Category Archives: belief

Dateline: New Jerusalem–Children, Have Ye Any Meat?

Natural man is shallow. His pretensions are petty; his plans are seeped with selfish thoughts. His heart is haunted by a covert lust that lingers in his intentions. Natural man is self-centered and shallow. He is a mere depression on the surface of life’s landscape, a wallow that cannot contain the latter rain. When he hears the floods of heaven coming, He will sit up in the mud, lost and alone—but not abandoned. For God wants to take him to the land of the deep things of God (Gal. 5: 19-21).

But before that can happen, old man Adam must be born from above, or else he “cannot see” the deep things of God. Unless he is “born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into” the deep things. And those deep things are all the blessed things that pertain unto the kingdom of God.

We saw earlier that the deep mysteries of God concern His kingdom and government here on earth. The things that God has prepared for those of us who love Him are things about His kingdom and how He will rule through Christ.

So there it is—the deep things, the mysteries that are revealed to us by His Spirit. It’s the kingdom of God. The literal government coming to this earth, headed by the glorious Monarch Christ, worthy of all praise.

This worldwide kingdom is what all the patriarchs and prophets looked for. And because of their faithfulness, “God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He has prepared for them [and us] a city.” This is New Jerusalem (Heb. 11: 14-16; 12: 22). Of which deep things the apostles have much to share, but can’t because most Christians are still babes in Christ, little children mostly alive for what they can receive from their spiritual Father. They are like natural man. They need the milk of the word and not the strong meat of the “deep things.” The milk is the apostles’ doctrine (Heb. 5: 10-14; 6: 1-2). The strong meat concerns the weightier matters of the kingdom.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Kingdom

When we speak of the Kingdom of God, many have been conditioned to think of the Jehovah Witnesses and have been turned off. You see their church houses everywhere: The Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Don’t be fooled. Just because they speak of it does not mean it is a false doctrine. I disagree with most of their doctrines, but I concur with their belief in the kingdom of God coming to earth. Study it out for yourselves in the word. Christ said to seek the kingdom first. All the parables of Christ was about the kingdom. The prophet Daniel said that the “God of heaven shall set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed” (2: 44). Being born again allows you to enter the kingdom of God. There are many more passages about the kingdom and its importance to God.

The whole shooting match is all about Him preparing a people to inhabit His heavenly city already prepared for them. And that people is us who believe.

It is not totally about “getting saved,” avoiding hell, going to church, and “going to heaven.” It is all about getting prepared to live in the heavenly city of New Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven to this earth! Heaven on earth. Right here. Rather, it is setting down on the real estate that stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. That’s the reason that the Holy Land is so important in the Holy Bible; it is the center of the magnificent 12,000 furlong cubed city whose capital is where Old Jerusalem now sits. Abraham spoke with Yahweh-in-human-form about the city, no doubt. For it was of the ultimate importance in God’s plan (Rev. 21).

Even the preachers, pastors, and priests of churchianity will tell you to walk in faith like Abraham, to have his same faith. Well and good. He looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. This city no human eye has seen, nor ear has heard. Somewhere in this mind-blowing universe that has not been touched by human hands, New Jerusalem is waiting to come down.

A City Built by God

New Jerusalem is a city built by the Creator Himself. He is the Architect and the Builder. And He built it especially for us His children. It is the “city of the great King” (Psm. 48). It is a royal city built for those with a royal destiny. Peter said that we believers are a “royal priesthood.” A body of kingly priests is our destiny; to intercede for those who are in need will be our occupation in the kingdom.

New Jerusalem is built for those of the same faith as Abraham, who left his home, obeying God’s voice. And he left his home there where all his kinfolk lived, there near Haran in Padan-Aram in northern Mesopotamia. God wanted him nearer to the place where God’s throne room would be when the city set down. God went ahead and gave that real estate to Abraham and his seed as an inheritance. We are his seed, his offspring in Christ. Therefore, we own the earth where the New Jerusalem will set down [the last two sentences were not in my rough draft journal…it just came now…].

This real estate is the “land of promise.” The promise is God’s declared word that if we walk by faith like Abraham and the other patriarchs and prophets and apostles, that we will live in this great heavenly city with our King Yahshua the Anointed One. And “God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11: 16).

But, my brothers and sisters, before we can go more deeply, before we can digest the meat of the word [for many choke on it], we must have the sure foundation of Christ’s doctrine. If we do not, then when the wolf blows on our spiritual house, it will sadly come crashing down. This is why so many Christians backslide. They are “tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine,” and their house is spoiled by the enemy.

Without the apostles’ doctrine as our sure foundation, even these few thoughts shared out of the meat of the word today will with time fade in our memory as a lovely song heard many moons ago, forgotten like bird song in a southern wind. The enemy will steal it from one’s mind and replace it with shallow thoughts about one’s self—because, alas, the self is still there.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{Order your free copy of my new 220 page book The Royal Destiny of God’s Elect. The book is free; the shipping in the USA is free. Send me your mailing address to my email:  wayneman5@hotmail.com This is my tithe and offering to God…On international orders I ask you to pay your own shipping. Email me for details}

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Belief–The Key to Growing into the Manifestation of the Sons of God

Life is all about love and belief. It is all about believing the love that God showed to us when He had His Son give up His life to ransom us from the darkness of sin.

The “Life” we speak of is not the selfish little mortal life we first knew here on earth. No, we speak now about the life that  is in the Son of God. We speak of life without end, eternal life, life everlasting. Eternal life is the only true life, for life is not really life if it can die.

In order to exchange our first natural, mortal life for the eternal life that God is and wants for us, He merely requires us to just believe Him and have faith in His word concerning all this.

Our belief in His death [the death of our old life], His burial [the burial of our old life], and His resurrection [our being “raised to walk in a newness of life“] is the key. God has ordained belief to be the spark of spiritual energy that surges into our hearts, igniting the fire of life, causing us to begin to grow spiritually.

Like sunshine in spring upon the moist earth energizes the seed to awaken to its potential, even so we now spring to life in the garden of the King. In believing Him, we become His plants, flourishing in watered terraces, bearing the fruits of love, compassion, and justice for all to enjoy. For we are those trees He speaks of, trees planted by the river of life. Oh, how we should thank Him! And the sincerest form of thanks is belief.

Belief of God Is Elemental

We humans are created beings. Our origin, therefore, comes not from our own volition, but from the mind of a Superior Being who wanted us to be, to have life. Consequently, our sole responsibility is to believe the One who says that He is the Word. We are to believe His words. Belief is elemental and seminal in this walk on earth.

Belief, rendered “faith” in many verses, is profound, yet simple. In fact, the profound things of God, the mysteries, riddles, parables, precepts, and the puzzling enigmas that have perplexed prophets and wise men, and beggars and kings–they remain profoundly simple.

Remember the simplicity of the innocence of a little child that Christ spoke about? Unencumbered by the adult mind, the child believes simply. But man’s wisdom blunts the human mind like the granite rock dulls the sword that dares to strike it. The rock and the sword are not for each other. They are out of place, out of time. Such is the mind of old man Adam when endeavoring to comprehend the things of God.

Such are the mysteries of the mind of God. But childlike belief opens them up to our understanding. It is like when a child of three years plucks the petals of his first daisy or smells his first red rose. He does not need the botanist to analyze their parts. He needs no chart or graph depicting how to cultivate them. As the flower’s fragrance enters the child’s nostrils, he understands, yea, believes in the beauty and simplicity of the rose. He inhales its grace and its love. Of such belief, is the kingdom of heaven.

In like manner, let us savor the truth about how the Spirit grows within us to the point of God reproducing Himself. But it will take a childlike belief of God’s word, free from all doubt.

The “Greater Works”

As Christians we have wondered how it would be to have the same power to do good as the apostles of the early church. Through the Spirit, they raised the dead and healed the sick and did many astounding miracles. Whole denominations today have as their main purpose a return to the power of those early days.

Did Christ ever speak about this kind of growth? Did He ever promise us that we could grow to this point in Him? to do what He and His disciples did?

Yes, He did. He said, “He that believes on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do…” (John 14: 12). There it is. “Belief” is right there. The person that believes on Him shall do not only the works of Christ, but “greater works” than what He did. It’s there in irrefutable black and white.

But wait. There’s a problem here. Hundreds of millions of believers of Christ are out there. Why aren’t we all raising the dead and healing the sick and doing these “greater works” that He promised? We believe that He not only existed as an historical figure, but that He also is the Son of God and that He arose from the dead. Why don’t we have the power of the early apostles?

To find out what the words “he that believes on Me” mean, we must back up to John 14: 1. Christ tells his disciples, You believe in God; believe in Me, also. In our Father’s house are many abodes, many dwelling places. I am going now to prepare a place for you to dwell. I’ll return and you will be with Me. You know where I am going. And you know the way (1-4).

Thomas then asks Him the famous question. We do not know where You are going, so how can we know the way to the Father (v. 5). Christ replies, “I am the way.” I am the way; I am the traveled road, that will get you to the Father. “I am the truth.” I won’t steer you wrong with bad directions on your road to the Father. I am full of grace and truth for all seekers of the divine. “I am the life.” Life dwells in Me. That is the truth. That is the way to the Father. In fact, “no man comes to the Father but by Me” (v. 6).

How to Believe on Christ

In John 14, Christ is, no less, telling us how to believe on Him so that we can do the “greater works”!

He is saying, You can’t get to the Father without Me. Besides, If you really knew Me, you would know My Father also. And from now on, after this teaching that I am giving you, you know the Father and you have seen Him (v. 7).

Christ is saying, Right now you are seeing the Father, who is an invisible Spirit, dwelling in the abode of His Son. Then Philip says to Him, If You will just show us the Father, we’ll be satisfied and contented (v. 8).

I am persuaded that Christ just shook his head and said, I have been with you for a long time and you don’t know Me? If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father. Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The Father dwells inside of Me, and He speaks the words through Me and does the works (vs. 9-10).

Christ in v. 11 is pleading with us, imploring us, commanding us: “Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.” Christ is “in the Father” because He is doing His will perfectly. The Son is a vessel, then, that is in the Father, in the Spirit. And the Father, in turn, is also in the Son as that same one invisible Spirit. Christ is saying, The miracles that I have been performing, only the Father can do, so believe what I am saying to you about the Father being now present with you in Me.

The above is the prologue to Christ’s promise to us that we will do greater miracles than what He and His disciples did (John 14: 12). This is an astounding promise that is predicated on our understanding of the following: “He that believes on Me, the works I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall He do.”

“Believes on Me…” With the promise of growing up to become like–I am going to say it–like Christ, what do these three words mean? What kind of belief in Christ are we talking about here? We must believe that Christ is in the Father, and the Father is in Him. The invisible Spirit of Love, the Creator Himself, “dwelt bodily” in Christ. They are not sitting on two thrones; they are not a Twinity. Christ sits right now with the Father still inside of His vessel. The Father is invisible. The scriptures tell us this (Col. 1: 15; I Tim. 1: 17).

The question is this. Can we smell this rose as a little child? Can we simply believe, not my words, but Christ’s very own words: “The Father is in Me.” If we can believe on Christ this way, in child like faith, then our growth in Him is limitless.The great Yahweh, walking around in human form, left us with this commandment: Believe Me that I am in My Son. If we keep this commandment, nothing shall be impossible for us.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Word of God–Spirit, Life, Light, and Wisdom

When we hear the phrase, “the word of God,” most of us think of the book, the Holy Bible. The  Bible is our precious library of books inspired by the Spirit of God, written down by certain foreordained men of God. That is true. All of us seekers of truth have benefited greatly by the efforts of those who made the Bible happen.

However, the Holy Bible is but a repository of the inspired spiritual words that God spoke originally out of His heart.

The future manifested sons and daughters of God must get back, back, back to the beginning, before the word of God ever appeared on the printed page, back before it was committed as ink stains on fragile scrolls, back even before the word of God was transmitted orally, when Noah told of God’s plan and purpose to Shem, and so on down orally to his offspring like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

For the Word of God is alive; it contains the very thoughts and longings of the Father’s heart. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6: 63). These words were spoken by the Word Himself, who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us…” (John 1: 14). He spoke words comprised of His thoughts; He spoke truth because He is the truth (1: 17). He spoke words explaining His plan for us and all the earth. And these words that He speaks now enter our ears and seep down into our encrusted hearts, and they bring life to the spiritually dead.

For His words are life itself. They are the very breath of everlasting life. They are a spirit that makes us alive unto Him; they are spirit and life for us mortals. And this life is  contained in His words, which are spirit; they are our light. “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” And this light now shines on into the darkness of men’s hearts, and they do not comprehend Him, for He is the “true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” He is the Light, for He reveals God’s purpose and plan (John 1: 4-9).

His Words Are Spirit

The words that came out of the mouth of the Son of God are spirit and life. A God given curiosity compels me to ask, How are spoken words spirit? Fair question. Going to the Greek in Strong’s, “spirit” is translated from “pneuma” meaning “wind, breeze, breath.” It is from a root word meaning “to blow, to breathe.”

How are audible words formed? We literally create the spoken word by breathing air over the voice box, thus producing sound through the vibration of our vocal cords. We humans speak all kinds of words this way. But when we speak God’s words, divine words, holy words, His thoughts–then we breathe His Spirit. For His words are spirit and they are life.

We are admonished to speak the word of God, His words. “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Mt. 10: 20). The prophet Ezekiel is told by God several times to speak to the children of Israel, and what comes out of his mouth? The word of God.

The Word of Wisdom

If we study His word with true knowledge, then He will give us words to speak. The very first “gift of the Spirit” happens to be the “word of wisdom” (I Cor. 12: 8). It enables us to speak His thoughts about being in reverential awe of not only His majesty, but of His purpose and plan of reproducing Himself. He will reveal in a word to us  His great heart in sharing Himself with us.

But the time grows short. People sit like orphans in the dark streets of despair, hungering and thirsting for the truth. We must all share the portion of the truth that we have. We must not let His knowledge expire with our last breath in human flesh.

For our appointed time for the death of our old corruptible, decaying, earthly bodies fast approaches. We His children must share what we have while the sands of time still flow through the hourglass. We are channels and not the objects of His blessings. For knowledge of the holy things is the richest blessing our ears can hear.

Wisdom. Ask one thousand people what it is and you will receive one thousand different definitions. Philosophy cannot tell you what wisdom is, for it prattles on vainly about how much it loves (philos) wisdom (sophia), but it has never met her. Imagination cannot tell you, for it only projects images conjured up by the faux genius of earthly man’s mind.

And yet, the word of wisdom is the very first “gift of the Spirit” that God gives us to give to others. But it is not a mystical unction bestowed upon us from on high. We must seek to know what wisdom is–according to what the word of God says it is. Most do not know that wisdom is being in reverential awe of God. I repeat: Wisdom is being in reverential awe of God ( https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/book-yah-is-savior-the-road-to-immortality-chapter-2/ ).

Most professing Christians have one of three thoughts about the gifts of the Spirit. Some just don’t know that they exist. Others say that the “gifts of the Spirit” are not for modern times, thus limiting God’s power through unbelief. Another group are just the opposite; they “catch on fire” for God and immediately clamor for the power to perform miracles and healings.

The reality is that the gifts of the Spirit are real and are being given to His people. But they are given to us “decently and in order.” The first two gifts that God gives us is the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. Without them the new Christian will not grow spiritually. They will be stunted children, “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness” (Eph. 4: 14).

We must be rooted and grounded in His word. We must dig deep and put our spiritual house on the Rock. We must seek deeply “that we may be filled with all the fulness of God.” We must see and believe the Word, our Savior, savoring just where His words of glory came from–the Beginning. “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1: 1).   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Spirit of Truth Gives the Gift of the Word of Wisdom

We have seen that God’s eternal purpose is to reproduce Himself. He is a Spirit that is the action of Love. We have learned that He has a definite plan to accomplish His purpose. He thought the plan through and spoke it and wrote it all down in a Word. And this Word was God, the Spirit of Love. And this Word was the Logos and it was “made flesh and dwelt among us.”

And God’s plan to reproduce Himself is all contained in His Son, the Word or Logos of God, which acts as a Seed. And the Son/Seed “fell into the ground and died,” like all seeds do in the earth. And the Seed Son was resurrected out of the earth after three days and three nights. And through His act of laying down His life for others, He showed the greatest Love.

Now human beings are enlisted by their Creator to simply believe this report of His Son, and in so doing, their faith energizes that same resurrected spirit of love in their hearts. For they will have laid down their old lives as He did His, thus showing the greatest love, also. They let their old sinful selfish lives die on the cross with Christ, and by believing in His resurrection, they receive a new life powered by His Spirit.

And just like the seeds in the garden grow to bear much fruit, God’s children do grow through proper nourishment to become just like the original Seed/Son. That is His plan for reproducing Himself in a nutshell.

The Problem

Someone will say, It is simple to understand, the way you put it. Why has it been so difficult for the world to see this?

It is because of the enemy, the devil. He has “transformed himself into an angel of light” and has spread many erroneous teachings called “old leaven” by the apostles. These false teachers started their lies about Christ while the original twelve disciples still walked the earth.

They get the people worried about themselves–whether or not they are going to heaven or hell. They scare the people in the pews, “promising them liberty while they themselves are the servants of corruption.” They never speak of God’s purpose and plan to reproduce Himself, for their center is on self.

Moreover, they promise the churchgoers earthly prosperity if they give abundantly to the church organization. “Get all you can get from God,” they say. They think that’s all God has to do is bless them materially. But Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel weren’t in it for themselves. They were all about furthering what God wanted to accomplish. That is the reason  we still read of their exploits two and one half millenia later. They did not think of themselves, for they denied themselves to further God’s cause.

The Promise of His Spirit

Still God’s arms are outstreched, desiring to embrace all those who embrace Him. And we embrace Him when we cease thinking of our own petty little lives and “look to the Rock from whence we are hewn.” We do that by believing in what He believes in and helping Him to accomplish it.

To those who do this, He has promised to come to us. When we believe that the Father was in the Son, then He says that we will do “greater works than what He did.” In fact, the Son of God commanded us, “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.” When we keep this new commandment, then He will ask the Father to send us the Comforter, which is the Spirit of truth, which is the Spirit of Christ, which is the Father, for “God is a Spirit” (John 14: 9-20; 4: 24).

The Son of God continues, “When He ,the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth” (John 16: 13). This is His promise–to not leave us alone out here, but to comfort us with truth as to what is happening on this sin sick planet. The Spirit of truth will teach us “things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 13: 35). And these “things” are the mysteries of God’s purpose and plan.

When He comes to us, the Spirit of truth will guide us into all truth by giving us gifts. The very first gift of the Spirit is the “word of wisdom” (I Cor. 12: 8). [For more on “wisdom” go here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/book-yah-is-savior-the-road-to-immortality-chapter-2/ ]

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Vision of How God Fulfills His Purpose of Reproducing Himself

To walk in Jerusalem just like John, to speak the thoughts of God as the prophets and apostles did–that is our destiny, after all. But to do what they did, you and I must learn of God’s vision of His plan in establishing His government that will fulfill His purpose of reproducing Himself. And His purpose is composed of the Thoughts of His Mind, and they are poured into the Word and transformed into the Seed. And the Seed is the Word.

And the Seed was made flesh and dwelt among us. And the Seed was God, and the Seed was Love. For Love is the very nature of God; it is God. His purpose has always been to reproduce Love, which is Himself. He does  this by sowing the Seed of Love, His Son, into the earth. For the earth is the only place that a seed will grow. Faith in His resurrection germinates in the fertile soil of good and honest hearts, where it will grow and grow and grow until it fills the whole earth with Love.  “Until Christ (Love Incarnate) be all in all,” said the apostle Paul. And this is all contained in the Mind of the Son of God. And you and I are told to “let this mind be in you that was in Christ…”

Comprehending and understanding just how God will do this reproduction of Himself is  seeing the vision of God; it is being privy to the very secrets of God Almighty.  However, to be a “seer” of the  vision, an initiation of sorts must first be accomplished by the seeker of truth.

The Initiation

Natural man, the first Adam, cannot see the spiritual vision of God’s plan to fulfill His purpose. It can stare him right in the face. In fact, it is written in plain English and sits on a shelf in half the homes of this world, and yet, the Bible remains a dusty tome, mostly unintelligible. To understand what God is all about first takes a new heart and with it a new way of thinking and living.

The Word says that we must first be “born again,” which in the original says “born from above” before we can even “see” or “enter” the kingdom of God (John 3: 3, 5). The kingdom of God is the spiritual and physical environment in which God animates and enacts His plan to fulfill His purpose. Moreover, until the seeker experiences this spiritual rebirth, he remains blind to what God is doing and how He is doing it.

Being “born from above” begins with one experiencing his own spiritual death, burial, and resurrection in revelation on the cross with Christ. For we know that our old nature was crucified with Christ and then was buried with Him. And then by believing He was raised from the dead after three days and three nights in the tomb, we, also, are “raised to walk in a newness of life.” Our old selfish sinful heart spiritually dies with Christ, and that seed of faith, provided by His Love for us when we were down, begins to grow. And with this small step of faith, we begin to see and enter His kingdom. God is leading His children into these greener pastures, and He will send them a teacher with the vision who will explain to them the vision. We need only to seek with a hungry sincere heart, and God will not give us a stone, but the bread of life.

The cross experience must happen first. This is what the true “come to Jesus” moment is all about. This is the only place where we may strip ourselves of petty ego and let the old self die–with Christ (Romans 6). The only place. It is the only sacrifice now that God will accept from us. It is the only way to get right with Him. It is the crucible of true repentance from sin and faith toward God. This is the initiation that separates the sheep from the goats, the pretenders from the contenders. This is where a Christian must put his hands to the plow and not look back. This is where one sells all that they have, especially the delusions of self-glorification.

Once this has been done, the following pages explaining the vision of His plan to fulfill His purpose will begin to make sense. His true doctrine will enlighten our sojourn through the “valley of the shadow of death.” But Christ holds the key that unlocks death’s inevitability. And He will help our eyes to see and help our feet to walk on by faith in this invisible Spirit of Love.

Contemplating His Love

After these opening first steps of repentance from sin and faith toward God takes hold, we then can begin to comprehend His love for us. For we cannot help but wonder about why He loved us–warts and all–even before we met Him at the cross.

And then we realize that He is Love. He is agape, selfless Love, and all Love can do is love. And Love’s nature is giving and sharing with no ulterior motives.

And if He gives us insight to go all the way back to the beginning with God, we will see that Love is like a seed. Love gives itself, and the receiver of that love then begins to love. It is like planting a seed in a garden; it germinates and grows into a plant that will produce its own seed.

And so God in the beginning, of course, knew all this. In the infinite essence of His Love, He knew that He needed something to express His Love to. It would not be a beautiful planet, star, or galaxy, for they could not respond to the Love. To the contrary, it would be  a living being capable of receiving and feeling the love. Moreover, He would create a being especially designed to be touched and moved by Love, with a heart that could serve as the matrix for the further reproduction of agape Love. That being would be the human being, a being wonderfully made by his Creator, made to be the “glory of God.” The human being was created for this purpose of duplicating and multiplying God.

And so, in the beginning, because His nature was Love, God arrived at His purpose, which is to share this love and to multiply His nature of love. In a word, His purpose is to reproduce Himself.

To carry out His purpose, God formulated a plan to reproduce Himself. He would create a human being, and He would make them male and female. They would serve as a crucible for each other, forging through the fires of the human condition a purification, thus implementing His plan for their perfection in His love.

Furthermore, He would choose Him a family of people, picked from Adam’s lineage, to be a living metaphor and symbol of His plan in action. He would call out Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons and their families to literally act out in a reality the past, present and future of His plan, thereby unfolding His eternal purpose for all His creation to see.

The above is rarefied knowledge and constitutes the vision of God. This is the vision that He shared with a few Hebrew prophets, offspring all of the aforementioned patriarchs. We have their writings in the Holy Bible. They tell us of God’s vision in small doses and scenes and insights and revelations, fashioned from the lives of historical persons.

The words of the vision given to them have been “closed up and  sealed till the time of the end.” The time of the end is now upon us. Their words of truth are dots that are now being connected by the Spirit of truth. “None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand” (Daniel 12: 9-10).

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Finding Our Way Back Home to the Beginning

Our spiritual walk as Christians is about finding our way back home. We began our journey in the Mind of God eons ago. We proceeded forth from a thought in His Mind in the beginning. For the Word-made-flesh told us, “For you have been with Me from the beginning”.

We were  then deposited onto this terrestrial plain with no initial recollection of our spiritual origins–for a purpose–His purpose.

Our immersion into sin early on in our earthly life sent us on a quest for peace with our Maker. We needed to be free from the guilt and sorrow  that our first life provided. That was God’s purpose in allowing us to wallow in sin for a season–to send us on our search for His redemption. We would not have ever sought His solace without the misery and debasement that sin brought to us.

So we broke down and got real and humbled ourselves to our Maker, and He answered us in giving us a new life in the form of a new seed beginning that when watered, will grow into the same thing we had with Him before the foundations of the world (John 15: 26-27; Isa. 40: 21). And with this new life, we grew to not only appreciate God and His mercy in delivering us from degradation, but also to just plain loving Him.

It is this love that God, who is Love, is after–for us. His desire is to reproduce His nature of love in human beings, which are the only beings capable of reproducing His spirit of unselfish love. We are, after all, created in His image; we are a vessel to contain and to pour out God onto a thirsty land.

And the seed of this love for God grows from that appreciation we exhibit when we acknowledge God’s love to us. His love toward us is all in the plan to use His Son as the sacrificial Lamb that “takes away the sins of the world.” God’s self-sacrifice at the cross showed us the greatest love. There no greater love than that.

When we believe the testimony of the Seed/Son, we receive a new life in a seed, energized by the Spirit, which erases all our past sins along with the guilt.

We are made free, and as the ex-slaves of sin, we exalt our new Master who has delivered us from death. We love Him and appreciate Him. His life now through the resurrection affords us that same life inside us. And His Seed of Love is growing and growing, both in our own hearts and in the hearts of our brothers and sisters.

Christ is the Seed of a new beginning for us. When we believe His testimony, we receive the seed of faith into our hearts. There is no spiritual growth without the true seed being received into the ground of a fertile heart, a heart that’s honest and receptive and in need.

It is this internalization into our hearts of His resurrection power that generates within us the new life.

The Father/Creator/Spirit/Love/Light has poured His complete plan, purpose, essence and life into His Son. Consequently,  we cannot thrive in our brief moments here on earth if we do not believe God’s testimony of His Son.

When someone rejects the Son, they reject the Truth of the ages, and in so doing, they lose their own souls. If the doubters do not surrender to God’s plan as seen in His Son’s life, then their brief moment of self-aggrandizement will molder in a forgotten shallow grave. But if we walk in the Light, we shall overcome all things and bask in the glory we had with him in the beginning (Heb. 2: 10; 1 Pet. 1: 7; Rom. 8: 18).     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Exploring the Mind of God–His Love, Purpose, and Plan

Distilling the mind of God into the ink of a single page is like trying to put a cloud burst into a coffee cup. After the torrent, we see a bit of the water of heaven captured in a small finite vessel, a symbol of the moisture poured forth on the thirsty land.

That cup of truth may satisfy the parched souls of only a few pilgrims who stop for refreshment. Hopefully this cup of rain reminds them of the firmament from which it fell.

The mind of God. How do we begin to consider and relate such ethereal thoughts? Perhaps when our finite minds decrease and His infinite wisdom increases in them.

The Hebrew God has left us a record of His thoughts that emanates from His mind as revealed to His prophets of old. This record of His thoughts were written down and miraculously preserved through the millenia for us in the last days. They are called the “scriptures of truth,” or the writings of truth.

Thousands of years ago, God spoke His mind to His people using the prophets, who wrote it down. Now God speaks to us by His Son, the heir of all things, the King of God’s Kingdom (Heb. 1: 1-2). The prophets knew the mind of God because the “Spirit of Christ…was in them” (I Pet. 1: 11). These prophets “spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (II Pet. 1: 21). They had the Spirit of Christ in them and were longing for our day, the day when the Spirit of Christ is multiplied and reproduced into a body of “many sons [and daughters] unto glory”–right here on earth!

The Spirit of Christ in the prophets of old longed for that time about 2,000 years ago for the Father Yahweh’s Son to come on the scene. For with His arrival, the Seed Son then could be planted in the earth. They knew that there could be no great harvest without the planting of the Seed Son into the earth. Christ, reflecting on His date with death, said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12: 24 NKJV).

Without Christ’s death and resurrection, there would be no harvest of “grain,” no reproduction of seed. By definition, grain is reproducible seed. And in this case, Christ is teaching us that by believing Him, we become just like the original Seed that was planted. The harvest is not a harvest of little immature seedlings. No. It is a harvest of seeds, like the original, ready to be planted for their own harvest.

With Christ’s planting of Himself literally in the tomb in the earth, we have the inevitable harvest of Seed just like Him! That is what He said. And He is speaking the mind of God. He is speaking the thoughts of God about His purpose, which is this: God is reproducing Himself in a group of people called and chosen for this purpose.

That is worthy of repeating over and over in our finite minds. God is reproducing Himself in a body of people from all over the earth. He is calling them and choosing them. It is all His doing. It is all Him. They did not work for this honor. To the contrary. He has chosen the weak, the foolish, the low, and the despised of the earth to bring to nothing the world and its thinking (I Cor. 1: 27).

The Plan Is Found in the Scriptures

If you peel back all the layers of the Seed, you will find the seminal heart to be Unselfish Love. God is Love, and Love cannot by its very nature do anything but share. God is sharing Himself.

And in the very beginning, God, of course, realized this about Himself. He knew that the wonderful thing that He is is Love, and Love shares and magnifies and expresses and ultimately reproduces itself. That is what unselfish love, the love from above, is.

So this reproduction of Himself, which is Love, became His Purpose and Life. In His Mind of Love He created thoughts comprised of words. And with these words and thoughts He created the Plan to make His Purpose happen.

Using His thoughts, comprised of words, He created the  concept of “seed time and harvest.” And He made the original Seed His Word, and He made it incorruptible (I Pet. 1: 23).

We must pause a moment and realize that this whereof we speak was in the beginning before this dimension in which we breathe existed.

God created the Plan to carry out His Purpose of Reproducing Himself (Love). And this Plan is laid out in the scriptures of truth. To the prophets and apostles He revealed a precept here and a precept there, but we now have the privelege of seeing all the pieces to the puzzle spread before us. And with the Spirit of Christ within us, we through His help can comprehend the mysteries of God’s Plan.

His Plan, which is expressed in words, becomes the Word, the Logos. And this entire Plan of His Purpose of Reproducing Love is all poured into the Son of God. “And the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory…” (John 1: 14).

The Plan and Purpose is all in the Seed, who is the Word, who is the Son of God. The Father, whose thoughts we have endeavored to explore, poured His everything into His Son–His very nature, His purpose, His plan. It is all there in Him. That’s the reason the apostle Paul says, “He is before all things, and by Him all things consist (Col. 1: 17-18).

And Christ is our Head, and we are His body. He now needs His body to agree with His Mind, the Mind of God. And God’s Mind becomes our mind when we agree with His thoughts.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In the Beginning Was the Seed, the Word

Faith is likened to a small seed that germinates and grows into a large tree. Because the words “faith” and “belief” come from the same Greek word, we see then, that “belief” is like a seed (Matt. 13: 31).

Belief can only happen when the thing to be believed is put into words. “In the beginning was the Word,” the Logos. God formulated and then spoke words in the beginning outlining just what His eternal purpose and plan entailed. This is the Logos; this is the Thought-of-God. This is the Mind of God, and these words detailing His plan in all phases is the Word. And this Word, expressed in words and actions is what is believed.

These words of God include His promise to His people, who are the human beings that He created for His pleasure. The Word is the Son of God, who is the Seed, who first fell into the ground and died and then was raised up 72 hours later (John 12: 24).

The Son of God is the living Word. He is the embodiment of the Plan and Purpose that was created as thought in the mind of God and later written and spoken millennia ago. He is the “express image of the invisible God, the Father, His Father, and our Father.

When We Believe

When we really believe the words of the Word, who is the Logos, then that Seed, which is the Word, germinates in our hearts. It springs forth in our inner spirit and in our heart, and this belief of the Truth/Word/Seed engenders a light that is switched on in us.

Through believing, we at once become one with the Author and Writer of the Play. We find ourselves on the same page with our Creator, who is the Word, and the Word is comprised of a detailed description of what the Son of God has done, is doing, and shall do in the future.

When we believe the words of the Logos, the Word, we cease fr0m our own works for our own little selves and rest in Him. We are not fighting against the truth anymore; we are engendered by the words of truth about Him and His Plan, and we are begotten from above. The Word through His words about Himself and us–that Word begets us with that creative power that was in the beginning. By believing the Word’s words, we are “born again,” which in the Greek means “born from above,” or engendered from heaven or born from the beginning. It is only in this state or spiritual transformation that we can “see” and “enter” the kingdom of heaven, which is the environment of His Plan.

The Seed Reproducing Himself

The word of God is the incorruptible seed (I Pet. 1: 23). “Logos” means “Word” in Greek. So, the Logos = the Son = the Seed = the Word = the Eternal Plan and Purpose = God Reproducing Himself. That is His Plan. Always has been.

If there are any doubts about this, we need to ask ourselves one question: What is a seed for, except to reproduce itself? Christ is the Seed Son. He said, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it die, it brings forth much fruit.” Reproduction of Himself. Just look at Peter, James, John and Paul in Acts.

In order to reproduce Himself, God would have to decree just what He wanted to do. He outlined His Plan that would enact and realize His Purpose of Reproduction. Since He cannot fail, He set it in motion.

He created the worlds as the setting for His grand plan of Self-reproduction. He established Laws to rule the environment and milieu we find in our present dimension. He laid it all out and manifested it in His Son, who is the Seed, the Word, the Logos made flesh.

The Father then created the earthy medium for the Seed/Word to grow in, which, of course, is the human being. He created us with just the right amount of nutrients and intelligence in order for us to believe the Word-made-flesh and the testimony Christ would give us.

But He also allowed us first to fall into a wretchedly sinful condition so that we would recognize that we have need of a Savior. Then He called out other humans to tell us about the Savior and His love for us in promising us that if we would just believe the Word-Logos-Plan-Purpose of God that is encapsulated in His Son, then we could not only be delivered from our sinful state, but be able to grow up to spiritually be like Him. We could receive immortality and become just like the Son Himself. In fact, He would actually call us “His body” with Him living His life through us by His invisible Spirit of Love. Hence, God reproducing Himself.

He just asks us to believe the witness of the Word-made-flesh, which is the Logos, which is the Plan and Purpose of God.

These are His thoughts out of His mind. This is His Plan to fulfill His Eternal Purpose. His  thoughts on how He will accomplish all of this is the Word (the Logos, the logical plan He has to do it). All of this is a mystery to most, but it is now being revealed to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. These are the mysteries of God that many prophets and kings have longed to see and hear but it was not time. These are the mysteries of the kingdom of God, encrypted in the parables of Christ and contained in His Wonderful Heart and Mind.

And these things above shall come to pass, according to His word, written down by His prophet Isaiah: “The LORD of hosts (Yahweh) has sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand” (14: 24).     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Law and the Testimony of Love That Fulfills It–How to Prevent Backsliding

“Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Which law? The Ten Commandments, the breaking of which constitutes the definition of sin (I John 3: 4; Rom. 13: 8-10).

Which “love” is it then? It is the love from above–agape love. It is only through agape love that the law can be kept. Natural man without this love cannot keep the law, no matter how hard he works to keep it. It is spiritual, and it takes a new spirit from a brand new heart to keep it.

This divine law is the standard that man can and must attain unto, but it will be only through God’s Spirit helping him. In fact, that is precisely the point. The only way that a man stops breaking the Ten Commandments–stops sinning, in other words– is by receiving a new spirit from God.

The Greatest Love

In order for this to happen, one must visit the source of agape love. The source is God Himself and what He did for us. He gave us His Son. Yahweh was in Christ, “reconciling the world unto Himself” (II Cor. 5: 19). It is the laying down of His life on the cross that is the greatest love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15: 13).

When we believe this love that Christ showed, when we are grateful and appreciative for this selfless act, and when we do what Christ did, then this great agape love that He exhibited in dying for us is transferred into and through us to others. We then become a channel of God’s love, which is His essence, for “God is love” (I John 4: 16).

This agape love is the essence of His Spirit, which He gives to us. And this love inside our new hearts in the form of His Spirit, now courses through us.

We must see that Christ “was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (II Cor. 5: 21). And we must identify our old sinful law-breaking selfish nature with Christ on the cross. We must believe that when He died, our old sinful nature died with Him. Same goes with His burial. And–HalleluYah!–when we believe that He rose from the dead, we rise, also, to walk in a newness of life! He is not our substitute; He is our example.

It is all lined out in Romans 6. Our old sinful Adamic nature must die with Christ on the cross. And be buried with Him. And through belief that He arose from the dead, God will raise us up with a new heart! For which is easier for God to perform–raising Christ from a three day death or giving us a new heart that is free from sin and sinning?

This is the crux of the matter. This is the rock solid foundation that will never be shaken. Just feeling guilty about the sin in one’s life and walking down to the front of a church building will not sustain a young convert to Christ. How many have we seen “back slide” into the slop and vomit of their old lives?

The crux? Do we believe that Christ was raised from the dead? Not just the historical resurrection some 2,000 years ago. It is believing that Christ, when He arose then, now arises IN US. Do we believe that? For that is the crux of the matter. Even the devils believe in one God and tremble (James 2: 19). So believing that Christ’s historical resurrection is not enough. It is believing that His Spirit is resurrected in us–that is the important thing. That is the solid Rock in us that cannot be moved. That is what prevents backsliding into the old life of sin.

When this Spirit of agape love, now in us, begins to flow through us to others, then the law is fulfilled in us. Love fulfills the law in us. This is the testimony of God’s Spirit incarnate once again in us.

And now the old scripture passage becomes clear. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa. 8: 20). Those that speak of this law and the testimony that keeps the law through divine love, have the light of God. If they don’t speak in agreement with the law and this testimony of what fulfills it, then beware of them, for there is no light in them.     [For much more on this visit here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/category/light/ ]

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Additions to the Faith to Make Our Calling and Election Sure–To Be Like Peter, James, John, and Paul

We are admonished by the apostle Peter to “make our calling and election sure.” You mean that we have to do something? I thought it was all God and His grace that helps us to be what He wants us to be. It is, but there remains things we must do in order for the spiritual growth to take place.

We must study and pray and eventually fast that the culprit Unbelief might skulk away out of our spiritual lives. For it is unbelief that hinders our growth. But the Spirit has left us a roadmap, a way of cutting through the haze of phony doctrines about God.

Peter tells us in his second letter the steps we should take. He explains that to grow to full maturity, we must add seven attributes to our faith.

Peter writes to those who “have obtained like precious faith with us” (2 Peter 1: 1). The elect, God’s chosen ones for this high calling, have received the same exact precious faith that the early apostles received.

Now this comes about in our lives “through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ (Yahshua)” (v. 1). After we were convicted of our sin-guiltiness, and after we stepped out and laid down our old sinful self on the cross and died in revelation with the sacrificial Lamb of God, we, by believing that Christ was raised from the dead, receive a newly resurrected life by faith.

It is His faith that we have received. God believed in His own power to raise up the Lamb of God, and when we believed that, then we obtained that very same belief in the form of a “new heart” and a new spirit. By believing in His resurrection, we also believe that we were raised from the dead, for we were definitely dead in our sins—the walking dead, as it were. But now we are  alive from the dead, and we bear God’s very own faith in our bosom. As Paul said, “Old things are passed away,” and all things “are become new.” It is no longer the old Adamic man, writhing in the guilt of sin, that now lives, but rather the new man Christ, who has now begun His growth within our new hearts.

This is the faith we have obtained with Peter, Paul, James, and John. Faith is the foundation that must be added to, just like a builder adds walls, a roof, windows and doors to the foundation of the new house he is building. And it is this faith—God’s faith now in us, not our faith in Him—that must be added unto.

Adding Seven Spiritual Attributes Insures Three Things

We are to add to our faith “virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity [agape love]” (1: 5-7).

Peter writes that adding these seven spiritual attributes to His faith in us yields three major things in God’s plan for these latter days. First, they insure that we will not “be barren nor unfruitful” (1: 8). God wants us to bear “much fruit” and is glorified when we do (John 15: 8).

Second, the additions to our faith are how we solidify our standing as one of God’s elect; it is how we “make our calling and election sure.” Walking in these seven attributes of God’s nature insures our place in the elect. Or better put, those destined to be part of the elect will build their spiritual house with these attributes (1: 10).

Furthermore, it is through them that “an entrance shall be ministered unto [us] abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior” (1: 11).

Adding them is how we “partake of His divine nature” (1: 4). It is how we make our calling and election sure, how we never fall, how we will be full of spiritual fruit, how we will receive an entrance into His kingdom, and how we will “partake of His divine nature.” That sums up what spiritual growth is about. That is how important these things are as outlined by Peter in his Second Epistle, Chapter 1.

A Serious Assignment

Adding these attributes is a serious assignment that only the Spirit of truth can teach, for it is He that leads us into all truth. Truth being the key word.

“Truth is fallen in the streets,” says the prophet. And there is a famine in the land, a famine of the word of God. Because of this dearth, adding these seven attributes is a formidable task. Why? Peter in the very next chapter forewarns us of how the devil will hinder our growth in becoming God’s elect. He warns us to beware of false prophets and false teachers who “shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.” And many will follow these hypocrites, who will “speak great swelling words of vanity” and will “promise them liberty” while they are “the servants of corruption” (II Peter 2:1-19).

And how does this second chapter tie into the first? These false “Christian” teachers will spew out false teachings that will hinder a young Christian’s spiritual growth. Peter gives his stark warning to us so that we would not be hijacked and taken away by the enemy, thus prohibiting us from making our calling and election sure. Bluntly put, false teachings will thwart the children of God from growing into fully matured Christians, fit to sit on the throne with Christ. Getting rid of these false concepts about God is where the study and prayer come in after true knowledge comes to us.

Isaiah wonders, “Who hath believed our report?” Who will answer the call to go all the way to the throne of God? Only the adventurous. Only the unafraid. Only the rebels who refuse to come under the yoke of the god of this world. Only those who trust in the Spirit of God within themselves, as He helps them separate the good teachings from the bad.

But man’s wisdom cannot teach this truth to the elect. Old Adamic man just cannot teach it to us, nor the well-meaning manna-gatherers of yesteryear, who fed the flock of God with the spiritual bread that they had one hundred, five hundred, or one thousand or more years ago. That cannot sustain the elect of God for these latter days. For these elect must have the “present truth”—food convenient for them.

God is doing a new thing; He is pouring out new light as to His plan and purpose. The Spirit is pouring out His truth today all over the earth. He has seven thousand unbowed to Baal, and they are like river bed conduits of His living water. Those who thirst will drink. The rest will with parched throats persist in scratching moisture out of broken cisterns of the waters of the past, repositories of the damp shadows of truth.

For God is doing a new thing in the earth, a thing that men will not believe though God Himself tells them. For He has already, even though He has blinded all but the remnant, the elect. But they will prepare and do and put on these additions to the “faith once delivered to the saints.”   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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