The Bible states that God made Adam like Him, in God’s image, set in an authority to rule the earth with guidance by the Spirit of God. In the garden of Eden, God planted precious plants, stately trees, costly spices, and aromatic herbs. In this garden the trees planted by God were types of people. Adam lived, fed, and worked at reigning in Eden’s heavenly garden.
This very thing is still true in the lives Christ has restored. Each of our spiritual lives are little vineyards, portions of earth and spirit of which God is the creator and husbandman. His orchard of fruit trees do already rejoice together and individually take their place in a heavenly order of spiritually sacrificing priests. These people are the Lord’s planting in which our heavenly Father husbands the inner arrangements of the heart to refine our inner character to produce fruit like His great King. Earnestly pray the husbandman does a quick work in your personal “garden!”
May we come to the completion that procures the glorious life God has promised. Too often Christians have settled for a standard supply of earthly blessings, supposing that earthly gain is godliness. Our earthly needs are food and raiment, with these we must be content today. If we do find contentment with His guidance, it heals and delivers our inner being as we seek for greater miracles Christ grants that sweeten our life from our inner being.
His nature, guidance, and goodness change our whole being. Even our natural mortal body is quickened when His Spirit dwells within us. Our Father will dig up and prune away any and all inner deceit working within us. He overturns our fallow ground, purging our earthly ideas and exposing the temporal desires of our own hearts, planting heavenly thoughts and attitudes in our innermost being. Characteristics of godliness in our heart produces sweet proper tasting fruit. Love is real!
We believers are called to holiness so we do present our bodies a living sacrifice, faithfully trusting He will uncover all that is hindering His perfect image from being known and formed at the center of our being. Our Father’s purpose is to develop our inner person by Christ reigning within our life without haste.
Ah, as the tree of life was the blessing in Eden, now we are eating from the hidden tree of life that springs up within us to run in deep rivers of truth. Jesus saves us from darkness as He reveals how to let Christ work within our being. Our Father desires that we bear kingdom fruit, that we worship in the right spirit of real truth, developing qualities of the Divine life in us even now.
He leads us through great realms of faith that changes our mind, and gives spiritual development that quickens our spirit. He is to continually abide within us which also quickens our mortal bodies even now. Even when the cold north winds of adversity blow against the garden of our life, our inner light shines in abundance with spiritual strength growing within our being. God breathes upon the garden of our inner spiritual life with His truth to deal with our nature, stripping away our ignorance, vanity, and pride, no matter how hard the blows may be.
“Awake, O North Wind!” Blow most fervently to search out our hidden self-interests, expose our hidden selfish motives, our pride and prejudices, in order to free us of any and all soulish mindsets, human emotions, and earthly desires that would control the hearts of His people. God’s people in the candlestick church realms are held in carnal minded states that need to be overcome. Oh, His cold north wind of adversity will blow upon every false scriptural standard to free us from every earthly minded interpretation and soulish expression found in passing church heavens.
The traditional teachings of systematic seminaries are exposed as faulty as He removes error from overcomers. Christian overcomers stand in His truth, the truth His Spirit teaches them. He is forming Christ within us as we are connected to our Father and being taught by His Spirit of truth. The carnal minded teachings of religious men must be forsaken, so that death is swallowed up into the comforting teachings and personal guidance of God’s Spirit. God calls death our enemy! He clothes us now with the spiritual reality of true humility and righteousness. These clothe our inner person now, so the saints do bear fruit of right ways. The Father does prune our inner beings, so that overcomers form an effective channel for the mind of Christ.
Our Father is husband to our personal lives, providing, guiding, watering our individual garden. He sends sunlight and rain, comforts, and then sends the cold north wind of adversity to strip away any false assurances that we assume to possess. We learn not to boast in the trickery of men nor voice their crafty claims. We do not become part of schemes that defraud the gullible with law mentality and traditions of men. We refuse to build in the passing heavens known as “church.” The reality of our heavenly Father is not grasped by head knowledge, because knowing about good is just as dead as knowledge of evil. The knowledge of good and evil is death!
We stay alive with Christ who establishes a firm and constant leadership within. The natural minded people in the Laodicean candlestick church “think they are rich and have need of nothing”, yet in God’s eyes these Christians are “poor, blind, miserable and naked”, not having fully laid hold of the promises. They still lack the vision and provision needed to arrive at real union within.
Our Father has granted eyes of wisdom so we understand the truth. We are not mistaken or deceived with literal interpretations of scriptural revelation. This spiritual knowledge opens the doors of heaven. New things are coming as Christ feeds us from within. Christ guides us to possess the power found in Jesus’s immortal life, life that supplies the Spirit of truth. Listening to and following Christ’s directions within our inner person works out an honest upright character within us, a satisfying measure beyond any other. Christ’s own glory is placed into each overcomer’s life.
Our Father actively guides us to correctly overcome life’s difficulties,. In these, He also prunes away every excess so Christ can be perfectly formed within us. It is easy to see that testings and trials do form a measure of righteousness within our lives to correct what does not benefit us in Him. Our own plans, schemes, and efforts are exposed as the hidden motivations that hinder our union with Christ. The spiritual lives of so many Christians remain self-absorbed even with religious activities and multiplied works of charity. The center of attention in candlestick churches does not allow liberty for spiritual worship, focusing instead on good ordinances, works and surface fellowship which can become iniquity in God’s sight. The modern day Laodicean church thinks it needs nothing but it has surely drained and strained the finances of God’s people, stripped them of real strength, not allowing the vitality of personal fellowship with the Father and His Son, nor His called out people.
Our Father cuts things out of our life, pruning things within our personal activities and relationships. He guides our inner being to remove the mindsets and ways that offend Him. When adversity uncovers carnality within our soul, thus, it exposes our thoughts, our acts, and our mental state. Repentance positions us to a comparison with the King’s life. The Spirit of God prunes us with convictions that turn us from our dead ways. His Spirit of truth reveals the right from the wrong ways and sifts through our religious thoughts.
Sometimes quietly, sometimes like a mighty wind, He sweeps away the error to shine on our sin until it is removed from us forever. Our past is left behind as the old falls off. Though we may appear momentarily stripped and bare, in reality we are made stronger when we can be dealt with in new washings. New portions of God life completes an inner work to full stature. Made fresh, we are new creatures better clothed and conditioned to bring forth love, joy, and peace in our life that grows to be harvested. Ah, divine fruit is made by the Spirit of God! Excellent love is sewn into our spirit by Christ. Within our spirit His Spirit teaches us to understand His glorious purposes in the making of full grown sons and daughters of God.
Now with faith and confidence we pray, “Awake, O north wind, and blow upon my heart! Send whatever testing and processing that I need. Send chastening that produces your heavenly fruit today.” He can prune away dead ways of being within our inner person that causes new life to blossom and develop heavenly, spiritual fruit within our lives. Christ centered people are now positioned beautifully to behold and bear the most luscious fruits of the Father’s nature, and we can receive the greatest spiritual rewards.
God tries every man’s work with adversity. He tries every man’s work with the cold north winds that blow upon all the plans and processes that work to promote falsities. He uncovers what man has injected into His church. The church of the firstborn is not ruled by ignorant men. He rebukes the lies man submits to rule His people and He proves whether we have quality fruit abiding within. Overcomers LIVE in the King’s precepts! The true minister deals in our lives to reveal mystifying revelations that confuse men. Light comes to our lives when we hear and see Him in a higher calling in a new heavenly place. Once hidden by the carnal mind of religious men, a liberating door is now opened for the revealed truth of God’s Spirit.
“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this: “I know your deeds. Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name.’” Revelation 3:7-9 NAS
“The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” Matthew 13:41-43
The Christians in candlestick churches are in passing heavens. They have made much show before the eyes of the people, claiming authority in knowing the high things of God in Christ Jesus. Yet for generations, religious men have projected such legalistic folly that God’s people are lead by blind worldly minded leaders. Jesus has had to endure a saturating mixture for two thousand years. Christians are taught to anticipate acceptance AFTER they die, a place in the kingdom of heaven forever, while non-believers burn in a lasting hell FOREVER.
Only qualified overcomers of the candlestick orders understand and are dealt with to remove the inner offenses that keep them from being raised NOW into His throne realm. Overcomers have an entrance into the city built of God! We rejoice with new strength, with the divine might and power of God’s glory being revealed from within. It is best to question to what degree every organized Christian camp has yielded to the revealed truth in the scriptures. What is the real state of each of our spiritual lives? Has the organized church reached mature FRUITFULNESS within its members? Or has head knowledge just merely talked about great revelations. What possesses sufficient measure inside our spirit today?
“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches; he that overcomes shall not be hurt of the second death.” Revelation 2:11
This passage states the overcomer experiences no hurt of the second death. NOTHING of that second death process hurts them. The second death is a process some pass through in prunings and inner deaths that process a death to our religious self. This works out to complete what is wrought by God in Christ Jesus WITHIN us. Our Father corrects and prunes His vineyard and we are not “hurt” by it. Listen, it is possible to pass through the most terrible experiences, deep dealings, traumatic life events and not be hurt by them!
“And these three men Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spoke, and said unto his counselors, ‘Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ They answered and said unto the king, ‘True, O king.’ He answered and said, ‘Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.’” Daniel 3:23-25
Through experience, the maturity of overcomers grows to pass through any and all dark terrors that prevail in this life on earth. The hot testings burn out our dross, remolding even in the deepest depths of our being. We are being changed and we are not hurt, because we are drawing from Christ within. We have strength to walk on higher ground with the Son of God. How heartening and assuring to read and know such promises do apply to us as this:
“When thou pass through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: and when thou walk through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” Isaiah 43:2
The word “hurt” from the Greek is “adikeo,” meaning to be injured, be an offender, be unjustly wronged, injured, or offended. Armed with this understanding, we could rightly paraphrase Revelation 2:11 thus:
“He that overcomes shall not be done an injustice, wronged, injured, or offended by the second death.”
Jesus willingly and obediently walked into the fiery processing of God's plan in dealing with crucifixion. It was with inner joy He laid down His life on earth, understanding the blessings the Father was preparing. Our Father will continue to work on the inner parts of overcomers spiritual life until all of them die the second death!
"And the sea gives up the dead in it, and death and the unseen give up the dead in them. And they were condemned, each in accord with their acts. And death and the unseen were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death-the lake of fire. And if anyone was not found written in the scroll of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." Revelation 20:13-15 concordant
When our natural mindedness gives way for a spiritual awakening, that birth goes on to grow in the inner spiritual man. Great change happens as God writes His word on our foreheads, as prescribed in scripture to an attainment, a passing from death unto life for us. This attainment is the end of the second death, being judged by God as one worked upon. No transitional offenses occurs, as here practical harmony is within our spirit while knowing the King’s thoughts. We do consider His desires and doings among His people. We question the lack of harmony that surrounds soulish thinking, which is produced by self centered desires to do “religious” things!
As CHRIST quickens our spirit within us, there has come a great desire to break from the old, to separate for the regenerating of our spirit. We are to have nothing in common with the old worldly conditions that dominate natural minded men. The former way of life now becomes embarrassing for us. Because “sin in our members” refuses to be dismissed completely, our spiritual consciousness competes doggedly to recognize the new nature of Christ rising within. Even memories of past passion are lost as our fixed association to Him inhabits our being. Our inner being remains focused on seeing His face.
The complex and bewildered Christian soul, in fact, finds himself to be two contrasting faculties — the fleshly man and a spiritual man — each with urgent but incompatible claims. It is a dual consciousness in a deceived world, a world whose inhabitants are deadly enemies engaging in perpetual civil war, killing one another, blaming one another for wrong. The condition of Christians is perplexing. It is clear that man can attempt to live with many masters, but no man can serve two masters at one time. He will love one more and love one less than the other for we will follow the one master’s pursuits, or follow after others. One can not have two masters, for he will eventually hate the one and cling to the other, no matter how long a time it takes to prove.
"For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot perform it. I have the intention and urge to do what is right, but no power to carry it out; for I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds I do not desire to do are what I am ever doing. Now if I do what I do not desire to do, it is no longer I doing it — it is not myself that acts — but the sin (principle) which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law of my being that when I want to do what is right and good, evil is ever present with me and I am subject to its insistent demands.
For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost self — with my new nature. But I discern in my bodily members — in the sensitive appetites and will of the flesh — a different law at war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that dwells in my bodily organs — in the sensitive appetites and will of the flesh. O, unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from the shackles of this body of death? O thank God! He will! through Jesus Christ, the Anointed One, our Lord! So then indeed I myself with the mind and heart serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” Romans 7:18-25, Amplified
“No man,” Jesus often emphasized, “can serve two masters.” And yet, as a matter of fact, here is the quickened apostle of God, Paul, having clear confession of being mastered by two inner forces: the fleshly nature working in his body opposing his inner spirit. Christians on the earth today are in the same condition as Paul because in our human constitution is both flesh and spirit. Who can deny it? Yet, someone quickly says, “But my old man is dead!” Yes friend, the old man you were is dead, but your fleshly mind (soul realm) needs be deadened too!
"Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Galatians 5:19-21 NAS
“…no man ever hates his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it;" Ephesians 5:29
We are surely saved by God’s grace! God awakens our spirit and soul to the things of God. He takes us through a death to self process that is our second death experience. We have it NOW, in this life. We can take up our cross and follow Christ Thru every spiritual circumcision needed, to be crucified in our inner man, beholding His spirit operating to clothe us from within. We are no longer dominated by a selfish master! Many men are concerned about getting and keeping the most for themselves, for “no man hates his own flesh” and blood body, so they nourish it.
Christians on earth have flesh and blood bodies and are also brought into knowing about high spiritual workings. Within them are these two realms that are opposing realms — flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, light and darkness, truth and error. Herein lies the objective truth of our being! Who and what can rule us right now? What is set in my deepest affection now? What can be done in such an emergency? How can our inner spiritual man be dominant over that ever-persistent greedy sowing and reaping of our flesh?
The only ready solution to the difficulty we Christian men have is to GROW UP SPIRITUALLY UNTIL HIS LIFE SWALLOWS UP OUR SPIRIT, delivering us from the DEATH which is called in the scripture text the "second death."
We recognize as dead what God says is dead, and we must put to death what God says is still alive and must be put to death. Some church people harp on the fact that their “old man is crucified,” but read the scriptures in an understanding light. Light shone on the scripture brings unity. Together in unity the body of Christ makes divine progress most enjoyable by us:
“So kill the evil desire lurking in your members — those animal impulses and all that is earthly in you is employed in sin: sexual vice, impurity, sensual appetites, unholy desires, and all greed and covetousness, for that is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5 Amplified
This scripture instructs us to KILL THE EVIL DESIRE LURKING IN OUR OWN MEMBERS (mental or physical). The animal impulses of unholy desire must be STOPPED FROM WITHIN. THEY MUST STOP TAKING AN UNRIGHTFUL PLACE OF MASTERY WITHIN US. So, God tests us to see what we allow. If we really know what He is doing we will yield to Him and not be ignorant humans led by unholy desires that take familiar paths in religious forms, such as instructing others to hate something that is divine.
God tests if the love within our spirit is set on things above or set on things of the earth. Our life should be hid (covered, clothed) with Christ in God. Sons become enlightened to the process of being crucified with Christ. A measure of Godly anointing is applied to those operating in true spiritual workings that call people to life from their dead conditions.
His Spirit has been releasing overcomers from the hurt of the “second death” for two thousand years. These believers embraced and applied the cross of Jesus Christ DAILY to their own lives, eventually becoming clothed in white raiment as they are delivered from the last measure of death’s reign. God knows the measure of our need! He has been saving us to the uttermost. We are to be COMPLETELY made alive now and to remain so throughout the ages, as He has promised.
Let me be clear — ALL men that have every lived will eventually die to sin from within. ALL men will eventually be raised to unity with resurrection life in God. Great masses of people in places of hellish torment will miss ages of divine happenings, yet we who lovingly submit to God’s dealings while living will live through out all time. We may see dreadful events working in the carnal minded people as we pray to learn how to refuse the fleshly minded thoughts that rule in so many mental states, and stop sin from driving our bodily members.
We are empowered by God’s Christ to be changed in our inner being by knowledge of our Father’s spiritual state. While many others seem destined to wait for later ages — later seasons — to be subdued and broken under the heat of God great refining fire, we are willing passing through fiery trials NOW. Passing through our second death now, we die the death to self’s rule NOW. We have been circumcised of heart, learned how not to be “hurt” by any further refining processes.
We see things differently now. We came out of former conditions by being crucified with Christ. Now the learned followers of Christ have active faith and indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. Christ guided each one of us into a maturing character wrought by our Father writing every element of our character to be made one with God’s Son. Being exposed to His light, we are changed and made subject, made like unto Jesus:
“Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.” Revelation 20:4-6 NAS
"To be executed, or beheaded" is the second death. This becomes a great inner work of maturity where God operates within our spirit to teach us to embrace the sweet and the bitter. His crucifixions need to work in order to satisfy His longing heart that we be loosed from every yoke of offense, to be saved from death, hell, and the grave! In what measure we are identified with the cross of Christ and made conformable with His death, THAT is the measure of full relationship granted as a “beheaded brother.” We are no longer a babe in Christ, not doing our own thing. God does what is necessary to accomplish our “beheading” to count as our going through our "second death now." Our selfish desires have ended. In our life there remains no further judgment that hurts us.
The soul of man has ruled this world in selfishness. Carnal minded ways have hostility and enmity against others. Its destruction is in the tongue, but yet we are released from spreading its poison. Spiritual resurrection happens to people who allow God's Word and Spirit to work in the inner parts of their lives. God has elected — arranged— wherein all the sad effects of death, hell, and the grave are disabled, and our carnal minded sorrow ceases its plague.
It’s time for divine process of spiritual maturing to work in the hearts of all Christians, so they hear and understand what THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD is saying to believers in the candlestick church. They must overcome the carnality that is in the church systems to be given entrance and seating in the spiritual city above. All those in the grave who died physically, ALL the dead, shall hear His voice in their departed spirit and soul, and will yet arise to know the life in God’s Son:
"He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 3:21-22 NAS
Who hears and willingly submits to chastisement that gives spiritual growth, a process that only sons experience. They are like Jesus in knowing it is God who disciples us. We know that “no man is taking our life from us, we are laying it down as God directs.” But for those too stubborn to hear or understand spiritual things now, who do not or will not lay down their selfish interests, I do not hesitate to say that God's judgment will be coming to you for PROCESS UNTO VICTORY.
As the Lord appears, there may be suffering and loss involved for children found in certain candlestick church conditions. He appears to rule over all things that offend, causing some to weep, and wail, and gnashing of teeth comes while many leaders among them teach falsehoods that amount to iniquity in religious ways of the passing church heavens. On the other hand, for candlestick church overcomers, their inner spiritual state is raised to oneness with His Spirit and their tongue is loosed from telling stories of woe. They are set free from the shackles of man’s failing ways by Christ working to circumcise our hearts.
We are freed from church traditions that hold worldly mindsets to influence peoples lives with blinding lies. Some overcomers are being “beheaded” for Christ, they are true witnesses of Jesus Christ. When His Spirit rules and reigns within our spirit, our soul is renewed. We are made FREE from the sin and death, that is commonly working within qualified people. Thank God He graciously is coming to deliver a release "into to most glorious liberty reserved for sons and daughters of God.”
Make no mistake about this. He moves with passion, in extreme measures, to remove the marking of death within each of us. He will do whatever it takes to deliver us from “beastly” motivations that oppose Him. The measures He must use to subdue any one of us, His people, is beyond the grasp of our comprehension. Yet for the ungodly and wicked men, the second death in the unseen could prove to be a most painful experience until God’s standard of righteousness gains the allegiance of their hearts.
We have learned how to embrace the day’s events with His Spirit’s strength working to arrange a godly order within our lives to free us from past religious orders. God will blow on the garden of our life until any stubborn pride will be exposed and renounced. His Spiritual order that rules over our own soul and all its religious ways is NEW. He is truly making “all things new”! We are new witnesses of His wedding feast! If we submit to every refining fire now, we escape the second death. It does not hurt but helps us be changed clearly into the divine image even now! He that overcomes NOW shall not be HURT by all the ongoing workings of God’s judgment. I am so glad!