Repentance is, above everything else, turning away from wrong ideas about God. It is changing our mind about something we thought we knew about God. Do you think any man had the right conceptions of God before Jesus came two thousand years ago? Many thought so among the circumcised, who constantly poured through the scriptures, priding themselves that they kept every jot and every tittle of God’s law and therefore thought to know God.
Yet, these were the very people who hated, then crucified Jesus. Obviously they did not see God in Jesus. You know, religious spirits can crucify Jesus today, right in church. Preachers can kill the image of God in us and the people can gossip and present false ideas about each other. When they do these things, they can crucify Jesus afresh. Religious men have a knowledge of God, but need their minds to be changed to the spiritual mind, indicating reception in our spirit of the LOVE OF MERCY.
The coming of Christ within goes straight to the EXCHANGING of minds. His mind is giving us a new source of thinking that originates in a quickened spirit. Believers can recognize a NEW CREATION within them that is made in the image and likeness of the firstborn Son. Seeing Him clearly enables us to put away the thoughts that come from the vain natural mind of man. The mind of Christ is promised to become dominant within us with its renewing work of quickening our spirit and body. Acquiring formal church training is not necessary but coming to know Him is essential.
Repentance has been referred to by some as a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift comes after you gain all kinds of opinions, knowledge and experience about a matter, then suddenly, you receive new information, new facts, fresh truth, or further experience. This causes you to have a change of mind, a change of understanding that alters a core belief, a change of heart about that matter. We believing folk can suddenly have a different perspective as life’s events unfold, giving us totally new sets of priorities and sense of being. That is what is called a paradigm shift, as an example of repentance:
“From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 4:17
When Jesus said that, a definite point in time had come for a shift in thinking about the kingdom of God. Now, another time has come for a shift in thinking because we have entered the third thousand year DAY of the Lord. He is making it necessary to bring into clear focus a new spiritual dispensation for His people that WORKS INTO OUR INNER REALITY WHILE LIVING IN THIS WORLD. Jesus came asking sinners for repentance, charging us to believe in His gospel because it was a further revelation of God’s truth. His gospel had power to bring God's plan into greater focus than any previously expressed.
Those who could hear His voice were spiritually awakened to know God more correctly and more directly. Jesus now opens doors to heaven for us by sending a sevenfold Spirit power that brings a mind-changing, life transforming touch. This in itself is producing repentance once again among His people. He is coming by the spirit, teaching us how to better receive paradigm shifts in our thinking that are real repentance and really important! The practice of taking on new ways of thinking about God, ourselves, and the things we know about the true nature of all things, that’s the repentance He produces.
Repentance comes to be in us as a result of being taught by God’s spirit exerting the power of new understanding to us. We learn to put aside our reasoning mind to embrace the divine mind of peace. Therefore it involves us in a revolutionary battle within our mind. Finding the mind of Christ is a more exacting and long lasting process than many people realize. Men most often act on what they presume, for natural minded men are void of perfect divine guidance, giving preference to experienced instinct and impulses of their own.
But those being taught of His Spirit are learning of spiritual matters that teach us to WAIT UPON GOD TO RECEIVE HIS DIRECT GUIDANCE. For us it is the essential function for continual renewal. The spirit of sonship teaches His disciples to learn to wait upon the spirit given of the Father. He is giving us a spirit of sonship so we too can recognize the mind of Christ continually. Then we faithfully PUT IT ON to be clothed with the truth He speaks that makes us know God as our FATHER. A truly repentant one will see into the HEART of matters. Only one knowing God’s thoughts can recognize and consider His way of righteousness.
Jesus is still saying that there must be a change in our thinking in regard to the Kingdom of Heaven. The scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and elders of His day, were expecting an outer display in line with their political and religious aspirations. In their minds, the kingdom God was to reign yet in the future, away out in some Golden Age yet to dawn. They could not see the evidence of the Father working in Jesus as a son in whom He delighted.
Yet they were very much aware of how Israel was ruled under the iron heel of Imperial Rome. How they longed for their Messiah to come and release them from Rome’s authority. But when Jesus came, He was doing something else, so the leaders could not understand His first proclamation, “Repent!" He was saying “Re-think the kingdom of heaven in the light I’m bringing! Reach new conclusions about what God is going to do! Change your mind about the kingdom of heaven being far off in the future. It’s now at hand, and those who can repent shall qualify to be touched by it!”
Jesus asked them to prepare, to adopt new insights of understanding God because “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” He did not want them to think of the Kingdom any longer as something future, something coming someday — because the Kingdom was now at hand, being made accessible. It was no longer in the future for Jesus, it was within His reach.
Now, two thousand years later, through Him, the kingdom is available to us. We can enter it, partake of it, experience it, minister it from a place He dominates deep within our spirit. God’s government is being formed in a people. His coming IN THEM took control of their mental outlook by working deep, sealing processes of change within them. It starts in our inner spiritual person, deep within. Oh yes, that’s where He has been writing His name upon our spirit and soul to save us from within. Eventually, we learn to repent and be conformed to His divine image.
Jesus was telling the people of Israel that if they wanted to see and understand heavenly things, they needed first to repent — to take a new mind, to think differently. The Greek word used in scripture for repentance is METANOIA, basically interpreted as “to reconsider.” I say it means to “transfer the state from which we think”. Jesus opened up a new state, a heavenly realm where men were given the truth of His word mixed with His spiritual power to make of them something new. Even now He is stating:
“I don’t want your efforts of merely trying to change yourself. Your mind is carnal; it is not able to be subject to God, nor will it ever be. I want you to draw from the truth I put in your spirit, which I am quickening within you; now I want you to draw your thoughts and expressions from the spirit of sonship.” (Eby)
Once His spirit testifies together with our spirit, we will recognize Him and learn to recognize His thoughts being sent to our spiritual mindsets. If we are open to this change, we can become recipients of God’s wisdom and revelation that releases and frees us from the earthly mindsets of men held to death. We can immediately perceive that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
When we are thinking rightly, we have entered the Kingdom and can see how it is operating in righteousness, empowered with His glory. This seeing is the result of Christ the firstfruits causing a revelation within our spirit, for THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD. Traditional scriptural interpretation used in many churches teach ideas that restrict the Kingdom to a coming age after a great tribulation that is yet to come, in the future. These interpretations now have to be re-thought in the light of the fact that the Kingdom is come NOW within those who see and hear Him by the spirit.
Matthew records that Jesus’s instruction to His disciples was to go and preach, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven is at hand.“ Matthew 10:7
“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” Matthew 10:14
One thing is certain —when the people rejected the ministry of a true disciple, they were rejecting the kingdom of heaven BECAUSE THEY WERE PREACHING, DEMONSTRATING, AND MANIFESTING IT. Jesus instructed His disciples that when people rejected them, they were to DEPART from that house, and to shake that dust off them. They were to shake that carnal way of thinking off. Don’t let that earth-bound mentality cling to you or find a place in you. Don’t be influenced or affected by men's words or actions. Don’t accept the same kind of “serpent’s meat” thinking that they are providing!
To explain further will bring us back to the curse laid upon the serpent in the beginning. The ancient serpent, having beguiled Eve, became the recipient of the first curse recorded in Adamic history:
“And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” Genesis 3:14
This “going on the belly where he can eat dust” is a symbol that the Deceiver, Satan, that old Serpent, the Devil, has been able to eat on mankind without them knowing it! He has deceived the whole world and most Christians. The matter can be more clearly understood when we hear the judgment handed out to Adam when God said:
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Genesis 3:19
So the man Adam, a fleshly, earthy man, became a cursed man that the serpent could feed upon, for he was declared by the counsel of God to be dust: serpent food. Said the wise man:
“He knows our frame; He remembers that we are but dust…” Psalms 103:14
What Adam became, DUST, was substance the serpent could easily feed upon. God’s enlightened man was now subject to be serpent meat! Adam’s spirit was severed because his darkened spirit misinformed his mind within him. Now he allowed the devil to feed his earthly desires, devilish mindsets, and religious ways in a way that was so natural as to blind men to its operation.
The carnal mind of man is a DUST-BAG that is filled with devilish motivations and thoughts coming directly from the serpent spirit. This serpent spirit lies, cheats and kills to have its own way, even among good church folk where his strife is found. Man of himself cannot recognize what’s happening to him. The natural minded, sense-oriented realm of earth mindedness is a darkness given over to the serpent spirit as its rightful food. It is serpents meat. Every earthly minded man is fathered of the serpent according to Jesus:
"You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” John 8:44 KJV
Jesus stated to the scribes and Pharisees that they were fathered by the devil and were not acquainted with His Father, yet they were representatives of God to the nation of Israel. No wonder repentance was required! They were too aligned with the serpent’s nature, expressing serpent ideas, holding religious mindsets, fixing on motivations that were always mixed with falsehood, cheating to gain advantage, and killing the influence of Christ in one form or another.
Jesus exposed that base of operation and rebuked devilish thoughts among the religious leaders. The spiritual source of things within men was clearly evident to Jesus. He now purposes it be clear in His brethren also. He reveals what spirit individuals are expressing. God gives understanding of the spiritual source of man’s words and the fruit of his doings.
When the serpent spirit seeks to satisfy his appetite and gratify his desires, he uses a SPIRIT OF FEAR that produces false ideas in those people involved. Even for vast centuries the church has been torn:
“Milk I give you to drink, not solid food, for not as yet were you able for you are still fleshly. For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and walking according to man?” I Corinthians 3:2-3 concordant
Yet man is walking according to the serpent spirit. He has not learned of the Holy Spirit to be refusing serpent thoughts, the natural mindedness in mankind. Nor has even the Lord’s people been vigilant to resist the good thoughts of carnal-minded men and women, even less to apply ourselves to identify the spiritual source of our own reasoning mind.
Adam and his descendants, and all other people on earth start out as earthly minded — earthly minded particles of dust:
“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” I Corinthians 15:45-49
The Amplified Bible version of part of this text is:
“The first man was from out of the earth, made of dust — earth minded; the second man is the Lord out of heaven. Now those who are made of the dust are like him who was first made of the dust — earth minded. And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, so shall we and so let us bear also the image of the Man of heaven.” I Corinthians 15:47-49
It’s not news to any of us veterans that our minds are the battleground between two kingdoms. The major focal point of the battle in our mind rages at its greatest intensity when struggling for our hearts’ loyalties: WHAT DO WE LOVE FIRST? This battle tries every soul and marks the lives of men. Today the sphere of Satan’s activity in earth is vast, and the pinnacle object of his devouring is still in the establishment of religious mindsets that are close to God in head knowledge, but can not reveal how Christ is working in the hearts of brethren.
Thus they breathe out accusations of fault-finding judgment toward brethren, falsely. God’s judgment is not faulty. It is not found in religious self-righteous standards that instill hate, even going so far as to kill the Lord’s anointed influence in the hearts of the people:
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour.” I Peter 5:8
Peter advised that to brethren. Our adversary seeks to devour Christians in many ways, like overwhelming us with carnal-minded pursuits in which our being becomes consumed with THINGS and BUSYNESS (good and bad) that are not profitable in leading us to a godly life controlled by the Spirit of God.
Enough has been said that we should know how desperately we need a MIGHTY CHANGE IN OUR THINKING! Our thoughts and understanding are what Christ comes to change in us. His work is to make of us what God has determined is right for each of us to experience. So if there is to be any significant change in our lives, it must be a result of changes God wants worked out in our life. I say He causes us to repent by accepting the mind He gives in the spirit of sonship:
“Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” Romans 12:2
“Be renewed in the spirit of your mind…” Ephesians 4:23
The King is seen in us when the gospel truth is written upon our inner spiritual being by His spirit. Then we too proclaim like John the Baptist at the Jordan:
“Take a new mind! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 3:2
John was telling the people that, although they did not discern it then, they were in the midst of a most marvelous change in the world’s history. He was telling them that those things God had given them in the past, by the law and the prophets, were being fulfilled, now to pass away. A completely new dispensation of divine order was to be instituted and made operative, an order that eventually would dominate the entire universe.
Repentance is a result of God sending His Spirit to testify together with our spirit, instructing us in His ways. This causes repentance, CHANGE, on our part. As we look back on our lives in the light of His mind, it is evident that we have made NO major choices of our own. The Lord placed obstacles, blessings, brethren, books, ministries, dealings, teachings, movings of His Spirit, manifestations of His power, and life experiences in our pathway to give us a personal understanding of His will for us.
He is granting a KNOWING OF HIS WAYS so we may understand His great plans and purposes in His people. His plans that are not mixed with “serpent’s meat.” He is coming to inject new things into the pathways of our inner life EVEN NOW. Never in a million years could we have figured out how to identify the ways of the Kingdom of God. Never in a million years could we have searched out how to find God, how to see Him as He is, how to know Him as we are known by Him. Never in a million years of self-effort could anyone have uncovered the truth of this new day to which we have come.
Just as in the days of John the Baptist and Jesus, the present religious systems and orders of today want all things to continue on as they have been. They are not aware that an age has already ended and a new Day has dawned in the hearts of those God has prepared. They do not understand the program that God is now unfolding because the throne of Satan was established in the Pergamum church spoken of in Revelation. That order has worked for the past two thousand years in a formal order of church that has waxed old and is now ready to pass away.
Most people cannot see clearly that it is God’s time for judgment to be given to the saints of the Most High. A stage is set to usher in the next phase of the Kingdom of God in heaven and on the earth. It is a most important time. Even scholars do not understand the different stages of dispensational development God has used for the Kingdom of Christ to unfold in its true glory. Today’s religious leaders in formal church settings don’t understand His coming, as the leaders of the nation of Israel under the covenant given to Moses didn’t understand His coming.
Our faithful Lord and King is giving the full sevenfold Spirit to overcomers that delivers them from seeking the puny glory of former days. It is the seventh thousand year day from Adam, the third thousand year day since the advent of Christ Jesus has come. A new feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, is awaiting Christians who hear what the spirit is saying and commit to the principles the Lord teaches by His spirit of His New Day feast.
There is a marriage supper coming because an army is forming who see eye to eye and His delivering hand has brought them to spiritual Mt. Zion. The Lord is bringing a profound repentance within a people who are guileless and faultless before Him. They are able to really grasp to understand the testimony of God’s spirit:
“Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel.” Acts 5:31
He will give repentance to all the descendants of natural Israel that are the many nations in the earth today. He will do that through brethren He has changed by Christ. This change is more than conversion to a scriptural mindset, a philosophy, or a religion. It’s a change to know God's LIFE through being one spirit with the Lord. It’s a change to a mind that identifies the spiritual source of thoughts and motives presenting themselves within each of us right now:
“When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.” Acts 11:18
God has granted men of ALL nations to be changed thru the mind that Christ brings. Jesus was raised up to the right hand of God, the right hand of power so He could give change to all nations including Israel. True repentance is the CHANGE TO SPIRITUAL LIFE that reaches its consummation in a total metamorphosis as we become a beloved son or daughter of God the Father:
“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” I Corinthians 15:50-51
What a mystery Paul was declaring! We all shall be CHANGED! We shall not all sleep (be unaware in death), but we all shall be changed to know the trump of God that raises the dead:
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” Romans 12:2
The word “transformed” in this passage is the Greek word METAMORPHOO from which we get our English word “metamorphosis.” The same word is used to describe Jesus when He was transfigured. This metamorphosis is a divine exchange which is brought about after the quickening of our inner spirit has dislodged our earthly mindedness enough to be established in the disposition of life and peace.
Mind renewal is NOT accomplished through more efforts in positive thinking. It is the process of Christ’s light helping us to identify the difference between truth and error, realizing what spiritual source is working within our own soul. The spirit He sends causes us to learn the differences in the mind of Christ from the reasoning soulish mind of man. It is a matter of experiencing Christ teaching us over and over again until the mind of the Holy Spirit is imprinted, imparted, imputed, and stamped upon us. Then we are sealed in being written upon in God’s thinking processes by God Himself..
Kings and priests of the Kingdom have the Father’s name and nature etched within their foreheads. Their thought processes have become raised by a quickening that makes them alive to Christ. This doesn’t come by TRYING to meditate or TRYING to think differently, but by experiencing God's Spirit quickening our spirit—the spirit itself testifying together with our spirit until we can discern the mind of Christ enough to follow its teachings within our being. Christ gives liberty and reveals ALL things are LAWFUL for us, but all things are NOT EXPEDIENT in teaching us:
“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” II Corinthians 3:17-18
The Lord is coming to renew us from within, not from any visible outer work that men have observed. We are quickened to a spiritual raising that instructs us to realize and recognize Christ as He is coming to be glorified IN ALL HIS SAINTS. He is coming to His body by the spirit, to establish the Kingdom of God within us. He has, is, and will come again and again in mighty Spirit power to be conceived within the spirit of every believing man until God dwells in our hearts by faith.
Kingdom people grow up beyond milk to feed on the MEAT of His table. His hidden manna leads us into His Headship, as NEW CREATION men and women made in the image of God.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
By this scripture we can understand that creation is just two things: heavens and earth. Everything God originally created has contained within heavens and the earth — there is nothing of creation outside of these until Jesus Christ came to establish something NEW:
“If any man be in Christ he is a new creation.” II Cor. 5:17
The new creation is one that has moved from the old earth and the old heavens into something new. New heavens and new earthly conditions are promised of New Testament scripture. The mind of Christ makes this new substance be within us. Jesus Christ now sends the COMPLETE SEVENFOLD FULLNESS of divine holy spirit deep into us to overcome the obstacles and places found in the candlestick churches. He does this to establish His throne in those brethren He draws to Himself. Those who truly repent have the “Father’s name written in their forehead”. They have taken a new mind. They can understand the great reality, the power, and the glory of these matters:
“He Who is sitting on the throne said, ‘Lo! New am I making all!’ And He is saying, ‘Write, for these sayings are faithful and true.’ And He said to me, ‘I have become the Alpha and the Omega, the Origin and the Consummation. To him who is thirsting I shall be giving of the spring of the water of life gratuitously. He who is conquering shall be enjoying this allotment, and I shall be a God to him and he shall be a son to Me.” Revelation 21:5-8 concordant