When the Lord Jesus Christ hanged upon His Cross, He died spiritually before He died phy­sically! His crucifixion has NOTHING to do with His spiritual death! His greatest suffer­ing was not the Cross, but the CUP, which He had to drink! That “cup” contained all the spiritual filth, all dung, which mankind committed during its whole existence! And this filth temporarily became the filling of His clean and Holy Vessel exchanging the clean and Holy Life of the Holy Spirit (see Part 2a). No wonder that three times Jesus asked His Father to remove that cup from Him (Lk. 22:42). Hence, when the Lord died, He poured His Soul (His Blood) unto death and with it He poured out also the filling of that cup, all our dung. Jesus fully felt and tasted in His conscience the spiritual death – the separation from His Father – when in a terrific pain and suffering He cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mt. 27:46). He experienced the real hell on His Own skin and in His Own Soul in all its horror (2Cor. 5:21/ Lk. 22:42). And for a brief time He was held in the claws of DEATH where the bodily death has, in fact, no consequence, no influence, no effect, no significance or importance. Death is in its essence a spiritual thing and has to do only with man’s spirit. If the Lord does not come on time, we all shall know and expe­rience bodily death, which means, we shall die and be buried. But in that same moment, we will not have to taste the real spiritual death and the hell associated with it. Why? Because the Salvation by the Lord includes in itself also the salvation from this horrible conscience and experience of hell and death.

Conscience is a part of our spirit (see “Truth about Salvation”). During our salvation our filthy spirit is cleansed and we, being in Christ as a new creation, are joined with Christ into one spirit (1Cor. 6:17). We are not joined with Him during His death on the Cross, but after His Resurrection, in His New Life where there is no place either for death or for hell in any form. But those believers, which had not overcome and thus are not in Christ and are not joined with Him into one spirit, they will not escape the experience of that unimaginably horrible spiritual death and hell. Furthermore, these may also be hurt by the second death, which mans, by that spiritual death (Rev. 2:11).

The Lord thus saved us from death, which is something far deeper and horrible than just sin. His Salvation reaches literally to the bottom of hell and death. Hell and death are one and the same. Wake up to the spiritual death, and you are in hell! I believe that even Lazarus, when he died bodily, did not experience the conscience of the spiritual death and hell and he did not experience it even when the Lord raised him from the dead. The Lord said: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (Jn. 11:11). Was there not a danger that when he “wakes up” also in his spirit and thus in his conscience, that he will experience the conscience of the spiritual death and hell? May be it would have happened if someone else had woke him up, but the Lord Jesus woke him up outside of that danger. This also proves to us that when the Lord “wakes us up”, we will have nothing to worry about because this waking up is unto Glory and Life Eternal and Freedom and joy in Heaven and not unto condemnation to damnation and curse. It is to experience Life and Happiness and not death and hell.

          (b) The second fact is that we have and live the life of our soul even if our spirit is dead and separated form God. This life we live as NATURAL people and though it may be wonderful, it is still lived outside of God. And as such, it never crosses from the realm of this world into the realm of the spiritual world; hence, it cannot cross from one kingdom (of Satan) into another kingdom (of God). This natural life of ours thus NEVER CROSSES FROM DEATH INTO LIFE! Why? Because at our Redemption and during our Salvation, we are getting the foundation of a totally different life, the Life Eternal, the Life of God, which we are supposed to start living and which has NOTHING to do with our present life. The old natural life we will loose anyway, and the Lord gives us a clear picture of it in His Word (Mt. 16:25)

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This old natural life of ours, however, has in itself those astonish­ing abilities and powers, which were given to the first Adam and which he used and which, after his sin and fall, were forbidden him to use and “hidden” in his conscience. Let us not be surprised then, when Satan tries to get somehow to these powers and supernatural abilities, which he could use for his “spectacular” goals. His main goal is to gain control over these superna­tu­ral powers in human soul and thereby also over the man. And this effort of his is not demonstrated only in Christianity. Babylonians, Arabs, Buddhists, Taoists and Hindus have all tried in their own ways to liberate these powers, which we have, as it were, “inherited” from Adam. It may suffice to mention just some segments of these attempts and ways, for example: hypnotism (started by Mesmer in 1778), clairvoyance, telepathy, psycholo­gi­cal and parapsychological research, black magic, witchcraft, seercraft, power of selfruling (ex. Indian fakirs, people on Pacific island walking barefoot on red-hot stones, etc.) If we could release these “divine powers” in man, we all could become “gods” just as Satan told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:5 – see also “Latent power of the soul” by W. Nee, pages 21-27)

Mainly today, before the end of the world, these supernatural powers of the soul stand against the powers of the Spirit of God. Here is, and shall be, the main battlefield and Satan will use these powers as a substitute for God’s Gospel and Its Power. False christs and false prophets will rise (in fact, they have already risen), people who, despite God’s ban will seek and use these powers of their souls and shall show great signs and wonders by which they shall deceive everyone, who is not elect and guided by the Lord (Mt. 24:24). Satan will try to substitute Christ’s Salvation in His Blood by psychic powers. These are so dangerous and hellish that they will cover all nations and will bring the whole world into chaos. And these powers are especially excited where large crowds gather (here belong also the so called “mega-churches” with numerous congregations).

Important notes:

·        Many preachers are not aware that they may be using their own psychic power to con­vince believers. They may think or even believe that they have a spiritual power, but it may be just their own soulish power to gain people on their side. Many preachers have be­come experts in using psychology to manipulate people. It thus needs to be discerned in meetings whether they be psychic-soulish powers, or spiritual powers. When the work is done by the Holy Spirit, man needs almost nothing to do of himself. When the work is done by a soulish power, man usually uses methods as weeping, shouting, jumping, banging on the pulpit with fist, endless singing of the same choruses, running up & down the stage, talking of many touching stories, using Bible verses for own convictions, etc.

·        It is rather simple, and among the leadership of the churches quite frequent, that even at praying or teaching or preaching they use their psychic powers and not the Holy Spirit. By outer appearance you may be praying for someone, even honestly praying, but in real­ity you may be oppressing, dejecting, afflicting and making weary the person by your psychic soulish power! It may be a prayer of death and not of life and may not prosper anyone (Jn. 6:63). The power of the Holy Spirit is outside of our control, but the psychic po­wers we may control and we may be aware of this. Only the Holy Spirit is the Bearer of the Life Eternal, therefore, whatever is happening without the Holy Spirit, there is always death, fatigue, vexation, gloom, boredom and hopelessness.

·        Satan always fabricates, designs, forges in human soul phenomena and emotions, which are similar to the work of the Holy Spirit. Thereby he may cause man to experience or get impressions of a false repentance, false regeneration, false renewal, false joy and laughter, false love, false gifts of the Holy Spirit and other similar false imitations of expe­riences from the Holy Spirit, but the true fruit of the Spirit he cannot imitate! (Mt. 7:16-20)

·        Towards the end of the world, Satan will use man as his main instrument against God’s plans. The Holy Spirit is God’s miracle-working Instrument. But human natural soul will be Satan’s miracle-working instrument falsifying also the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

·        The Holy Spirit never speaks against the Scripture, but He retains the right to interpret the Scripture differently from our human interpretations, translations, phrases, express­ions and explanations of the Scripture. He also retains the right to step over and ignore our forms and systems of doctrines, which we created from the Scripture. It is a generally known fact that today almost everything religious and evangelistic is based on the Script­ure, yet, the vast majority of all that is in a terrible conflict and brings to believers chaos and death and not the Life of God.

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To be continued next week

brother Hanola

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