOMATICALLY IN CHRIST JESUS just by believing in Him and being baptized. Carnal believers cannot be IN Christ… though Christ is IN them! Born-again believers are IN Christ POTENTIALLY since our Father has put us into Christ based on His Will, not ours! Similarly, every man born to this planet is POTENTIALLY saved in Christ Jesus whether he accepts it or refuses it.
● The “new creature” is the one where ALL things are new, not just one or two, but ALL.
● Another Word spoken by the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ says clearly: “IF A MAN abide not in Me…” (Jn. 15:6)
This Word again means “IF A BELIEVER abide not in Me…” since A PAGANcould never have been abiding IN Christ in the first place! This is also a proof that BELIEVERS MAY LOSE THEIR SALVATION BY GETTING OUT OF CHRIST! If this were impossible (according to many preachers) then this Word of God could not possibly exist! True?
Another example is the Word in Mt. 16:24:
The words “IF ANY MAN will (decide to) come after Me…” have the identical meaning “IF ANY BELIEVER will (decide to) come after Me…”
This last example will also help us get the necessary further light concerning the fact of “being IN Christ”, following Him or not following Him, abiding in Him or not abiding in Him, finally, losing our salvation or keeping it. In order to SEE and comprehend this further light, the Spirit of the Lord is showing to us the following spiritual picture.
● NO PAGAN can ever follow or decide to follow the Lord before he becomes a believer and is redeemed. True?
● BELIEVERS may choose and decide to follow Him in their various ways and manners. In Mt. 16:24 the Lord uses the word “IF any believer will…” thus leaving the choice and decision to the free will of every believer. True?
● SPIRITUAL believers have been following the Lord by learning and being willing to keep denying their own selves and taking up their cross in a comparatively timely and continual manner. This means that they keep receiving the truth spoken to them in love and thereby keep growing up into Christ in all things (Eph. 4:15). They seek and love truth more than their own self and its “image”. True?
● CARNAL believers may try to follow Him from time to time in a sporadic manner or they may decide not to follow Him at all after discovering that this walk is “too hard for them” or they are told by their leaders that they are under grace and do not need to take up any cross. Also, they may soon reach their “limit” and stop moving after reaching some level IN Christ. This also means that they may receive some truth here and there whether spoken to them in love or not and thus grow up into Christ a little here and after some time a little there and between such intermittent walking they may have long intermissions… even of several years. They may not seek or love truth because ALL truth, which is new to them, is against their nature, will and desire. True?
● The Word in Eph. 4:15 is another proof that we are NOT IN CHRIST right after our redemption because we have to GROW UP INTO HIM in all things! Should we be IN Christ right after believing in Him, we would not have to grow up into Him! True? Our position IN Christ is thus determined by our believing and receiving the truth spoken to us in love, not just academically, but in love since love is an important ingredient in our ministry. God is love – 1Jn. 4:8,16, He is not an intellectual professor. It is also determined by denying our selves (thoughts, reasonings, imaginations, desires, convictions, ways, etc.) when they oppose the truth received and by taking up our cross and following the Lord. To be taking up our cross is absolutely vital for our salvation since ALL OUR CARNALITY- FLESH is dying thereon and nowhere else! It is there where we are crucifying our flesh and growing up into His Body. We then fully belong to Christ and are IN Him when we have crucified our flesh (Gal. 5:24).
● There are different positions IN Christ depending on how far we have grown up into Him during our earthly life. Logically, the levels of our being IN Him might range from 0% to 100% and we are always somewhere in between. The spiritual truth is that 0% cannot exist since from our redemption we have already believed the Word of truth, the Gospel of our Salvation and were thus sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise and obtained the earnest inheritance (Eph. 1:13,14). In other words, we have grown up into Christ some initial small measure, which became, as it were, our initial foundation. Then we were supposed to stand on it and grow up further and build on it and mature through faith by going on to perfection (Heb. 6:1-3). This initial foundation is as it were a separation line between spiritual and carnal believers. The spiritual believers through faith and patience inherit the promises, the carnal believers are slothful or fearful and do not follow the spiritual ones, though they are prompted to do so by the Holy Spirit, Who is in them, and also through Apostle Paul in the Word of God (Heb. 6:12). We will reach the 100% level of being IN Him, which means, we will be fully transformed and changed into Christ’s Image, sometime in our eternity.
● We may also lose even our initial measure of being IN Christ, that is, lose our redemption when we “fall away” (Heb. 6:4-6), when we “do not abide in Christ” (Jn. 15:6), when we are again overcome by the world, this end being worse with us than our beginning (before redemption – 2Pet. 2:20-22); when we are not receiving the love of the truth after our redemption so that we might be (continue to be) saved, perfected (2Thes. 2:10-12), when we keep refusing to overcome the evils in us that stand in our way to be changed into the Image of Christ (Rev. 3:5), which is the Final Will of God Our Father (Rom. 8:29), etc.
● There is a difference between “being IN Christ” and “putting ON Christ” (Rom. 13:14// Gal. 3:27). “Putting ON Christ” is identical to “putting on our new man” (Eph. 4:24) which is identical to “putting on kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another, charity, etc.” (Col. 3:12b-14) which is identical to “walking on the narrow way, which leads to life” (Mt. 7:13,14), which is identical to “going on unto perfection” (Heb. 6:1-3), which is identical to our overcoming (Rev. 2:7, 11,17,26 + 3:5,12,21).
Hence, “putting on” is our ACTIVITY directed by the Holy Spirit with our cooperation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12b,13), while “being IN” is our POSITION in Christ with the associated measure of His Holiness, Wisdom, Righteousness, Power, Authority, etc. These are all at the disposal of our New Man IN Christ, but not at the disposal of our soul alone to be used by us as an individual person separate from Christ! In other words, Christ will not give to us His Power, Wisdom, Authority or any other of His virtues so we could handle them apart from Him. No, we have them in Him and through Him only.
If we look at ourselves in THIS Light from the Spirit of God, our beliefs may have to be considerably revised and our possible dreams destroyed. And we should do this, first, for the sake of the Lord so that He would not have died for us in vain; second, for our own good and final destiny; and third, that we would finally stop, or at least limit, continuously grieving the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). Furthermore, IF WE WORK FOR THE LORD, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE BELONG TO THE LORD OR THAT THE LORD KNOWS US! (Mt. 7:22,23)
In conclusion, may I ask the following question: Can the Lord USE anything what we may have done “for Him” if we are not IN Him? The answer is YES, but there is no reward for that person. Just as the Lord may use the “work” of the devils while they are not rewarded for it (we should understand that the Lord is using also devils for our salvation!)
Do you truly appreciate this Light from the Holy Spirit? I do very much, since I did not have it all the time, rather, it has been progressively revealed to me by His Grace as I myself was enabled by Him to receive it. We can only receive His Light and revelations into our “new man”, never to our “old man”. If our “new man” does not grow up (we are not putting him on) and thus does not acquire the necessary spiritual capacity, he cannot receive from the Lord the desirable measure of spiritual light or revelation; then we will depend on those, who can receive. The above is also a proof that I have not written any of these truths out of my head since such things as written above are not “born” in human heads.
To be continued next week in chapter 6
brother Hanola
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