We greet you in the wonderful Name of our Lord Jesus Christ and appreciate your fellowship. This newsletter serves those of like precious faith and whosoever will receive the truth is welcome to feed their soul from the waters of the River of Life. Everything presented should be confirmed personally in your own Bible.
This week we continue our series called Redemption Revealed. URL's to the preceding articles in this series are at the foot of this page. Please visit us at www.biblebelievers.org.au/.
I Peter 3:17-20, "It is better to suffer unjustly for doing right, if that should be God's will, than to suffer justly for doing evil. For Christ also once suffered for the sins of all we guilty sinners, although He Himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might restore us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in His soul: (or united with His theophany or angel) in which form He went and preached unto the souls in prison; Which sometime were disobedient (and repented not), when God's patience waited during the building of the ark in which few, that is, eight souls were saved by water".
The souls of the non-elect, having heard and rejected the Message of the hour, in any Age, are removed from the Book of Life. Jesus said, "He who believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:18). These departed souls heard and consciously rejected Noah's Message of deliverance. They are now LOST.
We should treat the Words of God and His messengers with reverence because those Words are God in a form we can by faith receive. The only way God can fill us with His Spirit is as we receive His Word by faith (or a clear understanding), and obey what It says do.
That's why we are to "receive the word with all readiness of mind, then search the Scriptures to confirm the preaching" (Acts 17:11). Jesus said, "He who receives a vindicated prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he who receives a righteous man because of righteousness' sake shall receive a righteous man's reward" (Matthew 10:41).
Let's look at Adam's race. Jesus was the second Adam, He was not the second Cain. Cain and his race have no kinsman redeemer. Not being in the first Adam, they are not on the Book of Life. Within Adam's race there are the elect of God, the un-believers who are LOST, plus different groups who are "saved". Now the "saved" are those whose names remain on the Book of Life. But as they are not the elect of God, they can not be born-again.
God foreknew many of the "saved" would never encounter the Word for their day, but live moral lives according to all nature and their society revealed to them. Such are those who are good and kind to the Bride (or elect of God) - Buddhists, Baptists, stick-worshipers and so-on (Matthew 25:31-46; Romans 1:17-20). The Fifth Seal Jews are in this category, not having encountered the Word for their day. And seeing that the nation of Israel has been blinded so God may turn to the Gentile to call-out a Bride for His Son, all they have is the testimony of Moses' Law under the Old Covenant. Yet those of them who, from the time God turned from Israel at Calvary to the close of the Gentile Dispensation, lay down their lives for their testimony, are "saved" and will be granted in to eternal Life at the White Throne Judgment (Revelation 6:9-11).
A third group among the "saved" are they who refuse to worship the Beast or its image or serve them during the tribulation, and are martyred by the church. This group will include nominal Christians who realize that the Gentile denominations have become anti-Christ as the Jewish denominations became anti-Christ (Revelation 13:8- 18). Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini was very close to the truth when he said America is "the great Satan" (Revelation 13:11-18).
The fourth group of non-elect "saved" are the foolish virgin. They are those who are both justified and sanctified but not born-again because either they never encountered the Word of God's Bible for their day, or if they did, they failed to "prove all things" and receive the true measure of faith that would baptize them into the part of the Body God was fulfilling in their day.
In this day in which we live, all of the foolish virgin have heard the "Shout" of I Thessalonians 4:16, which is the Message of God's prophet RESTORING the apostolic faith, FINISHING the mystery of God and calling His people - both wise and foolish virgin - out of Rome and her (once) Protestant daughter churches into the UNITY of the faith for the MANIFESTATION of the Sons of God, and the great TRANSLATION (Malachi 4:5-6; Revelation 10:7; 18:4; Matthew 25:1-13; Ephesians 4:13; Romans 8:19; I Corinthians 13:10).
Today's foolish virgin are sitting under the ministry of the end-time Message, but lack the Oil of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps because their pastor has the "letter" without the "Spirit", and not being in the faith himself, lacks the revelation of the Message to share with his flock. I believe many pastors fit this description, being themselves foolish virgin. Alternatively, the foolish virgin lack the Oil or new birth because they are lackadaisical or dilatory in confirming all things - quite content to rely upon the second-hand religion of what their pastor has said. Now the pastor may be 100% correct and what I am preaching tonight might be 100% correct, but unless you take what we say back to God's Word, how will you know you're not relying upon the words of a man? My words will fail, so will the words of your pastor. Do yourself a favor, and honor God, by proving what we say with His Bible.
Had many of the "saved" people been more diligent in making their calling sure, they would be foreknown as receiving the new birth, and among God's elect. Ministers are just God's messengers, or His angels of Light. Their Message is Spirit in a form you can receive by faith, but It must be received by faith. "A pardon is not a pardon unless It is received as a pardon". This Message is our ticket out of here. It's God's way of escape for His elect. It's so precious It is Life if we can apprehend It by understanding and let It live through us.
Anyone who rejects the Message for their day after two admonitions proves they have no "representation of predestination". And in His mind, God does not see their glorified Form or theophany "seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:26-30; Ephesians 2:6). They're not on the Lamb's Book of Life, not an attribute of God, and their salvation is in dispute until Judgment Day. But so long as their name remains on the Book of Life, they are "saved", and will be granted in to eternal Life at the White Throne Judgment.
Everyone in Adam's race has an angel, but the moment they reject their last opportunity for grace, their name comes off the Book of Life, and becomes a "fallen angel". This happened to Israel when they crucified their Messiah (Revelation 12:4).
Those lost souls are imprisoned and their angel becomes a demon.
When a man dies unconverted, he can't enter his rest in the Presence of God (in the sixth dimension), and he can't return to earth as all the decisions that determine his destiny have already been made. His time is up, so he's in a nightmare condition, like someone awake in his subconscious mind but whose body is asleep so he's physically unable to escape or avoid the horrors of his night mare. Now the dreamer may have the presence of mind to wake up and come out of it by returning to consciousness, but the dead sinner remains in that state until the judgment. His soul is trapped or imprisoned in the fifth dimension.
Jesus described this state in his story of the beggar and the rich man (Luke 16:17-31). Poor Lazarus went to Paradise where he was in company with Abraham and the Old Testament saints awaiting Messiah to die and redeem them. The rich man in the prison house of lost souls, begged Abraham to send poor Lazarus with a little water to moisten his tongue. But the rich man was separated from his angel, unclothed as Paul would say. And without a covering, there was an impassable gulf between them.
Now the natural types the Spiritual, and the soul of man is the feminine of God. The New Testament Church was accounted in Jesus on Calvary and that is why we are without sin and cannot come into condemnation. We have already paid for our sins in Christ. We died in Him and were taken out of His body after He died in the Form of the Holy Spirit (II Corinthians 5), just as Eve was taken from the side of her Adam when God put him to sleep. And as Eve was made up from Adam's rib and the feminine nature of his mortal spirit, the New Testament Church is made up of the Holy Ghost. By the grace of God, It's coming into you now by faith or an understanding of this sermon, bringing you more fully into the image of God, the Word.
We learn from Scripture that a woman serves God as she obeys her husband (Genesis 3:16; Ephesians 5:22; I Peter 3:6). And that as the Head of Christ is God, the Head of the Church is Christ. The elect of God when they're regenerated or born-again is the Church. So the Head or Husband of the elect soul is the Word. And we're to obey every One (I Corinthians 11:3; Matthew 4:4). The Word is the Logos that came out of God and manifest bodily as the virgin-born Jesus Christ to pay the price of our sins on Calvary's Cross.
But the elect were foreknown in Christ when He was crucified in the foreknowledge of God before the foundation of the world. We were in His thinking then. He fore knew the decisions we would make by our own free choice, and saw us redeemed and already glorified in His thinking. That's the image of God He intends us to fulfill and we're going through that process now by faith, laying aside the world and all its transitory charms for the gold of God: character tried in the fiery furnace of afflictions.
Now if we were in God's mind way back then, we are a part of the Logos. Oh, get this! NOT our soul, because there is no such thing as Pre-existence of souls. That's Mormon theology and nonsense. It is our angel, the glorified appearance of our fully redeemed and eternal being that God foresaw. Our theophany.
A "theophany" is a visible manifestation of God. What is the true and living Church if It's not God manifest? We're the Body of Christ aren't we? And Christ is God isn't He? As a man and woman joined together in holy wedlock are one flesh, the Church is Word of His Word and Spirit of His Spirit. Our new birth is a Spiritual marriage union between our soul and Christ the anointed Word.
When the New Testament Church was inaugurated in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, the Logos manifest as a Pillar of Fire: not in the form of a dove as when God anointed the temple of Jesus' mortal body, but It was divided and anointed each and every one of the saints. This was the symbol of God taking residence in His new Temple (I Corinthians 6:19).
When we are born-again our soul is redeemed. In other words, it is re-united with our lick of the Pillar of Fire or Logos, our Part of the Word or theophany of God which is our angel, our theophany, the image of our glorified condition that God sees now.
We're not creatures of time. When we're born-again, God does not see us in a pair of greasy overalls, sweating in the plant, or out on the farm! He sees us already glorified. So when we REALLY make contact with God and our soul is married to the Word by the cement of the Spirit through recognizing OUR day and ITS Message, we are one with our theophany. We have made contact with God's grace and foreknowledge of our glorious destiny. Oh, that's the glory Christ shared with us before the foundation of the world.
When we can see this, we know that we're the purchased possession of God. We are a part of eternity and can no more be lost that God can be lost. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. (That's what the souls in prison are suffering: torment). He that fears is not made perfect (or mature) in love" (I John 4:18). "Let us go on to perfection".
Makes you laugh at the crass young god-forsaking fools who drive around with "no fear" written on their cars. But Christians need have no fear of their destiny. All the Father has by foreknowledge given to Christ will come to Him. There will not be one lost.
So if we are born-again, our soul is married to the anointed Word or Logos of God. Our husband-part is our theophany. Our theophany is a part of the Logos and is our covering or protection. It's our Head that seals us back into the Logos to the day of our physical redemption, or glorification, because what God has joined together can not be separated. We are One.
The non-elect soul can not unite with its angel until the final decision is made at the White Throne Judgment. You'll recall our teaching on "The Ordeal of Jealousy". If a spirit of jealousy caused a man to be suspicious of his wife's fidelity, he could bring her before the Israelitish priest, who, if she did not confess, would submit her to a test, prior to making a final judgment. The outcome determined her guilt or innocence. Were she guilty she would be stoned to death. Were she innocent, she would be reunited with her husband and they would bring forth life.
The antitype of the ordeal of jealousy (Numbers 5) was the Plagues God poured out upon the non-elect Church in six Church Ages - so far (Revelation 16). Many people believe these plagues are yet future, but have been fulfilled already. Brother Branham called them a "temporary judgment". (He said the Sixth Plague was the Influenza Epidemic that was killing so many in the trenches during WWI, they almost had to stop fighting. And by 1920, over 20 million souls had perished by influenza).
The Seventh Plague upon the false church will be a stoning with great hail out of heaven, and after her final judgment, cast into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 16:21; 19:20; 20:10). Now let's return to our discussion on the soul of the non-elect. Like the unfaithful wife in the Old Testament, they experienced the trial of jealousy in the Plagues. They miss the "rapture" and glorious Millennium, and at the general resurrection, will raise in the bodies in which they sinned for, the White Throne Judgment. Those who are found to be righteous are re-united with their angel and thereby granted into eternal Life. This unfolds a further dimension of the Words of Paul where he says, "The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband" (I Corinthians 7:14).
The lost, on the other hand, can not be redeemed. "For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. (All were foreknown, but there is no pre-existence of souls. God's foreknowledge is our husband part, or angel - His thoughts are spirit - and its destiny is dependent upon the decisions we will make). Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. (We, our soul, is to be under submission to our ministering spirit or angel so we conform to the image of God which is His Character, the Word). For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head (or under authority) because of the angels.
(Some angels are elect, some are "saved", while others will fall - and we determine their destiny. But that angel is our ministering Spirit, our husband, spiritually speaking. It is to bring us into submission by love). Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord" (I Corinthians 11:9-11). It's both soul and angel, or it's neither. It's negative and positive, husband and wife. The natural types the Spiritual.
The token of the Old Covenant was circumcision. But as you can't circumcise a woman, she came under the blood through Marriage, or if she were single, by obedience to her father. You'll remember that the Old Covenant was a natural type of the New. As Israel was separated from fleshly uncleanliness of the heathen, the evidence of being in the New Covenant, or born again, isn't circumcision in the flesh, but Spiritual circumcision in heart and ears. Marriage of our soul with our theophany, the Word, means separation from all unbelief, and It fulfills God's foreknowledge of our glorified condition. It's the fulfillment of His Word for us.
Our angel or theophany is Spirit. It's our Word form Body that covers or clothes us. It's the full armour of God (Ephesians 6:13- 17) finally made manifest. The true Church is the blood of Christ by the baptism of the Holy Ghost because the Life is in the blood (Galatians 3:27-29).
God's foreknowledge may be likened to a snapshot of the finished product. It's in his thinking, so It is spirit. In due season and at the instant the spirit of mortal life enters the new-born body, the soul that will take that spirit is created. It begins life's journey and as it grows up and passes the age of accountability it starts to make the decisions that will determine its destiny. Put another way, this soul is the negative placed in the developing solution of the world. And according to the decisions it makes, it will be united with its angel which has the appearance of its form glorified in perfection, or it will be lost, and its fallen angel will be without form, or take on some hideous appearance.
The life you live here is only reflecting what your celestial body is in another dimension.
Oh, this is such a big subject, and I'm trying to be brief. Demons are without form, but they can take form. Totem poles and idols prove this. They have such a gruesome appearance because they are carved in the likeness of the demons that inspired the craftsman.
When the lost die, their "angel" becomes a demon. That's why the world can't become "a better place" so long as there are sinners on earth. In his little big Book, Jude likens the natural and the spiritual serpent's seed when he speaks of Cain the serpent, and Koreh the false teacher, saying their destiny is destruction. "These are spots in your feasts of charity, (or worship services), when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, (unregenerated make-believers without the true Holy Spirit), carried about of winds (doctrines); trees whose fruit withers (you can tell a tree by its fruit), without fruit, twice dead, (natural and spiritual serpent seed) plucked up by the roots".
("Trees" symbolize spiritual principles. John the Baptist "laid the ax to the root of all trees" - Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes and Herodians. So did Brother Branham by Revelation 18:4, indicting Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian Church of England, Adventist, Pentecostal and all denominations). "Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, (stars are people, angels, souls. Cain was called a wanderer or vagabond because he had no inheritance in the earth, not being a son of Adam. And spiritual serpent's seed have no inheritance in heaven, not being in the Word), to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever" (Jude 12-13).
Like a wayward husband, the fallen spirit or angel becomes a demon upon the death of the lost. And not having any body in which to clothe himself or manifest, he becomes a free agent of mischief or evil, a parasite on others. "God's Word is Spirit, and It is Life" but these fallen angels are a perverted life and are helpless until they can find someone who will allow them to live in their bodies.
They enter people and manifest in the spiritual realm as insanity, pride, lust, emulations, strife, envy, etc., People invite them into their soul through unbelief in God's Word. Expressed another way, people invite demons into their soul by rejecting God's Word, which is their angel, their part of the Pillar of Fire, their protection and covering, which is eternal Life. Jesus cast seven of them out of Mary Magdelane (Luke 8:2).
I hope I'm making myself understood. In the spiritual realm they enter the soul and manifest by tormenting that soul, reacting through the body in the physical world to the distress of everyone - from family and friends to police - who come in contact with its anger, dishonesty, deceit, laziness, covetousness, argumentative nature, epilepsy, etc., as the case may be.
Like idolatry or false worship, it's really spiritual fornication with the foreign nature of a spirit or demon that is not our angel or husband-part. That's why idolatry or false worship by those calling themselves Christians (or indeed anyone), is spiritual fornication, because it is an illegal union with a fallen angel that is not your Head.
In the physical realm, they enter people, even genuine Christians, because their body is not yet redeemed. Only their soul. They no longer have a body of their own so they have no certain form. But they are a life and they must have a body in order to express that life. In the physical realm this fallen angel or perverted life enters your body as a disease, gaining entry as in the spiritual realm, through something that is undefended, like a bruise, cut or fracture. This foreign life then begins to manifest as a parasite in your body, feeding from your blood and deforming your cells as tumors or scales, or living from the mucus of your eye and growing cataracts. Once the demon establishes himself in your body, he begins to grow, multiplying cells and building a body just as like foetus grows in a woman who is to become mother. Cell, upon cell, upon cell, but without form.
But that demon has to submit to the Authority of God's Word. When it's enforced by faith in the believer he will recognize It. It's not how loud you shout at him or how excited you become. In Acts 19 we read of certain make-believers impersonating Paul's ministry. But the demons weren't fooled, and made the possessed man overpower and strip them naked.
Some churches in which I minister overseas are frequently visited by demon-possessed people seeking deliverance from evil spirits. And I don't understand why, but the ministers shout at the spirits and become rather melodramatic. That doesn't work. What works is a consecrated life and the Authority of God's Word (Matthew 17:21).
Because medical science has generally abandoned faith, they don't realize that in order to heal a patient with a cancer or growth, they must first cast out or exorcise the life in the growth. Then its body (or deformed cells) will die and the human body will pass or discard the dead cells, replacing them with new healthy flesh.
But no, they apply radiation, chemistry and the scalpel to destroy the body or cut out the sick part. If they are lucky, the demon leaves because it can no longer live in those dead cells, or he's taken out with the incised cells.
The patient now has a permanent deformity through the removal of a breast, muscle or limb. All because most doctors don't have faith nowadays. They operate upon what they can see or feel, ignoring the supernatural realm. Faith would have cast out those demons of TB, cancer, or whatever they were, then applied some naturopathic treatment of herbs, etc., and correct diet to aid the patient's physical recovery.
Whatever the situation, God has the answer in His Word. If only we endure until we can find and apply It by faith in our lives. The atonement brought deliverance and forgiveness of sins or Spiritual healing, but also physical healing.
God bless you all. We'll continue this subject next time as we continue studying Redemption Revealed. bb840429.htm
Redemption
Revealed - I
Redemption
Revealed - II
Redemption
Revealed - III
Redemption Revealed
- IV
Redemption Revealed -
V
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Brother Anthony Grigor-Scott is a non-denominational minister. He
has ministered full-time since 1981, primarily to other ministers
and their congregations in various countries. He pastors Bible
Believers' tiny congregation, and is available to minister in
your church.