Beloved Fellow Disciples,
Those of us who have been involved in Ultimate Journey and Follow Me Ministries are accustomed to repetition. In these materials it has been, and still is, purposely applied because we know that repetition is the mother of mastery and skill – thus a very important part of our discipleship training.
I mention this because this current article contains some of the same verbiage that you would have read in the previous article, “Is Yeshua Enough For Us?” To clarify, after that article had been published and booklets created, translated and distributed, the Holy Spirit imparted further revelation regarding the schemes and irregular warfare being waged by the powers of darkness against our God and against the humans He created in His image and likeness (us!), revealing once again why we must be diligent to remain rooted and grounded in Biblical Truth.
The content of the “Is Yeshua Enough For Us?” article on the FMM website has been updated and still carries the same title while it now includes the additional content you’ll find here. We believe that the additional expanded text needs to be released in booklet form as well. This article contains very timely, and sobering, and essential content for the further equipping of us Last Days Disciples. In my spirit, I sense this is like the shofar blasts of old that were used to call the armies of the Living God to battle. I urge each of us to prayerfully read it, listening to the Holy Spirit at the same time as He speaks His ‘for such a time as this’ Marching Orders, further firming up our foundation of faith and preparing us for whatever lies ahead.
This verse in Daniel not only gives us a clue to the enemy’s tactics but also a promise to those of us who know our God.
With smooth words he will seduce those who act wickedly against the covenant, but the people who know their God will stand strong and prevail. (Daniel 11:32 TLV, Emphasis added)
And here in Psalms 68 and 144 we are reminded that praise is our greatest weapon of war.
“Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” (Psalm 144:1, KJV)
“Let God arise, and His enemies be scattered; Let those who hate Him flee before Him.” (Psalm 68:1, AMP)
So, Beloved, I encourage us all to re-read King Jehoshaphat’s attitude, prayer and God-given strategy found in 2 Chronicles chapter 20, paying special attention to verses 15 and 17 below:
“…Listen all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat. Thus Adonai says to you, ‘Do not be afraid or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.’”
“You will not fight in this battle. Take your positions, stand and see the salvation of Adonai with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid or be dismayed. Tomorrow go out to face them, for Adonai is with you.” (Emphasis added)
“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have shalom. In the world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world!” (John 16:33 TLV), (Emphasis added)
“For everyone born of God overcomes the world. And the victory that has overcome the world is this—our faith.” (1 John 5:4, TLV, Emphasis added)
With love and continued prayer for our ever expanding FMM family of disciples,
Mum Nancy
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Beloved Family… I believe it’s safe to say that many in Christendom claim to believe in God, and to be disciples of His Son. But it’s also true that not many can supply demonstrable evidence to prove that what they claim is actually real. They may be frequent ‘churchgoers’ and engage in religious activities sponsored by high profile organized religious groups; and they may staunchly profess to be ‘believers’. But that isn’t enough to validate their claims. They must be able to back those claims with proof that is obviously supernatural!
“A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will recognize them by their (actual) fruit!” (Matthew 7:18-20 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
Holy Spirit provides the evidence that proves the risen Lord actually lives and acts from within a person. Disciple life is a visible, effervescent, electrified and joy-filled, life-transforming passage through this world that leaves obvious world-changing spiritual fruit in its wake. And those profound life changes are what convince observers that the supernatural indwelling Presence of God is truly abiding and working in and through the person in question:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, BUT HE WHO DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER IN HEAVEN!
“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your Name, and drive out demons in Your Name, and perform many miracles in Your Name?’
Then I will declare to them, ‘I NEVER KNEW YOU! Get away from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’”(Matthew 7:21-23 TLV, Emphasis added)
The Lord gives quite a stern ‘I really mean business’ kind of warning, doesn’t He? So try to imagine the overwhelmingly devastating shock that would surge through the entire being of anyone upon whom He would have to pronounce such a terrible judgment! At that instant, that person’s years of hiding behind false facades and maintaining distance from God’s Word would be made known and that individual’s true spiritual nakedness would be exposed! And that reminds me of how shocked and devastated Saul of Tarsus must have felt when the risen Lord confronted and exposed him in Acts 9, outside of Damascus!
“As he was traveling, approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. Falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, WHY ARE YOU PERSECUTING ME?”
“Who are You, Lord?” Saul said.
“I AM YESHUA—whom you are persecuting! But get up and go into the city, AND YOU WILL BE TOLD WHAT YOU MUST DO!” (Acts 9:3-6 TLV, Emphasis added)
Beloved, people who would have viewed Saul through the default carnal ‘lenses’ that are natural and common to all fallen human flesh would no doubt have rated Saul the same way he was rating himself! They would have agreed that he was an impeccable, faithful, authentic servant of the God of Israel! In fact, they would have agreed that Saul and his fellow religious colleagues had been perfectly (that is, Biblically) justified in stoning Stephen to death! They would have assumed that he had helped to protect Israel from spiritual corruption by ridding her of that crazy heretical pest!
So, just like Nicodemas before him, Saul had not yet comprehended the enormity of the Reality-Shift that took place the moment Israel’s Messiah, the Living Word of God made flesh, rose from the dead and ascended in total triumph back into Heaven! He hadn’t known the Lord in the flesh the way Nicodemas did. But Nicodemas had also been shocked and stunned when he heard what the pre-Resurrection Lord said to him that night in John chapter 3.
“Now there was a man, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jewish people. He came to Yeshua at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that You, a teacher, have come from God. For no one can perform these signs which You do unless God is with Him!”
Yeshua answered him, “Amen, amen I tell you, UNLESS ONE IS BORN FROM ABOVE, HE CANNOT SEE THE KINGDOM OF GOD!”
“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus said to Him. “He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?”
Yeshua answered, “Amen, amen I tell you, UNLESS ONE IS BORN OF WATER AND SPIRIT, HE CANNOT ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit!
“Do not be surprised that I said to you, ‘You all must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHERE IT COMES FROM OR WHERE IT GOES. SO IT IS WITH EVERYONE BORN OF THE SPIRIT.” (John 3:1-8 TLV, Emphasis added)
Beloved, at the beginning of their association with the Lord, neither of those two first century Pharisees was able to realize that Yeshua is the Eternal King of the Everlasting Kingdom of God! Nor were they able to discern the vast differences between the internal spiritual effects the New Covenant He had been sent to institute and launch would have on people, as a necessary fulfillment of what the Mosaic Covenant had been able to do for them and accomplish in them. So these two Israelites remained in the dark concerning Yeshua, and who He really was, and what He had been sent to be and to do in our midst! So even elite, top-level Biblical scholars and approved, highly-recognized religious authorities failed to recognize their long-awaited Messiah when He finally arrived. And even today, great resistance and antagonism against Yeshua is still vented against Him by most of the Jewish people, not to mention great portions of the modern day Gentile world!
That’s why His sudden Self-revelation knocked both Nicodemas and Saul for such a soul-shaking, life-rattling loop! Despite their years of training and erudition, they didn’t understand what it takes to love and please God on His terms, and actually satisfy and meet His Perfect Standards of Reality, Truth, Justice and Righteousness! They weren’t aware that they had failed to take to heart God’s promise to make a new covenant with Israel! To them it was merely a vague concept that prophets from the past had briefly mentioned. But they had never suspected that God’s electrifying New Covenant Reality had actually come… and was actually appearing before their eyes… in the Person of Yeshua… and in those disciples, like Stephen, who would be carrying His risen Presence within them!
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
“For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34 NASB, Emphasis added)
The Torah revealed that God would renew and cause the covenant He had made with Abraham to come alive in His people! And Scripture had intimated that it would make such enormous changes in their inner being that it would actually ‘circumcise their hearts’, making it possible for God to join Himself to, and become one with, each one of them – Spirit to spirit! And God was now actually on Earth… circumcising hearts in the midst of His people… and making it possible for them to actually become one with the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!
This is what Messiah Yeshua had come to Earth to accomplish! And that’s why He took onto Himself our very own humanity… except for Sin! God’s Word actually became one with our mortally wounded humanity to serve as our Covenant Representative and Champion! He has become one with us, so we would be able to become one with God! By taking on the humanity we all inherited from Adam, He was now legally able to represent us in an eternal covenant with God… redeeming, cleansing and setting us free from our state of Sin and enmity with God!
This is the vital importance of the New Covenant and what God’s Word accomplishes through it! But humans are usually so self-centered and self-adoring that they fail to get hold of this awesome truth! They can’t grasp the enormous implications of what it means to have God Himself abiding within you to serve as your Eternal Life, and your Infinitely Perfect Covering of Righteousness! Instead of looking to Him, we remain self-centered. We cook up all sorts of man-centered schemes and tactics that actually get in the way of what God is here to be for us! By relying on our own flesh-originated efforts, we actually push God away and maintain distance from Him… in our efforts to replace the Perfection of what He has done by relying instead, on the counterfeit substitutes we try to concoct for ourselves! And this habit of relying on what is created and favoring it over the One who is Uncreated, is especially prevalent in our day and age. That spirit of idolatry is increasing in intensity and closing in all around us at this very moment!
Yeshua came to take Israel and the rest of the world to a much deeper much more restful level of intimacy and personal relationship with God. The Blood Covenant Bond transforms two separate individuals… making the two to fuse into one brand new unified whole! Thus whatever God contains in Himself is intended to become one with us! We are to become ‘wedded’ into all that God Himself is! And this amazing union is so strikingly real and living, and actively fruitful, that God becomes the obvious world-changing Wellspring of the Eternal Life… the Fruit of which springs up continually from deep within us!
We Dare Not Do Or Accept Anything That Would Cause Us To Fall Short Of Being One With Our God!
We dare not foolishly settle for accepting alien, created substitute ingredients and merely theoretical, intellectual, conceptual levels of ‘head knowledge’ that are not authorized by God, which would contaminate, pollute and separate us from what He has already done in us. If we do allow that sort of mixture to take place… we ourselves will transform into something that is alien, corrupt, and unacceptable to God! So we must realize that our Holy God intends to work in us and through us at the deepest most intimately personal levels of our spiritual and physical makeup so that He can forever serve as our Righteousness and we can become everlasting members of His personal Family!
So obviously, since God considers the humanity He gave us to be that valuable and so worthy of redemption and restoration, the human nature He originally bestowed on us – even though it is currently Sin-corrupted and mortal – remains nevertheless, absolutely precious and desirable in God’s sight. He obviously intends to beautify, purify, renew, protect and preserve it. He’s not here to condemn it, He sent His Son to redeem and garden it back to its full level of original perfection… at any cost!
And now, as we abide with God in this renewed covenant bond, we can interact with Him and abide with Him at the most intimate levels possible! Beloved, this is even closer and profoundly more intimate than even the consummation of the marriage bond that weds husbands and wives to each other! God can now live in us, and through us, and His Spirit can continually transmit into our regenerated spirits, whatever we will ever need! And so, in reference to what Saul and the others had recently done to Stephen, this is why Yeshua asked His heart-piercing question: “Why are you persecuting ME?”
This awesome New Covenant Reality is what Nicodemas and Saul of Tarsus struggled so mightily to comprehend and eventually enjoy. And we disciples of the Last Days also need to gain a profound understanding of this issue. We must be fully equipped to deal with the demonic and human influences that are constantly at work to separate us from our God and the Glory of His Word’s Perfect Finished Works of Redemption and Restoration!
Stephen knew what God had done for him. That was his secret! Not even the threat of a violent death could separate him from abiding as one with His Lord. He successfully withstood all attacks, held His God-given Ground… and overcame every demonic attack that came against him. And now we too must know his secret… by probing and fathoming the depths of what it means to really be ‘born again’! We must understand the enormous difference between those who are ‘born from above’ and are filled with Eternal Messiah-Life, as opposed to those who are merely ‘born of the Sin-corrupted flesh and radically independent Self-life that is common to people of this fallen world’. ‘Flesh’ no matter how desperately it tries to find ways to ‘improve’ or ‘cure’ or ‘redeem’ itself is doomed to failure. It is already dead in God’s sight and will forever be unacceptable to Him. So, the critical issue, as I see it, and the questions to which it gives rise, are contained here:
Who lives in your spirit and operates through your flesh? Is it your radically independent self, or is it the resurrected Living Word of God who lives and operates from within you?’ And… do you really know your God as He really is… and are you firmly rooted in the faithful observance of His ways and His laws of Creation, or not?
“For no one can lay any other foundation THAN WHAT IS ALREADY LAID—which is Yeshua the Messiah. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear. For the Day will show it, because it is to be revealed by fire; and the fire itself will test each one’s work—what sort it is.” (1 Corinthians 3:11-13 TLV, Emphasis added)
The Tower of Babel Rebellion Is Here Again
The above text gives us a strong clue concerning what God is looking for whenever He regards any human He has created. He looks to see whether or not His beloved Son… the Living Word of God made flesh… is abiding in that person’s spirit, and revealing Himself, and producing His Fruit… in and through the flesh and earthly life of that person! But… at this critical time of human history, globalist experts, scientists and leaders deny the existence of God. And they’re searching for ways to enable human beings to ‘upgrade’ themselves to such an extent that they themselves will be able to step into His role of exercising supremacy! So today’s disciples are forced to face and deal with dangerous lethal realities that, to previous generations, were utterly unimaginable. They’re cropping up all around us, like weeds! And they are deadly traps! No Man-made Artificial Intelligences, or computerized robotic contraptions, or chemical or genetic contrivances can take the place of the Humanity of the resurrected Messiah of Israel! Only He is the Perfect Salvation and Restoration that has been promised and given to us by Almighty God!
To help you understand what I mean, I refer you to two videos that, hopefully, will make you more aware of some of the ominous forces that are marshaling themselves against the disciples of this Last Days Era. May they give us a clearer sense of direction as to what our boot camp training needs to instill in us and what levels of conviction and skillsets we must develop, to actually identify, and become one with, what God has already provided for us. We dare not allow anyone or anything to lure us away from God’s All-Sufficient Provision! Nor can we allow ourselves to be sucked into any of the myriads of demonic delusionary traps that are being set all around us. Beloved… God has already provided everything we will ever need! When we have His Word and Spirit living in us, we have EVERYTHING! So now we must learn to understand and properly use, maintain and protect our awesome Birthright so we may persevere to the very end of this age. If we persevere, we’ll overcome every ploy and attack of God’s enemies once and for all! So here are the two links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEvcbJloGjg
https://www.brighteon.com/dbc0cd92-60e0-4388-a802-0d130e44bd46
I hope these bits of information will give you an adequate taste that will prompt you to learn more about the awareness level we need to develop about the cunning deceptions we must recognize, expose, and overcome. Because of all the advances that are rapidly being made in technology and science, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), bio-engineering, mind control techniques, and Transhumanism… fallen humans are being manipulated and used by the powers of Darkness to devise new possibilities intended to take the human race into depths of depravity that were not as attainable in previous times as they have now become! They’re developing technological tools that enable them to attack the essential fabric of God’s beautiful, but fallen, Creation… including the awesome Humanity and DNA coding with which God sent His Son, the Last Adam, to become one! They’re tampering with that human part of God’s Creation and its nature… devising ways by which to bypass the laws of God’s Creation and the principles that govern its workings, and coming up with alien substitutes that He will never ratify or accept!
They propose to alter our original human genetic makeup by injecting unauthorized alien elements into our God-given DNA that will morph, change, and destroy the beautiful image and likeness of God Humanity that God originally created and which He sent His Son to redeem! They’re trying to get our race to mutate into something God never intended… something He didn’t send His Son to redeem! Yeshua didn’t come for the alien concoctions that men are devising in their well-funded, cleverly concealed laboratories! He came for us, as He originally made us to be!
“God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world (just as it is) might be saved through Him! The one who believes in Him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not put his trust in the Name of the one and only Ben-Elohim.” (John 3:17-18 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
The modern Man-devised innovations do not fit into God’s Plan of Salvation, Regeneration and Restoration! That Plan is only for the descendants of Adam! It is with them that the Word was sent to become one! But now the original humanity that our Messiah embraced and took upon Himself so that He could represent, redeem, purify, and transform us is in danger of being destroyed and replaced! Yes, it’s true! There are Dark forces at work that seek ways to bypass and replace the original Creation of Genesis 1 and 2!
“The serpent said to the woman, “You most assuredly won’t die! For God knows that when you eat of it, YOUR EYES WILL BE OPENED AND YOU WILL BE LIKE GOD, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL!”(Genesis 3:4-5 TLV, Emphasis added)
“Then they said, “Come! Let’s build ourselves a city, with a tower whose top reaches into heaven. SO LET’S MAKE A NAME FOR OURSELVES, or else we will be scattered over the face of the whole land.” (Genesis 11:4 TLV), Emphasis added)
The serpent and his demonic minions are manipulating people to enhance, perpetuate and deepen their rebellion against God. They’re interfering and meddling with God’s order of Creation… by devising alternate new hybrid versions of humanity that will not be within the sphere of influence of the Salvation, Redemption, and Restoration that God sent Yeshua to make possible for us all! And… to the extent that they succeed… to that extent do they intend to nullify and bypass God’s Plan. So we can see that they’re trying to fulfill what the Serpent promised Eve… that men can ‘be as God!’
So, not only must we protect and preserve the authentic Truth and Validity of the Gospel of Salvation… but we must also warn the human race to fight against the impending destruction of the God-intended object of His Salvation! Here is a critical set of questions God will ask each one of us, questions with which all Last Days disciples will have to come to grips and settle within themselves, once and for all:
- “Will you be willing to protect, maintain, and live out from the indwelling resurrected Humanity of My beloved Son?”
- “Or will you choose to draw from some cheap counterfeit substitute source that originates from fallen man’s rebellious, radically independent, God-less, Sin-corrupted Self-life desires, urges and deviations?”
God created us to be His very own personal family members… His sons and heirs! He put into us what proceeds from within Himself! We are made to be the very image and likeness of our Heavenly Father! And so, we can see how much deadly demonic hatred and contempt the Serpent harbors against God and His beloved humans! That hatred is the driving force impelling these alien ‘experiments’ and the many ‘new frontier’ scientific, technological manipulations of our DNA. It seeks to take what we are by our created-by-God nature, and mix it with dark alien elements and beings… in defiance of the real God! That hatred is trying to equip the human race with supra-normal levels of artificial intelligence that will erase our original God-given essence and our Covenant connection with Messiah Yeshua, our Blood Covenant Human Representative and Champion!
Beloved, the Serpent aims to destroy God’s beloved Chosen Human Body that is made up of His Jewish and non-Jewish Family members! He is dead set on preventing our risen Lord from fulfilling His Father’s Plan to redeem and restore God’s human race! And all of this is taking place ‘during our watch!’
“Yeshua said to them, “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to Me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty. But I told you that you have seen Me, yet you do not believe. Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and anyone coming to Me I will never reject. For I have come down from Heaven not to do My own will but the will of the One who sent Me.
“Now this is the will of the One who sent Me, that I lose not one of all He has given Me, but raise each one on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that EVERYONE WHO SEES THE SON AND TRUSTS IN HIM MAY HAVE ETERNAL LIFE; AND I WILL RAISE HIM UP ON THE LAST DAY!” (John 6:35-40 TLV, Emphasis added)
Perhaps now you see a deeper meaning in what is contained in the question that Messiah Yeshua asked Saul of Tarsus in Acts 9:
“Why are you persecuting Me?”
God’s Word was showing Saul that he didn’t have a clue that God had actually been living, operating, and speaking through Stephen’s yielded flesh! All the while that Saul and his fellow mob members were assailing Stephen, they were actually assaulting a living member of the Body of God’s Living Word! God had become one with Stephen! So whatever Saul and his cronies did to Stephen… they were doing it to Him!
The powers of Darkness dare to try to nullify God’s Plan of Salvation and Restoration for His Creation, by eliminating the earthly Body of His Living Word. God intends to fulfill our needs Himself! His Answer to our problems is a Living Person, a Divine ‘Who’ but the powers of Darkness are trying to direct man’s attention to a series of alternative created ‘what’s’, as homemade substitute sources of human wellbeing and self-redemption. In this way they hope to prevent God’s Word from fulfilling His Father’s will and Plan. If they destroy the Humanity God created and is in the process of redeeming… and replace it with an alien product that comes from competing demonic and human sources, they hope to bypass God and be able to exercise supreme lordship over their own manipulated substitute re-creations! Thus they’ll fashion an alternate universe and usurp what belongs to God for themselves, exercising a form of Absolute Supremacy that will compete with, and replace, God’s Original!
Saul was attempting to destroy the Lord’s Body in his own way. But after God exposed his Sinfulness, he sat stunned, blinded, and devastated for three days and nights! He came to grips with how terribly wrong and wicked he and his religious cohorts had been! And he saw how wrong he had been about God’s real purpose for Israel in relation to the rest of the human race and its promised Messiah!
“And just as they did not see fit to recognize God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what is not fitting. They became filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents. They are foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree—that those who practice such things deserve death—they not only do them but also approve of others who practice the same.” (Romans 1:28-32 TLV, Emphasis added)
But if, while seeking to be justified in Messiah, we (Jews) ourselves also were found to be sinners, is Messiah then an agent of sin? May it never be! For if I rebuild the very things I tore down, I prove myself to be a law-breaker. For through law I died to law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Messiah; and it is no longer I who live, but Messiah lives in me. And the Life I now live in the body, I live by trusting in Ben-Elohim (the Son of God) who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God—for if righteousness comes through Torah, then Messiah died for no reason!” (Galatians 2:17-21 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
Dear ones, no one has a right to interfere with God’s Plan of Salvation by separating people from the redemptive love and action of His Living Word! To try to do that is blatant, brazen defiance against our Creator! Nothing created has a right to meddle with what God created, instituted, and established in this world! And this is the fundamental issue that will finally be settled once and for all, on the Last Days battlefields upon which we have been called to serve! All the enemies of the King of Glory and Lord of lords will, at the end, be forced to serve as our Messiah’s footstool from the very moment He returns to Earth to establish the Total, Ultimate Victory of His Kingdom and Kingship… and enjoys and shares the Fruits of it with us… throughout the rest of eternity! (See Psalm 110.)
When Saul realized how wrong he was about God, and His Messiah… and realized that he had been striving to destroy God’s beloved Covenant friends, with whom God has become one… Saul got in touch with the true condition of his soul and spirit. And he finally realized, that in this life, regardless of how religious we may become, we will never be able to save ourselves by our own efforts! Nor will we ever be able to claim to have all the answers to every question. We must repent of such arrogance and humble ourselves before our Infinitely Perfect All-Encompassing Creator… like little children! And so the religious edifice Saul had worked so hard to erect for himself tumbled to the ground with a loud crash… before the Reality of His resurrected Redeemer! And whatever fallen men may try to do today will meet the very same fate!
“For we know that the Torah is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold to sin. For I do not understand what I am doing—for what I do not want, this I practice; but what I hate, this I do. But if I do what I do not want to do, then I agree with the Torah—that it is good.
“So now it is no longer I doing it, but Sin dwelling in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me—that is, in my flesh. For to will is present in me, but to do the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do; but the evil that I do not want, this I practice. But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I doing it, but sin that dwells in me.
“So I find the principle—that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I delight in the Torah of God with respect to the inner man, but I see a different law in my body parts, battling against the law of my mind and bringing me into bondage under the law of sin which is in my body parts. Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—it is through Messiah Yeshua our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself serve the Torah of God; but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin!” (Romans 7:14-25 TLV, Emphasis added)
The Exchanged, Indwelling Life of Yeshua is Our Victory
Saul died to what he once had been as a fallen child of Adam. He no longer strove to improve and sanctify himself by trusting in his own understanding and self-determining religious contrivances, or anyone else’s. Instead, he began to live only to God, and from God, trusting only in what God, through His Living Word made flesh, had already created and established even before this physical universe was created! And so, like Paul, we too can begin to understand what it means to be called by the Lord to serve as His disciple:
“Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the mutilation. For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship by the Ruach Elohim and glory in Messiah Yeshua and have not depended on the flesh—though I myself might have confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he might depend on the flesh, I far more—circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel; from the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the Torah, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting Messiah’s community; as for Torah righteousness, found blameless.
But whatever (Man-contrived) things were gain to me, these I have considered as loss for the sake of the Messiah. More than that, I CONSIDER ALL THINGS TO BE LOSS IN COMPARISON TO THE SURPASSING VALUE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF MESSIAH YESHUA, MY LORD. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things; and I consider them garbage in order that I might gain Messiah and be found in Him not having my righteousness derived from Torah, but one that is through trusting in Messiah—the righteousness from God based on trust.” (Philippians :2-9 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
In our day, fallen flesh strives like crazy to resurrect the failed building project of Babel (Genesis 11). Fallen men are once more striving to climb to the uttermost heights of their creative possibilities! At the urging of the powers of Darkness, they’re doing their utmost to undermine and bring down the Kingdom of God that is currently being established here on Earth! So we must grasp the Truth and Reality that underlie the Gospel and what it reveals. What happened to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus must happen to all the rest of us.
We must grasp what it means to die to one’s radically independent Self-life, and defer to the Perfect, Invincible Life of our Messiah… so that He may live and operate from within our crucified flesh. Only then will we be able to bear His eternally valid Fruit, and prove that we really do belong to God! Holy Spirit must be free to take us over completely, so that God’s Living Word can be free to love, obey and honor His Father, and fulfill whatever He requires of us… in our name!
So I pray that this will help us better understand what it means to be ‘born again’ of water and the Holy Spirit. Beloved… don’t be deceived! If you truly belong to God… and His Word and Spirit are already truly living and operating from within you… you have absolutely no need for anything else that fallen human experts, scientists, leaders, gurus, governments, and other assorted dabblers and manipulators may decide to try to ‘add’ or inject into you! They have no right to do it, and we have no right to allow it!
Once we’re one with our risen Lord, the way Stephen and Paul and those other first century Blood brothers of God were one with Him… we have everything that our Heavenly Father intends to give us! And all that we’re missing now are the new resurrection bodies that our Heavenly Father has promised to give us at the proper time! But that too will come to us as a pure gift from our God. And then… He will have completely and perfectly fulfilled His plans for us, without any help or advice from created Sin-corrupted, fallen flesh!
And those who are now so boldly and dogmatically spouting their rebellion against Almighty God are assuming power and authority over the human race that is in no way legitimate or worthy of our respect and compliance. God did not appoint them. Nor did we ‘elect’ them. And they most certainly do not have any right to appoint themselves to speak and act as if they were God! The position is already being occupied and exercised most capably… and they do not even come close to qualifying!
“The one who is taught the Word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a person sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap Eternal Life from the Spirit.” (Galatians 6:6-8 NASB, Emphasis added)