James

In order to possess such death we must not give too large a place to discovering how or to noticing our experience; we should instead believe God’s Word. “God says my flesh has been crucified so I believe it is crucified. I acknowledge that what God says is true.” By responding in this fashion we shall soon encounter the reality of it. If we look at God’s fact first our experience will follow next....

The Cross and the Holy Spirit
The Spiritual Man, CFP, Vol. 1, Part 2 THE FLESH, Ch. 3, by Watchman Nee

MANY, IF NOT MOST, believers were not filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment they believed the Lord. What is even worse, after many years of believing they continue to be entangled by sin and remain carnal Christians. In these pages which follow, what we intend to explain regarding how a Christian may be set free from his flesh is based upon the experience of the believers at Corinth as well as that of many like believers everywhere. We moreover do not wish to imply that a Christian must first believe in the substitutionary work of the cross before he can believe in its identifying work. Is it not true, however, that many do not have a distinct revelation concerning the cross at the beginning? What they have received is but half the whole truth; and so they are compelled to receive the other half at a subsequent period. Now if the reader already has accepted the complete work of the cross, what is given here will concern him little. But if like the majority of believers he too has believed only half the whole then the remainder is indispensable for him. Yet we do want our readers to know that the two sides of the work of the cross need not be accepted separately; a second believing only becomes necessary because of incompleteness at the first.

The Deliverance of the Cross

Upon reciting many deeds of the flesh in his Galatian letter, the Apostle Paul then points out that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5.24). Here is deliverance. Is it not strange that what concerns the believer vastly differs from what concerns God? The former is concerned with “the works of the flesh” (Gal. 5.19), that is, with the varying sins of the flesh. He is occupied with today’s anger, tomorrow’s jealousy, or the day after tomorrow’s strife. The believer mourns over a particular sin and longs for victory over it. Yet all these sins are but ...

The Wiles of the Evil Spirits

If his eyes have been opened to see his condition, the believer will naturally search for deliverance. Realize, though, that the evil spirits are not going to let their captives go free without a fight. They will apply every ounce of strength upon the person to prevent him from securing deliverance.

The evil spirits will suggest many lies to serve as excuses:

Those sudden beautiful thoughts of yours are from God.
Those flashing revelations are the fruits of spirituality.
That bad memory is due to your ill-health.
It is natural for you to become abruptly forgetful.
Your over-sensitiveness is because of your temperament.
Your weak memory is inherited.
Insomnia is an outgrowth of sickness. You are simply tired.
You cannot think because you have worked too hard.
That incessant contemplation at night stems from your mind’s overexhaustion in the daytime.
Impure thoughts arise from your sins.
You already have fallen.
You cannot listen to others because of your particular environment and because of their faults.

The evil spirits can manufacture sundry other excuses. Unless God’s children realize they are really being attacked and have actually fallen from the normal state, the enemy will engage these and other excuses like them to cover up the ground they have gained. But the true reason lies in the fact that the mind is passive and vacuous, and thus occupied by these satanic spirits. Every one of these phenomena is the effect of their pernicious working. We grant the possibility of natural causes being mixed in with these excuses, but the experience of so many saints confirms that the powers of darkness are extremely subtle in operating alongside natural causes so as to deceive the saints into accepting these natural causes—such as temperament, physical condition and environment—as the only explanation, forgetting altogether the subtle mixing in by the evil spirits. The latter are very delighted in hiding their works behind some little natural cause. There is one test which can be brought to bear here, however; and that is, that if the cause is natural the man’s condition will be restored to normal once the natural factor is eliminated: but were there something supernatural added to the natural, then the man will not recover even though the natural element is removed. If you have insomnia, for example, ...

Talking Too Much

Proverbs 10:19
When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

Proverbs 17:28
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.

James 1:19
Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;

Proverbs 18:2
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

Proverbs 29:20
Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Proverbs 21:23
Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

Psalm 141:3
Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!

Ecclesiastes 9:17
The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.

Ecclesiastes 5:2
Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.

Ecclesiastes 5:7
For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.

Proverbs 13:3
Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

James 3:6
And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

Proverbs 14:23
In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.

Matthew 12:36
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,

Proverbs 15:1-33
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good. A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. A fool despises his father's instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent. ...

Proverbs 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

Proverbs 30:32
If you have been foolish, exalting ...

This is really cool...

The Two Witnesses are first mentioned in Rev. 11 in the 2nd woe and are killed before the 3rd woe starts in Rev. 11. Rev. 7 to 11 are the major points of the Tribulation. To mention the Two Witnesses are killed in the 6th Trumpet and the 6th Trumpet is 13 months means the Two Witnesses start preaching 1260 days before the end of the 6th Trumpet. So 13 months of the 6th Trumpet + 5 months of the 5th Trumpet is 18 months. They preach for 42 months. So 42 - 18 = 24 months. 24 months prior takes us to 42 - 24 = 18 months after the Tribulation starts. 18 months after the Tribulation starts is after Passover 2023. But Rev. 11 doesn't say when the Two Witnesses die in the 6th Trumpet only that they do die during that time. They could die as early as the start of the 6th Trumpet so let's do the math. 42 - 5 for the 5th = 38. 42 - 38 = 5 months. The Two Witnesses could start preaching as early as 5 months after the Tribulation starts. The Passover in 2023 is about 7 months after the Tribulation starts Feast of Trumpets Sept. 26, 2022 so that works perfectly when the Two Witnesses start preaching judgment at Passover when the 3rd Temple newly constructed is dedicated. Their preaching takes them to Feast of Trumpets 3 1/2 years later. Another coincidence? I think not.

April 1, Nisan 10, first day of the 4 day inspection of the lamb before Nisan 15, April 6, Passover 2023 + 1260 days = Sept. 12, 2026 Feast of Trumpets.

The reason why I am a theist is because I can't get atheism to make sense. Atheism is false to me because the universe can't start up from nothing for that which does not exist can't cause anything. And the universe can't always have existed because if it did, by that definition, you would have had an eternity to come into being before now, so you should have already happened. More contradiction: you should never have existed, because an alleged past eternity would continue to go on for eternity by its definition, so it would never reach this point of your existence. The idea of a past eternity is a construct of man's imagination having no basis in reality.

Since atheism is false and theism is true, which theism is the correct one? The correct theism has one uncreated Creator (more than one is self-contradictory) and this uncreated Creator is personal and accessible because He can't be less than us whom He created. Therefore, there are only 3 choices, because there are only 3 accessible faiths: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

But Islam is false because you can't come along six centuries later in a cave all by yourself without any evidence and claim Jesus didn't die on the cross. Jesus' death on the cross is one of the most attested and proven facts of antiquity with scores of both Christian and non-Christian sources in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Hinduism is false because it would be unfair if due to your sin you become a frog and your destiny is determined by giving you a frog brain to decide how to behave. Furthermore, the God of Hinduism is Brahma who is said to be amoral, but how can God have morals below our own? So you get this one life to decide.

That leaves Christianity. To this day nobody has been able to find a naturalistic explanation to account for the eyewitness testimony of the Apostles in various group settings. The 4 most famous atheists in the past century Anthony Flew (later turned deist), John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and Bart Ehrman agreed on certain facts: (1) the Apostles truly believed they saw Jesus alive from the dead, (2) group hallucinations are impossible, (3) the first churches were set up on the resurrection of Jesus, and (4) the Apostles did not willingly die for what they knew was a lie. People do not allow themselves to cease to exist based on something they don't believe.

Therefore, the only solution is Jesus is God, salvation is in Him alone, and those who reject ...

On His Side and Consecration on Our Side

We ought to know the purpose of God in creating us and in redeeming us. He wishes for us to manifest the life of His Son and share in His Son’s glory. Even before the foundation of the world, God has purposed one purpose, which is to say, that He wants to have many sons just as He has the only begotten Son. And thus it states in Romans 8.29: “whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Why has God done such things? Because He had foreordained us to be conformed to the image of His Son. This is the eternal purpose of God. He purchases and redeems us that He may possess us.

Yet God uses two means to possess us: one is on His side, the other is on our side. On His side, God sent His Son to die for us, to buy us back. According to the right of purchase, we are His bondslaves. Thank the Lord, He has bought us. God once said to Abraham, “He that is born in the house, and he that is bought with money, must needs be circumcised” (Gen. 17.13). Hallelujah, we are not only born of God we are also bought by Him.

We are bought by God and thus belong to Him, yet He sets us free. Although according to the right of redemption we belong to God, He nonetheless will not force us into service. He will let us go if we desire to serve mammon, the world, the belly, or other idols. For the moment God is inactive: He is waiting for us to move: till one day we say on our side: “O God, I am Your bondslave not only because You have bought me, but also because I will gladly serve You.” A verse in Romans 6 unveils a most precious principle concerning consecration. We become God’s bondslaves not only for the reason that He has bought us, but also for the reason “that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye arewhom ye obey” (v.16a).

Here, then, are the two means by which God possesses us. On the one side, we are His bondslaves because He has bought us; on the other side, we willingly and gladly present ourselves to Him as His bondslaves. As regards law, we become God’s bondslaves on the day He purchased and redeemed us. As regards experience, we become His bondslaves on the day we offer up ourselves to Him. From the viewpoint of right and ownership, we are God’s bondslaves on the day we were redeemed. From the viewpoint of practice, we are truly His bondslaves ...

The Fall and Salvation

Unfortunately, mankind has fallen. By this plunge man’s unfettered volition suffered prodigious damage. We may say that there are two massive contradictory wills throughout the universe. On the one side stands the holy and perfect will of God; on the other is arrayed the defiled, defiling and opposing will of Satan. In between subsists the sovereign, independent, free will of man. When man listens to the devil and rebels against God he seems to render an eternal "no" to God’s will and an abiding "yes" to Satan’s. Since man employs his volition to choose the will of the devil, his volition falls captive to the devil. Therefore all his acts are governed by Satan’s will. Until he overturns his early subjection, man's will remains unquestionably oppressed by the enemy power.

In this fallen position and condition man is fleshly. This flesh—by which his will, together with his other organs, is ruled—is thoroughly corrupted. How can anything pleasing to God ever result from such a darkened will? Even his questing after God springs from the realm of the flesh and therefore lacks any spiritual value. He may invent many ways of worshiping God at this time, yet all are his own ideas, all are "will-worship" (Col. 2.23 ASV), totally unacceptable to Him.

Let us realize, then, that except a man receive God’s new life and serve Him therein, every bit of service for God is but the work of the flesh. His intention to serve and even to suffer for Him is vain. Before he is regenerated, his will, even though it may be inclined towards good and God, is futile. For it is not what fallen man intends to do for God but how He Himself wishes man to do for Him that really counts in God’s eyes. Man may devise and initiate countless notable works for God; nonetheless, if they do not originate with God they are nothing more than will-worship.

This is true with respect to salvation. When man lives carnally even his desire to be saved is not acceptable to God. We read in the Gospel of John that "to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (1.12-13). Man is not regenerated because he wills it so. He must be born of God. Nowadays Christians entertain the incorrect concept that if anyone ...