BASIC SPIRITUAL FACTS

EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY – TATRY 2017

 

Page

Part  1   – INTRODUCTION                                                           2

Part  2   – The beginning of our Christianity                                  5

Part  3   – The Continuation of our Christianity                              7

Part  3a – The Cross and its fruit                                                  11

Part  3b – The Fire and its judgments                                           17

Part  4   – What is man?                                                              20

Part  4a – Knowing oneself                                                           24

Part  5   – The living and dead Christians                                      26

Part  6   – Patience, power, eye, ear                                             33

Part  7   – Our war                                                                       38

Part  8   – Our organic unity                                                         43

Part  9   – Our anointing and ministry                                           45

Part 10  – Our works                                                                   52

Part 11  – Our natural and spiritual life                                         59

Part 12  – The Return of Jesus Christ                                            68

 

 

 

Brother Hanola

The servant of Jesus Christ – The King of kings

 

 

 

 

In our Christian life, theory is brilliant, practice is miserable! Our desires are brilliant, the reality is miserable! Is it possible that, some day we will live that brilliant theory? That our brilliant desires will come true? The Lord says:  YES... if you will follow Me.                                                                                      

PART 1 – INTRODUCTION

Before the Lord gives us His further Light in this Fellowship of 2017, He desires to again bring us to the “Light about us”, which he gave us on August 15, 2016 and which touched our spiritual state as well as our approach, our privilege and our responsibility towards the Light of the Lord from years 2013 and 2015. I sent this letter to everyone who was pre­sent in the Fellowship of 2015 in order that in this “Light about us” he may see himself, judge his own situation, his spiritual needs and the way how to bring that Light of the Lord from the Fellowship of 2015 into his own life. Because, this is that most important step in our present earthly life without which our present Christianity would lose its value, its objective and purpose as well as its ability to fulfill the Will of Our Saviour and Lord and by that also our high privilege and calling in Christ Jesus.

 

SOME POINTS FROM THE LETTER „LIGHT ABOUT US“   (from August 15, 2016)

1)   As we approach the first „anniversary“ of Lomnica 2015, The Lord started to show me His view on how He sees us, why He gathered us into Lomnica, what is His calling upon us and what is His Purpose. He did not have to gather us into Lomnica, did not have to give us anything and therefore ask from us any­thing. In such a case, we would not know today one another and every one could continue on his own old way. However, the Lord is well aware of what He is doing, why He had gathered us here, why He had given us such a precious Light, which He is not giving to just about “anybody anytime“. In fact, He did not give this Light to anyone else in the whole world! This is an incredible privilege, which He did not give to anyone whom we know in the whole Church and that not only in Slovakia, but anywhere in the world where we were sending our literature to 70 countries of the world and where I was ministering personally or through corres­pon­dence. This points to our high call­ing in Christ Jesus. In His Light He has thus given us an unusual and unique opportunity to be prepared for His Coming and for the entry to the Kingdom of God into which the majority of the Church will not enter! Are you aware of this privilege? Even one year after Lomnica 2015? Even in difficult situations of your Christian life? I am asking this because it is difficult for man to realize such a super spiritual opportunity even such an incredible Grace of the Lord toward us and our families.

2)   The Lord is giving to us also this „Light about us“, so that we may start seeing what we have never seen before in our entire life – our own selves on the narrow road!... walking or sitting. There we can see what we love, what we hate, what makes us joyful, what makes us angry what we receive and what we reject, what is according to our will and what is against it, what we are willing to do for God and what we are not, where we trust God and where we do not, whether we are proud, fearful, lazy, selfish, closed, meek or pressing our own opinions, whether we can discern our own heart from our head, and our spirit from our soul, that is, whether we are carnal or spiritual, to what degree we are carnal or spirit­ual, etc. This whole page could be covered with similar features of our character. Basically, without the knowledge of our own selves we will not be able to make even one step in our Salvation! I re­peat this important fact: Without the knowledge of our own selves we will not be able to make even one step in our Salvation! Once we see our own self then we will under­stand and be willing to give to the Lord our consent for the work, which He shows us at every step on this narrow road about every unacceptable part of our character, which He has to remove from us! Every part of our character, which He is show­ing to us on the narrow road is spiritual, it springs from our human spirit. That is why the Lord reminded us that our preparation for His Coming and our entry into the Kingdom of God is solely spiritual. The preparation of His Bride is spiritual; She and Christ will be of One Spirit at His Coming (though not quite 100%).

3)   If the Lord would not show us in His Light our own selves, we would never know what is in our heart, what spirits govern it. If our heart is still deceived, it can lead us in the opposite direction than what we may desire in our head and we may not be aware of it (Jer. 17:9). That’s why the Lord warns us in His Word that we should observe His Wisdom and incline our ear to His Understanding (Pr. 5:1) lest we should say one day: „How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof! And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” (Pr. 5:12-14). Therefore, let us see that this Light is very important! Without this “Light about us” as well as our understanding and faith, the Light of the Lord from our fellowship in Lomnica would be ineffective, and the living Body, which He desires to build, would never materialize.

4)   The Lord says that you are not able to work that Light from Lomnica into your own life by your own power, wisdom or ability and begin to walk on the narrow road without problems. Why? Because from that Light, you understood spiritually very little. Why? There are two reasons:

The first reason is: You have not yet begun to live the Life of Christ in a measurable rate. Why? Because on the narrow road, which alone leads to the Life of Christ and which only few believers find (Mt. 7:14), none of you was walking in the past, none of you has any practical experiences and everything on it may even look terrible. The Lord could have given you some Light on the narrow road already in 2013, but He put you on it practically only in 2015 (except JS) when He gave you the Light HOW we are saved. Only on this road we are dying = losing our old life and as we are losing it so we are gaining the New Life of Christ. There exists no other road and no other way!

Thes second reason is: “When anyone hears the Word of the Kingdom and understands it not, then comes the wicked one (devil) and catches away that which was sown. This is he which received the seed by the way side.” (Mt. 13:19). That is why, for example, Ivan Szabo had not even given thanks to the Lord for the Light received at the end of our fellowship in Lomnica in 2015 because in his heart he had NOTHING to thank for! What was given by the Lord that was taken away by the devil so that after Lomnica, he found himself in the same spirit­ual dark­ness as he was before Lomnica. The others from among you receiv­ed in Lomnica according to how fertile your heart was compared to the side of the road, whether it was full of spiritual weeds or stones or not (Mt. 13:3-9). This I cannot know since this is shown later on according to our walking and actions and reactions on the narrow road, where the “fruit of the spirits”, which is in us, is manifested.

5)   Right from the beginning of the narrow road, the Lord started to show you your true characters, which live in your soul. For example, two brothers from this fellowship showed their characters and their unacceptable features quite quickly as they passed on the narrow road only 1-2 steps and fell down. Today we know that to fall on the narrow road is not a tragedy, it is a norm-standard for every believ­er, who walks on it! The tragedy is to stay down and refuse the hand of the Lord, which He is offering to us… even smiles at us!... as father on his small children. Everyone of you started to get some first lessons of a practical walking on the narrow road and no one was prepared for it. Even today, you are “merrily falling” and the Lord is not nerv­ous or upset or sur­prised, He expects it. No man on the earth learned to walk without fall­ing down… and getting up! And in the spiritual world, it is precisely the same! In Lomnica, you have not received everything or every detail. The details we usually learn on the narrow road (examples: the judgment of Jan Lacho and Stan Gawel, arrival of Matúš and Dominik to Canada, etc.) 

6)   Every believer whom the Lord calls begins from carnality, humanism, intellectualism, soulishness and not from spirituality! This is a principle which nobody can change. A carnal believer cannot understand or even believe a spiritual believer even if both believe that they are “walking with the Lord towards the Kingdom”! The Lord foreknew everything what will be happening to us after Lom­­nica 2015 and thus He is not surprised at anything. The Lord has not gathered us in Lomnica because we were able, but because we were willing. We were willing even to give Him our lives and thus to start doing His Will, to know Him, love Him and be able to receive His Love and Wisdom and Power and Grace and thus also His Life. Do we remember this? Was it for you just a “religious formality” to give Him your life? The Lord has also a serious matter for you, which, thus far, did not have to penetrate into your consciousness. You see, the Lord does not know formalities. He takes our words and promises SERIOUSLY (Mt. 12:37) even if we do not take them seriously! Otherwise, He would not have asked from us our old lives.

7)   That is why He is also judging us, whom He gathered in Lomnica, completely differently than the other believers! Why? The Lord has given to you in Lomnica the Light, which is a Testimony about HIM HIMSELF – HE IS THE WORD, THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE (Jn. 1:1// Jn. 14:6). He has shown you clearly the Way to the Kingdom as well as to the Life Eternal. And this His Way is not your way! (Is. 55:8) He hereby opened the door to His Own Body to all of you, which Body is living and where you also must begin to live. He has hereby also given you an opportunity to become His Bride and be prepared for His Coming! This does not apply to the whole Church, which does not have this Light and will not become His Bride! We are very precious to the Lord, He will never look at our inabilities or misery, rather, whether in our hearts we are will­ing to follow Him, or not (Phil. 2:13// Mt. 16:24).

8)   It is written: “...man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1Sam. 16: 7b). Why is it so? The meaning of this Word of God is very important for us. Our danger is neither with the devil, nor with this sinful world, our greatest danger in our earthly life is OUR HEART. It may bring us either to Heaven, or to Hell (Jer. 17:9). It decides our future according to what it receives or not receives from Jesus Christ from our conscience in our spirit because our head receives no­thing and the Lord never communicates with our head (see “The Truth about Salvation” – diagrams). That is why the Lord advices us to keep our HEART with all diligence and not our head, because all the issues of life are coming out of our heart, and not out of our head (Pr. 4:23).

9)   Well, this is how it is, my beloved. But, how is it possible that to just few believers in Tatranska Lomnica in Slovakia God gives what He never gave to anyone else in this entire world that we know? I will tell you what the Lord is showing me even here. Firstly, we are at the end of the ages and not at the beginning, that is, the Bride of Christ has largely passed away, and today, He is adding to Her only very, very, very few living believers. Secondly, when the Lord had chosen for His servant a Slovak, He will not send him to Norway or to Uganda to give them such a great Gift of His Light, but He brought him to Slovakia! Is this also logical? He also brought him to the Czech Repub­lic, but nobody received that Light there. In Slovakia, only very few souls have received it. Thirdly, the Word of God says that the Church is His Body and He is Her Head e brought h (Eph. 1:22, 23 +4: 15// Col. 1:18). The Head lives by the Life of Christ, It is not dead, therefore, His Body, to which the Head is joined, must also live by the same Life of Christ, it cannot be dead! If we will not start living, we will not begin to bear any fruit, which grows from life. And if we will not bear any fruit then at some point of time, the Father will cut us away from the Body of Christ! (Jn. 15:2a, 6) Then He will cast us out where we will wither and men will gather us and cast us into the fire where we will be burned! Our unrenewed mind cannot register this in any living way, nor imagine it, nor under­stand it, nor realize it, nor yet believe it; it can only be done by our pure con­science.

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This is how the Lord sees us after Lomnica 2015 and He desires that we would not take His Gift and Grace and privilege lightly, how Israel was always taking it and how the Church is still doing it today. He desires that we would see, believe, understand even rejoice and with an unspeakable joy give Him thanks for everything He has already done for us and what He also desires to finish for us and in us for His, and even for our, glory (Phil. 1:6). And the Lord has for us a further Light prepared, which will be no less precious and no lesser than the One He gave us two years ago. In fact, what the Lord has for us at this time is not only Light but His LIFE. Because some words bring “only” Light, or “only” Truth, but other words bring LIFE, they are the Spirit and they are Life (Jn. 6:63). Hence, strive to discern what is only Light and what is Life, which words bring Light and which bring Life. Blessed be the Name of Our Savior, Lord and King Jesus Christ. Amen.

PS

The best “spiritual bread from Heaven” are the voice recordings from 2013 (17 records) and from 2015 (67 records from Andrej + 1 from Jan). Put them into your “Menu” and do not keep them in your pantry too long to gather dust. The Lord will not give to such believers anything more. And if any­one does not want to listen to them, let him not keep away him, who does desire to listen because even Pharisees were closing the door to the Kingdom and hindered those that wanted to get in (Mt. 23:13// Jn. 10:9) while they were not getting in themselves. After all, there is usually more Life in the voice recordings than in a writ­­­­­ten text. I must also note that in no way can I declare the whole Purpose of God to any Christian fellowship, which is not prepared for it by the Spirit of God. Hence, if any passage of His Light is not presently “digestible”, continue and ask the Lord to enable you to encompass the whole Light, which He is giving to you in His time span. We know that a progressive victory rests on a progressive spiritual de­velopment and growth. The measure of receiving of His Light and Life is also a question of our spi­rit­­­ual capacity. And our spiritual capacity is a question of our coming to the Lord (Jn. 5:40).

 

PART 2 – THE BEGINNING OF OUR CHRISTIANITY

Many of those that call themselves “believers” do not have to know when their heart believed, how it be­lieved, even why it believed and what actually had happened to them, since their mind did not have to understand any of it. One day they just appeared in a religious group among people, who also called themselves “believers” and which also did not have to know how they came to it. So, what is real­ly happening with us or to us when we are becoming so called “Christians”?

I have to be very brief since this is a topic for a separate book, but there are important facts, which we have to enlighten and explain. The explanations of a Christian life should be supported and confirmed by experiences, and experiences should be supported and confirmed by explanations. Natural man having earthly nature has NOTHING common with God, there is no relationship and thus no expe­ri­ences. Such man is in a state of antagonism, enmity toward God and that in his entire nature, in his entire soul: mind, heart and will, also in his entire human spirit. He has no explanation for his own existence, doesn’t know why he was born, what the meaning of his life is and what future he has. This applies until his redemp­tion when he receives the Grace of God, which brings Salvation and which God showed to all mankind (Tit. 2:11), when by his tongue he confesses the faith in his heart (Rim. 10:9,10). After his water baptism this new believer receives the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38) which is his New Man, Heavenly Man, which lives by the Life of Christ. Since this time, this new believer should begin to “put off his old natu­ral sin­ful man” and “put on his New Heavenly Man” created by God in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4: 22-24) Putting off the old and putting on the New is, in fact, the process of our Salvation, that is, of our CHANGE! The Life of Christ in the New Man, which lives in the spirit of the believer, slowly begins to influence the conscience of his spirit and he gradually begins to receive the awareness about God, about his own existence and its meaning. His spiritual senses, which basically correspond with his physical senses and which did not function before, begin to “wake up” and he should begin to use them, practice them, exercise them so they would become able to discern good and evil (Heb. 5:12-14).

When we are becoming Christians, our previous state of spiritual DEATH is to be exchanged with the state of spiritual LIFE. And here it is not just a question of some “revival” of something, which was dead in us before, but of granting a New Life, which has never existed in us before and which belongs to our New Heavenly Man. This New Life has its purpose, mission, even a new destiny. It brings to us a new conscience, new relationships, new fellowships, new desires and interests. No one is able to under­stand it or appreciate it only a newborn Christian can know it and have such experiences. And not only that, but this new Christian gets new spiritual and soulish abilities, which he never had before in­cluding wisdom, knowledge, understanding and intelligence, which greatly surpass his former mental capa­ci­ties. We can observe this easily when we want to discuss the Lord’s truths and matters with academic­ally educated individuals who should understand these things, but their facial expressions indicate that they have no clue what we are talking about. When such a Christian continues with the Lord and is receiving His Life, he is also receiving power to do things, which other people are not able to do – the power of persever­an­ce, patience, overcoming and of many-sided activities (Eph. 3:16).

Finally, such a Christian also receives a New Hope! What was it that enabled many Christians to conti­nue despite unspeakable difficulties and sufferings and opposition? Others capitulated, gave up, fell into despair, but Christians continued… not because they were supermen full of tenacity or stoutness, not at all. But Christians, though many were physically weak, had HOPE from the “God of hope” (Rom. 15:13// 1Tim. 1:1// Tit. 2:13// Heb. 7:19// 1Pet. 1:21// Heb. 11:1 etc.) HOPE IS POWER! What is then this all inclusive mys­­­­­tery of this matter? Because here, it is not a question of some abstract things, which you may even call “life or understanding or hope or power”, these are not abstract things. That true born-again Christ­ian has not received abstract things, he has received a PERSON, the Person of the Holy Spirit, which Person God gives to those, who obey Him. This Gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38) is that all in­clu­sive explanation of all that matter, because the Holy Spirit is GOD! The Holy Spirit is also called the “Spirit of Life”. He has all the intelligence and knowledge of God, all the Power of God as well as all the elements of eterni­ty and timelessness of God. Everything what is true about God is true about the Holy Spirit. Hence, if God gives the Holy Spirit to dwell inside man and that man learns from the very begin­ning as a child, day after day, month after month, year after year to walk in the fellowship with the Holy Spirit, then that man must necessarily grow in everything what I have described above. He also must gain the know­led­ge of and live the Life of God in his inner being and that Life must manifest it­self in him without any questions! Therefore, when that Holy Spirit has all God’s intelligence and we are in His school, we live with Him, keep with Him fellowship day after day, then we will grow in an intel­ligence, which no natu­ral man on this planet can have; we will grow in cognition, awareness, in ability to grasp and understand the things of God, which no natural man on this planet can understand.

Sadly, I find among Christians a lamentable lack of understanding what it actually means to have the Holy Spirit truly dwelling in our inner man. And in great multitudes of Christians this is shown and can be detected by a simple fact that they are able to speak and act in such a terrible conflict – contradict­ion towards the Holy Spirit without being controlled, corrected or guided by Him in any way or manner. It is even unbelievable how many Christians can speak about things even in a manner with which the Holy Spirit has nothing in common and what He does not agree with in any way. Simply, there is so­mething drastically wrong here, very sinful, carnal, to God unacceptable and despicable. Unbelievable multitudes of Christians are hypocrites able and even willing to believe a lie about others, even to repeat that lie to others and never be corrected by the Holy Spirit in their inner man, never be able to register a total op­po­sition and disagreement from the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Truth! It is the very EVIL that is manifested not only in many individuals, but generally applies to the very Church of Jesus Christ!

For, if we are true Christians, then wherever the Holy Spirit does not agree, has issue, controversy with anything what we speak or do, even with the manner how we speak or act, then we should know about it and register it and change accordingly. The Holy Spirit may be showing to us clearly that He does not agree with us, that what we speak or do is wrong, is iniquity, sin, evil, injustice, injury, lie, suppression. And not only may that be unacceptable to the Holy Spirit, but the very manner in which we speak or act. There­­fore, it is very important to sense in ourselves the reality of the Holy Spirit Who is dwelling in us that He would have in us the freedom to express Himself and guide us to all truth – because He was given to us for that purpose (Jn. 14:16,17 + 16:13a). I do not say by this that when we fail to know, sense or discern the Holy Spirit, that it must mean, that He does not dwell in us, does not exist in us and hence, we are not born-again Christians though many times it may look that way with many believers. But it does mean that we surely do not walk in the Spirit, never endeavored to find Him, notice Him or recog­nize His “voice” because we may have never used or trained our spiritual ear as well as other spiritual senses to contact the Holy Spirit in us (Heb. 5:12-14).

It is also more than likely that during all of our Christian life, nobody told us that in our being there lives and dwells the Person of the Holy Spirit and He waits when we shall “wake up” a begin to seek Him in­side of us, devote to Him our attention, listen to His voice. In fact, this applies to the whole Church of Jesus Christ since I have met there only very few believers who would be walking with the Spirit and exhibit His intelligence, wisdom, Life and guidance to all truth. The Christian life should be such that whenever we speak or do whatever the Spirit does not agree with, we should know it immediately, see it even understand it because we will have about it a “bad feeling in the very center of our being”. And we will not get rid of that feeling until we come to the Lord and confess that “very clearly we have not been speak­­ing or acting correctly, justly, righteously or in the right spirit”. And if we had caused anyone an injury, pain, behaved rudely, then we should also repent and apologize and ask the Lord to correct that situ­ation. This is the life in the Spirit and it is a very clear and practical thing, which we have to start practicing in our Christian life.

Well, this is what is happening to us when we become Christians. This is how it starts and the begin­nings may be very simple though they may be often chaotic. If you are only a short time in the real Christian life, you must have at least some of the above described experiences. Perhaps, you plan to do something what you had been doing in the past and “something” in your inside will tell you: “No, no – it is an old habit that belongs to the past.” Well, perhaps this is that simplest example from the beginnings of your Christian life. When we are born-again, that is not the end – in fact, it is only the beginning! In other words, when after 10-20-30 years or more you remain the same persons as you were after your water baptism, that is, at your beginning – THIS IS the tragedy of believers!

 

PART 3 – THE CONTINUATION OF OUR CHRISTIANITY

Soon after our beginnings and chiefly after our water baptism where we received the gift of Holy Spirit – the New Heavenly Man – the Spirit of God begins to lead us into the beginnings of the reality of the spiritual world, which we had never before sensed, seen, heard or understood… though every man of this world is heading into this spiritual world after his physical death, whether he be a pagan or believer. We will not devote ourselves to pagans or to so called “paper Christians”; we will be devoted solely to the true believers, born-again and baptized because only these have the opportunity to continue to their Salvation, that is, to their perfection. What is tragic in this starting state of believer’s life is the fact that the majority of these new believers do not continue to their Salvation-perfection! Why?

There are TWO major reasons! One reason is that many of them may not be willing to step on this nar­row road, or they may be deceived by their own pastors, preachers or other leaders, who themselves do not continue to their perfection or nobody tells them the truth. In the Word of God, the truth is clear: Therefore leav­ing the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection…”, which means, go on unto Sal­vation! (Heb. 6:1a). Ignoring this Word of God may be for believers tragic! Why? Because, “for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made par­takers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away (will not continue unto perfection) it shall be impossible for them to be renewed again unto re­pent­ance (redemption) seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open  shame” (Heb. 6:4-6). And the Word of God continues saying: “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again en­tan­gled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness… But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb: The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” (2Pet. 2:20-22) Is this not truly tragic and terrible?

We may ask: How can those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, how can those fall away? Perhaps, it may be unbelievable, but quite easily (Ivan Szabo and his wife are a typical example). In His Word, the Lord speaks to us about two ways: the broad way that leads to destruction, and the narrow way that leads to Life Eternal (Mt. 7:13,14). If we are to start walking towards our perfection (Heb. 6:4-6), then we start walking on the narrow way since it is the only way that leads to perfection and Life Eternal. However, we ourselves cannot walk on this way according to our feel­ings, ideas or decisions! The Spirit of the Lord must be with us at every step since we can walk on this narrow way only by His Wisdom and Power. Nevertheless, even if we walk with the Holy Spirit, we are falling! Even a small child, which learns to walk, is falling… whether the parents are present or not. Since this narrow way is spiritual and not physical, and we are spiritual toddlers, then this learning to walk on this spiritual way is exactly the same as for physical toddlers to walk on the physical way. And when on that narrow way we meet difficulties, pains, unexplainable obstacles, unpleasant experien­ces, etc., after a time we might be disgusted with these and may begin to speculate whether to continue, and when we fall, whether we should get up at all. Besides, every believer is different regarding his cha­rac­ter, his past, the size of the powers of evil and darkness in his soul, also regarding his thoughts, ima­gi­na­tions, plans, desires, etc. This also means that everyone walks on this narrow way differently after his character, hence, it is foolish to compare ourselves with others on this way.

If I am to follow someone whom I love, then the power of that love enables me to overcome difficulties or obstacles, even sufferings of various kinds. If I am to follow someone whom I am not interested in, then you could imagine that my walking will be close to zero. This means that to those above noted human characteristics and factors of the character we must add additional factors, which our walking on the narrow way will depend on. The two most important factors are our love towards God and our faith. If we do not love God, then we will not walk on any narrow way! If our faith is like a grain of poppy seed, then we will walk on that narrow way as a “snail on crutches”. If we are disobedient, unwilling to listen to anyone, to allow anyone to lead us, not admit any mistake, any inability, etc., then we will not even step on this narrow way. There are hundreds of examples of such situations. The most criti­­cal situ­ation is when we were already enlightened by the Light of the Lord, have tasted the heavenly gift, were partakers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come… and we thought or were even persuaded in ourselves that we walk on the narrow way, but we never walked on it! Is this possible? IT IS! Why? Because walking on the narrow way is not judged by these signs, walking on the narrow way does not produce signs, but LIFE, and from this Life grows the fruit of the Spirit! (Gal. 5:22,23) And it is by this fruit of the Spirit we know those who walk on the narrow way, and also those that only think they do! (Mt. 7:14,20). The Life CHANGES the character of man and by this change we know who walks on the narrow way and who does not. I strongly stressed at our fellow­ship in 2015 that Salvation is a CHANGE! It should also be clear from the above described facts that such belie­vers that were enlightened by the Light of the Lord, have tasted the heavenly gift, were par­takers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come can indeed fall out of their Redemption and Salvation!

At the very beginning of this Part there is presented an important fact that the Spirit of God will begin to guide us into the reality of the spiritual world, which we had never before sensed, seen, heard or under­stood. Along with that, there exists the Word of God where the Lord Jesus promises to us that we will receive a “Comforter that He may abide with you for ever. Even the Spirit of Truth…for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.” (Jn. 14:16,17) However, when He, the Spirit of Truth shall come, “He will guide you into all truth.” (Jn. 16:13) In other words, the Spirit of God will begin to guide us into the be­ginnings of the reality of the spiritual world, which we had never before sensed, seen, heard or under­stood – and He will also guide us into every truth of this world! What is the basis of this spiritual reality and spiritual truth? I will express it in two words – the LIFE OF CHRIST!

And now I will reveal to you the MOST IMPORTAMT VERSE FROM THE WHOLE BIBLE related to the salvation-perfection of every believer whether coming from Israel or paganism. That important verse is – John 5:40!!! Here the Lord speaks to believers with His Own mouth: “And you will not come to Me that ye may have Life.” The Lord does not say that we cannot come to Him, but we do not want to come to Him! However, without the Life of Christ, nobody can be saved for any such man is spiritually dead! Spiritually dead man may be redeemed but he can never be perfected. And secondly, we do not gain the Life only by coming to the Lord, but mainly by “fighting a good fight of faith and laying hold on Eternal Life, whereunto we are also called…” (1Tim. 6:12). This is a brief paragraph where I mention the Life of Christ, the most important thing that any man can possess in this whole Universe. Yet, we will touch His Life continually and will mention It also in other Parts of this message.

We will start progressing in our spiritual growth and development by starting to find out who we really are, by starting to see what spiritual state we are in, what we desire in our earthly life, what we pursue, what are our priorities and objectives, aims and what relationship we truly have towards Christ. How do we find that out, how do we start to see it? By the decisions of our human will, by our mistakes and fail­ures on the narrow way, by our sins against God and against one another, by our attitudes and intents of our heart which intents point out what kind of spirits are in our soul and what power they have over us (Pr. 16:2). The question of our spiritual progress and growth is therefore not in our trying to be “good Christians”, in trying to do everything in our humanistic goodness, understanding even sympathy with others, that when we endeavor to do good or help while we may not be even aware of the fact that evil may be always present with us (Rim. 7:21) which evil never produced good fruit. We are never prepared to do what we know is from the Lord whenever we believe that we are not able to do it. However, the Lord will never call us to do any task for which He would not enable us. “I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth (enables) me.” (Phil. 4:13) And I can do it NOW, if I am prepared in myself to begin, not in 20 years! Is this not true? Then why we are unable to do NOW what seems to be impossible? You see, we are never prepared in ourselves to begin such a “job”, we may also be lazy to do anything, to go to Christ with open heart and soul to receive His Life so He can enable us. Or we have no time for our­selves or anyone else, we have no fancy for it or faith that we can do it “if we want”! Our priorities are also others than those of the Lord. We prefer that the Lord would do for us everything while we would not mov­e our finger! We do not believe that the Lord always gives us what we need because He may be giving it to us in a different way than we expect. Also, we may be dissatisfied when the Lord is not add­ress­ing or solving our situation in our timing or in a way, which we may prefer, etc.

But then the whole Chris­t­ian­ity is an endeavor of at least some Christians to be what they are not, and to do what they are unable to do. These are the experiences of the so called carnal Christian, but they are not experiences of the spiritual Christian, which means, the Overcomer. Heaven is not the place which the Overcomers reach one day. In the Will of God, they have been there since the Beginning, and they were never in any other place! (Rom. 8:29) I myself am striving for my perfection in Heaven, which perfection I already have and where I already am according to the Will of My Father! Hence, I am striving for what I already have, and I am going where I already am! If Christ could have been crucified, resurrected and taken to Heaven before the foundation of this world (Rev. 13:8// 1Pet. 1:20), which also means, before He was born in Bethlehem and before He existed as Christ, the Anointed, then I myself could have been cruci­fied and resurrected with Him, I could have been perfected in Him and taken to the Throne of My Father together with Him before I was born because My Father had chosen me in Christ before the foundation of this world (Eph. 1:4// Rom. 8:29). I do hope that it is clear to you that here I am mixing the physical world with the spiritual one, and the physical time with the timelessness of God and of the spiritual world! Yet, these are all facts which, if we see them not, then we are spiritual poor wretches, paupers, deplorable believers.

One of the greatest problems of the Church & believers is their spiritual poverty. It is the result and not the reason. The result of the spiritual poverty is a lack of the discipline toward the Spirit of God. Those that are spiritually rich, en­­larged and empowered are those, and only those, who tasted the discipline of the Spirit, who went through “deep waters” and have a spiritual history with God because they also suffer­ed for His Body. Their sufferings, personal and family problems, their adversities and merciless­ness of destiny, they all were for the growth of Christ in His people. We may think that preaching is just preaching, teaching is just teaching, ministry is just ministry. Well, not so. To minister to God and His people is not only a quest­ion of words and deeds, but what have you gone through with God. If the Spirit of God is not allowed to “bother you, distress you, worry you or intrude into your personal affairs” then you will be doom­ed, sentenced and condemned into the poverty of your life. You will never learn how blessed it is to draw the fullness of Christ not only for yourself, but for others as well. Because THIS IS MINISTRY! Even the revelation of the Light of God waits for the discipline of the Spirit. Our openness and will­ing­ness to receive the discipline of the Spirit of God open for us the way that He may reveal to us the spi­ritual realities in Himself and bring us into them as well.

Our avoidance of His discipline takes away from the Lord the opportunity to do this work in us (Pr. 5:12). Every day the Lord looks at the opportunities how to enlarge us and empower us. When difficulties and conflicts arise, we usually shy away from them, when tests and trials arise, we widely bypass them because for us this is the simplest and most comfortable way. After all, this is our habit, which after many years of our com­fort­­able Christ­ian life we have developed in us though we cannot imagine what untold treasures of the Spirit we may have lost thereby. When we sin and act against the Will of God and He has to stop us, rebuke us or even correct us, that is a different matter, we cannot avoid His rebukes and corrections. But we can avoid the discipline of the Spirit of God, which is designed to transform our personality that it might be useful to God and His Purposes not only for us, but also for others. When we are poor, we have nothing to give to others. This is a typical feature of many leaders in today’s Church and also outside of it.

The Father had designed an awesome, stunning and amazing Salvation of man, the Son had realized it and the Spirit now communicates with us showing us what the Son had executed for us and empowers us to do it. The whole work of our Salvation is concluded by the work of the Son when He declared: “It is finished” and sat on the right hand of the Heavenly Father. If we today do not doubt that the Son had completely finished our Salvation which the Father entrusted to Him, then why do we doubt that the Spirit will completely finish what the Son entrusted to Him? As the design of the Salvation by the Father is awesome, stunning and amazing, the Son’s execution of the Salvation is just as awesome, stunning and amazing, and just as awe­some, stunning and amazing is the work of the Spirit Who is now executing that Salvation in us. The complete fullness of the spiritual reality, which is in Christ, will be grafted into us by His Spirit. The question of our entry into the fullness of the spiritual reality does not therefore depend entirely on us, but on the Spirit of God as well. Nor is it a question of our capacity or ability, but it is the question of the absolute faithfulness of the Spirit of God and of our faith and will. Can we really trust Him that He will finish all the work entrusted to Him by the Son? We have to learn first to trust the Spirit, BUT before this, we have to learn to perceive Him! How can you trust someone whom you can­not even hear? To whom you never speak? About Whom you may not even have any conscience that He lives in you? We must fully rely on His work, which is, in fact, double: first, that He will reveal to us the whole Character as well as all the dimensions of God’s spirit­ual reality, and second, that He will bring us into every little “crumb” of that reality, which He thus revealed to us.

In the beginning of our Christianity we are not aware of many things and the Lord does not want to give us too many tasks and responsibilities since in His eyes we are yet as children who need to mature more in order to be aware what they are now, what they should do, how to live, etc. But when we con­ti­nue in our faith and maturing and the Lord begins to lead us into greater depth of our Christian life, then He will also begin to show us the dangers, which will be lurking at us, slow us down and hinder our growth and progress. The Lord will make it clear to us that our Salvation is entirely on the basis of His Grace, not on our plans, but on our obedience to His plans! Also, on the other hand, our help to others in their salvation will also have to include the element of grace, which will dwell in our conscience. Our own Salvation flows from the Cross of Christ, from where also flow God’s Love, Grace and Life (see Part 3a). This same thing also applies to every believer, that is, if we do desire to help anyone in his process of salvation then from us must simi­larly flow love, grace and life. If we have none from these three then we ourselves are “zero” and can help no one in anything!

For any kind of spiritual help, we also need vision or revelation about the state and needs of the other person. The revelation is just the same question of grace as is our whole Salvation. Revelation is not something to which we can arrive in ourselves; it is not something that would belong to some superior understanding of ours. Revelation is thus not something which we ourselves can produce or acquire, but it is purely Grace of God. In the case of Apostle Paul it was also shown that it was not his extra intelli­gen­ce which produced those great revelations, but it was the Grace of God (2Cor. 12:7-9). This Grace of God came to us through Paul where we can now draw from his letters those great spiritual treasures. And not only that, but then, when this Grace came to our being where it works out the Life of God, this Grace can also be observed and explored by those higher spiritual intelligences in heavenly places, which are thus brought into an admiration, worship and glory of this Grace of God as it is exhibited in us. It is written that “angels desire to look into these things” (1Pet. 1:9-12) because they thereby get know­ledge of the Character of God’s Grace and also our new value after we had received it. Because God takes into His hands that which is not, and things that are not that they may overcome those things that are. He also takes things weak and foolish and in them He is displaying His Grace and Power of recrea­tion (1Cor. 1:27,28). In the ages to come, these enormous riches of His Grace and Mercy will also be shown to the principalities and heavenly powers through us.

 

PART 3a – THE CROSS AND ITS FRUIT

In general, the word “cross” brings to us negative thoughts, unpleasant feelings, fear, unwillingness to even talk about it. If someone fears something, we say: “He fears it as the devil fears the cross”. Since our old man has a lot in common with the devil, he also fears the cross. What shall we then, born-again Christ­ians, do about it? What attitude shall we take? What Light will the Lord give us? Shall we be will­ing to receive it? It is a beautiful and very powerful Light. Behold…

The most well known and most used Word of the New Testament, which declares the Love of God is Jn. 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave…” Is that true? But this Word includes in Itself not only Love, but also the Cross chiefly if we notice the previous two verses (Jn. 3:14,15). Because, God gave His only begotten Son to be crucified! We always see the Cross as something negative, unpleasant also unattractive, painful, undesirable – this is how the Cross is seen by our “old man”. Now, how is the Cross seen by our “New Man", do you know? Here it is…

The first basic truth about the Cross is that the Cross is the Love of God! That the Cross is as it were a spiritual medicine which kills in us the roots of all spiritual illnesses that threaten our very life, also, the Cross burns out of us all spiritual filth, heals spiritual cancer. The Cross removes from us all evil in order to bring us into all good. The Cross also removes from us all carnality – flesh and the death, which is connected with our flesh – in order to open for us the way into the spiritual reality and the Life Eter­nal. This is how the Cross is seen by our New Man. We always gladly buy the medicine, which heals us from our physical and mental illnesses, diseases and pains, if it is available to us. But for our spirit­ual illness­es, diseases and pains we have no pills, we have nothing! And these spiritual illnesses are the causes of our physical as well as mental illnesses, diseases and pains.

The second basis truth abut the Cross is that the Cross is the power of God! We must also see the Cross as the only power through which Christ destroyed Satan and all the evil of his devils and demons, destroyed also the Death over which Satan had his power (Heb. 2:14) and destroyed also all the works of the Devil (1Jn. 3:8b). That’s why the Cross became the only door into our Salvation and the Life Eternal. Without the Cross, we would have no hope into our future! Finally, the Cross cannot be sidestepped by any believer. Whosoever tries to sidestep the Cross, whether a pagan or born-again baptized Christ­ian, he/she will end up in the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second death and eternal damnation.

The third basic truth about the Cross is that the Cross of Jesus was both physical and spiritual. First He died on it spiritually (Mt. 27:46) and then also physically. Our cross is only spiritual and we are dying on it to our old life by our will as we follow Christ (Mt. 16:24). In Christ we died to our old life by the Will of Our Heavenly Father but NOT by our will since at that time we did not exist as yet. Bu now that we do exist, we have to die to our old life by OUR WILL!

The fourth basic truth about the Cross is that it is an Absolute Devastation of the very root of evil and of all sinfulness, which grows from this root. When Christ therefore drank from the cup that His Father prepared for Him (Lk. 22:42), He did not drink just our sinfulness and corruption and all evil deeds, but by His Father He was directly made SIN (2Cor. 5:21), which means, Christ was made the ROOT OF EVIL! If the Cross would deal only with our sins as deeds, it would not have its value and power, which it has, be­cause the Cross deals with the ROOT OF EVIL, which produces all our sins. Let us see that Satan is an embo­died evil, the Cross changes us from Satanic beings into God’s beings! Is this not a stunning power and value of the Cross as well as an expression of God’s Great Love towards us?

The fifth basic truth about the Cross is that it is, in fact, the only Source of our Life Eternal! When I was writing the book “Life out of Death” it was clear to me that it was the Death of Christ on the Cross out of which the New Life Eternal, as it were, sprang up. Without His Death, Christ would never have been resurrected and would never have received the New Life Eternal, which He now has and can give to us all who come to Him with faith and plea for His Life. Our Life flows from the Cross of Christ as well as from our cross (Mt. 16:24,25) where we are now crucifying not our body, but our old man!

When we thus begin to ponder realistically the facts about the Cross, all of our present thoughts, opini­ons, imagi­nations as well as understanding and relationship with the Cross should radically change as they are un­righteous even foolish and should be exchanged for righteous and wise thoughts, under­standing and beliefs. The Cross took us out of the power of Satan and from his eternal Death and brought us to God, into His Power and into His Life Eternal. Is there anything more priceless and powerful in this world? Nothing!

How the Cross began to work in human beings is possible to see quite clearly already on its first effects. As soon as Jesus began to speak about His death (about Cross), everything began to “crumble”. The Lord prophesied to His disciples that they all will be offended, irritated, wounded, fearful (Mt. 26:31) and will leave Him! This was confirmed when Jesus was taken captive on the Mount of Olives and was led to Caiaphas, all His disciples left Him and ran! (Mt. 26:56) After His resurrection, it was not much better be­cause His Cross had devastated everyone, who was a follower during His life on earth. When some wo­men brought the news about the empty grave and that His body was not there, their words appeared to the dis­ciples as fairytales and they did not believe! (Lk. 24:1-11) Likewise the two on the road to Emmaus were devastated by the events in Jerusalem and they lost all their hope to the degree that the Lord rebuk­ed them saying: “Oh, fools and slow in hearts to believe all what the prophets spoke.” (Lk. 24:1-11) When we look at those 40 days after His resurrection, we find the Lord rebuking them and up­braided them for their unbelief (Mk. 16:11,13,14); some of them even doubted about Him when they saw Him (Mt. 28:17).

The main point of these above noted examples is that all these disciples were walking and living with the Person of Christ 3½ years and had with Him experiences on their own skin. They had about Him all the FACTS beginning with His birth at Bethlehem according to the Scriptures and prophecies, then con­tinuing with His Person, His speech, His miracles, His teaching and finally with His death and resur­rect­ion according to the Scriptures and prophecies. They had all this and, yet, after His Cross and resur­rect­ion, they all are in the deepest despair and in the loss of all hope. The most important fact is that this main point applies also TO US today! Though we did not live at that time and had no living contact with Christ, but we also have today all those FACTS about Him, which they also had, plus the whole New Testament from the Acts all the way to the Book of Revelation, things they did not have. But when the Cross “begins to work”, or something does not come out as we expect, we also may end up in des­pair as well as lose all our hope! Why were they all after the Cross in such a misery though before they had in front of them the living Christ, even the power over devils? (Lk. 10:17). The reason is actually quite sim­ple: because they had Christ in front of them but NOT INSIDE OF THEM! That was the true reason for their despair, loss of hope and their misery that lasted until Pentecost when the Holy Spirit des­cen­­d­ed into their spirits! Then, suddenly, everything changed and the hopeless disciples became persons full of life, faith, zeal, dedication and power. What should we apply to ourselves from these facts? What should we understand, what should we do when we end up in the same situation as they had?

Though you have the Holy Spirit inside of you (in your spirit) and not only in front of you or around you yet my most important question is: “Do you have with the Holy Spirit any living contact?” Do you know Him? Do you perceive Him? Are you walking according to His guidance? Really? I am not asking you whe­ther you pray or not, whether you have a sufficient faith or not, whether you have desires, drive or quest to change something in your life, to refine it, improve it or not. I am asking you whether you are aware of the Holy Spirit, Who dwells in you and Who desires not only to bring you to every truth, but also to strengthen your inner man so he would be able to do and to be what he was called to do and to be by Christ? (Eph. 3:16) If you do not have with Him any living contact, then there is another question: Why not? The answer is rather simple: You do not know the powers, which stand in your way and which hold you from any contact with the Holy Spirit, powers, which you are unwilling to confront and overcome! These powers are a part of your character, they form your “old man, your flesh”, thus you are unwilling to confront and overcome the enemy of God in your own self! The fact of overcoming your own self is however vitally important because only the Overcomer will be judged worthy of the Salva­tion (Rev. 3:5 + 21:7,8). Hence, these above paragraphs do not contain just interesting notes and facts, but they do decide whether we will reach our Eternal Life or not! Accord­ing to the Word of God, overcoming is our part of Salvation, the Lord will not do it for us; in fact, He cannot do it for us, He does not have our will, we have it, we must overcome with OUR WILL! Where do Christians stand in this Light?

This important fact can also be expressed from a different Word of God so it would really be clear as the Sun. Our hope for Life Eternal is, in fact, our hope for the Glory because our Glory without the Life Eter­­nal cannot exist. If we understand this simple fact, then we should also understand the mystery that was kept secret from the previous ages and generations, but now it is revealed to His saints. The mystery is this: “Christ IN YOU, the hope of Glory” (Col. 1:26-28). What does this mean? It means that “Christ in the Bible IS NOT your hope for Glory and Life Eternal”! Christ IN YOU IS your hope for Glory and Life Eternal! Considering this reality, we must repeat that John 5:40 is the most im­port­ant Word of God for Christians in the whole Bible, which also explains ALL our problems, in­abilities, weak­ness­es, con­flicts and spiritual death during our whole earthly life! Why is it so? Be­cause when I am receiv­ing the Life of Christ, then I am receiving Christ INTO MYSELF! When I am not coming to Him then I am not receiving His Life and “Christ IN ME, the hope of Glory” cannot be the reality! True? Finally, the Spirit of God UPON man and the Spirit of God IN man represent two different Testaments. In the Old Testament, the Spirit of God was coming UPON man, not INTO him, while in the New Testa­ment, the Spirit of God came INTO man and not ON him – and this is also the basic difference between these two Testaments.

In addition and most importantly, Christ IN YOU does not mean in YOUR SPIRIT where He is after your Redemption. He must come into and live in YOUR SOUL otherwise He cannot save your soul being absent from it! This also means that Christ could dwell in your spirit all your earthly life while the devil can live in and rule your soul all your earthly life! Hence, at some point of your earthly life, instead of you overcoming the devil, he will again overcome you and cause you to “fall away” so that it will be im­possible for you to be re­newed again unto repentance, which means, to be redeemed again! (Heb. 6:4-6// 2Pet. 2:20-22// Rev. 3:5 + 21:7,8). This is also called the “loss of salvation”! Where do we and the Church stand in this Light? Is anybody preaching this, explaining this, warning the believers about this great danger? NOBODY! (Rev. 3:14-22)

The Lord desires to give us His Light also about one basic difference regarding mainly the servants of God. Let us return for a moment to His Disciples and to the others called by Him. The Lord established 12 disciples to be with Him and whom He could send out to preach (Mk. 3:14). Then the Lord called other 70 and sent them two by two into every place, where He Himself wanted to come. He gave them power to heal and over every power of the enemy and of every devil so nothing evil would happen to them (Lk. 10: 1,9,19). These 70 returned with joy saying: Lord, even devils are subjected to us through Your Name (Lk. 10:17). But after the Cross of Christ, the same people were totally devastated! You may ask: Is this possi­ble? Well, if you know your own heart, then it is possible. But what does this mean? Well, we can work for the Lord and do many wonderful deeds, even cast out devils and heal the sick, and then be re­jected by the Lord! (Mt. 7:22,23). That is to say, at the end of our ministry we may collapse, break down and go to pieces. The point is that these 12, and also the 70, went out being authorized by a delegated authority, which they carried out successfully. And then after the Cross, the same people are found with their faith shattered, destroyed, without hope, without future, devastated. What happened?

The first fact is that all this happened before Pentecost, before the Holy Spirit was sent into believers, Therefore, Christ was NOT IN THEM, nor was His Authority in them, it was only bestowed to them, delegated to them! Hence, all events just before and after the Cross they had to experience and over­come by their own powers and that caused their misery.

The second fact is that even the born-again Christians, which had the Holy Spirit in them and similarly performed wonderful deeds, will not be allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven because they did not do the Will of their Heavenly Father (Rom. 8:29). These were called “workers of iniquity” whose house will fall and its fall will be great (Mt. 7:21-27). This also means that we can perform miracles through gifts of the Spirit or through delegated authority – and be spiritually dead!

The third fact is given to us in the Book of the Acts where the situation is enlightened with a new factor which is: Christ, Who delegated His Authority to them, is now dwelling INSIDE of man and His Autho­r­i­ty Itself. The deeds performed in the Book of Acts are also wonderful deeds overcoming all the powers of evil and darkness. But these are not only the deeds of His people FOR the Lord, but these are deeds of the Lord Himself THROUGH His people! This then confirms the same important fact, that “Christ IN you” is the indispensable necessity for our earthly life as well as for our work and successes.

The Conclusion is that unless Christ is IN you, there is no hope for you neither as Christian individuals nor as Christian groups nor as churches nor as congregations nor even for Christianity itself! Everything else may be there, even abundantly, like doctrines, faith, sincerity, honesty, uprightness, dedication, zeal, diligence, desires, prayers even hope, but if Christ is not in our soul, it ends with misery and tragedy!

The fourth and last fact is that it is not sufficient that Christ be IN you in your SPIRIT ONLY as you received the Gift of His Spirit after your water baptism (Acts 2:38), because in your spirit, HE may re­main inactive, passive, and dormant! He must be IN you in your SOUL and there to keep changing you, which means, saving you and enabling you to do His Will (see also page 13).

Let us now devote some time to our testimonies and fellowships. It is written: But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me…” (Acts 1:8a). The principle of a testimony is always positive, never negative, because the true witness always touches the Lord Jesus Christ either directly or His work in us or in someone else. Besides, such a positive wit­ness is always li­ving and powerful and it is given not only for the Glory of the Lord, but also for the strengthening of those who are receiving it. The lives of many Christians are as it were bound into knots because they do not witness about anything, they are not witnesses, they do not verify any facts, they do not allow their light to shine and enlighten also others, their lives are negative. They always think what will other people say or think about the things, what will be the reactions from others. What poor specimens such believers truly are before the Lord? And not only those nega­tive ones since many could also be neutral, they do not care what is happening and what the Lord has in it, what benefit or what shame. Therefore, the Spirit of God does not move in such lives though it is in contradiction with His Character since He is always moving. In other words, such believers are limiting the Lord and do not allow Him free movements and work. As soon as we become positive we will find out that the Holy Spi­rit, Who is always positive, is with us and we will start facing surprises. Acts 10:19 and its conti­nuation, or 13:2 and its continuation are examples. What awesome and unimaginable continuations followed. Imagine, that neither Peter nor Barnabas nor Saul (the future apostle Paul) would have moved, but would be sit­ting in the corner speculating whether they should move? If that would have happened, then today even we would not be present here! True? We are here because of the testimonies of the servants of God devoted to His Spirit and to His Will and work.

Regarding fellowships, these are just as important as testimonies. As testimonies so also fellowships should always be positive and active. If there exist anything against which hell stands with all its power, then it is the fellowship of God’s people with the Holy Spirit! The powers of evil will always try to de­stroy such fellowships by any means. Why? Such fellowships have power and for those powers of evil and darkness they represent their final destruction. That’s why the fellowship with the Holy Spirit can never be neutral, passive, or “fruitless, barren”. Therefore, we ourselves must also endeavor to be posi­tive so that our fellowships would reach this objective, purpose, and goal. Let just a small crack, some rift or some con­flict happen in the fellowship and we will be able to see what a chaos, disaster or devas­tation could happen and what an effort would have to be necessary to renew the fellowship, not any phy­sical renewal, but a spiritual renewal (Peter & Stefania Toller).  

I believe that everyone present here has in himself the Holy Spirit, whether you sense Him or not at all or just to a certain degree. In any case, however, you should know, see and understand that if you are “out-of-joint” as touching some other member of this Body of Christ into which you belong, it is similar as to being “out-of-joint” in your own physical body. There is pain, your mobility is limited, you need crutch­es or a cane or a wheelchair in order to move. True? In the same way the Holy Spirit causes a spi­rit­ual pain in the spiritual Body where the “out-of-joint” happened. We know what happens in our body if such an injury is left long time without a treatment. The longer you leave it as it is, the harder it will be to correct it and heal it. The same is true in the spiritual body. If you leave it injured, it will become far harder and more complicated to correct it and heal it. The inflammation is still there and pain conti­nues. By this “inflammation and pain”, the Holy Spirit is giving us a positive testimony against this thing. But if you continue like that too long, the Holy Spirit will leave you in it as it is not His Character to sit next to you idly and look at you how you are sitting there idly. He moves forward and then a se­ri­ous situation may happen to us. The Spirit of God says: “Let us not give up, let us not leave our fellow­ships…” (Heb. 10:25) into which the Lord brought us. We may ask, why?

Well, not because we must be meeting or because it is compulsory to take part in fellowships, but these fellowships are our Life, this is the way of the Holy Spirit. If anyone disconnects himself and begins to live his separate, independent, free type of life, he dishonors, defiles, rapes, offends, breaches or violates the very mechanism, activity, process, system, movement, intention and purpose of the Spirit of God! There exists a freedom which is not the freedom of the Spirit of God! If the Spirit is passive, does not do anything, does not move, if there are clear signs, that the Spirit does not work, that is an abnormal situ­a­tion and that means that somewhere there is something very wrong. If He stopped it means that He waits for something from us because it is not His Character to stand and do nothing, this is a character of a lazy man. This is always the time to look at ourselves and find out what is between us and the Holy Spirit. As soon as we make a step and the Spirit will take the same step, we know that we continue in the right direction. And if we do not know what step to take, He will show us. Do we understand also this paragraph? Do we live in accordance with it?

Let us now look at the physical proof that only the Cross opened to us the way to Life Eternal, that is, to the Life of God! Though that proof should be sufficiently known, yet very few can see, understand or even realize the spiritual depth of this proof. Of course, I am speaking here about the curtain, which se­pa­rated the Holy Place from the Holiest of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was located, which Ark represented Jesus Christ Personally. And if someone touched It with just one finger of his flesh, that is, with his natural creation, he died, God smote him with an instantaneous death (2Sam. 6:6,7// Heb. chpt. 9 & 10). Only the Chief Priest could enter the Holiest of Holies once a year, in holy vestment made of linen just for this purpose, and he had to perform ceremonies with incense and the blood of animals according to the instructions, which God gave to Moses. If anyone else would have entered this Holiest of Holies be­hind the curtain, he would have been smitten with an instantaneous death. If the Chief Priest, which at that time was Aaron, would not have kept all the instructions for those ceremonies given to Moses by God, he also would have died as his two sons also died when they sacrificed before the Lord without His permission (Lev. 16:1-34). Even though these ceremonies were conducted in the glory and for the glory of God, yet, no one from the people of Israel was transformed in his life or character, their hearts remained closed and their beings unchanged.

All these ceremonies of the Old Testament given to Moses by God were out­wardly and thus they disappeared by the death and resurrection of Christ. The ministry of the New Tes­ta­ment is the result of the inner revelation and transformation of the human being and thus it is not the re­sult of outward ceremonies, which do not change any human being. This difference is similar to the one between a letter and the Spirit – the letter kills, but the Spirit gives Life.

Let us see now how the Cross opened our way to Life. Christ died on the Cross first spiritually (Mt. 27:46) but in the moment when He died also physically, God tore the curtain separating the Holy Place from the Holiest of Holies where there was the Ark of the Covenant! BY THIS ACT God opened our way to Life, which Life was represented by that Ark. Since that time, everyone who believed had a free access to the Ark on the basis of the Blood of Jesus – the Lamb of God, and he did not have to worry that he will die! (Heb. 10:19,20) That curtain represented in her existence human life and ministry, which were in bondage and in death. The removal of that curtain represents human life and ministry in freedom, power and life. When a believer comes to the Presence of the Lord by faith, he does not need any curtain. How­ever, whenever we remain in ourselves, in our natural character, we remain behind the curtain and dead, which is, as it were, laid on us because our flesh, being spiritually dead, has no access to the Lord. He does not hear its prayers, intercessions, petitions; He ignores its deeds and does not even touch it, except when He is destroying it!

There are many believers who live and work under the weight of the curtain because they look at them­selves and even live in themselves. But whenever they turn away from themselves and to the Lord with faith and their heart based on Who He is, the curtain is removed, the limitations, bond­age and death are removed and the light of the Glory of the Lord Jesus has a free way. The removal of the curtain also means that Christ, becoming a natural man (but sinless) and then died on the Cross, God “tore and re­moved” the curtain, which means, it is not any more the question what am I in myself, but WHAT HE IS… and I in Him! For every one of us, this is a beginning of a victorious life because we cannot bring our human limitations to the Presence of God. That is impossible! In our humanity, we can­’t even help anyone, can’t give advice, show the right direction, give something living, or find some living help in some library. We must have the Life of Christ in our own heart with all the necessary know­ledge of Him in order to be able to help anyone who seeks help. And not only to anyone but also anywhere since we will be able to help even in the middle of wilderness where there is no help for hund­reds of miles.

I really do not know whether we can imagine those Pharisees and Priests when they came into the Tem­ple and the curtain was torn and through a big hole they could suddenly see the Ark of the Covenant! It is quite possible that they trembled in their shoes whether they will survive this sight and not fall down dead even though they were not touching the Ark with their fingers! Nor can we imagine their shock when they saw that no man could tear such a curtain with his own hands and on top of that to tear it from top to bottom! It is absolutely natural that they had no clue what to do in such a shocking situation. What we should understand, however, is the fact that they decided to sew up that curtain together again or to change it for a new one (I do not know) and thus to close the way to the Life which God opened and return again to Death, which for them was totally natural.

Of course, when they did not believe in their own Messiah but let Him be crucified, then they could not believe even in the fact that the way to the Ark was suddenly open. Though we most probably cannot even imagine such things, yet, we should see and believe that, in principle, this is exactly what the whole multitudes of Christians are doing today in their “Christian life”. They are closing the way the to Life of Christ which God their Father opened for them and they remain in Death, which for them is altogether natural and they are used to it. Hence, today it is really a rare occurrence among Christians to find such, who truly know Christ quite independently from the religious systems and who thus do not “live behind the curtain”. It is also unusual to find Christians, wherever they may be on this earth, who know the Lord sufficiently well, walk with Him in a sufficient power of His Spirit and who thus may be regarded as His representatives and servants on this earth. Unfortunately, the Christians of today are rather revel­ing in outer ceremonies and rituals as well as in the letter of the Scripture, but the Life of Christ they do not want. That’s why they so not even want to come to Him that they might have His Life (Jn. 5:40).

 

PART  3b – THE FIRE AND ITS JUDGMENTS

Of course, the fire we will be talking about is symbolic, it symbolizes something, represents something and it has an important role in Christianity. First, we will begin with the Word of God which is preached very rarely, if at all, because it is also very little understood, especially some words of it, where the Lord says: “I am come to send fire on the earth;” (Lk. 12:49a). And the Lord continues: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Mt. 10:34-39). I truly do not know whether the words like “fire” or “sword” are properly understood by believers and what depth of under­­­standing they have for such expressions. Surely they are not sufficiently “pleasant” to be preached and explained very often. Because here the Lord looks into the future, what will be happening on earth since the time He declared these words until the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, which means, roughly 2,000 years. Hence, today we should see that “fire” and that “sword” rather clearly and, yet, we may not understand their spiritual meaning because we see them physically and not spiritually. The Lord desires here to show us the following.

In all the Scripture “fire” symbolizes “court-tribunal” and “sword” symbolizes “judgment-sepa­ra­tion”. But this is not all, since “fire” may be the fire that truly burns to ashes (Dan. 3:22-27), it may also be the fire that does not burn to ashes (Ex. 3:2,3// Mt. 13:42,50// Lk. 16:24// Rev. 14:10// Rev. 20:10,15), it also may be the fire that is not a fire at all, but symbolizes court-tribunal (1Cor. 3:13,15). When we here speak about court-tribunal, we must realize that here we do not deal with a final judgment, damnation or condemnation of an individual. A court always starts with a verification of things, matters, the state of affaires, examina­tion or screening of facts, finding out what is what, what is truth and what is lie, etc. Thus “fire” sym­bol­izes court-tribunal because fire also verifies, tests, finds out the state of things, what is what, what burns and what does not burn. This is the early effect of fire and also the early effect of a court, of its assess­ment and of the very process of the court of law. Then comes the process of discrimination, dis­cern­ment and of separation of various things and acts; hence, as fire separates what may burn from what may not burn and under what circumstances, so the court-tribunal separates what belongs to what cate­go­ry, what has evidence and what does not have it. Finally, the court assigns, determines, attributes or denounces things, evidences and facts into certain categories before the final verdict is reached and pro­nounced. The same with fire, it tests what it can burn to ashes, which is the final result of fire. For example, a piece of wood may burn to ashes, thus it disappears from its existence (wood, by the way, symbolizes human flesh-sinfulness; man in the Scripture is represented by trees), but precious metals or precious stones can never burn to ashes, they are eternal. This is a brief discourse about a spiritual fire and court-tribunal.

Concerning the “sword” and the separation, that can be imagined rather clearly especially in the phy­sic­al sense. In the spiritual sense it can be imagined when we realize that “sword” symbolizes the “Word of God”, which is sharper than a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12). This is also similar with the symbolism where it is written that mouth is made like unto a “sharp sword” or that a “sharp sword” comes out of the Lord’s mouth (Is. 49:2// Rev. 1:16 + 19:15). In every such case we deal with the Word of God and that Word separates not only pagans from believers, but believers from be­liev­ers as well, and that not only regarding various denominations or house churches, but also various members of families and homes. So here the sword (and also fire) works in the area of human relationships and all such separation work is being done essentially on the spiritual basis.

A typical example of such a spiritual separation are the Levites whom the Lord separated from the other Israelites when Moses descended from the mountain and saw Israel dancing around a golden calf. Only the Levites joined Moses because their hearts were after the Lord and not after satisfying their own lusts. A sword went into the area of human relationships discerning and separating where were their hearts, test­­ing their hearts and intents, thoughts and purposes and putting everyone into the category into which he or she belonged. The same principle may be seen in Matthew 10:35-40 and Luke 12:51-53 where we deal with family relationships, where sword, fire and judgment do the same work and where the separa­tions of persons are done by the Holy Spirit based on the relationships and intentions of their hearts. A similar case is happening to Israel in the wilderness where the Spirit of the Lord was testing their hearts, which were not after the Lord, but they lusted after Egypt; therefore, that whole generation never enter­ed the Promised Land.

In a certain sense, the Spirit of God is always the reason for dividing, separating and that from the very beginning of this world. He divided light from darkness (Gen. 1:1-4), later He divided waters which were under the firmament from those that were above the firmament (Gen. 1:7), then He divided the dry land from the waters (Gen. 1:10), etc. The main task of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is the division of light from darkness, that is, the truth from lies, because these two realms can never exist together. Every one who has the Spirit in himself and He guides him is sensitive not only to darkness (lies), but also to the light (truth). Wherever the spiritual believer finds the true light – truth – he opens himself to it wide. Why? Because this light is not a cold light, but it is the light of fire, it is living light, it has energy in itself. You­ may know the imitation fire, or so called, artificial fireplace; that is a cold light, which can be switched on and off, it is not a warm light of a burning wood, which has energy in itself. We may also say that the artificial cold light is a fake light, and though we may be fascinated with it, it does not give us any heat or warmth, any energy. Similarly, an imitated truth may exist, which is sometimes called “half-truth” or also a cunning fraud where the lie cannot be seen at first glimpse.

This is the task of the Holy Spirit in us and these are the signs of His work, to judge, assess what is what, what belongs to what category, to divide light from darkness, always and everywhere. You may be ex­periencing these differences also in your own family, in own home and that is why there may not exist any truthful, warm fellowship because this is how the Holy Spirit divided it and nothing can be done against it. You cannot avoid it, go over it or to bridge it somehow. It may even be painful, but it is the sign that the Holy Spirit has done something. The Lord desires that believers should be more sensitive toward these different realms, categories, facts, which are divided by the Spirit of God. This is also a sign of our spiritual growth in the light of the Spirit so we could be more sensitive to what belongs where or does not belong there and would not fight against it by our intellectual or emotional powers when we do not like something (S+P). We must see and recognize that the Life of the Spirit of God is the Life of spiritual dividing, judging, assessing and discerning the things, which are different.

When we return to the fire we will find out that the work of every man shall be tested and proved by fire of what kind that work was, in what spirit it was done. If the work of anyone being so tested shall burn, he will suffer a loss, yet, he himself shall be saved even though by the fire (1Cor. 3:13-15). Here we talk about a symbolic fire because it is represented by a judgment. Of course, here Paul talks to Christians and he warns them that there exists one realm or category of the work, which will survive the fire, and the­re is another realm or category of the work, which shall burn and only ashes and smoke will remain. This will be the proof that all that work was for nothing, nothing will remain, no fruit. Because only that, which was done by or through the Holy Spirit and true faith will remain, it shall survive the test of fire and shall be found “unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” (1Pet. 1:7b). There may exist the whole mountain of activities and energy and works which are done by Christians  “for Christ”, though only in their intention, which falls into this category, but it is destined into this fire to be burned and thus the workers are left with absolutely nothing for all their work and efforts and misery.

This paragraph above seems to be quite innocent especially for the believers which have done nothing in their lives “for Christ” as they may believe that they lost nothing. But we are not speaking here only about work and remuneration; we are also speaking about human destinies and lives. Hence, the above pa­ragraph is very important reaching far beyond our imaginations and judgments and has far reach­ing consequences. Before I mention possible concrete consequences for the Church and its leaders, I must, at least in part, describe the situation with Apostle Paul and the Judaizers the picture of which is quite clearly given in the Book of Acts. In that picture we see Judaizers who were truly and sin­cerely con­vinc­ed in themselves that they were doing a very desirable work appreciated even by God Himself (!) when they stood in the way of Apostle Paul at every step of his mission and preaching where he was literally “destroying Judaism” and everything what for Israel was sacred. They were going from country to coun­try and they accompanied him in his long missionary trips what must have cost them not only a lot of time, but also a lot of money. On the other hand, and maybe we do not realize this at all, that between them and Saul of Tarsus (who later became Apostle Paul) there is almost no difference! This is precisely what Saul of Tarsus was doing himself… he was one of the Judaizers! Paul himself testifies and admits it saying: “I verily thought within myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth.” (Acts 26:9) This is a confession of a sincere man, who thought and was convinced, that he had to do something. It was the question of his conscious conviction that that was what he had to do, that it was right, that he was called upon to do that! Well, is this not also a certain controversy and a spiritual mystery?

Even though we should believe these facts, but I am asking the question: how is it at all possible for any­one to be so absolutely and completely honest, and at the same time just as absolutely and completely mistaken and de­ceived? Well, it is clear from the Scripture that the Judaizers were exactly the same! HOWEVER… their work did not last long just as the work of Saul of Tarsus did not last long because in his case the Spirit of God intervened. But this picture shows us the highest and supreme importance of the basis of this whole thing, which is:  it is NOT sufficient to be honest, or enthusiastic, passionate, or acting on the basis of our conscious conviction (!) – but we absolutely need to be guided by the Spirit of God! THIS IS that important thing and it is the only thing what will endure, survive, outlast and go through the fire! After all, the Judaizers were not against Christianity as such, they only wanted a Jewish Christianity; Christianity conformed to the Jewish pattern, similarly as it was always wanted and pract­ic­ed by Galatians as well as modern, so called, “Messianic Jews”! But Apostle Paul, in his letter to Galati­­ans clearly showed that it was not the work or the object of the Spirit of God! Therefore, all the hard work and misery of Judaizers and Galatians and other believers (7th Day Adventists, etc.), who in their humanistic honesty and conviction thus worked “for Christ”, burned or in the future will burn to ashes and nothing will remain. This is applicable also to those pastors and preachers, who also work hard in congregations and behind pulpits in their honesty and humanistic convictions, that they do the right thing and are called upon to do just that. Although to believe that they do this through the Spirit of God is comfortable, but they have no proofs to show for it! Why do they not have them? Because they have no fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22,23), neither any testimony of the Spirit! You see, fire works also in the realm of Christian testi­monies. Their words and their deeds are grossly different! Many of them are able to preach the Word of God even in a flowery style or in enthusiasm, but what they preach they do not live themselves, that is to say, they are thrashing empty straw!

Those that refuse the Light of the Spirit of God, that remain in the fight against the Holy Spirit, are being brought to condemnation and repudiation, that is to say, they are brought to the category into which they belong – into damnation. On the other hand, those that believe and receive the Light are by the same Spirit of God brought into freedom. They will pass through that testing fire and will continue to the Life Eternal. In other words, the Holy Spirit never leaves the things as they were. The Presence of the Holy Spirit always brings with things and persons some form of crisis and then comes His decision, His ver­dict. Whenever the Holy Spirit is present and speaks to us and we sense His words, we cannot remain the same as we were before since something has happened and we are now either more stiffened or more softened, mell­ow­ed; either we are more accursed or we are more blessed, more saved. It is so because in the Presence of the Holy Spirit the fire is always­ doing the work of judgment. This is what the Lord Jesus meant by saying “I am come to send fire on the earth” (Lk. 12:49). What will the fire do? It will judge, it will sepa­rate, it will establish things and people and their destinies. This also means that when we are governed, guided and filled by the Holy Spirit then the result or consequence of our presence and our passing this way will also be that we will leave behind ourselves things and people in a different state than they were before. The verdicts of eternity will be reviewed and maybe even reached simply by the fact that we pass­­­ed by here. And this is of course the purpose of the spiritual ministry. And the consequence is either one thing or the other thing because the things will simply not remain the same as they were before. The ministry and the task of the Holy Spirit must be like these, they must produce something new, and they must leave behind them a difference.

The conclusion of this subject is that when we are governed by the Holy Spirit, we all shall belong to one category; there will not be many categories in which we will be living, in fact, there will not be even two – there will be only one. The Holy Spirit is seeking to achieve and secure only one category of peo­ple and these are those completely governed and guided by Him Himself. If anyone must say: “I ba­sical­ly disagree with you about something (anything)” then one of us is not in the Spirit of God. Then it is on us to find where the mistake is because the Spirit does not have two different minds. Hen­ce, to be tru­ly in the Spirit means to be of one category, one mind. That is why Apostle Paul wrote so much about the unity of mind, heart and will, where our spirit under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is ad­­vising us: “that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (1Cor. 1:10). Is this possible? Absolutely, otherwise Paul would not have written it as he did. The Spirit of God has no problems with us; we have problems with the Spirit of God, because many believers are not even aware that He is living in them. How then can they follow Him or allow themselves to be guided by Him into all truth? And how can He show them the future things? (Jn. 16:13-14) After all, I believe that the Holy Spirit always makes effort to get into our conscience somehow (for example even by causing us to suddenly feel hard, or we know that we should not do something or go somewhere, etc.). But if we have a “skin of a hippo” then even this attempt would not be sufficient or successful.

 

PART  4  –  WHAT IS MAN?

We all are men, but we do not know what is man, so we do not know what we are! True? The first man – Adam – was created by God when He formed his body out of the dust of the earth; then God breathed into his nostrils breath of life and he became a living soul (Gen. 2:7). Since that time, we have been using our nostrils for breathing and thus we keep our natural life. But the earth represents Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who became flesh! (Jn. 1:1,14) This is an important fact which only few peoples are aware of. When God said: “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place (seas) and let the dry land appear…” (Gen. 1:9,10), this also means that the dry land was needed to enable and support the conditions for every life, which God created on the earth. Man and all animals and plants on earth, whichever exist, may live and also to multiply only on the earth and not in the seas. Another fact is that the seas represent the sinful mankind, and when a dry land rises up from the seas, it spiritually means that from among the sinful mankind there as it were “emerged” a Man, Who is the source of life for peoples and animals and plants, namely physical life, and for the men also spiritual life.

We mentioned man and his constitution during our fellowship in 2015 and that mainly in Part 2a (Christ and man) and Part 2b (Satan and man). We have also mentioned in detail man, his Redemption and the process of his Salvation. Today we will mention some basic facts chiefly about the human soul and spi­rit since these we do not understand as we understand our body. God is a Spirit (Jn. 4:24) and we are His children, His offspring (Acts 17:28,29) and thus He is the Father of our spirits (Heb. 12:9). God is not a soul, therefore, He cannot be the Father of our souls, nor is He a body, therefore, He cannot be the Father of our bodies. Here also applies the Word of God in John 3:6. Hence man, born-again believer, is the off­spring of God only in his spirit. And thus it is only our spirit where we are able to know God our Father and the things, which He is giving to us (1Cor. 2:9-12) because God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. Because it is only our spirit, which is able to know the Spirit, therefore, the disciples of Christ did not know Him in truth until the Father had revealed this fact for the first time to Peter. From this it also follows that it is only our spirit, which is able to receive revelations from the Spirit of God (Rev. 1:10). After all, it is only our spirit, which is able to worship our God the Father and not our soul! (Jn. 4:23,24// Phil. 3:3) It also follows from these facts that our spirit has to be kept in a living unity with God so it would never contravene the laws of this Divine unity by crossing into our soul being thus influenced by it or by receiving advices or instructions from our mind, our lusts or by our will. This fact is the basis for the temptations of Our Lord and also of the first Adam in the Garden of Eden. In the case of Adam, he had not consulted his spirit, but was deciding on the basis of the lusts of his soul, therefore, death en­ter­ed into his spirit and soul. This meant the interruption of the unity of his spirit with God where God was the source of his Life. But this does not mean that Adam did not have his spirit any longer, but the domi­nant position of his spirit was subdued to his soul, which sinned and thereby it lost its life from the spirit. Today this is also our state where the governing role in our life is performed by our soul, which is sinful, and our spirit is seldom noticed by anyone. But when we do not know our spirit or we are not even aware of it, then we cannot even worship Our Father in Heaven.

Now we must return to Adam and to his temptation because in understanding his situation and fall, we will be able to know more our own selves and our situation in this system of this world and Christianity. Let us hope that we will be able to see the depth, width and height of this problem of human soul and spirit. The absolute aim of the temptation of Adam was that he should have everything in his own self, that he would thus become self-governing, self-owned, self-sufficient and independent, self-existent creature! Satan knew that to attack Adam’s spirit would have been futile and useless because his spirit was connected to God’s Spirit and thus God would have dealt with the temptations of Satan. Hence, he attacked Adam’s soul, the organ of his self-conscience, also his logical judgments, reasoning, desires and his will. In such a case, God was as it were “disconnected from action” and Adam was deciding inde­pendently. Thus Satan achieved his place in Adam’s soul and became the “god of this world”. The spirit of man ceased to be a living link between the man and God. His fellowship with God, which is always spiritual, was destroyed and the spirit became subdued to the soul! Hence, regarding man, he died to God and his soul began to dominate his spirit! Man became “soulish – carnal”, in other words, he became a different kind of man than how he was created by God. That’s why this man, in the natural state of his earthly life, became totally unacceptable to God.

Man doesn’t have to be highly educated in order to see and understand how the system that today directs this world is psychological, where everything is based on the desires, emotions, feelings, reasoning, ar­gu­mentations, choices and decisions of the will of man where all these things are activities of his soul! In one direction we have sorrow, fear, regret, pride, arrogance, curiosity, admiration, shame, surprise, joy, love, hatred, grief, remorse, excitement, etc. In another direction we have imagination, worry, phan­t­­asy, doubts, superstition, analysis, reasoning, investigation, research, etc. In the third direction we have desires for ownership, knowledge, power, influence, position, commendation, socializing, freedom, etc. And in yet another direction we have dependability, trustworthiness, courage, in­de­pendence, endurance, impulse, suggestion, caprice, moodiness, decisions or indecisions, stubbornness, obstinacy, etc. (47) Not everything above mentioned must be bad or evil in itself, but all the above are forms of soulish life of man and they prove that we live in the world, which is a completely soulish world! But let us now try to realize how much of the above has a permanent place in the Christian life and ministry begin­ning with the basic evangelism and ending in all the realms of Christian activities. Are we able to ima­gine it? Are we also able to imagine that the spiritual value of such Christian activities containing such soulish mani­festations is in its final phase equal to ZERO? THIS IS THE FRUIT of Adam’s fall!

Perhaps, many believers could now believe that the SOUL OF MAN is a dangerous thing, when not governed by the Holy Spirit, and is able to do unbelievable things. It can deceive us, mislead us, set up traps for us, form in us peculiar habits, lazi­ness, stubbornness, unwillingness; it can plan intrigues, machinations and keep at its disposal very many other tricks. Hence, man is now corrupted, messed up deformed creature unable to accomplish or even understand God’s original purposes, destiny and goals. Therefore, for an unrenewed man, his life is, in fact, a farce, parody, imitation and also corruption because in his natural state he can never achieve his intended goal (Rom. 8:19-23). Even if we build and educate our soul through knowledge, art and similar ways, we do not do anything bad, but if we do not do this also in our spirit, then the work of our soul will go to waste.

Once we came this far, we might as well ask the Lord why He allowed Adam and Eve to fall knowing be­forehand that they will fall and that the fruit of their fall will be this kind of tragedy? Well, the Lord has showed me also here something, which is not well known in the Church since it is never preached, explained not even discussed. That quite deep spiritual fact is this: not even the purity of man’s spirit or sinlessness of man’s soul are sufficient to be accepted by God and that such a man could live together with God and serve Him through Eternity! Why? Even such a sinless and pure man could be very naïve and thus foolish, irresponsible, untrustworthy, unwilling, undependable, with insufficient knowledge, wisdom, faith, love and other virtues, which God requires from the man, who is to serve Him and be His companion in Eternity.

Hence, when God created Adam and breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul and was sinless and pure in soul and spirit, yet, God saw in him (and in Eve) those deficiencies and in­suf­fi­ciencies and thus He had to “do something” in order to perfect those two for Himself. For that purpose, He needed Satan and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the whole plan of Salvation with the Tree of Life! But that Salvation contains in itself a condition that man will be willing to reject the tree of the knowledge with its fruit and overcome himself with the help of God and return to the Tree of Life in order to start eating its fruit! And if man will not be willing and will not overcome him­self, then his name will be blotted out from the Book of Life by Christ, Who is represented by the Tree of Life. Such a man will never get access to the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22-24// Rev. 3:5,6), but he will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second and eternal Death! (Rev. 20:15+21:7,8) The above condition for man that in addition to his believing in the Saviour and being baptized, he must overcome himself is clearly stated in the New Testament (ex. Rev. 3:5,6+21:7,8).

Further important words regarding the spirit and soul of man are these. The spirit of the man was not created as was his body, but it was formed in man (Zech. 12:1). The soul of man arose between his body and spirit, which are two parts of man with absolutely contradictory nature and characteris­tics and they have nothing in common! His body belongs wholly to the physical world and spirit belongs wholly to the spiritual world. Hence, in the first Adam, his soul was as it were a “connecting bridge and termi­nal station” of the body and spirit. We may also say that it was a binding agent, a nexus bet­ween the lower and higher nature of man where the spirit was joined with the body in that it gave the soul its life in the blood of the body. How­­ever, in the last Adam, that is, in Christ, it is His spirit, which is the “ter­mi­nal station” and the governing factor and that before and also after His resurrection (1Cor. 15:45).

It is possible to separate the spirit and soul (Heb. 4:12) without the danger that one of them would perish or lose his existence. To each of them is entrusted its own responsibility, a set of capabilities, compet­en­cies as well as their destinies, which could be different because the spirit returns to God Who gave it (Eccl. 12:7), but the soul may end up in a different place. Hence, even at the physical death, man should commit his spirit into the hands of God as it was done also by the Lord Jesus (Ps. 31:5// Lk. 23:46). Such a separa­tion, however, is not possible between the body and soul, which takes place only at the physical death. We can find our spirit much deeper in our being than our soul. It is far easier to reach our soul through our body than to reach our spirit through our soul. Much piercing, braking and splitting of the soul is needed in order to reach our spirit and be able to deal with it. While the physical senses are a comparati­vely easy way to the soul, it requires the great power of the Spirit of God to reach our spirit. After all, it is clear from the Word of God in Heb. 4:12 that the difference between the soul and spirit can be mani­fested or uncovered only when the Word of God is penetrated into our being by the power and energy of the Spirit of God.

Whenever the Spirit of God is leading us to such a task, the believer must find out that his soul was poi­soned by selfishness or by desire to direct his own life and thus it was connected to the powers of evil and dark­ness, which are the enemies of God. Hence, the spiritual believers will eventually find out after some time that their chief enemy is their own soul and that God finds His chief enemy in the soul of man! Therefore, when our soul surrenders to the body, all is lost! When it surrenders to the spirit, all is well. So, Adam became a living soul having his body and spirit, which was governed by the Spirit of God. By pushing through his own self on the side of the body and not on the side of the spirit, he be­ca­me a sinful soul. And that is what it is up till now, not only what is in him, but what HE IS in himself! This also means that he must be saved from himself – from the being, which was created from the dust of the earth, and into which God breathed the breath of life and it became a living soul. Because even the “life of his soul” was contaminated by Satan and we will lose that life, therefore, we have to substitute it by the Life of Christ (Mt. 16:25).

Every man who was born to this world may live as he pleases, he has from God a free will, hence, he can live as an individual creature not carrying about anybody, if he so decides, but live individually. He does not have to associate himself with anybody, be a member of any organization, association or any church. On the other hand, he may be a member of organizations, associations or of any church of his choice, he may believe what he wants, go wherever he wants, do whatever he wants, decide however he wants whether it would be wise or stupid. Let us now see how God looks at us, how He understands us believers. Maybe we will be shocked, maybe it has never come to our mind in our life, but if we talk about man and want to know what the man is, then even this topic falls into this question quite perfectly. God wants that we, Christians, would begin to see ourselves not as multitudes of little people, but as One Man! From the very beginning, the thought of God was – One Heavenly Man – not multitudes of small peoples. Why? Because on the Throne of God, there is also just One Heavenly Man – and it is the Son of Man – Jesus Christ. On the Throne is not seated the Son of God, but the Son of MAN. And that Man has a head and a body – and we are His Body! In His Body we are One and not multitudes of indi­vidual little peo­ples. When we believed in the Lord, we had become the members of His One Body. Are we seeking spirit­ual knowledge and experiences for ourselves? Or, are we seeking new believers for our denomina­tion? Well this is what the majority of believers are doing (Phil. 2:21)! But as for us, everything what we do we should do for Christ and His Body! In the first paragraph of Part 8, I speak about the organic unity of our body. When you read that Part later on and understand it, if it become also clear to your logic, then the very same thing will be applicable also for the Body of Christ.

When we are speaking about the Body of Christ, it is more than necessary to enlighten some important facts. Not even 50 years among Christians, nor a lifetime study and knowledge and exercises in theology could ever bring us or build us into the true Church – His Body! You see, it is not the outer knowledge or outer experiences with Christians, but it is the inner-spiritual knowledge and the in­ner-spiritual expe­rien­ces with the Spirit of God, which will bring us in and establish us as members of His Body. Hence, not every believer who sits in the congregation is the member of the Body of Christ! In fact, very few believers from the congregation may be true members of His Body, It is written: “no­bo­dy knows, who is the Son, only the Father” (Lk. 10:22). However, this does not mean that we will ne­ver know the Son or will never know anything spiritual about Him. He must become known by us not only as Christ our Saviour, but we must have our per­sonal knowledge of Christ, we must know one–another! (Mt. 25:12) Intellectual knowledge in the head, instructions, orders, commandments, etc., may all give appearance, likeness of a spiritual life. But when the “gates of hell” will come against us, they might speed­­­ily expose our miserable spiritual state. Many people saw Jesus, they listened to Him, followed Him, pressed against Him, they were touched or even heal­ed by Jesus, but none of them knew Him. This is exactly how it was and still is today with those virgins, which have no oil. The Church is not based and built only on spiritual revelations of His Light, but also on our confessions and testimo­nies, how we know Christ, Who He Is, whether we have with Him living experi­ences and live His Life or not.

 

PART  4a   –  KNOWING OUR SELF

How can we know our self and why is it vitally important for us, for our present earthly life AND for our destiny and Life Eternal? We are convinced that once we believed in our Saviour Jesus Christ in our heart and confessed our faith by our tongue, even got baptized in water, that our Life Eternal is secured because we are now redeemed! (Rom. 10:9-10) Redeemed we are, but redemption IS NOT SALVATION! Redemption is just opening the door to our Salvation, that is, to the narrow way, which alone leads to the Life Eternal (Mt. 7:14). This also means that a redeemed believer does NOT HAVE Life Eternal in his soul, as yet! He has it only in his New spiritual Man, who is in his spirit, which Man was given to him as a gift after his water baptism (Acts 2:38// Jn. 3:6). If our old spiritual man, who keeps governing our soul also after our redemption, is not overcome and destroyed by our own will, own decisions (if we will not put him off) and he is not substituted by the New spiritual Man, then we can never be saved! Salvation may also be expressed as our PERFECTION, when we are transformed to the Image of Christ, Who is Perfect in Himself. This transformation is the Will of Our Heavenly Father (Rim. 8:29). If, after our redemption, we will not get on the way to our perfection and will not overcome our “old self”, our name shall be blotted out of the Book of Life by Christ Himself and we shall be condemned (Rev. 3:5 + 21:7-8). This above vitally important paragraph may thus be concluded by a statement that if, after our redemption, we desire to receive the salvation of our soul, we MUST get on the way to our perfection (Heb. 6:1). There are no other alternatives!

But how shall we get on the way to our perfection when we do not know our own selves and thus we do not even see what is to be perfected, how and when? There never existed a Christian in the history of man­kind, who would progress in his Christian life, that is, who would grow perfecting himself without knowing himself! In fact, no one is able to take a single step in his spiritual life without receiving Light from the Lord, no one! Because one absolutely basic and inevitable part of our Christian life is to judge our own self, to weigh and assess the flesh of our self as absolutely undependable, useless, unacceptable, unnecessary and inapplicable. Because only then will the believer be able to ignore his own flesh (or humanism) and not to trust it or be guided by it, but trust God and begin to learn to walk with the Spirit, or according to the Spirit. Without this self-judgment, assessment, weighing of spiritual acts which are not seen by our eyes, our spiritual life is impossible! If we do not see and know ourselves then how can we judge ourselves righteously? We cannot, on the contrary, we will be filled with self-assurance, self-righteousness, self-con­fi­dence and self-reliance that “anything that stands before us we will be able to resolve and over­come”. Hereby we will also fail completely to understand and apply the Word of the Lord, which says to us clearly: “without Me, you can do nothing.” (Jn. 15:5b) It is just a very “tiny” word in the Bible, but it can either make or break our earthly as well as eternal life. How many believers do you know who tried to live by their own mind many dozens of years, but in the spiritual life they achieved nothing? They never knew the Lord nor were they ever coming to Him and thus received from Him nothing? Is this not a true tragedy of a Christian, especially if he thus wastes his whole earthly life? What should the Lord do with him after his physical death? The Word in Reve­lation 3:16,17 comes to  mind.

Though the Spirit of God is given to us and He dwells in us in order to help us and guide us through ob­sta­cles, problems, conflicts even “unsolvable situations”, we ignore Him, do not come to Him, we are not even aware of Him, hence, we do not even see our weaknesses or foolishness and thus we remain in them and are not even aware of them. As a consequence of such situations, we remain self-conceited and easily consider ourselves as superior to others, self-important, capable, etc. This causes that we may be very easily filled with pride and we are not aware even of these facts! Pride is before God the most despi­cable, most abominable thing; therefore, God resists the proud (Jam. 4:6). Pride also causes a lack of love, which is then manifested by frequent signs of petulance, irritability, roughness, sharpness, snap­pish­ness, anguish even an enmity. But even here we may not be aware of such displays of the soul. It is quite impossible to estimate how many spiritual blessings we might have lost in our life because we never un­derstood how perfect and stunningly precious is the Salvation through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, self-knowledge, in the Light of the Lord, is that most basic and most important condition for our progress and spiritual growth. Those that do not see themselves will not even be filled with the Spirit of God because in their heart, they are not even hungry or thirsty after truth and righteousness and that also regarding their own selves (Mt. 5:6). They have their New Man in their spirit because they are born again and baptized, but they are not putting him on, they have no interest to put him on and to put off the old man. The interest of a believer to put off the old man and put on the New Man is that hunger and thirst after truth and righteousness from Matthew 5:6. When we do not have that hunger and thirst, that interest, then our soul cannot change – cannot be perfected! When our soul does not change, then our heart does not change either. According to the Lord, our natural heart is “deceitful above all things, and de­s­pe­rately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9) What does this mean? We can be wrong, speak untruth or judge unrighteously, but our heart may justify us, hold us as truthful, refuse whatever objections, that is, it can deceive us and we would not be aware of it because we walk either by the feelings of our heart or by the reasoning of our brain. We may also say that the complexity and instability of our being causes our wrong and undependable judgments and convictions and leads us into wrong decisions. Do you have your own experiences about this?

Of course, the Lord knows all this and knows us inside-out and in every weakness and sinfulness. Since David was His faithful servant and had for the Lord an open heart, He could give him His Light also in this area. That’s why David turns to the Lord saying: “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have domi­nion over me; then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.” (Ps. 19:12-13) That is to say, nobody can understand his errors. And not only that, but we cannot even be aware of our hidden sins, transgressions from our assumptions, presumptions, thinking, pondering, speculating and imagining things. Our failure in this area is mainly due to the fact that we think about ourselves too much and too highly because we do not know ourselves and many other people do not know us in spirit either, and they cannot know us until the Lord gives them His Light about us.

Christianity is not a “vessel of clay”, nor is it a “treasure”, it is a “treasure in the vessel of clay”. People usually see only the vessel of clay, which lives and behaves differently then other vessels of clay, but they do not see the treasure, or they may see just a negligible part of it. Everyone in his life has an ideal, an imagination or a norm how should someone look, act and live as a “good man” or a “good Christian”. Such an ideal has not only a Christian, but also pagan. Later on, when the pagan is redeemed and re­ceiv­es at least some Light from the Lord, his ideal suddenly changes. The more Light of God he re­ceiv­es, the more his ideal changes. This, of course, applies also to a Christian, who continues in his spi­ri­t­ual growth. Our scope or extent of our assessment and measuring such a “good man, good Christian” is changing rapidly. Even our concept of the so called “holiness of a Christian” may be upside down.

We may suppose that the proof of our spirituality is to deny our feelings to be insensitive towards suffer­ings or pains or unaffected by natural interpersonal relationships. Hence, we might even think that to be “spiritual” means to stop being humanistic! Hence, many are trying to cover their vessel of clay not to be seen and thus they are becoming “saintly – good Christians”! But this is absolutely unnatural and ab­solutely hypocritical because such a believer fears to be relaxed, to speak freely and express himself either about himself or about others so his vessel of clay would not somehow become visible. He thus be­comes an “artificial man” and he uses his artificiality to cover his true spiritual state. Such a believer has no clue what the true Christianity is in the eyes of God.

The whole multitudes of believers have their own conceptions regarding any Christian, but all such con­ceptions are either one-sided or totally wrong since they are the creations of human mind, they are not cre­ations of the Mind of God. For example, in Apostle Paul we meet his “treasure”, but we also meet his “vessel of clay”. If, therefore, in some servant of God his vessel of clay is also evident, many think that such a servant is a hopeless case. However, the concept of God is such that in that vessel of clay His Treasure should also be found! Hence, the true Christianity is not only “the treasure and no vessel”! The true Christian is a person in whom exist seeming inconsistencies, discrepancies, disagreements, but in whom the Power of God consistently triumphs! Christianity is not based in a removal of all weak­nesses, nor is it just a manifestation of the Power of God. Rather, it is the manifestation of God’s Power in the presence of human weaknesses! By its presence, the vessel of clay does not annul its treasure.

We may boldly continue to declare other important spiritual facts, which should already be clear in the above quoted Light of the Lord. For example, Christianity is not only the matter of faith as such, but it is the matter of faith, which triumphs in the presence of doubts! Also, Christians are naturally inclined to believe that where sorrow or suffering exist, joy cannot exist; where tears are, there cannot exist any prai­sing or wor­shipping of the Lord, where weakness exists, there must obviously be lack of any power; where we are surrounded by enemies, there we must necessarily be besieged without any escape; where there is doubting, there cannot be any faith, etc. Well, what will the Lord say?

The Lord desires to bring us to the point of specific understanding, where everything humanistic is plan­­­ned, intended, designed to procure and prepare a vessel of clay so it could be filled with God’s Treasure! Therefore, whenever we are aware of depression, heaviness, crisis, dejection, let us not give in, but come to the Lord; when doubts or fears rise up in our heart, let us not give in, be subjected to the Lord. Let us overcome ourselves and the treasure in our vessel of clay will shine out even more gloriously then if nothing was happening. After all, the light is the brightest in the presence of darkness! True?

We may conclude this topic by declaring the following facts. Christianity is a paradox and just as we live this paradoxical life, so we also begin to know Our God. In fact, the more we continue in our Christ­ian life, the more it is becoming paradoxical. Our treasure is beginning to manifest itself more and more and is becoming more shining even though, on the other hand, our vessel of clay is more and more shrinking and withering. Just notice God’s patience in a man, who was before naturally very impatient, in fact, compare him with someone, who could not be “moved” by anything. Notice also God’s Divine modesty, submissiveness and meekness in a man, who was before naturally proud, hard, arrogant, stub­born, etc… well… is it not the beauty of the treasure? Thus, whenever you begin to notice the changes in man, you begin to notice the treasure and not his vessel of clay. Let me now repeat the most important fact: The whole question of our Salvation rests in the quality of the treasure and NOT in the short­comings of the vessel, which contains that treasure!

 

PART  5 – THE LIVING AND DEAD CHRISTIANS

Why are Christians “dead” and enemies of God in their spirit? They are so, because the Kingdom of God, which should guide and govern their beings, is not found in them. The Kingdom is not in them because they were never seeking it (Mt. 6:33). Hence, the kingdom of Satan remains in their spirit and in their soul. Finally, being carnal, we can also state some other facts about them, namely:

1)   They have no capacity to receive and keep what the Lord would like to give them or had already given them (Mt. 13:3-23 + Mk. 4:3-20 + Lk. 8:5-15)

2)   They have no ability to do something with the spiritual powers of evil and darkness influencing and governing their souls.

3)   They have no wisdom to do or just undertake what is needful to begin or continue the process of their salvation.

4)   They have no initiative or diligence to follow any instructions concerning their spiritual progress (Pr. 5:12).

5)   They cannot perceive and thus receive any thing from the Spirit of God (1Cor. 2:14)

6)   Their “good flesh” is visible in all their decisions and actions (Pr. 16:2)

 

The Lord may have various obstacles in believers in order to hear us, come to us and do in us a spiritual work. For example, the Lord hears and may also help a foolish but meek believer; on the other hand, He will not hear, nor will he help a foolish but a proud believer because He resists pride in any form and in any man. He must first destroy sufficiently his pride, make him sufficiently meek before He will hear him and help him in his foolishness. When we come to the Lord sincerely, maybe even in tears, but we feel in our­selves “dead”, that means that the Lord is showing to us the presence of our “old man”, our natural being, which is spirit­ual­ly dead as it has no Life of Christ. The Lord will not answer his prayers nor will He even listen to him; He listens to our New Man or to our meek and lowly heart.

If the Lord has touched us and blessed us at some time, but we do not continue in that blessing, we may lose it, however, not in the sense that it will stop existing, but in the sense that we lost its touch in our consciousness and our life because we abandoned it and continued in our old ways and old life. It is yet possible to regain that blessing, if we return to the Lord and repent of our foolishness that we did not value His blessings and the gift of His Grace to us (Is. 55:7). In point 1) above, there are quotes from the Bible about the sower, which is the Lord Jesus, Who sows His Word on the ground of our heart. Then our heart either remains barren or brings a crop 30-fold, 60-fold and some hearts bring even 100-fold crop. The Lord is present here and sows His Word into the hearts of born-again and baptized believers, not pagans. Out of 4 types of hearts in Christians, three are barren, only one of them has a fertile soil. But even these hearts with fertile soil do not all yield a 100-fold crop, some yield only 60-fold and some only 30-fold. The Lord is sowing with a hope for a harvest, but His waiting is often met with disappoint­ment whenever the heart does not respond to His sowing with a real fruit. In fact, this is the core of this Parable. He desires that the hearts would respond not only with emotions, but with a real fruit, which then becomes the personification of the Life, which Life the Lord’s seed contains. Apostle Paul instructs Timothy not to neglect the gift, which is now in him and which was given to him by prophecy, but rather to meditate upon these things and give himself wholly to them so that his profiting may appear to all (1Tim. 4:14,15).

Whenever the Lord comes with His Word, there almost always lurks danger that it may be somehow get­­ting into the mind of the believer to “postpone” that matter. It may not necessarily be a willful delay, but it is a delay one way or another. Every failure to seize upon that Word and devote oneself to it at least in a necessary measure is a delay, a postponement! If we truly have a desire to grow spiritually, to mature, to perfect ourselves and to prepare ourselves for the Coming of the Lord, then it is useful to practice a simple step in our life. Whenever some Word of the Lord at least touched our heart, we should without much delay return to that matter and bring it before the Lord in the sense of its import­ance and practical application for our being. If you should wait until tomorrow, it may happen that you will get into another cycle of messages, and those last Words that touched your heart will be gone… and you may continue this way slowly losing the benefit from all that you heard. And even if you return to it after a week, month or two… you will discover that in your heart, there is nothing! This will be the re­sult of accumulating of messages where you have not devoted to the Lord even 2-3 minutes in medita­t­­ing upon the response of your heart. And then the Lord may remind you that “the words that I spoke unto you, they will judge you in the last day” (Jn. 12:48b). Hence, for some reason, not a deliberate one, not ne­cessarily a willful one, we are accumulating responsibility for idleness, inaction toward the Words of the Lord and we may not even be aware of it. Here, we do not speak about churches and congrega­tions to whom the Lord does not speak directly when carnal preachers speak to them. Here we speak about those to whom the Lord speaks directly through the mouth of those whom He called.

Another fact is quite often applicable to believers right after their meetings. They almost immediately begin to talk about mundane things, laugh, joke, or even argue about what to do next, etc. They lose the touch with the Spirit and His message within minutes and may never return to it in the future. They was­ted all that time and not be even aware of it. Therefore, the Lord reminds us that He requires from our heart a response. He blesses such a heart and it is almost impossible for the devil to pluck out of such heart His Word since it does not lie by the “way side” (Mt. 13:4). When His Word is plucked out, the situation is the same as if it was never sown, spoken. Postponing our response may cause a loss and the Lord’s judgment for those most lazy, inattentive or careless will be: “…because when I called (spoke), you did not answer…” (Is. 65:12 + 66:4). Therefore, it is not enough just to take part in fellowships, conferences, classes or sermons and listen to addresses, teach­­ings or preachings, but it is necessary to see and understand what the Lord is actually giving to us and what meaning and importance it has for us personally. At least the Word, which touched our heart must be preserved and not lost. The importance of the above must also be clear from the fact that God had esta­blished nothing in a way that He cannot put it aside when it stops answering to His Will and Purposes. God established those churches in Asia, those candlesticks, which are described in the Book of Revela­tion. He blessed them and used them since they were vessels for His testimonies. And then a crisis came where God said that what He planted, established, blessed, what was the work of His Spirit – that will He remove from their places and from His Presence since they ceased to do His Will, Purposes and ex­pect­ations. Such a situation is clearly described where the lord speaks to the church in Ephesus “…I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.” (Rev.2:5) The Lord doesn’t need a candle­­­stick, which has no light, that is to say, a living testimony about Christ. The true witnesses of Jesus are not those who just speak truth about Him, but they are witnesses of His resurrection, that is to say, they manifest in their beings His Life and Authority. This is the same witness that is mentioned in Rev. 12:11. In other words, this is not just a testimony of truth, but a testimony of Life and Authority.

It is the Holy Spirit Who will bring into our life everything that is of God. And if it is not brought into our life, then we are in a miserable spiritual state indeed… we are dead indeed! Of course, we may also be “slightly” dead, and if this is true, then we stand facing a difficult problem of a very SLOW spiritual growth in all those that believed in and received Christ! There is no doubt that the spiritual maturing is a lifelong process, but here we are considering too delayed a growth with a very long lasting spiritual child­hood or even with a complete childishness and naivety! This matter is rather condemned in the letters of the New Testament. The core of this problem is the fact that during our Christian life until now, we might have received from the Lord literally mountains of truth and light. Though it might never be said that we did not understand it intellectually or did not believe it, yet, our heart did not have to believe it in the sense of realizing in a true faith the immense importance of that mountain of truth and light; also, that our salvation, the change of our being, literally hangs on that mountain of truth and light. It seems that in our heart there is neither understand­ing nor initiative in our will to feed on that mountain and not ignore it. We may thus not see such believ­ers continuing, moving forward since such desires may not exist in their hearts at all. And such desires cannot even exist in the hearts, if there is no true faith about that mountain of truth and light since such faith is the only source of initiative as well as driving force in human heart. Let us not take “faith” just as a consent or approval of our mind, as an acceptance by our intellect, as just an oppo­site of saying: “I do not believe it”. Faith is always an active and positive principle in us. It is conti­nually call­ing for an action, for an appropriation of things, which can in our time be invisible even out­side of our understanding. Nevertheless, these things will bring us Life, and Life is something that changes us; death does not change anything and anybody in any way! Where do we stand in this light?

We should also understand that there exist many other obstacles for our spiritual growth, which Satan throws under our feet. For example, chiefly in these last days, the promotion of prosperity and worldly successfulness are stunningly harmful to the spiritual progress. We can add to this the general problem of deep deceptions, which can penetrate into many areas of spiritual life and walk and are derailing the people of God in the process of their salvation. Maybe the most serious and dangerous area of Satan’s deceptions is in our failure to discern and thus ignore the huge difference between spirit and soul! The spirit in man is the only part of our human being by which man is directly connected to God’s things and which is the only bond with our salvation. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” (1Cor. 2:11-12) Whenever the Lord grants us His Truth and we do not take the right attitude to it, we are not open to it or to its impact and consequences, or we simply do not believe it, we are then exposed to be con­demn­ed to an inability to spiritually understand it and thus grow in spirit. For example, when you hurt a member of the Body of Christ, are you also hurt inside of your being? If not, or you are not even aware that you hurt a member of the Body of Christ, then you are dead in your spirit! I do not know if it is necessary to add to these facts additional explanations, but these spiritual matters have their principles and their own ways.

Even a high spiritual position with great spiritual blessings will eventually slowly deteriorate sliding “down the hill” if it is not guarded, maintained, preserved, if we do not progress in those blessings and do not continue in the building, enlarging and growing of that position and its blessings. We were not call­ed to become Christians, be baptized, read the Bible, take part in interesting meetings, conferences, fellowships or religious rituals and spiritually stagnate! Go to your library and look at all your books and you might find out that there is nothing spectacular, nothing attractive, nothing that would be worth to study again, actually, in some books you might find absolutely nothing! Why? Because the Lord always goes forward, He is pushing ahead also in you. And if you have also progressed with Him toward those deeper and higher things of His Spirit, then the things you find in your library may be for you, as we say, “outdated” or primitive, or today you may judge them and understand them differently than when you read them for the first time. We should never arrive at a place where we would be satis­fied with our­selves and believe that now we know everything, we achieved everything important. Hence, we can put our feet on the table and take a “nap” for 20-30 years. And if we had not grown spiritually in any meas­ur­­able way, then even our old books will look to us as attractive news.

Let us now consider some facts about our prayers. The prayer which does not move the heart of the one that prays cannot move the heart of God. If we had not listened to God in some thing, He will not listen to our prayer. We will find this way that we have to obey God if we expect something from Him since God only listens to the prayers of those that obey Him. We must have a heart that seeks and examines and thus will be able to discern whatever obstacles or barriers may be in our soul and spirit. These must then be removed from us before God answers our prayer. It is thus evident that the knowledge we re­ceive from God comes to us at times through hard experiences with God and not only through listening or reading. When in every such thing you will cooperate with God, or when God deals with you – then you will know what He desires from you, what He wishes that would be removed from you, or what is it that He wishes to achieve in you. Then you will be able to start knowing God.

During such dealings of God with you, He may show you that you lack faith or that you are too anxious or uneasy, over-concerned, insecure, fearful about some things and that this exorbitant anxiety and fear reveals the lack of your faith, patience or meekness or other needful virtues. You might be praying zealously or casu­ally, long prayers or short prayers, yet, during such prayers you may never even think about getting to know God or to even take into account such a thought. Ultimately, you may not care a bit whether God will answer your prayer or not. We may not even wait for His answer. But if we do not know His Character and how to communicate with Him, we are unable to continue growing up spiritually. Many believers think or even believe that after completing their studies at a theological seminary, they are qualified to preach. Though some seminars may be good, such candidates may help other believers to understand the Bible intel­­­lectually only, but they cannot help anyone to know God.

Therefore, there exists but one way for any progress in the growth of the spiritual life and it is through receiving God’s dealings with us and cooperating with Him. If we refuse to receive His dealings with us in our practical daily life, we will never go forward in the process of our salvation. If you sin or make mis­takes or are falling down, God may thereby show to you that He allowed it all since you do not know the corruption of your flesh nor do you know what you need so that He might cleanse you from that corruption. You may depend too much on yourselves and not on Him. As you are gradually getting to know the Character of God, you will also find out that the words used in your prayer will cause whether the prayer will or will not be answered. Maybe at times you will be praying with 2-3 other brethren and will be able to discern whose prayer will be answered and whose will not. One of the signs of a true spiritual growth in the Grace of God is the loss of our self-assurance and a gain of deep meekness and modesty as well as a sense of dependence on the Lord and thus also the desire after the reality so the believer would be able to get out of all false positions and dreams.

There are many believers today that make the mistake of not discerning the mental knowledge of the Bible from the spiritual knowledge not knowing that the true spiritual knowledge can only be gained from the Lord by His revelation and not by intellectual study. If you neither know the ways of God nor His knowledge nor yet His Character then what makes you different from other people? Even pagans are able to study the Bible or other religious writings, write their judgments or discuss them with any believ­ing theologian. You cannot lead other people to the truths of God or to the spiritual prosperity or to any­thing spiritual, if you have nothing else but a mental knowledge of the Bible.

Here I must repeat that there has never existed a Christian who made any progress in his spiritual life without knowing him­self. Just so, no Christian is able to progress in his spiritual life further than to the measure to which he knows himself! And what he knows about himself depends entirely on the Light received from the Lord and not on his mental knowledge or even on his self-examination, self-analysis. Nobody is able to proceed further than the Light God gave to him. If God gave him a Light about himself, he is only then able to judge-assess himself righteously since without this self-judgment-assessment his spiritual life is impos­sible! Also, such be­lievers that do not know themselves cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit since in their heart there is nei­ther hunger nor thirst for the things of the Spirit, especially truth and right­eous­ness (Mt. 5:6).

Do you know what God thinks about you? You may consider yourself a truly great person, but do you believe that God also thinks likewise? Or you may consider yourself a bad or miserable person; do you believe that God agrees with you? Hence, it is pretty stupid to consider oneself as good or bad according as you feel or as you think. Only God knows whether you are truly good or bad. Psalm 36:9 says: “in Thy Light we shall see light.” We may consider ourselves as better than anyone else, but one day when the Light of God shall shine, not only our evil will look bad, but even our good will look as bad. In fact, until the Light of God shines, nobody can see oneself as a sinner! We may often consider even our own motifs as per­fect, but the Light of God will show us how selfish, calculating, cunning and unrighteous we truly are. Hence, whatever you know about yourselves without the Light of God is false! Self-know­ledge gained from self-analysis represents only what you yourselves think about yourselves; while the self-knowledge gained from the Light of God represents what God thinks about yourselves. Our know­ledge shows what we know and what our mind understands. The Light from God shows what He knows and understands. His Light is being revealed to us by His Spirit. One more fact which we should consi­der is that the light IS NOT knowledge as such. The Word of God says: “Knowledge puffeth up” (1Cor. 8:1), but when the Light of God shines into the heart of believer, instead of puffing him up, it makes him regretful, humble and ready to do repentance.

There are three sources of Light for us: (1) Jesus Christ (Jn. 8:12); (2) The Word of God (Ps. 119:105, 130); and (3) Christians (Mt. 5:14) – especially, the true servants of the Lord. When a true believer lives in the Light of God, others are usually very afraid of him because whenever they see him, they feel ashamed, even condemned. Also, they speak and behave in his presence quite differently than in his absence. For a weak, feeble, fearful believer, it does not matter to meet the same believer as he is, but when he comes into the presence of someone who lives in the Light of God, he feels ashamed. There­fore believ­ers must be the Light in order to do the Will of God and fulfill the works God called them to do. The Light you are receiving and which Light you are becoming by living it in your earthly life, comes from the revelation of the Holy Spirit no matter whether it comes to you when you come to Christ, or you study the Word of God or you are gathering with other Christians.

The power of that Light is to give people self-knowledge! When someone hears or steps into that Light, his true state is revealed to him since no amount of logic, reasoning, warning or debating could enable a sinner to see his sin or to see the Lord as his Saviour. Every sinner is blind, deaf and under­stands no­thing! That’s why nobody can persuade people to receive Christianity, to believe in the Lord Jesus and become Christians, for example, through beautiful thoughts or reasons or enthusiastic atmosphere or emotions or pleasant music, tears or through any argumentation. To reach true Christianity needs the Light of God. He who is receiving more of God’s Light will see more of his corruption. The proud and self-righteous had never seen the Light of God. Finally, the Light of God which we are today receiving for the working out of our salvation (Phil. 2:12) is the same Light by which the Lord will judge us in the future. God’s Light never changes as it is the Light of the Judgment before the Judgment Seat of Christ! (Rom. 14:10b) The Holy Spirit has come to live in us, to guide us into all truth, which also means that He is revealing the Light of God to us so that we would be without excuses whether we received it or refused it, whether we lived it or ignored it.

We may believe in our soul that we want to do the Will of God and be obedient to Him, but we may not see or search out in the deep crevices of our heart (Jer. 17:9) that we are full of our own opinions and own convict­ions and self-will. Hence, we have to first call on the Lord as David was calling in Psalm 26:2 and 139:23-24. Only when God explores our thoughts, then we can get to know our thoughts; only when God explores our mind, then we can get to know our mind. Only then we will be able to see the wicked way in us and call on God to remove it. This problem may also be demonstrated through the fact that many Christians read their Bible as a newspaper or as a lawyer studies law-book. Their motif is to guard own interests or find weapons for self-defense, but if this is the case, their hearts are already open to a “diabolical input”. And we know that biased heart or also a “lawyer’s heart” deteriorates the mind so that such a mind cannot understand the Scripture as it should. The Word of God tells us: “Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures” (Lk. 24:45). Hence, our mind may be not only damaged but also closed toward the correct understanding of the Scriptures. We should also note that it is not necessary for God to enable us to understand or receive the truth at the time of reading the Scripture. He can reveal to us the truth of what we read later on and that in a more practical way, for example, during some future activity, which we will conduct and which could help us to see the truth in our daily life. After all, God will never reveal to us the whole truth at once in all its fullness; He may re­veal it to us part by part so we could understand it better and more fully.

Just as it is possible for our conscience to be cleansed and renewed and then subsequently to lose its own  purity, sensitivity, responsiveness, so the same is possible for our mind and heart, which are receiving spiritual things through the conscience. If any believer demeans the value of others, his soul is defect­i­­ve. We know that the people of this world, and also of the church often think badly about others while ele­va­ting themselves, their wisdom, knowledge, beliefs, convictions, etc. Whosoever is doing this has a to­tally unrenewed soul. Satan can secretly work in their mind because unrenewed soul and mind may very easily be made an operational center for his plans and intrigues of evil. Unrenewed mind produces filthy or damaged thoughts. If the spirit of a Christian is defective, his mind will also be defective since it is his spirit that produces his thoughts. Our thoughts should be good and wise since a stupid thought is already sin in the eyes of God (Pr. 24:9). If we do not win a victory in our thoughts, we will remain total­­ly defeated! Even good intentions are not sufficient; there are many Christians, who wasted the power of their thinking. He, who is able to listen without interrupting or “jumping into the mouth of the speaker”, has an intact, unimpaired mind. On the other hand, whosoever has the tendency or a habit to interrupt the conver­sa­tion and words of others, has a soul full of problems. Therefore, we must have our soul re­newed and that not once, but keep renewing it continuously – this is the process of salvation. Similarly, we will not be successful if we only have faith, but not the will to renew our soul by removing the old man. Our will is just as important as our faith is because with­out the decision of our will, we will not be able to do that faith. And we also know “that faith with­out works is dead”! (Jam. 2:20)

We spoke about “vision” in our previous fellowship (Tatry 2015), but the Lord desires to add some fur­ther facts. It is not difficult to listen, understand and even remember and share with others the Light that the Lord gives us. Though we may often ignore that Light, it is not difficult to listen to it again and re­fresh our memory. What is however very difficult is to SEE that Light by our spiritual eye! This fact is very important since all spiritual work is based on SEEING! Then, how shall we define “vision”? Well, a “vision is formed” by a penetration of the Light of God into our heart and spirit! Life and Salvation is in seeing, Death and Condemnation is in darkness. The Light that penetrates into our being and illu­mi­nates any lie will at the same time destroy it! We may thus say that the LIGHT OF GOD, which truly penetrates into our heart and spirit KILLS EVERYTHING IN US WHICH IS NOT OF GOD! Hence, when God is giving us His Light, it is not even the question whether we understand it or not, rather, it is the quest­­ion, whether we received it into our spirit and heart, in other words, whether we have SEEN it or not! It is thus important to know and realize that we can read or hear the Light, even understand it mentally and remain in the darkness! Concerning visions, it is not really important for us to grasp our “vision”, hold it, try to understand it and not forget it. Why? Because that vision will grasp us, it will take hold of us since it is living. If the Light of God is received not only into our head, but into heart and spirit, it then be­comes a living vision which no man has to repeat to himself twice-a-week in order to re­member it. Such living vision will never disappear from him as can any intellectual plan into his future. But, let us understand that VISION IS NOT IMAGINATION!

Another important fact is that, IF we want the Light we can have it. In order not to have it, we must con­­sciously shield it, cover it. That can be done too, of course. Someone once said that even the smallest leaf from a tree can shield even the largest star on the sky. In other words, man can allow even the most trivial obstacle inside of him to shield the Eternal Glory of God and thus also his future destiny. Every­thing that is in God is Light and Love, but when it comes out of God to man it becomes Truth and Grace. The Truth will always make demands on man, but the Grace will always be present to help fulfill those demands.

Some more words concerning the dead and living Christians. Spiritually dead, that is, the carnal Christ­ians are used to employ doctrinal statements to prove truth and their beliefs. Although this is nice, yet, it does not prove anything. For example, the fact that Christ was raised from the dead and lives, or that He is the Lord of Heaven and Earth can never be proven by doctrinal statements or claims. The statement of your faith may contain the fact that you believe that Jesus died, rose from the dead, ascended to Heaven and is seated on the right hand of God the Father. But how are you going to prove this statement? What has God provided as the evidence of this fact? You may believe it, even give your life for this faith, you may claim it with a superb emphasis, and yet, you are not proving this fact by it. You can never prove anything by stating the things which you absolutely believe. You will never prove anything be stating that you believe all the fundamental bases, principles or dogmas of Christian faith!... neither by calling yourself a “Christian”, that is, by name that indicates that you believe in the inspiration of the Bible. No­thing is proven in this way. If you claim that Christ rose from the dead and He is the Lord of Haven and Earth, you will still need to prove your statement. If you refer to the fact that the Word of God says so, even then you have proven nothing! Your proof can never be an argument since what argument builds up argument can destroy, what logic builds up logic can tear down. Then how do you want to prove such things? There is only one way: by manifesting His resurrected Life in yourself – that is all the proof that you need. This means that YOU ARE THE PERSONIFICATION of those things you proclaim. This living manifestation is also known as “testimony”! Testimony is not only a summary of truths, it has an extra factor containing the power of life which defeats death! Hence, to prove that Jesus defeat­ed death will be the death-defeating life manifested in us!

 

PART  6  –  PATIENCE, POWER, EYE, EAR

Let’s say few important words concerning patience. We all may think that we know what patience is but we may have no imaginations about its depth, height or its real importance. The first fact is that it is the suf­fering that brings patience (Rom. 5:3b), and patience brings experience, and experience brings hope (Rom. 5:4). Therefore, “we also glory in sufferings” (Rom. 5:3a). Or really? Well, I don’t know, but I know that the hope, which is the final product of sufferings, is for man perhaps that most precious thing since without hope men end in despair, they even die. The second fact is that in patience we are supposed to keep our souls (Lk. 21:19). This also means that without patience we will not be able to keep our souls on the narrow road espe­cially at the end of times, which will be full of affliction, stupidity, unrighteousness, arrogance, dis­obedience, provocation and other evil things and are described in the same chapter 21 of Luke. The third fact is that the word “patience” may also be expressed as unwavering enduran­ce. Then it is really very impor­t­ant to realize that it is only “he that endureth (is patient) to the end shall be saved” (Mt. 10:22b) In other words, without patience there is no salvation! And the fourth fact is that in order to be kept from the seven year’s Tribulation Period which the Lord also calls “the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world”, we must keep the Word of His patience (Rev. 3:10). Such a believer has already a crown (meaning, the entry into the Kingdom of Heaven) and he is to hold it fast that no man could take it from him (Rev. 3:11). And then the Lord describes the Overcomer, Who is His Bride (Rev. 3:12). There­fore, without patience no believer can become the Bride of Christ! This is that important and real value of patience.

We also know that there is no patience in the human flesh because the true patience is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). However, today we are being trained for ruling and governing along the line of pati­en­­ce. Any short-tempered, careless man will never be allowed to govern or given a position of res­ponsi­­bility in a spiritual government. A triumphant person is such, which can patiently wait. There is a great power in patience. Where we would be today, if God had not exercised over us a great patience? In fact, His patience has helped to save us; it keeps preserving us and keeps us in our salvation even today.

Another fruit of the Spirit is joy. And how important is joy? More than we think. “The joy of the Lord is our strength” (Neh. 8:10). The New Testament is not only a Book about the Cross and sufferings, it is also a romantic and joyful Book. Those that were kept by the Power of God were exceedingly joyful though at times they could have been under the weight of burdens and pressures being in various temptations, harassment, bullying, persecutions, hatred and sufferings of various kinds. And yet, they were looking forward to the appearance of Jesus Christ Whom they saw not “…yet believing, ye rejoice with joy un­speak­able and full of glory” (1Pet. 1:5-8). Hence, it is the joy from the Life of Christ; it is also the fellow­ship with HIS JOY in the middle of the fellowship with HIS SUFFERINGS. Without this, the Christian life and ministry are impossible. This joy of the Lord is coming to us immediately to confront the press­ures of our outward grieves and sorrows connected with our fights and sufferings. Consequently, the true base of our faith is revealed when apostle Paul says, that we rejoice in the hope of the Glory of God, and con­tinues: “…And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also;” (Rom. 5:2,3). Of course, we know that for the natural man this is absolutely impossible, which also applies to the carnal Christians since in our flesh there exist no sources of true joy. This joy springs only from the Holy Spirit and from His fruit, which grows from the Life of Christ in our spirit.

Believers desire to go to the Kingdom of God, but many are not aware that “the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). I also believe that the Kingdom of God will be a place far beyond our imaginations especially concerning the Glory and Joy. After all, we should never forget what apostle Paul told Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord” (Phil. 3:1), and again: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). But when true believers indeed desire to go to the Kingdom, then they should begin to seek it (Mt. 6:33) because if they will not find it, nor its righteousness, then what shall they do there? It will then be really questionable whether they will be worthy of it and will enter in (2Thes. 1:4,5).

Our salvation is represented by the deliverance of Israel from Egypt and bringing it to their Promised Land. The crossing of the Red Sea is our Redemption, the experience from the wilderness is our spiritual growth as it is also represented by our Salvation; and their entry into their Promised Land is our entry into the Kingdom of God. Let us now consider the threefold ministry, which was necessary to execute this process shown in the Word of God, which says: “For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron and Miriam.” (Mic. 6:4). Moses represents authority, Aaron represents priestly ministry in love, and Miriam represents prophetic ministry with celebrating and glorification. The important fact, which we should consider is that all these three types of ministry are concentrated in the Person of the Lord Jesus. Since we all are being perfected in our walking through the spiritual wilderness toward the Kingdom, let us realize what that wild­erness truly is and what is its purpose and importance in the Will of God.

When we know any truth, we believe that it is sufficient when we understand it and believe it. When the Lord teaches His people any truth, He does not just give them information regarding that truth, He will bring them into a personal relationship with the truth that He teaches – and that is the meaning of “our wilderness”. Wilderness is the discipline from the Lord to bring us into the life of that truth, which we know mentally! Do we continue in our wilderness in His discipline? Really? Because, in His discipline what is truth IN Him must be made truth also IN us – and that in a definite measure. In other words, only in our wilderness, that is, in His discipline, it is possible for us to be changed into His Like­ness, which is the WILL of Our Heavenly Father! (Rom. 8:29) If we are sitting in our wilderness doing nothing – we are NOT doing the Will of Our Father! And if we do not do the Will of Our Father, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven! (Mt. 7:21-23) Simply said, without wilderness we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven! Is this truly important for us? Well, if we will not enter the Kingdom, we will be cast into outer dark­­ness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt. 8:12). Simple, isn’t it?

In our wilderness the Lord Jesus is giving to the Holy Spirit His things so that we might see them, un­der­­stand them, believe them and do them in our life. Are we getting them? Can we say: The Holy Spirit showed me this or that? Is He truly guiding me? Am I perceiving Him? Do I sense Him or do I ignore Him and have no clue about Him? Am I dead toward Him? Our spiritual development and our growth depend on this 100%. You see, for us it is very simple, and for our old man very comfortable, to pitch a tent on our nar­row way, sit in it many years and not move. As soon as we move and step out of the tent, we will step into problems, conflicts, battles that we hate and would like to avoid them at all costs. But with­out them, we cannot be saved! And for us to get into them in the spirit of fear or potential disappo­int­ment, which is a lack of faith, would be meaningless. We can walk through them effectively and vic­to­riously only if we realize that we fight IN victory and not FOR victory. We should experience victory in every thing, which was already captured for us by Christ and which we have not captured yet, that is, we are to over­come powers in us, which are holding us from our victories and do not want us to discover them and even taste them in our own soul. We cannot glorify the Lord in our flesh; even this must be given to us by the Holy Spirit. As soon as the Holy Spirit puts into us a glorification of the Lord and His victory means that He will not only bring us into the battle and conflict, but He is already giving us the spirit of victory be­fore we step into the battle! However, many times we are not even aware of this fact since we focus on the battle, on the conflict, on the problem and we entertain the thoughts of fear given to us by the devil rather then the sweetness of the victory given to us by the Spirit. Every battle that the Lord allows us to enter in ends in victory and never in defeat! Have we not discovered that yet?

When we write about conflicts, problems, battles, etc., we must know and understand that we need to be strong. Apostle Paul writes: “Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His Might” (Eph. 6:10). But very few believers realize that the power will never be in us for our personal disposition! It will never become our ownership so that we could use it as we would wish and whenever we would wish. That power will always remain in the Lord; it will be to our disposition only in Him and never out­side of Him. Why? There is not one man on this planet in whom the Power of God could dwell without any danger. The rea­son is our human flesh. One typical example is the thorn which was given to the flesh of Apostle Paul, which thorn was to make him “naturally weak” and thus to enable him to receive the abun­dance of reve­lations from God (2Cor. 12:7-9). The only man, who would never misuse this Power of God is the Man Jesus Christ on the Throne of God, Who has all the Power on Earth and in Heaven (Mt. 28:18) because in Him there is none of this secret and cunning influence of man’s “selfishness”, which is able to use the Power of God and His Blessings for “his own self” and that even unconscious­ly! This danger is not in His Character, but it is in ours. In fact, the most saintly man on earth would have it. So, we can use the Power of God whenever we are to do His Will and not our own will, if our will is differ­ent from His Will (for example: to have power to come to Him is His Will – Jn. 5:40).

We will close this fact when we come to and consider that apparent contradiction where Paul says: “for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2Cor. 12:10b). Its explanation is the following. When the cross weak­ens me, that is, my natural strength, then the Lord can manifest in me His Strength. This also means that an uncrucified believer can never have and use the Power of the Lord because His Power cannot be mix­ed with the “strength”, or rather weakness, of his flesh. The obstacle in us for the Power of the Lord is the “strength” of our own flesh. However, our weakness gives place for the Power of the Lord to work

When we speak about being strong, here we must mention two important facts. The first fact is the foll­owing. To be strong in the Lord has in many believers serious obstacles since His Power stands against their spiritual passivity! In the life of believers, there are only few greater dangers than spirit­ual passi­vity and only few greater opportunities for our enemy to make out of such believers “Christian corpses”! This passivity means idle and lazy state where believers sit and wait that the Lord will come and put them up on their feet! This is the most dangerous situation in which we can find ourselves, a disastrous state which opens their souls to the devil, his power and plans and intentions. If you have some experi­en­ces in this direction then you must know that one of the important tactics of the devil is to influence believers to stop fighting, to be active in their spirit and return into their laziness, and that either by his intimidation, harassment, pressures, sufferings or by any other means. Such believers then take a fatal attitude toward all things around themselves; they are taken out of the spiritual battle, out of spiritual work of prayers. They even stop active prayers and, in fact, begin to pray passive and negative prayers whereby they do not ask the Lord to help them do what is necessary, but that He Himself would do for them everything needful. But He will not come to us in our spiritual state like that and will not uplift us with His hand. He never comes to uplift us from our “sofa of passivity” to put us on our feet!

When Elijah sat under the tree in his affliction and despair, the Lord told him: “What doest thou here, Elijah?” (1Ki. 19:9b), saying in effect, stand up on your feet. The devil constantly generates activities to stop you in your spiritual movement, in walking and overcoming all problems and conflicts (Phil. 4:13) in order to put you into “the corner” so you could not be counted as a living Christ­ian any more, as a posi­ti­ve factor, as an effective help, as a servant of God and the brethren. You will still remain able to discuss the Bible and look outwardly as living, but you will be unable to DO ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING for any­body, not even for your own self. In that spiritual state you are dragging along your earthly life as a “leprous man on crutches”… and you are not aware of it! Because the devil covers even this activity of his behind a curtain of deceptions so you do not see your self as spirit­ually leprous on crutches, rather, you see yourself as a “wonderful Christian, trying to do your best”. When you are unable to find in your life any spiritual fruit, if you cannot find any sign of the Life of Christ in your spirit and soul, in your earthly life, then the above descri­bed situation may explain it for you very well and very correctly.

Is there a way out of this? Of course there is. You must begin to ask the Lord to strengthen you so that you in yourself would be able to stand up on your own feet and do yourself what the Lord desires that you would do! Then, and only then, the Lord will come with His Power and Might and will help you to do what you should do and cannot do without Him! THIS IS THE LAW OF OVERCOMING! Be strength­­ened by His Power and Might in your innermost man (Eph. 3:16), who is willing to walk and act!

The second fact, which is no less important, is the following. There exists a very definite and important difference between the soulish power and spiritual power! We are able to have a great power born from our soul and powered by our soul. Our soul may be very active, strong, even stunning and unbearable – and this is more dangerous than the spiritual passivity! This is also exposing us, uncovering our soul to the activity and plans of the devil and the result may be similar to that described under the first fact. This great­er danger rests in the fact that with our soul, which is strong rather than passive in itself, we can influence or even pressure others by forces, which bring evil and death and not good and life. In my book “Life out of Death” there is the whole chapter describing our Enemy #1, which is our, so call­ed, “good flesh”, good but naïve humanity, which dwells in our soul and produces evil and death (Rom. 7:18-21). The measure by which we live the Life of Christ is the same measure by which Satan lost its power in us as well as his influence on us.

The spiritual vision was already described in Part 7 of Tatry 2015. I would like to add here few very im­portant additional facts. The first fact is the following. The spiritual seeing is the most important and determining factor in all of our life as believers. Even a small gathering, as is also this fellowship, re­presents various degrees of the spiritual seeing. It may be a beginner’s seeing (as newborn can see) or it may be advanced seeing, which normally comes after some years of walking with the Lord and train­ing our spiritual senses (Heb. 5:14b). It is our born-again experience, which gives us the faculty of spirit­ual seeing, first in the “measure of a newborn” and then it should keep growing. The newborn does not know what he sees even though he can see, but he knows when someone enters the room though he may not recognize who it is. Unfortunately, this seeing of a newborn is all that many Christians have until their old age and it never grows, never develops, never matures. Such are also called “carnal Christians”. Whether they are young or middle-age or old, but one can see what kind of life they are living, how they behave, what dress or shoes they wear, what hairdo, what looks they portray, how they speak, etc. Why? Because, all these are according to this world and not according to the Lord. How good it is when, even after a short time in his Christian life, the believer says: “The Lord was leading me to change my beha­vior, my old habits, even my clothing, shoes, hairdo, also an inappropriate expressing of myself.” Such one will be able to see by his spiritual eyes what the Lord desires to have in him and what He does not desire. This is a clear spiritual progress, growth, advancement.

Have you been seeing mostly by your head only or also by your heart? Have you been seeing mostly by your soul, by your ratio­n­al reasons or emotions or also by your spirit? How have you been seeing? This fellow­ship will be a tragedy and a total failure if we will not be able to go home and say “I saw the Lord… I saw Him indeed, maybe I only saw some things, which He showed in me, but from now on I cannot remain the same. That seeing changed me and now I have to submit and conform to it.” THIS IS a norm­al life of believers! This is how it should be with every believer whose eyesight is developing and is becoming coordinated and able of spiritual discernment and understanding. Thus we shall be govern­ed and guided by our spiritual seeing in our behavior, manners, speaking, making deci­sions, in our prayers, in choos­ing our opportunities, possibilities, options, etc.

The devil seized the faculty of seeing from the woman when she “saw that the tree was good” (Gen. 3:6) even though she was looking at a wrong tree and maybe did not even notice the Tree of Life. The conse­quence of it was Death by blind­ness. The devil always tries to seize the faculty of eyesight not always by presenting ugly, abomi­nable or satanic things, but by presenting also nice things, changing danger­­ous things into attractive things, also by imitating Christ, imitating the truth, imitating the Angels of Light (2Cor. 11:13-15), etc.

Then how shall we escape into safety? How shall we know Who is Christ and who are antichrists, serv­ants of Satan among so many imitators? “The anointing which ye have received of Him remains in you and teaches you of all things...” (1Jn. 2:27). The Truth with its meaning, sense and significance is in us and is showing us that that thing, which can be as wonderful as it wants to be and which may have some truth in it­self, that that thing is dangerous and will lead you into a calamity, disaster, it will spiritually derail you! Therefore, we have in ourselves a warning light! Do we see it? Really? Why? Because, if we remain fools from the very beginning of our redemption, if we know nothing about the Lord, if we have no sense, no awareness about the Holy Spirit, then we are being kept in our grave or brought to it very easily and quickly. But if we see, discern and understand in spirit, that is wonderful. Then you can read also spiritual writ­ings, but your reading does not end by what you read – you will see far and deep beyond what you read because your spiritual seeing is not governed by any senses or organs of your soul! The Spirit of God Who dwells in us is that surest Guardian for our walking.

When we talk about the spiritual seeing, we must also talk about spiritual hearing! However, before we go further, we must mention a very important fact as follows. All our spiritual senses: eyesight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, are never sensed by our soul or body. We are not aware in ourselves whether we see, hear, taste, smell or touch something in spirit; we can detect these senses only in our own spirit, namely, in our conscience, which is one part of our spirit. I can be aware that I hear or see or smell some spirit, but I cannot define it in words or express it rationally. In fact, often we may not be aware that we “heard the voice of the Lord by our inner-spiritual ear”, but later on we might see the fruit of it. Maybe the best example is when the Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” (Rev. 3:20). Furthermore, to every church and every believer in chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, the Lord clearly says: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." (Rev. 2:7,11,17, 29+3:6,13,22). What does it mean? Firstly, this means that what is written in the text of Rev. chpt 2 and 3 is NOT everything what the Spirit is saying to us in those chapters. Hence, our mental understanding of these two chapters will NOT give us the spiritual picture of what the Spirit desires to give us through that written text! Secondly, the Lord, of course, means our inner-spiritual ear and not our physical ears which every­body had since with those ears nobody could hear the Spirit (Jn. 8:43). So, if the text would be preached to us and we would hear it with our ears, we would still not get what the Spirit would like to give us! Do we understand that? The Lord had His ear sanctified to hear His Father and what He heard in His spirit, that’s what He spoke with His tongue (Jn. 12:50). We should have our inner-spiritual ear turn­ed and tuned to the Spirit of God especially when we walk through problems.

Here, again, is a difference between the Old and the New Testament. Although in many passages of the Old Testament it is written: “Thus sayeth the Lord…” in the New Testament you will not find this ex­pression even once. Why? In the New Testament the Lord does not speak to us by words as He spoke to His Old Testament prophets, but He is “revealing” His Will and Mind to His New Testa­ment prophets. He is giving to us His Light in which He does not have to describe by words what is going on, what He desires from us or from others. But as in the Old Testament His people did not listen to His Word, nor answered Him when He was turning to them (Jer. 7:23-28 + 9:2-6), so it is just like that today when His people don’t consider His Light, nor do they answer Him for it! Therefore the Lord scattered His people of Israel among pagans and sent sword after them to destroy them, in fact, to be destroyed by the uncir­cu­­mcised heathen! (Jer. 9:16,25) In the New Testament, this “scattering” is for the Church represented by “spitting” out of the mouth of the Lord (Rev. 3:16), since the Church similarly rejects His Light (Voice) as Israel did it in the Old Testament.

I believe that hardly anyone from us, if anyone at all, remembers that he was able to “hear the voice of the Lord” when He was speaking to us “knocking on the door of our heart with His Word”. And yet, our inner-spiritual ear, which we already had at that time in our spirit, was able to hear His voice and our will began the process of opening of our heart to Him. With some believers this could have happened shortly after their water baptism, with many others it could have taken a long time. However, what we were real­ly able to perceive in our conscience from this “process” of hearing His voice and opening our heart is truly quest­ion­able. We should mention here that “His knocking on the door” is not actually knock­ing with a hand as we understand it, rather it is “knocking by His Word” which He is saying to us. The Lord says: “My knocking is My Voice, and My voice is what the Spirit says.” Whenever the Lord comes to us with the Word of His Spirit, He comes expecting our response, our answer, our expression regarding His Word, and He gets it very rarely.

Another truth is that our ear is no less important, than our eye. In fact, our inner-spiritual man is always influenced by both, our outer physical ear and eye. Adam and Eve had their inner-spiritual man connect­ed to the Life of God, nevertheless, it was their physical eye, which “saw that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was good”; and their physical ear, which was inclined to listen to Satan. It was actually the unrighteousness, iniquity, injustice of their physical eye and ear, which brought whole mankind into this tragedy! Hence, an extremely important fact should be mentioned right here at this place and it is the following: We can be born-­again having our inner New Man connected to the Life of God, but when we give our eye and incline our ear to Satan, we are just as able to produce a tragedy in our life and in the life of many people as Adam and Eve did! The objective of Satan is to seize not only our eye but also our ear, our thoughts and imagi­na­tions irrespective of how spirit­ual­ly mature we may be. Satan loves to speak with us all the time since his opportunities to deceive us are thereby multiplied. Perhaps, believers are not aware of the fact that as the Lord has problems with our free will, so also has Satan!

The Lord speaks only to those who appreciate the value of His Voice. If the Lord has our ear indeed, then we are able to minister to Him and to His children – and that not under pressure or under a sense of obligation or under some sense of our conscience. We should never moan or sigh and complain because we must minister to Him or that it is our burden, rather, it should be our joy, pleasure even delight to do His Will. If we love the Lord truly, if we really appreciate Him and His value for us, then we will gladly and thankfully give Him our eye and ear and will serve Him for ever and ever (Ex. 21:2-6).

 

PART  7  –  OUR WAR

Let us now look at our WAR. We all are in a war whether we like it or not, whether we are prepared to battle or not, whether we desire to win and save our life or to be defeated and die. We all are involved in this war because we all were born to this earth, to this sinful and defiled world where the kingdoms of Satan are ruling. Nobody likes war, pain and suffering which are always present in every war, nobody likes to battle, press forward, make efforts, and try to overcome whatever needs it, especially our own selves. On the contrary, we all prefer taking part in religious conferences where we can be comfortably seated, listening to interesting speeches, discussing interesting topics or to sit in churches and listen to interest­ing sermons where we are assured about our entry into the Kingdom of Heaven and about our Life Eternal irrespective of what we are doing or not doing. Are these activities more acceptable than to go to a war? Of course! In fact, we may not even understand why we have to battle, why is such a war necessary at all? Well, do we really understand the need for our war?

Well, the reason for this war is actually simple. As you know according to the Word of God, we are call­ed into an eternal fellowship with Our Lord Jesus Christ and with Our Heavenly Father. But if we are truly called into such a relationship, then we are actually called into a family relationship, kinship with a Heavenly Being with Whom we naturally have nothing in common, Who is totally different from us and to Whom we have to be “conformed” without any further questioning or discussions with Our Heav­en­ly Father! And THIS IS THAT SAME WORD used in the Scripture “to be conformed to the Image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). This is the Will of Our Father for every one of us! But how are we going to do that in confer­ences or in churches listening to interesting speech­es or sermons? After all, “conformed” also means “changed, transformed, reconstructed, reconstituted” beginning with our water baptism, isn’t it so? It is! But THIS IS A TERRIFIC BATTLE! Our natural old man in whom we were born and whom we know so well and in whom we have been living all our previous earthly life, he will actu­al­­ly NOT SURVIVE this change, this transforma­tion, this reconstruction! Hence, we are called into a terrible con­flict, into a war, and that every one of us who was redeemed! Those that were not redeemed, or they were but refused to battle and overcome their old man, all those will spend their eternity in the lake of fire and brimstone! (Rev. 3:5 + 20:14,15 + 21:7,8). Do you see it? The simple truth is that man born into this world is a “son of Satan” and he must be changed into a “son of God”! How do you want to achieve this without pain, suffering, war, without death and resurrection? This is impossible! We talk here about a comple­te reconstruction of our human being! Can you achieve this by some other painless, comfort­able way? For example, by attending religious services in churches? Or by studying the Bible? Or by reading religious literature on the sofa of your living room? Absolutely NOT! In reading the Bible or other reli­gious literature, you only get instructions for that war, but nothing else is happening to you.

We all are called to be soldiers in the Heavenly army. To be a soldier does not mean just to walk about in uniform and be admired, but be involved in everyday war, which begins in our INSIDE! Be­fore we can do anything OUTSIDE of us, this war must first be won in our INSIDE, in our spirit and soul which must be sufficiently cleansed and the powers of evil and darkness therein defeated (2Cor. 7:1). And this battle between our two natures, two characters, two constitutions, earthly and heavenly, must first install and establish our New Heavenly Man as a clear Victor. Other­wise, you cannot have any battles with ex­ternal powers of evil and darkness, nor can you have any authority over the powers of evil, over princi­pa­lities or rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12). We are not ready to fight every day, but whenever we suffer with a “fighting fatigue”, the Lord grants us a rest according to His Grace and Wisdom so we could gain new energy to continue. A great battle may not exhaust us as we expected or feared; sometimes smaller conflicts may cause us a prolonged agony or suffering. This is a part of the mystery of our spiritual warfare.

Let us now consider that war INSIDE and OUTSIDE of us. Israel positionally came out of Egypt, but Egypt had not come out of Israel… it remained INSIDE of them. This also means that at our redemption we positionally came out of the sphere of the power of Satan, but the power of Satan had not come out of us, but remained INSIDE of us! It took Israel 40 years in the wilderness during which time God tried to get Egypt out of them – but they failed in not allowing God to do such a great change in them. Hence, they perished in the wilderness not being reconstructed and “conformed” to the Image of Christ and thus not being prepared what was to follow – Promised Land, their rule in that Land, and Eternal Fellowship with God! It may also take about 40 years with many believers to overcome the power of Satan INSIDE of them, be reconstructed and at least sufficiently “conformed” to the Image of Christ and thus be pre­par­ed for what is to follow – The Kingdom of God, their rule therein and Eternal Fellowship with Christ and the Heavenly Father (Rev. 20:4). Too many believers are also failing here. They are perishing in this spiritual wild­er­ness of this world because they are not allowing God to do in them this great change. This is also the reason why many believers, being redeemed even many years, are unable to stand against the powers of evil in this world whether those powers are in them or outside of them. Many believers may, however, desire that the Spirit of God would govern their soul and give them authority over those powers of evil and darkness so that they would be prepared to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But they are not willing to begin to walk on the way, which leads to such a desire and authority and which the Lord had planned for them. This also applies to the Church, which is impotent to stand against the same powers of evil and darkness, which is not being prepared for His Coming and for their entry into the Kingdom of Heaven to rule there with Christ 1,000 years (Rev. 20:4b). On the contrary, these powers of evil and darkness are taking believers into captivity at their will and are deceiving the Church as they also deceive the entire world (2Tim. 2:26// Rev. 12:9).

Regarding today’s Church, in its position it is in a great measure in Corinth, which was a carnal church and not spiritual. Are we yet Corinthians? If we are, are we willing to change and gravitate to Colossians or Ephesians? It is a colossal gravitation and a tremendous crossing from the one to the other. We can’t even try to read, understand and truly rejoice from the letters to Colossians or Ephesians or even from other letters of the New Testament before we are completely out of Corinth. In other words, we can not go to the Ephesians or Colossians until we crossed from our position in the wilderness and were re­con­structed! This also means that we have no power over Satan while we remain on our natural soul­ish ground, while we remain in our wilderness, while we remain in the position of Corinthians. Let us un­derstand and remember for ever and ever that – the earthly is AGAINST the heavenly, that is to say, the NATURAL is against the SPIRITUAL. There exists a permanent and mutual enmity and that from the very beginning of mankind until now! (Example: Cain and Abel, Abraham and Lot, Isaac and Ishma­el, Jacob and Esau, Corinth and Ephesus, I described this so called “dual trend” in Tatry 2015). What is the most important in this entire war is the fact that our whole natural life, which we live on this earth, is to­tally AGAINST the spiritual and eternal Life, which we are to get from Christ. Until we begin to lose this natural life, which is spiritually dead, we cannot even begin to receive the Life of Christ.

Hence regarding this war, Satan does not mind how many churches and congregations and home gather­ing are there in the world, how much preaching is taking place therein, how many people are attending their services or masses or how much religious worship or other rituals are taking place there. Although in many places things with acceptable truthfulness or correctness may be preached, taught or discussed, however, no signs of spiritual life are manifested there, no energy of the Holy Spirit, everything is dead or it only flows from the soul and not from the spirit. Thus, the time flows and Satan is slowly and quiet­ly getting all of them in comfort and nice environment into spiritual death… and they are not even aware of it, nor do they perceive it.

The question now stands: On what way are you walking? Are you following your own way, which is dictated by your own interests and desires while you are ignoring the interests of God? Then look at Israel and see their position and end. The influence of the nature and that of God is clearly seen there. So, which way are you walking? According to my faith and experiences for the past about 46 years, there exist only individuals – so called Remnant – which are at least making effort to walk on the right way and follow God. The Church is in a horrible state and the world is deeply rooted in its inside cripp­ling it with worldly prosperity and by other stupid doctrines so the believers cannot move toward God and thus they cannot be any factor against Satan and his powers of evil and darkness. Why is it so? Believers have not been crucified, their flesh (humanism) was not even touched by the Cross and that is also why they have not even tasted in themselves the Victory of Christ. And just as Israel was one time paralyzed by one man – Achan (Jos. 7:1-26) – so also whichever church or sect or denomination, large or small or even a house church may be paralyzed by one disobedient man – until he/she is separated from the con­gregation. Thus even our own person may influence the whole Body of Christ and we may not even be aware of it until the Spirit of God shows us this fact. The main problem remains the same and it is – the separation, which must be done between the soul and spirit of every man. This inner sepa­ra­tion, as well as a “circumcision of heart” done without hands (Col. 2:10-11) must be carried out in order to bring us into the power of His Kingdom, and also over all the power of Satan.

We will not be built by knowledge, we will be built by love (Eph. 4:15-16). We will not be liberated by a mountain of wonderful teachings, we will be liberated by a mountain of wonderful grace. The direction of the life of believer should be such as to enlarge our appreciation of the Love and Grace of God, and this is also a test for us. If we really think that we are doing any spiritual progress but it does not reach in us greater and greater appreciation of the greatness of the Love and Grace of God, then it cannot be a true spiritual progress. The law of a spiritual progress is, in fact, the “Law of the Spirit of Life” (Rom. 8:2, 5-8,16). Very few born-again and baptized believers are able to perceive the Spirit of Life, being the Holy Spirit, which dwells in them, speaks to them and guides them into all truth and on the right ways. And even if they are able to perceive Him at least a little bit, but they understand Him nothing! Why? Well, the measure of our understanding the things of the Holy Spirit is directly proportional to the death of our natural mind! Especially in these last days before the End of the world, something must happen to us be­fore we would be able to understand the Holy Spirit as well as the Scriptures, since He is their Author. We cannot understand the Word of God just because we decided to study It, take a training course or en­roll into a seminary. We can understand the Word of God only according to the measure of our spiritual life. Carnal believers cannot understand the true meaning of the Word of God though they can under­stand it mentally. There exist many believers who take part in conferences and fellowships or courses in order to increase their knowledge and understanding, but this represents a danger. You see, this is pre­ci­sely as Eve and Adam were caught when Satan told them that “in the day that you will eat of this tree, your eyes shall be opened - you will know good and evil (Gen. 3:5) because it was the tree of knowledge! Had Adam or Eve asked Satan at least one simple question like: “How will it influence our life with God?” Satan would have become speechless… and we would not have to sit here today and speak about it. The value of the spiritual knowledge depends exactly on the fact, how it influences our life with God, how it increases the measure of the Life of Christ in us.

If Christ is the exposition of the Bible (and He is), then the increase of the spiritual knowledge of the Bible is the increase of Christ in us. In two weeks we will all go home with notebooks filled with notes and maybe you will be thinking that you received a mountain of knowledge, but if you would not be leaving with a greater measure of the Life of Christ, a greater Image of Christ within you, then this fellow­­ship failed! Therefore, I pray that the time of this fellowship would bring to us a spiritual increase and not only an intellectual increase. Everything must be judged according to how much it contributes to the Final Purpose of God. We may be asking: “Where does all this lead us? Does it lead us anywhere? All spiritual knowledge leads us to the increase of Christ in us; it contributes to the Final Purpose of God. Hence, the question should always be: “How much Life is in all that?” You see, to be sitting in a con­gregation, in a church or in this meeting room and be listening to the revelations of God’s Light is not a heavy work, not even a painful work. It is something similar to listening to lectures at a university, per­ceive them, understand them and remember the subject matter. But once it comes to a practical use of the subject matter, that is another song altogether; there we usually begin to travail and sweat. The same happens also here with the matter of acquiring the Light of the Lord, but applying that Light into our own life may be a “painful travail”. Sometimes it may even last a long time to do it.

Our war also has an unnatural side, it has its own peculiar, unusual even extravagant demands, which are in fact very unnatural and our position in that war is also very unnatural. This does not mean that we fight on a spiritual base and not on a natural base, but it means much more. Sometimes I go to such an unnatural, even extreme position as to compare our salvation to a suicide! We are to deny, abandon, de­stroy and cru­cify our existing earthly sinful life in order to change it for a sinless and a much better Life Eternal. Example? Even in our earthly natural life, it is absolutely unnatural, if not outright crazy, if any­one desires to know the thoughts, desires and purposes of some one else just so he could exchange his own will for the will of that other person, his own thoughts and desires and pur­poses for those of that other person! True? Hence, it is equally unnatural for a believer to desire to know the Will of God when he knows that once knowing It, believing It and accepting It, he will have to abandon his own will and accept God’s Will, which is totally different and in many cases absolutely opposite to his own will. Do we truly realize this fact? We do not have to do it, but keeping our own will brings us to the eternal con­dem­nation in the lake of fire and brim­­stone! So, our choice does become pretty clear, doesn’t it? I am not saying here that in the final stage of our sal­vation we will be disap­point­ed because we abandoned our own will, rather I am saying that we will find out that the Will of God is infinitely better, far more acceptable, wiser and useful for everyone of us than our human earthly will, which we abandoned. But today, we may not know much about it as yet, we may not even be able to imagine such life eternal or live it consciously being limited by our clocks and watches and calendars and schedules. So we must walk and decide by faith, which is to us another unnatural thing to do and live as our war is, until we discover the mystery how to do it… which usually takes years.

The purpose of this paragraph is to show the tragedy of the worldwide church where zealots are rush­ing to various seminars to study there, they pass their exams, then they rush home with their characters being unchanged in any way. Then they receive positions of pastors or preachers, they believe that they know the Bible, they are able to quote it, so, should you quote some verse, they are able to complete it for you. Then they believe that they are also able to preach the Bible and pastor their sheep. At the same time, they do not know the Lord at all and spiritually they know nothing! Is this not a tragedy? I am end­ing this paragraph with an important question: “How long do you want to walk according to the rea­son­­ing of your own mind?... according to your intellectual knowledge?” If you are a person who needs expla­nations for every little problem before you are ready to move forward by your faith, then you are like a “religiously educated pagan”. Do you understand what the Lord desires to tell us in this para­graph? If yes, then let us go on…

When we talk about Christ, do we talk only about an individual Being on the Throne of God? Or, is there something more here than just that? Well, this is just the beginning of our understanding, imagi­nation even of our ability to comprehend what the human being is actually not able to comprehend. Let us see that Christ is not just a separate individual Being, individual Entity, He is the Head of a Body – and this Head and this Body are made ONE by the Holy Spirit! And the Body consists of members, which members we are (that is, we should be!), and we – the Body – are made One with the Head, which is Christ (1Cor. 12:12-31). This is further confirmed by the Word of God, which says: “But he that is joined (united) unto the Lord is One Spirit.” (1Cor. 6:17). Furthermore, this unification is made by One Anointing of One Spirit of God upon One Head and One Body of Christ. And “Christ” also means the “Anointed One”, which we should all know by now.

Hence, the True Church becomes an anointed ONE vessel, the Body of Christ. Also, from verse 22 of Exodus, chapter 30, we may read about the holy oil, how it was made and used and how it should not be misused. That oil made all anointed things and persons holy, saintly, and whosoever just touched them, he/she also became holy. The very tent, tabernacle of the congregation was also anointed, hence, it was not just the congregation, believers, which were made holy, but also the place where they were gather­ed together became holy (Ex. 30:26)! Perhaps, we have not been aware of this fact up till now, but also today, here at this very place and now, we are anointed, sanctified, covered by the Spirit of God so that we are not exposed to Satan and to his evil and his deceptions and his lies and his death. But if I am truly anoin­ted also as an individual believer, then even if I leave this meeting room, I am not losing my anointing, my covering by the Holy Spirit. This fact also applies to ALL of us wherever on this planet we may be and live, if we live in this Body of Christ, where the Lord placed us. Maybe, when we finally realize some spiritual facts like this one, we will also begin to appreciate much more our anointing, our cover­ing by the Holy Spirit and will avoid to do anything what might disrupt our anointing, annul it or even lose it. We have to see and also understand that to lose our anoint­ing is possible just as it is possible to lose our salvation.

It should follow quite clearly from the above mentioned that our war is primarily in the inside of our being. Our enemy the devil wants to attack our whole being but chiefly our soul and body. In our soul, he is attacking our mind giving to us not only stupid thoughts, but also fraudulent ideas, which seem to be good, logical, wise even useful even though before God they may also be similarly stupid as those original ones. He also attacks our heart giving to it foolish feelings, he deceives it in manifold manners, inserts into it doubts and juggles it as much as he could. He also attacks our will trying to weaken it and turn it away from important decisions, chiefly our decisions for the Lord and His Will. He thus attacks our soul not only on its intellectual side, but on every side. If he is not very successful through lies and decept­ions, he reaches after his “spirit of death” to deaden our perceptions, discernments, live inte­rests in order to blunt our clear intentions or decisions, blot out our vision or bring us into doubts and laziness to continue what we have already previously decided to do, etc. We must thus be not only aware of the rich Light which the Lord is giving to us, but to begin to live it in our being.

THIS IS OUR WAR. I will tell you a shock: Do you know the Book of Revelation, chapter 12? In verse 7 it is written: And there was war in Heaven”! This alone should shock the whole Church as well as all believers, who are preparing to “go to Heaven” because there is supposed to be peace, joy and heavenly bliss! And now suddenly – there is a war? But the greatest shock they have probably never heard nor realized in their con­­science is that they – Christians – will have to overcome Satan by the Blood of Christ as well as by the WORD OF THEIR TESTIMONY so that he might be cast down from Heaven by Archangel Michael and his angels (Rev. 12:7-11). But, how do we want to overcome Satan when we are unable to over­­­come even our own laziness, foolish thoughts, opinions, habits and plans to our future?

And just as all this is the case directly with our soul, so it is also with our body. There are no doubts that the devil is attacking also our bodies. I am not saying that every physical sickness, every weakness or every tiredness is the work of the devil. However, wherever he finds weakness he can “hang up himself” on it and add to it as much as he can even if he could paralyze or cripple the person. Hence, the devil tries to intensify our ailments, ills, weaknesses and sicknesses so it would look like something natural and not provoked by him. Of course, wherever the Life of Christ rules, he cannot even touch it. This Divine Eternal Life has awesome power and potential, is much deeper than our physical life and also deeper than our own soulish life. Finally, let us note that the Lord can heal every sickness, but He will also allow us to have any sickness in order that our spirit would grow and not stagnate.

 

PART  8   –  OUR ORGANIC UNITY

What is “organic unity”? All that we should do is to look at our own body, which is a beautiful organic unity and that despite the fact that it has an unimaginable quantity of living cells, many members and organs and every such part of our body has its own important function. It is made an organic unity by the help of a double system of controls. One is the blood system, the other one is the nervous system. The blood system makes the body an active living unity. Stop the blood circulation in any part of your body, and in no time that part stops being a living and active component of the body and becomes lame or numb. The nervous system governs and controls every “needle point” of the whole physical body and, of course, its center is the head so that we cannot touch the smallest point on our body without touching the head and register that touch by the intelligence, which dwells in the head. If you do understand the brain and you take a needle and will go across the brain from one point to another, you will be able to sideline from activity whichever organ of your body you choose and make it insensiti­ve. Furthermore, though there exist in our body incalculable amount of microscopic organisms and cells like starts are in the sky – not even one of them lives and exists just for itself – not one! If some of those tiny cells stop living or func­tion and supply the body with what it needs, we simply get sick. Our perform­ance and abilities will be reduced. Every cell must take responsibility for the whole body because this is the Law of Creation! The body is created for fellowship and only in this way it can grow and increase.

Here we must mention two important parts, which hold the body together and secure its needs – joints and tendons (Col. 2:19// Eph. 4:16). They are living things and thus their character and work are life. If a ten­don is torn or injured, it cannot fulfill its function, what is worse, it will cripple the whole body, influ­en­ce its efficiency, ability and will limit its movements and activities. Furthermore, there are yet two other import­­ant things, which need to be considered – individuality and integrity. Even though we cannot ex­clude the in­dividuality as such, we must realize that no individual member or part or organ of the body can ever fulfill the purposes and goals of the whole body. One organ can’t do the work of another organ and thus a mutual cooperation is vitally important. Get rid of all your tendons and all the organs of your body will fall apart. Our life produces these tendons to hold the body together so that it can function pro­perly. The life of your body then becomes the most important question.

When we now speak about the Body of Christ, we should ask the question: Am I a joint, or a tendon? Maybe I am just a small piece of a muscle, or a piece of a nerve? What kind of a living contribution am I bringing into the Body? Am I at all some means for the enrichment of the Body of Christ? Absolutely! What am I bringing into the Body of Christ – Life or Death? Because, it is either the Life or Death, here is nothing else existing between these two. If I am not bringing to the Body Life, then automatically I am bringing there Death! Am I bringing into the Body only information or Life? For example, various tissues in our body are living and thus are suppliers of life and not of information. And all those living tissues are, in effect, “love in action”. Love in action may have different forms, it contributes chiefly to our spi­ritual life, to our enlargement, to our giving to the Lord from our own lives as we are also receiv­ing from the Lord into our lives (Eph. 4:15). This is not necessarily the question of our ministry to pub­­lic, rather it is a ministry to any small body where two or three are gathered in His Name and where He is in the midst of them (Mt. 18:20). In God’s Universe it requires myriads of individuals, persons and specia­l­ists in order to fulfill all the Purposes and Plans of Christ in His Body. As it is totally impossible for any medic­al doctor to under­stand and govern the life in human body, so it is impossible for any be­liever to under­stand and govern the Life in the Body of Christ. This fact can also show us the Wisdom and Power of Christ that are necessary to maintain His Body in a perfect state and health and Life.

Since the Body of Christ is the exact spiritual counterpart of our physical body, we can at least briefly describe its blood and nervous system in the spiritual sense as follows:

a)   Concerning the blood system, in place of the blood in the body, in our soul and spirit circulates the Life of Christ. If that Life is somewhere “strangulated” and its “circulation” interrupted, the unity of the Body is disturbed, suspended. For example, if only one of two members of the Body would sin, violate the spiritual law of the Life of God and thereby arrest its “circulation”, these two mem­bers would stumble to difficulties even to an impossibility to cooperate or help one another. For example, Achan (Jos. 7:1-26), one man out of Israel, stopped the advance of the whole Israel by viola­t­­­ing the commandment of God and thus the law of the Life and the whole Body-Israel was affected. Similarly it happened with Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). Hence, if we touch the Body of Christ the consequences may be horrible. The Lord Himself stated: “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” (Ps 105:15). If we take the interpretation of this Word into the New Testa­ment we will find out that it is related to the Unity of the Lord and the members of His Living Body under one anointing. We talk here about those who LIVE their New Man with his anointing and not only that they have Him “somewhere” in their spirit and live their old non-anointed life! Here, we must mention an extremely important fact, which is, that the sin against the living Body of Christ could also be the sin against the Holy Spirit because such a sin offends and dishonors the anointing of the Head and Body by the Holy Spirit! As we know, this sin is also called the “sin unto death” because it will never be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come (Mt. 12:31,32// 1Jn. 5:16) and that also means the loss of one’s salvation.

      To touch a living member of the Body of Christ is to touch the “apple of His eye” (Zech. 2:8). Let us repeat that here we do not talk about the carnal members of His Body who do not have the anoint­­ing nor do they live it. Disobedience toward the touch of the Holy Spirit upon us will have conse­quence that you will remain uncovered and without shelter in the House of God. “Failure to discern the Body of Christ” is comparable with the sin of presumption in the Old Testament, which was con­sidered a great transgression! (Ps. 19:12,13) The Unity of Christ and His living members who form His living Body is the basic revelation and declaration of the basic Truth. In the New Testa­ment, the Lord also said things, which pointed to this unity quite clearly, for example: “He that hear­eth you heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me…” (Lk. 10:16). Also: “Inasmuch as ye have done it (or not done it) unto one of the least of My brethren, ye have done it (or not done it) unto Me.” (Mt. 25:40-46). And such will go into the Life Eternal, but those that have not done it will go to everlasting punishment! Is this just a little trifle in the Scripture, which is not worthy to be even noticed? After all, our whole future is hanging on it, our whole life and eternal destiny! Is this preached in the Church? NEVER! Also, partaking in the Lord’s Supper, we may be eating and drinking damnation to ourselves not discerning the Lord’s Body and for this cause, many of us may be weak and sick and even dead (1Cor. 11:29,30).

 

b)   Concerning the nervous system, this is represented by the Holy Spirit. He is the Life as well as the Intelligence of our spiritual being. These two things cannot be separated even though there is a dif­ference between them. The Holy Spirit is the Intelligence of this unity; it is, as it were, the “nervous system” by which we are being made aware of all things in our whole body. Similarly we also have the Intelligence of the whole Body of Christ. Let us realize how important it is to have spiritual in­telligence so that the Body of Christ would function perfectly. But there exists a difference bet­ween a congregation and a body. Congregation is a gathering together of religious individuals with their individual hearts and minds and wills and spirits. They all live their individual lives and may be totally different and among themselves there may not exist any unity in any sense of the word, and that in nothing. They all live their lives for themselves while we cannot live our spiritual life for ourselves. Whenever we occupy ourselves just with ourselves, we are transgressing the law of Life which is also valid and directed toward the others in His Body. His Life works in two directions, which are not contradictory, namely, (1) from individual member to the whole Body, and (2) from the other members of the Body into that individual member. If you separate yourself from the Body, you separate yourself from your Life. Life always needs fellowship. Separate yourselves from the fellowship, close yourselves into yourselves and for yourselves, and you will separate yourselves from the very stream of your Life. Therefore, pay attention and make effort against everything what the devil would bring between you and the other saints. Are these above quoted facts important for our earthly Christian life?

 

PART   9   –  OUR ANOINTING AND MINISTRY

Well, let us now say something about our anointing. The anointing in you will tell you, where the true anointing is and where it is not. The true anointing is just one and it recognizes its own picture and charac­ter. Some man or some religious system comes and is posing as if it was Christ, the Anointed One, but that man or that system IS NOT anointed. How will you know that the anointing is not there? By that anointing, which is in you and is one anointing which has no relationship, connection or fellow­ship with that other one. And when the true anointing is present, the anointing in you will be going out stream­­ing toward him spontaneously. This is something that only the anointed believers have and live, some­thing that we cannot define rationally, something that is not mental. You will not be able to sit down and  write on a piece of paper exactly where the antichrist is wrong, but your anointing will give you an instant awareness that here stands before you antichrist. And you will know that before you would start pondering and judging and analyzing and researching.

Furthermore, the anointing is supposed to bring to us the Intelligence of the Lord’s Mind. This is what Paul meant when he said: “We have the mind of Christ” (1Cor. 2:16b). How do we have the Mind of Christ? Not only in the fact that our mind is renewed in the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:23), but also in its anoint­ing! This does not mean that now we know the Mind of Christ in every detail regarding our life or the lives of others. But when we walk in the Spirit and our anointing is “functioning”, which means, we live it, we know it. When we step out or try to step out outside of the borders of the plans or times of the Lord, the Spirit will not go with us and we shall know that we are going or trying to go according to our plan and time and no the Lord’s. This is comparatively simple, but true. The Spirit of the Lord will simply “not suffer, not accept, not allow us” our steps, which will mean that they are not in the Will of the Lord for us at that time or in that direction. Hence, the Intelligence of our anointing by the Holy Spirit will give us the same under­stand­ing of the Mind of Christ with respect to the same specific matter in our life, the same specific de­cisions or specific walking in our life.

However, our anointing can also give us the understanding of general things of God, even the facts of His Creation. Whenever we read the Bible, whenever we pray or meditate, we should always understand the following facts: The Heavenly things always govern all earthly things; unseen things always govern all seen things; spiritual things always govern all worldly secular things; general things always govern all local specific things. Hence, when I pray that something should take place on earth, that must first take place in Heaven at some time and in some manner. And if there are obstacles in Heaven against the possibility of that thing taking place on earth, I must wait. And what obstacles may there be in Heaven? As we know, without the Lord nothing can happen in Heaven, also, nothing can be allow­ed to happen. The Lord sits on the Throne of Heaven and rules all heavenly things since after His resur­rection, He received from the Father ALL POWER in Heaven and on earth (Mt. 28:18). He rules over the earthly things through the Heaven­ly things, or He is allowing the earthly things to happen. What should per­sonally interest us is another fact, namely, that every hour of every day of every month of every year of our earth­ly life the Lord continually weighs, judges our spirits! (Pr. 16:2) He judges-assesses all the spirits that are in our spirit and soul; what they are, where do they come from and in what state they are. And when He sees that, for example, our heart is not in the spiritual state required for the receiving of His an­swer to our prayer, then THIS represents an obstacle in Heaven, which must be removed, elimi­na­ted be­fore His answer to the earthly matter is given.

What I am going to declare now should shake our whole personality. The Spirit of God has gathered us here for the Glory of Christ, Our Saviour, Lord and King, and He anointed in us everything what we have receiv­ed from Him from our redemption, and united it with Himself and that by One Anointing. He has also anointed this place where we are gathered because this place contains in itself the treasure for which Christ died and rose from the dead and is seated on the Throne of Heaven. And the Anointing that Christ has is the same which we now have, it was given to us and it unites us into One… IF we are truly members of this living Body of Christ! In other words, the Lord’s prayer, which was answered by His Father on Calvary, is now fulfilled in us (Jn. 17:11,21). Which one of us can perceive this marvelous and tremendous fact in his spirit? This truth should shake your whole soul to its foundation, the whole heart, mind and also your will. The Anointing which you have received from the Holy Spirit remains in you, it will teach you all things, it will give you self-confidence as well as testimony that now are you sons and daught­ers of God, that you have His covering and as such, you should cleanse yourselves as Christ is also clean! (1Jn. 2:27,28 + 3:2,3// 2Cor. 7:1)

Every born-again and baptized believer who started to go on unto perfection (Heb. 6:1) had received the anointing from the Holy Spirit in his New Man, which was born from God and was given to the spirit of that believer. Our old man has absolutely no­thing in common with our anointing. When that believer begins to walk and live in the Holy Spirit and grow into Christ in all things (Eph. 4:15), his anointing grows with his New Man and with it his ability to serve God and His Church. Carnal Christians have no anointing and thus they cannot serve God or any­body else. We all have received the same anointing, which means that personal anointing for a personal use does not exist. The Holy Spirit is not dividing Himself into as many parts as there are believers. We are receiving our anointing as we are coming into the Body of Christ and under the sovereign rule of the Head – the Lord Jesus Christ. This anointing is potentially for everyone but only on the basis of a corporate and “organic unity” with Christ as the Head. Hence, the anointing is one and not many anoint­ings. God never accepts spiritual autonomy, indepen­den­ce or separation. The effort of the Holy Spirit is always directed toward fellowship and unity while the effort of the devil is always to divide, to be separate chiefly from those that have the Life of Christ, and to be totally independent from the others.

When we speak about the anointing, we of course speak also about Life, because anointing is, as it were, a part of Life of God. It is the Holy Spirit, Who grants the anointing and it is the Holy Spirit, Who is the “Bearer of Life of God”. Hence, the anointing is not only making us able to minister according to the call­­ing of Christ, but it is also enabling us to minister Life and not death! Therefore, if someone does not demonstrate the signs of the Life of Christ, then he either does not have the anointing, or does not use it or he is not even aware of it. The Spirit of God also gives to the believers His gifts (1Cor. 12:1-11), but the believer that uses His gifts may not be necessarily spiritually living and thus ministering the Life of Christ. Though His gifts are called “spiritual”, but not because the recipients are spiritual, but because the gifts come from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is always a grave error to judge or measure the spirit­ual­ity of a believer according to the presence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in his life. 

That believer, who has the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) has the Life of Christ in himself because the fruit grows out of the Spirit of Life, but His gifts are not growing out from His Life. The most important fruit of the Spirit is love, therefore, without love the ministry of life does not exist! Apostle Paul shows us that for a perfect edification of the Church God uses love and not the gifts of the Spirit. We can grow up into Christ in all things, which means, grow to perfection only by “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). The gifts of the Spirit have their purpose and, according to Paul, we ought to desire the best gifts of the Spirit; and yet, Paul is also showing us “a more excellent way” (1Cor. 12:31) in the follow­ing chapter thirteen of the First Corinthians where he is showing a beautiful picture of the true love.

The goal of our ministry to the Lord and His Church is that we would become spiritual believers which live the Life of Christ and not be just believers which are endlessly taught doctrines so they can speak or preach the right words even understand what they preach; even explain biblical things to others. What is truly important before God is: who we are in our spirit and not what we know in our head or what we speak or preach or do. If I preach or teach what I do not live myself, then my ministry before God has no value and nothing acceptable will come out of it. What then may happen quite often is that believers may find a certain help from their gifts, but they are at the same time hampered – limited by what they are in their spirit. The Spirit gives gifts – God gives people. To understand doctrine and to know God are two totally separate things! We often prefer good words – God prefers good hearts! Hence, some serv­ants speak and we may receive help, some others speak the same words, but we remain empty, and quite often also disillusioned, disappointed. The difference rests in the servants themselves. We cannot de­ceive the true Church of Christ by intellectual values instead of spiritual values. Without Christ the gifts are not only empty, but they may also be misleading, false, and illusory.

Too many servants of Christ are deceived in themselves in how they judge their ministry, its values and importance for the Church. Although on one hand we should take every opportunity to study and educa­te ourselves in the things of the Word of God, but we will never find our ministry to the Church in this alone. Here the preachers are in a specific danger since the majority of them keep seeking new light in the Scripture, new attractive topics for their sermons, but the way to minister the Scriptures is not found in this direction. It is not seeking, studying or comparing with others, but it is at the places where we ex­perience problems, conflicts, despair, hopelessness and similar sufferings where God is giving us Life. Our ministry of Life is usually established through unusual experiences with Christ and it is usually in test­­ing our faith what brings us across such above mentioned experiences. I do not know whether the follo­wing truth will be fully understood, but I must say that the simplest and most important password, which is valid for the servant, who is being called by the Lord to His ministry without great problems, is: “Death working in the servant of God produces Life in himself and in others”! (2Cor. 4:11,12) And since this servant now has Life, those to whom he will minister will also have Life. Hence, the Church is get­ting Life because some are willing to deny their old man and carry their cross (Mt. 16:24). And those that are willing to pay this price are being called into this priceless ministry since Life is only obtained and released through the death of our old life of the old man.

There exist only two kinds of ministry for the building up of the Body of Christ – gifts and Life. We must not be surprised when we find out that the highest goal of the Lord is not gifts, but Life. The gifts, of course, have their own significance especially at the beginning of our Christian walk even though the whole multitudes of Christians have no clue, what gifts were given to them at their redemption, nor do they have any interest to find that out and minister by them. True? But the gifts themselves do not live, nor do they bring Life. In fact, Satan does not fight against the gifts of the Spirit, he fights against any Life in the Church, and fights against it by his Death. His attack against the living believers is his Death! God destroyed Death through Christ at His resurrection, but the Death was not destroyed as yet in the whole Creation. It is written that our last enemy, which shall be destroyed, is Death! (1Cor. 15:26) Ever since the resurrection of His Son, God desires to use the Church as a vessel of Life, but the Church failed also in this direction. Even today Satan is sowing death in the Church and in every believer, which does not fight, but is casually receiving his death as something essential and natural. The matter of fact is that sin is only a road to death, but death is the destination of that road. Hence, when we sin, we are on the road to death, but the Lord clearly stated that the Church, which He is building, though it will be attacked by Satan and his Death, yet those powers of evil and plans of the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Mt. 16:18). This Word of God however indicates a continuing campaign of the powers of hell to strangle, suffo­ca­te the Life of Christ in every believer! There are very, very few believers, which realize during their Christian life on earth that to be just passive concerning the spiritual life means to be an acti­ve dissemi­nator of the spiritual death!

There is no greater propagator of death then scandal, criticism, stupidity, chaos or disobedience toward the Spirit of God. When God wants us to remain where we are, but our feet continue walking, when He desires us to be quiet, but our tongue runs full speed, hence, whenever we speak though God does not demand it, we can always be sure that death is in our words. Thus, whenever we bring our flesh, even our so called “good flesh” or “neutral flesh”, into the work of God, that always invites or attracts attacks of the gates of hell upon such work and we may not even be aware of the consequences of such attacks. Natural man may discern between warmness and coldness, good doctrine and bad doctrine, etc., but he will never discern between the spiritual life and death. There are multitudes of believers who think and are even persuaded that if there is evidently nothing bad happening in their church, then everything is all right. After all, this also applies to the home churches. But the inability to discern what is life and what is death is a fatal shortcoming; then we will never be aware when are we being attacked by hell! This also applies to the presence or absence of Life. For, if we are the Body of Christ, a living part of His Body, then when one member suffers, the other members suffer with him… not because they are try­ing to suffer or because they should be suffering, but because they suffer due to reality, without any other reason, which means, automatically. The same takes place in our physical body, when some member is in pain the whole body suffers because it realizes the pain though other members may be healthy.                                

Should you ask me a question, how can you be an effective minister of Life for the Body of Christ, then I have a very simple answer, if you permit, and the answer is: that the Cross would operate in your life in the normal course of your daily life and in your walk with the Lord. Why? Because, the Life of Christ flows from the Cross where He died. If we refuse to die on the Cross to the old life in our soul, then His Life has no access to us and cannot flow into our soul… and we are remaining the same as we were before our redemption (2Cor. 4:12). Here we talk about the death of those ­“virtues” of our flesh, which are absolutely unacceptable to God, hence, they should be unacceptable also to us, like, pride, arrogan­ce, selfishness, self-righteousness, laziness, fear, vanity, envy, hate, unwillingness to open ones heart to Christ, receive from Him His Light and Truth, disobedience toward His Word, etc. When these, so call­ed, “virtues” die, they are replaced by the “virtues” grown in the fruit of the Holy Spirit. This change of “virtues” cannot be achieved by any prayer or fasting or studying of the Bible or by any other religious ways, only by death, which is our separation from our flesh. Hence, the ministry in the Body of Christ is not only the question of preaching, teaching, praying or testimonies. What we go through with the Lord in a hidden way, intimately, confidentially, is often quite sufficient to minister Life to the mem­bers of His Body. Even if we suffer because of the Lord, that suffering may bring a further growth to others even without us publicizing the history of our suffering. Therefore, the question of our spiritual progress and growth and the preparation for the Coming of Christ is not in our much speaking, teaching, preach­ing or listening, but also in how many things we are going through under the hand of God. Be­cause, our fellowship here is rather like a “theory” and then a “practice” waits for us, which the Spirit of God always secures for us. And whether that practice will suit us or not, even that will not matter; what will matter is whether we love God or not (Rom. 8:28).

When we speak here about our anointing, about our ministry toward others, whether they are strangers or members of our own family, we must note the question of discipleship. The chief facts (which are never preached nor explained in any church) are clearly indicated in the words of the Lord (Lk. 14:25-35// Phil. 3:10-13). In the Gospel of Luke, the Lord puts salt in connection with discipleship, even with the character of our relationship with Himself. It is written in verse 25: “And there went great multitudes with Him”. In other words, there existed a certain form of following Christ, certain interest, certain sentimental rela­tionship or a certain pretended devotion toward Him; some of them even took upon themselves the name of the follower of Jesus Christ. But the Lord says that the only thing that has here substantiation is disci­ple­ship. That is the only thing that truly satisfies His heart and points to the right relationship with Him. Hence, the Lord seeks disciples and not followers, nor multitudes. He that builds a tower… will he finish it? The king that goes to a war… will he win it?  

The Lord gives here examples where, in order to reach success, it is needful to pay any price and be de­voted to our goal with everything that is in us. Here the Lord is thorough, literary meticulous, even dras­tic, where He declares clearly that unless our relationship with Him is such that HE IS MORE than who­ever else (mother, father, brother, sister, even our own life), where our knowledge of HIM IS MORE than anything else in our life, that HE always represents MORE than anything else – we cannot be His disciples and cannot have success in anything what we undertake! In such a case, we will also be a “salt of the earth”, which has not lost all its saltiness and is thus good only to be thrown on a dunghill, but we will be effective against corruption and death (2Ki. 2:20-22). Christ seeks also among us such that will be the real salt and will put in front of Christ NOTHING what they would consider more valuable or more useful or wiser or better.

The Lord said: “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Mt. 11:29) This is the only effective relationship with Christ where we can learn about Him, grow in meekness and humility and simultaneously gain peace in our souls. But this also demands discipline, which our natural being does not have; therefore, it has to learn it and also to bear it. This way we will at the same time start to appreciate not only what Christ has done for the sal­vation of man, but also WHO HE IS in the eyes of God the Father, what intentions God has in Christ, what position He has in the whole Creation, which means, with WHOM we actually have to do! When our knowledge does not include these living facts about His Personality then they are dead and have no value. Perhaps, we received great quantities of knowledge during our Christian life, the question is: what is their value? Is there in them an element of life and effectiveness that is able to change human beings or to help them spiritually? The answer to these questions should be whether we belong to the multitu­des or are we His disciples. The multitudes keep living their natural earthly life that has no spi­ritual value and they will lose it anyway, while disciples are getting and living the Life Eternal, Life which is indes­truct­­ible and has an enormous value. That it is not free of cost, it is clear.

My question is: How much approximately would you pay for your Life Eternal? Do you have any esti­mate at all how much it could be? According to the measures of this world, our knowledge is very pre­cious, that is, until we know Christ Personally. When Apostle Paul started to know Him in a living way, he also started to see the real worthlessness of what he gained before his living knowledge of Christ. That is why in his letter to Philippians he expressed this fact by saying: “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ… and I do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.” (Phil. 3:7-8) Apostle Paul was after a time able to see those “precious things of his” as garbage in the Light of his knowing the Person of Christ. While we will never reach the level of Apostle Paul during our earthly life, yet I write these things as principles, which apply to every believer. Therefore, the usefulness of our Christian life as well as bringing the fruit depend absolutely on the measure of the living knowledge of the Person of Christ and not on what we hear at our gatherings like this one, or in churches, but what will become the life of our being out of all that. I myself knew the Person of Christ only from reading the Bible, from sermons or from hearing, but my living knowledge of the Lord began only after He found­­ed a church in my house and I began to teach, preach and pastor others actively. It was during these act­ivi­ties that I started to “see and learn” Christ, His Character, Grace, Love, Wisdom, Power, etc. At the same time, I started to “see and learn” the depravity, foolishness and sinfulness of human beings.

Finally, let us remind ourselves and bring into view two words of the Lord. One is through the Apostle Paul, where he says: “I beseech you therefore, brethren… that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice …” (Rom. 12:1). What significance does it have to give our body to God? Paul in the matter of fact touch­es in this point of his letter our ministry to God. Our body is FOR God very needful, of course, and that in our contact with others here on earth. The unusual object of our body is our relationship with others as an instrument or vessel through which we may communicate with other believers (or even unbelievers) living spiritual knowledge of God’s Will. Although God can choose for His contact with man any other form or method, His main goal is to use man for the ministry of His Will and Mind and Purposes toward other people. This Word of God thus applies also to us and to our eventual ministry to others.

That second word is also through Apostle Paul where he says: “But speaking the truth in love may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ.” (Eph. 4:15) We are however not aware, even if we read this word and meditate on it, that truth and love are two things which are almost impo­s­sible to unite together and speak, preach or teach, that is, pure truth in pure love. Why? Let us consider the following: In the eyes of the Lord, none of us is without a spiritual defect, sin, weakness, various shortcomings, needs for correction, transformation, discipline, faith, wisdom, humility, diligence, vision, etc. On the other hand, take the real, veritable love and put these two things together! The problem is not so much that we may not have any love toward one another, nor that we do not know the truth in many areas of our life, which truth may even be bitter. Very often the problem is to minister both at the same time to the same person! I will give you a typical example from a marriage: One of you (either wife or husband) will tell you a radical stupidity or will accuse you falsely without verifying the facts or some­thing similar. The need for correction by expressing the truth is most needed especially when that truth is clear to you. But how do you want to minister that truth in love when you are about to make “a hole in the ceiling”? When your spirit is anything but loving or affectionate, rather, it is offended and ready “to kill”? Have you never had such experiences? Really? And if you have had such, do you see what I am here speaking about? According to my estimate, it is just a question of how many such “pleasant” inci­dents have happen­ed in your life. The conclusion, however, is sufficiently clear and simple: our human love does NOT have the required qualities and abilities to render such ministry to anyone to whom a bitter truth is to be ministered “in love” and who either offended us, shocked us or brought us to the edge of despair!

After all, let us look at ourselves and consider whether we are really such cute, loveable and attractive creatures, which are automatically and under all circumstances attracting pure love from others? Or by our charm and attractiveness, we have so impressed the Almighty God that He immediately decided to go to His office and begin to plan our Salvation because, according to Him, we deserved it even at the cost of the life of His Son? Really? I believe that should God have a human love, today we all would be sitting in the lake of fire and brimstone because according to Him we all were a band of incorrigible fools who understood nothing, were disobedient, sinned and did not even want from Him His Goodness, not even our Salvation! To our great fortune, God does not have human love, but Divine Love! Do you want to take at least a glimpse at His Love? If yes, then it is sufficient to just look at Israel.

It seems that God had chosen for Himself the most beautiful, loveable, most obedient and surely the most faithful nation on this planet. True? Really? During reading the Old Testament, your hair must be standing on your head whenever you read about the problems of God with Israel, about the prophets of Israel, who could be very happy should they die a natural death. It thus seems that when God chose Israel, He chose the exact opposite then what I wrote above. The history of Israel is a total cata­strophe of human relationships with God, their Creator and Saviour. It suffices to mention that this nation killed their own Messiah and they behaved toward Him like pigs! Should God have a human love and right­eousness and mercy, Hitler would have burnt not only 6 million Jews, but all of them to the last one! No nation needed from God literally endless patience, endless mercy, clemency, forbear­ance and a comp­let­ely unimagi­nable love! Every other nation hated them, yet, God says: “I will be the God to all the fami­lies of Israel, and they shall be My people… I have loved thee with an everlasting love; there­fore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” (Jer. 31:1+3) Whenever Israel repented and promised God their faith­fulness and obedience toward His Words, God made haste to forgive them while they were yet speaking and to bless them as never before. Hence, God often behaved toward them as if nothing evil had ever hap­pened. Read just few passages from prophet Jeremiah (ex. Jer. 9:16) and you will get almost exactly the oppo­­site picture of the love of God toward Israel! (Death by sword was mercy & love compared to a life of torture). Despite that fact, He again gathered them from around the whole world and gave them again their land and home. This is the Love of God, which is not affect­ed, influenced or ruined by evil! Our human love is influenced and ruined by evil, and evil can change it even into hatred, fast!

We called this part “OUR ANOINTING AND MINISTRY” and from this title it would seem that as soon as we have the anointing, we can minister. Well, we can, but the question will remain how effect­ive our ministry shall be, what usefulness it shall have for the Lord? Why? Because the decisive and ab­solutely indispensable factor for the usefulness, and thus also the effectiveness of our ministry to the Lord is our “spiritual capacity”. It is the basic principle of our ministry and also the measure of our ferti­lity for bringing fruit. The value of our ministry to the Lord depends on the measure of our spiritual ca­pa­city. Right at the beginning we must note that here it is the matter of “spiritual capacity” and not of our “natural capacity”. There exist people who naturally have a strong, clear and educated mind, they are able to control even govern others, they can speak or explain things persuasively, defend their posi­tions, coax other people, etc. When such ones will enter the sphere of spiritual things or God’s Truth, they can grab the truth analytically or comprehensively, remember it, use it for their own purposes more than for the Lord. This, however, is not, nor has ever been, the “spiritual capacity”.

Spiritual capacity is not gained by studies, intellectual meditation, discussions, debates, analyzing or ex­chang­ing of opinions or by any other such means. Spiritual capacity is gained and is enlarged only by afflictions, sufferings, physical or soulish or spiritual pains. Spiritual values do not begin by what we know or what we are able to talk about even whole hours or by what we are able to do, but by that what WE ARE in our spirit. And this is clearly shown only when we are in a fire, whatever that “fire” may be or mean for us, because, “fire” may mean various things for various believers. What is fire for me does not have to be a fire for you. This means that what I can go through without some sufferings, afflictions or worries, you may not go through at all; and what you may go through easily, through that I might not go at all. Hence, if fire is an individual thing and depends on the character and the spiritual needs of that individual, in the same way, the spiritual capacity is individual and also depends on the character and the spiritual needs of that individual. Then how the Lord enlarges that capacity and on what principle? What is the purpose of every suffering, affliction or of every test? It is faith! (1Pet. 1:5-7) Let us never forget that every suffering, affliction, overcoming, every test that God allows, every “crumb” of testing by fire to which we are subjected according to His allowance has as its goal the same purpose – it is always the  question of our faith!

In the New Testament, God as it were “hanged” everything on one word, and that word is faith. Since faith is the basis of our Salvation and of the whole New Testament, then it should be obvious to us that Satan works primarily on the basis of unbelief, faithlessness. Now, unbelief is essentially an inability to trust God! But the inability to trust is also the inability to receive whatever the Lord is giving to us. And the inability to receive rests in the lack of training, exercise, movement, development, usage of our spi­ri­t­ual senses, perception, understanding, discernment of spiritual matters or phenomena or factors of real­ity. Apostle Paul also joins the lack of training, exercise, movement, development, usage of our spi­ri­t­ual senses with our spiritual capacity and thus also with the measure of our spiritual maturity (Heb. 5:12-14). Children, who did not develop their senses, can only receive milk. Adults, who developed, moved, exer­cised and trained their senses, can receive solid food. You may ask yourselves how is it with your exer­cise, movement, development and usage of your spiritual capacity and growth? Do you truly use your spiritual senses and spiritual talent that the Lord had given to you, as you should? Do you have a habit just to fly through what the Lord gave just on its surface, or you go deeper into the Light that He gave? Are you able to discern and spiritually understand that Light and that not only generally, but also in its applicability to your own person? Do you often speak about yourself or mostly about others? You see, it seems that we know about others everything, we also know all their shortcomings, needs and weak­­ness­es, but about ourselves we apparently know nothing! We are usually ashamed to talk about what we may know about ourselves. Do you sometimes come with this Light to the Lord, also with quest­ions, which should enlarge your own spiritual capacity as well as your living knowledge of His Person­ality? After all, this is the purpose of that Light. Of course, these questions must be answered by you.

 

PART   10   –   OUR WORKS

The Lord has foreknowledge so He knows the timing for every thing, we do not know it. He also knows whether His answer will ever come to us… because our heart may never be subjected to Him and may not agree with doing what the Lord will demand before He answers our prayer. Example? You feel that you are naïve and foolish or simply you are lacking wisdom, so you ask wisdom from the Lord accord­ing to His Word (Jam. 1:5). But the wisdom is not coming! Then you open the Bible again and find out that verse 5 continues by verse 6 and 7. But the wisdom is still not coming though you may believe that you have the necessary faith. If you do desire that wisdom desperately, you will return to the Bible and there, a little further on, you will read: “God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble.” (Jam. 4:6). Hence, while there is pride in your heart or head, the Lord will give you nothing… and that includes wisdom. When He resists you, then He cannot give you anything. So, a proud man may pray day and night and will receive nothing! How do you see yourselves in this light? Do you have any experiences in this matter? And do you really believe that the Lord desires that you continue with those impotent and unans­wered prayers? Well, NO. But if you do not even wait for His answers or instructions, you will never become righteous and will never pray effective prayers of a righteous man that avail much (Jam. 5:16). The same applies to the Church, which is proud, self-righteous, “it knows everything”, it needs no­bo­dy who would have something to say, even though the Church is wretched, miserable, poor and blind and naked (Rev. 3:17). That is why it totally failed! It has also become a worldly system, something in it­self and thus it has lost its heavenly position and significance. Today, the Church has NO VALUE! It is worse than the House of Israel, because Israel never had in itself the Holy Spirit as the Church has!

Thusly speaks brother Hanola because my Lord speaks thusly. Listen what the Lord says to Ezekiel: Son of man, go to the house of Israel and tell them MY WORDS… but the House of Israel will not listen to you; for they will not listen even to ME; for all the house of Israel is impudent and hardhearted.” (Ez. 3:4-7).

And now, listen to me, because this is also my Testimony before the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is what I testify – the same Word transferred from the Old Testament to the New testament: “Son of man, go to the CHURCH and speak to them MY WORDS… but the CHURCH will not listen to you; for they will not listen even to ME; for the whole CHURCH is impudent and hardhearted.” (Ez. 3:4-7). And let this Truth of God is published throughout the whole Church since it also explains the Word of God in the Book of Revelation 3:16-19.

All preachers should have important messages for these times of the End of the world. The Bible teach­ings should be messages for this present time and the coming End of this world and all things in it. They should show what God is going to do now and not only with this wicked world, but also with the wicked and proud believers. There must be a great urgency of a truthful preaching in churches, which preach­­ing must replace empty religious words that have no meaning and no importance and which do not show the way out of this Babylon. There are great problems here standing in front of us and the preachers must re­alize that they influence human lives for eternity! The blood of multitudes of believers will be required from their hands!... (Rev. 19:2) and that by the Person, Whom they call “the Lord” and Whom they do not know at all! I call this a true TRAGEDY OF THE CHURCH! (read my book “The Tragedy and Glory of Believers” and understand the Tragedy which is coming at a speed of a tornado). I must furthermore testify and say that I am not in this ministry because I chose it or because I would have in my person “inborn” qualifications for this ministry. I am in this ministry because the hand of the Lord is upon me, be­cause He called me and also anointed me for this ministry. Should I take myself out from this ministry and stop ministering, that would mean that I took myself out of the hand of the Lord – and this I will never do. He had given me a message for this time of the End of this world and for this situation and His Word is like a fire in my bones. That’s why I am preaching it… though I can change nobody, because I cannot change even myself.

Now I have to pronounce a very important spiritual fact, which is not understood by the believers in a sufficient depth and thus not appreciated. In this situation of a moral decline, negligence, disobedience, indifference, lukewarmness and the coming destruction, God has to start with something new, something pure even if it would be something small, like as a small child. God will not heal a sickness when that sick­ness is moral or full of disobedience, negligence or lukewarmness, but He will prepare a new birth. God had not healed Lazarus, but left him to die and began again with his resurrection (Jn.11:39-44, Lazarus re­presented Israel!) This is the fact and a God’s Law.

He will never heal the old creation, but will begin with a new, clean, pure creation and teaches that new creation to hear His voice. This reminds me of Sam­uel, newborn pure child and then, when it was taken to the sanctuary, the first thing that the Lord taught him was to know His voice, discern the voice of God from the voice of man (1Sam. 3:1-12). The voice of man includes in itself his reasoning, desires, plans, emotions, his will and affections and his con­victions and thus his sinfulness, as well. There exist many voices of many people, but the Voice of God is only one and is very different. It is not possible to define it or explain it, but we know that THIS is the Voice of the Lord. In the Old Testament, Samuel heard the Voice of the Lord by his physical ears (1Sam. 3:1-8). In the New Testament, we are normally discovering and identifying His Voice in our con­scious­ness, where is our “inner” spiritual ear. Unless we have learn­ed to discern the Voice of the Lord, we can never serve Him to His people and our usefulness to the Lord and believers will remain at zero. This spiritual fact is almost unknown to many believers as well as to many of their leaders.

And then we have to learn to know the Mind of the Lord, which means, to understand His Voice, what is He saying, to whom and why. His words are proceeding out of His Mind and we hear them by our inner spiritual ear, and then we have to understand them. You learned a lot, you have a mountain of Light, but the Lord has not come just to see how much Light we have received or how much Truth we have receiv­ed and believ­ed. He has come to see what reality that Light and Truth have become in our own life! He can say: “I know… I know… I know everything about this or that… I know what you believe, what you are talking about, what you are discussing, speaking, professing… but I want to know how much of all that has become your real life, your real being and what of this all has become for you the true question of you life and death?” So that I would not have to tell you: “You have a name that you live, and are dead” (Rev. 3:1b). Because THIS is for the believers a continual danger whenever the Light from the Lord comes, that they are not taking it with the required seriousness and consistency, and the result of that Light is then zero! The Lord is giving to us this Light because it is written clearly in the Scripture that “Herein is My Father glorified that ye bear much fruit…” (Jn. 15:8a) He is NOT glorified that you have a lot of knowledge and know a lot of Truth. We can bring fruit only when our reaction to His Light is not just a mental agreement, nodding our head, consent or only a delight or pleasure of our soul from that Light, but receiving that Light into our very being. Because that Light has the Power to change our earthly life to a life sanctified, which alone can bring fruit acceptable to God. Our mind or emotions do not bring to God any fruit!

The twelve disciples were with the Lord during His ministry on earth for 3½ years and they had the pri­vi­lege to experience the Light, Truth and Life of the Son of God in His Presence. They were also witnes­s­­es of all His miracles as well as His Resurrection. But nothing of this has changed their spirit and thus their old life. They were not being changed to His Image in no direction and no way and thus could not bring to God any acceptable fruit! It needed their subsequent experiences in the world with testing and sufferings during their ministry, which started to change them in their spirit, enabled them to see, hear and understand in their hearts and spirit and thus to change their life. The same applies also to us. We are not being changed to His Image, which is the main Purpose of the Father in Heaven (Rom. 8:29) be­cause we are exposed to the Light and the Truth of His Word or to many good sermons. They are the pressures upon our old life, sufferings, conflicts, our reactions to the problems and the decisions of our will, which may have far-reaching consequences, and our warring in general through which we have to go – these are changing us either to His Image and bring us into joy, or they do not change us and bring us into perdition.

Therefore I repeat, the Lord is questioning us concerning the Light and Truth, which we received, which could have been a fabulous doctrine or fabulous revelation, maybe even much more, then what others have ever received. The Lord is questioning us how much of it has become our Life? The final goal and purpose and desire of Our Heavenly Father is not that we would only have Life, but no fruit. Even the branches of the vine – Christ – suck and absorb His Life and grow, but they have no fruit! Hence, they are cut out, taken away from Christ by the Husbandman – by the Heavenly Father and there they wither, and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned! (Jn. 15:1-6, this we have already mentioned in Part 2)

The Lord can ask us vitally important questions, which may begin with the absorption of His Light into our being, then continue by the measure of the Life, which that Light produced in our being in denying our old life in us and overcoming it, and ending with the fruit, which grew out of that Life in us. Then the Lord will present this vitally important matter on our personal level and will say to us: “If anyone hears… if anyone overcomes… I will give to him…” This is the true sense and conclusion of His quest­ions, appeals as well as expectations. The Basic Fact of this paragraph rests in this that the Will, Desire and Glory of Our Father is attached to the fruitfulness of our Life!

Now we will say important spiritual things that are vividly joined with the above paragraph. The fruit­ful­­ness of a believer is related to the Word of God. The whole Bible is based on Life, that is, on the Tree of Life and its fruit of Life and not of Death, that is, on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and its fruit of death! From Genesis to the Book of Revelation it deals about nothing else but the Life and Death, how to gain Life Eternal and how to end up in Death Eternal (Deut. 30:15+19// Mt. 7:13,14). Life can always be recognized by its fruit which brings life, and Death can also be recognized by its fruit that brings death. Hence, one of the most important parables of the Lord is the Parable about the sower. The basic factor of this Parable is that man can generally have one of the five kinds of heart. Pagans have a heart full of faithlessness which can never bring forth any kind of fruit; we will not be expanding on this subject.

Believers may have one of the four kinds of heart which are furthermore distinguished by their “ground”. What is a shocking factor is that three out of these four kinds of heart are BARREN!... at least from the beginning. Only one kind of heart is able to bring forth fruit! And even from among those be­liev­­ers having this good and fruitful heart, only some are able to bring a full yield – a hundredfold yield, others can bring sixtyfold yield and the rest of them only thirtyfold yield! Hence, Our Lord, Who is that Sower, does not have fields which are enviable. I am personally curious what the Lord is doing with those hearts, which from the very beginning, that is, from the water baptism, have been barren? Be­cause, if they remain in such a barren state, they cannot be saved as they do not fulfill the most im­portant Will, Desire and Purpose of God the Father (Rom. 8:29, His Son never had a barren heart!). Let us now bring closer at least the most important facts of those four kinds of hearts and their ground.

1)       Darkened heart –

“And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up.” (Mt. 13:4). What happened? “When any one heareth the Word… and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart…” (Mt. 13:19). The one that under­stands not is he whose “mind the god of this world blinded not to believe” (2Cor. 4:4). Such believers are also those which are able, even willing to believe only what they understand. Here we have a darkened heart, heart not enlightened and such heart cannot react to the Word of the Lord, it has no response for Him, especially, if it does not even understand Him! It is also written: “…the Word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” (Heb. 4:2b). What does this mean? Well, it is not sufficient when we are only delivered from a “positive unbelief” as pagans have, but we remain in some “passive spiritual state” where faith could exist, but it is nowhere. Here we must understand the import­ant difference between pagans that do not believe and believers that do not believe. The differ­en­ce is that the heart of pagans says: “I will not believe” while the heart of believer says: “I cannot be­lieve.” In such a passive state believer expects that something will happen through the Word of God without the need for him to move his finger – this is his personal conviction, personal expectation, his belief, but this is NOT the faith from the Lord. This will never happen! The Lord has to bring such a believer into circum­stan­ces where a certain “enforcement, a necessary application, movement of faith, birth of faith” in con­nect­ion with the Light of the Lord. Such faith, even a small faith, will cause enlight­enment in the heart and thereby destroys the blinding and deceptive work of the devil. The greater the faith, the greater the bright­­ness in the heart. It is our natural inability to receive the Light of the Lord which then gives the devil a found­ation for snatching out the Word from the heart. Any faith destroying the darkness in the heart is also destroying this purpose of the devil and begins to make the ground of the heart fruitful. In other words, our laziness or passivity gives to the devil the ground where he can effect­ively obstruct the purposes of the Lord. In such circumstances, a marvelous and wonderful Light of the Lord could be pre­sented to us, but it may produce no fruit whatsoever. We heard, we left and no fruit followed. There is no life and no right spirit in us. Why? We were satisfied only with what we heard, and mentally under­stood and believed. When we later on seek what we heard, it is gone; it is not with us any more as it was during our listening. What may affect the light presented to us with all its possibili­ties and its fruit which was supposed to become a reality in our life? It is the action of faith or lack of faith in con­nection with that presentation.

2)       Superficial, shallow heart –

“Some fell upon stony places where they had not much earth… because they had no root, they with­er­ed away.” (Mt. 13:5,6) Such heart is also called “stony, hard” and this makes that heart barren. What is needful here? It is clear here that what is needed is “breaking and plowing the heart”. This also points to the fact that the Lord simply cannot penetrate into the necessary depth in our natural lives unless He did some breaking of the ground in our hearts. The Lord has to gain in our natural lives certain “capacity of fruitfulness” acceptable for His Purposes and expectations. He also told His disciples: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” (Jn. 16:12) One of the reasons why they were un­able to receive from the Lord what He wanted to give to them was the factor that they were so very self-assured by their natural beliefs. Peter said to Jesus: “Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee.” (Mt. 26:35) It is clear that the Lord could give him nothing more because He hit in Peter his abso­lute inability to receive what was not natural and logical. Later on, however, Peter was broken and he saw and became to the Lord very useful.

3)       Divided heart –

“And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them.” (Mt. 13:7) This believer is the one that “hears the Word, but the worries of this world and deceitfulness of riches choke the Word and he will become unfruitful” (Mt. 13:22). This is the heart that would even go to the Lord, has desires and may also have right purposes, in this sense it is then “similar” to the seed, which also has desires and even right purposes. But in this heart there are powers of worries of this world including the rush after the money and riches, which choke the powers of the good purposes and thus the heart becomes unfruit­ful, barren. What is interesting in this case is the fact, that the seed and that believer are becoming one concerning the responsibility in that they both have the same desires and purposes. However, the seed without that believer can do nothing, just as, that believer without that seed can do nothing. The seed is full of good intentions, full of good purposes, full of good desires. The believer is full of good intentions, full of good purposes, full of good desires, maybe even good opportunities, but here we stop! We are discover­ing here other powers that count; the word used in the Bible is “affliction or suffer­ing”, which also mean “great weights”. In other words, other things are weighing not only our mind but also the heart and will and thus the whole soul… whether these be the weights of our concerns, prejudices, undecidedness to act, or various other difficulties as harassment, anxiety, overcoming sick­nesses, financial problems, social problems, annoyance, vexation by other persons, anger, etc. All these and similar things cause the heart to be divided among these “weights” and those important and good intentions, which are by them suffo­ca­t­ed and prevented to overcome. But even if they were not comple­te­ly prevented and disabled, such heart is unable to decide rightly but remains divided and prefers to deal with those “weights” rather than with those good purposes, desires and intentions of the seed. Such a divided heart in fact represents to some degree a heart which is “non-consecrated”, which also means, not yet elected for the purposes of God. One more import­ant note is needed at this place to be mentioned and it is that the seeds of the Lord were not sown here “among” the thorns or “on” the thorns that were already grown, but among the seeds of thorns. Hence, both seeds started to grow together, but the heart preferred the seeds of thorns and thus they gained advantage over the seeds of the Lord and in the final phase they chocked them.

4)       Heart renewed by Spirit –

I believe that here we do not have to go to great lengths to understand what heart we are talking about. However, we must pause here and understand very important fact, which could appear here only as “wordplay” but on which our life or death depend! What fact is it? If something comes only ON us, we will have no fruit, neither 100, nor 60 nor yet 30-fold. If we will take the truth ON us, we will end very badly in calamities, tragedies, misery and in absolute fruitlessness. Even if you assume that you receiv­ed the truth into yourselves thanks to your intellectual abilities of comprehension, you will not be more fruit­ful than in the first case. Spirit and Life are things totally different from an intellectual comprehen­sion of the truth. That Truth, Light and Word must be received INTO ourselves, into the depth of our being, which is DEEPER than our soul! The way to Life is the way into renewed spirit, renewed under­standing, renewed and enlightened and revived heart. THIS you should request from the Lord in your pray­ers. Paul never prayed that “they should have enlightened the eyes of their intellect”. Paul was sur­rounded by multitudes of people, which had enlightened the eyes of their intellect, what was ON them, and Paul saw the tragedy of it! He prayed that they would have enlightened the eyes of their heart!... that was IN them. Ask the Lord for this as this is the only way of fruitfulness! The more you have Christ IN you, the more is your life ”more inward” and not “more outward”. You may have a certain measure of Christ from outside, which is a “mere objective understanding”, mere information. But when you recei­ve the Life of Christ, it will be totally “inner” Life; Christ will be IN your heart. Then you will see the real difference.

Bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit is, of course, closely tied with the Holy Spirit Who was given to us to “guide us into all truth” (Jn. 16:13). Bu this work of the Spirit is not only something occasional, ran­dom, irregular or casual, on the contrary, it is continual because it should be the course of life of every member of the Family of God. The full Truth revealed about Christ is not a question of God’s arrange­ment, measure or some plan concerning the timing or calendar. Rather it is the question of our obedience and reaction and response or answer of our spirit toward what was already revealed to us, what we have already received and have in order that through that revelation we could grow and advance, make pro­gress. And this reaction, response and answer of our spirit, obviously depend on our walking with the Spirit of God. This guidance of the Spirit in us into all the truth is thus not just something what comes and is only tied to some specific problems in our life, to some times of crisis, to urgent cases, emergency situations or to similar extraordinary or unexpected events in our life, but that guidance has our life con­tinuously under the government of the Holy Spirit through the inward part of our being. The Holy Spirit wants to guide us and govern us, if we only allow Him to do that, through our innermost spiritual man.

Therefore, I must mention here another important fact, that slowness of our spiritual growth and of our progress on the way of the Lord is simply the consequence of the fact that we were for such a long time governed from outside, by the world and our plans, and not from our inside. Believers that are in their spiritual lives guided and governed from outside, through their natural senses and per­cep­tions, are being spiritually deve­loped very slowly, if at all. Their spiritual maturity is extremely de­lay­ed. Very rarely can they reach the depth or height of the spiritual life that would be more than just elementary foundations. If Saul of Tarsus would have continued being guided and governed from out­side by his sincere as well as logical convictions of his soul, today we would miss in the New Testament many letters containing a very rare treasures indeed.

What was the chief blunder, the greatest mistake of Saul? He believed in all his heart that Israel and Ju­da­­ism, built and established by God, accepted and blessed by God and which God was connected with, must have been something very right, good, true and he had to be absolutely passionate for them and devoted to them with all his heart unto the very end of his life. True? But NO! This was very erroneous argument. Because time may come when even that, which God built, established and used, even join­ed Himself with it, may one day cease to be useful fulfilling His Will, or be the place where God always is and He cannot leave it. A typical example of this fact is also the tabernacle in Shiloh, which God establi­sh­­ed and then He forsook it (Ps. 78:60). But this tremendous difference in the human conception of the Will of God in what God can or cannot do, what is temporary Will and His final Will, includes some of the very important questions in our own lives. After all, the misconception of that tremendous difference puts before us also that great and important question of spiritual leadership.

What is “leadership” according to the Mind of God? It is very simply that what is born and developed during our walking with God Himself and that under any circumstances and outer conditions of our life. That which never surrenders to the guidance or government of what comes from outside, from what is worldly, natu­ral, logical, what forms our human convictions of various kinds, which then substitute for the true faith from Christ. Alas, the church leadership of today is not guided from inside, but from out­side, therefore, in the eyes of God, it is NOT THE LEADERSHIP, which would be represented by Apostle Paul, but which is re­presented by Saul of Tarsus! And that is tragedy!

Few important ending notes: If you are guided by your outside religious system, if you must conform to or follows all its rules and regulations, if you are trying to do God’s work in this way or live by the Will of God… alas, alas! Man cannot even imagine the terrible death of all that, tremendous burden of all that even paralysis and chaos of all that. Why? You see, the Lord Jesus Christ does not desire to govern over His people by external regulations and rules and commandments and laws. The Lord desires to govern His people by the internal life and testimonies! To live in today’s age of evil and darkness is possible only by our renewed internal man, whom only very few believers know, understand and follow; their majority ignores him. A great majority of believers is trying to live their Christian life in their ex­ter­nal old man, who is sufficiently humanistic and intellectually educated to guide them and to earn their trust. It is then quite obvious that such believers do not know that humanism is stupid and sinful before God. This fact is best observable among the believers that received their religious foundations in the Roman catho­lic “church”. They all walk according to how they see themselves – hardworking, helpful, good minded, compassionate, willing to serve or to teach the catechism, modest, giving offerings to churches, con­vinced that their intentions are always good and righteous. Not even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself could con­vince them that He sees them completely differently and that their “external holiness” is to the Lord abso­­lutely un­acceptable. Nobody will ever convince them that they do not know the Lord at all, that in their spirit they are dead and thus they have no notion about spiritual things, that they are victims of the deceptions of the Devil and should the Lord not show them a special Grace and clemency, they all walk to damnation. (Read again pages 128-133 of the book “Life out of Death” and refresh for yourselves the shocking news about the USA and Vatican,) Of course, the above paragraph also applies to the believers in protestant churches who also walk according to their human­is­tic and intellectual education and about spiritual things they have no idea. Let us not forget that Reve­la­tion 3:16-18 applies to the whole church of the End times, which is now.

Also, here is our reaction to the Lord’s appeal. The Lord calls on us and expects from us a new attitude, new relation toward His Light and Truth which we received. Do we have a new attitude and relation or shall we take toward all that received Light the same stand as we always took in the past? You see, until this very day, we did not have to realize and understand that the Lord had not deposited into our memory just a mountain of new information, but He wanted to put into our being a part of HIM HIMSELF! Since “you will not come to Me, that you might have Life” (Jn. 5:40), hence, I came to you… that you might have … first Light and Truth. And if that Light and Truth become a part of your life, your being, then they become your Life, because “I am …the Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14:6b).

If we have no heart to come to Him and receive His Life, and if we neglect His Truth, which He reveal­ed to us, then we are becoming a contradiction to that great revelation, which came to us. He is testing us in everything what was given to us from Him Himself. Our destiny depends on it, it depends on our answer which we shall give to the Lord and which He expects. Our old man will never guide us to that Light and to that Truth similarly as a thief will never guide us to a police station. In the old man, there is neither true grace nor any true forgiveness! There is no true love or joy or faith or any other fruit of the Spirit of God in our old man! The old man does not like to be “photographed” so his true image would not get into “wrong” hands. Nor is he attending places where he could be easily revealed. The old man is always dissatisfied with something, always seeking something and when he is joyful it is but for short moment. His dissatisfac­tion applies, in fact, to every natural man on earth since everyone has his/her old man living inside of their being! The true, perfect and eternal satisfaction is only in Christ and with Christ and our “old man” will never get to it.

There is a simple but extremely important fact that in the day of Crucifixion and the Death of Christ, God tore the curtain in the Temple in half from top to bottom. That curtain was so heavy and strong that no man could tear it in half and absolutely not from top to bottom (this is mentioned also on page 15). It was a clear miracle from God so the whole Israel could see what God had done, that is, He opened the way to Himself and to Life through His Son Jesus Christ Who was represented by the Ark of the Cove­nant in the Most Holy Place of the Temple. The Ark, and thus, the Life of God, was always covered be­hind that curtain and whosoever would have come near the Ark and went behind that curtain, would have lost his life. Only once a year the Chief Priest was allowed to come in with the blood sacrifice and under very strict rules. After the Death of Christ, God closed this way to death. The whole history of the Old Testament and Israel with everything that the Old Testament established, commanded, prescribed, with the whole Law of Commandments, the Temple, priestly rituals, sacrifices on the altar, candlestick, the table of incense and for the shewbread in the Holy Place with all rituals and ceremonies, which the priests were doing in that Holy Place – this all God ABOLISHED and by this the NEW TESTAMENT began! This New Testament is based on the Blood of the Lamb and on the Grace of God (Mt. 26:28// Mk. 14:24// Lk. 22:20// Eph. 2:8). This can also be expressed by the fact that Israel, as such, ended on the Day of Pentecost and the Kingdom of God began. This also means that the Kingdom of God is already here, al­though we do not see it and do not understand it.

What happened then? The religious leadership of Israel again sew up that curtain and put everything back to the same order as it was before. In other words, all those that were convinced that guided Israel to God and to Heaven CLOSED that new way to Life Eternal and OPENED again the old way to Death Eternal! For Israel, this was an absolute tragedy! In fact, the sewing up of that curtain caused the writ­ing of the letter to Hebrews by Apostle Paul. The way to Life that God opened for Israel, they closed again! They decided to go on the old way of Death and refused what God provided for them and also paid for with the Blood of His Son! This brought to Israel an absolute devastation, destruction of the Temple and dispersion of Jews into the whole world for 2,000 years! What is spiritually even greater tragedy is that the believers in today’s Church are the same! They never saw, never appreciated and never truly receiv­ed this new way but they began to “monkey” their ways after Israel. They started with every­thing what God refused and what is connected with Death, and the way to Life they shut down!

They built churches at every corner, made for themselves priests and all kinds of “big wigs” all the way to cardinals and popes, conceived stupid religious rituals, rules (chiefly through Catholicism which is from Satan), instead of the Bible they teach catechism, human thoughts, opinions, convictions and thus Death! No wonder that the whole so called “catholic church” is like a cemetery, there is not one living creature and to this day none of them knows the Lord Jesus Christ in spirit! This whole structure with all its church buildings, statues, artistically decorated altars, rituals and ceremonies, confessionals, carnal sermons, baptism of newly born children by sprinkling the water on their heads, praying for the dead and with all the other stupidities, which contradict the Word of God, this whole structure will soon be demo­lished into dust and burned with all those, who by their own will want to stay in it. (In 1962, Lorai­ne Boettner wrote a book “Roman Catholicism” that offers a detailed and truthful picture of this “roman beast” from Revelation chapter 17. Typical examples, which are discussed in the book in detail, are: the church, priesthood, traditions, Peter, papacy, Mary, mass, hearing confessions, purgatory, infalli­bi­li­ty of the pope, indulgencies, penances, salvation by works, ritualism, celibate, marriage, parochial schools, in­tolerance, religious persecution, burning of those speaking truth to their faces, relationship of state and the church, usurpation of the worldly governmental power, historical aspects of the church, catholic mo­ral norms concerning "small and great sins” as gambling, cards playing, drunkenness, financial machina­tions, etc.) And what came out of Catholicism, which is Protestantism, is not acceptable to God either as it was developed after its separation from the Catholicism (see the church in Laodicea, Rev. chpt. 3)

 

PART   11  –  OUR NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE

And now, let us take at least a brief look at our natural life and spiritual life. We shall also sketch a comparison, which we hope will give us a better understanding of some passages of the Word of God, where some words may not sound to us too “acceptably”. When we eat and drink, which we do every day, we do not think about these things more deeply except that we do for ourselves a needful activity to keep ourselves in our physical life. Such eating and drinking is mostly a pleasant activity when we try to choose meals and beverages according to our taste and others we leave on side. When we are fed we are usually satisfied and we return to the activities of our life. I personally believe that nobody during eating for example a sandwich was ever pondering the question as for example: Where, when and how will that sandwich become your imagination, an idea, a thought in your mind, which you are thinking or imagin­ing? When and how will it become the voice forming the words, which you speak or how will it become an emotion, which you will feel in your heart and which you are able to express to others? You see, a very simple fact is that should you stop eating and drinking, soon thereafter you would lose your voice, your emotions, thoughts, even the ability to think, see, hear, smell or feel anything because you would lose the nutrition for your life. True? Well, let us go to the Word of God and let us look at the parallel between the natural and the spiritual.

We shall start in the Book of Revelation 3:20, where the Lord says that when we hear His voice and open the door (into our heart), He will come in and will SUP with us, and we with Him. In 2015, I had explained to our fellowship that the word “table-sitting” in the Slovak translation is incorrect. I had also explained that here we are not talking about breakfast or lunch, but about supper. I furthermore explain­ed what it means to have a “meal” with the Lord. You see, He will enable us not only to read, or to listen to His Word, but TO EAT His Word and to DRINK His Spirit. The same fact is repeated in John 6:48-51 and 54-56 with an explanation in verse 63 and with the basis of that fact shown in chapter 1, verses 1 and 14. All these abovementioned facts show that just as our natural creation needs natural nu­trition in order to live and grow and was able to think, perceive even to express itself, just the same it is with our spiritual creation which also needs spiritual nutrition to live and grow to be able to think, perceive and to express itself! WE are to PUT ON our new-spiritual man created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24), who was given to us at our redemption and baptism (Acts 2:38) and dwells in our spirit. If we do not feed him he will not grow and after a time he will “die” where “to die” does not mean the end of his exist­ence, but his departure-separation from us – which is the loss of salvation! He is also called as our “inner man” and his need to be strengthened is also shown in the Word of God (Eph. 3:16). Hence, we need an open heart with the Lord dwelling therein enabling us to eat His Body-Word and to drink His Blood-Spirit. Only then we will be able to notice the growth of our new-spiritual-inner Man, Who already has the Image of Jesus Christ. Here, I have to repeat the fact that a “closed heart is a doomed heart”!... and we should now see and understand why.

A brief conclusion to this paragraph is: what we eat that what we are! And this applies to both creations. It is truly a great and astonishing mystery how our being may be affected and changed like that. Hence, when we are eating His Body=Word and drinking His Blood=Spirit, we are getting into ourselves His Life (Jn. 6: 53). Which also means that we are NOT getting Him only into our understanding and memory, but we are literally assimilating Him into our being so that He can then express and manifest Himself in us and through us! So, there is a change here from what we are into what He is. Even though we re­main two different personalities, yet, we begin to thing like Christ, express ourselves like Christ, walk like Christ and live like Christ. And this is precisely the reason why Apostle Paul declared: “For me to live is Christ…” (Phil. 1:21). This above mentioned fact was undoubtedly the Main Purpose in the Mind of God when He established marital relationships where the husband is the head of the wife (Eph 5:23) and she, being joined to her husband, is receiving and participating in his life so that she has only one life – his life. Consequently, she has only one interest – his interest (provided that her husband walks with God and not with the devil)! Hence, there are now not two lives, but only one (Mt. 19:5// Eph. 5:31, 32). This is the idea of God, which is actually the picture of that higher relationship between His Son and the Bride of His Son, Who assimilates Christ so that they – though they remain two – are becoming ONE SPIRIT AND ONE LIFE!

Let us now be devoted to a greater depth of the subject of spirituality and the natural creation, their com­parison, controversy, mutual discord, impossibility of any compromise and a source of unsolvable problems. Wherever and whenever the SPIRITUAL confronts, stands against the formal, traditional, no­minal, naturalistic, natural, earthly, carnal, in other words, SOULISH – there always and without pardon occurs a great problem! What is interesting is that this reaction is not coming from the world, but from the Church regardless of its name or denomination. There, in fact, exists a huge difference between the Christianity formal, traditional, nominal, natural, carnal or also known as “soulish” – and the Christ­­ian­ity “spirit­ual”! This difference goes to such a depth that it becomes a true “bloody battlefield” where brother is not just unable to understand his brother or believe him, but he is also able to “kill him”, yes, even physically (Jn. 16:2,3) as well as “kill him” spiritually, which means, to separate himself from him, kick him off, never to see him again, never to answer him, spread lies about him, hate him without a cause, etc. (Jn. 15:25b). Since during the last almost 50 years of my ministry, I have plenty of my own experiences from this battlefield, hence, I have a lot to write about. But I will be brief and will give only the most important facts, which could be very useful chiefly to those, which are only now beginning to walk on the narrow road toward the spirit­ual or living Christianity. This fact I had already discussed at our Tatry 2015 fellowship as two trends, which began from Adam and Eve and continue until now. I also named the representatives of these two trends and their absolute mutual inconsistency, incompatibility, enmity. But today we will look at this subject from a differ­ent viewpoint.  

The spiritual ministry and spiritual believers are by the Church, and chiefly by its various leaders, called “troublemakers”! Had I left the things in the Church in their habitual state, ignored formalism, received the traditions as they are generally received, refrained from preaching in various congregations spiritual facts, which are in a clear contradiction with carnality, then I would have never had problems with the Church, or rather, the Church would have had none with me. However, since I have never acted like that nor have I ever ministered like that, but all those years I have been faithful to the truth and calling of Christ, then after time it became clear to me that I myself have become for the Church a “problem” as well as a “troublemaker”! It does not matter to me personally; I'm actually glorifying the Lord because this fact is at the same time a proof for me that I am “spiritual” and thus a true servant of the Lord! My calling start­ed with teaching ministry, then pastoral ministry, then preaching ministry and then prophetic ministry. I really do not know whether the Church has ever seen and noticed that all true prophets of the Lord were essentially “troublemakers”. Why? To cause problems or difficulties is an inescapable part of the ministry of a prophetic instrument of the Lord, it is absolutely essential; it is the very character of things. Why? Because the very function of a prophet was founded, established when things were any­thing but right. If the state of the Church (and of Israel, of course) was not going the wrong way, if it was not failing, if it did not need corrections, controlling, bringing it to order or to a deeper spirituality, etc., then there would have never arisen the need for any prophets.

The task for the prophets always was to maintain and keep before the people of God the fullness of the Purpose of God regarding their spiritual growth, development and progress toward their spiritual maturi­ty, that is, their change to the Image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). This is that true and final Will of Our Heavenly Father, which is never preached and never explained and which is totally ignored by the Church! “And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him: Art thou he that “troubleth” Israel? And he answered: I have not troubled Israel but thou and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim.” (1Ki. 18:17,18). Because Ahab defiled Israel and Elijah was zealous to correct it as God led him, he automatically became a “troublemaker” for Israel. Because there are many who defiled the Church, which is now in a terrible state, and which the Lord will spew out of His mouth (Rev. 3:16), and the Lord saw me zealous to correct what is yet possible to correct, that is why I also have become a “troublemaker” for the Church! Why the state of Israel, and then also of the Church, were getting continually worse until they finally got into this terrible state? Well, read the following paragraph and it will enlighten the situation.

A very important fact related to the natural earthly creation is the following. The very character of all created things and creatures is its irrecoverably descending direction, course, trend, tendency, pro­gress­ive erosion and ruin and worsening and deterioration of their state. Leave in this creation anything to itself and it will deteriorate and degenerate, it is only the question of time… it will rot, rust or other­wise deteriorate and dissolve. Hence, any attempt to cor­rect things, and that, in all areas, is full of stre­nuous efforts and conflicts. This is absolutely clear and evi­dent also regarding the human being and its nature. Human nature hates to be harassed, concerned or alarmed, distracted, moved to action, asked to assume responsibility, to learn new things, etc. It always desires to have its own way, maintain its own laziness and disinterest about any new things. Its trend is al­ways heading downward; it constantly declines chiefly morally and spiritually. If there is anyone who dares to resist or challenge this trend, tries to slow it down, help it, correct it or even stop it, doubts its values, behave toward it unfriendly, un­kindly, then a conflict is inevitable; problems, difficulties and sometimes even an undisguised enmity is on its way.

Many times I have sincerely wondered why had God chosen Israel as “His nation” – the most stubborn, most unbelieving, most ungrateful and the most disobedient nation on this planet? Later on I had receiv­ed my answer. Israel was, in fact, God’s experiment by which He wanted to show to the world the true and real human nature in its depth, width, breadth and height. And the second, if not the first thing, God wanted to show to the world His Love and Grace (see again page 50). Ever since God chose Israel, He did everything what was possible on His side (without breaking His own principles of free will given to humans) so that they would grow up spiritually and morally, in faith and humility, in love for Him and also for their fellow men. Though they were murmuring and disobeying Him too often and were never satisfied with anything, but as soon as they repented and returned to Him, He did not wait, but forgave them and blessed them even more than before. God indeed manifested to this nation an endless patience, restraint, goodness, forgiveness and mercy, He loved them and did not repay evil for their evil, which they almost always rendered to Him. Such blessings and gifts He had never given to anyone else. Why? God purposed in Himself to show on this nation, and to the whole world, the depth of the true and tragic depravity of the human nature and also the depth of His patience and Love and Grace! How­ever, despite His endless goodness and grace, their trend kept going downward and nothing brought to them indicated to be eventually helpful in correcting it.

God thus showed for all times that there is something existing in man, and that, very deeply IN MAN that is deeper and stronger than all the favorable upward benefits, profits, advantages even the best con­ditions that God could give to man! Put man into a beautiful and blessed environment… and he is able to make out of it a filthy den. Prepare for man a blessed land flowing with milk and honey… and he will “drop dead” in a wilderness as a dog rather than go against his own imaginations or convictions! And what is maybe the most incredible is that – man loves it that way! Even if you desire to clean his den with a broom, he will attack you with a poker in hand. When you tell him that his faith is not correct or that even his picture about his own Messiah is false, he will attack you with a “knife in hand” without asking you even one question! Why? Because the human nature is absolutely incomprehensible, full of evil and unwillingness. This applied to the full extend to God’s Israel and, unfortunately, it also applies in a similar way to God’s Church! Try to tell anyone in the Church that he is somewhere wrong, that his faith is “upside-down” that his services (or masses) are rituals of traditional habits having no Life of Christ in them, nor any benefit for his salvation, and you will be mighty glad if you escape from such a “believer” in good health. True? At least, these are the same experiences of my 50 years of ministry, so, whether you believe it or not, I personally do not care one bit.

Was not Jesus Christ God’s answer to all our problems, illnesses, needs, to all our conflicts? Was He not the solution to our every bad or even dangerous situation? Was He not our Redeemer, Liberator from all our slavery, Doctor for all our sicknesses and problems, even our Saviour? He was! Then why He had become the most hated Personality in Israel at Whom they roared like wild pigs: “Crucify Him, cru­ci­fy Him”? Is there anyone who can find in Him any evil? NO! Hence, when the Israelites cried: Crucify Him, Pilate himself questioned them: “Why, what evil hath He done?” (Mk. 15:13,14) A pagan from Rome question­ed the chief priests of Israel! But the chief priests, scribes and the elders of Israel con­tinued to mock Him, accuse Him and kept inciting people against Him (Mt. 27:41). Finally, Pilate out of all pagans publicly confessed that Jesus Christ was a “righteous Person and he did not find on Him any fault”! (Mt. 27:24b// Lk. 23:13-23) Despite that, this Man is an object of indescribable and unspeakable mali­ce, viciousness and hatred that then led to His brutal murder! WHY? Is this not an infinite shame of the people of Israel with all their religious leaders? Is this not the most brutish and piggish act any human being can ever imagine or do?

What does this experiment of God with Israel clearly shows to us? Whatever stands in the way of human nature, human favor, inclination or human pleasure and desire to have its own way, will surely become a “troublemaker” and the source of bitter conflicts, hatred, even a mortal enmity. The very fact that you want to be zealous for the Lord and dedicated to serve Him in truth and in Spirit will bring you into con­flict with that continuously declining trend of man in this world and in this Church! So called “Roman Catholic church” once burned living believers, which were telling them truth to their face. Any witness of the Truth of God becomes very difficult, if not an impossible affair, because every such Truth, every such testimony stands against the trend of this world and of all religions of today including Christianity! One should weep over it, but today I understand Revelation 3:16. And because I do understand also this Word of God, I also understand the whole core of this unbelievable and unimaginable matter of human nature, human life and the behavior of man. In the world, there exist wide areas of mankind, which form nations and all of them are kingdoms of Satan. And in those areas, there exist smaller areas of various religions (whatever their names may be), where some of them are indivisible parts of these king­doms of Satan, and some are only open to them; these are the areas of the religions based on the Bible. All these areas are areas of conflicts wherever the full Truth of God is presented or preached. But in the core of every such area, there is also something what we cannot see at first glance and thus it is something like a mystery. But we can observe the core of it in the Bible rather clearly – it is an absolutely satanic core of evil, darkness and death!

If Satan wants to keep his kingdoms, he cannot sit in a sofa and just look around what is happening in the world. He is rather touchy if anyone handles his kingdoms negatively and thus becomes for him dangerous. This is always happening wherever Christ is proclaimed as the only Lord and King of this world as well as the world, which is to come, where the full Truth of God, His Purposes and Will are proclaimed, where deceptions, cheatings and frauds are uncovered, which Satan placed in all areas of the world as mines are placed in battlefields. When the darkness in the souls of believers is being destroyed and replaced with the Light of God, which penetrates the darkness of Satan, that demolishes the defens­ive walls in his kingdoms. He who is doing this ceases to be just an ordinary teacher or pastor or preach­er or a missionary and becomes an effective power for demolishing his kingdoms! What do you think, what attitude Satan has toward such a personality? You see, Satan can very quickly discern who is his true threat even if no one from the whole congregation and from the whole leadership of the Church is aware of this or understand this. Why the Church cannot understand this? Because the natural, carnal man with his natural mind, heart and will, that is, with his natural soul, lives and moves and understands the mental spheres and not spiritual spheres. Hence, his soul is an ideal playground for the powers of darkness and evil and such a soul cannot even be aware what is happening in the spiritual world though such man may be “born-again and baptized believer” with the gift of the Holy Spirit in his spirit! (Acts 2:38) BUT nothing in his SOUL! In his soul, there is still darkness and evil, hence, he is spiritually blind and deaf and does not understand anything in the spiritual sphere.

The topic regarding spirituality and carnality is so deep and wide that we could write a book about it. But the basic facts should be sufficient for us in order to see the core of this problem since it is at the same time the core of all problems and conflicts in the sphere of religious denominations and organiza­tions. It is simultaneously the core of all the problems and conflicts in the summary of all denominations and organizations toward all the spiritual servants of God. It is also the explanation for the hatred and enmity of the Church toward all the prophets of God since the human carnal nature is the same in Israel as it is in the Church. God had given us also our soul, not only the spirit, hence, there is nothing wrong with the soul as such except that, after the fall of Adam, the soul became the dominion of the powers of darkness and evil and it remained so until today. The main point here is: what is the source in our soul from which spring our thoughts, imaginations, feelings, perceptions, our decisions, convictions, etc.? Do they come from the Spirit of God or from our natural soul? In other words, is the basis of our earthly life our soul where our own life governs in every sense and direction? Or is it our spirit where the Life of God governs in every sense and direction? This is the core and basis of this whole thing! One more remark should fit herein. Some things and ministries may begin in the Spirit, but after a time they may end up on a completely different track if we do not remain with the Spirit but succumb to the temptations of the world. To serve in the Spirit of God is a costly process where we suffer and pay a great price because we are not received as servants of God. (Jn. chap. 9)

On page 58 we started the subject of spirituality and the natural creation, their com­parison, contro­ver­sy, mutual discord, impossibility of any compromise and a source of unsolvable problems, we also des­cribed some basic facts. We saw how these two spheres divide Christianity into two different and even mutually hostile camps, which cause in Christianity untold and incalculable damages. However, we must always know how practically differentiate between these two spheres regarding our own selves and our walking in our Christian life. Here we must judge our walking and our own Christianity accord­­ing to our spiritual fruit.

The fact is that a spiritual man can see both camps and thus he is able to judge not only the spiritual but also carnal believers while carnal, natural believer, is unable to do this! He does not see, does not hear, does not perceive spiritual sphere as he is unable even to receive the things of the Holy Spirit since they are for him foolishness. He cannot even know them as they must be spiritually discerned, perceived and understood (1Cor. 2:14). Hence, a spiritual believer has a greater responsibility before the Lord since he knows the spiritual things and understands them and thus he knows how to deal with a natural, carnal, soulish believer wisely and righteously. Another practical fact is that the spiritual believer walks in the Spirit of God while the natural believer walks in his flesh, chiefly according to his brain, his heart and the will of his soul, that is, according to how he understands the things, how he is feeling about them and how his will is influenced by these manifestations of his soul – and not how God understand them, how God feels about them and how is God’s Will influenced by them.

The Word of God says: Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” (Gal. 5:16). This also means that if we do not walk in the Spirit, we are fulfilling the desires of our flesh-sinfulness. If we are believers and we see this, maybe we try to wrestle with it, fight against it, struggle not to do it, but in these efforts we always fail because we “fight our flesh by our flesh”! This way we will never be able to reach our goal – we must walk in the Spirit, otherwise it is impossible! However, do we know at all what is it to walk in the Spirit? Believers may have no clue about this matter. Well, let us say it in a straight manner: If I want to know somebody and then get knowing him more and more, I must first meet that person, then I must socialize, have fellowship with that person. The more and better I want to know him, the more I must get in touch with him. True? Of course, the Holy Spirit, Who dwells in you, you cannot meet on the street, shake hands with Him, introduce yourself to Him and say: “I am very glad to meet You, let us go to a coffee shop, have a coffee and talk so I can know You better.” You must be satisfied with the fact that He is Spirit and only your spirit can “meet Him” through faith, which is the instrument of a spirit­ual talk! You must believe that He dwells in you, in your spirit and He is at your disposal as the Amba­s­sador of Jesus Christ, Advisor, Guide, Comforter (Jn. 15:26 + 16:13,14), the Spirit of Life and Power (Rom. 8:2// Acts 1:8, etc.). When you speak to Him, He can hear you though you cannot hear Him with your physical years only with your conscience, which is the organ of your spirit. Has your con­­science ever “spoken” to you? THAT IS A SPIRITUAL VOICE! Have you ever prayed? To whom did you pray? And from where did you pray, from your head, from heart or from your spirit? And when you worshipped God the Father, did you worship Him from your head, or from heart or from your spirit? I ask because Our Lord receives prayers from our faith, which is in our heart (Rom. 10:10). Our God the Father receives our worship only from our spirit and truth (Jn. 4:24). Hence, if we do not recognize our head from our heart and from our spirit, we have a problem.

In order that you might really begin to perceive and understand your walking in Spirit, socializing and fellow­shipping with Him, to begin to perceive His advices, guidance, desires and purposes and be thus guided by them – then we should turn to our flesh and sinfulness. Why? Because we socialize with it daily, we are also “entertained” by it, have discussions with it, deal with its desires, we know its goals and are guided by them. If we know how to do THIS, then how is it that we do not know ho to do exact­ly THE SAME with the Holy Spirit? According to our old nature we are always in touch with our flesh and our sinfulness and with our old self – with our poor and miserable “ego”. We are always preoccu­pied, anxious and worried about ourselves; we are speaking about ourselves, praying about our­selves, we hold ourselves before ourselves and in our own interests. But when we are continuously occupied with ourselves, what we are in ourselves, that is socializing, touching, fellowshipping with ourselves, or is it not? And how far do we get in this way? Well, according to me, nowhere.

And this is not all because we might not believe how many believers are in touch and “socializing and fellowshipping” with devils! Many, of course, without being aware of it since it is not easy to discern our own sinfulness from the devil though the devil always tries to speak to us, communicate with us, socialize or “fellowship” with us trough our soul. Whenever there is something wrong, something sin­ful, he always tries to bring it into our conscience. If there is anything afflicting, tormenting, worrying us, if there is anything painful, he always tries to point to that and add to it, if at all possible. Those that have such “talks” with the devil usually get into his traps. The devil comes and accuses you and you listen­­ to him, he gives you some proposal and you accept it, sometimes you can get into a discussion with him! You may thus maintain contact and have “fellowship” with the devil or do the same with your own self, with your flesh, with your old personality, and you may be doing it daily, that is, you are “sowing to your flesh”, and then you will reap corruption (Gal. 6:8). THIS IS WALKING IN FLESH. When you do the same with the Holy Spirit, and this can also be done daily, you are “sowing to the Spirit” and then you will from the Spirit reap Life Eternal (Gal. 6:8). THIS IS WALKING IN THE SPIRIT. Do you see the difference… and the reality of it all? For too many believers sitting in various churches this differ­ence may mean the loss of salvation… if no one tells them about it! Would this not be a true trage­dy? This may also mean an unimaginable loss of time wasted during their earthly life, which life all the carnal believers live in the state of a spiritual death and stresses and not in the state of life and peace. “For, to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Rom. 8:6)

There is yet one more important thing here, which needs to be mentioned at this place – faith. Marriage can be compared to a contract, covenant and whenever a covenant is mentioned in the Bible, faith is al­ways present as an important “ingredient”. Even if we look at our earthly marriages, every woman is making a great step of faith. She is giving herself to someone else for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, she has no questions or reservations, objections, doubts; I am giving my life, my very own being to someone else. Is this not a step of faith? And now I hope and believe that the other one will not fail me, that he will not disappoint me, that he will be worthy of my faith and trust, that he will be worthy of me and that at the end I will be justified in giving myself to that other one! (I ended this sentence with a big exclamation mark, but I could have also ended it with a great question mark?) And that same faith and trust also applies in our Heavenly Marriage. The Lord says: I am wholly yours, when you are wholly Mine. I am wholly given to you and all My possessions is at your disposal, when you are wholly given to Me and are giving to Me all that you own, and all that you are! God is indeed testing us whether we truly and seriously mean what we say to Him and what we promise to do. DO you still think that you are the Bride of Christ? And if you are not yet, do you still wish, do you still desire in your heart to be the Bride of Christ? If yes, then read again the above four paragraphs. Also, please, be aware and realize that when we were giving our life to the Lord (page 34, Tatry 2015), how many percent of your life did you truly give to Him? 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 or only 1%? Or you are not sure? It is definitely worthwhile to consider this matter before the Lord and with the Lord.

Life Eternal is a gift! We were not born with it nor are we able to grow it in us or to obtain it in some way. This Life has nothing in common with our natural life with which we were born, which is in our blood (Lev. 17:11,14) and has its end. When we physically die this natural life of ours will end, it will dis­appear since after our death we will only have our soul and spirit but no body and no blood. Hence, after death we will have no other life to live if we will not have in our spirit this Life Eternal. If we will have Life Eternal, we will be able to live it, but if we were pagans we will have no life to live! (Mt. 16:25) Can we imagine it? Certainly not. Because life has self-conscience and intelligence with the ability to ponder and think and judge, it also has emotions and virtues and these may be either good or bad. In God they are all good, in Satan, they are all bad and in believers they are mixed. We can also say that Satan has “no life” as such, he has an “existence of evil” just as all pagans and people condemned will have and will spend their eternity in that state of evil and terrible suffering and that without God. Finally, Life Eternal also means God-conscience; no other type of life or existence has anything common with God nor can be con­scious of God.

Therefore, do we truly desire to live Life Eternal, which is the Life of Christ? If yes, then it is not suffi­cient to only be a born-again and baptized believer, have knowledge of the Bible and keep living our life natural. Such believers have Life Eternal potentially in their spirit, in their New Man, but he does not yet govern their souls; their souls are occupied and governed by their “old man”, who is also spiritual in its constitution, but he lives the natural sinful life. Then, how are we going to gain and live the Life of Christ? By coming to Christ with open heart and willingness to receive from Him what He has for us – Life Eternal (Jn. 5:40), also, by passing through the tests and experiences, which are painful, fighting the good fight of faith (1Tim. 6:12). Don’t we have experiences when we could cry: “Where is God?” How could He allow that this or that has hap­pen­ed? Why He did not prevent it? Just look at the consequen­ces!”, etc. But if Our Lord and King has no place in our life, in our circumstances, affaires, matters, in our plans and decisions, then very se­rious and dangerous consequences may follow. And this is the road on which we usually learn many things through unpleasant even painful experiences because usually we will never learn them on any other road. Maybe that at this place it is a good opportunity to mention an important spiritual fact, which says: “Grace is free, but our obedience to that Grace is not!” What is our road? The price is our earth­ly natural life, which we value so much and we care about so much during all our earthly existence. This fact also decides how much treasure in our earthen vessel we already have and how much empty space is there, as yet.

Before we conclude this Part, let us consider the Word of God, which says: “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts…” (Gal. 4:6// Jn. 1:12). Why God had not sent forth into our hearts the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of His Son? Is He a different Spirit? Do we know the answer to this very important question? Well, I personally believe, and the Lord has already showed me this in His Light, that there is a great difference here, which for us, human creat­ures, is extremely important. Even if we would regard the Holy Spirit to be the Spirit of God and would not make between them any difference, we would not make any mistakes. However, the Spirit of His Son is fundamentally different since He is actually the human spirit of Jesus-the Man, which was perfected to the Spirit of the Son of God through sufferings, learning obedience, overcoming various temptations to which we all are also exposed (Heb. 4:15). And being thus perfected, He became the Author of the Eternal Salvation to all those that obey Him (Heb. 5:8, 9). The Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit had never suffered, never had to learn obedience to anybody in anything nor had they ever to overcome any temp­­tations since God can never be tempted (Jam. 1:13). This also leads us to the fact that on the Throne of Heaven there actually is not sitting the Son of God… but a Son of Man! And this Son of Man has be­come God-the-­Man… Whose Name is Jesus… the Anointed One, that is, Christ. What meaning does this have?

Because, this Man-Jesus was absolutely and in every way perfected, He thus became the summary of all Thoughts, Desires and Purposes of God! He is not coming to inform us about the Thoughts of God or to describe to us the Desires of God or to talk to us about the Purposes of God. He is coming as One who is representing, even embodying in His Own Being those Thoughts, Desires as well as Purposes of God! They all are now, as it were, embodied into a form of human being. The Mind of Jesus was one with the Mind of the Father and His Thoughts, the Heart of Jesus was one with the Heart of the Father and His Desires, the Will of Jesus was one with the Will of the Father and His Purposes. But all this was subject­ed to demanding, even cruel, harsh, severe tests and ordeals on this earth, in the king­doms of Satan in this world in order that it may be perfected and confirmed in the spiritual world. And it is the HUMAN SPIRIT of MAN-JESUS that did it and overcame and prevailed victoriously! He was “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

Hence, He was always tempted by other thoughts than those of God, by other desires than those of God, by other purposes than those of God. This also points to the fact that no thought or desire or purpose of God, which are coming to us are becoming parts of our being until we were subjected to testing, to a process of suffering of afflictions even of our over­com­ing in these spheres. Our mental understanding, agreement or believing is never sufficient! Do we un­derstand this? We should receive not only into our mind, but also into our heart the unchangeable fact that in order that every bit of God’s revelation be established into a permanent and indestructible form of life and power, it must be subjected to the fire of testing, afflictions and overcoming. You see, there exists the whole multitudes of Christians about whom it is said that “they have truth, right imaginations, good intentions, plans, ideas, desires, etc.” – but with these factors, they have not yet passed through the fire of testing, therefore, they have no life and thus no value.

The next step in the plan of God was sending the Holy Spirit so that this “sonship” would be brought and fitted into the beings of believers. “Sonship” is the expression which reflects the fullness, finality, ulti­ma­t­e state, perfection, that is, God’s Purpose is reached! God declared Jesus to be His Son from His birthday when He declared: “Thou Art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.” (Ps. 2:7// Acts 13:33// Heb. 1:5 + 5:5) And this Word is also connected with His baptism as well as with His resurrection. At the same time, this also represents the important fact that, in this Man, all God’s Thoughts, Desires and Purposes were brought into an absolute perfection! And the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was nothing short of being a seal to confirm the perfection of His Humanity. Therefore was the Holy Spirit sent for His Mission on earth to bring this “sonship” into the believers only after the resurrection and ascension to Heaven of the Lord Jesus Christ, where that perfected Sonship was sat on the Throne of Heaven on the Right Hand of God the Father. Only thereafter God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. Hence, the basis and the key for everything in our Christianity is the Spirit of Sonship in us. It makes all our Christianity “inner” and subjective as opposed to all that is “outer” and objective. There exists a huge difference between an imi­tation and conception, one is outwardly depicted and preached, the other is inwardly born.

When we thus have in our heart the Spirit of His Son and we are perceiving Him and letting Him guide us, then Christ Himself with His Spirit is situated in the very center of our being and we are “one with Christ”, because, “he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” (1Cor. 6:17) There is nothing that is to be added to Christ, He is complete and perfect and our task is to get to know Him. And we start knowing Him when we are following Him. And we are following Him when we are (1) denying our selves, (2) taking up our cross, and (3) following Him (Mt. 16:24). Even if we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, it yet remains just a Book, a dead Book… until the Holy Spirit comes and begins to reproduce it in us. Though I believe, as much as I want, that the Bible is the True Word of God, what can I do? I can do NOTHING… un­til Christ, Who is that Book, starts coming into me and we two are becoming One, that is, I am becom­ing the Word as He is also the Word! Let us also consider this revelation:

“In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God… and the Word was made a man (flesh) and dwelt among us…” (Jn. 1:1,14a). WHY? So that we, our man, may become the Word and dwell in Heaven!” (also Rom. 8:29) This is the KEY to all Christianity. As soon as THIS begins to happen, that Book will begin to live, because we will be becoming that Book! We will never go wrong way in our life, if THIS is going to be the basis on which we will live our earthly life.

Of course, the Lord allows man to go and do things in his own fleshly way, earthly way, but in such a case the whole principle of the spiritual life and authority will soon be lost. When such a situation will happen then what will follow will doubtless be chaos, disintegration, the state of vanity, fear, questions and feel­ings that something is definitely on the wrong way and that it failed. That’s why in these days things are not right, there is something here very bad and evil and there is only one way how to correct the things and their course. That only way is: Bring back Our King into our life, into all the matters, plans and decisions of our earthly life. The powers of darkness and evil will in such case become shock­ed since they will suddenly see that the real Lord and King of Heaven and Earth is back in His right place… and that will make all the difference! Whenever we struggle, break our way, battle with the powers of darkness and evil, when we just cannot prevail and they seem to just play games with us, then we need “Some One” with an absolute authority to be at the controlling levers of our life, our matters, plans and decisions. And the only One, Who is designated for this task to have the controlling levers of our life in His hands is Our Lord and King Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, very needful to bring back again the Lord and King of Heaven and Earth in His Authority into the life of every Christian and into the whole Church of Jesus Christ. Hence, the ANSWER to these things and questions is The Return of the Lord Jesus Christ into our life!

 

PART   12   –  RETURN OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

Before we will devote ourselves to this subject, we must devote ourselves at least briefly to another very important subject, which the majority of the Church and believers is not aware of in their spirit or in their heart. I will not be mentioning here mind or will as organs of the soul, only the heart since only heart can understand love and faith. We had already declared that love and faith are the most important kinds of fruit of the Holy Spirit without which the Bride of Christ does not exist! Even though we are continually mentioning love and faith in this message as well as in the previous one from Tatry 2015, yet, we have to point out and underline that the love we will be speaking about later on is not an “ordinary human love”, which we can know and live and even show to one another.

But, before we speak about love, let us consider the following. On page 61, the Lord is giving to us at least a glimpse of the greatest evil in man, which He compares with the satanic core of evil, darkness and death! This is much worse than any of our sins because this core is the seat of all our sinfulness and evil, which is also present in Satan! And THIS EVIL, this core can­not be taken out of us by any prayer, any religious rituals, any doctrine, teaching, fasting, knowledge or debate nor can it be cast out of man by the spiritual authority by which we ourselves are able to cast out devils from people possessed by devils! How is it possible? Let us again help ourselves by the Word of God and consider an unusual paradox, where believers, including servants from leadership, are able in the Name of Christ to do many wonderful works, present wonderful sermons, heal the sick, prophecy, or cast out devils in His Name – and at the same time, they are workers of iniquity and the Lord doesn’t know them! (Mt. 7:21-23) How is that possible? Because they carry in themselves that core of evil though they cast out devils from other people! That core of evil, in fact, cannot be cast out from any man or fight against it by any means human or religious.

You see, the core of evil dwells in our “old man” who forms our character. And our character cannot be cast out of us nor can we fight against it! He was destroyed on the Cross of Christ BY HIS WILL – NOT BY OUR WILL since we did not even exist at that time. That core of evil in us can now be destroyed only on our cross BY OUR WILL because today we exist and the Lord is asking us whether we want to follow Him or not? If we do want to follow Him then we must deny our own selves (our old man) and take up OUR CROSS and thus follow the Lord (Mt. 16:24). By taking up our cross, we are destroying that CORE OF EVIL in our “old man”, who is not under the Grace of Christ, but is destined to a cross and destruct­ion. If we will NOT DESTROY that core of evil in our old man by OUR OWN WILL by denying ourselves – which is the basis of overcoming ourselves – then IT SHALL DESTROY US! Why? Because we will not overcome what we must overcome according to the Will of Our Heavenly Father (Rev. 3:5 + 21:7) so we might be changed into the Image of His Son! (Mt. 7:21// Rom. 8:28), which is the basic Will of Our Heavenly Father!

What I described above is the spiritual foundation of what we call SALVATION – PERFECT­ION – CHANGE of believers to the Image of Christ. During the past 2,000 years, the Church has had no clue about this true Salvation; hence, it cannot preach, teach or explain this true Salvation to any believer! And if the Church does not know the true Salvation, how can it bring any believer to it? THIS IS the Tragedy of the Church and this is also the basis for Revelation 3:16,17.

The Lord is now leading me to another spiritual fact, which apparently is still a mystery not only for the whole carnal Church, but also for the vast majority of believers, which are not part of the carnal Church, but started to walk on the narrow road to the Life Eternal. What is that mystery? Maybe we can express it by one or two sentences, but the spiritual depth, width and height of this fact is for man awesome, al­most unimaginable. Because, had Christ not drunk the cup, which the Father prepared for Him and He obviously did not want to drink it! (Lk. 22:42), had He not been thus made THE SIN – that is, the Man with Satanic core of evil in Himself – had He not loved those which the Father gave Him (Jn. 6:39b), and had He not died in that spiritual state, then NO MAN ON THIS PLANET COULD BE SAVED!!! No man would have today any opportunity or ability to take up his cross, deny himself and thus follow Christ! In His death and resurrection we have the victory, which enables us to follow Him, to overcome ourselves and thus destroy Satan and his works in our own selves… by our will and faith and love for Christ! And THEREFORE, every believer who refuses to overcome himself and thus de­stroy Satan and his core of evil in his character, shall be damned for ever and ever!

One of the clear proofs of this is also hidden in the Scripture, namely, after Christ had spoken to His disciples about Him­self as “living bread from Heaven”, many of His own disciples left Him and walk­ed with Him no more (Jn. 6:66). When you take a closer look at this biblical quote you will find out that it reflects the number of antichrist, 666, and thus it clearly indicates that the satanic core of evil in the character of His own disciples prevailed and they joined Satan and left Christ! Only the twelve remained with Him (Lk. 6:13). Doesn’t this also remind us of the Word of God in Revelation 20:6-9 where people, which lived 1,000 years in the Personal Presence of Jesus Christ and with­out any tempta­tions, they will again join Satan and will go with him against Christ? (Rev. 20:7-10) This is the ut­most tragedy of man!

How could Christ overcome those terrific powers of hell, overcome Himself and gain for us that incredi­ble Salvation? By His fruit of the Spirit of God which was perfected in every way. From His miracles we know that His faith was “superhuman”, supernatural and thus even this fruit was totally perfected. However, the Lord is leading me to a specific fruit, which was similarly supernatural, but which did not have to be so outwardly evident, as His faith. It is His fruit of love and meekness! The Lord knew very well every one of His disciples, what group of miserable men they were, what characters they had, what problems and what difficulties. He was choosing every one of them thus He knew who was who and He also knew what was in each man. That’s why He had not committed Himself to any one of them because He knew all men (Jn. 2:24,25). He knew all their failures, errors and weaknesses, he also knew how they will behave and how that last phase in their fellowship with Him will be concluded, that they all will be scatter­ed and devastated and in unbelief! Of course, He also knew how it will end with Judas Iscariot and thus He knew them all well before He chose them – and then He chose them and selected them all.

Then the Word of God says: “…having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” (Jn. 13:1b). The true meaning of this Word is also this: “He loved them without any reservations or limits”. His love was never “extinguished” or limited by evil, which was in them. It was stronger than all their evil, all their sins, errors, transgressions, offenses, weaknesses, trespasses, all their unbelief and other failures. What would today be with us if His Love were offended and taken away from us because what we are in ourselves, how are we, what are we doing, failing, etc.? Probably we cannot even imagi­ne it. This is as it were the first fact concerning His Love. It is stronger than evil and evil can neither change it nor influence it. (See also pages 49 and 50)

The second fact concerning His Love is its condescension, gentleness, meekness and mercy. Let us now consider the following Word of God, which says: “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He was come from God, and went to God” (Jn. 13:3). That is to say, Jesus owed and inherited from the Father absolutely everything in this Universe! What an incredibly high position in the whole Creat­ion. I really do no know what we would do if this was the truth of us? Eh? We would most assuredly feel as highly superior and very prominent people looking down on all the others. And we might think about the others as not being worthy even of our regard or consideration. However, Jesus owing EVERYTHING in the whole Creation, “…riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments and took a towel and girded Himself… and began to wash the disciples’ feet…”  (Jn. 13:4,5). Vow! What an unimaginable humbleness and mercy in His Love, what a descend from His high position to the level of these “unworthy, undeserv­ing, miserable” men! This is, in fact, the third fact about His Love where we can also call it a “cleansing love”, which has also a spirit­ual meaning. Why? He had not only washed their feet but taught them another valuable lecture where He showed them God’s Love in comparison with the human love. Jesus wanted to tell them that in that towel and washbasin and water there is some­thing much more than what they are able to see with their eyes and understand with their brain. The Lord of Heaven and Earth washed feet of Jewish sinners. We can see behind it the Love, which no man is able to understand or imitate and which, at the same time, has a tremendous spiritual meaning.

Furthermore, Jesus told them: “Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so am I” (Jn. 13:13). But despite this truth, the Master and Lord had humbled himself to the level of a servant saying: “Verily, verily I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither is he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” (Jn. 13:16,17). Finally, He said unto them: “Verily, verily I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I sent receiveth Me and he that re­ceiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me." (Jn. 13:20) Hence, this Love of the Lord deletes all differences, levels and classes between the people which are called by their Heavenly Father. Important note: Jesus never loved evil, sin, unrighteousness or those that sinned knowingly and stood in opposition to­ward Him, toward truth and righteousness of God! In other words, Jesus Christ loved those that were sin­ners, had in their character the same core of evil from Satan, but they had no opposition in their heart toward Him, toward truth and righteousness of God! This also points to another fact regarding His Love…

The Love of Jesus was not sentimental but above all practical and truthful. He never embraced anybody and said to him “I love you”, but He always proved it by His deeds. We may have very bad experiences with so called “brotherly love” of many of our so called “brothers and sisters”, which may have express­ed their love to us and before long they may have left us and inflicted upon us maybe even the greatest injuries of our life! In other words, their humanistic love, which is a sentimental love, was quite quickly changed into a hatred, contempt and repudiation. This is that huge difference between the “true Love of God” and a “true human love”. And we must admit that our love is not even close to the Love of Jesus, rather, it often fails when­ever someone does something bad to us, offends us, gets on our nerves, hurts us, annoys us, outrages us, blames us unrighteously, humiliates us or purposely speaks a very bitter or shameful truth to our eyes with an evil intention. However, the Lord says that what is for us impossible today, will be pos­si­ble when He sends us His Holy Spirit, Who will dwell in us and enable us to do what Jesus did also. And this Spirit will not only guide us into all truth, but He will also be our Comforter and we should not be surprised at this. When we see the Love of Jesus and we also see ourselves and our love, then we need a Comforter “as salt” since with­out Him we would achieve nothing. The Word of God confirms this fact as well (Jn. 14:12,16,17// 16:13).

Maybe it will look as a paradox at first sight, but I want to take you back about 6,000 years. Do we know what happened 6,000 years ago? Adam and Eve lived in the Paradise and had a good life; they were sinless, pure and saintly as was Jesus also. In this situation then, we can compare Adam to Jesus, the First Adam to the Last Adam. But what shall we do with Eve? Obviously Eve can be compared to the Church, to the Body of Christ. She was the only woman in the whole world, hence, she belonged to Adam wholly. Furthermore, the picture of the Church, which Eve represents, is double. Firstly, she was a part of Adam since she was taken out of him while he slept, she was his body. Secondly, when she was created and perfected, she was brought to him and became his bride. This also points out to us the origi­nal and eternal Purpose and Goal of God to have a Bride for His Son, Who was to be the Saviour of man­kind. All this happened before their fall into sin and their separation from God and His Life.

To this above mentioned picture I must now add another picture regarding Adam and Eve, which applies to us as well, and that, until now! The first paragraph on page 20 (Part 4) will give us the necessary light to what I want to describe in this paragraph. It suffices to repeat here that Adam had a high earthly intel­ligence that he needed for his earthly life, hence, in this area he was not foolish. But in the spiritual area he was very naïve, could not recognize, discern spiritual facts, to orientate himself in spiritual problems and situations. This was another reason why he together with Eve had to be “submerged into evil” and thus learn spiritual wisdom. I will mention only one basic fact, which, I believe, was hardly noticed by anyone read­ing the first chapters of Genesis, and its importance for us.

It is sufficient to read Genesis chpt. 3, verses 1-6, in order to get the basis of the picture, which I desire to outline at this place. I will focus only on verse 6: “And when the woman saw, that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat…” The woman saw, the woman liked it, so, the woman took and ate. What is unusual about that? What is here absolutely unusual, even tragic at best is that the woman asked no quest­ion of anybody! She saw, she liked it and so she took and ate. Period! She did not even ask her hus­band (who was next to her) whether she should take its fruit and eat it especially when she knew that the fruit was forbidden! Nor did she tell Satan: “Now, Mr. Satan, you are saying that I will surely not die, but God says that I will surely die, I have to first talk to God because one of you is not saying truth!” Well, was this not an important thing for Eve to ask, at least one such simple question?

IT WAS NOT! Why? Because Eve had no clue what it was “to die”! No death existed by then, and no one would have understood it anyway. In fact, here we are not even talking about a physical death, which would have shaken them both quite a bit, but about a spiritual death, which was impossible for them to perceive by their senses anyway. But the fact that she had not asked Adam even one question, that was a tragedy, which put the whole mankind into the arms of Satan! But not even that was suffi­cient, because she “…gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.” Can we ask here the same question as with the woman: What is there unusual about it? What is even here absolutely unusual, in fact, absolutely tragic is that not even Adam asked any question of anybody! STUPENDOUS! Was he truly so deceived? NO! (1Tim. 2:14) Was he truly so stupid? Well, love can make one blind and stupid. You see, he obviously loved Eve more than the commandment of God! After all, even he did not know what it was “to die”! And neither of them realized the importance of the commandment or their required obedience toward God! It is also clear from the Book of Genesis that God was not explaining to them the basis of the spiritual world nor what will happen when they, as it were, “die”. Hence, the only thing that God expected from them was faith and trust that He knows why He gave them such a command­ment and that they did not have to understand everything before they would believe. Is this not God’s Principle for us even today? Because, if we believe only that what we understand, don’t we put all the Word of God and the whole Christianity and our own Salvation absolutely upside down?

What lesson can we draw from the above mentioned facts even today? Very simple one. In the Paradise Eve was turned to the first “Jezebel”; wife who never asks her husband anything whenever she likes some­thing very much or she wants it at any price. And this spirit became so slimy and unreasonable and foxy that sometimes it cannot be discovered easily. There always seems to be something in the wife, which de­sires to govern the husband so that he would not be aware of it or that he would always do what she wants. In that same Paradise Adam was turned into a husband who will eat everything what his wife gives to him and that without asking her any questions. A husband that is blind and deaf and lazy to be devoted to im­port­­ant things, even to ponder them what is right and wise and righteous and what is not, what could be dangerous and what could not. Though Adam was not deceived by Satan, yet he took it lightly, he was lazy to move his tongue and ask Satan even one simple question, like: “You say that when I will eat of this tree, I will get the knowledge of good and evil and will be like a god? (Gen. 3:5) But how will the fruit of that tree affect my life and relationship with God?” If Adam had not been so lazy, naïve and stupid and asked Sa­tan such a question, Satan would have disappeared very quickly as he had no answer to such a quest­ion. After all, Adam could have asked God directly such a question if he had an interest to understand what it was “to die” and what consequences it might have for his future. As a husband, he obviously did not have such interests. Well, don’t we see even today that such wives and husbands are existing on this planet in every nation and on every step? The explanation is from the Paradise.

Isn’t it above all things the most interesting and the most important that the destiny of all mankind was hanging upon one simple question? That, for example, today there did not have to exist the Bible, or Israel, or Church, or evil, or hospitals, or police, or armies, not even shops, businesses, money, work or anything similar on which we today base our earthly life? The Paradise could have been spread around the world and today we could have had literally “haven on earth”! And when we look at this matter even more closely, we will find out that even today one simple question can either resolve great problems or cause great da­mages, if it is not asked! The most simple and maybe even most clear example is the Church. Today, everyone in the Church knows everything, nobody ever asks anything of anybody and thus another tra­ge­dy of millions of people is on the horizon. Can anyone ever prevent it? NO! I have yet to meet a Christian from any church denomination or even from a house church, which would have asked simple questions, like: “Is that what I believe really so, is it really truth? Is the way I am walking on the right way and, thus, will I arrive where I desire to come? Should I really believe every­thing what is today being said or preached or taught? I only hear the voices of man, but the Voice of God I hear not, hence, should I put my future destiny and life in the hands of this talking man if the Voice of God I hear not?” On such very simple questions like these hangs the whole future life of that believer… and he is not interested in it? Perhaps, he inherited something from Adam in the Paradise? May be, but he is surely hopelessly deceived.

Have you ever met a believer who would have asked such questions? Why not? Well, the Word of God is giving us Light even here when it clearly says: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.” (2Tim. 2:24-26) Hence, the majority of believers are victims of the devil being taken captive to his trap of deceptions and lies and darkness – at his will! “At his will” means that he does not even have to strain himself, just to decide by his will. When any believer is in the trap of the devil, he is not even allowed to have such thoughts and ask such important questions, lest he could get out of that trap and be free. Of course, Adam and Eve could not even have such thoughts and questions since they did not even know what was evil, or deception or trap. Hence, it is quite possible that because of that they could believe Satan his sweet deceptions and did not verify the truth with God. However, this “trifle” cost mankind their fall into sin and for many of them an eternal condemnation in the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the greatest tra­gedy that can happen to man (Rev. 20:15 + 21:8). We now jumped from the Paradise and the Book of Gene­sis to the Book of Revela­tion. The most important remark that is fitting at this place is the following: The Book of Revelation represents the MAXIMUM RENEWAL, RECOVERY, a change and a total restoration of everything that man destroyed in the Book of Genesis! The Book of Revelation represents a complete changeover of the Book of Genesis. Everything that failed right at the beginning of the crea­tion of mankind, that collapsed, crashed, perished, is at the end of the history of man annulled and re­newed; everything that was lost is recovered into the original state; every question that arose at the be­ginning of the history is now, at the end of the history, answered.

Let us take a look at this stunning fact personally! What we have become, as the consequence of our BEING IN CHRIST, is eternal truth already today and will be fully disclosed at His Coming! Our one and important mistake will be, if we will remain in our emotions, imaginations, reasonings, life’s ex­periences, in wrestling, striving, failing, doubting, suspicions, distrust, disbelief, in hoping… and not concentrating our faith upon “Him, Who IS Truth” (Jn. 14:6). We were incorporated into His Death, and when He rose from the dead, we had risen with Him as members of His Body. When He was taken to Heaven, we were taken with Him, and when He was seated on the Throne of God, we were seated with Him! (Eph. 2:4-6) But wherefrom shall we obtain an absolute assurance that all this is truly so? Well, our emotions, imaginations, reasonings, life’s ex­periences, wrestling, striving, failing, doubting, suspicions, distrust, disbelief, hoping… not even our knowledge of the Bible will “liberate us” from our earthly bon­d­age and captivity. It is solely the TRUTH which liberates (Jn. 8:32). The more truth we see and believe the more assurance about the abovementioned facts we receive. Truth preached without the Light of God is doctrine, truth preached with the Light of God is revelation! We can never see doctrine, but we can always see revelation! I am telling you what I see… not what I studied!

Christ is the First and the Last, He is Alfa and Omega, and not only that, but He is also the two at the same time, and thus everything what is between them. With man the past and the future are separate, dif­ferent and unique; with Christ they synchronize, they are united. Therefore, when Christ says “I am”, it is applicable for all times, from the beginning until eternity. Christ never said “I was” or “I shall be” in that same sense (Jn. 8:58). What is most important for me personally is the fact that Christ is not only the Sa­viour, not only the Lord, not only the Son of Man sitting on the Throne of God, but Christ, this Majes­tic King of kings, The King of Heaven and Earth is also my Brother! How do I know this unbelievable fact? Firstly, read the Word of God describing the situation before the Kingdom of God (Mt. 25:31-40) and you will find out that the sheep on the right hand of the Son of Man in verse 37 He called “righteous”, and in verse 40 He also called them “the least of My brethren”. I am the least of His brethren. Secondly, I do the Will of My Father which is in Haven (Mt. 12:50// Mk. 3:35). Those that do not do the Will of the Heavenly Father or they do It sloppily, casually, lazily, unwillingly or they think they do It, but do It not and have no proof from the Lord, these are not the brethren of Christ! That’s why these do not even want to come to Him to have His Life! (Jn. 5:40) And thirdly, I love the Lord and He loves me and I am always where He is (Jn. 19:26,27). His Life contains Truth and it liberates us from the earthly bondage. The more I see Christ, the more I am free and see my future with Him. I want to add here such a small “technical” note, namely, that when we are receiving from Christ His Life, we do not have to necessarily perceive any battle or conflict in our being, that is, we may not have any knowledge that in this area there may be taking place some battle of the New Life with our old life, that is, with our death. It is our “self”, our old na­tural life, which stands in the way of that New Life of God and how it wants to demon­strate and express itself in our being.

What is also absolutely important to mention is the fact, that regarding the Lord Jesus Christ on the right hand of God, Satan is totally ineffective and unable to even touch Him, and he knows it, The only way how he can touch Christ is trough the members of His Body, which do not live His Life and thus they do not have the armor against Satan’s death. Such members of His Body may be enormously active in reli­gious sphere, but God is not in their activities. Their activity may be in any religious sphere, but God is not in it. We should thus not be surprised if the world’s “religions” are, in fact, the greatest enemies of God in this world. Why? Well, our receiving the Life of Christ at the same time means our riddance of our old so that this latter operation would provide a place for the New Life. But this is not some pleasant operation. The believers, which have truly devoted themselves to the Lord and desire to have and live His Life, are later often found in uneasy situations. What is worse is when such believers live in places where they are desperately lonely. There is no spiritual life either in their presence or around them, but a spiritual death, nor is there a possibility of a spiritual fellowship. They are literary forced to trust the Lord that He will hold them in any and every life’s situation. These are not any fairytales, but a real­ity not only from the side of such believers, but also from the side of the Lord, Who has exceedingly great power toward us, who believe (Eph. 1:19).

We have called this Part 12 “Return of the Lord Jesus Christ”. Let us now continue in this subject and let us ask ourselves: “What will return Our Lord and King?” There exist several conditions in the believ­ers themselves which will be decisive in the return of Our Lord and King. The first and most import­ant condition is that believers have actually and in truth learned their lessons “prescribed” by Our Lord and King Himself. This may take us a long time and may also mean a miserable time, but the Lord will not move until the lessons presented to believers have been learned in their lives. The most important lesson which the Church and all believers must learn is the fact that it is always absolutely catastrophic if the Anointed King of God is not at His place in our life, in our affaires, plans and also our decisions. Hence, while the believers have a “good life in this world” and they are “missing nothing”, then the King will never return for them.

Having learned this lesson in their life, the believers usually gain the ability to fulfill also the second condition, which rests in their truthful confession and repentance. Confession is always a very important factor, which includes in itself our kneeling and confirming our failures as well as the true reasons for our failures. Finally, this will bring us to our third condition, that is, to a truthful and heart-felt desire when we will be finally prepared to declare: “We cannot continue without You… our very life and future depend on You and on the fact that You are with us.” But here will be yet necessary another work, some preparation because it is also written: “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” (1Jn. 3:3). Even this is what the Lord will be looking for in us, and if He finds no­thing, He again may postpone His return. Since He has foreknowledge, HE knows when WE shall be ready to truthfully and in a deep desire to call on Him that He would return.

Many believers may be satisfying themselves in waiting that “something will happen before His return”, or they may be calculating when He will come or they may also say: “He will come in His appointed time”. Well, yes it is true, but this does not give us any specific answer to our specific question. Though the time is appointed by the Heavenly Father in His foreknowledge, but the most important factor in His Coming are US, which are truly His Bride… and we may not be aware of that factor. In fact, He will not come from Himself nor will the Heavenly Father just send Him. Even in the Mind of the Father He must be brought back by readiness of His Bride and not by any calendar! (Mt. 25:10-12// Rev. 19:7-9) The Spirit and the Bride must from her heart and in truth confess: “COME… even so COME Lord Jesus.” (Rev. 22: 17,20) And when the Bride will call for Him like that… then He will come!

LET THE NAME OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS BLESSED FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN.

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