Monday, June 22, 2009

Purpose in Life



Q: Praise the Lord! I came across your article on the “Apostolic Preachers.org” website, and at the end of it you stated if we have questions we could email you.


I too have been asking the Lord, what is my purpose? To date, no answer. I am backslidden and so disappointed with my life, my work, my home. There is no joy anywhere for me.

I am at this job where no one really likes me, I have sat there while they have talked about me, I am not even invited to the Christmas Party. How come I feel so isolated? Is this isolation really from GOD? I am an as needed employee. I have failed the test twice in seeking to become a permanent employee. I am 47 years old and in need of direction. HOW DO I FIND IT?


A: Praise the Lord! Thank you so very much for reading the articles. Yes I try my best to minister to the people of God. It is wonderful writing to you.

I know how to be in your shoes, cause once I used to feel continiously like what you are saying. Rejection, sorrow and a back slidden feeling used to haunt me. The sad thing was, I always used to think that due to sinfulness I am feeling like that. Now I know bad feeling comes from the devil and good feelings always comes from God.

Everthing flows from a quality decision. Never forget no matter what circumstances you may be going through, you can choose to trust in the Lord and rejoice always. God feelings will always follow after you do this. Even if you don't feel good, do this and worship the Lord daily. Joy of heaven will be released in to your soul as you keep doing these basics. When you feel weak and tired, reject those feelings and say it out loud, "The Joy of the Lord is my strength".

Some times when you are searching for a purpose, God may allow you to be isolated so that you may soon learn to trust in Him at all times (Ps 62:8). Do not ever weigh your worth based on what other people think and say about you. For example some one says to your child that she is an idiot. She comes and tells you, 'Mummy this fellow said to me I am an idiot'. What will you say to your child. Normally you will say the child to reject such worthless words and will make her understand that she is your lovely daughter whom you love infinitely. Am i right? That is the same thing that God is saying to you now, He loves you infinitely. Let your worth be based on, 'Who you are as a child of the Heavenly King'. Keep saying to yourself and encourage your soul always by saying, 'I am the loving daughter of my Heavenly Father who owns this universe'.

All the jobs and promotion that you get are just a means, even if you didn't get through and perform well, you are not rejected by God. He loves as much as He loves you when you perform your best. Learn to get in to the presence of God daily which will give you favor in all other areas of your life. A happy and joyful life is not based on the circumstances we go through [whether good or bad], but is based on our God whom we believe is working continuously all things for our good (Rom 8:28; Ps 121:4-5). This is the best possible life of confidence and joy that we can live on this planet earth (Prov 3:26; 1 Peter 1:8; John 10:10).

God is training you to just depend on Him, so that your life may not be driven based on worthless events. When you don't like yourself, it is most likely others will not like you. So only the word of God says, "Love ...[others] as yourself" (Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31; Rom 13:9). In other words when you love yourself based on how God sees you [i.e. as His unique dear and beloved child (Rom 8:16; 1 John 3:1)], you will then be really able to love others. Ask God to teach you, 'How to love yourself first?'. He will pour out His love through the Holy Spirit and then will make you love others (Rom 5:5).

Get intimate with God. Say to Him, 'I surrender my all and give all that I am body, soul and spirit to you my Lord, thank you that you will take care of me and guide me all the days of my life! Amen!' Step by step one day at a time the Lord will lead you from now on.








Wednesday, June 10, 2009

More on 'Re: Is it ever right to lie?'

Abraham Israel :

Question: "More on 'Re: Is it ever right to lie?'"


Some people who say it is okay to lie if the motives are right and result are not evil, but the Bible simply says that 'lying to people is a sin and trespass against the Lord' and a trespass offering is required to bring the lost fellowship of His presence back (Lev 6:1-7). In the new testament scenario, when we lie no matter for what reason we have done it, we lose the precious presence of God in our conscious mind. When we lose the presence of God and His peace because of lying and committing a trespass against the Lord, immediately we need to confess to God that we have sinned and then praise God in the name of Jesus for having forgiven all our sins because of His faithful and just character to always forgive our sins. Guilt, peace less mind and confusion are spiritual thermometer that indicates that something has gone wrong because of sin (Isaiah 26:3; Heb 9:14). The moment we confess and praise God for His forgiveness, peace will start to flood our soul and you will be full of joy as a sign of restored fellowship with God (1 John 1:3-4, 9; Heb 13:15). Walking in the light of God is to agree with God that we have sinned against Him and His word, whenever we commit sin. And God in His faithfulness automatically cleanses us from all sin through the blood of Jesus Christ (1 John 1:7). God also in the Book of Jeremiah compared the tongues of people to a bow and the lies that come our of it as an arrow which has the potential to kill people and slaughter them. These type of people were compared to coward who are not valiant enough to speak the truth on earth, as a result these people as predicted by God are those who will go from evil to evil (Jeremiah 9:3). In other words because of a lying tongue they will be hell bent to fulfill the plans of the evil one. So what do we learn from what God says, it is not okay to lie even when the motives are right and result are not evil. Sin practiced will pull us deeper in to its pit and will one day fully consume our vitality (Judges 16:28-30).



Some point to the life of Jacob and say that God blessed Jacob in spite of Him lying four time with the blessing of God. But the point is, God was making a salvation model out of His life. God told to Rebekah about the life and characteristics of both Jacob and Esau, even before they were born (Rom 9:10-13). This shows that God knows us and has chosen us even before we were born (Ps 139:13-16; Hag 2:23). God knew all the sins that we will ever do because of our own bad choices even before we were born, and when we do sin in the natural it does not surprise Him one bit (2 Peter 3:15). In other words, God hates sin but he loves us and long suffers with us even though we sin now and then because of our sin nature. God acts as a long-suffering person in order to turn us away from all the bad choices of sin we make in our daily life (2 Peter 3:9). This is the reason God sent a savior in to the world knowing that we need His blood to cleanse ourselves from the stained gutter of sin through our repentance and confession (Luke 13:3, 5; Mark 1:15; 1 John 1:9). God waits for every man to receive the Savior Jesus Christ by his own personal choice and waits, woos and draws people toward Him even up to every human's death, after which no matter what every has person have done or not, he will be judged [acquitted or condemned] based on whether he has received the Savior or have rejected Him (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Tim 2:4). The meaning of the name 'Jacob' means 'supplanter or deceitful [lit. One who takes the heel]'. This clearly shows that God has charged all humans as deceivers like Jacob inspite of what they do or not do in one's life (Rom 3:9-18, 23). We are sinners not because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. In other words we all are sinners by birth, not just by our sinful actions (Ps 51:5).


God did not bless Jacob until he repented and humbled himself by acknowledging that he was 'Jacob the liar'. After His repentance and confession of his indwelling sin nature, God then released the blessings over his life by giving a new name which conveys that he has been transformed from as a liar ['Jacob'] to be a prince with God ['Israel'] (Gen 32:22-30). Like Esau many people around the world want to earn their salvation and blessing without ever confessing about their sin nature to God and acknowledging their need for a Saviour to save them from sin. Like Esau they never see or experience the salvation of God because of their own wrong choice of rejecting God's offer of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. The people who want to earn their salvation through their own good works, despise the riches of God’s goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads them to repentance (Rom 2:4). As a sinner by birth we are all the vessels of wrath and dishonor prepared for destruction, but because of a willing conscious choice we make, we become a vessels of mercy and honor through the riches of God's goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering shown to us in His Son Jesus Christ who has been prepared and substituted as our substitute on our behalf of us before God's eyes from the foundation of the world (Heb 4:3; 9:26; Rom 9:21-24). As a result we become as righteous as God is (2 Cor 5:21). The vessels of honor like Jacob are those who cleanse themselves by receiving in to their lives the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus in abundance and become useful for the Master, prepared for every good work (2 Tim 2:21; Heb 9:14).


The bottom line is, God did not justify Jacob's lies but he justified Jacob for His faith in humbling himself by turning toward God. God blessed Jacob because of his desire for transformation. The question that I ask is, can we see Jacob lying again after getting transformed in to Israel? The answer is a big NO. Why? Because a supernatural work of God had been wrought in him which gave him an overcoming new nature by the power of God (Rom 7:24-25). So also after we are born again as the Israel of God we have become new creation and overcomers through our faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 6:15-16; 1 John 5:4). We are not supposed to lie knowingly based on our old nature after we are born again, because the old nature has been crucified in Christ (Rom 6:6; Gal 6:14). This is the reason Apostle Paul said to the Ephesian believers, "So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body." (Eph 4:25, NLT). Rebekah the mother of Jacob took a shortcut to support her younger son inherit the blessings. It was not the will of God for her to act this way, but because of her sin nature inside her and a carnal love toward her younger son, she orchestrated and supported this deceitful act (Gen 25:28). We must understand that God has used all things whether good or bad in the life of Jacob to work together for the good of Jacob because He sincerely loved God and his spiritual blessings more than just material and instant fleshly gratification and satisfaction unlike Esau (Rom 8:28). Even though Jacob was a imperfect man, God honored his desire for God and the things of God which was just the opposite for Esau (Heb 12:16-17). This does not mean that God could not have brought the blessings which He promised to Rebekah even before Jacob was born, except through Jacob's deceitful failures. It was not God's perfect will for Jacob to lie, but it was His permissive will which demonstrates the agency of the power of choice in every man's life. If we consider the lies of Jacob as the orchestration of God's plan, then there is unrighteousness with God (Rom 9:14). But because all unrighteousness is sin and sin is lawlessness, there is no sin in God (1 John 3:4; 5:17). God says in His word, "Be holy, for I am holy." ( 1 Peter 1:16). Because God is holy, he cannot promote unholy things of lies. God is not a perpetrator of unrighteousness by orchestrating lies.


God sent Deborah to help Barak accomplish the will of the Lord, which was to overthrow their present enemy, the Canaanites. Barak was afraid and told Deborah if she will accompany him he would go, if not he would not go. Sisera was the captain of the Kings army (Canaanites). Deborah told Barak that Sisera will be killed by the hand of a woman. Exactly according to her prophecy, Jael the Israelite woman lied to Sisera the Gentile king about the safety she offered and killed him by lying and hiding her malicious motives. Yet again we see that God never rebuked her for it because He knows that as a woman with a indwelling sin nature she had lied. And also just because she was honored in song from Deborah and Barak for having killed Sisera doesn't mean God is commending Jael's lies (Judges 4:9-21; 5:1, 24-27). God has never covered any deceit or lies that people have spoken. Instead by details He has exposed peoples weakness just for all of us to know about our own indwelling sin nature, but yet He has justified people for their faith in Him. This is the reason the Bible says, "25 God sent him [i.e. Jesus Christ] to die in our place to take away our sins. We receive forgiveness through faith in the blood of Jesus' death. This showed that God always does what is right and fair, as in the past when he was patient and did not punish people for their sins. (NCV)" "26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." (Rom 3:25-26, NKJV).


In 1 Samuel 16 God speaks to Samuel the prophet, instructing him to go to Bethlehem to anoint a son of Jesse to be king. Saul the presiding king of Israel at that time has a reputation of paranoia for his crown and would kill to keep it, as Saul tried to kill David in the later years, over and over again. God instructed Samuel to go to Bethlehem instructing people to tell only the secondary thing [which was to sacrifice for the Lord] that he is going to do so by anointing David. The primary things was to anoint David as king (1 Sam 16:2-5). Here spiritually we notice that when God says to Samuel, to tell people that he is going to sacrifice with Jesse, He was symbolically saying a spiritual principle of sacrificing is a offering of a broken heart to God (Rom 12:1). To anoint a broken hearted man with the oil is the kind of sacrifice that God is speaking about to Samuel the prophet in the above verses and that is not a lie (Ps 51:17; Acts 13:22). Samuel the prophet must have sacrificed along with Jesse to the Lord as a sign of thanksgiving to the Lord after anointing David. Just because the sacrifice is not specifically described doesn't mean that there was no sacrifice done after the anointing. If Samuel had no intent to sacrifice, he would not have told the people confidently to come with him to sacrifice, after which he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and invited them to sacrifice (1 Samuel 16:5). In other words, Samuel's secondary reason for going to Jesse was also to offer sacrifice to the Lord. God's instruction to Samuel the prophet had a pretence in it, but it was not a lie. In other words God's simple hidden instruction to Samuel is, 'protect yourself carefully because Saul is on a rampage.'


In Judges 7, Gideon was instructed by God to blow a trumpet with a lamp. [A trumpet or lamp seen or heard in battle was considered to represent 1000 men behind each one. At the instruction of God, and not surely knowing how this would be perceived, Gideon’s 300 man army by faith may have appeared to be 300,000 men. Not to mention a lamp also was thought to have a 1000 men behind each one.] But it was not pretence or lie that confused the gentile army. The enemy camp because of confusion self destroyed themselves even to the last man. God did not project a false image through Gideon, but it was fear in the mind of enemy that did the trick. When the spirit of fear attacked them, the Lord set every man's sword against his companion throughout the whole camp (Judges 7:22). It was not a lie that gave Gideon the victory, but the direct intervention of the Lord that gave Gideon and his micro 300 people army the victory. The Lord intervened because of Gideon's obedience and faith. Praise the Lord!


Even in 2 Samuel 17:19-23, a woman lied in order to protect David's spies from the evil rule of Absalom. This was not at all commended by God in the scripture. This clearly shows that God will never instruct a person to lie or will ever commend it. This whole chaos happened as a divine retribution for lies, murder and adultery that king David committed. But king David humbled himself to God saying that it was the Lord who has allowed and ordered such a situation in his family for his past disobedience to the Lord (2 Samuel 10-14). This incident and the episode that followed in David’s life was a part of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Nathan the prophet. This prophecy had a strong statement of divine retribution in all the generations that will follow David in his house for his adultery and murder committed previously (2 Samuel 12:9-12). This shows that God never instructs or inspires anybody to tell a lie, but it is a result of their own doings due to sinful nature inside them.


In 2 Kings 6:18 after the Lord had struck the Syrians with blindness according to Elisha's prayer, Elisha then went to them and said to them that he will lead them to the man whom they have come to seek. But He knew that they have come to capture him. It was a lie (2 Kings 6:19-23). What can we learn from this, God uses imperfect vessels to fulfill his perfect purposes. Elisha too had a sin nature that dwelt in him that made him to sin. That doesn't mean that God is commending what the prophet had done. God through His perfect sacrifice will cover the prophets mistakes and lies (Prov 10:12; Ps 65:3). Even though Elisha was a great prophet yet he was still justified only by his faith. So only the word of God says that those who believe on God even though ungodly, is justified by God based on their faith and their faith is accounted for righteousness (Rom 4:6). Elisha was one of the man with like nature as any one of us and his master Elijah, who walked with God and did great things for God purely by his faith (James 5:17).


My conclusion is that all lies are sinful no matter for what reason or motives we say it. A good cause cannot justify a wrong action.The only thing that the word of God says is that, God works all things [the good and the bad] together for good for them that love God and those who are inline with God's purpose by faith to fulfill it through their lives (Rom 8:28). Praise the Lord!













Sunday, June 7, 2009

Re: Is it Ever Right to Lie?



Q:
“No matter what the desperate situation you may face, it is not a right thing to lie saying that, it is a lesser evil to lie in order to prevent a greater evil from happening as though God cannot prevent things from happening and protect His people. It is unbelief to say and think like this as the Bible says, "Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do [it], to him it is sin." (James 4:17). Praise the Lord!”

The only reason I’m emailing you is to help you for the glory of Christ. To error is human, but Satan helps without you knowing it.

Therefore, it is not always sinful to lie. You need to reconsider this issue from a different view point, man’s involvement and participation. Everything that happens to us requires our participation, and God is looking to see how we handle it. Are all the bullets in war going to miss you, if you don’t hid, or duck, and when you do, and the enemy has you in his sights, will his bullet miss you then? Perhaps, yes, but not always.

Every soul has a free will to do evil or good. If an evil man becomes a killer of Christians, why didn’t God protect his people? Many Christians might say, ‘It was God’s will’. No, it was the will of the evil man. If a evil man has no power, or free will to kill a Christian of his own, then he doesn’t have a free will. But, everyone has free will, even the evil man to do as he or she so wishes.

Although, I agree, God protects his people, he limits his own protection by that of mans free will. God will never interfere with the free will of man, else man is controlled by God, and has no free will. All souls are allowed to do evil. Nevertheless, there are too many variables to label a situation, ‘God’s protection’, or ‘evil was allowed, or not allowed to happen’.

There are many stories of God protecting his people, and there are many stories of God’s people dying. Some were protected, and some God allowed the evil to take place, because God must allow some evil men there evil without interfering with their free will. God, knowing the heart of an evil man, might be waiting and hoping for his salvation, and allow him to kill a Christian (who will be in Heaven), and the evil killer’s heart might become open to Christ after hearing the word of God’s love. But, as I said, there are so many variables to which we will impose on God’s actions, or lack of towards a situation, and we can be so wrong.

P.S. Don’t accept that all lie are sinful. God himself perpetrated a lie! See if you can find it.


A: When we give our will in to the hands of God, God's will becomes our will to fulfill from that time on. Our view point does not change God's unchangeable and perfect law, because it is already settled in heaven, once and all forever in eternity (Ps119:89). As the Bible says, "The words of the LORD are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." (Ps 12:6).

It is true that we all humans fail one time or the other, even when we try not to do because of the indwelling sin nature (Rom 7:19-20). But that does not mean that we can willfully do wrong things [i.e. speak a lie] and expect God to rescue us from it (Prov 19:3). Once we say or do wrong even after we know that it is wrong, it is absolutely sinful to continue in it (Rom 14:23). Only we can seek His mercy again and again when we fail like that (Ps 69:5, 16). Because we seek Him and approach His throne by faith in His merciful character, again and again God because of His faithfulness will show His mercy infinitely to us (Heb 4:16; Prov 24:16; Ps 37:24). This does not mean God overlooks sin at any time as though it were not that serious. Even a smallest thought of sin is sin, as much as it were fulfilled after its full conception in the natural world (Matt 5:22, 28; James 1:15).

God saved Peter out of the prison before his death from the hands of evil men, but he did not rescue James the elder brother of John who died in the same hands of evil Herod just days and months before. Even Peter himself was surprised to be delivered by the Lord (Acts 12:1-11). If we ask the question why did it happen like this? Is it God's will for James to die? In a way it is yes because as a sovereign God he was in control of that event and allowed it to happen (Rom 8:28; 1 Cor 10:13; Job 1:12; 2:3, 6-7). In another way it is no. In other words, the reason God allowed the event to happen was because of the lack of prayer on the part of the Church. We see that the Church started to offer to God continuous prayer for deliverance only after James death and Peter's imprisonment. God must have expected the Church to pray for James to be rescued, but they didn't. No captain will ever want even one of His deputies to die for any reason, how much more with God. But once a apostolic seed died on the ground, it started to bring the Church towards fervent prayer toward God (John 12:24).

God will not work without man's prayer, man cannot work supernaturally without God's power. So prayer is power with God dispersed over evil on earth. Prayer is a spiritual material that God takes and starts to use it in the construction of God's purpose on earth. Through our prayer, we willingly offer our free will to God, to work through us His purposes. God legally takes it and starts to impose and disperse His supernatural power against all the evil works of Satan and his minions. Satan also works legally on earth in the same way by planting His evil thoughts and lies in to the hearts of men to fulfill his evil strategies to steal, kill and destroy them (John 8:44; 13:27, 30; 10:10; Mark 7:20-23).

It is true that we participate in the things of life based on our limited knowledge that we have acquired in our life time, but God rules over us in His sovereignty if we are a person who believes and lives by faith in Him and His word of promises. So only the word of God says, " the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment." (2 Peter 2:9). A godly person is one who fears the Lord always with out bothering or envying about what sinners do or not do (Prov 23:17).

The Lord has promised absolutely a 100% protection for all His presence dwelling believers, and he has also told that nothing in life can happen by chance (Ps 91:10-11). From the evil that comes to us unexpectedly through Satanic schemes which he fulfills usually by using people as his agents (John 8:44), God rules over it and turns it in to a blessing if we continue to live by faith based on His unconditional love towards us (Duet 23:5; Rom 8:28; Heb 10:38). But this does not mean that a believer can go flaunting about God's sovereign protection over him before the wicked people. In fact, God expects a believer to be wise and hide himself when he foresees evil (Prov 22:3; 27:12).

God never perpetrates a lie, but he sends a lying spirit to deceive people in His sovereignty when people's heart are desiring after lies instead of God's truth (1 Kings 22:22-23; 2 Ch 18:21-22; 2 Thess 2:10-12). God sees, answers, repays and rewards man according to the hidden motives of man and not based on outward events or appearance (1 Sam 16:7; Job 34:11). All lies no matter for what reason it is said is sinful and a abomination to God (Prov 12:22). God is not the source of any lie that humanity speaks, but Satan is (John 8:44). In fact, God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). A lie makes a righteous man sad, but it strengthens the hands of the wicked man (Ezek 13:22). So the bottom line is, all lies no matter for what reason it is said is sinful in the eyes of God. The mouth of those who speak lies knowingly shall be stopped in God's ripe time, because of God's righteous retribution (Ps 63:11). This is the reason the Book of Proverbs clearly says, "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who speaks lies [Note: it does not say godly lies or ungodly lies] will not escape. A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who speaks lies shall perish" (Prov 19:5, 9). He who lies shall not continue to dwell within God's house and in His presence (Ps 101:7). The wicked...go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies (Ps 58:3). As God's children we should ask God to remove falsehood and lies far from us (Prov 30:8). Lies does not glorify God, but truth does. Be blessed to live in truth than to be deceived by practicing lies. Praise the Lord!








Friday, May 1, 2009

Ezekiel 38-39 and the Battle of Armageddon

50 Reasons Why Ezekiel 38-39 is the Battle of Armageddon

By Abraham Israel



1) Both the Gog-Magog battle (Ezek 38-39) and the battle of Armageddon (Rev 16:16; 19:19) are both described as taking place after the rebirth of Israel and is denoted with various phrases such as “latter years” (Ezek 38:8), “last days” (Ezek 38:16). Last days symbolically points to the time just before the Messiah will come and to Him shall be the obedience of all the people be (Gen 49:1, 10; 1 Chron 5:2).

2) Apostle Paul describes the “last days” as a time of disintegration of the morality of society and a time of Apostasy (2 Tim 3:1-8). Jesus also described these end times as a time of low morality and a time of Apostasy (Matt 24:11-12, 23-24). The main thing that we should notice here is, these last days disintegration of society and apostasy are predicted to happen after the rebirth of the nation of Israel which Jesus symbolically referred to as a fig tree (Matt 24:32; Hos 9:10). Thus the timing of this war generally points to the time after the rebirth of Israel and up to the Second Coming of Jesus (Matt 24:30-31). After the time of disintegration of society and the worldwide apostasy organized by Antichrist’s one world religion Jesus will come and defeat Antichrist in the battle of Armageddon.

3) Ezekiel 39:4, 17-20 and Rev 19:17-18 both describe dead invaders being eaten by birds and wild animals.

4) In Ezekiel 39:29, God has promised that He will not hide His face from the nation of Israel anymore after this war. The reason God gave for not hiding His face is because He has said, “…I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel.” This is the same outpouring of God’s Spirit that is described in the Book of Zechariah to be the time of Jesus’ Second Coming in which the Jews will accept Jesus as their Messiah (Zech 12:10).

5) The Ezekiel 38-39 war cannot happen before or during Tribulation because God has promised to the nation of Israel, “…I will not hide My face from them anymore…” after this final war. Here the promise of God clearly points the time of this war to Armageddon in which the nation of Israel will accept Jesus as their God and Savior, after which for the next thousand years and for eternity the Jews will have access to God through their faith in their true Messiah Jesus (Gal 3:26-29; Eph 2:18; Zech 12:10). The phrase “…I will not hide My face from them anymore…” here points to a time of eternally unbroken continuous fellowship of God with the nation of Israel which can only happen after the battle of Armageddon.

6) Ezekiel 39:22 declares that at the end of Gog- Magog battle the nation of Israel will finally acknowledge and know that their Messiah Jesus Christ is their true Lord God from that day forward. Thus the references in Ezekiel 39: 22, 29 coupled with Zechariah 12:10 explains the acknowledgment by Israel of their Messiah at the end of the Tribulation, which would naturally make the Gog-Magog battle and Armageddon as one and the same. Here “…Israel…shall know their God from that day forward” in Ezek39:22 shows that the nations of Israel will never again be separated from their God and Messiah Jesus Christ anymore after this war.

7) The next point that points the Gog-Magog battle to be the same Armageddon battle is the verse in Ezekiel 39:23 which says, “The Gentiles shall know [after this Gog-Magog war] that the house of Israel went into captivity [of their enemies which includes Antichrist ruling over them tyrannically during the Great Tribulation] for their iniquity; because they were unfaithful to Me, therefore I hid My face from them. I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword.” The Book of Revelation 13:10 points that Antichrist will lead people in to captivity and will kill the zealous saints with the sword during the Tribulation, which shows that Israel as a nation will not be free from captivity and manslaughter until the Armageddon war gets over. The world can only realize that the nation of Israel is free from captivity and sword if they are no more under the authority of anyone except their Messiah God Jesus Christ. This will only be possible after the war of Armageddon in which the Messiah of Israel will defeat all the enemies of Israel and will show the world that Israel suffered for nearly two millenniums because of their sins which were upon them because of the rejection of their Messiah Jesus (Matt 27:24-25; John 19:11; Matt 23:38-39; Zech 12:9).

8) The references to Armageddon include the nation of the entire earth against Israel (Joel 3:2; Zeph 3:8; Zech 12:3; 14:2). At the same time the nations of the entire earth do not necessarily mean that not even one nation will be left out from being a part of it. Also we see in the Book of Daniel that the Antichrist having some foes even to the very end, up to Armageddon battle (Daniel 11:40-44). From this we know that few nations will exclude themselves and will not like to be a part of the global government of Antichrist and thus will oppose him. These nations being powerless before the might of the global government of the Antichrist will sit at the sidelines and watch his brutal rampage (Ezek 38:13). As the Antichrist will be representing a global coalition of nations, the Bible calls this coalition as “all the nations”, “the beast [Antichrist], the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together [representing the entire nations of the world] and “the kings of the earth” (Rev 16:14; 19:19; Zech 14:2). This clearly shows that even though a few nations will not be a part of the global coalition of Antichrist, still this global coalition is representing the whole world and thus can be called as the troops and armies of “all the nations”. Or in other words, this global coalition army will contain “men of war” (Ezek 39:2) who are all part of the armies of many nations around the world.

9) Even though Antichrist takes this global coalition to destroy the nation of Israel, some nations will not agree to be a part of it and thus will sit at the sidelines watching [i.e. confessing their inability to help Israel] in horror of what Antichrist will try to do by going toward the city of Jerusalem to plunder its wealth and to destroy completely forever (Ezek 38:13). All the nations that will not take part in the global coalition will be considered as sheep nations in the Judgment of nations after the battle of Armageddon gets over (Matt 25:31-33; Dan 11:44).

10) Some people say that the players in the battles do not match. But it is a false assumption to think like that. The nations described in the Gog-Magog battle are Gog [the Antichrist] of the land of Magog who is the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal [Note: Ezekiel the prophet is commanded by God to “prophecy against him” (Ezek 38:2) which is a singular pronoun which represents a person not a nation or nations], Persia, Ethiopia, Libya, Gomer, the house of Togarmah. These preceding nations are the some of the same nations which are described in the Book of Daniel as those who follow the Antichrist at his heels (Dan 11:43). This gives us a clue that Armageddon and Ezek 38-39 are the same battle expressed differently. If the number of nations stops here, this could not be compared with the battle of Armageddon in which a global coalition of all nations will be a part of it. But after this in Ezek 38:6 it is written, “many people are with you [with whom? The previously described limited list of nations]. And again and again this phrase “many people are with you” is described in the same chapter to mean that along with the eminently named and numbered visible nations, an infinite number of nations and people groups will be partaking in this battle (Ezek 38:6, 9, 22). In all these verses “many peoples or people” means ‘all the people group of the world, many nations, all the nations of the world or infinite number of nations’. This clearly shows that Gog-Magog battle is the battle of Armageddon in which the Bible says, ‘all the nations of the world as a coalition under the one world government’ will participate to destroy the nation of Israel and its inhabitants (Rev 16:13-14, 16; 19:19). The exclusively named nations will be the dominant players in the final battle, but the whole army will be a global coalition under the leadership of Antichrist.

11) The locations described for the two battles match perfectly. Armageddon takes place in the valley of Jezreel by the plain of Megiddo (Judges 5:19; 2 Kings 23:29; 2 Chron 35:22; Zech 12:11). The Book of Revelation says that the kings of the earth gathered together in a place called in Hebrew ‘Armageddon’ which means ‘Mount Megiddo’ (Rev 16:14, 16). A valley is an area of land between two lines of hills or mountains, usually with a river flowing through it. Thus the valley of Jezreel is an area of land between the mountains of Megiddo which is situated just outside of the city of Jerusalem. This is the exact place where the Bible describes that the blood of people will come out even up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs after Christ defeats this global coalition of nations under Antichrist (Rev 14:20). This complete catastrophic destruction is because of the wrath of God upon the kings of the earth for coming with an evil intention to destroy the nation of Israel forever and plunder it. Because the nation of Israel is the apple of God’s eye (Zech 2:8), Christ and His army will come to defend God’s land of the nation of Israel from being destroyed which is His will for them (2 Chron 7:20; Jer 2:7; Is 14:25; Rev 14:19; 19:19-21). The same place of battle is also described in the Book of Joel as “the valley of Jehoshaphat” (Joel 3:2, 12). Again the same place of battle is referred in Zech 12:10-11 where the Bible says, “In that day [of Gog-Magog battle] there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like… in the plain of Megiddo.” This clearly shows that a great mourning will first start in the plain valley of Megiddo first due to the massive destruction of the multi-million army of the global coalition of the kings under Antichrist and then will the mourning of the remnant Jews as a sign of repentance will happen in Jerusalem, to receive their Savior and Messiah Jesus who was rejected by them in His first coming.

Ezekiel 38:8 describes the Gog-Magog battle as taking place on the “mountains of Israel” which clearly matches the exact location of the Armageddon battle which also takes place beside Mount Megiddo. The very Hebrew name ‘Armageddon’ literally means ‘Mount Megiddo’ (Rev 16:16). God Himself has promised in His word that He will tread Antichrist the Assyrian underfoot on the mountains of Israel, and this purpose is purposed against the whole earth because Antichrist will represent all the nations of the world. His army will have a global outlook with nearly all nations as a part of it (Isaiah 14:25-26). This proves that Gog-Magog battle is the same Armageddon battle described in the New Testament.

12) The account of the defeat of the invaders matches perfectly. The Gog-Magog invaders are defeated by God who uses “pestilence…bloodshed and [will]…rain down on him [i.e. the Antichrist and his troops and the accompanying nations of the world]…flooding rain, great hailstones, fire and brimstone.” (Ezek 38:22). The kings of the earth are defeated by Christ and His army in the same way in Armageddon as in the battle of Gog-Magog battle. The Apostle John has written in the Book of Revelation which says, [The Antichrist and the false prophet] were cast alive in to the lake of fire burning with brimstone.” (Rev 19:20). Then the invading nations at Armageddon are defeated by Jesus who uses “a sharp sword” from His mouth, meaning mere words (Rev 19:15). When Jesus speaks the word of Judgment upon Antichrist and his global armies, the heaven will open up and release the destructive wrath of God on this planet earth. Just like Sodom and Gomorrah were rained by brimstone and fire, so will be upon the global coalition of nations under Antichrist (Gen 19:19:24-25, 28; Ezek 38:22). This is also confirmed in Isaiah 66:15-16 which says, “15 For behold, the LORD will come with fire and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire. 16 For by fire and by His sword the LORD will judge all flesh; and the slain of the LORD shall be many.” This preceding verses clearly points to Jesus’ Second Coming in which He will destroy His enemies by fire and His sword [i.e. which is His word that will come out of His mouth (Rev 19:13-15; Eph 6:17)].

13) In Ezekiel 38:22 God says, “…I will bring him [whom? Antichrist] to judgment….I will rain down on him [whom? Antichrist, this is the reason God is speaking in a singular personal pronoun pointing to a single person], on his troops [‘his troops’ points to the personal troops of Antichrist that he will have to destroy the nations that oppose him], and on the many peoples [i.e. many different people groups from nations around the globe] who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” This verse clearly points that the Gog-Magog battle is the same Armageddon battle of the End Time. Antichrist is spoken as a single person with His empowered troops under his charisma. Then the nations of the world who have joined him to destroy and plunder Israel are described as nations who are with him. Thus the scenario of Antichrist invading Israel with a global coalition perfectly fits the Gog-Magog battle.

14) The only time of peace that the Bible predicts in the end times is the false peace accord that the Antichrist will make with the nation of Israel for 7 years (Dan 9:27; 12:4, 9). We see in the Bible that the peace that the world will seek in the end times due to distress that will come upon it as a judgment from God for all its wickedness (Luke 21:25-26; 1 Thess 5:3) will be changed to peaceful conditions and prosperity as God has promised, only after the Messiah of Israel comes and makes Jerusalem as His capital city to rule the world from it (Isaiah 11:6-11; 9:6-7). Until the government of the real Messiah Jesus Christ is established in the earth, there can be no real peace on earth (Luke 2:14; Eph 2:14; Haggai 2:9). Thus we see that the peace that is achieved in Ezekiel 38th chapter is the false peace that has come as a result of the peace accord that the nation of Israel will make with Antichrist. The Jews will accept Antichrist as their Messiah because of His achievement in breaking the wall between the Nation of Israel and Palestine, thus bringing false peace upon the whole wide world (Ezek 38:11). We can see from the view point of the previous scripture, after the Palestine becomes a nation, the nation of Israel will very soon build a great wall between them to protect themselves from the terrorist activities of the Palestinians. In the end time Israel will become very prosperous in the whole wide world, this is the reason nations will come to plunder Israel under Antichrist (Ezek 38:13-14). The Antichrist will make the Jews as peaceful people by his reassuring words and will make them dwell safely without walls, having neither bars nor gates (Ezek 38:11-12). All these gimmicks of Antichrist will be over after the time of the 7 years false peace covenant ends, after which Antichrist with all the nations of the world under him will try to destroy Israel completely. At that time the real Messiah of Israel [i.e. Jesus Christ] will come and rescue the nation of Israel during the final Gog-Magog battle of Armageddon (Rev 19:17-21). And also only the Messianic Jews will oppose the idolatrous one world religion which will be instituted by the Antichrist’s right hand man the false prophet from the newly built Jewish temple, this will start only from the day of the abomination of desolation (Matt 24:15-16, 23-28; 2 Thess 2:3-4, 8). Only these zealous Messianic Jews will be killed by the Antichrist (Rev 13:15, 7). All other Jews will accept Antichrist as their Messiah and will follow him (Rev 13:8). The Great Tribulation will start immediately after the rapture and it will be a time of the wrath of God which will be poured out on Antichrist and the inhabitants of the whole earth (1 Thess 1:10; 5:9; 2 Thess 1:7-10; 2:11-12; Rev 16:1-16). Even under God’s wrath of Great Tribulation, the deceitful and peaceful pre-condition of Ezekiel 38:11 can exist, in which Israel will be living unsuspectingly believing the lie of Antichrist to be Israel’s Messiah and the false prophet to be Elijah before the Gog-Magog battle. After the 7-year peace covenant with Antichrist gets over, then the evil plan of Satan will come in to the mind of Antichrist to plunder and destroy Israel (Ezek 38:10-12). After which Antichrist will gather a global coalition of troops under him to destroy Israel completely, only then the unsuspecting people of Israel will realize their folly in believing Antichrist as their Messiah. Then in their helplessness they will mourn for the real Messiah Jesus Christ, after which He will come and rescue the nation of Israel in the Gog-Magog battle of Armageddon (Zech 12:3, 9-11; Matt 24:29-31).

15) Ezekiel 38:13 describes some nations questioning the Gog-Magog invasion. These nations are Sheba, Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish and all their young lions. This shows that when the Bible says all the nations of the world is involved (Joel 3:2; Zeph 3:8; Zech 12:3; 14:2), it is describing about a global coalition of troops under the leadership of Antichrist (Ezek 38:22). If all the nations of the world without the exception of even one nation supports the Antichrist’s Gog-Magog invasion, then how can any nation be considered as sheep nation when Christ sits on His throne after Armageddon battle in the judgment of nations (Matt 25:31-33)? So the Biblically accurate view requires that some nations need to surely sit at the sidelines, not having the ability to resist the evil plan of Antichrist to destroy Israel from existence and plunder its wealth (Ezekiel 38:10, 13-14).

16) Ezekiel 39:9 describes Israel burning the invading enemies weapons for seven years. Because the Gog-Magog battle will take place after the end of the Great Tribulation, the enemies weapons will be burned for 7 years in to the Millennium. At that time Messiah of Israel would be present in Israel to protect it and to judge the nations of the world. This is the reason the nation of Israel will not want to take and store the weapons as booty or spoils for future wars, but instead would choose to burn the weapons completely. This also reveals their confidence in their real Messiah Jesus Christ who will have by then saved them from the terrible and brutal clutches of the Assyrian Antichrist in this final war of Armageddon.

The next thing is, even though Jesus will provide to everyone’s needs, the curse will be partially lifted (Is 11:6-10), and the earth also will be reformatted by earth quakes (Rev 6:12-14; 16:17-21), still as the Bible says Jesus will come and only help to raise up the tabernacle of David, repair its damages, raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old (Amos 9:11; Acts 15:16-17). It took many years as the history says to rebuild the tabernacle of David which was fully completed by Solomon (John 2:20; 1 Chron 16:1; 17:5-14; 29:1-9; 2 Chron 6:5-11; 7:1-11). Jesus did not promise a new temple for the Millennium pre-built in heaven, lowered and refitted on earth like the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven (Rev 21:1-3). In this way burning the weapons in the millennium is part of the work to rebuild the Millennium temple through the surviving saints of the Great Tribulation who will be in their natural bodies. These saints who will have survived and have come out of Great Tribulation will be allowed to live on earth in the Millennium to procreate and multiply the earth. Thus because the Messiah will rule the world with an iron rod, all the nations of the earth and Israel especially will destroy all their weapons completely trusting the supernatural power of the Messiah to protect them from any harm (Joel 3:16). This massive de-weaponisation program around the world will be implemented without fail by the Messiah (Isaiah 2:2-4; Rev 19:15; Isaiah 11:4).

17) The leaders of the invasion in both the Gog-Magog and Armageddon battle are the same. Gog is the prince and ruler of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal (Ezek 38:3). The Antichrist is clearly described in the Book of Daniel as “the people of the prince who is to come” (Dan 9:26). Also He is clearly described as the horn before which three horns fell (Dan 7:20). The meaning of the preceding verse is “….He [i.e. the Antichrist] shall be different from the first ones, and shall subdue three kings.” (Dan 7:24). In other words the prince of Gog who is the Antichrist will bring the three kings of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal under his control and will subdue them. Seeing this, the whole world will give their power over to Antichrist to form a one world government with a one world religion intertwined within it (Ezek 38:3; Rev 17:12-13). The invading leader in both Armageddon and Ezek 38-39 is the same beast Antichrist who will have a worldwide control over the whole earth. It is a clearly a known fact that the Antichrist who is also called as the prince of Gog will be possessed by Satan the Dragon (Rev 13:2). This is the reason the verse in Ezekiel 38:10 says, “thoughts will arise in your mind…you will make evil plans”. In other words, just like Satan entered Judas to fulfill the purpose of God, so will be at the end time with Antichrist (John 13:27). Satan will fulfill all his wishes through the body of Antichrist before he will be locked in prison for a Millennium (Rev 20:2).

The invaders in to the nation of Israel in both the Armageddon and Gog-Magog battle are a global coalition of nations with their one world powerful charismatic leader Antichrist leading them (Ezek 38:11; Rev 19:19). Not realizing that the Messiah of Israel will come to defend the people who fear Him in Israel, the kings of the earth will come to completely destroy the nation of Israel. The army under Antichrist will openly declare a war cry against the Messiah of Israel to come and fight to rescue the nation of Israel, if its Messiah is truly God Almighty (Rev 13:4, 6-10; 17:12-14; 19:19; 6:15-17). Thus unexpectedly they will see Christ and His armies of saints from heaven supernaturally come and fight for Israel (Rev 19:11-21). As a result of this final war, the nation of Israel will be protected from annihilation. Jerusalem will become the capital city of its Messiah Jesus Christ. From the city of Jerusalem the Great King and the Messiah of the world will rule the nations for a Millennium (Matt 5:35). Praise the Lord!

18) The people who say that Ezekiel 38, 39 war is a separate war from Armageddon use two words “…dwell safely…” to substantiate their claim out of context. In the Hebrew ‘yashab’ is used for the word ‘dwell’ which means ‘to dwell, remain, sit, abide’. This is a root word out of which all these sub division occurs '(Qal) to sit, sit down, to be set, to remain, stay, to dwell, have one's abode, (Niphal) to be inhabited, (Piel) to set, place, (Hiphil) to cause to sit, to cause to abide, set, to cause to dwell, to cause (cities) to be inhabited, to marry (give an dwelling to), (Hophal) to be inhabited, to make to dwell’. This clearly points to the return of the nation of Israel back to its land by causing cities to be inhabited by them. And this has already happened.

The other Hebrew word used here for ‘safely’ is ‘betach’ which can be translated as ‘security, safety, securely’. This word can also be translated as ‘ safely , safety , carelessly , careless , safe , securely , assurance , boldly , care , confidence , hope , secure , surely’. The word ‘carelessly’ exactly fits the context of the scripture because it is a war situation where the people of Israel will have carelessly trusted Antichrist as their messiah already, through a careless covenant agreement of peace for seven years (Dan 9:27). This word is used three times in other places to point to the same meaning of a lethargic attitude towards God and His ways (Isaiah 47:8; Ezek 39:6; Zephaniah 2:15).

As we have seen, this word exactly fits the context because of the false covenant agreement that the Antichrist will make to bring safety to the nation of Israel and then exactly at the half of the seven year time he will break it. The word ‘carelessly’ in this context is used in Ezekiel 38:8, 11, 14. In other words, the Israelites who will be inhabiting the cities of Israel before the battle of Armageddon take place, will live carelessly [i.e. without their absolute knowledge of the God (Jehovah) who protects them] and thus ignorant of the God of their fathers who brought them in to the land of Israel to be a nation after millenniums of living in exile in various nations (Isaiah 11:12; Jeremiah 33:24-26; Ezek 36:24). They will live believing the lie that the Antichrist is their real messiah and that he will protect the nation of Israel forever (2 Thess 2:9-12). They will live carelessly without walls and having neither bars nor gates to protect themselves from their enemies because of believing Antichrist as their messiah and the false prophet as their real prophet Elijah who will protect them (Ezek 38:11). The nation of Israel will prosper because of reinstituting the temple and its ritual sacrifice as in the days of old. People from all over the world will bring their gold as an offering to the god of Israel under Antichrist. This is also the reason Antichrist with a global coalition of troops will come to plunder the nation of Israel and take its gold and silver wealth from its temple during Gog-Magog war (Ezek 38:13). As a nation Israel will prosper during the false time of peace in an unprecedented way (Ezek 38:12-13).

Many hypocritical Jews will worship Antichrist even when he will break the covenant with Israel and also even after he begins to boast himself as God thus directing all the peoples of the earth to worship Satan openly (Rev 13:8). These hypocritical Jews will be deceived in to thinking that their messiah is Antichrist even up to the battle of Armageddon in which the true remnant will be saved from the clutches of Israel’s enemies (John 5:43; 1 Thess 2:11; Zech 13:9; Joel 2:32; Mic 4:7; Rev 13:8, 13-18; 16:2, 8-11). It will be only on the day of Armageddon battle, many of the Israelites will come to know that the Antichrist is not their real messiah, but is actually their enemy who has planned to destroy and completely wipe them out of the planet earth (Rev 19:19-21). Until then the Antichrist will act as though he is the real Savior of the nation of Israel and many Jews will be deceived during this time of the end (Rev 3:9-10).

After this false safety will go bust just before the battle of Armageddon, then these same Israelites will mourn for the true Messiah to appear and rescue them to safety, at this point of time He will return to rescue Israel and inhabit in it forever. Then in true safety they will dwell in their land (Jer 23:6; 32:37; 33:16; Ezek 28:26; 34:25, 28; Zech 14:11).

19) The ‘un walled villages, prosperous people, dwelling safely, all of them dwelling without walls and having neither bars nor gates’ are all the words that the boastful Antichrist will use to make the Israelites [i.e. Jews] feel safe throughout the whole false peace covenant period (Ezek 38:11,14; 1 Thess 5:3). Thus absolutely indicating that the war which has been foretold in Ezekiel 38th and 39th chapter is the same Armageddon war described in the Book of Revelation (Rev 16:12-14; 19:17-21).

20) In a chronological order the whole end part of Ezekiel is written. Ezekiel 36 speaks about the regathering of Israel from nations around the world. Ezekiel 37 speaks mainly of the miraculous resurrection of the nation of Israel after millenniums of exile, which got fulfilled in May 14, 1948. Out of nowhere the nation of Israel suddenly came in to the international scene as a nation recognized by powerful countries around the world. This chapter also speaks about God's prosperous will and future for the nation of Israel with one kingdom [i.e. God's rulership] and one king [i.e. the Messiah David ruling forever (Ezek 37:25)]. Ezekiel 38 speaks about the end time prosperity of the nation of Israel and how Antichrist who will deceitfully become the false messiah of Israel and will try to plunder and destroy them. Ezekiel 39 speaks about how God will destroy Antichrist through His direct intervention through His Messiah from heaven who is the supernatural stone that was cut out of the mountain of heaven without hands (Dan 2:44-45). At the end this chapter also speaks about the outpouring of the Spirit that will happen when the Messiah comes to rescue the nation of Israel (Ezek 39:29). Then from Ezekiel 40 onwards, the information for building a new Millennial Temple for the Messiah and His kingdom law is described to the very details. Then about the Tribes, Priests, Prosperity of the kingdom of the Messiah is described even to the end of the Book of Ezekiel in Chapter 48. Thus, this chronological and sequential order of chapters arranged in the Book of Ezekiel also gives us a clear idea that the Gog-Magog war in the Old Testament is the same final Armageddon war written in the New Testament.

21) We see immediately after this Gog-Magog battle in Ezek 38-39, the building of the Millennial Temple of the Messiah in Israel in Ezek 40 onwards, which again shows that the preceding Ezekiel thirty ninth chapter battle is Armageddon battle. And it agrees with the scripture in the Book of Amos Chapter 9 which says, "11 “ On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; 12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name,” says the LORD who does this thing." We also notice that the enemy nations come against the mountains of Israel in and around Jerusalem from which the Lord will fight against them in that day of battle, which again shows that it is Armageddon Battle (Ezek 39:2; Zech 14:2; Joel 2:32).

22) Some believe that the Lord will use the Battle of Ezekiel 38-39 as a wake up call to Israel (Ezek. 39:22) which is necessary before the 70th week of Daniel so that the Great Tribulation can begin. But I don't think that the nations once they see such awesome power of the Lord in such a way as in Ezek 38-39, they will ever have strength in them to go against Him or for the Israelites to believe an Antichrist who will not be able to display a power equal to this magnitude. Next God says that the Israelites will know [i.e. spiritually because of receiving God's Spirit] that it is their God who has sent them out of their land in to captivity and that he has brought them back to their land and nobody will be left captive any longer (Ezek 39:28-29). If this Gog-Magog war happens before or during the Great Tribulation, the nation of Israel will again be taken captive by Antichrist during the Great Tribulation in which he will tyrannically impose his rule over them and kill many. This scenario is a technical impossibility. So this proves Gog-Magog to be the final Armageddon war. And also the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is only promised after the end of the Great Tribulation and Armageddon war, in which they will mourn for the Messiah whom they have rejected at His First Coming to come and rescue them (Ezek 39:29; Zech 12:10-11; Matt 24:29-30). It is an absolute impossibility and unbiblical to say that there is another outpouring apart from the one at Jesus' Second Coming to rescue the nation of Israel from the clutches of Antichrist. There is no back up verse in any part of the scripture to strengthen this belief. Again this proves Ezekiel 38-39 war to be the same Armageddon war.

23) All the world travelers towards Jerusalem who will come to see the Messiah and worship Him in His temple will be obstructed by the burial of the dead bodies in the mountains of Jerusalem, just after the war of Armageddon will be over (Ezek 39:11). Ezekiel 39:12 says that the whole nation engages in disposing of the bodies of the invaders for seven months, this disposal of bodies is done to cleanse the land of Israel [As we know from Mosaic Law that touching a dead body will make a person unclean for seven days (Num 19:11)]. Then there’s the issue of the whole nation handling dead bodies during the burial process, something that would make them unclean if they weren’t already. Once all the dead bodies are buried and the land is cleansed up, then they will cleanse themselves ceremonially by staying in isolation for seven days after which they will join in the rebuilding of the Messiah's dream project of rebuilding the temple, city and the whole nation of Israel under Him and rule the world from it (Num 19:11; Amos 9:11; Jer 31:39; Isaiah 60:10, 12, 18, 21-22). After seven months, squads of people are specially employed who are called as "search party" to dispose of any remains that are found. When a bone is found, a marker is placed by it and the burying is done by specialists (Ezek 39:14-16). In other words once the seven months burial gets over, the common man will avoid touching the bone so that he can remain ritually pure (Num 19:16). If this burial happens before or during the Great Tribulation, nobody and especially the Antichrist will bother to pick the bodies one by one. Instead it will be burnt to ashes by pouring some other inflammable liquid over it or by burning the weapons booty of the enemy in the same place. Because the place of death in which the Messiah defeats "Gog and all his multitude" (Ezek 39:11) will be a holy memorial to the supernatural power of the Messiah for the whole Millennium ahead, all the bodies will be removed one by one, thus cleansing the whole place (Jer 31:40, 39; Joel 3:17; Ezek 39:11). This clearly shows that Ezek 38-39 and Armageddon battle are one and the same.

24) The Hebrew word for 'Gog' is a proper masculine noun. It represents a person who is a male prince. The other meanings for the word 'Gog' is 'mountain [which represents authority (Dan 2:45; Matt 21:21)], a Reubenite, son of Shemaiah (1 Chro 5:4), the prophetic [male] prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, Gog is the Antichrist who is from the gentile origin of the land of Magog (Ezek 38:2; Gen 10:2-5)'. Here in Ezek 38-39 context, the scripture clearly says Gog of the land of Magog is the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal (Ezek 38:2-3). And in Ezek 39 God has said that "Gog and all his multitude will be buried [in]...the Valley of Hamon-gog." (Ezek 39:11). This preceding scripture calls the whole army of Ezek 38-39 as "his multitude" which is a personal pronoun that points to the person of Antichrist and his army consisting of a global coalition of kings and their armies from all the earth.

Ezekiel 38:17 describes the Lord talking to Gog. He’s the one spoken about by the prophets, specifically in Amos 7:1 where the Greek translation names Gog as the king of the locusts. The locusts are demonic powers and personalities that are clearly portrayed as the ones which will afflict people during the Great Tribulation (Rev 9:3). And from this description we know that Satan and his evil minions will be the one who will orchestrate, empower and possess the Antichrist and all the kings and armies of the earth that will accompany him for the final Gog-Magog battle to destroy and plunder Israel forever (Ezek 38:10-13; Luke 10:18-20; Rev 16:12-16; 19:19-21).

Amos was written over 200 years before Ezekiel. It’s the only place in any translation of the Old Testament where Gog is mentioned by name except in 1 Chron 5:4 where a son of Joel from the family of Reuben is named Gog. This shows that the Old Testament's Ezekiel 38-39 [Gog-Magog] battle is one and the same Armageddon battle spoken in the New Testament.

25) God calls this Armageddon day in which He will fight against the enemies of His as ‘The Day of His Wrath or Fury’ in all scriptures (Ps 110:5; Is 13: 9, 13; Zeph 1:18; 3:8; Rev 6:17). In the Gog-Magog war God says, "For in My jealousy [and] in the fire of My wrath I have spoken: 'Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel" (Ezekiel 38:19). God calls the day of Armageddon battle in the Book of Revelation as the “wrath of Almighty God” and “fierceness of His wrath” (Ezek 38:18; Rev 16:19; 19:15). In Ezekiel 38:19, we first see God speaking about the battle, in the fire of His wrath and then predicting an unprecedented earthquake as the result of His wrath. This is the same scenario that is also described in the Book of Revelation on the Armageddon day of battle (Matt 24:29; Rev 6:12-17; 16:18-21).

In this day only the one-third remnant of Jews left will be hidden from His anger and wrath (Zeph 2:1-2; Zech 13:9; 14:2-5). There is a great quake which is described in this day of battle in Ezekiel 38:19-21, and also in many other places of the Scripture which says that at the Messiah’s presence all men who are on the face of the earth will shake in that day. In the exact way the war of Armageddon is also described in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, in which it is said that because of His wrath a great unprecedented earth quake is said to take place. The only shaking of heaven and earth which is clearly portrayed in the Scripture is the day of Armageddon in which the Lord’s “wrath” will consume His enemies when He will appear to rule on the earth forever (Isa 13:13; Joel 3:16; Hag 2:6, 21). Exactly in the same way this unique earth quake is described in all the other references of the Scriptures which clearly proves that it is the same battle that is described in both Ezekiel 38-39 and in the Book of Revelation as Armageddon, and also in all other places of the Bible in which the same battle is called as the ‘day of His wrath’ (Zech 14:3-5; Amos 1:1; Rev 16:18-19; 6:14-17; Zephaniah 1:14).

26) Not one statement in these two chapters (Ez: 38-39) mention a war in Israel before Armageddon [or after]. If there is a war described in these two chapters of Ezek 38-39, then legitimately atleast we can think of considering it as an option for the discussion that the two battles of Ezek 38-39 and Armageddon may be different.

27) The battle of Armageddon is the only war predicted by the prophets that could possibly be referred to in these chapters (Ezek. 38:17). Armageddon is mentioned many times by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and other prophets before the days of Ezekiel (Isa. 1:25-31; 3:25-26; 13:1-16; 24:21; 63:1-6; Jer. 25:30-33; 30:11,20-24; Joel 2-3; Oba. 1:15-21; Mic. 1:3-4; 2:12-13; 5:5-15; etc.). There is not a single war in the whole Bible that does fit a scenario other than the Armageddon which has the accompanying signs of God’s wrath and earth quake in it.

28) The destruction of Gog and his armies (Ezek. 38:18-23; 39:1-6,17-20) compares with similar statements about Armageddon in Joel 3; Zech. 14; Rev. 19:11-21. These similar statements points clearly to one conclusion that all the Books of the Bible has clearly pointed towards this battle as something unique in which the mortal man will try one last time to fight against his maker to dislodge Him from His rightful place as the sole owner who deserves worship because of His absolute character. This is the reason at the end of the Millennium rule of Christ as the Bible says this war will continue and reach its zenith one last time before Satan and all human flesh will be banished forever (Rev 20:7-10).

29) Gog will not fall upon the open field until Armageddon (Ezek. 39:3-5; Rev. 19:11-21). There are no other battle in the Bible which points to an open field battle in rebellion against God and His land of Israel directly except this one battle of all battles which is Armageddon. Clearly this is one battle that the Bible describes that the blood of God’s enemies will come upto the height of horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs (Rev 14:17-20).

30) The great supper for the fowls and beasts will only be at Armageddon (Ezek. 39:4,17-20 with Mt. 24:27-28; Rev. 19:17-21). The is no other great supper that God has described anywhere in the Bible except these two places which points to the conclusion that both must be the same.

31) The presence of God (as pictured in Ezek. 38:18-21; 39:1-6,17-24) will not be present in the temple until Armageddon (Isa. 63:1-6; Zech. 14:1-5; Rev. 19:11-21). God has promised to build the tabernacle of David only when He will come to restore it after Armageddon and has assured that He will rebuild the old ruined walls, only at this time He has also promised to bring back the Shekinah glory of God through the Messiah who will rule the world (Acts 15:16-17; Is 11:4; 60:1-3; Ps 2:12).

32) The supernatural destruction of Gog and his armies (as described in Ezek. 38:21-23) will not be until Armageddon (Isa. 63:1-6; Joel 2-3; Zech. 14; Rev. 19:11-21). In no other scripture during the latter days has God told us about a supernatural direct intervention to rescue the nation of Israel except at the time of the battle of Armageddon (Rom 11:26-27; 9:25-29; Isa 59:20; Zech 14:1-5).

33) God will not magnify and sanctify Himself and set His glory among the heathen (as stated in Ezek. 38:23; 39:21-24) until He comes at the second coming of Christ -- at Armageddon (Zech. 14:1-21; Mt. 24:29-31; Rev. 19:11-21). Until the day of Armageddon Antichrist will be the one who will rule the nation of Israel, deceitfully making the Jews believe that he is their real messiah. This is the reason God accuses the nation of Israel in Ezekiel 44:7-8 as a rebellious house which will bring all the abominations of Antichrist and his religion inside the the 3rd Temple of the end times. The Antichrist is described here as a foreigner who will be neither a Jew [i.e. uncircumcised in the flesh] nor a Christian [i.e. uncircumcised in heart], but who will defile the temple by his unholy sacrifices. God has also predicted that all foreigners will break God's covenant law given to Israelites by Moses (John1:17; Acts7:37-43; Rom 2:17-25; Deut 5:1-22) because of all the abominations that will take place during the 7 year covenant period of false peace instituted by Antichrist (1 Thess 5:3; 2 Thess2:3-4). God has clearly foretold in the Ezek 44:8 that the house of Israel will not keep charge of God's holy things but instead will allow foreigners to keep charge of His sanctuary for Him (Ezek 44:7-8). And also this shows that Antichrist will be accepted as the messiah of Israel in spite of him being a foreigner. God will only set up His rightful kingdom and His glory on earth through the real Messiah of Israel [i.e. Jesus Christ]. This kingdom establishment on earth through the Real Messiah Jesus Christ will happen only after Armageddon battle (Rev 19:11-16; Matt 25:31-34).

34) Gog will not bring the many armies of the nations into Israel to be destroyed until the time of the second coming of Christ, at Armageddon, as referred to in Ezek. 38:18-23; 39:1-7 and proved in Zech. 14:1-5; Rev. 16:13-16; 19:11-21. Such a massive size of army has not been described anywhere in the Bible except at the time of Armageddon battle (Rev 9:13-21; 16:12-16). Due to the massive population explosion of the end times this 200 million army of horsemen can be possible.

35) The great earthquake of Ezek. 38:20 will not take place until the seventh vial and the second coming (Zech. 14:1-5; Rev. 16:17-21; 19:11-21). There are no such powerful earth quake described in any part of the Bible during a battle, so only God compared this Armageddon battle to the time of the days of Uzziah king of Judah in which the Lord supernaturally opened up a mountain valley for the army of the people of Israel to flee from the earth quake which destroyed their enemies (Zech 14:5). In the same way it will happen at the end time war of Armageddon.

36) God's presence will not destroy Gog and his army until the second coming, at Armageddon (Ezek. 38:20; 39:2-7 with Zech. 14:1-5; Rev. 19:11-21). The supernatural destruction of Ezek 38-39 with out any human intervention clearly points to the direct destruction of the enemy through the presence of the Lord and his invisible armies at Armageddon (2 Thess 2:8; Rev 19:17-21).

37) Gog and his army cannot be destroyed in a war in Israel before the second coming, at Armageddon, to fulfill Ezek. 38:18-23; 39:1-7,17-20, and then be destroyed again at Armageddon to fulfill Isa. 63; Joel 2-3; Zech. 14. We must therefore recognize all these passages as referring to the same destruction -- at Armageddon (Rev. 19:11-21).

38) The burial of Gog and all his armies destroyed in the fulfillment of Ezek. 38-39 will be at the second coming of Christ (Ezek. 39:11-16 with Dan. 7:11; 2Th. 2:8-12; Rev. 19:11-21).

39) It is at the second coming of Christ that God's glory will be set among the heathen and Israel will be completely gathered and blessed (Ezek. 39:21-29; Zech. 14; Mt. 24:29-31; Rom. 11:24-29; Rev. 19:11-21).

40) There is not one single scripture in the Bible that describes any war in Israel after the Gog-Magog war -- because there isn't one. If we accept the Battle of Armageddon as coming after Gog-Magog, then, we must accept two supernatural destructions of two gathered armies by the Lord of Hosts each led by a different Assyrian Prince, two great suppers for the fowls, two great earthquakes that shake the whole world, two mass burials of armies in a valley called Hamongog, two 7-year periods of burning weapons, and two different days about which God proclaims, "Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken." (Ezek 39:8).

41) Ezekiel says that the nation of Israel will be seven months burying the dead and seven years burning the weapons. This obviously can't happen during the Tribulation Week with everything else that will be going on. Weapons of war will only be burned after Christ returns and Israel is living in perfect peace under the Prince of Peace, no Antichrist in sight and weapons of war are no longer necessary. And, it won't just be Israel that burns weapons of war. In the beginning of the Lord's Millennial Reign we will see the fulfillment of Micah 4:3, "And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." In other words, all the nations of the world including Israel will be implementing the most massive and permanent disarmament program in history.

42) Further, the Gog-Magog war cannot take place before the Rapture when the "Restrainer of Lawlessness" will still be present (2 Thess 2:7). Once the "Restrainer of Lawlessness" is taken out of the way for the Antichrist to fullfill the end time purpose of God, Antichrist will step in to the temple to claim himself to be god and will seat himself in it, after this event which is usually called as the ‘abomination of desolation’ the restrainer will no more be restraining any lawlessness from the world which will cause the wrath of God to come upon it in an increasing measure till the Great Tribulation gets over (2 Thess 2:8; Rev 13:5; Matt 24:21, 29). Immediately after this event of ‘abomination of desolation’, any time the Church will be raptured out of the world (Matt 24:24-28; 1 Thess 4:13-18; 5:1-11). The Gog-Magog war cannot take place in the first half of the peace covenant of 7 years that Antichrist will make with the nation of Israel (Dan 9:27), for such an significant event would certainly have been mentioned by John separately from Armageddon if they were two separate events conducted by two separate invading "Princes". Furthermore, it is beyond credibility to think that Ezekiel would describe the invasion of Israel in the latter days by an Assyrian Prince named Gog and never once mention a war as significant as Armageddon led by another Assyrian Prince if they are two different "Princes" and two separate conflicts. Remember, Ezekiel's war and Armageddon are both described as only lasting a single day, the same day, the Day of the Lord.

43) The Gog of Magog, the Assyrian, and the Antichrist are all one and the same person. Ezekiel 38:17 proves this fact beyond doubt.

"Thus saith the Lord GOD; Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them?" (Ezek 38:17, KJV)

The Lord GOD is speaking directly to Gog of Magog ("he of whom I have spoken"). It is evident in searching through all the other books of the "prophets of Israel" that the Antichrist is referred to many times by many names, but, here in Ezekiel is the only place in the Bible we have a reference to a Prince called "Gog". So, if God's "servants the prophets of Israel" "prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee (Gog) against them", Gog and Antichrist have to be the same person because the only person the others prophesied about invading Israel was Antichrist.

44) Finally, it is only at the Second Coming and after the Battle of Armageddon that Ezekiel 39:7-8 can possibly be fulfilled:

Ezekiel 39:7-8 says "So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, THE HOLY ONE IN ISRAEL. 8 ¶Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken."

In the King James Bible, the phrase, "the Holy One of Israel" occurs many times and always refers to Messiah the King. But, the phrase "the Holy One IN Israel" occurs only once in Scripture, here in Ezekiel 39:7. This proves beyond doubt that Jesus Christ is physically present IN Israel after Ezekiel's war.

Now that we have proven that Ezekiel's war and Armageddon are the same battle, and that Gog is "the heathen" Assyrian Prince we call the Antichrist, any remaining questions regarding the timing of "his two campaigns" against Israel can easily be resolved.

45) Most Bible scholars believe the land of Magog refers to lands encompassed by modern Russia. This does not, however, mean that Gog, himself, has to be a Russian in order to lead a coalition of "many nations" including Russia into battle. We know from a study of Daniel 11:35-45 that the Antichrist will come from the Syrian (Selucid) division of the former Grecian Empire and that other passages refer to him as "the Assyrian", "the King of the North", the "Prince that shall come", "the Beast", "the Son of Perdition", "that evil one", "a wicked counsellor", etc. Now, thanks to Ezekiel, we can also refer to him as Gog of the land of Magog, the Chief Prince of Meshech and Tubal. I think with a little careful study you will find historically that Meshech and Tubal were located in the area of modern Turkey, not Russia, and Turkey was definitely a part of the Syrian or Selucid portion of the four divisions of the former Greek Empire.

46) The first time Antichrist the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal comes to Israel, he will occupy the 3rd Tribulation Temple of Israel deceitfully as their messiah in the middle of the peace covenant of Daniel's 70th week, and only 10 kingdoms of the Revised Roman Empire will be with him (Dan. 11:35-45; Rev. 11:1-2). [This is when Gog, the Antichrist, will take Jerusalem as his capital city by claiming himself to be the messiah of the nation of Israel and will enter the Temple proclaiming himself to be God.] Between this deceitful takeover of the temple and the fulfillment of Ezek. 38-39 the combined nations of the north and east of the 10 kingdoms will make war on Gog and these kingdoms under him. He will leave Israel and his capital (Jerusalem at this time), to go forth against these new enemies until they are defeated in the last 3 1/2 years of Daniel's 70th week (Dan. 11:44).

47) The second time Antichrist as Gog comes to Israel, he will show his real face and will invade the nation of Israel which will be at the end of the last 3 1/2 years of Daniel's 70th week. After he has conquered the countries north and east of his 10 kingdoms inside the old Roman Empire boundary lines, then he will have conquered Russia, and the many countries with her, becoming their ruler as well as being the ruler of the 10 kingdoms and the countries of the north and east. Gog will then lead all these to battle, and many other nations whom he has not yet conquered, but who will cooperate with him through the ministry of the 3 unclean spirits of Rev. 16:13-16. These vast armies being mobilized [at Armageddon] will converge on Israel in an effort to destroy Israel completely (Zech. 14:1-15) and stop Christ from setting up His kingdom on earth (Rev. 19:11-21). At this time all of Ezek. 38-39 will be fulfilled. Then after this battle of Armageddon Christ will set up His kingdom on earth as predicted here and in Isa. 2:2-4; 9:6-7; 11:1 -- Isa. 12:6; 63:1-6; Jer. 30-31; Dan. 7:13-14; Mic. 4; Joel 2-3; Zech. 14; Lk. 1:32-33; Rev. 11:15; 19:11 -- Rev. 20:10.

48) The only time Russia will invade Israel in fulfillment of Scripture will be as one of many conquered nations under Gog or Antichrist, when he and his armies will fight against Israel and Christ at Armageddon -- at the time of the second coming. Russia will not be under Antichrist at the time of his first deceitful influence over Israel as their messiah when he takes over Jerusalem and the Jewish temple as his capital; but she will be with him when he returns the second time to Israel. The second time Antichrist comes to Israel, he will come with a evil thought inside him to destroy Israel and plunder its wealth (Ezek 38:10-17). After conquering these nations of the east and the north (Dan 11:44-45), Gog will come back down into Israel, surround the city, take half of it, and then be suddenly defeated in one day's battle (Armageddon) by Christ and the heavenly armies (Zech. 14:1-15). The first time Antichrist comes towards the nation of Israel, his motive will be to rule the world from the temple in Jerusalem. The second time he comes towards the nation of Israel, his motive will be to plunder the wealth of the nation of Israel and destroy it for ever. This is the reason it is shown in the Book of Daniel that the second time Antichrist return to Israel he will not stay in the temple as his palace of abode as at former times but he, “...shall plant the tents of his palace between the seas and the glorious holy mountain [Note: this time his palace of abode will not be inside the temple which would have been desolated completely due to abomination of placing a Satanic statue inside the holy of holies at the end of the ascension of the two prophets Elijah and Enoch, but he will plant his tent between the seas and the temple mount so that it will be easy for him to invade Israel, loot it and completely destroy it from existence]; yet he shall come to his end [in the Armageddon battle (Rev 19:17-21)], and no one will help him [ because all humans will be powerless before the supernatural army of Christ and His saints in their glorious bodies]." (Dan 11:45).

49) As Christ has foretold in Matt 24:6, “…ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end [war of Armageddon] is not yet.” During the end time before Armageddon a lot of wars will take place and the rumours of more wars will increase as the time of the end will draw near to the finish line of Armageddon. The sorrows of the end time will be just like a birth pang (Matt 24:8; Mark 13:8). In other words the sorrows and distresses of the end time will keep increasing day by day during the end time until the day of Armageddon which is its zenith gets over and Christ establishes His righteous government and His kingdom on earth. Till then as Christ has clearly instructed us, all these things of chaotic fighting's, wars and rumors of wars are just a passing time before rapture takes place. So we should not be troubled by all these wars and rumours of wars like as the world which will experience serious distress of what is going to happen to the world (Luke 21:25-26; 2 Tim 3:1). We should be ruled by peace and joy in the end times looking forward to the day of rapture and comfort one another with the message of the rapture of the Church in the end times (1 Thess 4:15-18; 5:9-11).

50) Thus all the previous expositions clearly points that Ezekiel's war is the same as the Battle of Armageddon, the final war between good and evil, and cannot not take place until the end of the 70th Week of Daniel at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.







Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A Question about Daniel and then the Flood of Noah's Days


Question 1. As we all know that Daniel and his three friends were recruited and lived under the same Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 1:17-20; 2:17-19), why was Daniel not a part of the pack who defied the king's command to worship the golden statue (Daniel 3:8-18). When they were thrown in to the fire, what was Daniel doing who was also living as a ruler and the chief administrator over all the whole province of Babylon (Daniel 2:47-48)? Was it because of his position of ruler ship along with the king that he was excluded and thus was not compelled to worship the golden Idol? If this is true, the reason they were compelled to worship the gods and serve the golden image was because they were just administrators who were set over the affairs of the province of Babylon which is less powerful than the post that Daniel held as a ruler in the king's gate (Daniel 3:12; 2:49).

Question 2. The other question is why did God not judge the sea creatures when the whole earth was defiled because of the wickedness of man (Genesis 6:5, 17-20). Is it because Noah's ark was the first ship that was built upon the earth so that the seas were undefiled by the presence of man over it? And also in those days the sea and the land were separated perfectly during the creation of the earth. I mean God had the whole waters under the heaven gathered together in one place and then there was one dry land the earth. The first part He called as "the dry land Earth", the other part which was "the gathering together of waters He called Seas" (Gen 1:9-10). I believe that the people at Noah's time had no need to build a ship because they had one big chunk of dry land 'the Earth'. Does the fall at the garden of Eden and the resultant curse is only upon the dry land 'the Earth' and not on the sea and the creatures that live in it (Gen 3:17-19). If this is right, why did the word of God say, "...the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together [with man] until now." (Rom 8:22) which includes the Sea and its creatures. And also man was initially given dominion over the sea, after the time of creation (Gen 1:26). Then the curse upon man must have come upon the creatures of the sea too. Does this mean that the living creatures in the sea also died during the time of the great flood of Noah's days?

Thank you so very much.

Abraham Israel

www.apostolicrevelation.blogspot.com


Hi Israel...

Answer 1. There are only three possible ways Daniel could have avoided the confrontation. The first is that he bowed before the statue. The second is that he didn't bow but was not reported. Both of these are highly unlikely, given Daniel's character and the animosity of the other officials toward Daniel and his friends alike.

The third possibility is the one that one most scholars accept, and that is that he was away from the capitol city when the event occurred. This would explain his absence from the narrative, and also why the other administrators had the courage to accuse his friends.

If this third view is correct, then the fiery furnace event becomes a model of the Great Tribulation. Nebuchadnezzar represents the anti-Christ who erects a statue of himself and requires everyone to worship it on pain of death. Daniel's 3 friends are a type of the believing Jewish remnant who remain faithful and are preserved through the fire. And Daniel models the Church, missing through out the entire event.

Answer 2. The Bible does not address the issue of the fish in the sea. It may be as you say, that the sea was not defiled at the time and therefore not subject to the judgment. In Genesis 3:17 God only said, "Cursed is the ground because of you." If so it would have become defiled during the flood with the multitudes of dead bodies caused by the drowning people. This would explain why Romans 8:22 says that the whole creation groans to be delivered from bondage and why John wrote about the sea giving up the dead that are in it in preparation for the Great White Throne judgment (Rev 20:13)

Lord bless,
Jack

www.gracethrufaith.com




Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sit, Walk and Stand – (Part 2)

Sit, Walk and Stand – (Part 2)

By Abraham Israel




2. Walk Effortlessly

As we have clearly seen in the first part of
this article it is the will of God for us to sit comfortably in the finished work of Christ before we can start to walk effortlessly. Every time we reverse this divine order the result is disaster. Because Jesus has done everything for us and as a result God has made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6), we only need to rest in this truth before we can see the grace of God act powerfully in us and carry us to walk effortlessly in His strength. Thus all our great spiritual experience begins from the rest based on the finished work of Jesus Christ. But it does not end there. Though we begin our Christian life with sitting, once we sit comfortably we do in fact begin to walk. After we get strengthened by the revelation of the power and authority of Christ in us and acting through us, we need to start walking by the consciousness of His power working through us.

Once God begins to unveil the eyes of your understanding by enlightening it, then you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward you who believe according to the working of His mighty power (Eph 1:18-19). In other words, after the illumination we receive of our power and authority in Christ Jesus, the greatness of the power of God will start to work through us. Sitting describes our position of rest that has come to us by revelation. Walking is the practical outworking of the exceeding greatness of His power working through us on earth. Unless the heavenly power and authority is worked out, practiced and exercised in the natural by walking effortlessly in our dwellings and offices, our shops and kitchens, it will be meaningless to say that we are seated comfortably in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.




Apostle Paul has admonished the saints to use this practical outworking of God’s power in their daily lives in at least six places in the book of Ephesians. As we are using the book of Ephesians as the foundation upon which we are building the whole theme, let us now look at these verses first,


Eph 2:10 - "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for GOOD WORKS, WHICH GOD PREPARED BEFOREHAND THAT WE SHOULD WALK IN THEM."

Eph 4:1, 2 - "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to WALK WORTHY OF THE CALLING with which you were called with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love"

Eph 4:17, 23 - "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should NO LONGER WALK AS THE REST OF THE GENTILES WALK, in the futility of their mind,[BUT]...BE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND"

Eph 5:2 - "And WALK IN LOVE, AS CHRIST ALSO HAS LOVED US and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma."

Eph 5:8 - "For you were once darkness, but NOW [YOU ARE] LIGHT IN THE LORD. WALK AS CHILDREN OF LIGHT"

Eph 5:15 (AMP) - "LOOK CAREFULLY then HOW YOU WALK! LIVE PURPOSEFULLY and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people)"


The word 'walk' occurs 7 times in 6 verses in the book of Ephesians. The Greek word used for the word 'walk' is 'peripateō' [pronounced pe-rē-pä-te'-ō] which means ' to walk, to make one's way, progress; to make due use of opportunities, Hebrew for - to live 1) to regulate one's life 2) to conduct one's self 3) to pass one's life'. From all these meaning we can say that ‘to walk’ is to keep ourselves moving towards a better life of victory over self, freedom from bondages and liberty in the Spirit. All these things are prepared for us by God beforehand to walk in them. In Christian life good works that we do are not decided by us, but it is decided by God and also directed by God as we seek Him day after day to fulfill His will for our lives and glorify Him. This is the reason Jesus taught the disciples to model their prayer to say to God the Father, “…Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). In other words Jesus was teaching the disciples to ask God to do His preplanned good works through their lives as He does in heaven. Not only God directs us with His counsel (Ps 16:7), but also He wants to be the source of our strength to fulfill the work preplanned by Him (Is 26:4; Ps 84:5; 1 Ch 29:12). This is the true godly walk which is worthy of God because He becomes the director and executor. He becomes the counselor and also source of the strength to fulfill His desired counsel.

To walk worthily is to attend the divine celebration of the wedding feast of God with His robe of righteousness and ring of authority which is based on His calling with which He has called us (Matt 22:11-12, 14; Luke 15:22). Jesus has called us as friends (John 15:13-15). God has predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ in to His family and has called us as the children of God (Eph 1:5; 1 John 3:1). To walk worthy of God’s calling to be His sons and daughters starts with a decision on our part to come out of our old pattern of sinful thinking and separate ourselves by believing the promises of God which will make us to hate touching what is unclean (2 Cor 6:17-18). We need to keep wearing the robe of righteousness by faith and walk by faith as we continue in this process of holiness (Is 61:10; 2 Cor 5:7). We also need to be filled with the knowledge of His will so that we may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him by our faith life which will make us to be fruitful in every good work (Col 1:9-10). The work we do by our godly walk must be done by being filled with the knowledge of His will. Only this can please the Lord. The unbelievers walk in the foolishness of the will of their soulish mind which is influenced by Satan’s thoughts and desires (2 Cor 4:4). The unbelievers because of lack of faith become blinded to the spiritual reality of God and His ways of purpose and purity. In their blindness they will keep fulfilling the works of their father the devil because devil would have made them to believe his lie as the genuine (John 8:43-45). We as the saints of the Most High God should put on the new man of the spirit and put off the old man of our soul by renewing the spirit of our mind. The ‘spirit of our mind’ is the quickened soul that thinks in a particular mode of thinking and judging by our thoughts, feelings, purposes and desires. As we renew our thoughts by identifying ourselves with the finished work of Christ, godly feelings, purposes and desires will follow to dominate our whole body system. This is the true godly person’s walk of holiness.

The next important part of walking the God-life on earth is to walk in love. The word of God says “God is love” (1 John 4:8). In other words, the very essence of God is to love unconditionally forever. We love God because He first loved us unconditionally (1 John 4:19). We cannot produce love apart from God who is the true source of it. To live and grow in love is a process. The only royal command that Jesus has commanded us to fulfill in the New Testament is to love one another (John 15:12, 17). Once we obey this commandment, it is equal to fulfilling all the commandments of the Old Testament perfectly (Rom 13:8-10). This is the reason Apostle John confidently assures us by saying, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7). In other words, a person cannot really love people unconditionally like God unless He is born of God and knows God by experience. The Bible says that “…the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom 5:5). The Holy Spirit is the executive agent of God who acts as a conduit to bring the love of God from heaven to the heart of every one of us in order to make us walk in God effortlessly. We need to ask God hoping to get filled with the love of God in order to forgive others and love them in spite of their weaknesses or evil mindedness. This is the process which has been described in the previous verses in Rom 5:3-4, “we ... glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts”. The end product of all the trials that we go through in life is the love of God. The more we walk through the trials and tribulations that God allows us to go through, the more we will be able to walk effortlessly in the love of God. As we grow and mature as sons, God will grant to us all the riches of His glory, which will strengthen us with might through His Spirit in the inner man so “that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith; that we, being rooted and grounded in love, ....may be able to comprehend [by experience and] know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:15-19). Once we move above the line of love that passes knowledge, we end up with God sitting in His fullness inside us. This is when we will begin to experience and feel that “…in Him we live and move and have our being… [because] we are also His offspring.” (Acts 17:28). Praise the Lord!

In the Bible light is always referred to the revelation of truth, and darkness to the veil of satanic deception to hinder people from seeing the truth of God (Luke 1:79; Acts 26:18). Also good deeds were compared to be man’s outworking of the source of God’s light and evil deeds were compared to be man’s outworking of the source of Satan’s darkness inside them. In other words, a man’s love for God’s light will make him to allow good deeds of God to be done through his body, at the same time a man’s love for darkness will make him to allow the wicked evil deeds of Satan to be done through his body (John 3:19). So only Apostle Paul in Rom 6:16, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” When we are activated by our soulish mind, it will lead to sin which will prevent us from doing good deeds of God. When we obey God as His slave we will increase tremendously to do God’s work unhindered by any satanic interruption. According to the truth of God’s word nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, this truth is a reality from the spiritual view point of God from heaven (Rom 8:35, 37-39), however when we commit sin it gives legal space in our soul for Satan and his evil minions to speak condemnation in to our mind continuously (1 Peter 2:11). As the Bible says in Isaiah 30:18, “…For the LORD [is] a God of justice”. In the natural God is still a God of justice who hates sin as He hated it two thousand years ago. So by His justice He allows Satan to influence a believer’s life according to each believer’s actions (1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 12:7; 1 Tim 1:20; 5:15). Satan can also take advantage over a believer to influence him wrongfully as long as that believer is ignorant of Satan’s devices of deception (2 Cor 2:11). In other words, if a believer does not effortlessly walk in the ways of God because of ignorance, Satan will take advantage over the believer to steal, kill and destroy him by all means. Satan will make the believer to strive for the victory that is already his in Christ Jesus. The believer does not walk to achieve victory, but a believer walks effortlessly in the victory of Jesus Christ that he has achieved for each one personally on the Cross. The Good thing is, God is also the God of mercy as He was two thousand years ago (Ps 59:10, 17). When a believer approaches God anytime to appropriate His mercies and receive His grace in time of his need, that is when God’s mercy will triumph over His judgment (James 2:13). God will always show His mercies to the believer as long as His throne is approached because He has already judged Jesus for all our sin on the Cross (Col 1:19; 2:13-16). Thank God that the believer can again return back to God anytime by renewing his mind with the message of forgiveness through the blood of the Cross.

Do not allow anyone to judge you based on your behavior on the outside because we are the embodiment of the revelation of God’s truth who is called as light in the world of darkness (Eph 5:8; 1 Cor 2:15; 4:3). Because you are having the light of the life of God within you, choose to effortlessly express the character of God through your daily life in the world. So only Jesus told, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." (John 9:5) and then He pointed to the believer’s and said, “14 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matt 5:14-16). Here Jesus is saying in the above verse that the revelation of God’s character working effortlessly through you cannot be hidden because God has adopted you as His children just to reveal His heavenly character through your life. Jesus is also then encouraging us the believers to freely and effortlessly express the good works of our Heavenly Father who is in heaven which will bring glory to Him through us. This exhortation of Jesus is no way pointing us to strive for a spirituality that we do not have but yet to attain. This is the reason Jesus said to the believers, “… I am the Light of the world. He who follows Me will not be walking in the dark, but will have the Light which is Life.” (John 8:12, AMP). In other words Jesus Himself is guaranteeing His followers who believe in Him will become the light that Jesus is, which is the life of God present within them. This light of the life of God will be so powerfully illuminating in and through the believers that they will no way be able to continue walking in darkness willingly. Praise the Lord!

The only thing that the believer need to look in his own life is to check whether he is renewing his mind constantly and get transformed in his effortless walk in Christ (Rom 12:2). When we renew our mind constantly we will be automatically living our life purposefully, worthily and accurately. So only if the basics are done right, the rest is assured because the word of God says, “So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” (2 Cor 3:18, NLT). When we willingly give ourselves to God and freely express the life of God within us, very soon we will become God’s mature sons and daughters because God will prune us in order to make us to be more fruitful which is a very painful process but only for a certain period of time (John 15:2; James 5:11 ). After a little time of suffering, God will surely establish us to walk effortlessly through His mighty power (2 Thess 2:16-17; 3:3; 1 Peter 5:10). After God establishes us whatever we desire it will be done for us by God (John 15:7). As we show much of the character of our Heavenly Father as His mature sons and daughters on earth, we will truly be seen as the disciples of Jesus and our Heavenly Father will truly be glorified through our lifestyle (John 15:7-8). Praise the Lord!


The Law and Sin

Many still do not understand the purpose for which the law and the prophets [i.e. Old Testament rules] were given. God first promised Abraham that he will bless him and through his seed He will bless the whole world (Gen 12:1-3). Abraham first obeyed the divine call over his life and he believed the promise of God which is nothing but the gospel preached to him before nearly four thousand years ago itself (Gal 3:8). This is the reason Jesus Himself told that Abraham with expectation for nearly two thousand years waited till the day in which Jesus would arrive on earth to redeem him. When Jesus got incarnated as a human baby and then grew up to be the Messiah, Abraham was so glad to see it fulfilled (John 8:56). The word gospelin Greek is euaggelion [pronounced ‘yü-än-ge'-lē-on’]which simply means ‘good tidings or good news, the glad tidings of salvation through Christ, the proclamation of the grace of God manifest and pledged in Christ, the narrative of the sayings, deeds, and death of Jesus Christ came to be called the gospel or glad tidings’. Here the context in which the word gospel is used in Galatians 3:8 means ‘to announce or promise glad tidings beforehand’. When Abraham believed the gospel of grace beforehand, God began to release the New Testament blessings in his life even before the Old Testament ever came in to existence. From this we can clearly understand that the New Testament way of faith is the way through which God planned to have relationship with every human being. So only Apostle Paul wrote, “…those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” (Gal 3:9). In other words Paul was saying if we believe God like Abraham believed in the promises of God, we will surely be blessed spiritually, mentally, physically, financially and socially with Him. Note Paul was not saying that we will be blessed like Abraham, but with Abraham. If Paul had said ‘blessed like him’, we need to achieve in our walk in the same way Abraham walked in His life. But because He said that we are ‘blessed with him’, we are privileged as Abraham’s spiritual sons to use the same channel of faith that he used and as a result become the inheritor of his blessing that was promised to him. This is the reason Apostle Paul clearly said, “Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.” (Gal 3:7).

If reaching out to God by faith was God’s original intention for the whole human kind, then “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed [i.e. Jesus Christ] should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.” (Gal 3:19). The laws were supplied to Moses from God through the angels. Moses acted as a mediator for the law of God to be established before God on behalf of the people of Israel when he sprinkled the blood and made the Old Covenant active by purification (John 1:17; Heb 9:16-22). Moses sprinkled the blood of sacrifice initially over the book of the law to symbolically indicate that those people who keep the law sincerely with all their heart without even breaking one commandment all through their life will be purified by the law covenant of God (Rom 2:12-13; 3:19). The law works wrath upon the one who keep it because no one can keep the law without breaking the law even once (Rom 4:15). So only Jesus said to the people who trusted in the Law of Moses to declare them as righteous because of keeping it self-righteously, “Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust.” In other words Jesus was telling to these self-righteous people that Moses the mediator of the Old Testament will accuse them of breaking the law which he constituted by sprinkling the blood, because the law was given to make people realize that they are sinners who cannot keep the law perfectly before God (Rom 3:20). Next reason the law was given to Israelites was to keep them from breaking the commandments of God freely because of lack of knowledge of God’s holiness after they came out of Egypt (Rom 7:7). In the days of Noah this is what happened when men hardened their heart to do whatever they wanted freely without remorse and it grieved the heart of God. Such lawlessness of man, made God to judge the whole earth (Gen 6:5-7). In the pre-flood era there was no law of God given to man. Because God had already ordained before the foundation of the world for Jesus Christ to come and live on this earth for cleansing our sins and return back to heaven (1 Peter 1:20; Heb 4:3), the law came as a makeshift promise of God to the Israelites more than 400 years after God’s promise to Abraham, till Jesus would come at the right moment of the year of our Lord which is 01 Anno Domini and fulfill all the law by Himself. So only when Jesus started to preach about the kingdom of God already coming to the earth he said, “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.” (Luke 16:16). In other words Jesus was saying that the law and the prophets era was over and gone with John the Baptist itself, now a new kingdom era with Jesus as its king is established, the people are running in to it to receive its citizenship in order to receive its benefits which was the same benefit given to Abraham in the Old Testament.

The next reason God gave the law to the Israelites was to make them understand that the law cannot be kept by them perfectly because of indwelling sin nature (Rom 7:16-23; Ps 51:5), but only the Messiah as the sinless lamb of God would be able to keep it perfectly (John 1:29, 36; 8:46). Jesus Himself confirmed this fact when He said, “17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” (Matt 5:17-18). During the time of His ministry in Israel Jesus tried His best to make the Jews understand this fact. But because of self-righteousness they rejected the true righteousness of God which God offered through the sacrifice of Jesus as the lamb of God (Matt 5:20). The scribes and Pharisees trusted in their own false self-righteousness which comes through keeping the law of God, they did not admit humbly to God that they were sinners (Luke 18:9-14). Because their sense of rightness with God came based on their belief that they were keeping the law of God without fail, they were not able to realize their need for the Savior Jesus Christ. To them Christ has died in vain because they did not see the need for a savior (Gal 2:21). The Pharisees were wrongfully thinking that by poring over the scriptures, understanding it more accurately and keeping it perfectly will save them from the wrath of God and keep them blessed by God; it is a religious spirit that has deceived them to think this way. The religious spirits has blinded these scribes and Pharisees from seeing the truth that “…by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight” (Rom 3:20). This is the reason Jesus told the Jewish religious people, “39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. 40 But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40).

Apostle Paul agreed with this truth and confirmed five truths basic to our spiritual growth,

(1) The scripture has declared and confined all humans as sinners before God whether they keep the law or not (Gal 3:22),

(2) The promise of eternal life of God and its resultant blessing will be given only to those who will believe God’s promises by their faith in Jesus Christ (v22),

(3) The purpose of the law was to keep us under guard by making us realize our intense sinfulness and thus by magnifying it more intensely it directs us to believe in Jesus Christ as our personnel Savior who has forgiven all our past, present and future sins through faith in Him as a sacrificial substitute on our behalf (Gal 3:23; Rom 7:13),

(4) Before faith came the law acted as a tutor by making us to realize that we are sinners in need of a Savior and thus ultimately bringing us to Christ who makes us ‘Just as if we have never sinned’ which is justification (Gal 3:24),

(5) After we have come to Christ we no longer need the law which only makes us realize that we are desperate sinners (Gal 3:25). Because the first promise of God to the Israelites thr
ough Moses was with fault, God established the second promise through Jesus Christ which is faultless and better than the Old Testament promise (Heb 8:7, 6).

The law was faulty because it only made people realize that they had sinful nature inside them which prevents them from keeping the law perfectly, but the law did not give power to overcome sin and save them from it (Rom 8:3-4). By coming up with a new plan of new covenant between God and his people, God put the old plan on the shelf. And there it stays, gathering dust (Heb 8:13). The Old Testament is not in use any more, having been replaced by the New Testament which promises something newer, better and more effective way of reaching God. The Old Testament is now used only as an examples and instructions for us to derive principles to live better through its promises which are all to us ‘amen in Christ Jesus’ (1 Cor 10:6, 11; Rom 15:4; 2 Cor 1:20). In other words,
by taking all the Old Testament curses upon himself which comes upon those who do not keep the law perfectly, Jesus Christ has qualified us to receive only the blessing promises of the Old Testament (Gal 3:13-14). We claim by faith in order to receive its blessing because it really got fulfilled in Christ on our behalf (1 Cor 10:6, 11). As the Old Testament Scriptures are also God-breathed, it still has the power to impart patience and comfort of God in to us, so that we may increase in our hope (Rom 15:4; 2 Tim 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21). Hope brings the presence of God in to our lives (Heb 6:19).

After our faith in Christ Jesus we are not under law but under Christ who loves us in spite of our sinfulness and saves us ultimately and eternally. While we were ungodly without faith in Jesus Christ, Christ died for us and has forgiven all our past, present and future sins and have made us godly and the righteousness of God forever (Rom 5:6-8; 2 Cor 5:21). We have been declared forgiven, cleansed and perfected forever by God through the blood of Jesus and will be saved from all the judgmental wrath of God through the life of Jesus in the present and future time of our life on earth and in heaven (Rom 5:9-10; Heb 1:3; 10:17, 14). The more we grow in our faith in the fulfilled work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, the more the righteousness of God will be revealed to us and through us to others (Rom 1:17). Revelation of God’s righteousness will increase in us by our life of faith lived out on earth. Faith life is the only thing that we can do to please God (Heb 11:6). Because of our faith in Christ Jesus all of us have become the sons of God (Gal 3:26). No son is ever born in a family because of his own striving or the work he does for the family, it not the son who decides to be born in a family instead it is the fathers decision. The same holds true in our spiritual life too, it is our Heavenly Father who has preplanned us to be born in his heavenly family through Jesus Christ (John 1:12-13). It is a privilege to be part of God’s family eternally; we do not have to do anything to continue and be a part of it.

The reason God gave the law was to make us understand that we are sinful enough to need a liberator to liberate us from our sinfulness. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. Sinning is as natural as breathing to us. Even though we abstain to sin outwardly by striving with our own strength for a certain period of time, eventually we end up sinning more and more to gratify ourselves. Even when we abstain from the fulfillment of sinful actions, we end up thinking and dwelling on it. To God even dwelling on a sinful thought for a moment of time is equal to fulfilling it in the natural (Matt 5:28), because most evil that have occurred in the world have all started with a single sinful thought. The law was not given for us to strive and conform to each word written in it. But as seen in details above, the law was given to make us realize our need for our savior Jesus Christ in our daily life in order to obtain mercy and find grace in time of our need (Heb 4:16).

As the Bible says, “The law came to make sin worse [when we sin]. But when sin grew worse [after we have sinned], God's grace increased [to give us comfort by reminding us that all our past, present and future sins were forgiven in Christ Jesus forever].” (Rom 5:20, NCV). Our time of need is when we sin and as a result of it get accused and condemned by Satan in our soul, this is when sin grows worse and God’s grace super abounds (Rev 12:10; 1 John 3:20; Rom 8:1, 34). When we are tempted and fall in to sin, renewing our mind with the finished work of Jesus Christ and confessing our faith in His blood through our confessional faith-command is the way of escape that justifies us from the accusation of Satan and his demons in our soul (1 Cor 10:13; Rev 12:11). The blood of Jesus will cleanse our conscience from all guilt and keep it pure (Heb 9:14; 1 Tim 3:9). In other words, our soulish mind needs to be renewed so that our spirit mind which is usually called as our conscience can be cleansed when we sin. Once when we come to Christ the law becomes useless and outdated because we start to live in the higher standard of the law of Christ through His Spirit (Gal 6:2; Rom 8:2). The bottom line is, “4 For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him … [have been] made right with God [already].” (Rom 10:4, NLT). Thus having understood the various reasons for which God gave the law and its relationship to sin, will empower us to walk effortlessly in our spiritual walk. Praise the Lord!


Our Robe of Righteousness and the Cleansing Blood

When we are born again in to the kingdom of God, we are clothed with garments of salvation and are covered by a new robe of righteousness and a ring of authority is given to us as God’s sons over all realms (Isaiah 61:10; John 3:3, 5; Luke 15:22). Our spirit which was dead and separated before we were born spiritually will get born in God as His sons once we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior (John 3:6; 1:12; Gal 3:26). When we are born again, the wind of the Holy Spirit will blow over us and we will start to hear the voice of God just like Adam initially heard God before the fall of humankind (John 3:8; Gen 2:15-16; 3:8). The mind which is in our spirit-man within us is called as 'conscience' in the Scripture (Rom 9:1). This mind of our spirit man will be clothed with salvation which is deliverance from self-accusation and covered with robe of righteousness which is the blood of Jesus cleansing our conscience each time we sin after we are born again (Rom 2:15; Heb 9:14). Salvation gives us confidence in the ability of God while righteousness gives us boldness, peace and assurance against overcoming the destructive elements of devil and his minions (1 Cor 12:3; Isaiah 32:17).

By one sacrifice of Jesus, we were forever changed from being sin-conscious to righteousness conscious people. In the New Testament the worshippers of Christ who have received Christ-consciousness when they were born again, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins (Heb 10:2). This is the way God sees us once we receive Christ. But in the natural why a born-again believer even after inviting Christ-consciousness in to His life is sin-conscious many times? The simple answer is Satan and his demonic cohorts are infusing thoughts of self-accusation in to the soulish heart of the believers constantly which starts to affect the flow of God’s voice in to the soul of man (1 John 3:20, 21). So only each time we use the blood of Jesus by our faith, the robe of righteousness is washed clean and the authority of boldness, peace and assurance gets returned. This is a process which we should continue to make sure that our spirit man’s mind which is the conscience to be kept right, good and pure toward God all the time by the blood of Jesus (2 Cor 1:12; 1 Tim 1:19). Once we invoke the Blood of Christ over us, the Holy Spirit will always speak in to our conscience by witnessing about our righteousness of God which has been fulfilled in Christ Jesus (Matt 3:15; 1 Cor 5:21; Rom 9:1; John 16:8, 10). The truth of righteousness that has been imputed in to our account when we were born again and the judgment of God that happened on the Cross which declares that Satan and his demons were eternally defeated and has no authority at all to control or influence us through sin-consciousness will be revealed more and more and we will be guided in to the experiential truth of knowing Jesus as a person by the Holy Spirit who is dwelling inside our spirit man inside us (Rom 4:5-6; Col 2:14-16; John 16:13-14).

When our robe gets spotted because of the impurities that we have allowed in our life, we need to use the launderers’ soap of the work of Christ’s baptism which fulfilled all our righteousness and the blood of His Cross which paid all of God’s righteous requirements of God on behalf of us to be renewed in our mind to transform us (Malachi 3:2; Col 1:20-22; Rom 12:2). Baptism of Jesus is a form of doctrine that must be believed in order to see victory over our fleshly nature which always desires to sin (Heb 6:2; Rom 6:2-3). Through the doctrine of baptism we see ourselves in the present time as “though we were slaves of sin” (Rom 6:17). Apostle Paul commended the Roman believers who were believing and obeying from their heart the form of doctrine in Christ’s baptism which says that we have been set free forever from sin and have become slaves of righteousness because Christ fully took our sins at His baptism and paid the price of God’s requirement to redeem us on the Cross (Rom 6:17-19). In identifying with Christ in His baptism we see ourselves as righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 5:21). The physical baptism that we take is our public confession of our identification with Jesus in His baptism which washed all our sins and exchanged His perfect righteousness to our account (Matt 28:19; Acts 2:38; 10:47-48; 19:5-6; Gal 3:27). This is the reason the writer of the book of Hebrews said in Heb 10:22, “19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus [which was God’s righteous requirement for our freedom from sin and friendship with God], 20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and having a High Priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience [by the blood of Jesus] and our bodies washed with pure water [by believing the water of the word which started in John’s baptism of Jesus (Eph 5:26; Acts 10:37; Matt 3:15)]. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” Our physical body and soul will experience the righteousness of God only when we are washed with the water of the word by our identification of our self with Jesus in His baptism in which all our sins were washed away. In other words, this verse says that if we can confess the same thing over us that God has declared over Jesus when He was baptized without wavering by the unbelief of the Satan, we will become bold in God through a new and living way of the ministry of Jesus Christ who is our High Priest. Never forget we are accepted in the beloved (Eph 1:6). In other words you are the beloved of God in whom God the Father is very pleased because of what Jesus has done for you. The bottom-line is we need to renew our mind with the baptism of Jesus and the blood of His Cross to walk effortlessly and use His robe of righteousness to keep ourselves spotlessly with His full authority which is our birthright that has already been supplied to us. The sins that cause friction in our effortless spiritual walk need to be lubricated constantly by renewing our mind with the message of Jesus baptism and the work of the Cross. Amen! Praise the Lord!


Man’s work after creation and redemption

Man had no work to do in creation because on the sixth day he was created which was the last day of God’s creation. On the seventh day God rested from all His work which means He enjoyed having fellowship with His creation (Gen 1:31-2:1-3). The first day of Adam started with Sabbath rest. In our Christian life too we start it by resting and believing in the finished work of the Jesus Christ (Heb 4:2-3). Like a baby after it learns to sit will next naturally try to walk, we too in our spiritual life after we learn to SIT in our Christian life we naturally begin to walk. The mother and father of a child will always watch and help their little toddler to slowly walk. It may fall a number of times but the parents will take responsibility to make the child walk. A father and mother in the natural may stand a little distance away and may extend their arms toward their child in order to encourage the child to walk. In the same way after we are saved by believing in the finished work of Christ, the Lord will first make us strengthened enough to sit comfortably first. Once we sit comfortably in the belief that we are saved not by our behavior but by our belief in the finished work of Christ Jesus, from that time onwards our Father God will extend His long arms and will start to encourage us to walk (Deut 1:31). Though we may fall down completely by our sins, yet the Lord will constantly watch over us and will endlessly encourage us to walk. Whenever we fall no matter how many times, He is faithful enough to lift us again and make us walk again (Prov 24:16; Ps 37:23-24; 40:1-2). Like a father in the natural delights when a child starts to walk, so the Lord delights to see His children walk in His way. Learning to walk takes time in our Christian life because it is not an event to achieve but a process to learn. The more a baby walks, the more the soft baby muscles will get strengthened. So also in the spiritual walk the more we learn to walk, the more our spiritual muscles will get strengthened and we will begin to walk effortlessly. God’s original purpose for man was not to roam in the Garden of Eden and waste his time idly. The very reason God put Adam in the garden was to “tend [i.e. cultivate] and keep it” (Gen 2:15). In other words, Adam was designed to work effortlessly by having fellowship constantly with the Lord (Gen 3:8). This activity and work which Adam was purposed to do in the Garden of Eden is what we call in our spiritual realm as ‘WALK’. When we have fellowship closely with the Lord everyday and then depend on Him to strengthen us in our work, naturally we will glorify Him with the result that comes out of such work. The Lord will be only pleased with such work of faith (James 2:20-22, 14). So only it is not what we do that pleases God, rather it is how we do [i.e. with or without faith (Heb 11:4)] and through whom we do [i.e. with whose strength we do (Phil 4:13)]. The divine order for a Christian to live is to first sit and believe in God’s promises, and then work as a sign of expressing his gratitude for what the Lord has done for Him in strengthening Him to walk effortlessly. In this aspect faith and work is intertwined to work together. Without the one the other cannot work. A dead man cannot walk, so is a man without faith in the spiritual realm (James 2:26). A true Christian walk is the outworking of faith that is already in the heart.

We can only give to others what we have. So also in our spiritual life, all the God-things that we receive by faith are the only things that we will be able to give out to others. For example Jesus has clearly commanded in His word to love another (John 13:34; 15:12). But He does not stop at this place and leave us to strive in order to keep the commandment by our own strength. Jesus said, “… love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34). In other words Jesus is telling us, if you have truly experienced My love in your life, then give it out the way you have experienced it. This is the true Christian walk of faith. Thus we can give out God’s unconditional true love, only if we have personally experienced it first hand in our lives. This is the same in the area of forgiveness too. We are exhorted by Apostle Paul to "...be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you."(Eph 4:32). In other words Paul is saying, ‘Because God has forgiven all your past, present and future sins when you received Christ as your Lord and Savior, in the same way you also shows to others the same character of God that has been revealed to you and that which is in you.’ (John 17:23-24, 26; 14:23; 1 John 4:4). Jesus expressed God’s strong attitude of chastisement toward His unforgiving children and servants. The outcome of the ‘Parable of the unforgiving servant’ is, God will allow torturing demons to afflict all His unforgiving servants and children until they change their wrong attitude towards others by forgiving their mistakes no matter how many times the same mistakes were made in the past or will be made in the future (Matt 18:32-35, Eph 4:26-27; 2 Cor 2:10-11; John 20:17). Because God has freely given us as much as we need, He also expects us to give out to others freely what we have received so that His resources can be utilized for His glory through us His children on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 10:8; 6:10).

Only as we give out the good things of God which is inside us, we will have more space to receive from God the Father who is the source of all good things (Matt 6:14-15; James 1:17). If we do not give out that which we have already received, God will also not give us anything further. The greatest giver in the entire universe is God who gives without measure only to those who are givers (Luke 12:16-21; 6:37-38). To that level we give out, not only we will receive from God the same level of pressed down and shaken together blessings but also overflowing measure in return. Say for example a small tumbler size of God’s blessings we give out to others, we will receive an overflowing small tumbler size in return from God. If we give to others a big cup size, we will receive the same cup size blessing in return but in running over measure. God’s blessing is like rain- water vapor cycle which keeps on changing places and hands. Those who try to hold it will in the end lose what they have selfishly with them. Those who give out freely will never lack anything good because God is the greatest giver of all (Prov 13:7; 28:27; Ps 84:11). His resources never dry up no matter what. There is always a right measure to which a man can withhold according to God’s justice, anything withheld more than that is considered covetous (Prov 11:24; Luke 12:16-21). The Lord never expects us to give out what we do not have. It is our attitude towards others and the things that we possess that either makes God to freely give to us if it is a givers attitude or withhold from us if it is a covetous attitude. If God’s resources are used according to His direction under Him, the resources of earth will be more than enough for us who are its inhabitants forever and ever.

Adam started to work with his own strength because he was no more able to connect to God’s strength through communion in his inner man because of the curse that came upon him because of his disobedience to God’s word (Gen 3:17-19; Eph 3:15-16). God told Adam “"...the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:17). There are three different possibilities of death that can be applicable in this verse, (1) Spiritual death, (2) Physical death and (3) Eternal death. Physical death is a curse that has come upon mankind because of the spirtual death that has happened at the fall of mankind in to sin, which may lead to eternal death if not taken seriously to seek God for remedy while alive (Rom 5:12; Is 55:6). Here the phrase "...you shall surely die" or 'death' means separation from God spiritually. We know that Adam did not die physically the moment he disobeyed the commandant of God. But immediately after the fall the soul of Adam was filled with ‘fear, self-rejection and isolation’ which was the spiritual death that God warned will happen on the day he eats the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:6-10; 2:17). From this we understand that God spoke about the spiritual part of Adam [i.e. spirit man] which will get separated from God the moment Adam will choose to disobey God. Here in this previous verse the word ‘die’ in Hebrew is [‘muwth’ pronounced 'müth' which means 'put to death as a penalty for neglecting wise moral conduct’] a verb which conveys that the immediate action of death will take place as an aftereffect of breaking the commandment of the higher one (Gen 2:16-17). From this time onwards with God’s spiritual connection being cut man began to toil for physical and spiritual survival because of the curse (Gen 3:17-19). But because Jesus has taken all these curse upon Himself on the Cross and died for us by paying the price that God required for the friendship with man to be restored again, now we have a free access to God apart from the curse that made people to toil to survive on earth physically and also to please God spiritually (Gal 3:13-14; Rom 4:24 - 5:2). Abraham was blessed to have free access to God on earth as God’s very own friend, which God Himself confirmed (Gal 3:14; James 2:23; Is 41:8). In extending His arms to Abraham as a friend, God has conveyed that it is His desire to have friendship with every human based on their faith toward Him. The same way Abraham was blessed with all the blessings of God [i.e. spiritually, soulishly, physically, financially and socially], we too along with him will be blessed as we journey day after day with God in our lives.

Since the day Adam took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, humanity has been engaged in deciding what is good and what is evil. The natural man without God has independently worked out his own standards of what is right and wrong, justice and injustice, has striven to live by them. Of course as Christians we do not have to live like the world as we have seen earlier because we are different by nature. Christ is for us the Tree of Life. We do not live by deciding what is wrong and what is right. Instead we start from the tree of life. Nothing has done greater damage to the Christian testimony than those who try to claim what is right or wrong based on their own ideas and philosophies. These are the people who get easily offended if someone treats them badly and they always try to justify their actions based on their own standard. But that is not our standard.

Jesus taught us, “38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. 41 And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. 42 Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt 5:38-48). If you ask me, ‘Is it right for someone to strike my cheek?’ To that I say ‘Of course not!’ But the real question is, ‘Do you only want to be right or live in the higher heavenly realm of our Father in heaven?’ Do you want to just show your selfish right to defend or God’s selfless love to transform others? Do you just want to be a natural man or a supernatural obedient child of God (James 1:23)? With God it is a question of His grace shone forth, not a question of right or wrong. Praise God! God makes His sun shine on the evil and the good, and also showers His rain abundantly on the evil and the good. Our lives as a Christian should be governed by the principle of the Cross and of the perfection of the Father as Jesus said, “…be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” ‘Right or wrong’ is the principle of the worldly people. This pattern of thinking is not under the jurisdiction of the kingdom of God but rather under the influence of this world system of governance which is under the sway of Satan and his demonic minions (2 Cor 4:4). If we do not allow God to work through us and resist our selfish agendas, we are just wasting our God given one life on earth which is the stadia of opportunity to either position ourselves with a great reward in heaven or lose everything and regret later. If we choose to show God’s ability and His supernatural character through us, God will be pleased with our faith and it will truly glorify God who has freely loved us (1 Cor 6:20).

As a Christian our standard of living life is not based on what is right or wrong but rather it is the Cross. The Cross is a symbol of suffering that was literally used to crucify and thus punish an offender of the law during the time when the Romans ruled the whole world. Jesus said, ""If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." (Matt 16:24). In this context it means that we give up our self right of defending for ourselves based on whether something is right or wrong and then unconditionally give ourselves in to the hands of God to do His will for our lives. In our times taking up our cross conveys the idea of accepting an unpleasant or painful situation or the doings of an evil person that is done against us and then deal them with the unconditional love of God. Although we find it absolutely impossible to deal with our own limited strength of character or goodness in our soul, God's strength of His character in us will come out of our spirit because the spirit-man is born again with the life of God inside us (Eph 3:15-16). Our spirit-man is the place where the tree of life which is Christ's life in us dwells (Eph 3:17).

As we depend on God by faith to help us not to be reactive by our own limited strength, but rather strongly desire to see the character of our heavenly Father to come out of us as His child, suddenly from our spirit the character of Christ will surge through in to our soul strongly and thus will transform the situation that we deal in the physical realm with the heavenly result. So my fellow brethren do not stand on your right, but allow the Lord to defend you through His love surging through you. If you will ever try to defend your right ways before others, you will be overcome by evil subtly. So as Apostle Paul said, "...overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:21). This makes us ask the question, do we have anything good inside us? The Bible also says, "...No one is good but One, that is, God." (Mark 10:18). What does it mean? It means you can only overcome evil with God who is the only good inside you. In other words, you can choose to experience victory over evil by the power of the victor who resides within you. Thus you are exhorted by Apostle Paul personally to, "1-2Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that." (Eph 5:1-2, The Message). Praise the Lord!


The Fine Line between Grace and Works

Believing the voice of the Lord spoken to us personally through His word is faith (Rom 10:17). Allowing the promises of God to take root in us by patience will cause us to receive and experience the goodness of God’s grace (Heb 4:3; 6:12), after which we become the dispenser of God’s goodness by acting as a channel of blessing to others (2 Cor 1:3, 4). A person who says I have done great things for God and have sacrificed much for him, has not really done all his work completely through God’s grace ( 1 Cor 13:3). Since people who make such confession of doing much for God have done it in their own strength, it will not profit them personally, eternally and also presently to receive God’s physical blessing. They will not have any satisfaction in their personal lives for the work they have done because it is done without God who is love. God sees every man’s motivation in doing His work. If the motivation for doing any work for God is not based on unconditional love of God and love for God, then according to God it is “dead works” (Heb 6:1). The dead works can be any spiritual activity that we do such as prayer, Bible reading, helping the poor, living holy lives, sharing the gospel, etc… without the love of God as its motivation. We should do all these spiritual activities as gratitude towards God for all the things that He has done for us in Christ Jesus already.

All such dead works that we have discussed previously are compared by Apostle Paul to cheap easily burnable material like “…wood, hay and straw”. The things that will be done by God’s unconditional love as its motivation is compared to hardened costly unburnable material such as “…gold, silver and precious stones” and will all be tested by God’s perfect judgmental fire in the future 'Judgment of believer's for receiving reward' in which God will reveal the true motives of each believer’s work done for God on earth (1 Cor 3:11-15). Works done in expression of God’s unconditional love will receive reward. Works done by the believer’s own enthusiasm and their own strength will completely be trashed out without any reward. But because all the believers are placed over the unfailing foundation of Christ’s faithful love and His promises, they personally will be saved from eternal separation from God which is hell fire.


Repentance and Confession

The Hebrew word in the Old Testament used for the English word 'repent' is 'Nacham and Shuwb'. According to Strong’s Concordance, the English word repent appears 21 times in the Old Testament. These come from two different Hebrew words. The one used most often is 'Nacham', which means 'to regret'. The other is 'Shuwb' which means 'to turn or return'. The word in the New Testament usually translated “repent” is the Greek word “metanoeo,” and the word translated “repentance” is “metanoia.” Both of these Greek words have the same basic meaning: “to change your mind; reconsider; or, to think differently.” The word ‘confess’ in the New Testament comes from the Greek word 'homologeō' [pronounced as 'ho-mo-lo-ge'-ō'] means to 'say the same thing as another, not deny something that has been done, declare, admit or declare one's self guilty of what one is accused of, profess, declare openly, speak out freely, profess one's self the worshipper of one, praise, celebrate'. Confession is only for a believer who trusts that God has already forgiven all his past, present and future sins through the one prefect sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Heb 10:14, 12 ). Confession is agreeing with God that we have sinned when we do sin and then celebrate and praise God for His forgiveness through Jesus Christ that has already been declared once for all (Heb 10:12; 1 John 2:1-2). Jesus introduced to us the Holy Spirit who is the "counselor". A counselor is someone who sees and listens to a person's problem and gives advice and strength to overcome it. Every time you sin you’re over riding the Holy Spirit’s counsel. And when you feel guilty afterward you’re experiencing His conviction for having done so. Confession is the antidote He gave us for that guilt. Once we agree with God that we have sinned, the blood of Jesus will automatically cleanse us from our guilt that comes as a result of our sin. Because God is faithful and just to forgive us according to His promised Covenant that He has made with Jesus, we will feel no more guilty.

The Holy Spirit is the one who applies the blood of Jesus as a personal spiritual helper from God. We can’t confess our sins to get saved. We need to repent to get saved. Repentance is changing our mind by unseating our self from the throne of our mind and seating Christ as our Lord and Savior by confessing Him through our mouth, then believe in our heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead supernaturally so that we too are raised along with Him to access God’s power freely by grace through faith (Rom 10:9; 5:2). We can only confess to get cleansed from our sins if we are already saved.

Repenting does not mean to stop doing something. If we need to stop sinning before we need to ask Jesus to come in to our heart, then nobody of us will ever qualify to get saved through repentance. In the context of salvation it means to change our mind about the need for a Savior and realize that without Jesus we’re hopelessly lost (John 3:36; 1 John 2:2). When John the Baptist told people to repent and be saved, he wasn’t telling them to stop sinning so they could merit salvation. He was telling them to change their minds about the need for a Savior (Matt 3:6-12). We receive salvation when we first accept ourselves as sinner who needs Jesus as a savior to save us from all our sins and then a change in behavior is wrought by the Holy Spirit who is the real transforming agent of Jesus. This is the reason Apostle Paul said in the Book of Romans 2:4, “…the goodness of God leads you to repentance.” In other words Paul is saying, knowing the unconditional forgiveness of our past, present and future sins by God through Jesus Christ and His unconditional love toward us in spite of our indwelling sin nature that always sins will only lead us to change our mind toward our bad behavior and renounce it bit by bit through God’s grace. Since our salvation is based solely on our belief that Jesus died for our sins, it is the only repentance that’s required for salvation. As soon as we ask Him, He agrees to save us and to keep us saved forever. From the moment Jesus becomes our savior He becomes our Lord too (1 Cor 12:3). After we’re saved, the Holy Spirit prompts us to change our mind about our behavior.


If we already know that we are a sinner in need of a savior, we don’t need to repent to be saved. We just need to ask Jesus to save us. If we already know our behavior is a sin, we don’t have to repent, we just need to confess our sins to God and He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). If we keep asking God to forgive us by repenting each time we sin, we should understand that we have not even learnt the elementary principles of Christ which is “repentance from dead works” by “our faith towards God” through believing what He has already done for us by forgiving all our past, present and future sins in Christ Jesus (Heb 6:1). Dead works are nothing but our strivings to please God and trying to keep ourselves saved by our own strength and behavior. Dead works also includes asking God to forgive us when we are already forgiven and accepted by God in Christ Jesus. When we sin we do not ask God to forgive us, but we just tell God that we have sinned and praise God for His forgiveness. We should confess to God something like this statement by saying, 'Lord I have sinned and thank you for forgiving my sin by being faithful and just. I thank you Lord for the Blood of Jesus that has cleansed me from all my unrighteousness.' (1 John 1:9, 7). This is an example of a faith-filled prayer for confession of sins. If we keep asking God to forgive us when He has already forgiven all our past, present and future sins in Christ Jesus (Eph 4:32; Col 3:13), we are blindly saying to God indirectly that He is unjust and unfaithful. Such behaviors are developed by lack of faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Passages that admonish us to change our behavior are always written to people who’ve already been saved and refer to maintaining our fellowship with God (1 John 2:1; 1:3, 7, 9). Repentance is like first owning a bus as a gift that will take you to heaven which is its final destination. Confessions to God are like correcting a punctured tube and thus continue to travel in the salvation bus.

It helps to remember that all believers continue to sin and to varying degrees refuse to give up their worldly lives. It’s our belief that Jesus died for our sins and rose again that gets us saved and keeps us that way. Someone who doesn’t think he’s sinning doesn’t ask for forgiveness, so asking for forgiveness is a sign that he’s changed his opinion about his behavior (1 John 1:6-8). That’s true repentance. At that point, the Holy Spirit can convict him and begin leading him toward the change in behavior God desires. But even the best of us still does things that we know are sin but can’t seem to stop doing. That’s why John said that the person who thinks he doesn’t sin is a liar and cautioned us to ask for forgiveness every time we sin (1 John 1:8-10). We must remind ourselves that we do not do the right things of God all the time even though we try our best to. We fail many times, and it is always good to learn from our failures and confess it to God to receive His grace in time of our need. But the good news is we are getting better and better by being transformed from glory to glory all the time (2 Cor 3:18). Before we were full time sinners who accidentally did something right once in a while as babies in Christ, but as we mature in our Christian walk we tend to take good decisions consistently and will desire to walk as victorious over comer’s all the time. To simply and shortly describe our Christian walk, ‘We are not where we ought to be, but thank God we are not where we were used to be’.



Walking after Sitting

The secret to walk consistently in the power of Christ is based on a Christian’s rest ‘in Christ’. Certain people only rest a little while and rush out to try to walk in Christ. What will happen is they will soon be tripped to walk in self rather than in Christ. Why? They might not have spent at least an hour a day ‘in Christ’ consciously by lingering in the presence of Christ or they might not have meditated on the word of God enough to sustain them for the need that might arise on that particular day (Matt 26:40-41; Ps 119:104, 23, 11). Say a car travels fifteen kilometers a litre. If the owner of that car loads two litres of petrol in his tank and tries to travel a hundred kilometers with it, what will happen? He will most probably be stranded mid-way to his destination on that particular day until he consciously fills the tank with at least another five litres of petrol to travel the remaining distance. The same thing happens in our spiritual life too. We need the spiritual tank of our-spirit man to be filled to the full by the Spirit always. All who sit can walk, for in the thought of God the one follows the other spontaneously. We sit forever with Christ in the heavenly material of spirit-man inside our innermost being and then with that Christ-consciousness in our soul we walk before men. Christ consciousness will bring the life of Christ to be manifested in every little details of our life. Once we forsake and give up our Christ-consciousness for self-consciousness in us, suddenly we will go from rest to restlessness because of this transition in our mind. When we become self-conscious, we will become influenced by world-consciousness which is an impure stream of thoughts which will give no real strength to overcome all our problems in our lives journey (Gen 3:8-10). Christ-consciousness is the purest way to drink from the spiritual stream of living water, which are the creative, comforting, guiding and protecting thoughts of God which will fill our mind (John 4:14). All who can sit in Christ-consciousness can walk in Christ’s strength; according to God the one follows the other. Forsake the rest of sitting in Christ, immediately we are tripped and our testimony in the world is spoiled. Once we start to abide in Christ-consciousness all the time, our position there in our mind releases the power to walk worthy of Him here in the world.

For example a pilot who gets in to flight only needs himself to position rightly in the pilot seat. Then to move himself to the destination, he only needs to push a button and check whether everything is working rightly. He does not carry himself to the destination, but the plane carries him. He does not need to help the plane to take off in to the air a little bit and then somehow get in to the plane by his own effort. It is practically impossible. Either he is carried by the plane or else he is out of it. This is the same that happens in Christian lives too. We just get in to the spiritual plane of God when we are born again. Like a plane is powered to fly based on the fuel that it holds, we too are empowered to walk the spiritual life journey by the power of Christ within us that we hold. We get seated in the spiritual pilot seat and embark on a journey called eternal life. God is that big plane who carries us by his power (Isaiah 46:4). We just receive the feedback from God’s gauges which will show where we are in our journey of eternal life, we trust those meter’s and start to fly by consciously positioning ourselves rightly according to the feedback from the spiritual meters. Just like an airplane meters shows the altitude of the plane, its fuel limit and its speed, the spiritual meters of God will indicate the spiritual altitude, fuel and our speed which are the Holy Spirit’s guidance of righteousness, joy and peace in this life. We walk not the spiritual life with our strength, but by the strength of God acting through us we walk. We cannot support God in our walk. Either we walk by His power in Christ or we are out in our own self. The pilot can reach His destination as long as he is seated in his plane which he is driving. In the same way we can walk spiritually as long as we are seated in Christ by being Christ-conscious. Once the pilot unseats himself and jumps out of the plane, he is no more carried by the plane. In the same way once we unseat our self from Christ-consciousness to self-consciousness, we are out of the spiritual strength of God which carries us. Thus our conduct and behavior depends on how much we fundamentally rest inwardly by sitting in Christ.

Many times in the time of our need we tend to think that Christ as a Person apart from us who will come to help us whenever we need Him, as a result of it we fail to identify Christ within us as a part of us who cannot fail. We should see Christ Himself as the answer in us to all of God’s demands (Rom 8:3-4). Apart from Christ we do not have any holiness, but because Christ lives inside us though His “Spirit of holiness”, He Himself has become our holiness in our new-man inside us (Ps 16:2; Rom 1:4; Col 1:26-27). Once we become Christ-conscious, we put on the new man which has been born inside us (Eph 4:24). In the new-man Christ resides by our faith and becomes everything that we shall ever need (Eph 3:17). Thus faith becomes our extended spiritual arms through which we access in to God’s grace that empowers us to walk effortlessly in Christ (Rom 5:2). This is the reason Apostle Paul said, "...Jesus ... became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor 1:30). In other words Jesus himself is our strength with which we walk in our spiritual life. Jesus becomes our nourishment for the sustenance of our spiritual life.

How does an arm of a wrist watch moves, it does not move itself. It moves, yet not by its own power. It is moved by the power beyond itself. We walk, yet not by our strength. We work in our spiritual life, yet not us but the grace of God within us. In short we are moved by the power of God within us to walk in this life. Apostle Paul described about this phenomenal thing that happened in his life by saying, "...I labored more abundantly than they all [i.e. apostles], yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." (1 Cor 15:10). The same thing Paul said in Col 1:29 which says, “… I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.” The secret of such extraordinary spiritual life that Apostle Paul lived has been clearly revealed in the following words “grace of God which was with me” and “according to His working which works in me”. This explains Paul’s real secret to live a powerful spiritual life. He has first learned to sit. Then He has come to the place of rest in God. As a result his walking is not based on his efforts but on God’s mighty inward working.

Paul has seen himself seated in Christ; therefore his walk before men takes its character from Christ dwelling in him. It was not Paul’s striving by his own strength to live the spiritual life which catapulted him to do great things for God, but God’s power worked with in him because of his Christ-consciousness. This Christ-consciousness which he focused made him who he was spiritually. Paul labored very hard in his spiritual life to glorify God yet not in His own strength but God’s. What a wonder! The operation of Christ’s life in us is spontaneous and is without effort of ours. This type of working in God’s power was what he exhorted the believers to work out in their own lives in Phil 2:12-13 where he says, "12 ...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." In other words Paul is saying to the believers to work out the salvation that God is working inside them. What we show forth outwardly is what God has first put within. Thus it agrees with the verses in Eph 2:10 which says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”


Walk in the Spirit

Many times in our Christian life we struggle with various form of lustful behavior which is ingrained within our old man. The old man with its various forms of lust will be put off only when we turn our mind from focusing on ourselves and our weaknesses to Christ’s strength and his character intertwined within us (Eph 4:20-24). Once we do focus ourselves on the work of Christ which is also described as being “renewed in the spirit of [our] mind”, Jesus Himself walks though us and teaches us to walk in the truth which is in Him. If we do the things that we wish we are walking in our own fleshly desires. But if we are walking in the godly desires of the Holy Spirit who prompts us every time we need direction, we are walking in the Spirit. All of us who are born again “live in the Spirit”, means we know ourselves as sinners and we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior by our confession (Gal 5:25).

After we are born again by our belief in the finished work of Christ we have the Spirit of Christ dwelling within us as a guarantee of our salvation (Rom 8:9; 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5). Once we have this guarantee of the Spirit, He starts His divine work of revealing the will of God which we obey sometimes and walk in it, other times we ignore it because of the strong influence of the indwelling fleshly nature. But because we have Christ’s guidance within us through His Spirit we are declared and considered by God as walking in the Spirit, as a result the Spirit of life which resides in us as a guarantee of our salvation has made us free from the law which says when you sin you die without mercy. So now there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus by their belief but failing to live up to the perfect standard of God prompted by the Holy Spirit because of their own bad choices (Rom 8:9, 1-2).

The more we learn to walk in the promptings of the Spirit, the more we will overcome the lust of the flesh (Gal 5:16). The liberty of the Spirit overcomes and breaks the cyclic bondages of the lust of the flesh. To stand in the freedom and liberty of the Spirit which we already have in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 3:17; Gal 5:1, 13; James 1:25; 2:12; 1 Pet 2:16), the Apostle Paul is exhorting the believers to consistently walk in the promptings of the Spirit not just for a limited period of time. By experiencing more and more liberty of the Spirit in our lives we walk effortlessly the ‘in Christ’ life which God has prearranged (Gal 5:25). The promptings of the Spirit comes through various ways in our life. First we get prompted by the still small voice of the Spirit in our spirit-man inside us, through the reading and meditating of His word, through hearing God’s voice in prayer, through our circumstances, through dreams and visions, through prophetic word and godly counsel from God’s people. If we are really seeking to fulfill the will of God that comes to us through these various ways of the Holy Spirit as listed above, we are walking consistently in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit releases the power of God within us. In other words, we do not walk but the Spirit of God starts to live, move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Paul learned to consistently walk in the Spirit, after which he said, “"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God [which was] with me." (1Cr 15:10). Here we see the spiritual dynamics of grace which Apostle Paul used in his life to labor more effectively than all the other apostles of Christ to reach the whole world with the Gospel within the shortest period of time (Rom 15:18-20, 23-24, 28-29). Most Christians know the mechanics but never understand the dynamics of living such effective victorious Christian life. Many Christians use this preceding verse of Paul to justify themselves of their so called humility and many times foolishly express to describe what they have done by their own strength. Once somebody says to them that they have done well in something, they will readily say this religious cliché, 'Oh, it is the grace of God!' They don’t bother to think whether it is done in God’s strength or their own. God’s grace must make everyone who watches us to get astonished by how much we achieve easily by God’s strength. During that time it is good to point our achievement and success towards God and His empowering grace in our lives.

The all-important rule is not to ‘try’ but to ‘trust,’ not to depend on our own strength but upon His. Many of us are acting as Christians because we profess Christ but do not show His power working through our lives which is a very poor testimony. Still others are hypocritically walking in pretense not in reality. Many of us have learned to talk spiritually, act spiritually and adopt spiritual attitudes to keep ourselves secure in our very own religious shell which makes us ‘do’ the whole Christianity ourselves. Such religious attitude will only force us to refrain from doing this, saying that, from eating certain things and how hard we find it and end up thinking as though God is indebted to us because of our so called great spiritual achievements. The extreme effort and labor involved to live such lives must at least make one realize that it is not the real spiritual life that Jesus promised to give (Matt 11:28). When we yoke and position ourselves with Christ to live the real spiritual Christ’s life, the burden we carry will be light exactly as Jesus told (Matt 11:30). You know why? Because the more we learn from Christ to live gently [i.e. meekly] and lowly in heart, the more God will start to give His empowering grace freely which will make us effortlessly walk the spiritual life which God has predesigned for us (1 Peter 5:5). Only living such lives will really glorify God.

Like a person who speaks his mother tongue naturally, so also the life of Christ naturally flows through a Christian. Even when you wake up a person in the night and ask him a question, the first word that will come out of His mouth will be in his mother tongue. The moment an unexpected thing happens the first reaction will come out in his mother tongue naturally. Christians who pretend to live their life without the grace of God flowing through them are like people who are trying to speak in an alien language and that too try to learn it hard. The Holy Spirit who is the one who acts as the divine executive who supplies the empowering grace does it freely and spontaneously as we walk in the Spirit. The moment we learn this fact we shall end our struggling and will throw away our pretence. Nothing is as worse as acting in Christian life, at the same time nothing is as blessed as when our outward efforts ceases and our attitudes become natural—when our words, our prayers and our very life becomes a spontaneous expression of the life of Christ within.

To ‘walk’ is to ‘proceed,’ to ‘follow on,’ and also to progress towards a set goal. What should be the Christians goal? Surely it is not going to heaven because we go to heaven not based on our performance of our Christian life on earth but rather based on our belief that Christ as our substitute has perfectly fulfilled God’s entire requirement for us to enter heaven, and true to our belief “…we shall be saved by His [i.e. Christ’s] life.” (Rom 5:10). In other words we will surely enter heaven because of believing what Jesus has done for us on the Cross personally. We see in God’s word that God has great prosperous and very hopeful plans for us to walk in our future as long as we are present in the earth (Jer 29:11). The Bible also says that, "In Him we also were made [God's] heritage (portion) and we obtained an inheritance; for we had been foreordained (chosen and appointed beforehand) in accordance with His purpose, Who works out everything in agreement with the counsel and design of His [own] will" (Eph 1:11, Amp). This preceding verse says that we were chosen and appointed beforehand for God to work out His pre-appointed counsel and design through us. So a Christian’s goal must be to fulfill all the plans that God has already pre-appointed to fulfill in his life. From the above verse we also come to understand that God Himself works out His plan in His time, all we need to do is to give ourselves as a living sacrifice for God to operate through us (Rom 12:1). King David in the Bible was one such person who gave himself wholly to God in order for Him to fulfill His entire plan for his life (1 Samuel 22:3-5). This is the reason in the book of Acts the Bible says, "For David, after he had served God's will and purpose and counsel in his own generation, fell asleep [in death] and was buried among his forefathers..." (Acts 13:36, Amp). David was one man who fulfilled all of God’s will, purpose and counsel in his own generation. When he died there was nothing more of God’s plan to be fulfilled in his life and he was buried. What a great testimony from God Himself! This should be every Christian’s desire and testimony.

Apostle Paul said, "I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. " (Phil 3:14). If we ask the question what is he really saying, is he speaking about his goal of going to heaven? No not at all. First Paul desires to fulfill God’s plan for his life because it carries a great prize or heavenly reward that God was waiting to give Paul for his most exemplary life. He is also saying that he is pressing forward toward the goal of finishing the final phase of all the remaining plans that God has left for Paul to fulfill before he leaves to be in heaven. Paul was in Rome when he wrote the Letter to the Philippians (Phil 4:22). Hence Paul was waiting to fulfill the rest of God’s plan for His life which was to completely preach the gospel in word and deed in Rome fully (Rom 1:7; 15:23-24; Acts 27:24-25). The same Apostle after He fulfilled all the plans of God for His life and generation victoriously cried out, “6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” (2Tim 4:6-8). This should be the testimony of every Christian. Such victorious cry before the end of our lives is the will of God for every Christian!

Say now, ‘God has a unique plan for my life. By the grace of God I will fight by faith to fulfill all of God’s will and finish the race victoriously by fulfilling God’s entire plan. The Lord will help me keep the faith till my very end.’


Surely if we learn from now on to walk effortlessly by letting the Holy Spirit to work out the Christ’s life in us, before the end of our lives we too will cry out the victory shout of all the fulfillment of God’s plan in our lives. Praise the Lord!



Walk and Watch

Because we are living in the ‘end of the end time’, we can see before our very eyes all the signs of the end time are taking place and increasing in its intensity day by day. Jesus told the end time believers to carefully watch these things and not only realize that the time of rapture is near at hand but also pray daily and be connected with Jesus to be filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit fully (Luke 21:36). Only those who are saved will connect to Jesus by praying to Him and watchfully expecting his arrival. Particularly Jesus told that all the distressing end times signs will occur like a birth pang (Mark 13:8; Isa 13:8). In other words it will increase and increase before the rapture takes place and then the Tribulation wrath of God will be released by God upon the earth to destroy its sinners (Is 13:6-9, 13; 1 Thess 1:10; 5:9).

In the Book of Ephesians Apostle Paul exhorted the believer’s saying, “15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:15-18). Walking watchfully by redeeming the time according to the will of God means simply ‘to be filled with the Spirit all the time’. To eat, drink, marry wives, buy and sell goods, plant gardens and build spectacular buildings are all earthly good, but has no eternal value (Luke 17:27-28). These were the activities the people who perished during Lot’s and Noah’s time were very much involved in. They never thought about eternal things at all. Jesus predicted that the end time generation will live in the same way which will bring the wrath of God upon them. This is the reason the Bible calls the people who will live during the Antichrist’s reign during the Tribulation time as “all who dwell on the earth” (Rev 13:8). In other words they will live as though there is no eternity except the life on earth. As long as we are alive and well on this earth, it is better to remember our Creator and start to lay up our treasures in heaven (Eccl 12:1, 6-7, Matt 6:20). The moment we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior our eyes gets fixed upon God’s eternal things, we are also exhorted to set our minds on things which are above which we will by and by as we start to give more of ourselves to God (1 Cor 12:3; Heb 12:1-2; Col 3:1-4). More than the first century believers the preceding verses fit’s our end time Church perfectly because Jesus gave ‘the parable of the wise and foolish virgins’ to the end time Church. Jesus compared the wise virgins to the Church of the end time which will have the saved and Spirit filled believer’s as a part of it, Jesus promised that these wise virgins will be the one that will be taken up in the rapture of the end time (Matt 25:9). Scripture after scripture assures us that God who began the work of salvation will finish it to the uttermost (Phil 1:6; Jude 24; 2 Tim 1:12; Eph 3:20).

No believer will be half saved, but we must understand that Jesus wants the end-time Church to be watchful because their surrounding society will degenerate in to perversity like in the times of Noah and Lot (Luke 17:25-30). Because of being involved in perverse activities many will willfully forget and deny the coming of the Lord to take away His Church in the end time (2 Peter 3:3-7). The Lord doesn’t want His end time Church to be a part of “the filthy conduct of the wicked” (2 Peter 2:7) and instead he has planned to sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word to present her to Himself a Glorious Church at the time of rapture (Eph 5:26-27). Those who co-operate with Christ will be found without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, they will be separated from all perverse worldly activities of the end time having holiness without blemish because of work of Jesus Christ done in them and through them. The command of Jesus to the end time Church is, “34 “But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day [of the rapture] come on you unexpectedly. 35 For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things [i.e. God’s Tribulation wrath upon the sinning world] that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:34-36).

Because of heeding the command of Jesus to watch and pray, the end time believers will escape God’s wrath which will come upon the whole earth to destroy its people who will be involved in perverse activities. To 'watch' in Greek is 'agrypneō' [pronounced 'ä-grüp-ne'-ō'] which means 'to be sleepless, keep awake, watch, to be circumspect, attentive, ready’. To be ready for rapture is to pray and be filled with the oil of the Spirit all the time. When a person does not pray, he will naturally have no strength to overcome the perversion happening around him. Then once a person will be involved in the perversion of the end time he will start to sleep spiritually. Thus Jesus is looking for an obedient, overcoming and Holy Church that is connected to Him. The believers who will be watching and praying by being filled by the Holy Spirit will escape God's wrath. Others who do not take heed to this command will be left behind with the unbelievers to face God’s wrath. Yet their Soul will be saved because of their deep repentance by faith and patience after the rapture. They will reject the seal of Antichrist and will not worship him (Rev 13:10, 15-17;16:2). Most of these saints will be martyred and killed with the sword (Rev 13:10; 7:13-17).

The Church is spoken in the scripture symbolically as “the bride” (Rev 22:17), “the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (Rev 21:9), also Jesus is spoken by John the Baptist as the bridegroom who is rightfully having the bride who are the saved people of God (John 3:29), Apostle Paul spoke of the Church as a chaste virgin presented to Christ (2 Cor 11:2; 1 Cor 7:34). In ‘the parable of the wise and foolish virgins’ the whole Church is represented to be a virgin which means ‘the Church at large’ at the time of the rapture (Matt 25:1). As the oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit inside a believer (1 Sam 16:13; Luke 4:18; 1 Cor 6:17, 19-20), only the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps (Matt 25:4). The foolish virgins were not really saved by believing in Jesus Christ because they had ‘the lamp’ with them which is symbolic of being a part of the Church which is the lamp stand (Rev 2:1). They were not careful enough to take the oil with them which in itself shows that they were not real born again believer but were acting as though they were also a part of the real Church. Only those who are sealed by the Holy Spirit and have Him within them are the real Church (Matt 25:3; 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:14). Also Apostle Paul in his Book to the Romans said “Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” (Rom 8:9). Now the question arises, what then were they doing inside the Church then? They were playing Church but in reality they were denying its transforming power by not taking with them the oil of the Holy Spirit by receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior (2 Tim 3:1, 5).

The wise knowing they were sinners in need of a Savior, accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior watchfully (Matt 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luk 5:32). Nearly half of the end time Church was foolish enough to act as though they were saved and the other half of the end time Church were wise enough to be saved by accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. This is the very reason when the foolish virgins came to Jesus right after the rapture saying “11 “…, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ 12 [Jesus] answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’” (Matt 25:11-12; Rom 10:11-13). Another great point that should be appreciated in this parable is that both the foolish and wise began to sleep. To sleep is to be conformed to the world rather be transformed by the renewing of the mind. To sleep is to walk not in faith, love and the hope of salvation (Rom 12:2; 1 Thess 5:4-9). Thus it proves that it is not their behavior but their belief in Jesus Christ as the one who died for them in order to receive forgiveness from God for all their sins as a substitute made these believers to live by faith based on the fact of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross surely saved the sleeping but wise believers. In other words, both the saved believers and unbelievers were not expecting the Lord based on their poor behavior of sleeping before that moment of rapture (Matt 25:5).

When the mid night cry was heard the whole Church began to correct their actions, the foolish virgins only at that point realized that playing Church cannot qualify them to be part of the rapture to the wedding of the lamb (v 6-7). The foolish said to the wise to give their oil, the wise said to the foolish virgins that the oil of the Holy Spirit cannot be given because “…lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves” (v 9). Once realizing their own foolishness when they try to hear the salvation message at that time of rapture, no true believer or a minister of God will be left behind to share the truth of salvation by grace (Rom 10:14-17; Eph 2:8-10). The truth of salvation by grace and the oil of the Holy Spirit that comes as a guaranteed seal of salvation can only be received by one’s personal belief in the Lord Jesus as one’s Lord and Savior (2 Cor 5:5, 7). By the time the foolish realize their folly, the rapture would have already taken place. These foolish virgins will have only two choices to make at that time, either they can confess themselves as believers in Christ and go through the persecution and eventually death execution of the Antichrist, or accept Antichrist as their god by receiving the seal of the beast and be lost for eternity away from God just for the sake of temporal earthly gain that he will give (Rev 13:7-10, 16-18). But the saints who will not receive the seal of the Antichrist by their patience and faith in the eternal things of God will be saved for eternity to be with God in His blissfulness (Rev 13:10, 7:13-17). The door to the wedding of the bridegroom will be closed as the bride will be no more left here on the earth (Matt 25:10; 22:1-14). Thus Jesus is saying to our end time generation to “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.” (Matt 25:13). Watching is truly effortlessly walking out the salvation that we receive by faith. Thus receiving the true salvation of Jesus Christ that God gives freely and thereafter walking by faith is essential to be part of the greatest escape of all time which is the rapture of the saints (2 Cor 5:7).






Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Sit, Walk and Stand – (Part 1)

Sit, Walk and Stand – (Part 1)

By Abraham Israel


I believe one of the most important apostolic messages that the Lord wants to restore to this end time generation is to make them understand that He measures everything, from the start to the finish, by the perfections of His Son. The Apostle Paul affirmed this fact by writing in Colossians 1:19-20, “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness [of the resources of heaven like righteousness, peace and joy (Rom 14:17)] should dwell, and by Him to reconcile [i.e. reunite] all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth [i.e. living saints and the whole of God’s creation on earth (Rom 8:19-23)] or things in heaven [i.e. redeemed saints in heaven (Rev 4:8-10)], having made peace through the blood of His cross”. Thus as seen in the above verse Father God is pleased by His own plan to reunite the lost humanity with Himself through the outworking of Christ through His Spirit dwelling in them (Rom 8:9). We are first going to see in this article that in a believer’s life, Christ lives in us through His Spirit from the moment we invite Him in to our life as our Lord and Savior eternally (Eph 2:18, 22). Then we will be delving in to the three postures of a Christian which will empower us to live a victorious abundant life of God in this planet earth. The three postures are sitting, walking and standing. We sit by revelation to achieve things in the spiritual realm by receiving grace through faith (Eph 2:5-8; 1 Cor 15:10), we walk to get blessed with all the spiritual blessing which is in the heavenly places (Eph 1:3-14; 2:10) and we stand to possess our inheritance that our Lord has already declared to be ours in Christ Jesus (Eph 6:10-12; 1 Thess 4:4; Luke 21:19; Duet 1:21, 39; 6:18; 8:1).


The eternal promise of His Spirit in us

God has also already revealed to us His mystery by telling us that at the end of the age He is going to do, “… His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that … He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him [on the day of rapture (1 Thess 4:1-18)]. In Him [whom? Christ] also we have obtained an inheritance [i.e. birthright as children of God in His family (John 1:12)], being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.” (Eph 1:9-12). In the preceding verses we see that it is God who has appointed us with all the favor and empowerment of heaven by working in us all things from the moment we received Christ as our Savior to the time we will leave this earth, because we have trusted in Christ to live in us victoriously for the praise of His glory. God will counsel us each second as we earnestly seek the consciousness of His presence to guide us constantly in His will to be fulfilled in our life (Ps 73:23-24). We do work out His counsel as He works inside us. In other words the Spirit of Christ starts to sit, walk and stand through us. Our very behavior will be that of God’s nature, because it will be God who will start to control us as we start to depend on Christ living inside us through His anointing.

The moment we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, He abides in our spirit man through the Holy Spirit and will start to live His God-life through our mortal body (John 17:20-21). The glory of Jesus is the Spirit of glory resting upon us which unites our being with God, as a result of this union the glory of Jesus unites us with our fellow brethren on earth (John 17:21-23; 1 Peter 4:14). Thus we do not live the God-life by doing, but by being united with Him in our spirit. From the time we are saved to the time we leave this planet earth, this union of interpenetration with God in our spirit man will not change and this is described in the Bible as “…You are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” “…You are sealed unto the day of redemption [i.e. Rapture of the believers and Second Coming for the tribulation saints]” (Eph 1:13; 4:30) and also in 1 Cor 1:22 the Bible says that, [God] has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee [i.e. first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us].” This sealing of the Spirit that God does as a guarantee of the future promises is a divine act of God. We cannot do the sealing ourselves by our own effort. When people sin and get condemned by the condemnation of the devil because of not approaching the throne of grace to receive grace in their time of need (Rom 8:1; Heb 4:16), they hear the lies of the enemy and allow it to influence them to doubt the permanency of their salvation. We do not seal ourselves with the Spirit of God, and it shows that we cannot unseal the Spirit of God by what we do. The sealing of the Spirit is an inheritance that we receive as God’s children and is a pure gift from the Heavenly Father that we do not deserve. Because of sinning one cannot lose the sealing of the Spirit, because the Bible says that salvation is an eternal one of which the sealing of the spirit is a guarantee given to us personally of the awesome future that we will have as God’s true children (Heb 5:9).

In other words God has stamped us with his eternal pledge of his Spirit —a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete. What is His eternal pledge? His pledge is His Spirit who lives in us by interpenetrating with our spirit man inside us, who will never leave us nor forsake us based on what we do (Heb 13:5). When we walk in the impulse of our old man, the Holy Spirit will get grieved, but He will never leave us nor forsake us because of His promises (Heb 10:15-18). When we neglect the stirring and guidance of the Spirit because of our lack of knowledge, the Holy Spirit’s activities in our life will get quenched by our doing (1 Thess 5:19-22). But in spite of a believer, grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit, He does not leave us because of what Jesus has achieved for us on the Cross as our Substitute eternally (2 Cor 5:21, 17). Our whole body becomes God’s place of dwelling as we consciously invite God by opening compartment after compartment of our self-conscious soul until we are wholly consumed by God-consciousness (1 Cor 6:19; Rom 12:1). From within His temple of our body He will sit, walk, stand and start to rule over the earth. This is why we are told by Jesus to pray in this manner, [Let] your kingdom come [in an increased measure day by day]. [Let] your will be done on earth [through me] as it is in heaven.” (Matt 6:10). By letting God rule over our spirit, soul and body, we are acting as the kings and co-regent with the ‘King of Kings’ who rules the whole universe from heaven and also on earth through our lives.

It is true in the Old Testament that the Spirit of God left a particular person whenever they sinned and disobeyed His voice consistently (Judges 14:6; 16:20; 1 Samuel 16:14). Knowing very well how the Lord has left Saul his master because of his rebellion and sin, David cried out to the Lord and pleaded not to take away His presence and His Holy Spirit from him when the Lord confronted his sinful lifestyle of disobedience through Nathan the prophet (Psalm 51:11). But in the New Testament the Lord has promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us based on our doings or behavior (Heb 13:5; 2 Tim 2:13). Some people become very fearful and feel that they have lost the Spirit when they sin (Gen 3:8-11). This kind of unhealthy fear comes because of the lying condemnation of the enemy’s voice which has been accepted as the truth (Rom 8:1, 9). The real truth is, God has once for all have forgiven us of all our past, present and future sins and have wholly accepted us in the Beloved Son of God, and this benevolent acts of God’s mercy and grace that we have received in Jesus Christ is truly an undeserved favor that God has showered upon us as His children (Eph 1:6; Matt 3:13-17; Eph 4:32; Col 2:13; Rom 8:31-34). God knows all the sins that we will ever do because of our bad choices, in spite of fore-knowing all these things He patiently helps us and mercifully waits until we die one day at His appointed time so that we may be freed from this sinful body to become loaded with the glorious sinless body on the day of rapture (Rom 7:17-25; Ps 90:10; 2 Sam 5:4; 1 Kings 2:10-11; 91:16). This is the reason Apostle Peter brilliantly described, “…that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation…” (2 Peter 3:15). God waits for us to finish this pilgrimage on earth (1 Pet 2:1; Heb 11:13; Ps 84:5; Ex 6:4), in spite of fore-knowing that we have a deceitful heart that sins all the time whenever it has opportunity, which is very weak and defective to please Him (Jer 17:9; 16:12). Even in the Old Testament God showed favor to the people of Israel because of His merciful nature and thus overlooking their iniquity because they too were having the same sinful nature that we have (Mic 7:18; Ps 51:5; Num 23:21). In the New Covenant promise, God the Father now sees us as holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight through the Body of Jesus Christ’s flesh though the death that He died for all of us as our perfect substitute (Col 1:21-22). In the New Testament we are … complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.” (Col 2:10). We are a completed product of God in the New Testament who does not need any more furnishing to improve our self spiritually in our life, but only need to sit, walk and stand in Christ Jesus to be successful and experience the favor of God in our lives. Praise the Lord!






1. Sit Comfortably

Sitting can be considered as our position in Christ, which we will call as SIT (Eph 2:6). To be seated is to hold a position of power and authority (Mark 14:62). Sitting is an attitude of rest.

“17 …The GOD of our Lord Jesus Christ… raised Him from the dead and SEATED HIM AT HIS RIGHT HAND IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES, 21 FAR ABOVE ALL PRINCIPALITY AND POWER AND MIGHT AND DOMINION, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (Eph 1:17, 20-21).

“6 AND raised us up together, and MADE US SIT TOGETHER IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES IN CHRIST JESUS, 7 THAT in the ages to come HE MIGHT SHOW THE EXCEEDING RICHES OF HIS GRACE in His kindness TOWARD US in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Eph 2:6-9).

The outcome is “God…made him to sit…and made us to sit with Him.” In revelation of the word sit lies the secret of the heavenly life of power and authority to be lived out on the earth. Revelation is not a onetime transaction. It is the outcome of the progressive revelation of the authority and power of God which lies in the recesses of the spirit man inside us (Eph 3:16). The more we delve deeper in to relationship with God by faith, the more the inner man will get loaded by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph 1:17-18). According to Apostle Paul, we are all enrolled in the school of the Spirit to experience and enjoy the God-life on earth. It is up to each child of God to diligently learn, appropriate and be blessed with all the experiences of heaven on earth (Eph 1:3). We see clearly in Ephesians chapter 1 and 2 of how the Apostle Paul has described about the sitting position of Christ in power and authority in heaven, which he then applied to us believers in Christ Jesus who are on earth and declared that we are seated in the same position spiritually along with Him. Our Christian life does not start with walking but with the sitting. From the moment we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth that God has raised Jesus as a substitute representing us from the dead as a sign that all our sins have been paid for and forever forgiven (Matt 16:4; 12:38-41; Luke 11:29-30, 32; Jonah 3:5-10; 2; 1 Cor 15:16-17), we will be saved in our spirit at that same moment and will be joined to the same power and authority that Christ has in the heavenly places (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 6:17). All the religions in the world say do, do, do and do until you die to please God. But only Christianity starts with the resounding message of Christ who cried out and declared with all His might before He died at the cross saying, “…It is done and finished forever!...” (John 19:30). If we ask the question, what is finished and done forever? The answer is, all that we need to do to please God in perfection has been done and finished forever by Jesus. In other words God is already fully pleased with your life because you believe Jesus as your substitute of perfection before God. It is like God declaring to you personally through His voice from heaven which He declared to Jesus on the day of His Baptism by John saying “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17). Believe that God is declaring over you now, “Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He will declare justice to the Gentiles.” (Matt 12:18).

Say now to the Lord, ‘Thank you Father-God for choosing me as your Servant and declaring that your soul is well pleased in me your beloved, thank you for putting your Spirit upon me as a sign of your authority and power to declare and live the abundant life that you have given me. In Jesus name, Amen and Amen…Praise the Lord.’ (John 10:10).

Sitting starts and ends with believing. This is the truth because Jesus as your substitute has already fulfilled all the righteous requirements of God perfectly for you as a substitute (Matt 3:15), which completely got fulfilled when He victoriously cried the victory cry by saying, “Paid in full!” (John 19:30). There is no more works that is needed to be done to please God, because God is already pleased with your life because of what Jesus has done for you by paying a heavy price [ by dying on the cross as a sin (2 Cor 5:21)] for you.


God has acknowledged this fact and has made you to be His temple and dwelling place of rest. As you allow the Holy Spirit who is the representative of Jesus sent from heaven to you personally to live His God-life through your spirit, soul and body as a gratitude for what Jesus has done for you, you will glorify God in your spirit, soul and body (1 Cor 6:19-20). This is the only reasonable service that you can do to the Lord which He considers as a sacrifice (Rom 12:1). He is sitting in you in all His power and authority which has no match in the whole universe (1 John 4:4). He desires you to know that you are sitting along with Him in all power and authority already. He desires to reveal to you bit by bit and teach you by revelation, how to act in the power and authority that you already have. Do you ask and desire and pray for such revelation to fill you so that you can be used in the fullness of His power and authority? If yes, surely God will use you mightily for His glory. We are like a prince in training through the helper Holy Spirit, learning day by day through exposure and application in the real world scenario to use the fullness of the authority and power of the king of kings (John 14:26; 16:13-15). When Jesus speaks from heaven as the king of kings, the Holy Spirit will take the words of Jesus and will declare to us the kings so that we can declare the word on earth with the authority and power of heaven acting behind it (Eccl 8:4). We are kings on earth working with the same power and authority of the ‘king of kings’ in heaven who rules the whole universe (Phil 2:9-11; Rev 1:5-6; 19:16). This is why Apostle Paul said, “… [God] has made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Eph 1:6). Because you believe in Jesus Christ as your substitute before God, you are complete in Christ Jesus (Col 2:10). In other words, you do not need to work in order to earn the favor and blessings of God which makes you filled with the authority and empowerment of heaven to live a successful and prosperous Christian life. It is already yours in Christ Jesus. You only need to sit comfortably in the revelation and wisdom of the Spirit in order to experientially use it to your benefit.


Enter His rest

God wants us to enter His rest by sitting comfortably on the finished work of Jesus Christ through our faith in His birth [Identifying Jesus as a man born one among us in the flesh as a human (1 John 4:2)], death [Identifying Jesus as the perfect sinless substitute for our sins, who through his death has brought back the favor and blessings of God back upon us through forgiveness of all our sins (Col 1:20-23)] and resurrection [Identifying Us before God as an advocate and a mediator and thus releasing God’s continual blessings of power and authority to us on earth (1 John 2:1; Luke 10:19)].

How can we experience His rest by sitting comfortably in the spiritual realm of our daily life? Realizing our need for a Savior is the first step to enter this rest. When the self-righteous Pharisees through the influence of religious spirits questioned Jesus about his association with the sinners and tax collectors who were considered by their religious society as the unholy scum’s of all humanity, Jesus said to them, “… 12 “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”” (Matt 9:12-13). In other words, Jesus was saying to these Pharisees, ‘Only those people who feel that they are having irreparably sick souls need a Savior to save them from condemnation of the enemy and the guilt of God’s inbuilt spiritual thermometer which is our conscience (Rom 2:15). I desire to show God’s mercy to the needy and not require sacrifice from self-righteous people who do these things as though God is a tyrant who demands it. I have come to call the sinners to look towards me to receive abundant life of joy, peace and righteousness daily.’ We are in constant need of our Savior in order to sit and enjoy the rest of God within our sin-sick irreparable soul which always desires to sin. The moment any person comes to God confessing himself as a sinner in need of a Savior; God justifies him as in the case of the tax collector who did not even lift his head towards heaven knowing his unworthiness as a sinner to call upon God to receive mercy. Tax-collectors were considered big-time sinners and traitors by the Jews of Jesus time because even though many were Jews yet they worked as tax collection agents for the Romans who were considered as enemies of the zealous religious Jews who wanted freedom from these Romans to rule the country independently (Luke 5:27-32; 7:34; 15:1). This tax-collector was justified by God. That is, He was declared by God as clean and just as if he had never sinned. God did this based on what Jesus Christ would do for that tax collector personally on the cross in the future from that point of time [(Rom 3:26)] (Luke 18:9-14). That is why Jesus said to weary sinners who try to please God with their own works, “28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” From this verse we can understand that those who try to please God with their labor of living good life and works will be experiencing unbearable burden of condemnation, guilt and unforgiveness. But those who come to Jesus, He has promised to give rest to their souls. The ability for the soul to rest can only be received from Jesus. A yoke is a wooden bar which is fastened over the necks of two animals, especially cattle, and connected to the vehicle or load that they are pulling. Jesus was telling us symbolically to get connected with Him through the wooden bar of the cross by submitting our will to God by looking to Jesus as our solution of rest for our sin-sick souls and give our burdens to God through prayer like Jesus did (Phil 2:8; Heb 5:7-9; Mark 14:32-36), so that the peace and rest of God can guard us in the heavens state of serenity in our soul (Phil 4:6-7). Jesus Himself is the ultimate example of how He trusted God to solve all his problems by giving Him all of his earthly burdens through prayer. Trusting God by giving to Him all our problems in our daily life will help us experience rest in our soul which is truly a sitting position.


God’s-rest in creation and redemption

God created the whole creations in six days. On the seventh day He rested. Man was created on the sixth day. So what was man’s involvement in the act of creation? The answer is nothing. To man the first day to experience life was the seventh day of God’s rest. In other words, God wanted man to experience the rest of God first in his earthly life and then live life to full the other six days with the same attitude of this blessed rest. God’s seventh day was, in fact, Adams first. God works before he rests, while it is God’s will for man to first enter God’s rest, and then to work. God’s work always ends in man’s rest. Even in God’s work of redemption through Jesus Christ for all humanity (2 Cor 5:19), the moment Jesus Christ said “It is finished!” (John 19:30) the spiritual rest of God had already come to all the heavenly new creation who have believed in Jesus Christ with in this earthly creation (2 Cor 5:17). This is what the writer of the book of Hebrews said, [According to the foreknowledge of God]…the works of [redemption through Jesus Christ] were finished from the foundation of the world [i.e. even when Satan and his angels rebelled against God to form their own separate kingdom on earth before man was created (Rev 12:3-4)].” (Heb 4:3).

In walking or standing we burn up a great deal of energy, but when we are seated we relax at once, because the strain no longer falls upon our muscles and nerves but upon something outside of ourselves. Normally we sit on a chair and lean on it, the chair takes the whole load of the weight of our body. We do not support the chair in any way to hold our weight, but we safely trust the chair to support us. In the same way when we are seated with Christ, we do not try to work along with the work of Christ on the Cross in order to save ourselves from falling down out of God’s favor and the blessing that Christ has achieved for us. We just lean on the finished work of Christ and safely trust in it completely to save ourselves from the sin nature within us and true to His promise He will keep us from stumbling (Rom 7:23-25; Jude 24). We need to relax ourselves by sitting and identifying ourselves with the finished work of the Cross and believe it as our ultimate chair of righteousness in which we are seated with all its authority and power (2 Cor 5:21; Matt 3:15; Rom 4:5-6). Say out loudly with confidence, ‘I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus’ (2 Cor 5:21). In other words, sitting is like trusting God’s chair in the heavenly places and sitting backwards depending on God’s righteousness to hold us all through our life’s journey on earth and then say to God, ‘God I cannot save myself from hellfire because of my sin nature within me, but I trust your Son’s righteousness which has been declared as my righteousness to sit and relax comfortably for getting in to heaven and to exercise your authority and power in this earth freely. Thank you for doing it for me.’ This is the real Christian who has learned to SIT. If we ask ourselves finally, ‘Who does the Bible say will enter this rest?’ The Bible says, “…we who have believed [in the finished work of the Cross] do enter that rest…” (Heb 4:3) and also the Bible exhorts us to “…be diligent to enter that rest…” (Heb 4:11). The good news of the finished works of Jesus Christ through His birth, death and resurrection which is the word (John 1:1-4) should be mixed with faith to enter the rest which has been prepared for the people of God to use in their daily life (Heb 4:2, 9). They should cease from the wrong mentality that thinks that God is pleased only when we work for Him. In fact we cannot work for God, only He can work for us and in us to fulfill His preplanned purposes. Praise the Lord! Our Christian life begins with the discovery of what God has provided “according to the riches of His grace,” which was “freely bestowed on us in the Beloved [Jesus Christ]” (Eph 1:6, 7). Those people who obey the good news of God’s finished work, they must be able to enter in to that rest easily (Heb 4:6).


Rest in His mercies

In the parable of the Lost Son in Luke 15:11-32, the younger son wasted all his possessions that he received from his father by journeying in to the far country of the world. His life ended up in a mess, when He had nothing but a severe famine in the land. He was in constant need of food to survive. When he went and joined himself to a citizen of that far country, penniless and in tatters, he sent him in to his fields to feed swine. In his hunger to survive he longed to eat the pig’s food, but he was denied to eat even that pigs pods. Here we see that the Lost Son was actually operating in his sinful nature which longs to fulfill its own desire apart from God (Rom 7:17-21, 23-24). We too in the natural apart from God are like the lost son. Now and then we sin and lose the precious possession of joy, peace and righteousness of the Heavenly Father’s possession because of the fallen state of our sin-sick souls (John 14:1; Rom 14:17). Many times because of the influence of the fallen nature within us we do not even remember that we already have peace and rest which God has already given to us in Him [i.e. Christ’s nature within us]. We only need to choose to be of good cheer and celebrate what Christ has already done for us by overcoming the world system of governance that is purely influenced by this sin nature of Satan and his demonic cohorts (John 16:33). The Bible says that, “The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.” (Gal 5:17, NLT). In other words, what the Apostle Paul is expressing in this verse is this: We have this sinful nature of the Lost Son [i.e. old man (Eph 4:22)] within us constantly desiring to waste the heavenly possessions of our Heavenly Father with prodigal and wasteful living. But in the innermost part of our being where our spirit is, our Heavenly Father has deposited His Spirit’s nature within it which is called right mind man [i.e. new man (Eph 4:23-24)] with which we should renew ourselves constantly and live out the abundant life of our Heavenly Father on earth. The demonically influenced nature of our soul is constantly in direct opposition to the Holy Spirit influenced nature of our spirit. This is the reason we are not able to live freely and flawlessly with the right thinking perpetually, even though we are born again, tongue speaking, demon driving and Spirit filled believers.

This parable which has usually been called as ‘the parable of the prodigal son’ is mostly seen in the context of a sinner coming at once to the Heavenly Father’s home of His kingdom to be born again. But the real meaning is really different because the man without Jesus who is not born again in to the family of God cannot be called as the Son of the Heavenly Father at all (John 1:12; 3:3; 17:9). In this parable the far country is the world and its deceitfulness in which some believer’s are swayed in to, like the lost son in this parable and become desperate and hungry for reality. The world hates these lost godly people who are searching for reality and meaning of this life, who are impoverished spiritually, downtrodden by despair and depression. So only Jesus hours before His death on the Cross prayed this most beautiful prayer to our Heavenly Father, “ 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.” (John 17:14-19). This prayer shows that, as long as we live in the world it is the Father’s merciful nature that keeps us from the evil one who is Satan. We are sanctified and separated already in Christ Jesus who is our substitute, representing us individually before the Heavenly Father based on His perfect life, to shower God’s mercy constantly upon us. As long as we are in the world we are constantly sanctified by the truth of God’s word which renews our mind to remember the right things of God with the right mind. We are renewed and restored by the truth of what Jesus has done for us, which has also given us the rights to live as a part of God’s family as a son (Rom 8:16), and qualifies us to receive as much mercy and grace whenever we need from our Heavenly Father. But on our part we need to remember the merciful nature of our Heavenly Father like the Lost Son and approach boldly our Heavenly Father’s Throne in heaven to experience His goodness. This Lost Son by remembering his father’s unchanging merciful and benevolent character came to himself [i.e. his right mind] and said, “…‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’ 20 “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’”” (Luke 15:17-21). In times of spiritual crisis when we have sinned and as a result feel unworthy and condemned, we should boldly approach the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace in time of our need like the Lost Son (Heb 4:16). The Lost Son felt unworthy with sin-consciousness to approach the father and told him that he not only sinned in his sight but is surely unworthy to be called his son. This clearly shows that the Lost Son approached the father for mercy, already knowing that the father by his omnipresence and omniscience knew what he had done and have seen all his sinful doing [Note: the words “I have sinned…in your sight”]. But see how the father compassionately responded to his Son’s need by running towards him even while he was only trying to approach the Father’s home in heaven (Matt 6:9). In the same way when we sin and feel unworthy about our self, and then we start to think of approaching God’s throne, even while we start to think of approaching our Heavenly Father when we are long way off from heaven down in this earth, our Father in heaven sees us and feels intensely compassionate, He runs and falls in to our neck and kisses us. Our Heavenly Father sent Jesus in to the world representing Himself, to show His mercy and compassion towards us his sons who are tempted constantly and fall in to sinful things (John 14:9; Heb 2:17-18). In other words, Jesus Christ as the replica of our Heavenly Father is representing the Heavenly Father to us and is compassionately giving out the Father’s mercy to us as we approach Him every time after we sin and seek God’s mercy (Heb 2:17-18). This ‘compassionate heart of the father in the preceding parable who ran toward his sinful son who wronged him, fell on his neck and kissed him’ represents the one act of the compassionate heart of the Heavenly Father in sending His only begotten Son to die for us on the Cross (John 3:16).

The Lost Son rested in the merciful character of the father. As a result the father said, “It was right that we should make merry and be glad…” (Luke 15:32). And in these words Jesus has revealed of how in the sphere of redemption, our Heavenly Father’s heart rejoices every time we come to Him through Jesus Christ to receive His mercies. It is not the elder brother ceaseless toil that brought forth joy to the father’s heart, but the younger brother’s trust in the father’s merciful character that made the father do everything for him and celebrate it joyfully. When the prodigal son returned home, having wasted his material in uncontrolled living, the father did not rebuke for the waste that had been done, or even ask a word of inquiry regarding the wasted possession. He did not sorrow over all that was spent; he only rejoiced over the opportunity the son’s return afforded him for spending more. Why? Our Heavenly Father owns the whole universe and it is not at all a problem to give His mercy and grace to us who are His sons as many times as we need. God is so wealthy that His chief delight is to give. He is so very, very rich, it gives him true joy when we let Him give and give and give again to us. He longs that we will just let Him do and do and do, and it gives him immense satisfaction as we start to celebrate and rest in all His infinite possessions. If Jesus told Peter to forgive the brother who sins against him seven seventy times, how much more infinitely will our Heavenly Father forgive his sons who sin and come to Him again and again asking for His mercy and grace (Matt 18:21-22).

Do you think that the moment you cease trying to please God, your good behavior will cease? Do you think that resting in the merciful character of our Heavenly Father to forgive and give and give will be less satisfactory to Him than if you do some of it yourself with your rigid rules? It is only as we try to do it ourselves that we will put ourselves under the law, which will disqualify us to become the recipient of God’s mercy and grace (Rom 4:4; 11:6). Our best works are dead works and is hateful to God because it is ineffectual (Gal 3:10; Heb 6:1).

It is highly significant to see that both the sons were equally removed from the joys of their father’s house. But only the lost son because of believing in his father’s merciful and benevolent character to give was able to enter the rest and celebration of the father’s house. The younger son was all wrong, but he came home and he found rest, and this is where Christian life begins as the Bible says, “4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us… made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Eph 2:4, 6). The elder son even though was near to his father, he was always working to please him by mechanically doing his father’s work as a duty. He never was able to find the real rest and celebration of his father’s house because he clung on to his own good works which he did with his own ability. In fact, when the older brother heard that his younger brother has returned home and that the father is arranging a great feast and celebration for all because he has returned safe and sound, he was very angry and upset with the father’s merciful character of giving. He had an evil eye which cannot see the beauty of the father’s grace (Matt 20:15). It cannot see the brightness of the Heavenly Father’s generosity. It cannot see the unexpected blessing to others as a precious treasure. It is an eye that is blind to what is truly beautiful and bright and precious in the sight of our Heavenly Father who first “…desires [to show] mercy and not [just receive] sacrifice.'…” (Matt 9:13) and then “…delights in [showing] mercy” (Micah 7:18). It is a worldly eye that hates seeing other’s receive undeserved favor of His grace. It sees money and material reward as more to be desired than a beautiful display of free, gracious, Father-like generosity. That is why the older son said to his father angrily and ironically, “29 …‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. 30 But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’” (Luke 15:29-30).

As long as we live our life on this earth, if we try to please God through our works, we will never be able to experience the joy, peace, righteousness and rest of the Heavenly Father’s house in this earth like this older son. But if we will accept our inability and unworthiness to please the Father because of our indwelling sinful nature like the lost son and accept his forgiveness, mercy and grace by approaching the ‘throne of grace’ every time we fall down because of our sinful nature, we will be able to enter in to God’s celebration and rest that he freely gives to us. Those sons who try to work and please God will not only lose the experience of God’s joy of celebration and rest in this earth, but will also lose their reward in heaven for eternity. All the rewards would have actually belonged to them if they would have only believed, but because of their dead works of worthlessness to please God, all their works will be burnt by fire yet they themselves will be saved (1 Cor 3:11-15; 2Cor 5:10). Stop ‘giving’ your works to God and see what kind of giver God is (Ps 34:8). Stop ‘doing’ your works for God and see what kind of worker God is.

Christianity starts with the celebration rest of coming in to God’s kingdom by receiving the Heavenly Father’s mercy. The moment we receive the Father’s mercy by believing Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior (John 3:3), immediately the Heavenly Father will command His servants the angels (Ps 103:20) saying, “‘Bring out the best robe [of righteousness (Is 61:10)] and put it on him [whom? We who are His lost sons], and put a ring [of authority (Esther 8:2, 8, 10; Dan 6:17; Hag 2:23; Luke 10:19)] on his hand and sandals [of protection (Deut 29:5; Eph 6:15)] on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us [i.e. God, angels and the whole of heaven (Luke 15:7, 10)] eat and be merry; 24 for this my son was dead [and separated from My mercy and love because of unbelief] and is alive again [through his faith in My merciful character to forgive and receive him]; he was lost [because of selfishness] and is found [because of my love for him].’ And they began to be merry.”(Luke 15:22-24). The moment we enter in to God’s kingdom from the Satan influenced worldly kingdom of darkness (Col 1:13; Rev 12:9; Matt 4:8-9; Eph 5:8; 6:12), we can choose to celebrate and celebrate for eternity and be merry all the time, this is the reason Apostle Paul said in Phil 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” and also 1 Thess 5:16, 18, “16 Rejoice always…18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Christianity starts with an invitation to enter the singing, music and dance celebration of God the Father, as Jesus Himself said in Matt 22:2-4 [The Message], “…"God's kingdom," … "is like a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son. He sent out servants to call in all the invited guests. …"He [then again] sent out …servants, instructing them to tell the guests, 'Look, everything is on the table, the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the feast!' (Luke 15:25; Eph 5:17-20). The moment you have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have already started to gorge in the celebration feast of the Heavenly Father God that will continue for eternity. Christianity not only starts with restful celebration of the Heavenly Father’s merciful character, but it also continues with the celebration-rest of God’s heavenly joyfulness which only those who diligently believe will enter in and enjoy like the lost son. As we are all sinners who sin till we die because of our indwelling sin nature within us (1 John 1:8; 1 Tim 1:15), we constantly need our Savior Jesus Christ who is compassionate and merciful to progressively shower God’s mercy and grace in time of our need (Heb 4:14-16; 1 John 1:9; 10:23). Some of you may be feeling a little uncomfortable with the above statement that has been made here. Because in many Churches right from our Sunday school time we have been taught to behave rightly all the time and be holy in this world. We have been told that anything that we do apart from this shows that we are not saved or may lose our salvation. This is not the real gospel of grace. This is work based religion. Think about it, Jesus said, “...I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother 'idiot!' and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell 'stupid!' at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire." (Matt 5:22, The Message) and "...anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt5:28, NLT). According to this standard that Jesus had set for our works to be perfect before God, one wrong thought or one wrong word is enough to throw us away eternally in to hell fire by God’s perfect judgment. Along this line of thought Apostle James wrote that if a person keeps all the law but fails in one, he is guilty of breaking all (James 2:10). In other words no one is qualified enough to be called as righteous man before God based on their own works. The Bible also confirms this fact by saying, “For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.” (Eccl 7:20). According to this preceding verse, a man may be a believer or an unbeliever but he sins as long as he dies. Many believers do not like to accept this fact of inconvenient truth because it make them think that they may be seen in a bad light by others or even some people fear that they might miss heaven because of such imperfection. Others fear that accepting such thing will make them to sin fearlessly and still others fear that God will be grieved when we say that we sin until we die in some way or the other. Still some others want to adhere to their own strict rule book which will say some sins as knowing sins and other sins as unknowing sins. God’s set standard for qualification based on works is absolute righteousness. In other words, if a person wants to boast himself as a righteous person he must live absolutely sinless all his life, even if he commits a single sin once in his whole life he will be declared wicked by God and deserves to go only to hell. Such is the absolute perfection of God’s nature of justice. Does God require such perfection from us who do nothing but ungodly things all the time with evil nature acting constantly in us to destroy our very existence in this earth (Rom 7:14-15; 3:10-20; 1 Peter 2:11)? But the truth of God is just the opposite. If God wanted us to perform ourselves and self-justify ourselves by our own works, he would have sent a motivational speaker to motivate us to perform better works than before and not a Savior to save us from hell fire (Rom 5:6-8). But take heart, Apostle John identified our inability to please God all the time because of our indwelling sin nature (Rom 7:19) and said, “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1). Now and then we sin and try to justify ourselves saying this is just a small sin or else comparing ourselves with others we say, ‘I am not sinning like that brother or sister who is overtaken by trespasses (Gal 6:1).’ We reach the highest point of such self-righteousness and we start to think that God is indebted to us because we have worked so hard to please Him. Some people even become angry against God with such wrong and bad attitudes, when they see a person who does not have any special spiritual qualification get equally and even tremendously more blessed than themselves (Matt 20:1-16). These people, who try to earn their blessing, forget that God is the greatest giver who cannot help himself but give. So only, as the Bible says God gives his blessing of rain and sun rise every day [i.e. physical and financial blessing] on the good and on the evil person, on the just and on the unjust person without partiality (Matt 5:45). This is the true benevolent and merciful character of our heavenly Father (Matt 5:48). Religious attitude always makes our eyes to get blurred of the real image of our Heavenly Father. We don’t do God a favor, by being involved in any spiritual activities. All the prayer that we make, the Scriptures that we read day by day and meditate, the right choices that we make does not make God better as though God is in need of our constant attention and love, it makes us better and successful to fulfill the best custom designed destiny which God has prepared for us because He is love (Joshua 1:8-9; Jer 29:11; 1 John 4:8). Even we love God because he has already loved us through His only begotten Son Jesus. We are not the initiators, we just are receiver’s who give out what we have already received (1 John 4:9-10). We are not the illuminating source, but we are just reflectors of God’s love (1 John 4:7-8, 11). Anyone who thinks that he deserves to be blessed is already blind to see the spiritual reality of heaven. A spiritually blind man cannot approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and grace in time of his need when demonic condemnation and fear hits him right on his head, because of his spiritual blindness he will not be able to locate the exact place of God’s throne in his innermost being of his spirit-man to connect to God. He needs God to heal his blindness before he can see the throne of grace to receive mercy and grace. He needs a supernatural miracle to be cured from this spiritual blindness caused by religious spirit.

All these different types of bad attitudes and thoughts that we have seen above are self-justifying demonic thoughts of Satan which will keep us from receiving God’s mercy and grace like the older son who was very judgmental, prejudiced and biased in the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:25-32). If we allow such attitude to influence us knowingly or unknowingly, God will see us as a proud person whose only desire is to please our own self, in our own way, with our own strength rather than God. Such pride will be resisted by God Himself (James 4:6). God only justifies those who come to him humbly seeking to receive His mercy and grace (James 4:6-10; 1 Peter 5:5). [Note: Even though grace and mercy looks the same, it is different. Mercy is something that God does not give us what we rightfully deserve. Ex: hell, death, torment. Grace is something that God gives us what we do not deserve. Ex: heaven, joy, righteousness, earthly blessings.] Only as we know our unworthiness as sinners to receive God’s grace, only then we will be able to align ourselves humbly before God’s ‘throne of grace’ as His son with God’s holy boldness to receive as much grace as we need (Heb 4:16; 10:19). Right alignment positions us to receive the right quantity of God’s resources, thereby making us believe His merciful unchanging character of mercy which will make God to impute us with His abundant gift of grace which reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, as a saint of the Most High God (Rom 5:17; 4:5-8; Eph 1:1; Rom 5:21). When you are distressed, learn to rest in God’s mercies by throwing yourself in to the hands of God like David, who was declared as the man after God’s own heart by God Himself because of this unique revelation of God’s mercy that he applied in His daily life (2 Sam 24:14; Acts 13:22; Ps 90:14; 94:18; 100:5; 109:21, 26).


Rest in His-Story

Every new spiritual experience begins with an acceptance by faith of what God has done for us. In other words, greater levels of spiritual experiences are reached when we learn to skillfully sit and relax with a new level of comfort. We cannot earn spiritual experiences and growth. From the beginning to end God has divinely determined in each stage of our Christian life to sit and relax more and more in the finished work of Christ. As time goes by we skillfully learn to sit confidently and easily in the finished work of Christ. This is true maturity.

What do we do to receive forgiveness of all our sins? Nothing! We just believe that God the Father has placed all our past, present and future sins on Jesus and “made him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21) and suffer its consequence of separation from God ultimately on the Cross (Mark 15:33-34; Is 54:7-8; Galatians 3:13). We believe that Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried as a penalty paid to God for all our past, present and future sins; the third day He arose again from the dead as a sign of our justification (Col 3:13; Rom 4:25). We have been guaranteed and declared by God to be justified which means ‘Just as if we have never sinned’. Jesus stands alive as a witness to this reality. We have only believed this fact of what Jesus has done for us as a substitute and as a result we enjoy all the goodness of God as a result of believing this fact. This is the reason Apostle Paul boldly declared that we are no more under the control and penalty of our sins because of our faith in believing Christ is risen (1 Cor 15:17, 14). We do not do anything to receive God’s goodness except to believe what he has done for us.

Some people can agree with the fact that we do not do anything to receive God’s forgiveness, but they are not sure about receiving God’s power to be a witness. The words, “the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:39), “….I send the Promise of My Father upon you; …tarry … until you are endued with power from on high.”(Luke 24:49), “….the Promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4), “…baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5), “…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:8) are all synonymous and got fulfilled on the day of Pentecost as it is written when “…they were all [i.e. 120 disciples (Acts 1:15)] filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:4). Jesus instructed the Apostles initially to wait until the day of Pentecost to be filled with the Spirit, because Father God had already personally set the day of Pentecost as the opening ceremony of the New Covenant outpouring of His Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-8). From that day of Pentecost onwards nobody tarried or waited to receive the Holy Spirit’s Baptism. Apostle Peter confirmed this fact in his revolutionary apostolic sermon on the day of Pentecost saying, “32 This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. 33 Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.” (Acts 2:32-33). In other words Apostle Peter was saying that the evidence that Jesus is alive in a exalted state over the entire universe at the right hand of the Father and have already received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit is now verified as true because you now see [What did they see? He was pointing to themselves inebriated under the influence of the wine of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:13, 15-18)] us operate under the anointing and hear [What did they hear? The people heard them speak in their own tongues which were unknown tongues to most of the 120 disciples because mostly they were Galileans (Acts 2:4, 6-8, 11-12)] us speak in tongues. Just after having explained to the multitude of people what Jesus is presently doing, Peter the Apostle promised to all the people that if they too will receive the forgiveness of sins, they will become eligible to “receive the gift of the Holy Spirit [i.e. same infilling of the Holy Spirit as themselves]” (Acts 2:38-39) because he said that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which is the promise [of the Father (Acts 1:4; 2:33, 39)] is to them and their children and to all the believers of the New Testament dispensation. In fact many wrongly believe that we need to wait upon the Lord to receive the Baptism of His Spirit and receive the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:7, 11, 31; 14:1). There is not a single word in the Bible to prove that we need to wait on God to receive the baptism of the Spirit, instead from the time of the proclamation of John the Baptist to the present day, many are getting baptized who are rightly believing the word of God which promises that the very purpose of Jesus coming to the earth is to freely Baptize people who will only dare to believe Him as the first century believers believed God at His word (Matt 3:11; Acts 1:4-5). Wrong understanding or lack of knowledge will rob you of receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and all other spiritual gifts (Acts 19:2-6). So only Apostle Paul clearly taught to the zealous but not so knowledgeable Corinthian Church, not to be ignorant of spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:1).

We see again and again after the day of Pentecost the Apostles laying hands on as many believers who received Jesus and imparting the gift of the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ to them (Acts 8:14-17; 19:6-7). The New Testament Apostolic pattern for every believer to be filled by the Spirit, is with the evidence of speaking in tongues and prophesying as the Spirit gives them utterance (Acts 2:4; 8:14-17; 10:44-48; 11:15-18). What did the apostles do to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues? Is it because they have tarried and waited for the Holy Spirit, they finally received this wonderful gift? Apostle Peter himself gave an answer to this question when he saw the gift of the Holy Spirit given to the non-Jewish people in the house of Cornelius a Roman officer even without the laying of his own hands, he said “…God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:17). This verse clearly shows that the apostles and the 120 disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit because they all believed. Do we need to work or tarry in prayer to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? Biblically and apostolically we need not. We can believe and receive this gift by faith anytime we want (Gal 3:2-5; Mark 16:17). Laying hands to impart the gift of the Spirit is an act of faith; the apostles practiced it to stir people’s faith to receive (Acts 19:2-7; Mark 11:24). It is not that this is the only way to receive the gift of the Spirit, you can personally receive the gift of the Holy Spirit by believing in the promise of God as you would receive salvation from the Lord by believing what He has done for you personally (Mark 16:17; Eph 2:8). Both salvation and the gift of the infilling of the Holy Spirit are a gift of God. A gift is something that is given freely by someone. We do not earn it, but we only receive it.

Are you ready? You are asking me for what, to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and speak with new tongues! If you have already received it, use it daily to communicate supernaturally to the Lord in your personal prayer. If you not yet received, it is very easy if only you will believe that it is the will of God for you to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in new tongues and prophesying. As the Bible says, we can easily receive “the promise of the Spirit through faith.” (Gal 3:14).

Pray with me to receive it now, ‘Lord Jesus, I believe that it is your will for me to be baptized with the Holy Spirit with the accompanying sign of the tongues of fire as its evidence (Matt 3:11; 2:3-4; Mark 16:17), just as your 120 disciples received your gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and all the first century believers received after them. By faith I receive it as you are now pouring out your Spirit upon me with the accompanying power to be a witness to the work that you are doing in me and through me (Acts 1:8). Thank you Lord now, for fulfilling your promise in my life. Amen and Amen.’

Now don’t reason with your mind, just switch off your mind and believe that you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Bible says (Mark 11:24). If you feel the utterance of the Holy Spirit, even a single word coming from you spirit, start to speak it by faith. The fact is God never fails to do His promise when you connect to Him by faith. Don’t worry, as Jesus has said when you ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit, our Heavenly Father will not give any idolatrous demonic spirits like stone, serpent and scorpion (Luke 11:11-12; 10:19-20). He will surely give you more of the Holy Spirit which is the key which opens the flood gates of the unlimited ‘Baptismal measure’ of the Spirit. Receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit is like getting positioned or licensed to receive unlimited measure of the Holy Spirit. If you have not received the ‘Baptism of the Spirit’ the first time you have asked God, it does not mean that it is not real. To God the most important possession that He gives to you next only to His only Begotten Son Jesus who was given 2000 years ago is the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:32; Luke 11:13; Matt 12:31-32), so only in the same context of asking for gift of the Holy Spirit, in the preceding verses in Luke 11:9-10 Jesus admonished everyone who asks for the Spirit to ask God with persistence saying, “9 So I say to you, Ask and keep on asking and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking and you shall find; knock and keep on knocking and the door shall be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks and keeps on asking receives; and he who seeks and keeps on seeking finds; and to him who knocks and keeps on knocking, the door shall be opened.” (Amp).

Another thing that may be hindering you to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in new tongues may be logical skepticism, lack of faith, doubt and lack of knowledge of the word of God. Make sure, even if you have not received the first time you have asked for the gift of the Spirit, ask God with persistence and try to connect to God by faith, and you will get it because God will be pleased to give you the gift of the Holy Spirit because of your faith and persistence (James 1:5-8; Matt 15:28; Heb 11:6). Once you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, you can again and again get filled with the Spirit of God through communion with the Holy Spirit, by thanking God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, speaking or singing psalms to another in a Church setting and personally singing spiritual songs to the Lord moved by the Spirit (Eph 5:17-21; 2 Cor 13:14). All the above things are not works but a route through which you will be able to have more and more faith to get filled with the Spirit until you feel intoxicated by the Spirit continuously, which Apostle Paul compared to drinking wine in the natural (Rom 10:17; Eph 5:18). Some people mix the measure of the Holy Spirit that a believer receives during ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ to sealing of the Spirit that happens when one is born again (2 Cor 1:22). The Spirit given to live in us when we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is the seal of evidence to assure us that we are born again (Rom 8:9; 2 Cor 1:22). It is unbiblical to say that both the sealing of the Spirit and the gift of the Holy Spirit which is also called as the baptism of the Holy Spirit are all the same. My question to you is, if the Salvation measure and Baptismal measure of the Spirit are the same, why did the apostles who got born again by Jesus breathing on them through which they received the Holy Spirit sealing after His resurrection (John 20:22) should again be instructed by the Lord to wait for “the Promise of the Father” before His ascension to heaven (Acts 1:4-9) which only got culminated on the day of Pentecost. This clearly shows that receiving the Salvation measure of the Spirit which can be termed as ‘Salvation’s limited fountain measure’ of the Spirit (John 4:14) is not the same as the ‘Baptismal unlimited river measure’ of the Spirit (John 7:38-39). Our spirit man is described in the two previous verses as the innermost being and heart. When we receive salvation, from our spirit man the Holy Spirit’s guidance, power, presence and revelation will ooze out as like in a fountain. When we receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, from our spirit man the Holy Spirit’s guidance, power, presence and revelation will flow out as like in a river.

All believers are entitled to, and should ardently expect and earnestly seek, the promise of the Father, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, according to the command of Jesus Christ. With this comes the endowment of power for life and service, the bestowment of gifts and their uses in the work of the ministry. This experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth but can occur at the same moment a person is reborn (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-8; 2:38-39; 10:44-46; 11:14-16; 15:7-9; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31). As a believer by faith rests in the truth of the word of God without striving to receive all of the above, God will bestow His entire gifts joyfully each time according to each one’s measure of faith which is according to the measure of Christ’s gift (Rom 12:3, 6; Eph 4:7). This is true rest, when we believers ask and receive all good things from our Heavenly Father who is the source in Jesus name by resting in the finished work of Jesus, so that our joy may be full and overflowing to the brim (John 16:24; James 1:17).

The Bottom-line question is, what is the basis for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? It is based on the exaltation of Jesus (Acts 2:33). Because Jesus died on the Cross, my sins were forgiven (Col 2:13-14); because He is exalted to the throne, I am endued with power from on high (Luke 24:49). I do not deserve to receive God’s forgiveness; neither do I deserve to receive the gift of the Spirit. Both are received not on walking but by sitting down, not by doing but by resting in the Lord. As much as salvation is a gift from God, so is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. A gift is something that is not worked for, but is gladly received. We receive both salvation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit purely by faith.

The Bible says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be ruled over effectively by causing the old man to be in a powerless state, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” (Rom 6:6, Paraphrased). This is not an exhortation to struggle. It says that His-story of death for our sins is our spiritual past and our achievement over sinful nature. That is history; our history, written in Christ before we were born. Do you believe that? It is true and is the truth! Our crucifixion with Christ is our glorious historic fact. Our deliverance from sin is not based on what we can do or even what God is going to do for us, but is based on believing and resting in what God has already done for us in Christ Jesus. The more the revelation of His-story dawns upon us and the more we will rest back upon it. The secret to deliverance from sin is not to do something but to rest on what God has done for us in Christ. This is the true secret to holy life. Apostle Paul expounded this fact by saying, “10For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him]. 11Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 6:10-11, Amp). In other words because your relationship to lawless, sinful, overpowering satanic nature which strongly influences your mind, will and emotion has been severed by the death of Jesus on your behalf, you can choose to have unbroken communion with God without any sin consciousness and fellowship with Him. Satan and his cohorts do not have any right to afflict and oppress you; he is in a position like a stranger who can try to come in to your house to claim his rights over your property unlawfully by convincing you. Get mad at him and command him out of your house which is your body and the temple of God (John 2:16-22; 2 Cor 6:16). Do not allow him and if he tries again to oppress you with his lies, command him in Jesus Name. If he resists your command the second time, angels may be sent by God on assignment to oppose the lawless demonic spirit that is not obeying the command of the king of kings, so that it will be dislodged and punished (Matt 18:18; Heb 1:14; Ps 91:11-13; 34:7; 35:5-6). Satan and his demons will run away immediately because you are the property of Jesus as he has paid His life as a price to buy you (1 Cor 6:20). Satan and his evil minions cannot stand against Jesus because He is now sitting as the owner of the whole universe at the right hand of God (Matt 28:18; Phil 2:9-11). You can enjoy God as much as you desire and with a grateful heart you can choose to let Him enjoy you as much as you want (Rom 12:1). What a privilege! Praise the Lord!

This ‘rest in His-story’ theme perfectly fits the song format written by none other than one the most prolific song writer of the Christian era, Fanny Crosby. Frances Jane Crosby (March 24, 1820 – February 12, 1915) usually known as Fanny Crosby, was an American lyricist best known for her Protestant Christian hymns. A lifelong Methodist, she was one of the most prolific hymnists in history, writing over 8,000 despite becoming blind shortly after birth. Also known for her preaching and speaking, during her lifetime Fanny Crosby was one of the best known women in the United States.

Crosby was visiting her friend Phoebe Knapp as the Knapp home was having a large pipe organ installed. The organ was incomplete so, using the piano, Mrs. Knapp played a new melody she had just composed called "Assurance". "What do you think the tune says?" asked Knapp.

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine", answered Fanny Crosby.

Thus moved by the Spirit this song was born. Every time Satan comes to accuse you and condemn you, start to sing the refrain of the song ‘Blessed assurance…’

This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;

this is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long.

Never forget to remember that His-story is your spiritual history, so keep praising God for such a colossal history of yours that is immutable and powerful to make you live successfully in the present and awesomely in the future.



Rest Your-self in Him

In all the epistles that Apostle Paul wrote by the personal revelation that God gave him (Galatians 1:11-12), he emphasized that God has already achieved all that we need to do in Christ Jesus. Jesus worked by God’s mighty power and fulfilled all that was needed by God to finally “sit down” at His right hand of power. In fact God the Father worked through His only Begotten Son the last Adam Jesus Christ until He regained the lost position of authority on earth by giving life to the dead spirit of man, this position of authority is nothing but the God-life to live as His sons on earth, which the first Adam lost in the garden of Eden by his disobedience to God’s command (1 Cor 15:45; Gen 2:15-17). Jesus confirmed this fact when questioned by the Jews for healing on Sabbath Jesus said, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” (John 5:17). In other words Jesus who started His work of redemption with His Baptism worked till He Himself said that it is all finished and the price to God was paid in full (John 19:30). Jesus started his divine work of redemption not on the Cross, but on the day He took Baptism from John in the river of Jordan. Cross was the fulfillment of redemption. But the Baptism of Jesus is the starting point of the work of redemption. This is the reason by God’s revelation Apostle Paul tied the identity of our self with Him not first on the Cross but in His Baptism by saying, “Buried with him [whom? Christ] in [His] baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” (Col 2:12, KJV). The key word is “buried with Him in baptism”. When you are baptized, you are confessing your identification of yourself to be buried with Christ, not apart from Him. In other words your old self was buried on the river of Jordan which means ‘the river of death’ when Jesus took His Baptism from John. This is the reason Jesus said to John the Baptist when he was unwilling to baptize Jesus because of His perfect purity of life, ““Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him.” (Matt 3:15). According to this verse the baptism that Jesus took fulfilled all our righteousness once forever. This shows that Jesus got baptized not for Himself but for us. In taking the baptism of John Jesus humbled himself and stooped low to the level of sinful humanity and accepted the “wages of sin [which] is death.” (Rom 6:23).

He symbolically immersed himself in to the death of the cross on that day of His baptism on the river of Jordan. This is the reason Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 6:4, “Therefore we were buried with Him through [His] baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” In other words Paul is telling that because we have identified our old self to be buried with Jesus in His baptism on the river of Jordan we can now appropriate the power of God to live a glorious new life like Jesus lived after he came out of the water with the ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ upon Him to overcome all evil and temptations by the Spirit of the Lord (Matt 3:16-17). Jesus did a divine exchange in His baptism by taking our sinfulness and fulfilled all our righteousness based on His perfect sinless life which was the reason for which He came to this earth. This was confirmed by God the Father from heaven who acknowledged this by saying, “… This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17). In other words it is like God telling to us directly that we have become the righteousness of God and that we are pleasing to Him based on what Jesus has done for us (2 Cor 5:21). At the point of time when Jesus took baptism from John, God the Father made “Him who knew no sin to be sin for us (2 Cor 5:21) by causing all our iniquities [i.e. sin nature] to land on Him (Isaiah 53:6). Think about it, if Jesus was not laid with all our iniquities Satan would not have been able to tempt Jesus in the wilderness because of His sinless nature. This is the reason the moment He took the baptism from John “the Spirit drove Him in to wilderness” (Mark 1:12) before Satan could come to Him. He was driven as one who is more than a conqueror to face Satan with the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon Him. Because we are in Him, the Bible says that we are more than a conqueror because of the anointing that in upon us through Jesus (Rom 8:37; 1 John 4:4). The bottom line is, identify yourself with Jesus in His baptism to victoriously appropriate and live in His righteousness everyday of your life. We are commanded by Paul not to ‘sit down’ but to see ourselves as “seated” in Christ’s righteousness and power. Paul prayed for our hearts to get enlightened with this truth of resting ourselves in Him (1:18). We really need the enlightenment from God to grasp this glorious truth.

We were not born with Christ, but we were baptized with Him where a divine exchange of our old self for the new man of His divine nature happened. Our union with Christ began at His baptism in the river Jordan, where Jesus was baptized with the baptism of suffering for our sins unto death (Matt 20:22; Mark 10:38; Luke 12:50). Jesus answered by saying to the advanced booking that James and John’s mother wanted to do in order to occupy the nearest possible place to the throne of Jesus in the millennial kingdom, “You do not realize what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? They answered, we are able.” (Matt 20:22, Amp). From this verse we can understand two important truths of the work of redemption, to the first question that Jesus asked was fulfilled in His life when Jesus drank the suffering of the Cross which Jesus himself described in the prayer of the garden of Gethsemane where He prayed to the Father, “….O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” (Matt 26:39). Cup in the Bible has mostly been used as a symbol of God’s fury and wrath (Isa 51:22; Jer 25:15; Ps 75:8). God’s fury and wrath of judgment for our sins was upon Jesus on that Cross for three hours when God the Father forsook His own only begotten Son for our sins (Matt 27:45-46; Is 54:7-8). The second question that He asked, pointed to His baptism that He took symbolically from John the Baptist which represented His death, burial and resurrection which at that point of time would be fulfilled in the future (Rom 6:1-6). In other words the symbolic ritual of baptism which represents death to sin and living new life toward God was fulfilled by Jesus literally on the Cross and then through His resurrection by the power of God. In fact, Jesus took the mission of the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins when He was baptized by John on the river of Jordan. When Jesus took baptism, God included us in Him there. We were ‘with Him’ because we were ‘in Him’. This is the reason which Jesus himself gave to John the Baptist for taking baptism from him by saying, “…“Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him.” (Matt 3:15). In other words Jesus was saying to John, ‘This one time allow me to take baptism from you, in doing so we are going to fulfill every person’s righteousness that God demands, because in heaven’s document the divine exchange and substitution for every believer will right now take place, where all My righteousness will be put in to their account and all their sins will be literally put upon me to be carried to the Cross where payment for sins will be paid in full.’ (John 1:29; Matt 8:16-17; John 19:30).

You may ask me, how do I know for sure that I am “in Christ”? You can be sure because the Bible affirms that God has put you there. The Bible says, “He who establishes ... you in Christ ... is God" (2 Cor 1:21) and “by ... [God's] doing you are in Christ Jesus..." (1 Cor 1:30, NASB). This “in Christ” position is something accomplished by God in His sovereign wisdom so that it can be seen, believed, accepted, experienced and rejoiced by us. For example if you are a citizen of a nation and say an enemy from another nation is coming to attack you and your family individually. Knowing this you are informing the government and the higher authorities of the possible attack that the enemy has planned. Suddenly the Para-military arrives, attacks the enemy and thwarts the whole episode. Say unfortunately a soldier dies in the combat. What will you say of the victory? Will you say I won or we won identifying yourself with all the Para-troopers because they identified themselves for your cause and fought for you and even died for you? In the same way God has identified you as the citizen of His government and one of His sons who has been in endangered condition because of your enemies [i.e. Satan and his demons] plan to kill, steal and destroy you. God then decided to send His only begotten Son Jesus who is the captain of the heavenly army of Para-troopers to rescue you from death. On the heat of the battle the captain realized that there is no other way to rescue you except by dying for you in order to rescue you from imminent death and he chose to die (Matt 26:42). Will you identify His death and victory as yours and praise God for His sovereign plan by which he has rescued you. Even though you didn’t die, it is like you dying along with Him and thus declared victorious because the enemy has been destroyed by that one valiant act of selflessness! You are declared victorious because He represented you! It is up to you to celebrate and identify with Him for what He has done for you. O what a grace! Praise the Lord!

Through the Baptismal identification of ourselves with Christ in His baptism we automatically identify ourselves through the divine exchange of His death and ascension, we believe that when “…He died to sin once for all” (Rom 6:10), “we … [too] died to sin” (Rom 6:2). When “…He was buried” (1 Cor 15:4), “we were buried with Him [too]” (Rom 6:4). When God “…raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,” (Eph 1:20), we too were “…raised us up together, and [God] made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). When He was made the “…Lord of both the dead and the living” (Rom 14:9), we too were made Lords with Him on earth, so only Jesus is called as “Lord of Lords” in the Book of Revelation (Rev 17:14; 19:16). Apostle Paul assures us that “When we were spiritually dead because of our sins and because we were not free from the power of our sinful self, God made us alive with Christ, and he forgave all our sins.” (Col 2:13, NCV). If we ask ourselves when this has actually happened? It happened nearly two thousand years ago when our Jesus Lord Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem and rose again on the third day after this event. Two thousand years ago itself we were factually forgiven of our past, present and future sins and were made alive with Christ to live forever. By the factual experience of Christ, I was destined two thousand years ago itself to live in God’s power and authority in the now realm. I might not have been physically present at that time but I am part of it because of the legacy of the will written at that time by my Heavenly Father in Heaven. For example it is like your great grandfather defeated all his enemies and brought a huge royal estate under his control and then writing a will saying ‘All this power and authority belongs to my great-grandson.’ Say that the palace was still standing there in your time with all the servants ready to accept the order and execute it in the natural. But because of the lack of knowledge of the document you do not have the confidence to command the servants until one fine day you find your great-grandfathers will and suddenly a revelation of your power and authority comes to you. Then as you realize it and act on it, immediately the servants respond to your command. Even though you were not physically present when your great-grandfather wrote the will, yet it had the power to accommodate you in it. In the same way we too have been in reality accommodated in the will of our Heavenly Father which had been fulfilled in the work of Christ, which is God’s will to us notifying of our power and authority. Even during the time the great-grandfather lived, he does have the rights to see the yet to be born great-grandson in his mind with all royal power and authority, because according to him it already belongs to his great-grandson by the will that is written. God by his omniscience is seeing us as already having everything ‘with Him’. All that we now have is ‘with Christ’. This is the reality in our Christian lives too. The moment a revelation of our power and authority comes to us; we will be quickened and made alive to act in reality of what actually belongs to us.


Sit Comfortably and Relax Until Your Enemies Are Completely Destroyed

Most Christians make the mistake of trying to walk in order to be able to sit, but this is a reversal of the true order. Our natural reasons say if I do not walk how will I ever be able to reach my spiritual goal? If I do not spend my effort how can I attain greatness in my personal life? How can I get somewhere that God want me to if I do not start to move? But Christianity is an enigmatic endeavor. This is the reason in Christianity we are told just to keep “holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.” (1 Tim 3:9). Our faith is just like the arm-rest handle in the throne. According to the instruction keep holding on to the arm-rest handle of faith and relax comfortably in all the blessings with which God has already “… blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph 1:3). This is what Jesus is doing now in heaven. We too are to do the same thing on earth because we are seated with Him and like Him.

After Jesus got resurrected God the Father invited Jesus and conferred a “…the name which is above every name “(Phil 2:9) said to Him, “… “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool"?” (Heb 1:13). Jesus from that time onwards has been “…waiting till His enemies are made His footstool.” (Heb 10:13). You may ask what He is accomplishing sitting over there. What does this mean? Firstly, Jesus is sitting, waiting for His enemies [i.e. Satan and his demonically influenced world system of governance] to be made His footstool and relaxing in the promises of God. Secondly, the Bible says Jesus, “… is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” (Rom 8:34, NIV). Why He is interceding for us? Because God has promised that He “… will crush Satan under … [our] feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you [all]. Amen.” (Rom 16:20). Through the intercession of Jesus on our behalf, the grace and empowerment of God from heaven will get released tremendously for us to crush Satan bit by bit under our feet. Till the Gospel will be preached fully and the message of righteousness is declared fully through the saints of God in all the world, Jesus will be interceding for the whole Church on earth (Matt 24:14). In other words, Apostle Paul is telling us that God will increasingly crush Satan under our feet as we wait by grace through faith till each appointed moment of Salvation comes through the power of God in our lives. Wait for God’s timing to see victory. If Jesus can wait by sitting, we too can wait till by sitting along with Him till we see God crush Satan and his demonic oppressors who are fighting against us constantly. For each successive waiting period in our lives, we will see greater and greater dimension of God’s crushing power operating through us against our satanic enemies. The Bible says that “Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; ... that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him.” (Is 30:18). In other words, God himself is waiting for you to wait for Him, so that at His planned time of execution He will do justice by avenging against your enemy by giving you His grace and showing you His mercy. This verse also says that such people who wait for God are happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous -- with life-joy and satisfaction in God's favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions. This is the reason the Bible also promises that God, “… acts for the one who waits for Him.” (Is 64:4). Will you wait and sit patiently for God? If yes you are that blessed person who will see victory and victory in your life supernaturally by the power of God in every area of your life. Praise the Lord!

God is waiting for you to cease doing and be still by waiting (Ps 46:10). When you cease doing, God will begin to reveal His true rest in you. One way to cease doing is to focus yourself on God completely, till your mind becomes filled with the peace of God that passes all understanding which will guard your heart from doubts or anxieties (Is 26:3; Phil 4:7). This is the true inward sign that will indicate that you have truly trusted the Lord and have ceased doing things by your efforts. Have you ever seen a man who tries to rescue a drowning man? The trouble is that the drowning man’s fear will prevent him from trusting himself in to the rescuers hand. When such thing happens, only there are two ways to save the drowning man. Either he needs to be knocked unconscious and then dragged to the shore, or else he must be left alone to struggle and shout till his strength gives way before the rescuer can rescue the drowning man. When a person tries to help a terror struck, fear filled drowning man, as long as the drowning man will have any strength left in him he will clutch the rescuer in his terror and drag him under. In this possible scenario both the drowning man and the rescuer will both be lost. In the same way God is waiting for your store of strength to be utterly exhausted before He can deliver you. Once you have ceased to struggle, he will do everything. God is waiting for you to despair.

Even now say to the Lord, ‘Lord I cannot live my Christian life with my own strength, I give up trying. I cannot love you, love people and forgive others on my own. I pray give me thy grace and show me your mercy. Teach me to enter and stay in the perfect rest that Christ has accomplished through His finished work of the Cross. Reveal to me more and more of the heavenly seated position in which I am seated in my Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for hearing and answering me. Amen and Amen! Praise the Lord!’


The bottom line is, in your Christian life even though you struggle and feel like you are dying, God’s watchful eyes are over you. The moment all hope is lost, that’s when you will see the mighty hand of the Lord rescues you. Praise the Lord!