Born of God Really?

By John Gavazzoni
John Gavazzoni is a non-denominational theologian, evangelist, writer and speaker, and former pastor. He served on the CUA Board of Directors in 2007. This article is published online at http://www.christianuniversalist.org/articles/bornofgod.html

For many, many years, during the period when I was quite conventionally-oriented in my theology, I fully, without question -- and to be honest, unwilling to entertain anything to the contrary -- thought that the substance of humanity came forth out of nothing. I believed, of course, that we originated by the creative act of God, but certainly did not believe that our substance was eternal in nature, that God had shared with us His very substance in bringing us into being, or that, by us, in/with Christ, Deity had increased Itself as Family. Now, by the grace of God which is mightily able to effect the deepest change of mind in any of us, and that, when He chooses, I now stand firmly in the conviction which I once deemed, a most deviant heresy. I have always been a committed preacher of the new birth, of spiritual rebirth from above, but I previously thought that being born from above was identical to being born of God. That the two are very essentially related, of course, there can be no doubt. But I see now that being born of God is the larger context in which being born again, or born from above must be understood. It would certainly seem that there is some distinction between born and being reborn. It was my former conviction that I, by inclusion in Adam, had my origination as a person by the creative act of God whereby He brought all creation into existence out of nothing (Theo.: the doctrine of creation ex nihilo), and, having received the Lord Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, been born of the Spirit by the act of God by which He, by the Holy Spirit, gave me His life in Christ. There was certainly a wonderful vein of truth within that understanding, but nevertheless also, substantial and significant elements of ignorance and misunderstanding. The conviction that we possess eternal being and personhood in God is usually referred to as belief in pre-existence. It does not really require too much thought to realize that the term pre-existence, used in this way, is a misnomer, for eternity does not have to do with pre-existence, or for that matter, a bye-and-bye-someday existence, because eternity is not a dimension that was before time and will once again be after time is over, but rather eternity is now, the NOW which is God Himself, the NOW that encompasses, circumscribes and permeates space-time as He immanently plays hide and seek with His creation yet, all the while, transcending it.

We are all, at this very moment, living in time within eternity--time being a temporal dimension WITHIN eternity, not interrupting eternity--somewhat accurately, yet crudely illustrated by Plato's idea that our present existence is like that of a man living in the darkness of a cave with a little light filtering in from the outside world, while he is largely ignorant of that world that gives larger meaning to his cave-existence. But when we are enlightened to affirm that "I AM" is the ultimate Ground of all Being, our own included, our cave-dwelling days shall have come to an end in the brightness of the eternal Day, which is Christ, Himself. Our being and personhood is a matter of eternal birthing--Creaturehood, in time, proceeds out from Being, the Being in whom we have our being--and God is the One who does the birthing. I'm really talking about God giving birth. I'm really talking about really being "born of God."

The conventional evangelical idea of being born of God falls short of the truth that God giving birth to us is, wouldn't you know, first and foremost God's experience. Do we realize that the experience of being born of God is first God's experience within Him/Her Self before it becomes our experience? (when I say, "before," I do not mean as on a timeline, but "before," as in the Ground from which all things proceed.) Honestly, really, we've all been conceived in and birthed out of God. Rebirth, or being born again, or born from above in our creaturely, time-oriented existence and experience, is about being reconnected to, remembering, being awakened to, and realizing in time the truth that we have been, in and from eternity, born of God. We re-member, that is, we return in creaturely experience to being members of Christ's eternal Body, that Body born of the conjugal uniting of the complementary gendercompleteness of the reproductive love attraction within God. Christ, and we, in Him, have been conceived and born by God's Self-knowing from which proceeded the Son of His love. You, with your elder brother, THE Son of God, are God's love-child. Do you realize that you were born by a passionate attraction that occurred, and is still occurring in God? What triggered your divine birth was when the twinkle in Deity's eye met It's own come-hither look. You are a love-child, a passion-fire-child. You had to experience creaturely separation from that Love-family, so that in re-membering, in the gathering together, the recollection of all things in Christ, you might fully know the glory of your Being. "Beloved, now are we the children of God..." (1 John 3:2)

The Destiny of the Race of Man: An Orthodox Christian Understanding

By Dr. George Zgourides
Dr. George Zgourides is an Eastern Orthodox Christian author, clinical psychologist, family physician, volunteer hospital chaplain, and former priest. He has served on the CUA Board of Directors since July 2007. This article is published online at http://www.christianuniversalist.org/articles/destinyofman.html

According to Meyendorff's Byzantine Theology, at the heart of the Byzantine understanding of humanity's destiny is the doctrine of participation in God, termed deification, or theosis (163). Along these lines, Meyendorff quotes Maximus the Confessor as follows: In the same way in which the soul and the body are united, God should become accessible for participation by the soul and, through the soul's intermediary, by the body, in order that the soul might receive an unchangeable character, and the body, immortality; and finally that the whole man should become God, deified by the grace of God become man, becoming whole man, soul and body, by nature, and becoming whole God, soul and body, by grace. (164) In other words, man is called to participate and share in the deified humanity of Christ, not merely in imitation of Jesus' moral and virtuous acts, but to actual life in Christ, particularly through the sacraments (164). The whole person, then, participates fully in the divine nature of the whole God (164). Ware, in his The Orthodox Church, adds that humans, created in the image of God, fully acquire God's likeness and in the process become deified (219). Because God became human that we might be made god (21, quoting St. Athanasius), humans become a created god, a god by grace or by status (232; c.f. John 10: 34-35). And as the three members of the Trinity dwell one in another, so are humans called to dwell in the God-head (231). Hence, theosis enables Christians to become by grace what God is by nature (21). For the Orthodox faithful, then, to be saved and redeemed is to be deified (231). The doctrinal foundation of deification rests in the hypostatic union between the human and divine natures of Christ (Meyendorff 164). This human-divine hypostasis belongs to Christ alone (164), while the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are said to be three persons [hypostasis] in one essence [ousia] (Ware 23). There is, however, communication between the energies of Christ's hypostatic natures, and those who are in Christ also share in this communication (Meyendorff 164).

Union with God is union with His divine energy (actions, operations, power) but not His divine essence (nature, inner being). In The Orthodox Way, Ware quotes St. Basil as affirming, No one has ever seen the essence of God, but we believe in the essence because we experience the energy (22). The human finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite mind of God, which remains a mystery to man. To experience such comprehension would be to know God as He knows Himself, which is impossible for created beings (22). However, man is able to experience directly God's energies in the form of grace, love, and life, to mention only a few (22). And, of course, man is never deified through his own works or efforts; the human energy must become obedient to the divine energy. Nor are human and divine natures ever confused or fused: The created can never be the same as the Creator (23). In The Orthodox Way, Ware notes that through theosis humans do not lose their personal identity, integrity, or sense of self (23). Instead, they remain distinct (but not separated) from God, and they always maintain an I-Thou relationship with God (23). In the end, humans become more fully who they were meant to be. By freely conforming to God's will, they achieve the supreme goal for which they were created (Meyendorff 165). The notion of man's eventual deification leads to certain conclusions regarding humanity and creation. The Christian concepts of fall (sin and separation) and restoration (salvation and deification) are based on the idea that man is created in both the image of God (iconos, with the ability to exercise reason and free will) and the likeness of God (the ability to choose and live morally). The first humans were created as perfect beings in a potential sense, and they were called to use their image to acquire the likeness of God -with God's help (Ware, The Orthodox Church 220-221). Through rebellion, however, man did fall, and his sinfulness placed a wall between God and humanity that man could never tear down on his own (225). In turn, God came to man because man could no longer come to Him (225). The constant theme in the deification of man is that of redemption through the Incarnation of the Word -- the Logos (Meyendorff 159). Indeed, the redemptive death of Christ restores humanity's fallen and broken state to one of participation in the divine nature (c.f., II Peter 1:4). Humankind is destined for union with God. So when men freely choose to respond to God's love and call, they are deified by being assimilated to God through virtue (219, quoting John Damascene). And not only will the human body be deified. At the appointed hour, the entirety of creation will be saved, glorified, and transformed from corruption into a new heaven and a new earth (234; Revelation 21:1). On the topic of freely choosing God's will, the term synergia refers to humanity's cooperation with God in attaining full fellowship with Him (221). On the one hand, full communion with the Creator cannot occur without God's grace and assistance. On the other hand, man must do his part, too (221). The two work together, although God's part in the process is always incalculably greater than man's part (221). Still, while God may call sinners to repentance, He never interferes with man's free will-his ability to choose between good and evil (222). God always respects man's decisions, even if the result is disobedience and sin. As God works in man, and humanity's will is conformed to God's

Will, union with Him becomes more complete as man develops into His likeness. The Orthodox hold that the Mother of God -- the Theotokos who perfectly cooperated with God-is humanity's best example of synergia in action (222). Ware, in The Orthodox Church, summarizes the key concepts of deification and theosis in the following several points: Theosis is the ultimate goal of all Christians, and the process begins in the present life (236). Theosis prompts continued repentance (236). Theosis requires following God's commandments and walking daily with Him by praying, fasting, receiving the sacraments, reading the Scriptures and Church Fathers, and so forth (236). Theosis is a social process that embraces the commandment to love neighbor as self, for example, by feeding the hungry and visiting the sick (237). Theosis is a practical process that encourages both prayer and love in action (237). Theosis presupposes a common life in the Church and sacraments (237-238).

To conclude, theosis is the process whereby man becomes what God originally meant him to be. Man and God must work synergistically to bring about man's redemption through the Incarnation and subsequent death of our Lord and Savior. And, in the end, deified man will fully commune with God, and participate in His divine energies. Works Cited: Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordharn University Press, 1979. Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church. New Edition. London: Penguin, 1997. Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Way. Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Theosis: The Fusion of Man/Woman and God?

By ngel F. Snchez Escobar
ngel F. Snchez Escobar is a member of the Roman Catholic clergy. This article is published online at http://www.christianuniversalist.org/connection/theosis-fusion.html

According to Orthodoxy and the Eastern Fathers of the Church, there are two main ideas to the complex concept of theosis or deification as the salvation of man/woman: on the one hand, that God, as a deed of His Infinite, ecstatic love, comes out of Himself, bestows Himself on man/woman, inhabits man/woman, and seeks to unite with him/her; on the other hand, that man/woman is given the command to be perfect in the Fathers likeness, literally to become god. Deification, the restoration of man/woman as a true son of God, occurs by means of Gods grace or uncreated energies through His Spirit and in Christ. In contrast with the Western Church, God is not only essence, He is also energy. If God were only essence man/woman could not unite or commune with Him. In the deification process, both our soul residing in the mind according to Macarius the Great (Homily 15,20) and the abode of the indwelling Spirit and our body experience a transformation (Irenaeus, Book V, Chapter 6, 1). It is the whole man/woman who glorifies in Christ as he acquires the grace of the Holy Spirit. For the Church Fathers, Jesus incarnation is the key to salvation and deification. The Logos of God having taken a human body makes mankind partakers of the divine nature. Palamas says that in the process of deification there is a hypostatic union of human nature with the incarnate Logos of God. But is there an ontological transformation of the soul of man/woman, and, thus, of the whole person as he/she is deified? Is there a real participation of man/woman in intra-divine relationship, a real fusion with the Spirit, granting the body even on earth incorruptibility and glorification or just a moral development, a communication of the divine attributes to the perfecting human being, a vision of God when the person approaches the knowledge of the Truth? What is true is that it must be a personal or pre-personal union, not an impersonal one. The uncreated energies, coming directly from God, are of personal origin as He is a Divine Person as well as God the Son and God the Spirit and the center and source of all personalities. It is through these uncreated energies that man/woman is able to divinize as he/she acquires a new, transformed soul-personality at his unification with the Spirit of God. For Palamas the union between man and the Divine Energies is enhypostatic, that is, personal: it cannot exist apart from the divine hypostases.

One wonders if the Spirit of God, the Divine Presence, as Florovsky calls it, indwelling man/woman, is the infinite God the Spirit (also called the Holy Spirit and the Infinite Third Person of the Trinity). Most Church Fathers must have had difficulties contemplating a union of the soul with this Third Person as this divine Person is absolute and in essence similar to the Father. A union with this Infinite Being would be close to pantheism and a woman/man could lose his/her personal identity, instead of becoming individuated. Perhaps the great problem of the Fathers was considering the Spirit of God the Third Person of the Trinity instead of just as a part of God, but still not a personal one. Being so, man/woman could be embraced in the personality circuit of energy (uncreated energies) coming from and going to the Father through the action of the Spirit of God inhabiting man/woman. This part would personalize as the soul of the man/ woman deifies and fuses with it, thus becoming a new, transformed being without losing its personal identity, without being absorbed into the essence of God. The Bible refers many times to the Spirit of God, without reference to the Third Person of the Trinity, the latter idea being a later theological development. This Spirit, according to Paul, is the same that raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11). But when does this process of transformation begin and when does it end? When does the pre-personal part of God become personal as man/woman fuses with it? I believe that deification is an eternal ongoing process that may start in this world and, very exceptionally, can be accelerated in this world, as in the case of Jesus or John the Baptist, who according to Palamas would not have died if he did not die by martyrdom (Homily 40). For Hieromonk Damascene, the theme of transformation points to the purpose of our life. That purpose is unending union with God deification, theosis. But deification is not a static condition: it is a never-ending growth, a process, an ascent toward God. We do not reach the end in this life, nor even in the life to come (The Way of Spiritual Transformation). Damascene also quotes the words of St. Symeon the New Theologian, who he believes attained what might be called the highest possible degree of union with God in this life: Over the ages the progress will be endless, for a cessation of this growing toward the end without ending would be nothing but a grasping at the ungraspable. Thus our union with God is a continual transformation into the likeness of God, which is the likeness of Christ. We should also remember Enoch and Elijah whose dedication to God caused them not to taste death in life, as the Scriptures say and the Orthodox tradition confirms: By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. (Hebrews 11:5) And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. (II Kings 2:12)

It is plausible to think that both prophets might have attained deification on earth. Moreover, we see that the fire mentioned in the Book of Kings about Elijah is reflected in Symeons work, in which he compares our soul with a lamp kindled by divine fire: God is fire and He is so called by all the inspired Scripture (cf. Heb. 12:29). The soul of each of us is a lamp. Now a lamp is wholly in darkness, even though it be filled with oil or tow or other combustible matter, until it receives fire and is kindled (Ethical Discourses 339). Perhaps light is the image we can retain in our still earthly eyes to grasp this mystery of the Grace of God being bestowed upon us and our eternal deification and ascent to the Father. Symeon, this great teacher on the human experience of theosis, describes this mystical light as follows: By grace I have received grace (cf. John 1:16), by doing well I have received [His] kindness, by fire I have been requited with fire, by flame with flame. As I ascended I was given other ascents, at the end of the ascent I was given light, and by the light an even clearer light. In the midst thereof a sun shone brightly and from it a ray shone forth that filled all things. The object of my thought remained beyond understanding, and in this state I remained while I wept most sweetly and marvelled at the ineffable. (Ethical Discourses 205) He also says: That human being who is inwardly illumined by the light of the Holy Spirit cannot endure the vision of it, but falls face down on the ground and cries out in great fear and wonder, because he has seen and experienced something that is beyond nature, thought, or conception. How can we experience something beyond nature and not be wholly transformed by it? The Russian holy staretz (or elder) of the eighteenth century, St. Seraphim of Sarov also addresses this light: The grace of the Holy Spirit is the light which enlightens man. The whole of Sacred Scripture speaks about this (Conversation with Nicholas Motovilov III). We also hear him saying: Then Father Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said: My son, we are both at this moment in the Spirit of God. Why dont you look at me? I cannot look, Father, I replied, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and it hurts my eyes to look at you. Dont be afraid, he said. At this very moment you yourself have become as bright as I am. You yourself are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God; otherwise you would not be able to see me as you do. This saint also points to a cosmic salvation of humanity: Learn to be peaceful, and thousands around you will find salvation. He also says, Prayer, fasting, works of mercy all this is very good, but it represents only the means, not the end of the Christian life. The true end is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the deification process, in which Spirit of God indwells mans soul and mysteriously unites with him leads man to

unceasing prayer, to hesychasm (conscious resting in God). This is what Isaac the Syrian, Bishop of Nineveh, in the seventh century, writes: When the Spirit establishes his indwelling in man, the latter can no longer stop praying, for the Spirit never ceases praying in him. Whether he sleeps or stays awake, prayer is not separated from his soul. While he eats, while he drinks, while he lies in bed or in working, while he is plunged into sleep, the perfume of prayer spontaneously exhales from his soul. Henceforth he masters prayers not during determined periods of time, but at all times. (Treatises) Unceasing, perfumed prayer naturally flows from our soul as it breathes its union with the Spirit of God and worships the Father in heaven. Deification should be the aim of all personalities in a spiritualizing cosmos. In this process, I dare say, the non-spiritualized soul would be as though it would have never existed, would be no reality as the only reality would be a spiritual one; perhaps it might enter a pantheistic state.

The Divine Incarnation

By Jabez T. Sunderland
Jabez T. Sunderland (1842-1936) was an American minister and missionary who opposed the drift of the Unitarian Church from its Christian roots into secular humanism. This essay appeared as a pamphlet in 1901 as the first in the Twentieth Century Sermon Series, put out by the Unitarian Club in Toronto. It is published online at http://www.americanunitarian.org/sunderlandincarnation.htm

"God was in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:19). "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us" (1 John 4:12). The doctrine of the Divine Incarnation is of great importance in religious thought, whatever form of faith we may hold. There are in the Christian world today two widely and in some respects radically different forms of this doctrine. Let us inquire what they are, study them as candidly and carefully as we can, compare them with each other, and try earnestly to find out where lies the truth. In inquiring what the two forms are, we quickly get an answer from the two texts which I have cited. The Apostle Paul says: "God was in Christ." One view of the incarnation bases itself upon this text and stops here, saying, This is the doctrine, the whole doctrine"God was in Christ"only in Christthe incarnation of God is confined to one person, supernaturally born, who lived and died in Palestine, some nineteen hundred years ago. The other view does not deny this one, except as to its limitation. It says with Paul, ''Yes, God was in Christ." But it goes on from this and adds, with John, the very important declaration, "If we love one another, God dwelleth also in us." In other words, it affirms the divine incarnation not only in Christ but also in all humanity. Nor does this latter and larger view of the Incarnation really array John against Paul. For, when we look further, we find that the larger thought is just what Paul also teaches, if we take his teaching as a whole. Turning over to Ephesians 4:6, we read the following declaration, as strong and unequivocal as words can make it: "There is one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Paul's real teaching, then, as well as that of John, is, that God was not in Christ alone, but that he is also "in you all."

In thus teaching, both Paul and John agree with Jesus, who taught, it is true, his own unity with God, but also just as strongly the unity of all men with God. If he said, "I and my Father are one" [John 10:30], he did not stop there, as so many teachers of Christianity today so strangely do, but, going on, he added the other half of the truth: "That they may be one, even as we are one" [John 17:21].1 One of our poet preachers has well expressed, in the form of a prayer, this union of all with God which Jesus taught. "O Thou Infinite One! Let me Know myself as one with Thee; Let me feel in my soul the vibrations of Thy Life. Fill me, O God, with Thyself; Let the Law that is in Thee Come as truth into my soul. Let the order that shapes Universes Become the conscious Law within me. Let my deeds and words Take form from Thee as the stars do. Let my actions be of Thy Law As are the motions of the planets. O God, fill, permeate, inform me, That I may be one with Thee Even as was Christ of old." We have now the two views of the Divine Incarnation before us. One view limits the incarnation; the other does not. One view sees God incarnate in Christ alone. This is the teaching of the so-called "orthodox" creeds, and of all the churches founded on those creeds. The other sees God incarnate not only in Christ, but also in all Christ's brethrenin all the rest of the children of the common Father. This is the view, not only of the Liberal Christian churches, but of a steadily growing number of the broader and freer minds in all the creedal churches, in spite of their creeds.
Jesus draws no line separating himself from humanity. Instead, he most unequivocally classes himself with humanity, making his relation to God the same as that of other men. He calls his disciples his "brethren" (Matt. 28:10, John 20:17). Paul calls him "the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). In 2 Peter (1:4) we, as well as Christ, are declared to be "partakers of the divine nature." If he is called the "son of God," so again and again, both in the Old Testament and the New, are we also called "sons of God" and "children of God;" and God is declared to be "our Father" as well as the Father of Jesus. On this point Jesus himself uses the strongest possible language, speaking of God to his followers as "my Father and your Father, my God and your God" (John 20:17). Thus we are taught most explicitly that in whatever sense God was in him, in the same sense God is in us. "Beloved now are we the sons of God" (1 John 3:2). "Every one that loveth is begotten of God" (1 John 4:7); "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God dwelleth in him" (1 John 4:16); "Even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us" (John 17:21).
1

Nor is it strange that this larger view finds increasing favor, for biblical scholarship is making it more and more clear that this was the teaching of Jesus and his immediate disciples, and historic study that this was the doctrine of the early Christian churches. I believe also that philosophic and scientific study is making it increasingly clear that this view has its foundation in fact and reason as the narrower view does not. Let us examine the commonly received doctrine of a limited incarnation in Christ alone, and see to what extent it stands the text of investigation. The first thing to be observed concerning it is that it was born latelong after Christ and in a very dark age, when a majority of men believed that God was to be seen only in the unusual, the limited, the exceptional, the irregular, the supposed miraculousbefore it was understood that all things are governed according to law. Since we have learned that we live in a law-ordered universe, we are fast attaining to a larger view of God and of his ways of manifesting himself. We are learning to see him in the steady on-going of nature. We are discovering that the regular displays him far better than the irregular, the normal far more clearly than the abnormal, the orderly far more surely than the erratic, the universal better than the limited. Indeed we are learning that order and law are themselves the clearest of all possible illustrations, the most irrefutable of all possible proofs of him. For what are law and order in the universe except the Universe-Power working intelligently, and therefore beneficently? And that is just what we must mean by Godthe Infinite Power at the heart of the universe, operating in all, and through all, and forever intelligently and to worthy ends. Order therefore is simply his symbol; law is simply his sign his path of light as he pursues his majestic way. This is the manner in which men are learning to think of God in our age of growing knowledge and reason. What then is to be presumed as antecedently probable regarding an incarnation? If God is to incarnate himself, will it be likely to take place in manner different from anything else in naturein a corner, in some one special age, in some single special land, in a little special town in that land, in some one human being born in an unusual and exceptional way? Is that according to the manner of God's great works and ways? I think we must say that at least the presumption is against an incarnation in such a special, limited, and unnatural manner. The case may be illustrated, I think, in some such way as this: Suppose some person should go away to some great mountain valley in Asia or Africa or Australia, and there find a single treeperhaps the largest tree in the worldbut one single tree among millions, hidden away in that one remote valleyand should say to you, "There, in that tree, and in that tree alone, God manifests himself, so far as trees are concerned." Would you believe him? He might urge that the tree was the largest and finest known. That would make no difference to you. He might even bring you reports, believed by multitudes, that the tree had been planted by an angel from heaven, or by inhabitants of another planet, or by God himself in a manner different from that of any other tree that

ever grew; but all the same you would say, "No, I cannot accept your claim. Not any one tree can monopolize the manifestation of God. Do you say God planted this tree? The God that I believe in and worship planted all treesand not by the poor expedient of special miracle either, but by his great, wise, perpetually operative and unfailing naturemethods. So far from this tree being the only manifestation of God, I believe that God is the creator and the very life of all the trees in all the lands of earth, and that every one of all their millions is busy day and night, in every leaf and bud and blossom and rootlet and fiber, in showing his handiwork, and manifesting his power and wisdom." I think this is essentially the reply you would make to one who should attempt to convince you that God's sole manifestation in the trees of earth is in some one single, special miracle-tree. Turn now to the Divine IncarnationGod's manifestation of himself in humanityand must we not say essentially the same thing? When men come to us attempting to confine God's incarnation to a single generation of humanity's long history, and to a single land and province and village in the midst of earth's vast continents, and to a single life in that little village do we not see at once that they are thinking not according to twentieth century methods, but methods of a darker past, and that the conception of God involved is the conception of the centuries before law in nature was known, and when the whole universe was limited in men's thought not only to this earth but to a few countries around the Mediterranean Sea? How are we to account for this strange idea that God's incarnation or manifestation of himself in humanity is confined to one man? I suppose we may say that this astonishing limitation is based upon the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus. We are told that Jesus was born of a virgin. He had no human father. God was his Father. This is cited as proof that he was a special incarnation of God different from anybody else. Well, let us briefly examine this story of the miraculous birth and see whether it really belongs in the Biblewhether it is any part of the real gospel, or is only a later addition a legendary after-growthand therefore whether it affords any basis for the belief that God's incarnation was different in kind in Jesus from what it is in humanity as a whole. It should be noted that two of the four gospels, or biographical accounts which we have of Jesus, say nothing about any miraculous birth. These two are Mark and John; and Mark is pretty generally conceded now by the best critics to be the earliest of all the Gospels. But now here is something very strange. If Jesus was really born differently from anybody else, and if this was the primary proof that he was God, it seems unaccountable that two of his biographers, and one of them the earliest of all, and therefore the one nearest to Jesus in time, should have omitted this crucial fact, this fact upon which everything else depended. Yet neither one gives any hint of a supernatural birth. Nor is this all. Turn to the Acts of the Apostlesthe book giving an account of the things which the "early disciples preached, as they went forth to lay the foundations of

Christianity. What do we find here? Any account of the great teacher, whose word they proclaimed, having been miraculously born?born differently from others, and therefore not really a man? Not a word. Peter begins his great sermon on the day of Pentecost: "Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you." No hint is given here or elsewhere in the whole book that Jesus was born otherwise than as all men are. Turn over still further, to the Epistles of Paul. If Paul knows of Jesus being born miraculously, with God as his father, and himself God, we shall of course find his epistles all aglow and ablaze with the great the unparalleled fact. What do we find? In all of Paul's writings not one word of anything of the kind. It is plain that Paul does not know any such fact concerning Jesus. Turn back now to the Gospels, and let us examine a little more carefully what we can find there. Matthew and Luke give the story of the miraculous birth. But there is reason to believe that it is a late legendary accretionsomething which formed no part of the earlier and more reliable biography. That it is a late addition is indicated by the fact that it is contrary to so many things in the Gospel narratives. For example, we read in Matthew that the friends and acquaintances of Jesus said of him, "Is not this the carpenter's son?" Evidently they had never heard but that he was the son of Joseph. Luke represents them as saying, "Is not this the son of Joseph?" John makes their question still more explicit, "Is not this Jesus, Joseph's son, whose father and mother we know?" Several times we read, in different places, of Jesus' "father" and "parents." His disciple Philip calls him "the son of Joseph." Mary, his own mother, declares that Joseph is his father, saying to him, of Joseph and herself, when he was a boy, "thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." Surely this should settle the matter. But even these things are not all. We have two separate genealogical tables given us in the Gospels both tracing the ancestry of Jesus through Josephsomething not only in the highest degree absurd, but positively misleading and dishonest, if Joseph was not his father. True, the different New Testament writers greatly exalt Jesus in many ways, but never, with the exception of the two passages already referred to in Matthew and Luke, in a way to teach or to imply that he was miraculously bornmuch less that he was God. The Gospels represent him as working miracles, but the working of miracles was believed to be common; not only men, but even bad men, are represented as workers of miracles. The Gospels call Jesus lord, but that was an appellation given to many besides him, as in England today men are called lords. The Gospels speak of him as the Jewish messiah. But to the Jews the messiah was not to be God, but simply a man having exalted power given him of God. The Gospels represent Jesus as dying and then rising from the dead. But others too are declared to have risen from the dead. If Jesus ascended into heaven, so had Elijah; and if his disciples expected him to return again, so had Elijah long been expected to return again. And Elijah was not God, but a man like other men. If Jesus is

called "son of God" and "begotten of God," so are others spoken of as "sons of God," "children of God," "begotten of God," as we have already seen. None of these declarations or representations imply an unnatural or supernatual birth, or that he was God. Nowhere save in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke does the New Testament anywhere hint at such a birth. And even this is contradicted and corrected again and again, by the genealogies and by the utterances of those who knew him best. Everything indicates that Jesus himself claimed no supernatural birth, and that nobody claimed it for him while he lived, or for more than a generation after his death. Even forty years or so after his decease, when Mark, the earliest of the Gospels was written, the story of such a birth seems not yet to have been in existence, or else was not credited. For if it had been known and generally believed, surely it would have found a place in Mark. How then did it arise? Let us see. A full generation of time had gone since the crucifixion. Those who knew Jesus personally were fast passing away. He had left nothing behind him in writing. The recollections of those who remained were growing a little dimmed with the lapse of years. It was natural and inevitable that legends about him should begin to spring up. In a little while there was a multitude of such. Indeed a whole volume of them, called the "Apocryphal Gospels," has come down to us. What could be more natural than that some of these numerous legends which time and distance wove about him, and especially about his birth and childhood, should make their way into the Gospels which we have in our New Testament? What was there to keep them out? We do not know certainly the writer of a single one of these Gospels, or its editor in the form in which it comes to us. It is well nigh certain that each Gospel passed through several re-adaptations before it reached the form in which we now have it. By the time Matthew and Luke received their final revisions, twenty years or more after the writing of Mark, the legend of the miraculous birth had come into existence; and as such a story seemed to add to the luster of Jesus's fame and name, it became in some way incorporated into these two Gospels. Once in, there was not in that age the careful scholarly criticism to cast it out. And so we have it today as a part of the New Testament. This seems to be the explanation of the fact that we find at the beginning of Matthew and Luke the story of the birth of Jesus without a human father,a story similar you know to what we have in connection with the birth of Buddha, and a number of other oriental characters. Thus do all lines of testimony seem to unite to make it clear that the story of the supernatural birth of Jesus was a late and legendary accretion, and no part of the original and real history of the life of the great Teacher of Nazareth. What, then, follows from all this? Does it follow that God was not in Christ? By no means. Does it follow that Christ was not divine? Far from that. What follows is that Christ's divineness of nature was not different in kind, but only in degree, from yours and

mine. God was in him, but also God is in all humanity. Jesus was simply the tallest soul among his brethren, one in whom the divine spirit rose to an unwonted fullness and power of manifestation, a man of rare genius, nobleness and strength, but whose crowning spiritual quality lay in his seemingly perfect union in mind and will with the mind and will of God, so that he was able to say with a deeper and loftier meaning than had ever been given to the words before, "I and my Father are one." If Jesus was "Son of God," in this he was not exceptional. His sonship lay not in any such questionable claim as that of being born of a virgin, and therefore differently from his brethren, but in the deep and essential divineness of the nature of man. It lay not in his being less a man than others, but more a man than others. He called himself "Son of God" and "Son of Man"shall we not say he was preeminent as Son of God because he was preeminent as Son of Man? What is incarnation? As the word signifies, it is God manifesting himself in the flesh, that is, in the highest form of his creation. But is there any part of his creation in which he does not manifest himself? Surely not; for creation is just Godthe Infinite Power and Life and Goodness that is behind all natureobjectifying himself, coming forth into manifestation. Thus the sun shines by his light, Saturn and Uranus pull by his strength, the flower smiles by his beauty. If we "live and move and have our being in him" [Acts 17:28], so do the birds, so do the planets, so do the constellations. Emerson puts it well in his Wood Notes: "Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds. Once slept the world an egg of stone, And pulse, and sound, and light was none; And God said "Throb," and there was motion, And the vast mass became vast ocean. Maker and original, The world is the ring of his spells, And the play of his miracles. As he giveth to all to drink, Thus or thus they are and think. With one drop sheds form and feature; With the next a special nature; The third adds heat's indulgent spark; The fourth gives light which eats the dark; Into the fifth himself he flings, And conscious Law is King of kings.

Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, He hides in pure transparency; Thou askest in fountains and in fires He is the essence that inquires. He is the axis of the star, He is the sparkle of the spar, He is the heart of every creature, He is the meaning of each feature; And his mind is the sky, Than all it holds more deep, more high." Do you ask, How is God in all things? I think we must answer: In the lowest objects, that is, in the whole inorganic world, he is present as simply Force or Energy. In objects higher, that is, in the organic world, he is present as Force or Energy and Life. In man his manifestation is still more complete and on still higher planes. That is to say, in man God is present as Energy, as Life, and also as Self-Consciousness, Will, Moral Nature, and highest of all, Love. Thus while God is no more truly in a human being than in a stone, his manifestation in the human being is far more full and in far higher ways than it can be in a stone. A man does not manifest God any more really than does a flower. But a man manifests God on a higher plane than the most beautiful and perfect flower can do. A flower is only a thing. It cannot think, it cannot know, it cannot will, it cannot love. But man can do all these things. Hence man partakes of the moral and spiritual nature of God, as the flower does not. As we rise from the lower to the higher objects of nature we rise from lower to higher manifestations of Godthe highest of all being man. But in man himself there is also gradation. In the man who is groveling and selfish, and who lives in material things, God's manifestation is down on a plane only a few steps higher than that in which he manifests himself in the brute animal; whereas in the moral and spiritual man it is up almost on the plane of the angel. In other words, as we rise in intelligence, in virtue, in love and moral attainment, the incarnation of God in us becomes more full and complete. It follows that God's incarnation in the world is perpetual and growing. This is what Evolution means. God did not come into the world once and then retire. He did not create the world in six days and then retreat back into some far away heaven to rest. His creation is eternal. It was going on further back than our thought can reach. It is going on still. Not only are new worlds being created in the skies, but this world on which we live is being all the while created anewrecreated to higher and higher ends. Especially is God's creation on the earth going on in the realm of the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual. Here its progress is more rapid than ever before, as seen in the constant rise of man. There never was a time when God was not in his world, the very life of all its life. But his manifestation grows in splendorespecially it grows in splendor with the progress of the human race. So that God's incarnation was never so glorious as now. And as the ages go

on, and the race advances, and man rises to still greater heights of moral and spiritual attainment, what will that be except the fuller and more perfect manifestation or incarnation of God in humanity? How much higher and more full of meaning does this view of the incarnation make everything! In the light of it, all nature and all human nature become manifestations of the divine, each in its degree. The sunshine which wraps the world in its warm embrace, is a manifestation of God's loving and gracious presence. All exhibitions of power are his power. All life is his life. All beauty is his beauty. All right and goodness on earth are finite manifestations of Eternal realities, whose fountain and whose fullness are in God. Especially what glory does this view of the Divine Incarnation shed upon human nature, and how does it fill all man's future with hope! Christ was not a strange, solitary, abnormal manifestation of God in human form, once in all the ages, with nothing in any way like it before or after. He was a type of our humanity. He was a foretaste of what waits for the race. The sleeping possibilities which are in your soul and mine came to full blossom in him. He is a prophecy of what God holds in store for all humanity, sometime, somewhere. This, friends, is the new, the larger, doctrine of the Divine Incarnation which is coming to our modern age. Am I not right in claiming that this doctrine is in harmony with science, in harmony with philosophy, in harmony with the thought of evolution and a law-governed universe, in harmony with the real teaching of Jesus and his disciples? May we not justly claim that it is the teaching of the New Testament restored to the world? And does it not meet the needs of the human soul as the old doctrine does not? It removes the distance between us and God. It lifts the human up to the divine. It makes our very life the life of God in us. And thus it teaches us to say with Jesus, "I and my Father are one." And how much nearer it brings Jesus to us! Now, with this view, he is no longer the strange, the far off being that we have been taughtincomprehensible, foreign to all our experience, half man, half God! Now he is our brothertrue, real, human, with nature like ours, with joys and sorrows like ours, with battles to fight like oursour strong brother, clear-headed, great hearted, noble, brave, gentle, waiting to take our weak hands in his strong hand, and lead us up to hope, to trust, to peace, to the loving heart of his Father and our Father, his God and our God. Yes, "God was in Christ." That is a great and precious truth. We cannot prize it too highly. But there is another even better that crowns it, that completes it, that gives it full significance and glory, and especially that brings it into practical touch with our lives. That other truth is, "Every one that loveth is begotten of God" [1 John 4:7]; "If we love, God dwelleth in us" [1 John 4:12]. Thus our limitations, finiteness and poverty become reinforced from the Infinite and Eternal Fountain of all Power, Wisdom and Love.

It is much to recognize God in nature; it is more to recognize him in human nature. It is much to see him in Christ; but it is most to see him in ourselves. Said Channing: "All minds are of one family." Wrote Emerson: "If a man is at heart just, then in so far he is God: the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice." William Blake, England's mystical and strangely gifted artist-poet of the eighteenth century, wrote a poem entitled "The Divine Image," which contains these profoundly suggestive lines: "Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is God our Father dear; And Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love Is man, his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart; Pity the human face; And Love, the human form divine; And Peace the human dress." Two great illuminating and inspiring thoughts are rising like morning stars in the sky of Christianity in our time. One is the Humanness of God, the other the Divineness of Humanity. Said the dying Baron Bunsen as he looked up in the face of his wife bending in love over him: "In thy face have I seen the Eternal." In the First Epistle of John [3:2] we read: "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it hath not yet been manifested what we shall be. But we know that when it shall be manifested, we shall be like Him." Thus we see the barriers fall away which have seemed to separate the human from the divine; more and more clearly the vision draws that all is divine. In the book of Revelation [3:20] it is written: "Behold I stand at the door and knock; and if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me." Oh friends, let us know, that whenever truth or duty, or pity or tenderness, or justice or aspiration, or any high thought or pure desire, knocks at the door of our heartsbut especially when love stands knocking thereit is God asking to be let in. And if we open the door he will enter, and become more and more fully incarnate in us. Thus our darkness will pass away; a rainbow of hope will illuminate every storm, our tears will be

dried, our weakness will turn to strength, the peace of the Eternal will be ours, and we shall know what it means to dwell in heaven while yet we are pilgrims of earth, even as Jesus did, because God, whose Presence is Heaven, has taken up his abode within us, the Life of all our life.

The Body of Christ: A Universalist Perspective on Divine Manifestation and Human Destiny
By Eric Stetson
Eric Stetson is a non-denominational Christian author, evangelist, and church planter from Northern Virginia. He has a background in the Bahai Faith and the Assemblies of God. He is the founding Executive Director of the CUA. This article is published online at http://www.christianuniversalist.org/articles/bodyofchrist.html

Introduction Who or what is God? What is the relationship between God and the universe? Is there a special relationship between God and intelligent beings such as humans, which is different from the relationship between God and other beings or things that exist? Is Jesus Christ ontologically different from other human beings, or are the evident differences between him and us simply differences of degree or developmental stage in time rather than of kind? These are profound questions that have sparked discussion and debate among Christians as well as non-Christians for many centuries. Various answers have been advanced, and they can generally be classified into five categories: (1) God is a singular entity and ontologically separate from the universe and human beings; (2) God is a plural entity and ontologically separate from the universe and human beings except in one specific case, the man Jesus Christ; (3) God is singular and ontologically separate from the universe and human beings except as revealed in a special category of human beings, including Jesus Christ and some other prophets or avatars; (4) God is plural and ontologically includes all human beings but is ontologically separate from the universe in general; (5) God is plural and ontologically includes everything that exists. View 1 is taught by orthodox forms of Islam, most forms of Rabbinical Judaism, and classical Unitarian Christians. View 2 is taught by orthodox Trinitarian forms of Christianity which became dominant after the takeover of the church by Rome. View 3 is taught by Bahaism, an offshoot of Shiite and Sufi Islam that originated in Iran in the 1800s, and may also find expression in some forms of Hinduism. View 4 was taught by many early Christians, especially the Alexandrian school of Christianity. View 5 has been taught by many Hindus, theistic Buddhists, Pagans, and mystics from various religious traditions including some Christians.

Delving deeper into specifically Christian views, we find various ideas ranging from orthodox and traditional to heterodox and radical. Christianity has traditionally been based on a Trinitarian view of God, in which the Deity is envisioned as a plural entity (three persons) consisting of a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that together act as one. In this view, God the Father is the Creator of the universe; God the Son is the preexistent human being who was born into this world as Jesus of Nazareth, and no one else; and the Holy Spirit is seen as a distinct person of the Trinity who reveals God to human beings, rather than simply an aspect or mode of Gods manifestation. Though this is seen as the orthodox Christian view of God in most churches, it is doubtful that the majority of Christians today hold strictly to this perspective. Three other views, which have been minority positions within Christian theological history but which seem to have the implicit support of a large number of Christians of the modern era, are Modalism, Unitarianism, and Panentheism. Modalism asserts that God is a singular entity manifesting Itself in multiple modes or forms, typically identified as the same as the three persons of the Trinity (but in theory could include other forms as well). Many Christians today seem to view the concept of Trinity in a way that is closer to Modalism than to traditional Trinitarianism this may in fact be the predominant perspective that is currently referred to by the name Trinitarianism. Modalism cannot be easily classified into any of the five general categories mentioned above, and may include aspects of any or all of them, depending on how it is precisely interpreted. Unitarianism (in its classical Christian form, not the non-theistic Unitarianism that is shorthand for the Unitarian Universalist Association) asserts that God is a singular entity beyond this world, and that attributes of God but not Gods own Self may be present in creation, including in human beings such as Jesus. This seems to be a popular view among a significant number of contemporary liberal Christians. Another view of God, which has always tended to find support among mystics both within and outside the Christian church, is Panentheism, the idea that God is present in some way in all things. Christians today who have been influenced by the New Age movement are often sympathetic to this idea. Panentheism is distinct from Pantheism, which is the idea that God is identical to the physical universe and does not transcend it. One more view that must be mentioned is the belief of many Christians during the first few centuries of church history a view that was especially common among those who followed St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and other theologians associated with the Egyptian branch of Christianity. This was the idea called Theosis (divinization or deification), that all human beings were created in divine perfection like Christ, have fallen into a state of rebellion, and may be restored to perfection and conformed to the image of Christ in the fullness of time. This view was revived by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in the 1800s. The Theosis teaching has been revived again by some Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians in the latter half of the 20th century through the present day, going by the term Sonship or Manifested Sons of God. According to this perspective, Jesus is the divine Son of God, but so are all other humans. What makes Jesus unique is that he is the firstborn Son, the Elder Brother or

example for all humanity to follow, the one who enables others to rise into our station of sons and heirs of God but Jesus is not the only son as traditional orthodoxy claims. Therefore, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God or God the Son, is a body of humans, the body of Christ. Depending on the specific interpretation of the Theosis/Sonship view, this body may include all human beings (Universal Sonship) or may only include those who have been fully conformed to the image of Christ. All of these views of Gods ontological nature and the relationship between God and creation are attempts at envisioning a Being who, as the ultimate Source of All Being, transcends the powers of the limited human intellect to fully conceive or explain. However, I believe that the teaching of Universal Sonship and Theosis and the teaching of Panentheism together with a Modalistic and nontraditional modification of the concept of Trinity can form a synthesis that would be a highly accurate way of understanding important aspects of Gods nature and relationship with the universe and with human beings especially. In this essay I will discuss several key points as I present an overall perspective on Gods being in Itself, Gods being in relation to the universe, the meaning of Christ, and the divine origin and destiny of human beings. Divine Oneness and Plurality To construct a theory of God and Gods relationship with creation that is both Christian and Universalist, I believe we need to explain the implications of Gods own nature on the nature of Jesus Christ, human beings in general, and Gods plan for humanity and the role of Christ in this plan. First of all, we need to explore the concepts of singularity and plurality and what these concepts could mean in regard to God and how God creates and manifests. If God is strictly singular, then all creation is by definition separate from God, since God could not create by extending Godself into other forms. On the other hand, if God is in some sense plural, then creation could in fact be manifestation or even reproduction of Godself. Is it possible that God could be both one and many at the same time? This would enable God to be distinct from creation and transcending it, while also in some ways to be manifested in it. This is the essence of both Trinitarian and Modalist forms of divine ontology. The Trinitarian view asserts that God consists of multiple beings which together form a oneness. The Modalist view asserts that God is a oneness which manifests Itself into multiple forms. In a sense, these views are mirror images of each other. Is God one out of many, or many out of one? Perhaps God is One who becomes many and the many return back into One. The Panentheistic and Theosis/Sonship views could together portray a God who expands Godself outward by creation and regathers Its manifestations in creation back into the Divine Oneness. We cannot plumb the depths of Gods innermost essence. But at the root level, totally inaccessible to human perception, I believe God is One. Once God becomes perceived, that by definition means that God is plural, because there is both Gods own Self as well

as the perception of God from an external perspective. The very fact of there being an inside and outside of God means that God has become divided by the creation of perspective and is no longer strictly one. It would seem that the first act of creation is the manifestation or projection of God into duality, a state of mutual Self-reflection and the natural analogue for this in human experience is the existence of two genders, male and female. This is the Taoist view of the Divine Reality as duality: yin (female, dark, cold, internal/inward drawing) and yang (male, light, heat, external/outward projecting). The Bible confirms this basic idea by naming God with both a male and a female name. According to the Hebrew scriptures, God is both Yahweh (male) and El Shaddai (female). Yahweh is described as a Lord with masculine characteristics. In contrast, the term El Shaddai means breasted one or many breasted Goddess. So there are at least two persons or aspects of the Divine Being: God and Goddess. Further confirmation of this idea comes from the story of the creation of Man, in which both male and female human beings are created in Gods own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27). This means that God must be a dual being, both male and female. In the Book of Proverbs, the female aspect of God is described as the personified Spirit of Wisdom who emerged from Yahweh much as Eve is said to have been formed from Adams rib and together They created the world. Yahweh and the female Spirit are described as eternal lovers and co-workers in the plan of creation: The LORD [Yahweh] brought Me forth as the first of His works, before His deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth, before He made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. I was there when He set the heavens in place, when He marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when He established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when He gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep His command, and when He marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was the craftsman at His side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in His presence, rejoicing in His whole world and delighting in mankind. (Prov. 8:22-31).

It is worth noting that in Hebrew, the term for Holy Spirit is Ruach HaKodesh, which is grammatically female. Also of note is that the Spirit speaks of mankind as Her delight, much as a mother might speak of her children. She continues, directly addressing humanity as My sons and speaking to them in a gentle but authoritative motherly voice in Prov. 8:32-35: Now then, My sons, listen to Me; blessed are those who keep My ways. Listen to My instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to Me, watching daily at My doors, waiting at My doorway. For whoever finds Me finds life and receives favor from the LORD. With the introduction of the concept of human beings as the sons or children of God, we have a third aspect of divinity. Not only is God male and female, but God is a Father and a Mother who have Children. Children are just as much part of a family unit as the husband and wife, and thus the Divine Being may be regarded as a plural entity containing within Itself all three normative parts of family structure. The Christian idea of Trinity should be envisioned as a natural triad formed by a Father, a Mother (the Holy Spirit), and a Child (God the Son). Traditional forms of Christianity have not considered the Holy Spirit to be a feminine-gendered being, probably because of the patriarchal nature of the church throughout most of Christian history, but in fact the Bible teaches that She is the female aspect of the Deity an aspect which God must logically have in order to be a God who produces a spiritual child. The Collective Son of God Traditionally, Christianity has taught that Jesus Christ was the Son of God because he was begotten by the Heavenly Father, but that his mother was the earthly woman Mary. However, this could only be the case for Jesus physical body which was born from the womb of Mary, not his preexistent spirit which was an aspect of the Deity from before the creation of the world. The preexistent spirit of Christ must have been begotten by God the Father and birthed by God the Mother long before the body of Jesus ever came into being in the womb of a physical human woman. Likewise, the same can be said for all human beings. Our spirits, the part of us that transcends the physical world, are the children of God. Our bodies are children of the dust. Inasmuch as our physical bodies come from the dust of the ground and are destined to return to the dust (Gen. 3:19), the spiritual essence of each one of us came out from Gods own being and shall one day return back into God (Rom. 11:36). God is the Father of our spirits (Heb. 12:9). For in Him we live and move and have our being. We are His offspring. (Acts 17:28).

As these verses of the Bible show, humanity collectively is the Son aspect of the Trinity, because all people are the children of God. This includes all people, both males and females, and sinners and saints. Jesus may be the archetypal example of the Child or Son of God, but he is not the only human being who is a son of God. Jesus taught people to pray to our Father in heaven (Mat. 6:9) and did not claim exclusive sonship for himself alone, instead defending his claim to be the Son of God by referring to the Hebrew scriptures, which describe human beings in general as gods who are all sons of the Most High (Ps. 82:6, quoted by Jesus in John 10:34). Indeed, God is plural according to the Hebrew scriptures. One of the names used for God in many passages of the Old Testament is Elohim, which literally means the gods. Angels, who were part of a divine council or assembly in heaven and were believed to be able to manifest themselves in human form on earth, are referred to as sons of God (e.g. Gen. 6:4). Judaism developed gradually from the primordial polytheism which was found among ancient peoples throughout the world into the strictly monotheistic faith it is today. Jesus made it clear that he opposed the rigidly Unitarian view of God held by many rabbis of his time which became the dominant view in Rabbinical Judaism. Instead, he affirmed the concept of a plural or corporate Deity who is in some way manifested in intelligent beings within the created universe such as humans. The idea that God reproduces Him/Herself by creating children whether humans on earth or angels in heaven who are literally divine beings and are in a sense manifestations of God, may seem like a very radical idea to many Christians today. However, this idea is Biblical and is also logical, if we believe that God is both male and female as the Bible also teaches. After all, reproduction is what naturally happens when male and female energies interact and combine with one another! The implications of this view of God are profound. If God is a being who reproduces, then this means that God is not static and monolithic but complex and growing. Through the Son of God or Child aspect of the triune divine family-nature, God is continually manifesting and expanding divinity into a potentially infinite number of unique expressions as various intelligent spiritual beings in the universe. All of these beings, whether human or extraterrestrial or in non-physical dimensions of reality, are each in their own individual way like holographic copies of the essential attributes of Deity. In this way, God enriches Godself and lives through innumerable forms. The teleological aspect of the creation of Man comes into clear focus according to such a view, for if all souls emanate outward from the Divine Source in a reproductive act taking place within Gods own Being, then our existence has its origin in love and is part of a glorious plan of divine multiplication. Adam Returned in Christ How does Jesus Christ fit into the divine plan? Is he a man who has attained the perfection of godhood before others and shows us the way? If so, why did he need to attain it in fact, why arent all human beings already perfectly divine? If all people are the children of God, why should an exemplar like Jesus even be necessary?

To answer these questions, we must explore the deeper significance of the story of Christ and how it relates to the human condition in general. First of all, if the human condition is that of a child in relationship to God, our Parents, then this means that human beings both individually and collectively are in a process of growing up from infancy to maturity. Christ, as the firstborn son of God, would be the one who sets the example for his younger spiritual siblings to follow and assists in their training and development, much like the eldest brother in a traditional family. Also like the oldest child of a family, Christ would be the first one to make mistakes and to go through the process of facing the consequences and learning from those mistakes. The Bible tells us that long before the man Jesus walked the earth, there was another man who was also called the son of God (Luke 3:38), was perfect and sinless, was given authority and glory over all things in the earth, and enjoyed intimate fellowship with his heavenly Father/Mother. This man was Adam, described in the Bible as the first human being ever created! Could it be that Adam and Christ are the same person? I believe this is the clear implication of the story of Christ when juxtaposed with the story of Adam. Adam represents the fallen human soul and was the father of a fallen race of men. Christ is the transformed Adam, the firstborn son of God who comes back to defeat the sin he originally introduced into this world. All human beings were fallen in Adam but will overcome in Christ, because Christ is the new pattern or archetype for all humanity. Consider the details of the stories: Adam fell from perfection into sin, and Christ overcame sin and ascended into perfection. Adam faced the consequences of sin in the form of decay and death of the physical body; and Christ suffered death without decay, to defeat the power of sin and death through the crucifixion of the physical body and resurrection of the spiritual body. Most importantly, Adams fall into sin, rebellion, and separation from God became the pattern for all humans, a fallen race of spiritual beings encased in flesh upon the earth; and Christs suffering on the cross, death to the things of flesh and new life and glorification in the spirit is prophesied to be the pattern for all humans to become a restored race of spiritual beings made perfect, again in harmony and reunited with God in heaven. The Apostle Paul speaks of Christ as the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) and the second man (vs. 47). He is the last Adam in the sense that he represents the end of the Adamic state of being, the corrupted or fallen state. Jesus was fully human and was subject to all the things of the flesh, including temptations, sicknesses, pain, and even death. Nevertheless, he is also the second man in the sense that he is the second archetype for humanity to follow. Even as all humanity followed Adam into the sinful nature of earthly life, all humanity shall eventually follow Christ into reconciliation with God in the spiritual realm. Each individual is destined to be transformed from Adam to Christ, even as Jesus already was. As Paul said, just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man [Adam], so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven [Christ]. (vs. 49).

Indeed, Adam and Christ are universal human archetypes and are two sides of the same coin. Adam is the archetype of the spiritually immature and corruptible man, who fell from divinity into sin and separation in the realm of flesh. The return of Adam, Christ, is the archetype of the spiritually mature and victorious man who overcomes sin, ascends into glory and returns to God. In the transformation from the old man (Adam) to the new man (Christ), we see the evidence of spiritual evolution as a basic principle of Gods plan for humanity. The Son of God progresses from the cradle of Eden (pristine state of infancy) through the learning process of childhood and adolescence with its laws and rules, rebellion, discipline and punishments (as illustrated by the Jews collectively and in the person of King David, who like Jesus was referred to as the begotten son of God [Ps. 2:7]) and finally into the maturity of spiritual adulthood with its powers and privileges (the fully Christed state). Eve and Mary are female analogues of Adam and Christ: Mary, the saintly mother of Jesus, can be regarded as the return of the sinful Eve, much as Jesus is the return of Adam. According to the Biblical creation story, Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden which can be considered Gods nursery and went out into the world of earth. This was the beginning of Mans difficult process of learning how to face temptation, overcome corruption, and return to harmony in the divine spirit, often by experiencing suffering in the process as a consequence of sinful behavior. The fallen Adamic human condition was summed up, expressed, and carried by Christ as the archetypal representative of all humankind the one who, though inwardly perfect, nevertheless was a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering (Isa. 53:3) when he hung on the cross and cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mat. 27:46). The sinful, Adamic man feels forsaken by God and condemned to punishment because of his karmic burden. It is highly significant that Christ said it is finished as his last words before physical death (John 19:30). This can be interpreted in a cosmic sense as a proclamation of the ultimate ending of the fallen condition. Truly, Christ is the last Adam, the end of the Adamic state of sin, suffering, and separation from God. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is evidence showing that Man returns to the Garden of Paradise after sin has been overcome and all karmic debt paid for. Similarly, the miraculous assumption of Mary into heaven (a belief of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions) could be considered as a symbolic demonstration of the redemption of the archetypal Eve, the divinized and ascended female. Mary bore the second man, the perfect ascended master Jesus, in her womb, much as Eve was first the mother of the fallen human race. For both the male and the female of humankind, the sinful state is overcome by the ascension into deified glory. We come full circle, originating in perfection, falling, and then rising back into harmony with God. But Man does not return to the nursery of Eden; we enter the paradise of reunion with God, our Origin, in a new and far more glorious way as mature, fully divinized beings conformed to the perfect image of our heavenly Father/Mother. Stepping off the spinning hamster-wheel of this earthly world of birth, decay, and rebirth of the flesh, we are finally reborn into our true and enduring spiritual identity in Christ. In the resurrection of the spirit, we attain Christhood as Jesus of Nazareth showed us is possible even for a

suffering and rejected human being, demonstrating that Gods plan is not one of exclusion but an all-inclusive salvation of the sons and daughters of Adam. For we are not only the children of Adam but the children of God! The spiritual journey of humanity is a journey from the condition of sin, separation, suffering, and death towards perfection, reunion, paradise, and eternal life. This is the journey of humankind collectively and of each individual human spirit. Christ as the Body of Saints The word Christ is often used interchangeably with the name Jesus, because Jesus is Christ. But this equation of Jesus with Christ can be used by traditional Christians to imply that only Jesus is Christ. In one sense, that is true: The word Christ comes from the Greek Christos, which is a translation of the Hebrew word Meshiach, meaning Messiah. Only Jesus was the Messiah of the Jewish people, at least according to Christianity. But the word Christ also has a broader meaning for humanity as a whole, as we have been discussing. Christ means the Perfected Human. In this sense of the word, all human beings not just the historical man Jesus of Nazareth are destined to become Christ as well. Lets explore this theme in greater detail. First of all, it is worth noting there are analogues of the name Jesus Christ as it is used by Christians. For example, Mohandas Gandhi is often called Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma is a title meaning Great Soul. Gandhi is generally considered to be a saintly, Christlike figure. Therefore, in Christian parlance, Gandhi could perhaps be called Gandhi Christ. Sound shocking? The fact that this may shock the sensibilities of many Christians only goes to show how far Christianity has drifted from the true Biblical understanding of the concept of Christ. In purveying the narrow view that only Jesus is Christ and no other human being may ever be described in this way, traditional Christians are ignoring the idea expressed by Jesus himself in the Bible that saints are one with Christ. They are also ignoring Pauls teaching that Christ is a corporate body of the faithful with Jesus as its head, not its only member. Consider this prayer of Jesus for those who believe in him: [T]hat all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent me. I have given them the glory that You gave me, that they may be one as We are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have loved me. (John 17:21-23). In this moving prayer, Jesus asks God, our Father, to make the believers one in Christ glorified like Christ and filled with divine Christ-ness. He asks this for the purpose of bringing the whole world into the knowledge of Gods Fatherly love for all souls. Like Jesus who said that he has given his disciples the glory that God gave him, Paul taught that all people will grow up into the full spiritual stature of Christ, beginning with those who believe in him. He says that the disciples of Christ must prepare Gods

people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph. 4:12-16). In other words, the purpose of becoming glorified in Christ being a true Christian is to do the work of sharing the truth with others, to bring the whole body of the Son of God, all humanity, into divine oneness as the Body of Christ. This truth we are commissioned to share is not some phony truth of dogmatic traditional Christianity, but simply the all-embracing, all-transforming truth of Gods universal love, forgiveness, and the reconciliation of all. As Paul puts it, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting mens sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christs ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us (2 Cor. 5:17-20). So it is clear that to be a Christian, to be part of the Body of Christ, means to be a worker in this world to bring about the salvation of all. God accomplishes the plan of universal reconciliation and transformation of humankind from the Adamic to the Christed state of being through the work of divine ambassadorship and discipleship. Jesus Christ served as Gods ambassador in the earth and made disciples to raise other humans up into the glorified state of mature Sonship and Christhood. We as his disciples are called to do the same things, until eventually the whole world will become one spiritual body, one corporate Christ, one mature Son of God or God the Son. Truly, we are to be the ambassadors of Christ here on earth a light in the darkness for lost souls, a healing balm for the sick, a helping hand for the weary. This is true discipleship and sainthood. This is the manifestation of oneness with Christ. While we are here on earth, we are called to be the manifestations of God on earth! If we are becoming transformed from being part of the body of Adam to the body of Christ, rediscovering our true inner nature and destiny as divine spiritual beings, then we must live accordingly, or else we are still in Adam. If we live according to the earthly spirit of separation from God, then we are not living as a member of the body of Christ because we are cutting ourselves off from this exalted purpose and condition. To be part of the body of Christ means to be a disciple of Christ, a follower in the path that Jesus showed the world; and this means we must be willing to deny the selfish ego, take up our cross daily and actually follow the path of the spirit (see Mat. 16:24-25, Luke 9:2324), not just talk about theological beliefs and doctrines. Discipleship is what leads to sainthood and Christhood. Excessive focus on doctrine and rhetorical Christianity the religion of churchy-sounding words without actions often leads to egotism and separation from other human beings and from the true purpose of God.

Each individual must find his or her own place in the collective, organic body of the Son of God. The concept of church can be a useful way of understanding the need for disciples of Christ to come together and work together for the salvation of all humanity as long as we are willing to admit that there are many, many people who do not belong to physical churches who are nevertheless important members in the invisible church, the mystical body of Christ or body of the saints. Paul suggests several types of roles that Christians can play in this exalted body: Some people are to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers. (Eph. 4:11). There are workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues categories which in modern terminology would include doctors of mind and body, charitable workers, entrepreneurs, office workers, and those skilled in foreign languages to spread the Gospel and reach souls in all lands. I would also add to Pauls list a couple more possibilities for working as a disciple of Christ that I think are important: artists using various media to challenge and uplift the spirits, and responsible parents and homemakers training the next generation of human beings in love and service to one another. In fact, no matter what a persons vocational calling is in this life, we can all find ways of fulfilling our God-given calling to strive to live as saints for Christ, in Christ, to bring others into Christedness. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Cor. 12:27). Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. (Rom. 12:4-6). Salvation as Reunion with the Godhead We have seen that the concept of Christ goes far beyond merely the historical man Jesus of Nazareth, because Christ is an organic body that grows and expands as more and more human beings are divinized and begin working as active members of God the Son to bring those still in darkness into the Divine Light. Thus all humanity will ultimately be restored to harmony with God and perfected in Gods likeness as we were originally created to reflect and manifest. To bring this discussion back to the overall subject of the relationship between God and creation, lets consider the meaning of the Christian concept of salvation in a broad sense, both as it applies to human beings and to the universe as a whole. First of all, I believe that most Christians have grievously misunderstood the meaning of salvation. Blindly following orthodox religious traditions, they equate salvation with escape from the possibility of being condemned to a never-ending hell. But this was never the teaching of Jesus or the Apostles or the earliest Church Fathers. Salvation was originally understood as restoration of ones human nature to the divine nature in which we were created, and furthermore, transformation into a higher spiritual condition of godhood as Jesus demonstrated. The concept of hell, when understood correctly, is

simply the recognition of the fact that the fallen Adamic state of being is a state of suffering. As long as a soul is in Adam, that soul is in a sense in hell. In other words, earth itself can be thought of as something of a hell realm. Are there even worse hells than earth? Perhaps. But whether or not that is the case, human beings could remain in hell simply by returning to earth over and over again, for life after life in the flesh. Christ was resurrected in an eternal spirit-body and will never again be subject to the suffering of a fleshly life, because he has transcended the need to live in this dark and cruel world. That is because Christ has overcome sin and therefore no longer shall suffer its consequences. So Jesus Christ is saved. Have any other human beings also been fully saved yet, or is Jesus the only one so far? That is an open question, but I suspect there are a relatively small number of others who have already reached the state of godhood, the state of true salvation souls that will never again walk this earth in the vessel of a normal human body, but have made their permanent abode with God in the heavenly realms. Perhaps these deified, ascended souls number only in the thousands or even merely the hundreds God only knows. But what we do know is that we are here on earth right now because we have not yet reached this state of full and total salvation, the perfection of Christ. We are in the process of striving for it, yes, working towards it as students of the Master. James, the brother of Jesus, said that As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (Jas. 2:26). Truer words have never been spoken. Jesus was a man of great deeds, and it was the quality of his deeds that made him spiritually alive while others were dead. Believing good things about Jesus that he is Lord and Savior, that he died for our sins, and all the other Christian buzzwords and catch phrases is utterly meaningless unless these beliefs are understood according to their true meaning and purpose, and then applied in real life. The purpose of beliefs is to drive our actions. The point is, salvation for human beings is not about what we believe; its about what we do, which enables us to become who we really are. Christians who think they are saved because they profess Jesus as Lord have really only taken the first step toward salvation. Its like a man who is planning to walk to Jerusalem and takes one step outside his doorstep, and pompously proclaims, I have arrived! Unless his abode is right next to the city gate, such a statement is foolishness. Jesus was able to say my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Mat. 11:30) because he was right on the threshold of the transformation from Adam to Christ. But for most of us, we still have a long, hard road to travel before we reach the Goal. We can make the journey of salvation much easier and faster by having the kind of beliefs that inspire us to greater heights of consciousness and action. That is why true spiritual faith is important. Religion can either hold people back from salvation as Jesus himself pointed out (see Mat. 23:15) or it can propel us forward and upward toward that eternal City of God. It all depends on the nature of the beliefs taught by religion. Fundamentalist religions that denigrate the human condition as inherently wicked and separated from God, denying our divine origin and divine potential, close the doors of heaven in the faces of humanity and provide only an ephemeral and illusory

salvation like a mirage in the desert a brief feeling of self-righteousness that is no salvation at all. The ego is the adversary of God, what keeps us separated from the Source of All Being. The ego the voice inside us that is ever whispering I am saved and that other person is not, I am loved by God but some others are not, I am worthy and the other is not this is the meaning of Satan, the devil! In Hebrew, the word HaSatan literally means the Adversary. Indeed, this inner demon of ego that speaks to us of separation from others and division of the world into the saved/loved/worthy and the damned/loathsome/worthless is what keeps us in the fallen Adamic condition and prevents us from reaching true salvation. How ironic! You see, the real meaning of salvation is reunion with the Godhead. And ultimately, all people and all things will be brought back into oneness with the Divine. The satanic ego tries to compartmentalize God as being distantly up there and we humans as being mere animals down here but the Holy Spirit proclaims that all things are from God, through God and to God (Rom. 11:36), and that God is becoming all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). The satanic ego tries to keep a person focused on ones separation from that which seems to be other or external to oneself but the Holy Spirit reminds us that we are all one and if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Cor. 12:26). Salvation is when we overcome the ego, when we firmly take command of the rebellious self, saying, get behind me, Satan! (Mat. 16:23), and move beyond this stumbling block once and for all as Jesus did when he accepted the cross. Through a cross the defeat and death of the carnal man, the ego we attain an eternal life and glory that comes only by extinguishing the part of us that is incompatible with God. The Buddhists call the state of the extinguished ego nirvana, which literally means the condition in which a being extinguishes the fires of self and separation and attains oneness with the Universal Reality. The Hindus speak of the Highest Deity as Brahman, a word which comes from the root to breathe. God breathed out the creation and is breathing it back into Oneself. To be in Christ means to pour the divine waters of life on the fires of hell that burn within ones Adamic being, and thus to enter reunion with the Godhead as a cell in the Divine Body joining the Elohim, the council of the gods or the heavenly host and ultimately, after ages and ages of time, to surrender completely to the All-in-All, the mystical Oneness of Being as a droplet, a photon of spiritual light, dancing and merging with the Ocean of Eternity. All of created reality came from Gods own Being and reflects some aspects of divinity. Intelligent souls in the universe play a special role in Gods plan for the divinization and perfection of all creation, with Jesus Christ as the head exemplar of the body of God the Son. As Paul declared, to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men. He who descended [from heaven to earth] is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe. (Eph. 4:7-8,10).

Imagine that: the whole universe will become filled with Christ! The spirit of separation, of death, decay and destruction will be conquered by the spirit of Christ, the spirit of divine life, beauty, and interconnected meaning and purpose. All the Universe all realms whether earthly or heavenly or hellish have a teleological function leading to reunion with Deity. Conclusion We have seen an amazing and wonderful vision of God, of creation, of human nature and destiny, and of Christ. What a glorious reality! Our lives on earth and in other realms of existence provide us with an opportunity first to develop an ego-self as we proceed outward from God, and then to overcome this ego-self and subordinate/subsume it to the One True Self as we proceed back into God. The Divine Breath projects Itself outward in the Let there be light (Gen. 1:3); manifests itself in innumerable forms in creation; culminates in the perfected Son of God, the Body of Christ, the ascended intelligence and power of divine humanity (including any other sapient spiritual beings there may be); and draws Itself back inward in the process of the Son himself will be made subject to [God] who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Cor. 15:28). In conclusion, let us be clear about one thing which is perhaps more important than anything else: Although salvation, the return of humanity to the Godhead, shall be universal, this does not happen automatically without our participation. Because God is in us, it is we who, as the Body of Christ, enable God to accomplish the goal of universal salvation. If Christ had not come to earth and taught his message, people would not have learned the truth and become disciples. If we do not act as the Body of Christ as sincere disciples sharing spiritual truth as Jesus did, both through words and deeds those who are currently walking in the darkness of falsehood, sin and separation from God, burning in the hell of ego, will not escape from the chains of the earthly, Adamic life/death. Bound to a world of flesh, a world currently ruled by the Satan of ego-separation from God, they will remain confined within themselves and this fallen world until liberated by those who are themselves being liberated and brought into Christ. It is our responsibility as Christians striving for maturity in the Body of Christ to manifest our destiny of divinity and to help bring others into the ever-growing Manifestation of God, that all the world may be transformed from Adam into Christ and the divine attributes may shine resplendent in all things.

Born of the Spirit: The Offspring and Heirs of God

By Brad Edwards
Brad Edwards is a non-denominational Christian writer and meteorologist from Des Moines, Iowa. He is a founding member of the CUA Board of Directors. This essay is published online at his website at http://www.savioroftheworld.net/Born %20of%20the%20Spirit.htm

John 3:5 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." This quote from Jesus may be the most enlightening passage in Christianity from the most enlightened teacher in the world! And yet, it also seems to be one of the most misunderstood among those who read it. In this particular encounter, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus about entering into Gods Kingdom, but this religious leader just couldnt fathom the spiritual depth of the Rabbis words. Imagine that! This apparent man of God from a group that is called the chosen of God didnt know how to enter the Kingdom of God! I am not surprised, but Jesus seemed to be a little bewildered concerning his lack of spiritual understanding. Do you understand what Jesus is saying? Do you understand that flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to spirit? While Jesus taught that being born of the spirit is a prerequisite to entering Gods Kingdom, he also said that we must be born of water. So what does it mean to be born of water? And more importantly, what does in mean to be born of the spirit? Nicodemus and many still today are confused about how we enter Gods Kingdom. Let us keep in mind that Gods Kingdom is not the one of flesh. So everyone must be born as SPIRIT here on earth before entering Gods Kingdom in heaven. This is a conundrum for the natural man who perceives himself as flesh and the Kingdom as an actual city with streets paved with gold. Heaven isnt a place above the clouds with pearly gates; heaven is a higher state (closer to God) in consciousness and spirit. The only way to reach heaven (and God for that matter) is by being SPIRIT. Only by being spirit will we be able to fly as angels fly. Jewish leaders then and certainly some of our Christian clergy today have missed the spiritual meaning of Jesus teachings. But this is nothing new because

traditional Christian doctrines are riddled with error. You see, there are many proclaiming to be born again Christians, but I dont think they really know what this divine birth entails. Depending on which born again Christian you ask this commonly used phrase means something a little different, but then again, isnt this always the case? If Peter and Paul couldnt agree about circumcision, what makes us think we can agree on what being born of spirit means? Now, some may use the phrase born of the spirit to describe the time after a religious ceremony (baptism, confirmation, etc.) while others may have had an actual spiritual experience that dramatically changed their life. They say this new lifestyle and dedication means they are born again. Perhaps God helped them overcome alcoholism or set them free from some other problem. While there is no doubt that these moments can change us, we do not suddenly BECOME spirit as the causation or result of this. Rather, these moments are times of spiritual growth when we notice the power God working in our spirit. Even after the resurrection when Jesus was said to have breathed on the disciples, this event didnt change them into spirit. While it certainly helped to strengthen them, they were still very natural men. Then later at Pentecost the Holy Spirit filled them again, but this was another experience, not an actual birth of their spirit. We should understand that spirit can never die, so the question really is can spirit ever be born? From a certain perspective, the answer is yes. Let me ask you this. Do you believe that you are spirit or flesh? Some might say they are both. Jesus taught that whoever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whoever is born of the spirit is spirit. Does this mean we are TWO people? Again, from a certain perspective, the answer is yes. What we should first realize is that everything has been born of or "come from" God, who is SPIRIT. Who could deny that all that is real has come from God? So then the reality and the life of all things is spirit. Without spirit from God there is nothing- no earth, no sun, no man and no manifestation of any kind. God is all in all, but we cannot fully realized this YET. This is the key! So the truth is we have always been and always will be spirit! Understand that long before our body came into existence in this world our spirit was alive in God. So the purpose of this article is to show that there isnt a single moment we become spirit in this world, but instead, each of us is spirit that is maturing to the level high enough to know God and enter the Kingdom of God. So when Jesus says we must be born of the spirit, I believe he is saying we must come to REALIZE that we are indeed spirit. This revelation of who we truly are certainly can change how we live and think. Surprisingly, many Christians still do not fully accept that they are indeed spirit from God. They may call Him their Father, but they still live and think as flesh. Nicodemus and other religious minds like him thoroughly know their doctrines, but have trouble thinking outside their ideological boxes. Most of humanity is programmed by the world with a particular philosophy, religion or culture then typically stay within those worldly bounds. When they are given a higher spiritual truth that they believe contradicts their ideology it is usually rejected. This is certainly apparent regarding the truth that we are spirit and not flesh. Jesus was trying to explain that there are two different ways we can be born and then live in this world. We can be born and live as flesh, or we can

be born and live as spirit. One birth leads to death and the other way leads us to life. One birth places us in the family of Satan, the other in the family of God. Even so, each of us must experience BOTH kinds of births, natural and then spiritual, to prepare us before entering the Kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 15:44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
45

So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
46 49

And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

Yes, Gods Seed is in you and all. This Seed will bear the likeness of Christ Jesus. So there is a reason why Jesus taught that being born of water and then of spirit are the prerequisites to enter the Kingdom of God. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians, we (spirit) have come into this world- to be born in a natural way, and then in a spiritual way. It should be obvious that being born of flesh and spirit are two completely different births. In one sense of the word, everyone born as a human into this world has been born of "water," which is to say the flesh. This is a natural birth resulting from our natural parents union, which happens with no effort on our part. Because our natural world shadows a higher spiritual world, this lower world can teach us about the higher life in Gods Kingdom. A baby comes into this world by the will of its parents, so those born of the spirit come to life by the will of God. John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. We are all children of God, but most havent been living like it! For those ready to live according to the spirit and not the flesh, you are given the right to be called children of God. God chose you before you chose Him. God gave you His life before you give Him yours. God is in control of your salvation. So as Jesus taught, the wind blows as it wills, so it is with everyone born of the spirit. We should think of being born of the spirit as a rather free-flowing process that is the inevitable result of our divine nature maturing. Like infants coming from our mothers womb into the world, we have no awareness of being

born. If Spirit begets spirit and we are from God, then we too are spirit! So then being born of the spirit isnt something we must strive to do, but rather a truth we must REALIZE. Truly after tasting death over and over again, we will eventually come to our spiritual senses! It will happen to all! In the same way, birds must eventually realize that they can fly. They break free from a shell and come into this world as flightless creatures. Once they mature they do not strive to fly, but just need a little practice! Flying comes to them naturally because this is who they are. Who are you? Who is your Father? What is your true nature? You know the answers to these questions, but you may be afraid to jump out of the nest, right? Know this- spirit never dies. You are and always will be spirit from God. You are alive in Christ and need only to come to this realization. Accepting this truth will, from that moment on, change the way you live in this world. Even today many that call themselves born again live as creatures of flesh instead of spirit born of God. Much of their time and effort are spent attending to the needs of the their carnal self. While it is true that at this moment, we (spirit) are living IN bodies of flesh, our minds must come to realize that it is our spirit giving us life. If our body stops breathing, we do not die. Many live with the fear of death because their mind is married to their body. Let your mind commune with your spirit and you will know the truth and will not fear death. Death loses its sting when we realize we are spirit. What shall you fear if you are spirit? Well, most children fear an angry Father, and we should too! We are spirit from God, yet Christianity traditionally teaches that our natural bodies will be raised from the graves and then taken into heaven. This is not actually true. As Jesus clearly teaches, flesh gives birth to flesh, but it means nothing. The human body is not the image of God, but is simply the image of our natural parents flesh. God is not black or white, male or female! These are natural distinctions of the flesh. Jesus said that the flesh means nothing because the spirit gives life. In the same way, Paul taught that flesh and blood (natural body) couldnt enter the Kingdom of God. It should be clear then that we must be SPIRIT to enter into a spiritual kingdom. As Jesus alludes to there is an order of birth that must be followed to enter Gods Kingdom. First we are born of water then of spirit. This is according to Gods design because the latter is dependent upon the former. We come into this world as flesh again and again for one purpose- to learn about God and our self. By living as creatures of flesh we have come to know death, sin and suffering. Yet this is also leading to come to know our Creator (Spirit) and our true self (spirit) better. Our trials and tribulations here allow us to gain the experience and wisdom necessary to realize we are spirit from God. This is a true epiphany that changes everything! Our spirits innate desire is to be like God while returning to God. We have come into the world to grow spiritually but this goes hand-in-hand with the increase in knowledge. We have been eating from THAT knowledge tree for millions of years now. And as Jesus said, the fields are ripe for the harvest. Many are ready to picked out by God! So in another, higher sense, this knowledge we are born from can also seen as being born of water. It is not unusual for Jesus teachings to be true on several different levels of understanding. He had some food for every level of comprehension. What truth seekers will find is that truth is relative to our level of faith

and understanding. Again like that bird that decides to fly, when we ready and decide to live in the Spirit of Christ a whole new reality opens before us! Some say that Jesus walking on the water was a symbol that he was above the rest of humanity because the sea (water) represented humanity. While others say it was showing that his spiritual understanding and wisdom were supporting him. I believe both interpretations have an element of truth in them, but there is no doubt that Jesus came to teach us the knowledge of salvation. The knowledge of the truth will set us free. Luke 7:33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, `He has a demon.' 34 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, `Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' 35 But wisdom is proved right by all her children." If God is the Father of our spirit then let wisdom be the mother of our soul! Wisdom is the living water that flowed from Jesus mouth providing a new life for thirsty souls. Once the soul has been born of this wisdom, then the reality of our spirit can come to life! It is written that Jesus grew in wisdom and understanding while walking the earth. Well, we are here to do the same if we are to follow him. If we do this, we shall find our salvation. Of this I am sure. But how do we follow Jesus? Obviously Jesus was a man born of spirit (born of God), but are we born in the same way he was? Well according to the rather questionable Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was not only born of the spirit, but also is said to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit. Then in Lukes Gospel we also read that he was filled with the Holy Spirit before entering the trials of the desert. Yet, John the Baptist was also a man apparently born miraculously and filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. So what or who is the Holy Spirit? Keep in mind that all spirit must be from God. So the Holy Spirit is the original spirit of this world that has been QUALIFIED by doing Gods will. We know that there are "unclean" spirits in this world that cause all sorts of problems, so we can think of the Holy Spirit as that Spirit of the world which obeys God's will. Even though all spirit is from God, only that spirit that has come back into alignment with His PERFECT will is deemed holy. Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. Gods perfect will is a higher will that can only be known by going higher in consciousness. In this lower, physical plane of creation every single atom contains the life (spirit) of God. Every cell of our body contains the life of God. When life organizes and carries out Gods higher will this life (spirit) is called holy. This world is full of spirit, but not all is holy. This is by Gods design. Though because of the Holy Spirits presence here, God can reach us in tangible ways. He can speak to us, heal us and guide

us to a higher life in Christ. So when we read about the Holy Spirit filling or coming upon someone it is by the will of the LORD God. In many ways, the Holy Spirit was first like our father by creating the building blocks of life while the earth was our mother. But then the Holy Spirit acts as our mother because our spirit has passed through the Holy Spirit and our LORD God (Christ, Son and Word of God) acts as our father. So all of humanity is here as a result of the Holy Spirit being on and in the earth. For this reason, God is present at every level of our development. Even if we make our bed in hell, His Holy Spirit helps to lead us out of the darkness so we can see the light of Christ. While God guides our spirit, our spirit then guides our soul. While each spirit is free to choose his own path, there is one thing that is never a matter of choice- who we are. We are Gods offspring destined to become the fullness of our Father. While Jesus was the first of his kind to make this transformation, any who follow will reveal the same glory! just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. This is the truth! We will be exactly like Jesus. However, long ago, Christendom did everything in their power to separate Jesus from us. They wanted the power and control over their subjects. They would say, You are not like Jesus, and you cannot reach God without us. They taught that the man Jesus came into this world without an earthly father. This supernatural event is said to separate him and make him different than the rest of humanity. As I have written many times before, I do not accept this teaching of men as truth. I believe that virgin birth story is an added fabrication created in the minds of over-zealous leaders aimed at bolstering the Christian movement. Jesus didnt teach this about a virgin birth nor did any of his apostles including Paul. It either didnt happen, or it doesnt matter. Paul was full of zeal, yet not one word about such an incredible even. For those who can accept it, this fictitious tenet of Christianity was added long after the disciples had passed away. What I explained in Jesus the Chosen Man is that Jesus was exactly like us and we shall be exactly like him. This is what Jesus taught and Paul preached. So, like it or not, I strongly believe that Jesus came into this world in a very natural way, which is to say his body was conceived by a natural father probably Joseph. His spirit, however, is a whole different story! In a very real sense, EVERY child of God has been conceived of the Holy Spirit. All has come from God, which means from the Father through the Son and then through the Holy Spirit. All is spirit, and when you have come into alignment with Gods perfect will, you are holy. Through His Holy Spirit, God has created the fabric of the universe from which all life has emerged and then evolves. Since we have all come from God, Jesus uniqueness was not that the Holy Spirit gave him life, but that he was the FIRST to overcome sin, death and the devil. Like us, he is and always had been SPIRIT from God, but he became our leader and Lord because he was more mature (spiritually) than any who had ever walked the earth before him. Jesus brought the Spirit of Christ into this world thereby becoming the first man to overcome the works and world of Satan. Because of his love, maturity and obedience to God, Jesus the Christ is our Savior! Jesus is now the Spirit of Christ living in us and leading ALL back to God! So seek Him, hear Him and follow Him. Someday your spirit will take flight to be with Him!

In God Is- Everything Else Isnt, I detailed how everything and everyone is spirit from God. Our spirit gives us life and connects us eternally to God as we move through the fabric of time and matter. Because of this connectedness to the Source of all life, we can never actually die, but we can only believe we are dead through deviance and deception. When we move out of that spiritual alignment with God, we move into the darkness. This is the key! We must come to know to see the Light of TRUTH that we are alive in God! So do not think that being born of the spirit means that you BECOME spirit. Again, you have always been and always will be SPIRIT! Jesus knew this and, I believe, used the phrase born of the spirit to mean the time when we REALIZE that we are spirit. Through acceptance of this truth and obedience to Gods will, Jesus spirit revealed himself as Gods mature and qualified Son; in whom, God was well pleased. Jesus accepted the undeniable truth that all of must accept- Christ is our life and the reason for life. This divine key opens the door to heaven, which has been kept hidden from man. Yet now it is given to those mature enough to accept it. Colossians 1:26 The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Who do you suppose are the saints that God is revealing His higher truths to? The saints are those that have realized they are spirit and are ready to follow Christ Jesus into the reality of sonship with God. God is our Father- the Father of our spirit! The saints are truly Gods Sons because they have the Spirit of Christ and are Gods anointed! They are the anointed souls ready to live for God. They have grown in wisdom and in spiritual stature to the level where they know His perfect will. We all began like newborns in our relationship with God, but will end just as Jesus- mature and holy. Long ago, mankind was born in complete ignorance of God. As mans spiritual eyes opened, his first sense was to fear God, but, in time, this feeling eventually turned to awe. Mankind is moving past awe to a sincere respect for God, but, in the end, it will all turn to love. It should clear that the spiritually mature LOVE God as their only Father. This is why we do Gods will because we love Him. It is for this reason we have come into this world as human beings-- to be led by faith into the knowledge of truth until we emerge as the mature offspring of God. The purpose of life is our spiritual maturation.

The Maturation
2 Corinthians 3:17 (NASB)

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. Much wisdom can be gleaned from this passage written by Paul to the Corinthians. First understand that the Lord is the spirit of Jesus, who is Christ, who is the Son and Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus found liberty in the Spirit of Christ, so he was free from the laws of religion and of men. We too have the Spirit of Christ and are beginning to see Gods glory shining from us. From life to life, we increase to a higher level of glory until we are transformed into the same image as Jesus, which is the image of God. As man measures time, this process of spiritual maturation happens very slowly. Science indicates that humans have been evolving for millions of years in natural ways, but Jesus showed us that we also progressing in spiritually. For many, many ages each of us has been returning here to be refined and transformed or as Paul says, from glory to glory. Whether we can see it now or not, we are going to be perfect like our Father is perfect. For this purpose, God continues to send us back again and again to learn more lessons, grow in faith, and move closer to our home with Him. We are on a journey back to God, but we dont find our way home in a single lifetime. How could we? Some are only in this world for a few seconds while others never make it out of their mothers womb! It should be obvious to serious truth seekers that God is using reincarnation of our spirit as the way to bring us to His perfection. Jesus often times used parables about nature to teach about God and His Kingdom because our earthly world shadows the heavenly one. Consider then the amazing process of being born. In the natural, a child is conceived in the darkness, not by its own will, but by the will of its parents. In the same way, we (spirit) are conceived by the will of God in a womb of spiritual darkness, which is the spiritual ignorance of this world. As discussed in The Meaning of Life, the reason for life is to gain full consciousness of the Truth. So in this eternal cycle of life the spirit does not grow in height and weight, but in awareness and love! We are maturing into the image of our Father! Nothing can keep this from happening because God is God, and we, His children, have His spiritual DNA. So everyone his beginning as a single spark of life from God in the womb of darkness called the void. It is here where our journey for life began.

THE CONCEPTIONJeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Have you ever wondered where were you before there was time? Where did you live before the earth and sun were created? Some believe they didnt exist at all until the moment of their natural conception. They believe that the same moment when a new

body was formed in their mothers womb, so were they. I wonder if these also believe that the spirit depends on the flesh for life! Apparently these also have no earthly idea that they are spirit. Jeremiah, however, seemed to know that he was a spirit being that existed before his natural birth. I wouldnt say that coming into this world of death and darkness is coming to life. Rather everyone that is born of flesh will die because the flesh is part of the manifested, temporary world. However, those born of the spirit are not flesh and will never die. John 11:25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" The one who LIVES and BELIEVES and will never die is your SPIRIT! Your spirit is your true self born in Gods image. But if you are not living through your spirit, then God doesnt recognize you. When God says, I never knew you, He is speaking to that false, natural self, which doesnt believe and will most certainly die. Yet, even though your false natural self dies, your true self will live. We should understand that our spirit from God has never been actually dead; this is impossible, but spirit can lose consciousness. As a consequence of this, our souls have been deceived into accepting this world in the flesh as reality. We have accepted these bodies we live in as our life, so the illusions pain and death seem very real in this world. As Jeremiah alluded to, we all were with God before we were placed into creation. So our true life doesnt begin with a natural conception or natural birth. Our true conception wasnt when a sperm joined with an egg. But our true life is realized when spirit joins with consciousness! Our life is from God and is God! The Father gives us life and the Son leads us to realize it! So if there is a place in time we could call our true CONCEPTION it would be that moment of creation when we (spirit), being led by the Word of God, went into the void. God spoke (breathed) His Word into the darkness, and we, the LIGHT, entered it. You could say that we went into the womb of creation to begin our development, each of us like a seed of God beginning a period of gestation. For billions of years, every spirit has been moving through this physical plane taking on higher and higher forms of life until evolving to our present form. Of course traditional Christianity teaches creationism not evolution. What they dont understand is that God created evolution to bring about higher and higher forms of life to build His Kingdom. Do you remember what Paul said? We are moving from one form of glory to a higher form of glory. So it is true that we are spirit beings on a human journey, not human beings on a spiritual journey. Our true life is not defined by the form we take because we are spirit always growing in consciousness. We have passed through the spectrum of life being qualified along the way. Because we have been qualified by world, we are all the children of God. This is why we can say that all been conceived and born through the Holy Spirit because God, who is holy, is our Father.

So our life in this physical universe began with the Big Bang when Gods Light went into the void. Yet surely what came from God must also return to God? This is the beginning of our journey of consciousness powered the spirit, which is always connected to God. Think of spirit as energy because energy makes things move and gives them life. Jesus, the enlightened and anointed one, said that we are the light (or energy) of the world. Each of us is a ray of Light from God that went into spiritual darkness. Consider the multitude of stars in the night sky. They are perhaps trillions of miles away, but we can still see their light! Gods light in us is no different. We entered the void as just a spark of light, but by the grace and will of God, we are transforming into the likeness of God. Where there was darkness, God made light. Where there was nothing, God created the heavens and the earth. He placed us, His seeds, in the womb of creation, so that His glory would be all in all. There in the womb of creation, faith would become our umbilical cord. Through this divine conduit of faith, God has nourished his spirit children with His life and love. In the natural world, a fetus remains in the womb until it is mature enough to be born, and so it is in the spiritual. Creation became our womb where our spirit has been maturing for ages and ages. Like every unborn child, our spirit was surrounded by our mothers womb (Mother Nature) where we continued to grow in consciousness. Yet like every unborn child, we were completely unaware of the world we were about to enter. Our Father God had given us His life and now our mother earth was ready to give birth to human beings.

THE INFANT SPIRITGenesis 2:7 The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. If one is looking for an actual moment that mankind was born of the spirit, then this passage from Genesis marks it. I believe this because this is the point when man reached self-awareness; man became a living soul- a sentient being of the highest order in nature. God, through evolution, created more and more advanced creatures, and then separated humans from the ape family. This is when we became self-conscious. This quantum leap in consciousness was necessary for us to prepare to become Christ-conscious. All humans are spirit that has been born into this present form to become Gods Image. Perhaps about four billion years ago, God set the spirit of man apart from the rest of creation and making him king of the jungle, as it were. With this heightened level of awareness and intelligence, the mind of man was (and is) driven to know. Like a newborn, all of our senses began to soak up information. As infant spirits, we were placed in a crib, which the Bible calls Eden. There in our infancy, God took care of us and made sure that man prospered thereby filling the earth with more vessels for Gods offspring to use. As our LORD God cared for us giving us

all that we needed, this was really a time of bliss for the spirit of man. Yet, there came that fateful time when we made our first choice. Although mere infants in spirit, we thought we needed more than what God was offering. From the moment our spirit went into the void, we have been seeking knowledge through experience. This God-given desire is insatiable and will lead us back to God; however, it also led us to taste that tree of death. We were innocent until this first choice to eat of the duality tree. Before this we did not know good from evil. We lived like animals with no real sense of what is right or wrong. Also by eating of this tree, we became aware of our flesh to the point we believed we were flesh. For the first time, our infant spirits were deceived by the carnal mind into believing we were merely flesh. Believing ourselves to be flesh, we also believed we died when the body died. In other words, our self-awareness told us that our self died when the body expired. This deception of death came upon the newborn spirit and soul of man long ago by the will of God, as we read in the story of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are one being who represent the human SPIRIT and SOUL respectively. Because Adam and Eve were one when Eve ate of the tree of knowledge so did Adam. The soul (Eve) of mankind led the spirit (Adam) of mankind into sin and this kind of spiritual death (sleep). We read that before Eve (soul) was taken out of Adam (spirit), Adam (spirit) was put into a deep sleep. We know that infants spend much of their time sleeping, so I see that this was also true of our infant spirits in a sense. As infants, not only were we napping much of the time, we also had very little experience or wisdom yet. There was humanity, the infant spirits of God, in the cradle of creation being fed in body by the earth and in spirit by God. There we were babbling, being unable to speak. There we were lying in our crib unable to walk. However, little by little we grew out of our infancy and all of this was about to change!

THE TODDLER SPIRIT1 Corinthians 14:20 Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. A toddler is somewhere between being an infant and a child. As Paul claims, there are certain qualities about infants that are desirable concerning evil. The toddler spirit is innocent with regards to evil because of his lack of knowledge. Sin infected the soul of man pulling the spirit down with her. Since sin is a state of deception, it must also be eradicated through the soul. The infant spirit of man did not know what sin was, but the toddler spirit is beginning to understand. When Cain killed Abel, this toddler spirit surely had a sense that he had done something wrong. Yes, the spirit of man was starting to grow up. At this stage in our development, the toddler spirit is babbling in a kind of incoherent language, which the soul really doesnt understand. So during this time, the soul, who is the companion of the spirit, mostly eats from that tree of knowledge. This tree is the

one filled with the fruit of the world, which she eats using her natural senses and digest using her natural mind. In this way, the soul is still a carnivore because of her carnal appetite. During this toddler era, mankind would be considered still fairly primitive like cavemen in all facets of life including that of religion. To this immature spirit, God is still very much a mystery. And while that babbling of the spirit is starting to be heard by the soul of man, it is mostly disregarded. One thing is true of toddlers; they like to put things in their mouths that they shouldnt! Man was no different during this stage of our spiritual development. We tried everythingtasting the different experiences that the world had to offer be they good or bad. Even so, this toddler was still considered innocent because he was mostly unaware of what is good or bad behavior. During this time, our LORD God is watching over us like a father and keeps us from getting into to much trouble. He even holds us up when we first try and walk on our own. Psalms 37:23 If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; 24 though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand. Yes, every toddler must toddle, and often times they stumble! But God is always there to protect us from any real harm. In truth, it is the soul that will feel the bumps and bruises of our falls. The first goal every toddler has is to escape from his crib! The toddler spirit of man was always curious and looking for something new. At some point in our early civilization, mankind left his crib to see what was out in the rest of the world. This curiosity to know all things is driven by the spirit of man by the Son of God. This is all part of learning who we are. Eventually, our spirit begins to walk and talk a little better then a much bigger and brighter world opens to us.

THE CHILD SPIRITActs 17:29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being (our true self) is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Yes, we are Gods offspring; and yes, we used to live in ignorance and deception. In the past, God overlooked our bad behavior because we were still young- you know kids will be kids! During our childhood stage, God allowed us to play freely on the earths playground. While God had still not laid down the law for mankind, we certainly were increasing our knowledge of what was considered good and evil. Mostly we were learning from our mistakes more than from God. God was watching over us, but we were still too young to really be taught His higher truths. This is the age when our child spirit

really came to acknowledge God more personally. Our relationship with God began with a sense of fear. The thought that an all-powerful Force was watching over us was a little unnerving. Yet as all parents know, obedience begins with the fear of discipline. Psalms 34:11 Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and so it is. For young children, fear is usually the most effective motivator. Eat your broccoli, or you will get no desert. Clean your room, our you cannot have friends come over. Every parent knows what works. If children fear they are going to lose something, they usually make the right choice. God has treated us like children through the ages using both the fear of punishment and the reward for good behavior as His modus operandi. During the child stage of the human spirit those who followed their spirit were blessed by the LORD God with mostly earthly blessings. This makes sense because although we were adult in the natural we were children in spirit. Kids dont want jobs; they want to play. Kids dont want tools; they want toys. So God provided those good children with earthly blessings like bountiful harvests, wives, health, fertility and so on. We see this being displayed in the more ancient writings of the Old Testament. During this child stage this spirit of man was beginning to really communicate with God on a meaningful level. As a result of this higher level of spiritual communication and awareness, the worlds religions began to emerge. Some looked outwardly at nature that is always speaking of God while others looked within into their own spirit to learn from God. Either way, man was beginning to really speak to God, spirit to Spirit. This period in our spiritual development is significant not only because of ability to communicate with God, but also our ability to remember the wisdom of past lives. We know that in the natural, our earliest memories begin around age four or five, and this is seen in the spiritual too. Mark 10:13 People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." 16 And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them. God loves His children! After every life here in this world, our spirit returns to God. Once we have become somewhat developed we can truly appreciate and even recall this return to God. Many of Gods children have told of near-death experiences in which they were aware of the peace, joy and light they entered. I believe this is what Jesus was speaking about here when he says we must be like a little child. Our first memories (stored consciousness) of God begin when we are little spirit children.

During this era, mankind began to really grow especially in all area of knowledge. This increased knowledge was also apparent by types of civilizations and social fabric that were created. Popular religions, powerful empires and wondrous inventions were becoming commonplace across the earth. This seemed to be mankinds heyday, or should we say, play day? But recess time was just about over. God had watched us playing in the dirt of the world for long enough. It was time for a bath in the way of a flood! So God took most of his kids back into heaven and washed them with grace. Soon after repopulating the earth again, our Father decided it was time for some rules to be set for His children. Yes, the spirit of man was coming upon the age of accountability!

THE ADOLESCENT SPIRITHebrews 12:7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! If you feel that God is disciplining you, rejoice because God is saying you are a legitimate son! In Judaism, a boy becomes a man at the age of thirteen. Regarding our spiritual development, this is the period when the spirit of man reaches a kind of puberty. Our inner voice changes as our spirit becomes louder and more authoritative. This is the time when mans spirit is really now starting to take more of a leadership role over the soul. Along with this new spiritual prowess given from above, more responsibility also is handed down from God. This is age of human history when God handed down the Law, and man became accountable for his sins. The Jews, of course, have officially documented this, but every spirit passing through his adolescence has been shown what God expects of them. In other words, we know what is right and wrong, so we had better make good choices. As we read in Hebrews, God disciplines those He loves. These are the ones mature enough to handle the coming trials and tribulations. Jesus was tested and qualified by such trials. Jesus is Lord because he PASSED the test! If we claim to be his followers, then shouldnt we also be put through these tests of our spirit? Jesus endured the lures and traps of Satan who worked through Jesus natural mind. His spirit was strong, pure and ready to reveal Gods Son to the world! This is why God expected so much from Jesus. This is why Jesus said, If much if given to you (from God), then MUCH is also expected. A father demands much more quality and effort from a 16 year old than a 6 year old. The same is true of God with us, His maturing sons. Like every good Father, God disciplines us children according to our level of maturity. During this adolescent age of humanity, our spirits were no longer children, but neither

were we adults yet. This means that even though our spirit had grown stronger and wiser, we were still of the world being led by the soul. For this reason, the Law is for the natural man who hasnt come to the full realization of who he is. Gods discipline is not necessarily to punish us, but rather to teach us His ways. Whatever courses our lives take, trust that God is doing what is best for our spiritual development. In the same way, the Law and effects of sin were not given to burden us, but to lead us into a higher life in Christ. Even honest teenagers will admit that they need boundaries from their parents to help edify and demonstrate their parents love for them. As any parent of an adolescent knows without set boundaries from a parent confusion and conflict can become the guiding principles. This is why God made clear His commandments to govern our behavior. They are simply designed to keep us out of trouble here in the devils playground (the world) until we have matured in Christ. The maturing spirit is powering the mind to higher and higher levels of learning and understanding, which is certainly apparent in the past 2,000 years. This increased receptiveness and perceptiveness is also manifested in mans religions. During this time, our religions became more enlighten by the Truth of God. Like in the natural, the teen spirit is torn between two worlds. In this case though, the battle is between the natural world of the senses and the spiritual Kingdom of God. For ages upon ages, we (spirit) have entered this world, lived in a body of flesh and been companioned with a soul. It is in the soul (mind) where the battle takes place. Does the soul choose the worldly food that she has grown accustom to or the spiritual food that is harder to reach? Then does the spirit believe the soul and take the worldly delights she offers him? This saga is as old as man himself; it is the sequel to the Adam and Eve story! Apparently some were still having trouble understanding this, as Paul explains. Hebrews 5:11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. We start with milk, but in time, we must eat that solid food- the meat of the truth. This is the truth that will set us free from deception. So apparently eating from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil is exactly what we needed! God didnt make a mistake by placing that tree in our reach, and we had to eat of it to advance the plan of life and salvation. In Thy Kingdom Come, I showed how mankind has a higher sense of what is right and wrong than ever before in our history. Two hundred years ago, Christians thought it was right to own slaves. Do they still feel this is right? Yes, it seems unthinkable, but that just goes to show you how we must continue to advance in the knowledge of the truth. Now, whether Paul realized it or not, he was attempting to teach Kindergartners calculus. Many were entering Christianity, but very few were chosen to carry the Truth. We know that Jesus had the same problem even with even his closest

disciples. Many that lacked spiritual understand or faith simply turned away when his teachings became too difficult to accept. So being able to understand and accept the deep mysteries is a sign of a more mature spirit. Above all else, the mature spirit acknowledges that God is his Father. Because the mature have trained themselves to distinguish between what is good and what is evil, they are without an excuse. If we know the difference between good and evil, God expects us to follow that code of conduct written on our hearts and minds. Of course, the choice is ours. Even today we see some adolescent spirits that continue to make the wrong choice being led still by the deceived soul. Yes, the devil is still doing his work on the earth. And who is the devil? The devil is the enemy of God, the carnal mind of man and ego that loves acting as a god. No one can BE God in this world; we can only be His image, as Jesus was. This divine irony of the truth will help lead the prodigal sons to repentance. What we all will find is that Gods peace only comes by DOING what we SEE our Father doing. We can only BE the image of God! The image (man) is a reflection in a mirror and can only do what the Subject (God) does. Jesus realized this truth. The effect (man) IS only because the Cause (God) IS. Straying from this truth brings us pain. Have you ever strayed from God? Have you ever knowingly rejected Gods will in your life? Have you ever been an evil spirit? You might be surprised who are the ones called evil.

THE EVIL SPIRITLuke 11:11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Here, Jesus is speaking to his closest followers. Did you know that the men that Jesus chose to be his disciples were evil? Are you also then evil? What is an evil spirit? As discussed in Hell Revisited, Satan Revealed, every spirit is from God even the so-called evil ones. So we must accept that God is the Father of all spirit and life. There is no exception. Because of this truth we must also acknowledge that God created what we call evil, but evil may not be what you think it is. Evil is part of the plan of perfection. There can be no good without evil just as there can be no knowledge of life without knowing death first. We all must be lost before we can be found, right? I believe God feels the same way because He has led us into disobedience. Romans 11:30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's

mercy to you. 32 For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Do you believe what Paul says here? God has made us all disobedient, so we would learn from it. Wasnt it God who planted the tree of death in our midst? Wasnt God who created the devil that tempted us? I, like Paul, hold God completely accountable for what is called the original sin. We only did exactly what God knew we would. Does a parent place poison that looks like candy in the reach of their child and tell them not to eat it? Certainly not! Yet, this is what those of Judea-Christian tradition are taught! What foolishness to think that God did something so reckless! I, like Paul, also trust that God knows exactly what He is doing! We had to eat of that tree of knowledge to become like God- knowing good from evil. Many self-righteous, religious souls are quick to label others as bad, sinful or evil when these souls dont believe or live as they do. They will say that these evil people are going to an eternal hell when they die. Again, this is foolishness! However, Paul humbled himself and others because he knew better. Paul realized that we ALL have been evil and said that he was once the worst of sinners. He said that we ALL used to follow the devil and ways of the world. This is our natural condition before we come to Christ. The word evil which is used to describe spirits in many passages of the New Testament is a translation of the Greek words poneros and akathartos. These words can mean vile or wicked, but "akathartos" is many times translated as "unclean" or "impure." In other words, these are UNholy spirits that have not yet be qualified and purified. We can think of these evil spirits as Gods naughty offspring that need to be taught a lesson. We all need lessons from time to time! Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth). 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. We used to be the spirits of darkness (evil, wayward, bad), but now we know and have the light of Christ! Yes, none is righteous, so we are the disobedient spirits whom Jesus came to save! Can you accept that you were a lost spirit and Christ Jesus is your Savior? Each of us has lost our way and need some help; otherwise we wouldnt be stuck in this (lower) state of life. We are called dead in our sin though we walk in Hades, which is the place of dead. The Spirit of Christ is our only hope to be resurrected from this condition. And evil or not, we are all Gods children that are destined to take on the image of our Father. God knows what it will take to save us, and in the dispensation of time, God will bring us all to salvation through Christ, His Son. So, God is not worried about His plan of perfection. Evil is not a problem. Satan is not a problem. They are necessary devices used to help us to realize who we are! Understand then that light and darkness are the same to God. This means from that highest perspective in Truth there is no such thing as good or evil. In the Holy of Holies

where Gods peace reigns eternal, God is all in all. We say that God has a right hand and left hand. We see that one is for love the other for judgment. One is for forgiveness, the other for vengeance. Good and evil are then like a left and a right. We need two hands to climb the ladder into heaven and two legs to walk with God. As we mature, we learn through our trials and errors. Every lifetime lived in the flesh is like another day for the spirit to learn. As our spirit matures, his voice becomes stronger. John 5:28 "Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. The Voice is the Spirit of Christ, and the grave is life in the flesh. After each lifetime we are judged according to what we have done. Our spirit is held accountable for our previous life, so that when we are reincarnated we reap what we have sown. Those who hear His Voice and remain defiant will rise to taste suffering and death again in this world. Those who hear and accept His Voice as their own are the mature Sons of God. They will rise into Christ-consciousness and live for God.

THE MATURE SPIRIT1 Corinthians 2:6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. Are you ready to enroll at that place of higher learning? You know, K of G, the Kingdom of God! There you will be taught the secret wisdom of God. No, you dont need books or to go up into the clouds, but your soul will certainly be lifted higher! Heaven is a higher state of consciousness and spirit. As your true self (spirit) matures, you will lift your soul (consciousness) into the Kingdom for a holy marriage consecrated and confirmed by God. This is how our soul is saved- by being united with our spirit in Christ. Being strong, mature and filled with wisdom, the spirit gains the respect and control of the soul. A spiritual synchronicity develops that brings the soul to perfection and the spirit back to God. The spirit and soul need each other for salvation to be realized. Just as Adam needed Eve so he wouldnt be alone in the world, so does the spirit need the soul to know. More than this, God needs you. Yes, God needs each of us to return to Him so that He can be all in all. You are part of Gods life, plan and purpose! Have we not read that it is not good that the spirit be alone? For this reason the soul is the partner for the spirit on our journey into the knowledge of the Truth. The soul, or mind, is where

consciousness is planted, cultivated and harvested. We (spirit) reap what we sow. Each life in this world is another growing season for consciousness. With the help of a loving, submissive soul, the spirit of man has grown stronger and closer to God. When your soul perfectly expresses who you are and you perfectly express God, then you know salvation. Simply put, this is the secret wisdom of God that has been hidden from us. For those spiritually mature enough, the mystery has been solved. Christ is our true life and self. Accepting this pivotal and essential truth is an indication that you have matured. This is the point where the spirit has been through life (many lives) enough to know that spirit is life and God is life! We only have true life when we surrender our life to God. Just as Jesus Christ came to realize this, so does every mature, qualified Son of God. You may have heard of that brother God gave us who was an example of a mature Son of God. Hebrews 2:17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. There is a reason that Jesus is called our eldest brother. It is because we are all of the same family! Yes, he is called the firstborn of God, but he is certainly not the last! He is leading all of his siblings (humanity) into perfection and back to God. Thanks be to God that Jesus IS his brothers keeper! While walking the earth in the flesh, Jesus helped all that he came into contact with, but now, as a SPIRIT in Gods Kingdom, he has access to the universe! He is in His Kingdom, which is in you and all! In this way, Christ Jesus will guide us back home to our Fathers house. The mature spirit is the Spirit of Christ that knows and loves God as Father. Romans 8:14 Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are Sons of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Some of my Christian friends have tried to tell me that we are not actually Gods children, but we are creatures that have been created from the dust. Well, the flesh has been created, so they must see themselves as flesh. But I am spirit! While Paul does speak of being adopted into Gods family, he was speaking of the Gentiles coming into the family of the Jews. So if you are flesh, then God have mercy on your soul, but if you are spirit, then hear what your spirit cries out! Abba, Father! Clearly, as we read in Romans 8:14, God is the Father of our spirit, and we are the Sons of God! Romans 8:18

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. The Sons of God will be revealed just as Jesus was revealed. Now understand that being called a son doesnt mean you are a man, but rather it means that you are SPIRIT! More than this, we are becoming Gods likeness and fullness- heirs of God! Certainly you have read the many lofty proclamations that Paul wrote about those who truly had the Spirit of Christ, but do Christians really believe they will attain the fullness of our Lord? I certainly do! This is our purpose on earth- to do Gods will and be Gods image. Ephesians 4:12 so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Little by little and life by life, we are moving closer to this glorious goal. The mature Sons (spirits) of God will live on earth even though they are in heaven. In other words, in Christ they have the freedom from fear, from sin and from death. And they bring Gods love and power to earth. As we prove our love and faithfulness, God gives us more responsibility and authority. Most parents would not let their 8 year old child drive their car, but they might let their 18 year old (I did say might!). When God deems us ready to handle it, we are given the keys to the Kingdom. The apostles were given an opportunity to take this divine power on a little test drive. While they only got a sampling of what it was like to be a perfected Son like Jesus, the time is coming when miracles will be commonplace. The Sons of God will bring Gods love and will into this world! Gods Kingdom is coming to a spirit near you, or more accurately to the spirit IN you!

The Miracles
John 10:38 But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." Thank God for miracles! Have you ever consider what would have become of the teachings of Jesus without His miracles? Jesus and God knew that our natural minds need some persuading. So it seems unlikely that Christianity would have ever gotten off the ground without God bending a few of natures rules. There is no doubt that miracles get our attention, and this seemed to be the main reason why Jesus used them. Even his

disciples seemed to be greatly influenced by them. I believe His miracles were designed to draw the crowds so that he would have an audience for his teachings. It should be obvious that most who sought out Jesus then were not seeking the knowledge of the Kingdom, but were after a miracle cure for the flesh. While Jesus did heal many ailing bodies, the miracles Jesus showed this world were like strong medicine for ailing, unbelieving souls. They were divine antibiotics that could quickly reverse the effects that infectious disease of the devil, which is doubt. Miracles can remove our doubt, and Jesus knew this. So not only was Jesus a healer of the body, but he was also the great physician of the soul! Whether a soul was in the lowest hell or knocking at heavens door, he met each follower where they were spiritually. Still it should be obvious that Jesus more interested in healing souls than bodies. In other words, he wanted to teach us the truth that could set us free. While there are some miracles throughout the Bible, nobody has ever topped Jesus who was the master miracle maker! This is because no one had ever reached the status of Son of God! This is the key to miracles. We are told that the first miracle Jesus performed in his ministry was turning water into wine at the wedding. Every natural miracle he manifested had a spiritual meaning. Jesus cured some of blindness, but Christ enables us to see God! Jesus turned water into wine, but Christ changes our life from the flesh to the spirit! By the way, have you noticed that potent forms of alcohol are called spirits? Have you also noticed that those who drink seem to let their inner feelings show? If you are angry on the inside, this will show through when you drink alcohol. Most of us have seen the happy drunk and the angry drunk, but now take this into a spiritual context. If we live on SPIRIT, then we shall see our true self revealed. If we drink the blood and eat the flesh of Christ, then we shall have His life! So the purpose of miracles is much more than just to improve the health of an ailing body. They are to teach us the higher way and to glorify the Highest One! Luke 19:37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" 40 "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

Everyone loves a winner! But put that winner on a humiliating cross to die, and then see who his true friends are. Miracles happen every day, and in varying degrees, we have all witnessed or experienced miracles in our lives. Yet, do we fully understand the physics behind these miracles? I believe there is a spiritual science to why and how miracles can happen. In simple terms, miracles are gifts from God, which could come as a spiritual, mental or even a carnal healing. Even what we think are tragedies sometimes turn out to

be miracles in disguise. While I am sure that miracles happen every day, many times we do not fully perceive them. Miracles can certainly be blessings in our lives, but their main purpose is to glorify God and increase our faith. Still, how and what exactly is a miracle? The dictionary says that a miracle is an inexplicable event by the laws of nature so is held to have supernatural or divine origin. There are documented cases in the medical field of miraculous cures from cancer and other terminal diseases. One man has been struck by lightning seven times! It surely is a miracle that he is still alive. There are some who might have missed their flight on the plane that crashed killing all aboard. Sometimes the birth of a child is considered a miracle, and why not? It may not be supernatural, but it is still very amazing how life begins. Still, what about those supernatural events? First, we should understand that our physical world is the home of the Holy Spirit, who represents God here in this lowest realm. The Holy Spirit is called the Helper and our Comforter because He brings down Gods truth, love and will into Hades. God is omnipresent in our world because of the Holy Spirit. So through this Holy Helper, the Spirit of God resides within every atom of the universe. We can think of the Holy Spirit as God in an elemental form. In the movie, Star Wars, the Force was this mysterious power generated by all things that the Jedi Knights used to gain supernatural abilities. To tap into this Force required FAITH and stillness on their part. Does this sound familiar? I wrote about how faith unlocks supernatural power in Bringing God to Life- A Matter of Faith. Jesus showed us that the Force of this world is able to bend natural laws and extend beyond the bounds of what we thought was reality. Life can be measured by vibration, so when your spirit is in step with God, then the Force will be with you! It is like a harmonic convergence of the spiritual kind. Certainly we have all had those days walking in step with Gods Spirit and everything seemed effortless, perfect. Those are the moments when we say and do the right thing without giving any of it a second thought. God, like the Force, is everywhere and in everything. The reality of all things is spirit from God, so when our focus is on the unseen, spiritual life then miraculous things will happen in our present life. When Jesus became the catalyst to heal a sick body he always reminded the one being healed that THEIR faith had made them well. Our bodies have the ability to heal because God lives in every cell and every atom. There the Holy Spirit can cure any disease, but we must to have faith. Where do we get the faith? Where else? God. If one empties his heart of doubt, pride and hate then God will surely fill it with faith, hope and love. Miracles are the result of faith and desire, which is Gods faith and Gods desire. If our faith was the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. Hard to believe that isnt it? That is why it hard to move mountains! So in actuality, miracles are the release of Gods spiritual energy that exists in all things. This energy can be tapped into by aligning our will with Gods perfect will. The Red Sea parted for Moses because it was Gods will; Moses just happened to be in the right

place at the right time because he followed his faith. It all comes back to faith. Jesus said, Your faith has healed you. Faith, like the oil in the virgins lamps, is something we must maintain and use wisely. You could think of it as your own spiritual bank account where you make deposits and withdrawals. This bank is open 24/7 and is called KARMA. Some Christians may have trouble accepting this Eastern word, but this universal truth is found in every major religion including Christianity. Jesus, Paul and God have told us that man will reap what he sows. This is our karmic account. Some have a debt to pay while others have started saving riches in heaven. Some naively believe that they must leave this world to have access to what they have secured in Gods Kingdom. They apparently dont believe Jesus when he said that the Kingdom of God is within us. Heaven and hell are states of mind and spirit. By doing Gods will both spirit and soul are lifted closer to heaven where our inheritance of divine riches is kept. We are here in this lower state of life to learn to love as God loves. Every time we love as God loves, we make a deposit into our savings. Every time we trust in Gods way, we earn interest on our faith. Every time we do Gods will in our lives, we are increasing our heavenly wealth, which no man can take away. God gives everyone the gifts of faith, hope and love, but what we do with these is our decision. Like the Prodigal son we can squander everything and become desolate. Yet, we are always able to come back to God in the end. Still, the truth remains; for those with no faith in their bank, they will see no miracles. For those with no love in their heart, they will have no forgiveness. These had better return to God for a loan! He has a monopoly in those particular commodities! Understand that by using our faith, we dont necessarily deplete this divine resource. Like money, faith used wisely makes more faith! John 14:12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. In the Spirit of Christ, we can do and have all things; but without Christ, we can do nothing! Jesus taught that when TWO or more come together in his name (spirit) whatever is asked would be given to them. The key is being in His SPIRIT because Jesus had the Spirit of Christ, which is the mature and perfected Son of God. In Christ, we are all one; so by joining this union we have access the fullness of God. Jesus walked on the water, but those who follow in Christ will glide through the air! The higher the octane of the spirit, the more power that is available to the soul and body. There are documented accounts of possessed individual levitating during an exorcism. Their body was the home to many spirits that caused it to rise. If this be true, then what shall we expect when the fullness of the Christs Spirit resides in us! I tell you the truth; mankind has only just begun to unlock his spiritual potential. Mental telepathy, levitation and healings of all kinds will become actualities when the Sons of God are revealed to the world!

Even today, when souls believe and spirits join in Christ, a spiritual fusion of faith takes place releasing the unlimited power of God. Because Jesus believed, only one other with faith was needed to create the miracle equation. However, there were no miracles where there was no faith, no maturity and no relationship with God. Only the more mature children of God have the faith necessary to unlock this energy from on high. A million years ago when mans spirit was an infant, those cavemen could not tap this divine power because they did not know God. Even the miracles from the great prophets of the Old Testament are very few, but this will change as the qualified Sons (spirits) of God are revealed! These spiritually mature prodigies of God walk the earth today waiting for the moment when the Spirit of Christ is fully manifested in them.

The Manifestation
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. The fruit of the spirit is a very healthy diet for the soul! Understanding that we are spirit and should live by the spirit is the key that opens heavens door. Spirit is at the center of everything and is the reality of everything. Whether it is an atom or an Adam, the heart of life itself begins with the spirit. Surrounding the spirit is the soul where consciousness is known and expressed. It is in the soul where the spirit finds his purpose. For the soul, it is in the spirit where she finds her peace. The human psyche (soul) is a complex entity where emotion, will, knowledge, and imagination come together like instruments of a symphony. When every part of our being is keeping time with God, then the music we produce is divine and joyous. When the children of God are in harmony we are the Body of Christ! Our spirit is our life, and the spirit is what is empowering us back to God. Because of our spirit we have obtained existence and consciousness of self. Yet for ages and ages the spirit of man was barely heard. That still small voice was like that of a young child, and so he was. But what began as a seemingly insignificant spark of Gods life has matured into a new man called Christ! As we mature into an anointed Son of God, we no longer live being led by our natural senses. The new man develops spiritual senses that give him NEW sensations and perceptions of a Kingdom hidden from natural eyes. Even though Jesus walked upon the earth, he LIVED in the Kingdom of God. Do you understand what I am saying here? Jesus body was here, but his mind and spirit were in the Kingdom of God. So his spirit lit up this dark world with the light of Christ, yet this is

the same light that should light every man. We are the light of the world sent here on holy mission to shine as Jesus did. Jesus said that we should uncover our light and then the world would be a brighter place. While Jesus was the brightest star that had ever shined from heaven to earth, each of us will also shine Gods glory. Some stars are brighter than others, but we are all Gods children nonetheless. All light works to destroy the darkness. The more we seek God and His will the more we will shine and produce the good fruit of the Spirit of Christ. We continue to accumulate wisdom, love and faith through our lives until that divine light of Christ comes shining through our whole being- body, soul and spirit.

THE PERSONALITY1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." The main topic I addressed in The Revelation (The End of the World as We Know It) was how Christ returns to this world through His Spirit being revealed in us. In the above passage, Peter just causally slips this idea in, but I wonder how many Christians have taken note. Yes, every eye will see Christ because Christ is in everyone; he only needs to mature and be revealed. Dear child of God, who do you think you are growing up to be? Who are you going to look like when your spirit has fully matured? You will be just as Jesus was- a perfect Son and Image of God! Peter goes on to write that we are called to holiness, but what does it really mean to be holy? We know that Jesus also told us to be perfect like our Father; however, many Christians do not strive for perfection because they are deceived about salvation. They say, I am not perfect, but at least I am saved. I say what Jesus says, Only those who do the Fathers will shall enter the Kingdom of God. So, wake up! And be what God says you are! All mature Sons of God strive to be perfect, which is accomplished by being aligned in spirit with Gods perfect will. Of course, to do Gods will we must first know Gods will. The mature in Christ are able to effectively communicate with God, spirit to Spirit. In ancient times, what made a prophet and prophet? It was his ability to communicate with God. If we receive the Word of God and are obedient to the Word of God, then we become the Word of God manifested. So understand that this perfection is an inner quality of the spirit and not necessarily what the world may deem as perfect. A good example of this discrepancy would be our perfect brother, Jesus, who the world didnt find so flawless. As Jesus proved, the actions of the mature spirit tends to be a little eccentric as compared to the society at large. At times they may even overindulge in what is considered a sinful activity, but their first and greatest love is always God. They live by

only one law- the spirit of the law of life. As a result of the freedom found in the Spirit of Christ, the Sons of God do not necessarily follow the rules of men. They live to express Gods love that pumps through their whole being. Jesus gave his love to everyone. Because of his divine love, he rebuked the Pharisees. Because of his divine love, he partied with sinners. Because of his divine love, he worked on the Sabbath. Jesus didnt live by the religious rules men had placed in his mind, but was led by his mature spirit within his soul. The mature know that the only food that satisfies them is doing Gods will. The only one that can know Gods will for you is YOU! Yet, if one cannot hear God then they must have these rules that are intended to lead them closer to God. This is why most religious zealots are led by their soul and not their spirit. Many use the word soul to mean their spiritual self, but I call this our spirit. I use the word soul, as it is used in the New Testament writings, to mean that intangible (female) entity, which is akin to our psyche. In fact, the Greek word for soul is PSUCHE and is where we get the word psyche. The Greek word translated spirit is PNEUMA, which means breath, current of air, ethereal or life unseen. So an angel can be a pneuma and is certainly a living, thinking being though not of this world. Then clearly, we should understand that the spirit and the soul are not the same entity, which is proven whereby the Word of God is able to divide them like marrow from bone. Yes, they are closely linked, but the spirit and soul are as different as a man is from a woman. When our natural self dies in this world and the breath (spirit) leaves the body, our spirit returns to God in heaven. This is when the soul can be divided from the spirit. This is done to remove everything that is not holy before entering heaven. This is why Jesus and Paul both taught that many souls are utterly destroyed (in hell) because they were joined to the flesh and not the spirit. Yet any part of the soul that was found worthy becomes the platform to form a new soul. This part would include any memories, wisdom or knowledge from a previous life. Then when the spirit reenters this world, a virgin soul emerges from and then wraps herself around the spirit, her source of life. She now becomes the medium between the spirit and the flesh. She is a conglomeration of the mind including emotion, will, personality and ego. So think of the soul coming out of the spirit like Eve came out of Adam. She does this to be his helper in the world. While she enters the world naked and pure, she soon finds herself dressed with the clothes the world gives her. As I have said before, you are not who the world says you are; you are who God says you are. Many have trouble accepting reincarnation because of this identity crisis created by the deception of the ego. They believe the lie that they are flesh and are of this world. Is this what you believe? They believe they are male, female, black, white, American, Chinese and so on. Is this what you believe? This is not who you truly are. These characteristics are like the clothes we have put on after entering this world. The soul may adorn herself with these coverings, but only the glory of Christ will suit the spirit. While we may be a different personality every time we reenter this world, we are always the same person. And that person is spirit maturing into the life of Christ. Understand that the ego, which is closely related to the personality, is really the most superficial part of our being. This outer shell is a projection of who the natural mind

thinks we are. The ego is our image of our self, which is a false image sustained by the world. So the personality then becomes the outerwear that our ego says we must put on to hide our otherwise naked self. To some degree we inherit a portion of our NATURAL personality from our natural parents and the rest is conditioned by the ambient experiences of the world. Our likes, dislikes, nuances and temperament are mostly programmed in this way. Why do you like fishing? Why do you like pancakes? If you were raised in a different home and setting, you may dislike these things. In some cultures, they would sooner eat the worms than go fishing! So I hope you understand that this is all superficial hoax. Until the spirit realizes that the glory of God is his true covering, the soul leads us to believe that we must hide behind a personality and ego. The human personality (and ego for that matter) came as a result of our spiritual and mental evolution. As our minds (souls) grew stronger (more mature), the ego began to really take over our being. This is the throne of the devil, where the false self says he is God. While the ego is a human condition, man is not the only species expressing emotions and even a personality. Anyone that has a dog as a pet knows this to be true through firsthand experience. Dogs show personality because they have a spirit and yes, a soul too. In truth, all is spirit. The form we have put on in this world is simply a medium we are using to advance to where God is leading us. Every creature from God is expressing the life of its spirit in some way, and the personality is just an evolved form of this. However, in the case of man, the world has become more and more influential while the ego has become his god and a false image of himself. The devil works through the egos of men to divide us, but Christ uses the love between our spirits to unite us. The devil is legion, but God is one. This is why mankind suffers as he does because too many are letting the ego control their soul instead of God. The ego lives in the world to gain the world. The ego is the throne of the devil and must be dismantled before Christ can reign. In the spiritually mature, the ego has been put down and overcome, so then God's nature can shine through our being. Every expression of God is a form of Love. In fact, John wrote a very simple definition to help us discern who is "born of God." 1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Yes, if you know and have Love you know and have God! As we more take on His likeness, the more we express perfect love toward others and our self. Love cannot be extinguished! Even the darker, natural tendencies of human nature will not stop divine Love from shining. Our spirit will grow brighter and eventually penetrate the natural self so that light of Love fills our whole being! We read that during the transfiguration, Jesus was seen in his true glory, which is LIGHT! While the world may not be able to see this aura yet, they will see Gods love flow from our spirit to our soul and into our good works. And even though the devil may try to dim our light, nothing can stop this from happening. Why? Because God says Christ has overcome the devil, the darkness and the deception! Some may feel naked without a worldly personality, but the spiritually mature know better. They know that Christ is our true personality, our true persona revealed.

These in Christ are not concerned with the superficial labels of the world, but seek to bring their spiritual self to the surface. This is not for their glory, but for Gods glory! This is how the spiritual Body of Christ is resurrected in us. The spiritually mature know this is the only body that truly matters.

THE BODY2 Corinthians 5:1 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. Adam and Eve were also found naked, but this had little to do with their bare skin. They were embarrassed of what they thought they were. For the first time they identified themselves as creatures of flesh instead of spirit of light. We are the only animals on the face of the earth that FEEL the need to cover our skin because of embarrassment, but this condition is more than skin deep! Our whole being went into hiding from God. This is what eating of the knowledge tree will do for you. So, is your body your self-image? When you look in a mirror do you see a natural body or a spiritual self? The spiritual student lives in his body, but he knows that he isnt his body. Because he doesnt associate his true identity with his body, his body does not embarrass him. He could stand naked in front of strangers and not feel uncomfortable at all. Do we judge others by the appearance of the flesh? We do if we look through our natural eyes. When the world labels a person as fat, ugly or sexy, this person is more likely to attach that identity to their self. While this labeling can turn into a distraction for the strong, it can be a trapping for the weak because it encourages the connection between the body and our self image. The world wants you to believe that being rich, famous and sexy is the way to happiness, but these things by themselves lead to the destruction of the soul in that state of Hades. So understand that we are not our bodies anymore than we are the automobiles we drive to work. Our bodies are simply the vehicles we use to move about in this world. So the spiritual student respects and cares for the body in this way. For this reason, the spiritually mature avoid harmful activities like smoking, excessive drinking and overeating. They understand they are free to do as choose, BUT they also fully realize that the only way to Gods peace is by following Gods will. Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.

If you do Gods will with your body, then it is truly a temple of God and a living sacrifice to God. You are NOT your body. And the body is NOT yours. God created a body suitable for you in this world through billions of years of evolution. You are not that body; you are spirit that is just renting out the space for awhile. In many ways, the body is like a garden that we must take care of. No gardener is fed eating the soil of his garden, but he certainly can enjoy the crop that is produced by the fruit of his labors. So the mature Sons of God do not worry about their physiques, which is to say they would not try to look like super models or body builders. They keep their body in good health because their spirit and soul are in good health. The spiritual exercise of the spirit must always come before the body. Instead of toning the flesh, they rather push up their faith, do some love crunches or run with their Trainer farther than they thought they could go. There is no doubt that Christ Jesus will push us to be in perfect spiritual shape. When we live according to the spirit, everything else falls into prefect place. Put the spirit first and the body and soul well be taken care of wonderfully. Our overall health starts with the spirit and works through the soul and then to the body. Positive vibes from the spirit translate into positive thoughts of the soul, which can have an incredibly positive affect on the body. When the spirit feeds and leads the soul, then the body will be of good health. It has even been scientifically proven that spiritual health directly affects our physical health. Those who pray or create positive thoughts heal must faster and have better overall health than those who dont. This is because our spirit is our true life (energy), and when we are tapped into Christ, we have the power of God to heal and to be healthy. While human beings are living longer than ever, they are also picking up some unhealthy lifestyles. Obesity has become epidemic in the United States just in the last century. Some blame fast food, but there are likely some spiritual influences are work here too. It has been documented that some of those who are obese in this current life have lived a past life where they starved to death. The spirit learns only through experience. If one has starved to death in a previous life then he may eat himself into a grave state of obesity in the next. This karmic cause and effect relationship is likely the root of many of our social ills and weaknesses. Eventually wisdom comes to the rescue and a balance is found that leads to good health. Life is about choices, and choices lead to consequences. Once we have matured in Christ, we are fully aware of what is right and wrong in the wisdom of the spirit. This is how we learn in this lower world of shadows- through duality. And this is why God made us male and female.

SEXUALITY1 Thessalonians 4:3 It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God.

Are you the master of your domain? Through the Spirit of Christ, the mature have self control over their mind and therefore also their body. No one could argue that the flesh has needs that must be met, but these desires should not control us. I think most men would have an easier time fasting from food than fasting from sex. This is really not their fault because the male body is designed to desire sex. In other words, the utmost desire of the flesh is to make more flesh. The spirit of our flesh gives rise to the desire, which is then translated to the brain. The natural mind is the brains activity, but the spiritual mind operates from the wisdom of the spirit. We should also understand that reproduction of self is quite natural because it is perhaps the strongest, most rudimentary desire of nature and all life for that matter. Everything seeks to reproduce life, which is a divine desire from on High. Isnt it Gods utmost desire to reproduce His Sons life through us? So the body isnt evil for wanting food or sex, but the body must made submissive to the hierarchy of our true self. The body should serve the soul that should serve the spirit. In this way, a spiritual harmony is achieved within our personal domain. Long ago ancient man, who was young in spirit, was only concerned with the needs of the body. Food, shelter and sex were pretty much the only concerns of early man. After only a few million years, this carnal focus started to shift. As the spirit matured, the soul began to focus less on the body and more on the heavenly things. Abstract thoughts about self, life and God began to be asked by that still, small voice within mans being. Through the ages, this inner power has been taming the beastly nature of man. Jesus and Paul, to a lesser degree, are good examples of men that didnt need sex in their lives. Paul wrote quite frankly about sex and desire, which he basically said that if your desire for sex is too strong to control get married. So gradually humans are losing their animal desires as we mature in Christ. This includes sex, but also even food and sleep will often be pushed aside when the spirit it at work in us. Fasting was a common practice in Jesus day, but while some practiced this sacrifice, other had mastered it! Jesus wasnt worried about filling his belly with food, but rather his sustenance was doing the will of God. Again, when we do THIS everything else will take care of itself. As I wrote about in Drugs, Sex and the ROCK that Rolls Them Over, sex shouldnt be viewed as a bad or evil thing. While some do certainly pervert it, sex is a necessary and beneficial act of intimacy between a man and woman. The spiritual student understands that sex is not just intercourse of two bodies, but also the union of two souls. Therefore sex for the mature is not a casual event such as animals have, but is symbol of a sacred bond. While having sex isnt really making love, it can be expressing ones love. God designed sex to act as a kind of glue that would hold many relationships together when other (higher) bonds have become undone. So the spiritual student views sex from a higher perspective. It is not about satisfying natural, primitive desires, but it is seen as a way to express their love and bring pleasure to their life partner. What is truly interesting is that revelation that there is no male or female in Christ. Of course, we dont have to leave this world to live in Christ, so the spiritually mature have this strong sense that they are not sexual beings right now. So entering this world with a male or female body doesnt have nearly as much influence on the mature as on others. In

other words, these spirit led souls will behave in a more neutral way than others. Their actions, emotions and thinking will not be stereotypical of natural men or women of the world because they are spirit! Whether they live in a male body or a female body, the Sons of God bring forth the fruit of the spirit. This is their highest desire- to glorify God!

MATERIALISMColossians 3:1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. What a wonderful passage! Christ is your life! That says it all! Now, is there any question how the spiritually mature feels about those earthly things? The mature have the mind of Christ, which means they desire the intangible gifts from God over the things of this world. They see material possessions as temporary, so they seek what they know is permanent. Peace, joy, holiness, love, faith and justice are the things we should all desire. When these are our only possessions, then nothing in this world can possess us! And what about food and shelter, surely we need these things, right? No, we really dont. The body does, but WE dont. The only necessity of life is the spirit. While wealth is certainly not a goal, the spiritually mature are usually successful in whatever endeavor they have been led to undertake including their vocation. I am sure Jesus was an excellent carpenter before he became a full-time Christ! It is even possible that the mature in Christ possess great worldly wealth, but they control their money. Even today, I am impressed and encouraged to see such great charity coming from the rich and powerful. Oprah, the very successful talk show host, is a great example of this. She is not controlled by greed, but is led by her wonderfully mature spirit. The Sons of God are everywhere and are taking over the world in the name of Love! They give generously and do not ask to be paid back. Because of the Spirit of Christ coming of age today, there is more charity in the world today than ever before. Yes, Gods Kingdom is coming! So understand that being rich is neither a sin nor a condemnation. Jesus told the rich man that he must give everything away because the rich man was controlled by his money and not God. If God has you, then everything you have is at Gods disposal. Rich or poor, it doesnt matter to the spiritually mature because they give still give freely to those in that come into their lives. They give the gifts that are much more valuable than money. Because they usually choose a practical lifestyle, their wealth may not even be apparent. Clothes for warmth and cars for transportation means they would not typically wear lavish clothes or drive expensive cars. As one brother showed us, the Sons of God ride on lowly donkeys and not noble steeds. They are not influenced by the trends of society like so many others. Too many souls of this world medicate themselves by

providing the ego all its worldly desires. This only serves to inflate that false image with a sense of pride. Look at all of my stuff! Then soul will tout, I am rich! But in reality, she is poor and dressed in filthy rags. As we should know, wealth is not the only costume the ego uses to keep man a character of this dream world. The guise of holiness has also proven to be a very effective deception that keeps many souls tied down with the weight of the law.

LEGALISMGalatians 5:16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

17

Every Christian soul should meditate on what this passage really means. If you are being led by the Spirit of Christ, you are not under the law! If you are IN Christ, you are above the law because Christ supersedes the law. Why then does Christianity keep teaching the law in the form of the Ten Commandments? I will tell you why. It is because most are not led by the SPIRIT, but instead are led by the soul. The mature in spirit know what is right in their own heart (spirit) whereas those that are still living naturally must be taught or think what is right. In Catholicism, children memorize prayers that they will repeat when it is appropriate. Then as matter of ritual or etiquette they will recite the words exactly as they have learned them. Without the sincerity and power of the spirit, such prayers are meaningless and even harmful because they deceive many into believing they are profitable. Prayers, laws, rituals nor rules will ever save us from sin and death. Colossians 2:20 Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21 "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? 22 These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. It is true that laws help keep order in this lower world, and some definitely need this to control their behavior. Yet, there will come a time when rules of men must be broken to achieve the will of God. Even today most of mankind still needs the laws of the prophets that helped define Gods will. Yet what the prophet knew long ago should be common knowledge of all Gods children today. How mature are you? Are you a Son of God that can feel God speaking to you through your spirit? Suppose you hear or read something that you KNOW it is true, but it contradicts that which you have been taught? What do you do? Are you going to believe what you were taught by men or accept what is ringing so true in your heart? Have you felt such a ringing? This sound is your spirit expressing

the joy and excitement of receiving the Truth from God. Truth can be found and come to us in many ways, but God always confirms the knowledge of the truth in our spirit. Conversely, the devil deceives us through the soul (mind) using the things of this world. Paul taught that the woman (soul, mind which is female relative to the spirit) should be quiet and still, so our spirit can know and teach the truth. The spiritual student knows that Gods will and truth cannot be found in any book. There is only way to know Gods will and that is through direct contact, spirit to Spirit. And in the spirit there is freedom from the law. 1 Corinthians 6:12 "Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything. Everything is permissiblebut not everything is beneficial is an actuality that the spiritually mature know very well. The sins of the flesh are seen more as a misuse of time and energy, but not as chains of death. Those who are not flesh cannot commit sins of the flesh. Those living with the Spirit of Christ are no longer chained by the Law or the guilt accompanying it. They have truly been set free to do anything, BUT being mature, they also understand what is the right and profitable choice. This is where wisdom really comes into play. The spiritually mature, filled with lifetimes of knowledge, will not keep making the same mistakes and bad choices that lead the soul into suffering, sorrow and even death. The mature Sons of God seek to please their Father, so they do what they know is right despite what the world may think. We should realize then that the Law of Moses is a shadow of the truth. It is the way the natural man (who is also a shadow of his true self) must live in this world to please our LORD God. But as I explained earlier, the law is not for the mature sons in Christ. Still many religious souls attempt to follow the law because of the fear of punishment. (They might be sent into an eternal hell if they dont). Others try are hooked on the law like drug so that they can get that fix of pride. Either way, the law can never save us, but only lead us to the one who does save- Christ! Now those in Christ uphold the law because of their love for God. Gods will becomes their will and this is the law of the spirit of life. Jesus confounded and enraged the religious leaders by living in this way. He didnt follow their rules. In fact, when he preached in Chapter 5 of Matthew his rewrote those old laws with higher ones. You have been taught to hate you enemies, but I say to love your enemies. You have been taught to take an eye for an eye, but I say turn the other cheek. Jesus raised the standard of the law! Jesus was trying to take humanity into the higher life of Christ where there is only one command- love each other as God loves. If you do just this, you have fulfilled all the Law.

RELIGIONJohn 4:23

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." Many today are leaving organized religion because they see its shortcomings. Many of my friends tend to label me a religious man, but this is really not accurate. I would say that I am spiritual, not religious. More than this, I am SPIRIT! And yes, in my mind there is a big difference between spiritual and religious. The spiritual soul is more open to spiritual truths whereas the religious soul is governed by a specific doctrine. The spiritual soul is free to move outside the lines, but the religious soul is stagnated in the box of his religion. While the spiritually minded may begin in a particular religion, they will eventually go beyond the teachings of men. They seek the truth from God. Jesus is a great example of this. He went beyond what he had been taught. Moses did the same. Truth comes from God as pure revelation, but then it finds its way into the hands of men and becomes a religion. Jesus was given pure Truth; those who followed built a religion. Religion is generally good for the souls of this world, but it is inadequate for the Sons of the Kingdom. Many times the mature will not feel they are being fed by going to church. If your pastor or priest doesnt inspire or teach you, then what purpose does he serve? Many are still being fed the milk at church, and this is as it should be. Meat is a little harder to come by, but more and more religions are being refined by the Truth. I am blessed every time I hear a minister sharing some real meat of the truth! Yes, we are all looking to be fed, and some do this by being very involved at their church. The average person might think about God on Sunday mornings and maybe Wednesday nights, but the spiritually mature seem to always have God on their mind- a continuous prayer. Many have told me that going to church helps them focus on God and life, which is a good thing if that is what it takes. This is like when some people require a personal trainer to get or stay physically fit. Some people need that person or group to help them stay on course, but the spiritually mature are supported directly by God. For many ages now, mans religions tend to be more soul-based than spirit-based. Consider the religious zealots that Jesus confronted. They were mostly led by the soul and deception (which is what got us in trouble in the Garden). Whereas, those who worship in spirit and truth are led by their mature and willing spirit. Our spirit gains knowledge by experience through the soul, so the soul can have a direct impact on the spirit in this way. She can lead him astray as Eve did Adam, but she can also be helpful and holy. Suppose a person with a young rebellious spirit is placed into a strong Christian environment. This religious and soul-based experience would most likely have a positive effect on that undeveloped spirit. So religion can certainly be helpful for those still maturing in Christ, but as Jesus said there will come a time when we worship is a higher way. It is important to understand that a follower of Christ need not be a Christian because Christ goes far beyond Christianity. The Word of God has permeated and certainly transcended every major religion ever conceived by man. Again, we must see that all sincere religions have some measure of the light of Truth within them. We know that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west and then there is

darkness. The light of Truth has moved across the horizon of humanity in the same way. The Truth rose in the Eastern religions first with the birth of Hinduism and Buddhism. These are said to be the oldest religions of the world still being practiced. Then as time marched forward during humanitys development the light of Truth shone on the Jews of the Middle East. By this time, the Sun was high in the sky. So, the knowledge of God was the highest it had ever been. It was at this brightest moment of the day when Christ came into the world through the man, Jesus. As the Sun moved west, Christianity was born and flourished. It started in abundant sunshine, but then grew dimmer as the Sun moved westward toward the horizon. Before the setting of the Sun, one last religion sprung up out of humanity- Islam, which today is called the fasted growing religion on earth. This will be the last prominent religion to come from man because the age (day) of religion has passed. A New Day is coming! As the Sun returns to the eastern horizon, every religion is shall see His Glory! Every religion of man will see the Truth in every other religion because the Truth will shine brighter than ever in what will be the Day of the Lord!

THE TRUTH1 Timothy 2:3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all men--the testimony given in its proper time. Jesus and Paul put the highest of premiums on seeking and accepting the knowledge of the truth. For the spiritually mature this is their prime directive- to know the Truth. Some may ask, What is truth? Yet the Sons of God know truth when they hear it. Conversely, they also know delusive dogma when they see it. The perfected souls in Christ will not accept mankinds reprehensible religious teachings even though these tenets of faith have been taught for hundreds of years. With spiritual eyes they question and scrutinize everything to see if it passes the tests of Love and Truth. They can then see right through the foolishness of an eternal hell where the lost children of God are tortured. This picture was not conceived in the mind of our God, but rather in the devil mind of man! Evil men created an image of God from their own sinful self, but those born of God know Christ is the true Image of God. Those in Christ express Gods Love and Truth. So fervently they seek the knowledge of the truth and then freely give it in love. They only want to know God and Gods will. They want to learn to love as God loves. Just as those who love are born of God, so are all truth seekers led back to God, who is Truth. So then when any truth from any facet of life is discovered by the mature Sons of God it will be accepted. When science proved the earth was not the center of the solar system, they let go of those false notions held for so long. When science proved that the universe was not created in six days, they let go of unenlightened ideas founded in ignorance. When science shows us that animals have evolved over millions of years leading to the

emergence of man, they accept it as Gods way of creating life. Knowledge replaces faith. What was once unseen faith carrying the offspring of God is now being transformed into a platform of knowledge upon which we stand. All truths support The Truth. We are not only growing in the knowledge of the world around us, but also in knowledge of the Kingdom within us! If we listen and look closely, the outside world is preaching and teaching us about the inner world of Gods Kingdom. Everything we see, hear and touch are shadows of a higher reality. This higher reality is the Kingdom of God where the Son of God is King. His Kingdom is not one of castles floating on the clouds; His Kingdom is a life in a higher state of consciousness where anything is possible! By the grace of God mankind continues to evolve physically, psychologically and spiritually toward this goal. Mankind is reaching higher and higher levels of knowledge and awareness, which is leading us face to face with God. Consider the child prodigies that come into this world with extraordinary talents. They have built this knowledge and skill in a previous life. Spiritually, we do the same! Long ago, very few could understand what the prophets were trying to convey about God, but today this knowledge is becoming common among all mankind. Today more than ever before, God is tearing down the false teachings found in mans religions and replacing them with His Truth. God is showing us that our only salvation is in the Spirit of Christ, which Jesus has sacrificed for us. For example, many Christians believe that no matter how imperfect or evil a person is, if they accept Jesus as their personal savior before their last breath, they will enter the Kingdom of God. This is a lie concocted in the mind of the devil! Do you believe Jesus is Christ? Good! Then also believe every word and the one command that he gave! Love each other as God loves you. Yes, believing that Jesus is Christ is the easy part, but taking up our cross and following is a whole other matter. Believing in Jesus is just the beginning of your faith in Christ; do Christians not know where it will take them in the end? If you follow Christ Jesus, you too will die on the cross, so that Christ lives in you. God demands perfection and holiness! This is what happens to those truly following Christ. Now, on the other hand, there are also those that believe that all good people go to heaven and all bad people go to hell. This teaching is actually closer to the truth! If we do evil things, we shall reap more suffering in the next life. If we do good, we shall reap more blessings from God. But understand all have fallen short of Gods glory. This is why we need saved! Good children or bad children, they are all Gods children. God is taking care of the situation. Of this, I am sure! God will save all no matter what condition they are in right now- no matter how deep their hell has become. Why can some not see the BIG picture here! Are these the same kind of souls that look at an acorn and say that will never be a huge tree? Do they not see the Seed of God in everyone? Can they not see that life is a process of perfection for the children of God? Yes, the wind blows wherever it pleases, but can you see it? Then how will you see those born of God? You will see the effects of the spirit! The mature Sons of God are bright in every sense of the word! Their spirit shines, but so does their soul. In other words, they are of high intellect, but not necessarily well educated by the worlds standards. So they may be illiterate and living in a poor village in

a Third World country, but this doesnt matter at all. Even without a sophisticated vocabulary, his ability to understand esoteric, abstract ideas is exceptional. Though his words may be small, his wisdom spans across the epochs of time. After passing through this world many, many times, the mature spirit has the gained the wisdom from God and is leading the soul to perfection. This is her salvation and together they will return to the Kingdom of God. Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. You know Paul believed in Jesus, but this wasnt enough for him. He strived, worked and pressed on toward the goal. What is the goal? Perfection in Christ is the goal! Our inner calling and divine desire is to be perfect like our Father is perfect. Our perfection is realized in the higher consciousness of Christ and is powered by Spirit of Christ. Being in Christ is living in a higher reality above this worlds worries and rules. Through this fullness and maturity of our spirit, we are able to return to our Fathers house and into our loving Fathers arms. You are not of this world nor are a child of flesh. Expose the lie of Satan and realize that you are the offspring of the Most High! Being Gods Son you should know who you are growing up to be! What son does not mature to become the likeness of his Father? What son does not watch and imitate his father? Yes, of course! Because of their love for God, the mature Sons of God do what they see their Father doing and thereby become Gods Word made flesh! Romans 8:17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs-- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. If you are ready to accept who you are then also accept your inheritance! Embrace Christ as your life and God as your Father! Yes, God is your Father, and wisdom must be the mother of your soul. Where spirit and truth meet God is revealed. A man and woman make one flesh, but living in the spirit and truth will make us a Son of God. We are here to reveal the glory of God through Christ, who is our life! God is raising mankind out of Hades and into His Kingdom! Yes, now is the time and here is the place for the Sons of God to live and be revealed! Here is where we are born of water and then realize we are spirit. All have been born of God and will take on His likeness to show the world the glorious face of God! The Spirit of Christ is yours!