- Gary Sigler -
"The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD,
which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the
earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him" (Zech. 12:1).
"But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to
worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him
in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24).
Jesus said that to worship God you must worship Him in spirit and in
truth. Another meaning for the word truth is reality.
We are beginning to enter in these days the Feast of Tabernacles. To
experience Tabernacles in reality is to have the Spirit of the living God
filling His temple, which temple you are.
What I was taught in the Pentecostal circles was that the Feast of
Tabernacles represented the land of Canaan, a place we enter into when we
die. We were taught that we experienced Passover when we were saved and
Pentecost when we were baptized with the Spirit. However, to experience
the Feast of Tabernacles, we were taught that we must die and go to
heaven.
This is why in many Pentecostal circles today they sing songs like
"When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will
be." We sing these songs because of our mindset. We have been taught
that the crossing over of the Jordan river is physical death, and that we
won’t really be free and understand the reality of God and walk in the
"Good Land" of Canaan until we die. They say that our hope is to
live the best we can and then we die and go to heaven. I have met a lot of
people who say they want to go to heaven but I never met anyone who wanted
to die to self to go there.
Jesus taught some very simple things, such as, "The kingdom of God
cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo
there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke
17:20-21).
The Kingdom of Heaven does not come with observation. You cannot see it
just with your physical eyes. People are saying today that you need to go
here or go there, God is really moving over there, and that may be true,
but Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you."
To worship God in spirit, we must enter into the reality of walking today
in the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul said, "Now this I say,
brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither
doth corruption inherit incorruption" (1 Cor. 15:50).
The Adamic nature cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Those who teach that
we enter heaven at death do not understand this Scripture. There is no
power in death to change you and make you acceptable for heaven. Death has
no power to change you into His likeness. If you pass from this earth
realm today, you will still be what you are right now. Death has
absolutely no power to make you into His likeness. This is why the Apostle
John warned us to abide in Him so that when He appears we won’t fall in
shame before him at His coming. "And now, little children, abide in
him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be
ashamed before him at his coming" (1 John 2:28). God is Spirit, and
He formed the spirit in man. The Apostle Paul tells us, "He that is
joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17).
If you are joined to the Lord, if His Spirit has quickened and regenerated
your spirit, you are one with God. Not in your mentality, not in your
natural understanding, not in your thinking, but you are one with God in
spirit. We must worship God in spirit and in reality.
To worship Him in reality means that you are walking in the Kingdom of
God. To walk in the Spirit means that the flesh is no longer in control.
To walk in the Kingdom of God today means that God is once again walking
in humanity. The reality of the Kingdom is to see the life of the King
come alive on the inside of your being. If Jesus isn’t at least in a
small measure coming forth in you, if you are not being changed into His
likeness, if you are not seeing your natural, carnal human nature falling
into the ground and dying, you are not in the Kingdom of God and neither
will you go there when you pass from this earthly plane.
The Scriptures never have promises for Adam, the carnal man. The promises
are made are to the Seed. The only promise to your carnal Adamic nature is
that it will be put to death. Do not ever think that God expects you with
your human intellect and understanding to become godly. He does not plan
to take your carnal nature and make it into something better. The only
thing your carnal nature is good for is to fall into the ground and die so
that the Seed of the living Christ can come forth within you. You must
understand this if you are to ever walk in the wonderful promises of the
Scriptures.
The Divine Nature
"According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that
pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath
called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great
and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine
nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through
lust" (2 Peter 1:3-4).
This is a promise to the one who has been regenerated by the Spirit of
God. The promises are to the Seed. If you don’t understand this, you
will always be trying with your natural goodness to make your carnal
nature better. God wants to expose, reveal and unveil to you that your
carnal nature needs to fall into the ground and die, no matter how good it
is.
Today you are living from either Adam or Christ. You are receiving your
life source from one of these two natures. You may be a Christian, born
again and regenerated, and still be living in Adam and not Christ. Adam
can be very good. Adam can go to church and sing songs and dance, he can
do all kinds of religious activity, he can have good emotional feelings,
but Adam is still Adam and he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That
is why Jesus said, "If you are going to worship me, you must worship
me in spirit and truth." We cannot come into His presence with our
natural goodness, or works of righteousness. We must enter into His
presence in spirit. This simply means that we enter His presence from the
Christ nature within us and not from the Adamic realm.
Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3). To be
poor in spirit means that you understand your carnal nature, the goodness
as well as the evil. You realize that you are so poor in being able to
please God with your human living. When you look at the life that Jesus
lived as an example to His followers, you hear Him teach the principles of
the Kingdom in Matthew 5, 6, & 7, and sense a stirring and a longing
to walk as He walked, but you know it is impossible with your human
nature. Within you is a desire, a deep longing hunger to be as He taught,
but you realize the hopelessness and the utter inability for you as a
human to walk as God on the earth. You have that desire to be conformed in
every way to His nature within you, but you feel so empty and unable to
fulfill all the righteous requirements of the law. That is when you begin
to discover that to worship God is not a matter of your intellect, not a
matter of your good performance.
Some of us can be very good, but our goodness cannot enter into the
presence of God. One of the best examples of that is Cain and Able. Cain
from his natural abilities and talents tilled the ground, and I am sure
that he produced some of the best crops that could be yielded. I’m sure
that he brought the very best that his human hands could produce to offer
to God, but God rejected his offering. For years I wondered why Cain’s
offering was not acceptable. It was because he tried to come to God based
on his capability to please God through his natural ability and goodness.
Able just brought an offering to God and his offering was accepted. He did
not do any work with his hands. Able realized he could offer nothing to
God from himself. He knew he could not come to God with his natural
ability and character. He understood that the offering was based on the
coming Messiah, one who would come to be an offering for his sin. We
cannot with our natural life be obedient and walk in all the precepts of
the Law. It is wonderful that you have that desire. Anyone who has been
regenerated has the Spirit of God within them and will have the heart-cry
to be like He is. But unless you understand that it is impossible for a
human to be godly, until you really understand that, you will always be a
failure, because you will always be trying to make your carnal nature
better, rather than letting it die.
The Religious Concept of Holiness
The past moves of holiness have, for the most part, always tried to make
Adam (our natural life) better. Holiness has been taught in such a way
that it has brought much bondage to God’s people. We were taught that
women must wear long dresses and long sleeves and not cut their hair and
not chew or go to movies. The list of don’ts goes on and on. We have
thought that to be holy we must not do certain things and we must do other
things. We must read the Bible every day, pray, give 10% of our money, and
this list also never seems to end. This concept makes us think that
holiness is an outward condition.
If we clean up Adam, then like Cain, we feel worthy to enter into God’s
presence, not realizing that this attitude keeps us from entering in. This
is why multitudes of God’s people never experience His loving presence
in their daily lives, because they are trying to enter His presence with
the works of Adam (the flesh). We are always trying to make Adam better.
When you understand who Adam is, you realize that he is under the Curse,
he is and always will be separated from God.
Adam is the Adamic race of flesh and blood, with a carnal mentality, and
separated from God. Adam will never be acceptable to God. Jesus did not go
to the Cross to make Adam a better person. Jesus took Adam (the carnal
nature) into death through the Cross and left him there, and even when we
were dead in trespasses and sins, Jesus made us alive in our spirit with
Christ. Now Christ is our new nature, and Adam is dead. We don’t realize
this, so we still keep trying to make Adam better, when God says he is
dead. We teach our children holiness in an outward way, which brings them
into bondage and causes them to rebel against the religious teachings of
their parents. Holiness is not performance. Holiness has nothing to do
with your natural character becoming better.
God’s Concept of Holiness
Holiness is simply God Himself. If God by His Spirit is not living in you,
if He is not being formed in you, if the Spirit of the living God is not
flowing from you, you can never be holy. Holiness is the person of Christ
living His life in you instead of you. Holiness is not a performance. You
are either holy or you are not. Holiness is not something you can become.
Holiness is wherever God is. When I first had my eyes opened to this
truth, I understood that everything I had been trying to do for many years
was missing the mark of holiness. I was trying to make myself obedient. I
was trying to conform to the Law in an outward way.
One day, the Lord revealed to me a truth in the burning bush where God
spoke to Moses. God spoke from the bush and told Moses to take off his
shoes because he was on holy ground. The only reason that ground was holy
was because God was there. That ground was not holy until the presence of
God came upon it. Holiness is wherever God is. When you have the
revelation of the Spirit of God living in you, you will then be a Holy
person. You won’t ever be holy in Adam, but when you see Christ in you
and realize that is your true nature, you will then begin to live from
that nature and you will be holy. You don’t become holy in spirit, you
are holy already! This is why Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17-19,
"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give
unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The
eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the
hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance
in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward
who believe, according to the working of his mighty power."
Once your eyes of understanding are opened, you will never have to try to
be holy. Christ in you will grow and swallow up everything of Adam until
Christ is all in all.
If you have been regenerated, you have a desire for God. If you don’t
have a hunger to be like Jesus, if you do not have this desire, it
doesn’t matter how many times you go to church, read your Bible, or say
some words. If you do not have a desire in your heart to be conformed into
His image, if you have no desire to walk as He walked, if you have no
desire to see your ugliness, your resentment, your bitterness, your hatred
fall into the ground and die, then you might be religious, but you are not
regenerated.
However, you must realize that Adam (the flesh man) cannot ever be holy.
This is why the Apostle Paul said in Romans 7:14-24,
"For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under
sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but
what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent
unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin
that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh),
dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform
that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the
evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that,
when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of
God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of
sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?"
Saved at the Cross
Paul says the Law is spiritual but we are carnal. This is why we must
learn how to touch God in our spirit. In our flesh dwells no good thing.
We must worship God in our spirit. We delight in God, but there is a
principle working in our flesh called the law of sin and death, and it
brings us into bondage and captivity.
If this is your experience, then you know that you have been regenerated,
or you wouldn’t care about your sinful condition. I use the word
regenerated instead of saved, because you were saved at the Cross of
Calvary. The Apostle Paul clearly taught that we were crucified with Jesus
at the Cross. At the Cross, the world, sin, the flesh and the devil were
terminated. However, in our perception it is all very much alive. I have
used before the illustration of a rose. If you cut a rose from a rose
bush, the moment you cut it, it loses its life supply and is dead.
However, in your perception the rose is still very much alive.
Nevertheless, in a few days the rose will totally die. At the Cross of
Calvary, Adam lost his life supply and was crucified with Jesus. When you
really see that by revelation, your carnal nature will begin lose its hold
on you.
When You Are Regenerated,
You Are Made Alive in Your Spirit
When you are regenerated in your spirit, you are made alive, and then
begin to experience God as your life. If you have been quickened or
touched by God, you will never forget it. Everyone can remember the
experience of being regenerated. When God touches and regenerates your
spirit, it is the best experience of your life up to that time. His Seed
within you is made alive.
From the Cross to the Throne is a long process in your experience. Time is
for processing. From the time of regeneration until we are transformed
into His likeness and image is a long transformation process.
The key to becoming godly is to understand that it is impossible for you
to accomplish it, but like Abraham, we are able to believe God who
justifies the ungodly. "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on
him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for
righteousness" Rom. 4:5).
As a Christian, for many years I had a lot of ungodly habits and traits. I
had developed a lot of deep-rooted habits by the time I experienced the
Lord at 29 years old. These habits did not all just fall away from me when
I was regenerated. To become transformed can take a long time. However, if
you get into the workings of the flesh to try to perfect the flesh, you
cause yourself a lot of grief. The flesh cannot perfect the flesh. We must
understand that it is God’s responsibility to perfect us.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his
good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13).
"Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb.
12:2).
"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good
work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil.
1:6).
We must develop confidence in God’s ability to perfect us according to
His plan and purpose. One who has true faith in God’s ability can look
at all the areas in his life that need to be transformed, and realize that
because of the sacrifice of Calvary, God says that I am justified.
Justified means just as if I had never sinned. I don’t have to look or
feel justified, but nevertheless, because of the Cross of Calvary, God
says we are justified.
"To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the
word of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19).
Almost all of Christendom knows these verses but has not really had a
revelation of them. Many of the denominations today will teach you that
Jesus lives in you. We have had this teaching for two thousand years,
without much experience of it. In these days, we are being brought into a
much greater revelation and understanding of God and His purposes than
ever before. This is because the age is changing and the new age is going
to usher in a people who are in the full likeness and manifestation of
God. God is literally going to fill His temple, which temple you are, with
His presence. Today, God is filling me with Himself. For 13 years, I tried
desperately to be a good Christian and couldn’t, but today I don’t
even have to try to be one.
We have had a lot of truth for years with little understanding and
reality. One of my favorite verses today is, "Then the eyes of the
blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then
shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for
in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert"
(Is. 35:5-6).
Today our eyes are being opened. It is not enough to just intellectually
know the gospel. We think that because we know these things we have them.
We think that because we have the knowledge that Jesus lives in us that He
does, yet look at our condition. There is something drastically wrong with
the church system. The condition of the system of Christianity is an
indictment against the leaders of the system. This is because carnally
minded men have taken the Scriptures with the natural understanding and
have taught people with natural concepts and reasoning. Every religion in
the world, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, or any other
religion, was birthed because men had a hunger and a desire for God. These
religions were all started by good men hungering after God, but became
polluted through the carnal mentality and understanding of men.
If Christian leaders really had a heart for God, with no selfish motives,
not looking for gain, not trying to maintain their finances or promoting
themselves, if they were totally unselfish, there is no way that they
could do what they are doing today. There is no way according to Scripture
that you can say, "I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am Baptist, I am
Catholic, I am Pentecostal." Some today are even saying "I am of
the third day." Jesus said, "Every kingdom divided against
itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against
itself shall not stand" (Matt. 12:25). The religious systems of
today, the Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, all of them are falling,
because they are not built on a proper foundation. They all started as a
work of God, but soon unspiritual men took over the leadership and created
another division in the church system.
One of the things that God says he hates is the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans (Rev. 2:6). That is the doctrine of the separation between
clergy and laity. God does not want a church hierarchy. His plan and
purpose is not to establish a church hierarchy; that is a perversion.
There is no place in Scripture where we can find such a thing as a
"senior pastor". The Apostle Paul, wherever he went, established
churches and ordained elders (plural) in each city. There is no such thing
in Scripture as the systematized churches we see today. That is why there
is no reality in the church life. That is why they are not worshiping God
in Spirit and in reality, because there is no reality in that form. The
ministry gifts that Ephesians talks about is not a hierarchy. An apostle
goes into an area and establishes and lays the foundation of the church
life. He raises up elders and then the apostle moves on.
We have not understood in these days that the Aaronic priesthood has
ended. You do not need a man today to counsel you and tell you what to do.
The Melchizedek priesthood is God coming to you bringing the bread of His
Word and the wine of His enjoyment.
There is a big difference between you having a desire for God and a call
on your life, and you going out to perform that with the carnal
understanding and mentality. That is why we have this big, ungodly,
horrible whore of Christendom passing herself off as the bride of Christ.
She is divisive and backbiting. You get some of the Christians of the same
church group together and they will bite and devour one another, they will
expose one another, all thinking they are doing God a service. They have
no concept of the Father-heart of God.
What God is doing today is bigger than any denomination. God has so many
hungry people today that we can travel the length and breath of this
country and have a meeting every night in a different home. Some say that
because we don’t meet regularly in a church building we are forsaking
the assembling of ourselves together. Preachers use that Scripture to keep
people in their churches. You don’t have to meet in a building with a
preacher and a choir. The Word simply says to not forsake the assembling
of yourselves together. You need me and I need you, and we need to gather
together and fellowship.
Giving and Receiving
Another item I love to discuss is giving and receiving. I have never in
all my years of ministry worried about finances. I never take an offering
in any of my meetings and I never sell anything. What we have is always
distributed at no charge. The principle of the Kingdom is giving and
receiving, not buying and selling. A servant is one who gives and
receives.
The system of Christianity has not learned some of the basic principles of
the Kingdom. Jesus said, "Therefore take no thought, saying, What
shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things" (Matt.
6:31-32). Do not be concerned about tomorrow. God can control what we do
through our finances. If God wants me to do something, I just say,
"OK God." I don’t have to worry about the finances if He wants
me to do something. If He wants me to go to another country to preach the
gospel, I don’t have to do fund-raising to raise the money. If I have to
raise the money by self-effort, then God is not really telling me to go.
He finances what He wants me to do. Most of the money raised in
Christianity is done by carnal means and methods.
We have not been taught the principles of the Kingdom, because most people
think that in our day and age they won’t work. When Jesus sent his
disciples out, he told them to not even take a money bag with them.
"And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by
two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; and commanded them
that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no
scrip, no bread, no money in their purse" (Mark 6:7-8). If God sends
you, He will provide. I used to say that I wanted to be like the men of
faith in Hebrews. If you want to be like those men then you have to be
like they were. God spoke to Abraham and he just started walking, not
knowing where he was going. Will we do that today? It is very difficult.
(Note: God does not always send out His disciples with no provisions (see
Luke 22:35-36). God is not limited; He does not always have to do things
the same way with everyone every time. The key is to hear His voice, and
to do whatever He leads you to do. You may have a genuine calling on your
life, and have to wait for years before God enables you to act on it. It
would be presumption to claim a verse and try to force God to do the same
with you as He did for someone else. Just relax and let God lead in His
own way, and don’t be afraid to obey even if there is no precedent for
what He tells you to do.)
Jesus also said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and
steal" (Matt. 6:19). This is another Kingdom principle. However, we
have teachers all over Christendom holding financial seminars, teaching
the saints how to lay up treasures on earth.
The Word of the Kingdom is not for the masses of people. When Jesus taught
the principles of the Kingdom, he went up on a mountain and His disciples
followed Him. There were only a few who heard the marvelous teaching of
the principles of the Kingdom. Matthew 8:1 says that when he came down
from the mountain, the multitudes followed Him again. The multitudes will
not listen to the gospel of the Kingdom.
We quote the verse all the time, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and all things shall be added unto you" (Matt.
6:33). We say that and we accept that with our natural understanding, but
we live like we do not believe it. We really do not believe it or we would
live like it. We just mentally assent to Scripture.
The natural mind goes absolutely crazy with Kingdom principles. We preach
a different gospel than what Jesus and His disciples taught. Jesus said,
"Love your enemies." He said, "Do good to those who
despitefully use you." Do you think that Jesus would tell you to love
your enemies and to bless them and do good to them and then He would do
something different? If you listen to the gospel that is being preached
today, that is what is said. We hear a lot in Christian circles about what
horrible tortures God is going to subject His creation to. They teach that
God is not going to bless His enemies, but submit them to endless torment
and agony. This comes from a carnal understanding of Scripture. God would
never teach us to do good to our enemies and then do the opposite Himself.
God has many wonderful, precious people in the system of Christianity,
however they are divided and blinded today by the system. It is not their
fault that they are sitting in darkness. Every seed produces after its own
kind. If you have been indoctrinated into a denominational theology, and
that is all you ever know, then the denominational seed will reproduce in
you. Only a revelation from God would ever cause you to seek more than you
can find in the system of religion. God has placed His Seed within us, and
will produce His life within us as we seek His presence above all else.
The problem with most of us is that we have mingled seed sown within us.
We have the Seed of God regenerated within us, but we also have the seed
of religion sown in us. We must turn away from all the religious things
and seek to hear God for ourselves. The principles of the Kingdom are not
to be taken in a legal way. This is not a performance. If Jesus speaks
something to you, then what He speaks to you He also gives you the ability
to do.
God’s Purpose in Man
"The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which
stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and
formeth the spirit of man within him" (Zech. 12:1).
The above verse is one of the verses that reveal God’s purpose for
creation. There are three main items mentioned: the heavens, the earth and
the spirit of man. This is a miniature picture of creation. God created
the heavens and earth so that He could then create man and have a body
through which to express himself on the earth. God’s people have been
deceived for years, thinking that the best thing for them was that they
would go to a place called heaven when they die, when all the time the
revelation of Scripture is that God wants to come to earth and live and be
expressed in His people. God created the earth and then man, so that He
could have a dwelling place. "In whom all the building fitly framed
together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are
builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" (Eph.
2:21-22).
God is Spirit, His substance is Spirit, and He formed His substance in
man. When God regenerates our spirit, His very substance comes alive
within us. The Scriptures call it waking up. "And that, knowing the
time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our
salvation nearer than when we believed" (Rom. 13:11).
"Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the
dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. 5:14). There is a
sleeping giant within us that needs to awake.
There is a substance in you that is not natural. There is a substance in
you that has nothing to do with the fall of Adam. Everything in your human
intellect and natural understanding and interpretation is a part of the
Fall. However, there is something deep within your being called spirit.
The Apostle Paul says, "He that is joined unto the Lord is one
spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17). Your spirit has been regenerated, and is the
very substance of God. You were formed out of the very substance of God.
His divine essence, His life and nature, is within the core of your being.
That is why it is said in Revelation 14:1, "And I looked, and, lo, a
Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four
thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads."
"And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their
foreheads" (Rev. 22:4). The name represents the character. These are
they who have been renewed in the spirit of their mind. There are people
of God on the earth today who are having the name of God written on their
foreheads. They are being transformed into His character and nature, and
are becoming the fullness of God on the earth. They are having their minds
renewed to see the difference between the natural and the spiritual life.
They realize that Adam must be swallowed up by the Christ within.
There is no amount of self-seeking or works that we can do to make this
happen. It is a work of the Spirit within us. When we get our eyes off of
Adam and onto Christ within us, then from the very center of our being
arises the ascended, transcendent, Spirit of the living God. He begins to
live in you, instead of you. You begin to experience what the Apostle Paul
said, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live
by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for
me" (Gal. 2:20).
That is the good news of the gospel. The gospel is not about what you have
to do after you are saved. It is not about making the natural life better.
You work out your salvation not by natural means and methods but by
sitting at His feet and learning to hear His voice and then doing what He
says. God wants to saturate and permeate your being with His life and
nature.
If you have been quickened by the Spirit of God, He is in you. It is not
enough just to know this, you must experience it. Jesus said, "Abide
in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it
abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine,
ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man
abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men
gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned" (John
15:4-6).
I spent many months seeking God as to what these verses meant. It became
evident that if I learned how to abide in Him, His life and character
would be produced in me. I so desperately wanted to know as a young
Christian how to abide in Him. I knew that this was the answer to all my
frustrations of trying to live the Christian life. If we abide in Him, we
will bear much fruit. I was told that to abide in Him I must not do
certain things and that I must do other things. In other words, if I kept
the Law by natural means, if I could make Adam a better person, I would be
abiding in Christ. Actually I would just be making Adam a better person.
The Scriptures say that "If any man is in Christ, he is a new
creature" (2 Cor. 5:17). We are a new creation, not an old creation
made better.
Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches." The same
life, the same spiritual substance that I am, you are, not in Adam, but in
Christ. In Christ you are complete. The Apostle Paul said, "For in
him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in
him, which is the head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:9-10).
You are complete in Him, not in your natural personality, not in your
carnal understanding, but you are complete in Him. He does not need
processing. He is complete. The more our eyes are opened to the truth of
His abiding in us, the more we will live by His life. The thing we have to
discover for ourselves is how to abide in Him.
How to Know If You Are Abiding in the Vine
"I am the vine, you are the branches." If you look at a vine
with branches, they are all one. The branch is connected to and a vital
part of the vine. If you cut a branch from the vine, it will dry up and
die. God and man are not two separate entities, they are one. You feel
separated in your consciousness because of the Fall. The branch and the
vine are one. The life that flows through the vine flows through the
branch. So Jesus says that if we abide in Him we will bear much fruit.
Your fruit is not all the people you witness to and get saved. Your fruit
is the nature and the character and the reproduction of God growing within
you: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, meekness and self control.
These attributes will flow from you, and you won’t have to try to be
this way. The only way to know if you are abiding in Christ is by the
fruit that you are producing. If you are still producing unforgiveness and
bitterness, and you are still holding resentment against someone, if you
are bringing accusation against a brother or sister in any form
whatsoever, you are not abiding in Christ. If you are worried and in fear
about tomorrow, you are not abiding in Him. These things are in Adam, not
in Christ. So when these negative things come up in us, we must turn away
from Adam and to Christ within us.
If you are holding resentment against someone, you can’t help it, but
you can make a choice to forgive them and turn to Christ for His life
supply in you to swallow up all resentment. You can choose, regardless of
what you are feeling. You may have rage inside of you for a person. You
can look at that rage and stand against it and make a choice to forgive
them and to be longsuffering with them. Your feelings may be going wild,
but you can choose to turn away from those feelings and look with the eyes
of faith and choose to forgive.
I may not like you in the natural, but I must make a choice, knowing that
God is love and so I choose to love you. I must stand against my feelings
of dislike for you. I must understand that on the Cross of Calvary every
act of transgression was forgiven. Through Calvary I must see Christ in
you. I have practiced this for many years, and I can testify to you that I
have learned to love everyone. Through practice and application, you will
begin to see with the eyes of the Spirit and experience the love of God
for all of creation.
"If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are
burned" (John 15:6). The first time I ever heard a message on this
verse, I was told that the branches which didn’t bear fruit were cast
into the fire of hell for ever and ever.
It would be very good for everyone to do a study on the word fire in the
Scriptures. The word fire in the original language is the word pur,
Strong’s #4442. We get our English words pure, purity, and purify from
this word.
If you are a Christian and you are not abiding in the vine, if you are
producing bitterness and hatefulness, criticizing one another and
producing the works of the flesh, then God will throw you into the fire.
He will raise up tormentors to torment you, and you will have no peace day
or night until you understand that you are not to bring condemnation on
anyone at any time.
"Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou
wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:
shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as
I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the
tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise
shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive
not every one his brother their trespasses" (Matt. 18:32-35).
To abide in the vine is to abide in His presence. In His presence we
experience the love of God. We turn from the presence of Adam (our natural
life) to Christ within. When you touch the love of God, it becomes your
nature to love everyone and to believe the very best of every person. You
can see all of their faults and yet realize that you love them and want to
minister the love of God to them. Whenever I see someone and I have a
tendency to bring judgment on them, I am immediately confronted with the
Cross of Calvary.
"To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the
word of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19).
If God is not holding you accountable for your trespasses because of the
Cross, then I have no right to hold you accountable either. I must
continually minister to you and intercede for you, that your eyes would be
opened to see that you are a spiritual being. Most of us are more natural
than spiritual. We are not natural beings but spiritual beings living in a
body. God will take that fallen nature into death so that you will
manifest everything that He is to a lost and dying world.
The Apostle Paul said, "What agreement hath the temple of God with
idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will
dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall
be my people" (2 Cor. 6:16).
When you realize that you are the dwelling place of God, you no longer
criticize and condemn anyone. You do not know you are the temple of God
when you display such a character. You may know it intellectually, but you
have no reality of it when you are manifesting the character of Adam. The
character of God being formed in you does not act unbecomingly. You may
have to bring correction to someone, but it will be in love. If you are
really bringing spiritual correction, your heart will be breaking for that
person and you will have a burning compassion to help them and to relieve
them of their wrongdoing. If you do not have that kind of an attitude,
then no matter how wrong someone is, you have no right to correct them.
When God’s people begin to understand these things, we will have people
running to our meetings, because there will be unconditional love and
acceptance.
Do you know that it is not our job to change anyone? There is only one
person in all of creation that can change anyone and that is God. God’s
leaders are not to try to control and manipulate and try to change people
in an outward way. Leaders try to control what others do if they do not
have the power of the Spirit of God to speak life to them. If someone is
disobedient and has problems and hangups, you can minister and speak life
into them. However, if you go to them and try to correct them in an
outward way and try to get them to conform to what you feel is best for
them, you are taking the place of the Spirit of God in their life.
There Are Two Seeds:
The Seed of the Serpent/The Seed of Christ
The Adamic life produces the seed of the serpent, which is the fallen
human nature within us. The Seed of Christ produces the nature of God
within us.
"And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this,
thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon
thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel"
(Gen. 3:14-15).
The seed of the serpent produces the fallen human consciousness which is
separated from God. When Adam was created and God breathed His life into
him, he was only conscious of God’s life flowing within him. He was the
image and expression of God on the earth. When he was lowered into the
flesh realm, he felt separated from God and hid himself.
After the Fall, it is said in Genesis 5:3, "And Adam lived an hundred
and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image;
and called his name Seth." So all of us are born into this world in
the likeness and image of Adam. We all have the serpent seed within us. I
know this will not be a popular teaching for some, but Scripture bears
this out. For instance, when Jesus was telling His disciples He was going
to the Cross, Peter began to rebuke him, and Jesus said, "Get behind
me, Satan!" He said, "You do not have in mind the things of God,
but the things of men" (Mark 8:32-33). This Scripture shows that
whenever we get into the natural mind and thinking, we are functioning in
the satanic realm.
The seed of the serpent grows in the natural mind. This seed produces a
life that is both good and evil. Living by the knowledge of good and evil
is what keeps you alienated and separated from God in your consciousness.
The seed of the serpent is growing in the consciousness of the masses of
this world, both Christian and non-Christian. This is why the Apostle Paul
said, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God:
for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then
they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:6-8). They that
live according to the natural mind are living according to the flesh. You
cannot please God, no matter how good you make your flesh. We must be
renewed in the spirit of our mind and live according to the Spirit.
Paul also said, "Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that
dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no
good thing. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in
my members" (Rom. 7:17-18,23).
The satanic life is one with our carnal nature. As long as we focus on the
Adamic life within us, we will never overcome the flesh. The more you try
to live according to good and evil, the more you become separated in your
consciousness from God. We must learn to turn from the Adamic
consciousness to Christ consciousness within us.
The Seed of the Serpent Produces the Antichrist
The seed of the serpent produces the carnal human nature, which is the
antichrist spirit. I know this is hard for some to receive, so let’s
look at some Scripture.
Antichrist means one who is against Christ. The word is Strong’s #500 -
(an-tee'-khris-tos); from 473 and 5547; an opponent of the Messiah.
"Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject
to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the
flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:7-8).
"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:
for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).
The natural man with the carnal mind is the Adamic life and consciousness
that we received at the Fall. This Adamic life is an antichrist spirit
that is against the Holy Spirit living His life in us. Antichrist is self
life—the natural man with a carnal mind sitting in the temple of God
(which temple you are), declaring himself to be God. Many have missed
this, not realizing that the antichrist is growing in human nature,
producing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that
antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we
know that it is the last time" (1 John 2:18).
"And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye
have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the
world" (1 John 4:3).
"For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an
antichrist" (2 John 1:77).
The Seed of Christ Produces God’s Nature In Us
A seed of corn contains everything that is needed to reproduce the corn
kingdom. The seed of corn is "predestinated", or you might say
"pre-programmed", to bring forth the corn kingdom. The seed has
a program, like a computer, and in the seed is the program to reproduce
the corn kingdom. You can take a seed of corn and plant it into the
ground, and then you can take your Bible and try to teach it how to grow.
This is what Christendom has done for 2,000 years. We get people
regenerated–the Seed of God becomes regenerated on the inside of
them–and then we take out the Book, and we begin to teach the seed in
the ground how to grow. For instance, we tell it that it has to go out and
witness, it has to clean up its life, it has to do all sorts of things.
And so we produce multitudes of people with itching ears, ever learning
and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, because the truth is
not in all the intellectual understanding and knowledge that you can pull
to yourself. All the teaching you need is to have a basic understanding of
the basic principles of God and His Kingdom, and then seek Him.
So you put the seed in the ground, and all it needs is water (Jesus said,
"You are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you")
and the sun, which brings heat (God will throw you into the fire). The
heat produces pressure on the seed (the shell of the outer man). The heat
and the pain and the pressure of everything you are going through in this
life breaks the shell of the outer man, and the Seed begins to grow.
Now you can teach me about how I am supposed to act, but if the Seed of
God in me never grows, I will never, in reality, be able to walk in all of
the truths that I know. But if the Seed is watered, if the Seed is
nourished, and if I understand that the covenant God made is with the
Seed, then I will grow to maturity. "And if ye be Christ's, then are
ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Now to Abraham and
his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many;
but as of one, And to thy Seed, which is Christ" (Gal. 3:29,16).
God’s Promise To the Seed
It is very, very critical, in what God is doing in these days, to
understand the covenant. Because, although God gave Abraham a covenant,
the covenant was not with Abraham, the covenant was with the Seed, Christ
(Gal. 3:16), and that Seed is in you. So Gary Sigler, the natural
character and makeup, the fallen being that I am, has no covenant with
God. He is guaranteed that he will never under any circumstances be able
to enter into the Kingdom of God or die and go to some place called
heaven.
It is impossible for Adam to enter into the Kingdom. Flesh and blood
cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. Adam, the fallen nature, is simply
the shell of the seed that holds in captivity and presses down, due to
blindness and religious tradition, the very life and substance of God that
is within you. So what you need is not rules and regulations, what you
need is not people telling you that now you are saved you need to keep the
Law. What you need is water. And how do you get water? You get water by
God coming to you bringing the bread of His Word and the wine of His
enjoyment. And that may be through a teacher, it may be through a
preacher, it may be through an apostolic or a prophetic anointing, or it
just may be God speaking to you. But the Seed in you, that is what the
covenant was made with.
You must know that you have the regenerated Seed within you. Do not settle
for just the knowledge of regeneration. You must experience the quickening
power of God. Your spirit will bear witness with His Spirit that you are a
child of God. You get regenerated when the Spirit of God quickens you, and
you cannot even explain it.
When I first realized that I was regenerated, and the presence of God
filled me, I literally wept for three or four days. I couldn’t believe
the love, the acceptance, the preciousness of His Spirit toward me. I was
a mess. And you know what? That didn’t completely change me overnight.
Don’t think that because you have run to an altar that everything is OK.
Have you been regenerated? Have you experienced the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob? I can assure you that for 99% of the people, if they have
experienced God, religion has shut it down, and they are no longer
experiencing Him, because they are listening to the traditions of the
elders and the traditions of our forefathers. And they are not producing
Seed for the Kingdom, they are producing Baptists and Pentecostals and
Lutherans and holiness people. They are producing seed after their own
kind, but God produces Seed after His own kind. So for God to work this in
you, you must understand that God doesn’t have anything for you (your
carnal man).
Adam is a fallen creation, and Adam must die. There is no hope for you, in
this life or the next, of escaping death to your flesh. And even Paul said
that the promise was to the Seed. How can I be a failure? I have the Seed
of God. God made a covenant with that Seed, and that covenant is, "I
will never leave you or forsake you." I could take you through the
Old Testament and show you that God will never, ever give up on you or on
anyone else until you are fully manifesting His glory. Do you know what
God’s glory is? It is His nature. But you cannot manifest the glory of
God through Adam. The glory of God comes through Christ. Hebrews 1:3 tells
us that Christ was the brightness and the express image of the glory of
God, which simply means that Christ, as Paul says, was the embodiment of
God. Jesus said to His disciples, "Have you seen me? Then you have
seen the Father."
The Debt Has Been Paid
I look at Calvary, and I really believe what Jesus said from the Cross. He
said, "The debt has been paid." And then Paul says that God was
in Christ, reconciling, not the Christian, not those who have run to an
altar, but He is reconciling the whole world unto Himself. So at the
Cross, the debt was paid for all of humanity. Now not all of humanity is
experiencing that salvation. That is why we preach the good news of the
gospel. We need to let them know the good news, that they have in their
being the very substance of God. You may be a homosexual, you may be a
prostitute, you may be one of the most despicable persons on the earth,
but the Scripture says that God formed the spirit in man. John 1:9 says
that Jesus was the true light that lights every man that comes into the
world. Proverbs 20:27 tells us that "The spirit of man is the candle
(light) of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly."
What we have out there in the Christian world is modern-day Pharisees. The
best way to define religion, is man’s performance. Man, in his carnal
nature, trying and wanting to become godly. That is what caused the Fall
in the first place. Religion will always dress and clean up the outward,
and through intellectual processing, people believe they have what they
think they have, but they really don’t. We have Christians all over the
world who believe that Jesus lives in them, yet very few actually have Him
living in them in reality. We know we do intellectually, but it is not an
experience.
Living In the Reality of the Kingdom
Paul gave us many illustrations of what it would be like to live in the
reality of the Kingdom. One of them is that you are seated with Christ in
heavenly places. We can quote that and we can say that it is such a nice
Scripture, but what is the reality of it? Christ is seated at the throne,
and the heavenly places are not another planet somewhere. If you are in
heavenly places, then you are living out the character of God within you.
Living in the Kingdom is having the awareness of living in the Kingdom.
When you are persecuted, you don’t hurt for yourself, you hurt for the
one persecuting you. That’s Kingdom. I could tell you story after story
of how I have walked through these principles. If someone is hurting you
or despitefully using you, and you are walking in the realm of the Kingdom
of God, you will hurt for the one who is hurting you.
I was once called to pastor a church. A group of about 40-50 people
invited me to come and hold a week-long conference in their midst. At the
end of their conference, I became the leader of their group. They fell in
love at that time with the message. So my wife and I went there to pastor
this group of people, and I began to teach these principles to them. You
would have to understand the mindset of the people that I went to. They
were the old-time pentecostal people. I began to teach them the principles
of the Kingdom, and I can’t tell you the persecution that I went
through, and some of the hurtful, horrible things that group did to me.
But I can also tell you that I would go to my room, and I would fall down
and weep, and I would say, "God, you have got to have mercy upon
them." I knew that if only people could see God as I see Him, if they
could only understand His father-heart as I do, there was no way they
would act like this.
If you are walking in the Kingdom and someone is coming against you and
hurting you, sure it hurts, but your attitude is such that you will hurt
for the one who is hurting you. That’s turning the other cheek. All of
these people left, they all just split on me, with the exception of about
10 people. I stayed there for another three years. But those people who
caused me so much grief have come to me literally in tears, saying,
"Gary, we had no idea what you were trying to give to us." One
lady told me just a few weeks ago, with tears in her eyes, "I had no
idea the precious, precious gift that God had sent to us." Many of
them came back into the fellowship after they had left.
True Forgiveness
You see, people do things because they don’t understand. This will help
you understand how Jesus, at the Cross, could look at the very men who
crucified Him and say, "Father, forgive them," because He knew
the Adamic race. He knew that they were only doing what they could not
help doing, because they were identified with their Adamic nature.
That’s why He could say, "Father, they really don’t know. So,
forgive them." Do you think that after He said, "Father, forgive
them," that they will ever be held accountable for nailing Him to a
cross? They won’t. It will be as if it had never been done. That’s
forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not forgiving someone who comes to you in repentance.
Forgiveness is knowing the heart of God and that the other person is in
ignorance, and they just don’t understand. This is illustrated through
Stephen and Paul. Paul stood and watched while Stephen was being stoned,
and Stephen said, "Father, lay not this sin to their charge."
Stephen understood the Kingdom. He understood that if the very men who
were stoning him had the same vision and understanding that he had, if
their eyes were opened as his had been, they would not be stoning him,
they would be cheering him. And so he could say, "Father, forgive
them."
Dying Daily
This is what God is raising up today. It is the Seed of His life. But you
can’t experience that until Adam dies. Paul says, "We die
daily." Daily we die to our wants and needs, to what we want our
spouse to be. My wife and I have been together for 15 years, and she can
tell you that I have never corrected her in an outward way. I have never
said, "Carol, don’t do this," or "You shouldn’t do
that," or "You shouldn’t say this." She will tell you
that if she gets into the flesh, she can sense my intercession for her.
She can literally feel the prayer and the covering of God over her, and
she will change. That’s what we need to do with one another.
Do you know what happens when you criticize someone? You are actually
saying that you are better than that person. But you must understand that
we are all cut from the same mold, that we all have the Adamic nature, we
all have that horrible, ugly disease called sin, and it’s going to
manifest in all of us. We look at sin in degrees. We look at homosexuality
as being horrible, and some of the other sins are minor, but what we
don’t understand is that the root is the same. There is no degree. The
knowledge of both good and evil come from exactly the same tree. So the
homosexual, in the eyes of God, is no different than someone who is very
good. Neither one of them experiences the life of God.
Now, God is good, but good is not always God. Good can be a natural
characteristic of Adam. The tree that Adam partook of was both good and
evil, but we need to eat from the tree of life. Jesus said, "If you
eat me, you will live by me." What does it mean to eat Jesus? We need
to assimilate Him. We need to look in the Scriptures and look into all the
principles that He taught, and feast upon them. We need to meditate upon
them and have them consume us until we become what they are. And that only
happens through death, but it is not you killing yourself. That doesn’t
work. But if we, through the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the flesh,
we will live.
How does that happen? Paul says in Romans that if when we were enemies we
were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more being
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Not by our actions or conduct,
not by our trying to walk in a certain way or use certain methods or
walking the 7 Steps to Divine Healing, or any number of other things. We
are only saved by His life.
That is why Jesus said, "I come that you might have life, not a new
set of rules and regulations. I didn’t come to raise the standard of the
10 Commandments to the Sermon on the Mount. I came that you might have
life, so that you might walk in and fulfill the Sermon on the Mount."
But it has to be by the Spirit. It has absolutely nothing to do with the
natural makeup of Adam. Adam must die, and every time that you fellowship
with the Spirit, every time that you enter into the presence of God, there
is a killing aspect, a transmutation of God’s Spirit that kills your
flesh.
You cannot fellowship with God and not have something of His divine
essence permeate you. That’s why Paul said that it is day by day that we
are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. It’s not that
today I’m a sinner and tomorrow I’m manifesting the glory of God, but
it develops day by day. Day by day we have choices to make, and day by day
we are being transformed into the image of God. The Seed reproduces in us
the God-kind of life.
Peter said that we have received His divine life and nature (2 Peter 1:3),
and we do that through the promises of God, not through self-effort.
Naturally, if you hear this word, and you think, "I’m just going to
go live it up," you can do that, but remember that if you abide not
in Christ, He just throws you into the fire. So don’t think it’s a
free ride. You may be a wonderful person, but unless you have full
confidence and faith, and you understand that it is only through grace and
by the power of God that you will be kept as you are, there will come a
day when you may fall away. And if that happens, if you don’t understand
that the covenant that God made is with the Seed that is within you, you
will fall under condemnation, and God will turn up the fire.
God has a covenant with the Seed, to bring it into maturity, but it has
nothing to do with Adam, except that Adam will fall into the ground and
die. And you can do it the easy way, or the hard way. There are multitudes
of verses that can substantiate what I am telling you. You were chosen in
Christ before the foundation of the world, that you should be holy and
without blemish before Him in love. Is that true? If it is true, if God
chose you before the foundation of the world, and made a covenant with the
Seed, that He would present you holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable
in His sight, if that is His choice, and you were chosen and predestinated
for that destination, how could that not happen?
The Fallacy of Free Will
I understand that the opposition here is on man’s free will. Man’s
free will is an absolute fallacy created by religious tradition and our
elders. I can shoot holes in that all day long, and prove to you that you
have a free will that is limited. One example of that is Jonah. Jonah said
no to God. God wanted him to go to Nineveh, but Jonah got on a boat and
tried to go the other way. Did God violate Jonah’s free will or didn’t
he? Do you think that you are any less valuable in God’s sight than
Jonah?
If you believe these things, and you get into disobedience, and you
believe the tradition that we have been taught for years, and you fall
away, and you believe that because you have made that choice, that God
can’t help you, you will be in a whole lot of trouble. It is so
important to understand this principle of the Seed, because God has no
promises for you in your Adamic nature. The only thing I know for a surety
is that Gary Sigler, that Adamic person that was born into this world and
came into the Fall and was blinded, the only promise he has is of dying,
and if he doesn’t die, he will never experience the Kingdom of God.
But you know what? Death always produces life. So, as much as the Spirit
of God within you can bring you into death, that is how much life you will
manifest in resurrection. That is what Paul meant when he said that death
works in us, but life in you. If death works in me, then that produces
life for you. I hope I don’t sound boastful, but some of what I teach, I
have never with my ears heard another human being teach in the way I do.
Why is that? Because we are all unique. I didn’t get this message from a
book, I didn’t get it from listening to tapes. I have been a hungry
person for the Kingdom, but I didn’t learn these principles from all the
intellectual knowledge that I tried to accumulate. I learned them through
revelation. That’s why I say, don’t take my word for it, you must have
a revelation of the truth of what I teach.
Many people tell me that although they have never heard some of these
things, they have the inner witness that they are true. Others say that
God has spoken this to them but they were not sure they were hearing
right. I can promise you that these words will germinate in your life. If
you don’t like this message, I feel sorry for you, because the seed has
been planted. God seals people in blindness until the appropriate time. We
don’t like to hear that, but the Word says that God hardened Pharaoh’s
heart. Pharaoh couldn’t have let the children of Israel go if he had
wanted to. It is very plain in the Scriptures. God hardened Pharaoh’s
heart, in order that His glory might be revealed to the Israelites. So do
you think that God is going to judge Pharaoh harshly for what He caused
him to do? How would you have liked to have been Judas? Think about it.
The words Jesus spoke from the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do," if you can hear this, were words for
humanity. The debt has been paid. We really have good news. We have been
told that the gospel is good news, but we haven’t heard the gospel of
good news. We have heard a gospel of performance. Performance-based
Christianity. |
Other
Writings in This Series:
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