The Gospel of Grace deals with Jesus and Self

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God looked down on a world of sin where humans could never save themselves by their own works.

God made a body of flesh for Himself and lived amongst men as Jesus Christ. His vast love for us lost sinners made Him take on our sins as His own. Thus, on the cross, His blood cleansed the repentant sinners as He paid the awful price of death. We undeservedly got rid of our sins and guilt that Jesus took from us. Even more undeservedly, He gave us His innocence and righteousness so that we can go to Heaven.

This is the greatest deal that has ever been offered to mankind. Repent and go to Heaven.

To reject the salvation offered to us by faith, when we repent of our sins, is an act of extreme foolishness.

Describing the Gospel of Grace

Born of sex into a sinful world we are doomed to die sooner or later.

Hollywood film stars, famous singers, international sports stars, powerful politicians, and super-rich billionaires enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season but only for a while.

Then death strikes them down and they take nothing with them to their uncertain future that they never prepared for.

Human life is a great puzzle as we cannot see beyond the curtain of time. The future is always an unknown.

At first, we grow stronger as time strengthens us.

Then after a while, after we reach sexual maturity, we grow weaker as time eventually ages us and robs us of our strength.

Our human downfall is unavoidably linked to sex and sin and we cannot escape that cycle.

Sex is also the cause of so much human sin.

But we have no desire to die as we all wish we could stay young and strong forever.

The final enemy is Death and we are helpless when he makes his final summons.

Alexander the Great was one of the greatest generals. Daniel saw a vision of him as a ferocious goat thundering at speed from West to East.

DANIEL 8:5   And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.

He conquered everything between Greece and India. But when he turned around and headed back towards the West, then he soon died a mysterious death. Why? God’s Word said he would conquer going from the West. He contradicted the Word when he went back towards the West.

The Word of God overrides all our lives. If we contradict the Word, we are doomed.

Time is our deceptive friend as we grow up and get stronger and cleverer but later in life is our biggest enemy when we yearn for a life free from the tyranny of time and ageing. That would be called Eternity. But there is no human way to get there.

Eternal life is sinless and never ends.

The fact that we die means we are sinful.

A newborn baby is helpless and totally dependent on others. Children have to develop a very complex brain as they grow up and thus require a prolonged need for nurturing and education. Slowly independence develops but a degree of dependence always remains.

Farmers must provide our food.

Medical personnel must monitor and correct our health.

Families and friends provide the love, care, and discipline that we need as we grow up all too fast and grow wiser all too slowly.

We are never fully independent as our emerging individual selfhood arises within a background of relationships. Our initial circumstances at birth are given to us, we do not choose them.

The circumstances of my birth have to just be accepted by me, they cannot be explained.

I played no role in influencing the circumstances of my birth. I just took the first breath of life and began to live.

We are thus born as individuals with a sinful spirit of natural life, but we have no hope of achieving timeless Eternal life by our own efforts.

What then is wrong with our natural life that elevates self-esteem, pride, and selfishness as worthwhile goals?

This natural life cannot be all that worthwhile because we die and lose it.

What is worrying is that worldly gain is only ours for all-too-short a time before we weaken and see our delusions of self-importance crumble and fade in the face of death.

We glory in our natural life if we achieve wealth and importance but inevitably we see that dreaded ageing face staring at us from a mirror.

However fast we move, we cannot run away from ourself.

Death is our fatal and dreaded summons to that silent shore that we know nothing about. Stained by sin we inwardly sense that we will not be welcome in a sinless Eternity.

A dangerous virus is not welcome in a sanitized hospital operating ward.

The problem is that death entered because of sin.

ROMANS 5:12   Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;

And sin has stained and corrupted our thinking, actions, and environment.

Our life on this Earth is ultimately doomed unless God makes a way of escape.

That is what salvation is all about.

We had no say in when and how we arrived here at birth.

Equally, we have no say in how to escape the consequences of our sin and our death that takes us down the Pit to hell. All we know is that Hell has no fire escape.

Goliath was a giant who delivered Death to the Israelites.

The people were helpless to oppose Goliath until young David picked up his sling to slay the giant.

Only one individual could save the Israelite nation.

David found five stones at a stream. One stone hit the giant’s forehead where he thinks.

One question is needed. “What is the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?”

The giant of Trinity is defeated. There is no single name for the three Persons in their Godhead. Five stones represent five letters: JESUS. The human name of God.

Humanity has always been helpless in the face of physical death because no normal man who died ever came back from the dead in a glorified body that had Eternal Life and would never die again.

The resurrection from the dead in a glorified, eternal body is the acid-proof of the Saviour.

The events which turned the Old Testament into the New Testament were the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It was the most significant time in history.

Jesus scored the most incredible victory over Death, our strongest enemy.

Enoch and Elijah escaped Death, but nobody had ever conquered Death.

The Son of David, Jesus Christ, was weak and brutally tortured when He faced Death on the cross for the great spiritual battle.

All the devils in hell were let loose on Him as the Sun blacked out for three hours.

This was not an eclipse of the Sun. The longest solar eclipse is seven and a half minutes.

Jesus became sin as He accepted responsibility for our sins and He paid the full price for them.

The wages of sin is death. Jesus seemed to lose, because He died.

But on the third day He rose from the grave in a new glorified body.

Jesus had conquered Death, Hell, and the Grave by His own power as the only Person ever to do so. Jesus alone could overcome sin and death.

Death defeats everybody else, including you and me.

We are thus all totally dependent on the victory of Jesus. He is our only Champion.

His resurrection allowed Him to grant a pardon to everybody who believes in His sacrifice on their behalf.

But a pardon is not a pardon until it is accepted

The only way to accept this pardon, which you can never earn or achieve by your own works, is to repent and accept Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour.

What does repent mean?

God only trusts what comes genuinely from our hearts. God does not trust our scheming brains.

But the heart of man is desperately wicked.

JEREMIAH 17:9   The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

We are born in sin and shaped in iniquity which means we spend most of our time doing what we know is wrong.

PSALM 51:5   Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Our nature tends towards sin and thus we cannot save ourselves,

Jesus is not a Saviour unless we accept His sacrifice on our behalf by faith. I must accept that He took all my sins and paid the death penalty for them.

So, when God reads our hearts, all He sees is sin.

Savour means to slowly enjoy an experience.

We humans enjoy or savour sin and endlessly justify the sinful desires in our hearts.

EPHESIANS 5:2   And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

Sin is an awful stink in the nostrils of God.

In connection with sin, the only sweet smell is Christ sacrificing Himself on our behalf.

To die for another is the greatest demonstration of love.

Thus nobody can love you more than what Jesus does. Because He alone died for you.

JOHN 15:13   Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

But the sweetsmelling savour of Christ’s love as He died for us does not make Him our Saviour.

A pardon is not a pardon until it is accepted.

If you reject His pardon, you remain unsaved,

An impossible gap exists.

Christ’s amazing perfume of His love and pardon for us that is so undeserved.

That is something to really savour and appreciate and enjoy.

But all our hearts can offer in return is the stink of selfish sin.

Nobody could love you more than Jesus loves you because He died for you when you never loved Him.

His cross always had a place in the four chambers of your heart. That is why it is easy for a repentant sinner to cling to the cross. This is home territory where we belong. Deep down in our hearts it is easy for us to believe in the cross.

So, how do we turn a “savour”, a sweet perfume of self-sacrifice, into a “Saviour” when all we have to offer is sin?

Sin.

The central character in sin is “i”.

“I, me, Myself”.

That dreadful trinity that rules and ruins our lives.

“Self” is the enemy that has to die because “self” is doomed to die at the end of our lives anyway.

There is no eternal life in “self”.

When you die, your spirit leaves your body.

There is no good work that “self” can do to save himself or herself.

So, we have to offer up “self” on the altar of self-sacrifice by kicking “self’s” lusts, desires, and selfish agendas out of our hearts.

God only wants my heart.

In my heart, I can be genuine.

In my brain, I easily pretend.

The sinful “I” that dominates my life must be kicked out of my heart. God does not want sin.

Now comes the crucial test of my repentance. Did I really offer up myself fully, or just half-heartedly? A person who really repents suddenly comes to the realization that sin is an enemy that is to be hated. That person wants nothing to do with their old sinful “self”.

The best symbol for nothing is O.

That replaces the “I” of self.

Only now can that person become a son of God.

But the enemy “I” is lurking nearby and wants to get back into his old position that he has been chased out of.

The essence of salvation is this.

How do I get completely rid of “I”, my old sinful “self”?

“I”  must be hidden away somewhere in a place where “I” cannot be seen.

“I” must be joined to someone who so completely outshines “self” that nobody can ever notice my “self”.

This is the secret to humility.

Realizing that I am worth nothing but that Jesus is everything.

Remember, a new-born baby is helpless. I am equally helpless if I try to save myself.

I could not get born by myself, nor can I become born-again by myself.

SAVOUR is not a person, it is the enjoyment of the sweet perfume of defeated sin.

It is always a pleasure when a vile stink is turned into a sweet perfume.

Only one Person ever achieved that agonizing victory over sin, Jesus.

So, I must connect myself to the sacrifice of Jesus, the sweetsmelling SAVOUR.

But if I have any desire to be seen or noticed then only a meaningless word emerges like

ISAVOUR or SIAVOUR or SAIVOUR.

But, if I am content to give all the glory to Jesus so that He alone is seen in my life, then I must bury myself totally out of sight in the middle of Him.

Only then do “I” and “SAVOUR” form the incredible word “SAVIOUR”.

When “I” disappears and is hidden in Christ, then only does SAVOUR transform into SAVIOUR.

Jesus has saved me from my sins, only if I die to self and disappear with no desire to be seen.

But, what is very important, is that by adding “I” to “SAVOUR”, I have turned Jesus into my PERSONAL Saviour.

Jesus only pardons those who personally accept His pardon.

In the Old Testament, God saved the Israelites as a nation.

But in the New Testament, God saves the Gentiles as individuals. Jesus becomes a personal Saviour as each individual has a different salvation experience with Him.

From the heart comes our deepest and most genuine emotions, so Jesus wants to dwell in the human heart.

He does not want to control us from outside as if we are robots.

Jesus wants to dwell in our hearts and control our thoughts and our actions from within.

Jesus does not trust our thoughts, our actions, and our hidden agendas.

Jesus is only accepted as a person’s personal Saviour by that person offering up “self” on the altar of self-sacrifice. Then Christ feels free to take over that person’s heart and He establishes His throne in that repentant heart that has been emptied of “self”.

Only then does a person become a son or daughter of God.

God only wants to dwell in a son of God

The status of a “son of God” is very important.

MATTHEW 3:17   And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

LUKE 9:35   And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

The Man Jesus was the Son of God because the supernatural God was pleased when He was in Him. A son is only a son of God when God is in that person.

The Son of God, Jesus, only did and spoke that which was Scriptural because God is the Word.

As a result, the supernatural God fully trusted His human Son and fully dwelled in the Man Jesus. The Holy Spirit of Jesus manifested both His developed human nature as the Son of God as well as the supernatural nature of the Father.

COLOSSIANS 2:9   For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

We have a subconscious mind (pretend that represents the father) that makes us breathe while we sleep, as well as a conscious mind (pretend that represents the son).

But they are two manifestations of the same mind.

You do not have two minds.

And you only have one name.

The Bible never says “God the Son” because God is not a Man, He is supernatural.

The Bible never says “God the Holy Spirit” because the Holy Spirit is a manifestation of both the human Jesus and the supernatural Father dwelling in Him. God is not human.

This is God’s pattern for action.

God wants a portion of His supernatural Spirit to dwell in each son of God and daughter of God.

The last Book, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, reveals Jesus to be the Almighty God.

REVELATION 1:8  I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

God’s throne on Earth is the repentant human heart.

The portion of the Holy Spirit that comes into us is partly the supernatural nature of God and partly the human nature of the Man Jesus.

Jesus is the God-man.

His death showed He was human, His resurrection showed He was God.

The human nature that comes into us as a portion of the Holy Ghost, makes us into the proper human being that God always wanted us to be.

The supernatural portion of the indwelling Holy Spirit makes us understand the Word and experience the power of God.

JOHN 16:13   Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:

The main purpose of the Holy Spirit, today, is to enable the wise virgins to acquire the wisdom to understand the Scriptures.

DANIEL 12:10   but the wise shall understand.

We cannot be part of the wise virgins who are ready for the Coming of the Lord unless we are able to understand the mysteries of Scripture.

The main gifts or manifestations of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, knowledge, and faith.

Thus, the most important blessing that God can bestow upon us at the end is the ability to read and understand the Word of God.

These are the mysteries that angels and prophets of old longed to understand, but could not.

I CORINTHIANS 12:8  For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;

:9   To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;

The knowledge to understand a Scripture.

The wisdom to join different Old and New Testament Scriptures together into a pattern that runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Thus, we are made into the image of God as our faith grows on the foundation of the perfect Word of God that we can understand.

Faith does not grow on Scriptures that you do not understand.

The Holy Spirit has both supernatural and human qualities. That is why our old human nature can die because the Holy Spirit of Jesus brings our proper human nature into us.

That makes us into new men and women. Born again of a new Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God in His church.

EPHESIANS 4:24   And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness

The duty and the desire of the new convert (who is a repentant sinner) is to reflect Christ because the convert wants Christ to be in full control of his life.

A repentant sinner only wants to glorify Christ and not take any credit for himself or herself.

MATTHEW 6:10   Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The most famous of prayers tells us to focus our earthly ideas on their heavenly meaning.

Revelation Chapter 4 sees Jesus (after all it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ) on a throne in Heaven surrounded by four beasts or powers.

These are His Bodyguards.

The most famous Roman, Caesar, died because he arrogantly and carelessly thought he did not need bodyguards in the Senate.

Jesus does not need them, but Jesus has His bodyguards around the throne.

God never takes chances. He always has everything in place.

Christ is the Head of the church and the church is His Body.

COLOSSIANS 1:18   And he is the head of the body, the church:

These heavenly Bodyguards are to protect the church during the 2000 years of church history.

REVELATION 4:2   And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.

There were not three Persons on the throne in Heaven.

God’s throne on Earth is the human heart.

REVELATION 4:6   And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

Eyes speak of wisdom.

“Before and behind” means they know the past (the seven church ages that we need to know so that we know where we are in God’s Plan).

And they know the future so they can help us overcome all the deceptions of our age.

REVELATION 4:7   And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

A calf is a young ox.

REVELATION 4:4   And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

A heavenly throne surrounded by four powers or beasts and 24 seats for elders.

Where do we find something like that on earth?

A heart with four chambers that is surrounded by 24 ribs.

The only throne that Jesus wants is the human heart.

God does not want the physical throne of a king. That will not last. Empires rise and fall.

Repent, and allow Christ to become King in your heart and He injects a portion of His Spirit into your heart that is probably about the size of your thumbnail. That is your deposit for Eternal Life.

The glow of Eternity takes root in your heart.

You now seek the WAY to Heaven.

You must thus allow the Holy Spirit to guide you through the Scriptures as the Word alone can guide us in God’s path. The Bible tells us what we must believe and what we must do in order to serve God in our present day and age.

If Jesus is not Lord of all of your heart, then He is not Lord at all.

Jesus does not accept half-shares in your life as He refuses to co-exist with “self”.

Saved people have four unexpected bodyguards

Your first Advisors are the four beasts around the throne. They are the Bodyguards of the church which is the Body of Christ.

On the Day of Pentecost, God poured out His Spirit into the hearts of men and women.

ACTS 2:1   And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

:2   And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

:3   And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

God was dividing up His Spirit and giving a portion to each individual.

ACTS 2:4   And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

That started the Book of Acts.

The Acts of the Holy Ghost in the early church.

Their actions and beliefs must always be the example that we try to follow.

To protect this precious Book of Acts, God placed the four Gospels around the Book of Acts.

Each Gospel represented a ministry of Jesus.

Four Beasts: the Lion, the calf or young Ox, the Man, and the Eagle.

Matthew. The Lion is the King of the beasts. The wild beasts in Scripture are also under God’s control. They can only do what God allows them to do.

Mark. The Calf or young Ox is the Servant. Jesus is our tireless Servant. He carried our sins down to Hell to dump them on the devil.

Luke.  The Man represents Jesus as the Ideal Man. The Man Who died for us. What love.

John.  The Eagle represents Jesus as God. The God Who resurrected from the dead. Who flies high and sees everything that is going on around us. The Eagle is like God having a powerful airforce.

Matthew.  The Bloodline or Vein from the famous king David flows in Matthew Chapter 1. (represented by heart Chamber 1)

MATTHEW 1:1   The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Then Matthew goes back to Abraham who met the first good King, Melchizedek.

Melchizedek was God who made a body for Himself out of a handful of dust.

GENESIS 14:18  And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.

Bread and wine. What Jesus used more than 2000 years later at the Last Supper, speaking of His death and resurrection. That was the most important event in the history of the world so far. It will only be matched by the Second Coming of King Jesus.

Kings are not born in stables. Matthew ignores the birth and starts with a two-year old young Child in a house getting important gifts from important men. That better describes a King.

MATTHEW 2:11   And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him:

There were no shepherds. Joseph was not there.

Mark shows Christ as the Servant.

There is no bloodline. No vein from the body enters the second chamber of the heart.

No mention of His birth. Nobody is interested in the birth of a servant.

Mark Chapter 1 uses words like Straightway, immediately, and forthwith. Jesus the Servant is a dynamo of energy.

John the Baptist was the forerunner and he baptized all Judaea in the first 5 verses. Talk about a spiritual hurricane.

MARK 1:5   And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

Then Jesus comes on the scene.

MARK 1:10   And straightway coming up out of the water

MARK 1:12   And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.

Jesus sees two strangers, Simon and Andrew, and tells them to follow Him.

They obey immediately. No discussion about salary, pension, leave benefits, or medical aid.

MARK 1:18   And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

Jesus then called James and John. They left their father. Those servants who worked for hire were ignored. Jesus does not need preachers who work for a salary in a church or denomination. That is preaching for hire. Hence churches now believe unscriptural things like Christmas, 25 Dec ember, Good Friday, Trinity, and a Pastor is the head of the church.

MARK 1:20   And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.

Those whom Jesus called had to respond instantly and work hard. Laziness and pensions were not a discussion in those days. As a Servant, Jesus had to work hard, put in long hours, and sacrifice Himself. James and John had to forsake their father. Jesus came first in their lives.

Luke tells of His birth in a stable.

The ideal Man had the most humble start.

Poverty is widespread on Earth, so the ideal Man Jesus connected with the poor during His birth. He did not come from the privileged rich.

A vein from the lungs with oxygenated blood carrying life flows into the third chamber.

LUKE 3:23   And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,

LUKE 3:38   Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

In Luke Chapter 3 we read of the bloodline from Adam, the first perfect man who was the son of God, the Source of Life.

But Adam messed up in the Garden of Eden.

The second and last perfect Man, Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, accepted our sins and chose to die for us. From our point of view, that was the ideal decision because nobody else could do it.

Luke describes the prodigal son who wasted his inheritance.

He was completely undeserving but his father welcomed him back.

Those of us who have made stupid decisions and were given a second chance in life resonate with that story.

A forgiving father is an ideal father. None of us want to be condemned because of our past mistakes.

Luke describes Jesus as the Fountain of undeserved forgiveness. That is Grace in action.

Luke describes the condemned thief on his cross who at first insulted Jesus but then somehow changed his mind.

The thief knew he was not fit to be in Paradise and did not expect to get in. All he asked, as a consolation prize, would Jesus maybe just spare a thought for him when He was on His throne.

LUKE 23:42   And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

These were his dying minutes.

He had lived an awful life and had left his change of heart to happen far too late, as far as he was concerned.

He really had no hope.

Jesus did not listen to his almost hopeless words but recognised his change of heart.

Then came the ideal answer from the Ideal Man.

“You have totally messed up but you are now genuinely trusting in Me to save you.

So, you’re in buddy.

Because you recognized that you cannot save yourself and I am the only One Who can save you”.

Jesus pulled him back from the very edge of Hell’s pit.

John sees Christ as the great Eagle, God Himself soaring in the realm of the Spirit.

The Spirit of God has no beginning so there is no mention of the birth of Jesus in John.

Only 7 miracles are recorded in His ministry but many great teachings are given.

With God, preeminence is given to Scriptural accuracy rather than miracles.

We must know that Christ, the Word, stands outside the church in the last church age and wants us to get back to the New Testament church beliefs.

What modern jet pilots call situational awareness.

Do you actually know what is going on in the battle between right and wrong? Truth and error?

We need to know how to conduct ourselves and what to believe so that we can please God.

The 4 creatures around the throne protect each person

The Lion represents Jesus as our defender, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, when we believe the written Word of God.

A roaring lion is a ferocious enemy that Satan fears.

When the devil tempts you or scares you, quote the Scriptures and he will depart from you. Satan cannot withstand the written Word.

A big female hyena (representing a devil) can kill a lioness (representing a repentant Christian). But one crushing blow from a male lion’s paw will kill the female hyena. When the male lion is around (the Word of God) then the female hyenas (devils) stay away.

Jesus, the Lion, is always there to protect us and make sure that the devil cannot do us too much harm. Thus, we have the confidence that we can overcome all the obstacles and difficulties that face us.

I CORINTHIANS 10:13   There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

The Ox represents Jesus as our strong Servant Who is always at our side.

He carries loads that will crush us.

He can work on through the hottest day tirelessly, long after we have given up.

Jesus says, Come unto Me all ye who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

We can rest while He carries our burdens because He never gets tired.

Jesus is an endless bundle of energy Who never slumbers or sleeps.

The perfect Servant Who is always attentive to our needs. Always willing to help.

A prayer request is simply asking this willing Servant to help and take over the problem.

The Man. Jesus is God coming down to our level so that He can teach us to start understanding God’s Word, which is God’s Will, at a higher level.

Jesus is a fellow human being. He grew up in our sinful world and knows what we have to go through.

He understands our daily problems and the issues which distress us. When we fail, He encourages us to try harder.

He willingly forgives our mistakes and unbelief and pushes us to do our best.

He is the ideal Friend as He understands our deepest thoughts and fears. He never holds a grudge when we try to serve Him.

When He forgives, He also forgets.

When we try, He remembers our successes and ignores our failures.

He is always there to help us up when we fall.

The Eagle. Jesus soars far above our problems and sees far into the future with His incredible eyesight that enables Him to reveal to us the deeper mysteries of Scripture.

He sees future problems coming and makes us take evasive action before we are aware of these problems. Thus at times, He does not seem to answer our prayers as prepares us for bigger issues that are about to break forth.

I may get an annoying puncture that holds me up, but it saves me from being involved in an accident later on.

Eventually, we learn that all things happen for the good to those who love God. Even when we think it is all going wrong, it is just God working on a deeper plan.

ROMANS 8:28   And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

As an Eagle, God is a proper spiritual Powerhouse who instantly gets from one place to another to avoid problems and to establish what needs to be done.

As humans, we worry and often panic. But that is foolishness on our part. God has all the circumstances of your life completely under control and His timing is perfect. He lets things happen just when they need to happen.

The Eagle that is soaring around high above us makes sure that no enemy can sneak up on us undetected. Modern-day armies have copied this idea with their unmanned drones that fly over the battlefield to see what is going on.

So, we can relax and seek to serve His Kingdom, and in return, He will add to us what we need.

MATTHEW 6:33   But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

God knows our needs far better than what we do and He loves it when we learn to trust Him with our lives and our problems.

He opened up the Red Sea to let Moses pass through and then closed the waters over the Egyptian killers. Those who tried to kill the Jews got killed. We learn a big lesson. Never fight against Israel. They are God’s people. God will come for them after He has taken the wise church (that understands the Bible) to Heaven at His Second Coming.

God can look after us far better than we can look after ourselves.

If we focus on looking after God’s Plan, then He will look after our needs.

The four Gospels are the heart of God’s salvation Plan with humanity.

It shows His four-fold Plan of protecting His people.

We get all these benefits if we simply accept His sacrifice on our behalf when He hung on the cross. We must treasure the cross in the depths of our hearts.

The Eagle has fantastic eyesight. Thus God, as the Eagle, is able to give us a fantastic insight into the understanding of the mysteries of the Bible.

The Bible tells us the thoughts of God, because the Word is God.

The Word is simply the expression of His thoughts.

You cannot separate between God and His thoughts. We need to understand the thoughts of God so that we can serve God effectively.

What happens to our Sins?

How does salvation work?

Jesus volunteered to take all our sins on Himself if we repent.

It is basically a cross-over effect.

When we repent, our sins flow onto Christ on the cross.

As He hung on the cross, Jesus could see into the future and see every future person who would repent and accept salvation.

Then Jesus cleansed every sin by washing sin away in His blood.

Our scarlet sins became as white as snow. He holds out a pardon to us whereby we become sinless as He takes on our sins. All we have to do is accept his pardon by faith.

If we do that then the cross-over effect happens. Our sin and guilt flows onto Jesus.

But then the sinlessness and innocence of Jesus flows back onto us.

Jesus is seen as a sinner on the cross and he has to die.

We, undeservedly, are seen as pure and innocent because we are filled with His righteousness, not our own.

In the Old Testament, the Jew’s guilt and sin flowed onto the sacrificial lamb. Then the innocence of the sacrificial lamb crossed over and flowed onto the Jew. The Jew was forgiven but the life in the lamb could not flow into the man. Thus, the Jew did not become a better person, nor did he lose the desire to sin.

In the New Testament, we get a much better deal. Which we do not deserve in any way.

Our sin flows onto Jesus and His innocence flows back onto us. But because Jesus is a Man, the Life that was in His blood, the Holy Spirit, is able to cross over from Him into us.

Thus, Jesus gives us a new Spirit that has no desire to sin and we can become much better people. As long as we die to “self” so that “self” does not try to attract attention as that can make us vain and arrogant.

So, how did Jesus get rid of our sins?

We live in the three dimensions of space, length, breadth, and height. We can move forwards and backwards in space. But with time, we hit the wall of the fourth dimension where the bad spirits live. We cannot understand time. We cannot move backwards in time and we cannot move forward to see the future ahead of time. So, time is a deep puzzle. We do not know what time is. We measure the movement of a pointer across a clock face. We do not measure time itself.

Everything associated with time, and all its bad spirits in that fourth dimension, will one day be cast into the Lake of Fire until everything has been burned up root and branch.

MALACHI 4:1   For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

In the fourth dimension of evil spirits we find the Pit of Hell. That is the dwelling place and headquarters of Satan and his devils. Somehow they live in the sides of the Pit.

ISAIAH 14:15   Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Deep down in the Pit is a “cave” in the sides of the Pit called Prison.

This is where the unrepentant people go when they die in their sins.

EZEKIEL 32:23   Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit, and her company is round about her grave: all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living.

In the Old Testament, when a person died, their spirit left the body and was called a ghost.

GENESIS 25:17   And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, an hundred and thirty and seven years: and he gave up the ghost and died; and was gathered unto his people.

If the person was an unbeliever then their ghost went down to Prison. Here they are kept in the torments of their thoughts as they realize how foolish they were to reject God’s salvation Plan.

Thus, they never became believers. Now, they await with horror the impending future Day of Judgement when they face an angry God whose salvation Plan they rejected.

Higher up in the sides of the Pit is another “cave” that is very comfortable, called Paradise.

All the believing Old Testament saints who had obeyed God collected there after they died and gave up the ghost.

GENESIS 25:8   Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.

These believing ghosts went to Paradise where they waited for their long-promised Messiah to resurrect them out of the Old Testament Paradise and take them up to the surface of the Earth. From there Messiah would ascend with them up to Heaven as they formed a cloud of witnesses.

The blood of Jesus formed a safety rope across the Pit of Hell so that the resurrected believers could ascend directly to the even higher dimension of Heaven where far more miraculous events can occur. Such as people being able to travel like a thought. They think of visiting someone far away and a moment later they are there.

Only a sinful ghost, the spirit of a dead person, can go deep enough down to the bottomless Pit where Satan dwells in the fires of hellish torment.

Then Satan made his biggest mistake. He killed Jesus on the cross. But Jesus was covered in our sins. The Holy Spirit left His body and became the Holy Ghost.

As a Ghost, carrying all our sins, Jesus was able to go down into the Pit where the devil lived. He walked across the fire of Hell which was designed to burn up sin. Jesus, being holy, could not burn. But His feet looked like brass that had been in an intense flame.

He marched over to the devil and dumped all our sins onto the devil.

No human could do that. Being sinful, we would burn as we tried to cross that awful flame of Hell.

Jesus then tore the keys of Death and Hell out of the hands of Satan.

Satan can no longer kill, unless he has the Lord’s permission.

Jesus, having defeated Satan, marched back over the intense flame unscathed. All our sins had been left on Satan. Consequently, Jesus is the only Saviour. No other person could possibly do that as Jesus thus got permanently rid of our sins.

Jesus began to ascend inside the Pit.

First, He knocked on the door of Prison. The unbelieving Old Testament ghosts were horrified. Those who had mocked Noah for 120 years while he preached with no success about the oncoming Flood of God’s Judgement, now saw the Saviour that Noah, by faith, had believed in.

I Peter 3:18   For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

:19   By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

:20   Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

They had sinned away their 120 years of grace. Now they realized that they were totally lost as they listened to the preaching of Jesus. All their so-called clever human wisdom was not worth anything in the face of God’s hatred for sin. And for 120 years they had mocked and rejected the only man who had tried to save them. They had really reached the pits of human stupidity. Thinking that their arrogant human delusions of knowledge would enable them to escape from the consequences of their sin.

They had mockingly rejected God in their day.

Now they were in total shock as they realized that God had totally rejected them.

Kamala Harris foolishly rejected the cry of “Jesus is Lord” and said the person was at the wrong rally. A fateful mistake. She mocked God and spent $1.5 billion on her election campaign. But God rejected Kamala and she lost. The biggest loser of all time considering the amount of money that she spent.

All that lies ahead of the ghosts in Prison will be Judgement Day and their total doom in the Lake of Fire. They will burn for their allocated time of Judgement, which will be determined on Judgement Day. Then they will be burnt up and disappear forever. Leaving not even a trace as God removes all memory of evil.

They cannot burn for Eternity, as then they would have to have Eternal Life. Eternal Life is what saves us from Hell and the Lake of Fire.

Having preached to the totally lost in Prison, Jesus then ascended up to Paradise.

LUKE 23:43   And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

These words were spoken by Jesus to the thief on the cross who wanted Jesus to remember him. He was the repentant thief.

This very bad man, now forgiven, was the messenger that Jesus sent to the higher cave of Paradise in the sides of the pit. His job was to warn all the Old Testament saints who were in Paradise that Messiah was about to arrive. These saints had believed in Messiah by faith because the Old Testament, which was God’s Word in their days, had prophesied of Him. Now they were about to meet Messiah.

PSALM 88:4   I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength:

David, a repentant champion of God, knew that he would also go down into the pit to be captive in the Old Testament Paradise. But any part of the pit was low and deep because the soul of a believer longs to be up with God in Heaven.

EPHESIANS 4:8   Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men

The ghosts of the believing Old Testament saints were captive in Paradise in the sides of the Pit. Now, Jesus was going to release them and resurrect them up onto the earth in glorified resurrected bodies. This would happen soon after Jesus Himself was resurrected. The Old Testament saints would be in higher dimension bodies which can be either visible or invisible to us, as they wish.

MATTHEW 27:52   And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

:53   And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Jesus first descended into the Pit to defeat Satan, dispose of our sins, and preach to the totally lost. There is no final mercy if you reject God’s salvation Plan.

The God of love becomes the God of implacable justice if you sin away His days of Grace whereby He offers you a pardon if you repent of your sins.

Once you die unsaved, you are doomed. Your sinful ghost is locked up in the holding cell of Prison, awaiting the Day of Judgement where all your thoughts and motives will be revealed.

EPHESIANS 4:9    (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

The resurrected dead appeared to many in Jerusalem and then disappeared from sight again, in order to be taken up to Heaven secretly, when Jesus ascended up to heaven.

The Old Testament saints ascending as a cloud of witnesses with Jesus shouted out as they approached the gates of Heaven.

HEBREWS 12:1   Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,

The Old Testament saints formed the cloud of witnesses that ascended with Jesus.

ACTS 1:9   And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

Jesus and the Old Testament saints ascended up to Heaven.

PSALM 24:7   Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

They wanted the angels who guard Heaven to open the gates because Jesus was returning.

PSALM 24:8   Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.

The angels check everything before they act.

The angels at the gates shout back, “Who is this King of glory?”

The exultant Old Testament saints give all the glory to King Jesus. They have no praise for themselves as they know only Jesus could lift them out of the Pit and bring them up to heaven. No human could do that.

So, they shout in reply, “The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.”

The angels double check. Heaven always makes certain that no unscriptural error like Christmas, 25 December, or Good Friday can sneak into Heaven like the slack Pastors allowed these errors to sneak into the church.

The angels demand confirmation.

PSALM 24:10   Who is this King of glory?

The Old Testament saints confirm that they deserve no glory. All glory belongs to King Jesus alone

as He is the Lord of hosts. Superior to all and everyone.

PSALM 24:10   The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.

Jesus had established a way in which humans could escape the Pit of hell.

His blood formed a scarlet cord or safety line that connected earth to Heaven.

All we have to do is make sure that while we are still alive, we must connect ourselves to this safety blood-line of the blood of Jesus. We do that by repenting and accepting Jesus as our personal Saviour.

If we then die, expectedly or unexpectedly, the angels can pull us safely across the pit into Heaven.

The three manifestations of God

Having got all the Old Testament saints to Heaven, which basically opened up the way to Heaven, Jesus then returned to earth on the Day of Pentecost as the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

In the New Testament, God had a new Plan. Christ in us the hope of glory.

As the Father, God was above the Jews.

As the Son, God was with the Jews, Emmanuel.

As the Holy Spirit, God is in the church.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the three manifestations of God. God above, with, and in His people.

The human name of God is Jesus.

The Father in the Old Testament was called Lord, Jehovah.

The Son is Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is the Annointed One, Christ.

So, the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the name. Lord and Christ are titles to tell us Who we are referring to when we say "Jesus" because Spanish and Portuguese people often are called Jesus.

God does not trust us to be responsible for our own futures. God knows that just like Adam did, we will also mess up somewhere.

So, God wants to kick “self” out of our lives and fill that empty space with His Holy Spirit. Then God is in control of our lives if we repent and accept Jesus as our personal Saviour.

We thereby become born-again of the Spirit of God and as a result the Spirit of God in us secures us to the blood-line of Jesus and our future destination is secure. We become citizens of Heaven.

In the Old Testament, God was above the Israelites as a supernatural Spirit, known as the Father. But the Old Testament never called Him “God the Father”.

God made a spiritual body for Himself which He called a Pillar of Fire or a Pillar of Cloud.

In the four Gospels, God has a new manifestation. God fully dwelled in the Man Jesus.

God made a human physical body for Himself which He called Jesus.

The names Elohim, Jehovah, Adonai, El, Yahweh, and JHVH which God had used in the Old Testament, were never used in the New Testament.

Why? Because the Jehovah of the Old Testament became the Jesus of the New Testament.

COLOSSIANS 2:9   For in him [Jesus] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

God’s new manifestation was Emmanuel, God with us as He fully lived in the Son of God, the Man Jesus.

The Son of God was a human being Who was totally obedient to the Father. Only under these conditions could God call Himself “God the Father”.

The Man Jesus is called the “Son of God” but never “God the Son” because God is not a man.

NUMBERS 23:19   God is not a man

Now came the big difference between the Old and the New Testaments.

In the Old Testament, God was a supernatural Spirit.

People were human and could not understand God’s supernatural thinking. They felt that God lived in heavenly splendour and righteousness and could thus not really understand the messy lives that we live subject to sin and failure, even when we try hard to please God.

We do our best to clean up our lives but are still sadly aware that we are far from perfect.

So, God came down to live amongst us in our stinking sins. That’s why Jesus was born in a stinking stable. He was acclimatizing Himself to our fallen state.

But as Jesus grew up His human nature developed so that His Holy Spirit was a combination of both the human and the divine supernatural.

Being human He died. Being divine He rose from the dead. He became the only human being Who could see both sides of the sin problem.

God the Father demanding perfection and our inability to be perfect.

How could Jesus find a reconciliation between these two opposite viewpoints?

How could imperfect humans acquire perfection?

MATTHEW 5:48   Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

This required a new and original plan of action.

We had to develop a perfect faith that Jesus, as the Word of God, is the Absolute and Infallible truth.

Faith comes by hearing the Word of God that we can understand.

So, we have to believe that the Word is perfect as it is the foundation of our faith.

The best we can do is to understand the Scriptures and regard them as being infallible.

Then the foundation of our faith is perfect.

We are totally relying on the perfection of the Scriptures because Jesus is the Word.

Thus, we are relying on the perfection of Jesus.

In the Old Testament, a Jew took his lamb to the Priest who would offer up the lamb as a sacrifice for his sins.

The Priest did not examine the Jew. He examined the lamb.

If the lamb was perfect, then the sacrifice was accepted and the Jew was forgiven.

With his sins forgiven, the Jew was briefly accepted as perfect.

But the sacrificial procedure had to be repeated because the Jew did not lose the desire to sin.

In the New Testament, we have a similar procedure.

We identify with our Sacrifice, Jesus on the cross.

God examines our Sacrifice, not us.

If we believe that our Sacrifice is perfect, then our sins are forgiven and God sees us as perfect.

But, since our Sacrifice is Jesus and He is the Word of God, then we must also believe that the King James Version of the Bible is Perfect.

JOHN 1:1   In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

JOHN 1:14   And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,

If we find any fault with the Old King James Bible then the Bible is not perfect.

Then we are saying that Jesus is not perfect.

Then our Sacrifice is not Perfect.

Then our Sacrifice is rejected and we are lost in sin.

Never think that there is any mistake in the Old King James Bible.