Category Archives: crucified with Christ

June 27, 2010 · 7:52 pm

How the Old Self Dies–Baptism into His Death

We may not realize it yet, but we are blessed, for we have seen that our old self needs to go.  Many try to redirect or re-channel its activities.  Sometimes we try to clean it up, but He wants it to die.

He said to repent and be baptized in water.  Yes, water baptism is a symbol of something else, yet we should still do it.  But few know what the real baptism is.  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Messiah Yahshua were baptized into His death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Rom. 6:3-4. NIV.

Going down into the water is a symbol of the mortal life we now live in this flesh.  Coming up out of the water is a symbol of the new spirit-being life we shall live which is the immortal life that we are called to.

Water is a symbol of our mortality.  Our first physical birth is an immersion in a bag of water.  We are born of water.  We mortals are about 75% water.  We  begin  in  our  mother’s  womb in water.  During water baptism we are baptized into His death.  To live in this mortal body is to die.  This watery entombment we call a body is really a deathtrap.  It by its very nature has to die.  The Messiah’s earthly body was composed of the same watery stuff that our bodies are.  And He died.  He had to die by reason of the nature of his shell during His earthly tenure.  This watery, flesh and blood body cannot inherit immortality and go into the kingdom of the Eternal One.  To be made of water is to be mortal, to be awaiting death, for water is extremely unstable, subject to every whim of nature’s forces.

To sin is to die.  Mortality is to be able to die.  Therefore, our mortality is to sin. Sinning insures a human of not receiving a new spiritual heavenly body.  But now He has enabled us to live a life where we do not have to sin, if we receive His Spirit.  Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust (desires) of the flesh (this old mortal body). Gal. 5:16. NKJV.

He was made to be sin for us

We, then, when we go under in water, are symbolically being immersed into this watery mortal state of sin with Him.  We “are buried with him by baptism into death.” Rom.6:4. God calls those things that are not,  as though they were.  We are dead already (Yahshua told the disciples, “Let the dead bury their dead”).  He calls it before its actual physical death when we consent to and experience it (in revelation).  The water is the symbol of our earthly mortal bodily state.  This spiritual death of our old self comes now in this revelation before the fruit of death comes to our earthly bodies.

In conjunction with this, few know that the Messiah, the day of His death, actually became sin for us—he who had never sinned.  He was the sacrificial  Lamb who was set to be sacrificed  before the world ever came into existence.  God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. II Cor. 5:21. NIV. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Rev. 13: 8.

The levitical priest, in types and shadows, laid his hands on the sacrificial goat, thereby transferring Israel’s sins upon it.  So did the Father place all of mankind’s sins upon the body of Messiah.  When He died, the body of sin died; our sin died that day.  To whom is the arm of Yahweh revealed?…Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all…It pleased Yahweh to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see His seed. Isa. 53:1,6,10.

We make the Lamb’s soul an offering for our own sins by realizing that it was us in our sinful state hanging on the tree that day.  We must be immersed in this knowledge.  We must believe that our old self—that old monkey on our back, that old demon that we were, that selfish, egotistical, self-absorbed, sorry excuse for a human being—that old thing that we were is now, in God’s eyes dead.  Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin. Rom. 6: 6.

[This is ch. 28 of my book, Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality, which you can find at the top of this page.  Just click “Ebook…”]

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June 11, 2010 · 3:55 pm

Repentance–Departing from Evil–Pre-requisite of Immortality

A few of us humans will achieve immortality  when we are given a new spiritual  body  at  the  time  of the resurrection, the time of the Messiah’s return.  But not everyone that says that He is Master of their life will become immortal.  It will only be those who are alive and have the Spirit of God dwelling in them in a reality, or those who had the Spirit of God dwelling in them at the time that their earthly bodies fell asleep, these also will be given a  new immortal spiritual body during the first resurrection.

You have a mortal, fleshly body at this time, but God Almighty has unlimited power and he is quite capable with the mere power of his word to give you a new spiritual body as it has pleased him in his eternal plan and purpose laid down since before the beginning of the world. (II Cor. 5:l).  He will have called many, but few are chosen for this the greatest of all honors—to be one of the many sons and daughters  that God is bringing to glory.  It is a great love  that  will  bestow  this  on  a  select few, for few there will be to find this way of truth.  It is quite easy to find the way that leads to destruction, misery, and  desolation.  A narrow gate awaits those who enter the way that leads to love, honor, and glory.

The sole criteria in achieving immortality is that we receive the Spirit of God somehow into our bodies.  But therein lies the problem for mankind.  The Spirit God will not dwell in unclean temples.  The human body was created for the express purpose to house the Spirit of God, the essence of Himself.  God made  his crowning creation, man and woman, to house Himself.  Mankind is to be His temple.

However, God cannot dwell in the fleshly, earthly tabernacle called the human being until He cleans out the temple first.  The old carnal nature dwells in unregenerated man.  Man in his original fleshly state is abominable before God.

If He were speaking directly to us He would say, “Your actions toward your fellow man make you filthy before God.  The inside of you is dirty.  It is your heart that needs cleansing.  Your nature of selfishness is an abomination before God.  You lie, cheat, steal, kill, commit adultery, want other people’s worldly possessions; even their sons and daughters and wives and husbands.  Nothing is sacred to you humans anymore, but then it was always that way.   I gave you a simple ten point law and you refuse to keep it because there is nothing in it for yourself. You worship other things besides Me, your Creator God.  And you don’t keep the one day that I said to keep holy, the sabbath.  A very simple law, but a very profound law.

“You humans basically worship yourselves, think of yourselves first, put your thoughts for your lives first.  Always first, first, first.  And before you realize it, there is little if any thought for, or even about Me in your thoughts.  You see, your thoughts make the temple, your body, unclean.  Your center is not right, is not on Me the Creator, and so, man and woman live out their little mortal existences, leading their little desperate rut-like lives, never glimpsing the truth of the potential of what could be for them.  And that potential is immortality, never ending life, everlasting life, eternal life, a life of infinite years.

“But man’s problem is that he wants his own life to go on without end.  He wants his own selfish little existence to continue unabated with everyone worshipping him and centering in on his every whim and inordinate desire.  He wants to live forever in his way of getting for himself.  And yet he doesn’t realize that that way of life cannot last forever.  The way of getting selfishly will end up in death.  Labor in the fields of selfishness, and all you are paid is death. In all man’s thoughts these things should not be, but that’s the way of all man’s flesh that doesn’t heed the higher call.  This is man’s grief—that he can’t take it with him.  This is the proverbial vanity of vanities.  No profit under the sun of all one’s labor spent upon oneself.”

So God cannot live in the midst of all that selfishness—a lawlessness that is called sin, for the breaking of the ten commandments is sin.  And God hates sin because it is so against His nature.  He wants to live in man and woman, but He can’t because when man is full of himself, then there is no room for God.  Selfish action is a selfish spirit and  is  the  opposite  of  God’s  Spirit,  which  is the action called Love.

So there again is man’s problem; he wants to live forever, but wants to live his own selfish life forever, and this thinking breeds mortality, the way of death.  In order to gain immortality, man must have God’s Spirit living within him.  But the Spirit of God will not dwell in temples (bodies) that are unclean (have actions done in them that are sinful in breaking the l0 commandments).  Mankind that comes as far as this knowledge on the road of life comes to a fork in the road.  He must chose to either remain as he is and how he has been living, or he must seek a way to repent, to change the error of his ways.  In other words, he must find a way to stop breaking the l0 commandments.

And men have tried in the past to do just that to keep the ten commandments of God.  They have failed miserably, for they have tried on their own strength and power to do so.  It is impossible to keep them without God’s help.  We are created that way, so that we must, in order to please Him, turn to Him for his power and strength to keep His holy law.  The mightiest of body and the noblest of mind found among men cannot obey the law without His Spirit doing it in and through them.

One would ask then, “What can a person do in order to keep the law?”

First, he must through a broken and contrite spirit and heart be sorry for the way he has treated his fellow man and God.  This sorrow can grow and eventually yield a desire to not do those things again.  He will then repent of his sins, turn away from that way of getting for himself, and throw himself  on  God’s  mercy to forgive him.  God is rich in mercy and wants to receive his creation back into the fold of His plan and purpose.  If they are sincere, He will forgive them and cleanse them from the filth and uncleanness.

We are cleansed by the shed blood of the Lamb, Yahshua, Yah-in-human-form, who gave Himself up in sacrifice for us.

It all hinges on faith and belief in the sacrifice that God has ordained–the only sacrifice that can  take away a person’s sins.  The sacrifice is the Lamb of God, the only one who lived a sinless life.  If you can really believe that your sin was placed upon him the day of His death, that when He died, your sin died with it, and that when He was buried, your sinful life was buried, and when He was resurrected, you also were raised again to walk in a newness of life—if you can believe all this, then you can receive into your body (temple) that same Spirit and power that raised Him from the dead.  It takes belief, faith.

If you ask Him, He will give you a portion, an earnest, a down payment of His Spirit.  And that Spirit will come into you to replace that old spirit and will grow like a tiny seed in a large garden.  You must water it with your prayers and feed it with your study.  And that little portion of His Spirit will grow up into a full-fledged son and daughter of the Spirit who will someday be transformed in a twinkling of an eye and will be changed when immortality will come down out of heaven to swallow up that which can die.

For without God’s Spirit dwelling within us, we are only a member of the walking dead who spend a few nightly whispers with loved ones and then bury their  dead  and  wait  to be buried in turn.  Without that entity, the Spirit of God, that makes alive whatever it touches and lives in, we are just as good as dead.  Without His Spirit, if we are walking around, we do it on borrowed air in an incredibly delicate and fragile shell.  And our  shell will in a few moments, comparatively speaking, go back to dust from where it came, and our brief stint at self-glory here on earth will not be remembered anymore.  Every thing that man says and does without the Spirit of God is vain and of no profit in the final analysis.  KWHancock  [This is chapter 27 of my book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality.  You may read more of this book which you can find at the top of this page.  Just click “Ebook…”]

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December 16, 2009 · 3:43 pm

The Fall of Tiger Woods–From a Biblical Perspective

Tiger Woods and his fall from grace has been a shocking revelation to everyone.  How does one go from demi-god to goat in a few days?  From a squeaky clean cultural icon to the butt of late night jokes?

Many are asking, Why?  Why, Tiger, did you do it?  You are worth a billion dollars.  You have a beautiful wife and gorgeous kids.  You own mansions in every corner of the world.  You who are so high up on the pedestal of man’s adoration–what could have possessed you to do such things?

Many excuses have been offered by the press.  He had lived a sheltered life.  Golf was his only world, and he didn’t have a normal childhood.  His “dating life” growing up was skewered because of his early celebrity.

Please.  Enough of man’s sappy wisdom.  What is the raw straight truth as to why he did it?

The Scriptures of truth speak of a corrupt spiritual condition we are all born with [1].  We are born with an old sinful nature.  And this old heart is incorrigible.  You can dress it up nice every Sunday morning, change  the music that it listens to and the books that it reads, but if still alive and given the chance, it will sin.  It cannot change itself.  Try as we might, we cannot effect a lasting change for our old sinful nature.  It has to be stopped, but we in our own power cannot change ourselves [2].

And when you add riches to this old nature, self-deception increases dramatically.  In the mind of man, riches give power, and power gives license to do, they think, whatever they want to do.  They think, “I have money and power and fame.  I’m somebody special, and I am above the law”, especially the moral law of the universe placed there by the Creator.  The “deceitfulness of riches” has tainted the rich man’s mind, deceiving him into thinking that he alone decides what is right or wrong personally for himself [ 3 ].

Like the kings of old, who did whatever came into their mind because they had the power, Tiger Woods has succumbed to the same temptations.  Like a classic tragedy worthy of the name, Tiger’s tragic flaw has been exposed, and it is his downfall, even as we speak.  And so we all can fall, if we are not sober and vigilant, always on guard against our formidable adversary, the devil [4].  And this enemy does not have a forked tail and horns; he has a forked tongue that lies to us in our thoughts and will lead us away from everything that we love or should love–especially our Maker.

Tiger’s sin?  He confessed already his “infidelity,”  which is a cleaned-up synonym for adultery.  Committing adultery is breaking one of the Ten Commandments, and breaking those is sin [5].   And there is a reason why God commanded us to not do this act.  For sin will bring reproach and eventually destroy a person.  “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” [6].

Sin is a spiritual condition that we are born in, but we are not destined to remain in it!  That’s the good news.  Christ’s whole message for us in the personal realm is that He came to eradicate sin out of our lives [7 ].  He did this at the cross by taking our sin upon Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God, and dying.  And when He died that day roughly 2,000 years ago, our sins, along with our old sinful nature, died with Him!

And when we believe that He rose from the grave, we then receive a new heart, a sinless heart, a new spiritual nature, a new life–in Him.  And He then gives us His Spirit, and by faith in His power, He keeps us from falling.  We are now “raised to walk in a newness of life”.  The old sinful life is gone, “for he that is dead is freed from sin” [8].

But this will only happen when a person is sick and tired of the sinful life they have been living.  And this usually happens when they hit rock bottom.  When a person gets to the putrid bottom of the spiritual gutter, and they have had enough of the swine-pens of sin, then they can finally hit the Rock of our salvation.

Riches, however, prevent one from hitting rock bottom.  That’s why Christ said, “How difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” [9].  Why?  Because his riches tell him that it really isn’t that bad.  Yeah, you made some mistakes, but nobody’s perfect, right?  Look at me.  I’ve still got my money.  I’ll patch it up.  Hey, life is good.  Minor bump in the road.  That’s all.

And so,to the rich, this truth about how to really repent from sin and sinning becomes so much nonsense and foolishness.  Yet Tiger needs this message today.  I’m sending it out into the blogosphere.  Do you think he’ll ever get it?

Do you think anyone will get it?  I do.  Because of our destiny in Him.              Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. Romans 5: 12
  2. Romans 7: 17-20
  3. Matt. 13: 22
  4. I Peter 5: 8
  5. I John 3: 4-5
  6. Proverbs 14: 34
  7. Romans 6: 6
  8. Romans 6: 4-18
  9. Matt. 19: 23

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November 15, 2009 · 12:22 pm

Conversations With the Seer–Becoming the Temple of God

(Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.  I Samuel 9: 9)

“I’m trying to comprehend God’s plan and purpose about making us His sons and daughters, but it boggles my mind.  I can’t seem to take it in.”

The Seer looked at me and told me the truth, even though he knew that  it would sting.  “It is because your heart, your spiritual core, is small and unable to contain at present what the Creator wants to do with you.”

“How do I make my heart bigger?”

“You cannot make it bigger.  It is so typical of natural man, to think that it all depends on  his actions.  You can’t enlarge it to contain more of Him.  Even though you sincerely desire to please God, you cannot just will it so.  You cannot run the race according to your own specifications, win the prize, and then trade the prize for a bigger heart to receive more of Him.  It doesn’t work that way.  He is the One who draws you to Him. He shows mercy to whomsoever He desires to reveal Himself to.  He is sovereign; we are not.  He is the Potter; we are the clay.  We have to remember that it is His ballgame, His rules, His ball park, and His ball.”

“I really do want to play,” I said.

“I know you do.  He has led you here.  He has placed a thirst for the truth in you.  It is Him drawing you.  He has His hands on you.  But you must first meet Him in that special place.”

“Where is it?”

It Is Not a Church Building

“It is not in a building with colored glass windows depicting events that were written down thousands of years ago.  That special place I speak of is not inside the walls of a physical building.”

“You are talking about churches.”

“Yes.  The true church is not a building where people go twice a week to worship.  Nor is the church those people necessarily.  The church is His body, which is the temple of God.  And this only occurs when humans have His Spirit inside them, leading them in their daily walk.  The Holy Bible tells of this.  It is a letter to us from our Father.  Its thoughts are inspired by His Spirit.  But without His Spirit breathing life into its words today, it is only black ink and white paper. Without God’s Spirit breathing truth afresh as to what it means, then it sits alone and mute, gathering dust in the houses of America and the world.

“Don’t get me wrong.  It is God’s written word to us, and in those pages are spelled out how to get to where we need to go.  But the world needs someone with God’s Spirit to bring it to life so that it can bring its light to others.  It speaks of God’s glorious plan, but without a human picking it up and believing it, its greatest power rests in being a witness against those who do not study their copy of it.”

“The Bible tells us how to get to that special spiritual place.”

“Indeed.  But our perspective must change.  It is not a place that we go to, to meet Him.  But rather, you become that special place.  Or better put, the lack of you becomes that special place.”

The ‘Lack of You’

“Wait a minute.  I don’t get it.  What do you mean, ‘the lack of you becomes that special place'”?

The Seer became energized.  He was conducting a symphony of knowledge that was now reaching a crescendo.  “The ‘lack of you’ means that you must cease and desist.  Your old life along with its vestiges must decrease to a point that ‘you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’

“How does that work?”

“I told you before that it is His ballgame and His rules.  And rule number one is ‘Obey His rules.’  He calls us while ‘we are yet in our sins.’  He commands us to repent of our sins.  We can’t clean up our mess by ourselves, no matter how hard we try in our own strength.  But He has provided a way.  The Great God of heaven, that great Spirit that created all things, came down and walked with us here on earth for a few short years.  He provided for us His own earthly body as a sacrifice that will cleanse us from sin, which is the breaking of the Ten Commandments.

“It is not just acknowledging that He died for us that cleanses us from all sin.  No. That is not enough.  We must rather die with Him.  For ‘He was made to be sin for us’ [1].  At the moment of Christ’s physical death, your old sinful heart and mine was placed upon Him, so that when He died, our sin died with Him.  When He was buried, our old sinful heart was buried.  And when He arose–this is the crux of our belief–when He arose from the dead, we, too, arise from the sinful dead, and become alive unto God [2].

“And as we grow spiritually in this truth, we begin to sense that it is no longer the original sinful human staring back at us in the mirror, but an entity quite changed.  We begin to see that we are that special spiritual place where God will dwell.  We become that special peaceful location–a place free from a demanding ego that tries to enslave other humans to worship its whims.

“At the end of this seemingly long spiritual growth cycle, we will have the distinct sensation that we are no longer in control or trying to be in control of everything around us.  The monkey chatter drowning our ear will have quieted, and then, we become that special abode for God’s Spirit.”   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. 2 Cor. 5: 21
  2. Romans 6: 1-11

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October 16, 2009 · 4:25 pm

Conversations with the Seer–Heirs of God and Joint-heirs With Christ

(Formerly in Israel, if a man went to inquire of God, he would say, “Come, let us go to the seer,” because the prophet of today used to be called a Seer. I Samuel 9: 9)

I asked the Seer, the Teacher of Righteousness, “The Scriptures say that we are now heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (1).  How do we become that?”

“It is all in Him.  For in the end He will be all in all (2).  We must decrease; He must increase in us to the point that He is all (3).  At that time it will only be Yahweh in His fullness walking around in us here on earth.  There will no longer be any more ‘us’ involved.”

“We will cease to exist?”

“In essence, yes.  For we now have the same testimony as the early apostles when we say, ‘It is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me’ (4).  We now live by His Spirit of the anointed truth dwelling within our new hearts.”

“How does this happen?”

The Seer looked into my eyes and on down into my heart, searching for sincerity.  Having found it, he answered, “It is by faith.  By believing, having not seen as yet.”

“How do we step out in faith?”

“We must reckon it so.  We must count it as done (5).  The Creator has revealed His truth to us.  He has said that our old sinful lives are a thing of the past.  They are crucified with Christ on the cross.  We must reckon it so by faith in what He said, even if we don’t understand it fully.  The understanding and comprehension of how it happens takes place after we reckon it done.”

“You mean, Just like that!  Reckon it so and it is done?”

“When we reckon the truth of God accomplished in our lives, we are merely doing  what God has already done.  For He had faith first in His own plan and ability to accomplish it in our pathetic little earthly lives (6).  He gave us this destiny before of old, before we ever came forth from our mother’s womb.  He knew us and pre-destined us for this very purpose: to work out a glorious future in our lives, guided by His very Spirit” (7).

“So we count it done in our lives?”

“Whatever He said in His word concerning our walk with Him on this earth–we have merely to believe it by reckoning it done by His Spirit, not by our own power.  And He will, like He did for Abraham, account it unto us for righteousness.”

“Abraham, the father of our faith.”

“Yes.  But why was he the father of our faith?  Because he believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness by God (8).  God said that He could live a righteous life right here on earth, and Abraham just believed Him, and it was so.  Many promises are made by God to His people, but they don’t believe it, and therefore, it never happens.”

“Like what?”

“Man’s wisdom teaches that a person cannot stop sinning, but the Spirit spoke through His apostles and taught the opposite.  The truth says, Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin (9).  Man limits God’s power through his unbelief in what God said.  They have no faith.  They believe what fearful and unbelieving man says and not what God says.  They believe that man is still a sinner because they teach that natural man with his old Adamic heart retains that old heart after his ‘conversion.’  They never get to the root of the problem.  They never get old Adam to the cross where their old heart can die with Christ.”

“But they say that they believe God.”

“Yes, but their words betray them, for they only say, and do not.  They do not believe the simplest of His words, ‘With man it is impossible.  But with God all things are possible’ (10).  Even to live a righteous life.  For you see, we must realize that Christ was made to be sin for us (11) so that we could recieve His Spirit and walk with Him.  They don’t teach the truth of how we must identify our old sinful heart with Christ that day, die, and through faith in the operation of God that raised up Christ from the dead, walk in a newness of life–new in that it is a life that is free from sin and sinning (12).  When He died, our old self died and the sinful core of our being with it.

“Since they never teach the truth that old man Adam dies out at the cross, then they can’t fathom a person living without sin in their lives.  When actually it is no longer our original sinning self that lives, but now the Spirit of Christ that lives in these mortal bodies!  This is what they don’t believe.”

“So then, those that don’t believe this first principle cannot be the heirs of God?”

The Seer looked at me and smiled.  “Precisely.  A vessel cannot inherit God while still thrashing selfishly about the earth, interested only in pumping up their own ego.”

“The heirs of God, then, reach that spiritual plateau through humility.”

“Precisely,” said the Seer.      KWH

[If this has blessed you, please make a comment, bookmark this site, pass it on to someone else, or subscribe to this blog]

  1. Romans 8: 17
  2. I Cor. 15: 28; Eph. 1: 23
  3. John 3: 30
  4. Gal. 2: 20
  5. Rom. 6: 11
  6. Eph. 1: 12
  7. Eph. 1: 11
  8. Gal. 3: 6
  9. I John 3: 9
  10. Mark 9: 23
  11. II Cor. 5: 21
  12. Col. 2: 12

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September 3, 2009 · 2:52 pm

Spiritual Transformation Comes Through the Renewing of Our Minds

Our transformation as the sons and daughters of God comes through the “renewing of our minds” (1).  Our new heart that we receive from God through faith is that fountain of new thoughts based in truth that feeds our minds.  Believing that we have been given a new heart makes our transformation possible.  This process in the Christian walk is called putting “on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (2).

“In the image of its Creator.”  We, His sons and daughters, are being transformed into the image of our Creator!  That is the true walk of the Christian.  As we look at our Savior’s glorious image, and walk in His way by believing Him,  we are changed into that same image through His Spirit in us!  “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (3).

This Is Difficult for Some to Believe

Some will gainsay and resist this truth and say, “No, no one can be changed into the image of God.”  They are speaking for themselves, for those doubt-filled words have sealed their fate.  And “the fearful and unbelieving” will have no place in His kingdom (4). 

But those who believe the report of the true prophets and apostles of God will be changed into His image.  That is the belief and the promise of the Savior and His apostles.  “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (I Cor. 15: 49).  This is the truth that renews our minds, thereby changing us. 

We Are Led by Our Thoughts

Our change starts with our thinking.  We are led by our thoughts.  We started out our earthly walk by thinking naturally, which is thinking derived from the input of our five senses.  Natural thinking says, If I can’t hear it, see it, taste it, touch it, or smell it, then fit must not be real or worth anything.

This empirical thinking would be absolutely correct if that was all life was made up of.  But think on this a minute.  This belief–if I can’t observe it, then it must not exist–this thinking is so prideful, as if they are the supremest of beings, and the whole world revolves around them and their wee little minds.  That is the wisdom of the world, the wisdom from beneath.  It tries to put the invisible God in a black box, stuffed way back in a dank warehouse for the politically-incorrect. 

But millions of lives that He has touched are rising from the graves of their doubts and are putting on their new self, created by His Spirit through belief in His resurrection–in them!  They will rise up and expose the natural thinkers as the liars that they are.  As Ezekiel saw into our day, the bones of His chosen ones are rising up, and they shall come together into one body with one Spirit leading them.  And they will be grateful for their new start, created in His image, transformed by a transfusion of life-giving truth.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. Rom 12: 2
  2. Col. 3: 10
  3. 2 Cor. 3: 18
  4. Rev. 21: 8
  5. I Cor. 15: 49

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August 25, 2009 · 12:19 pm

Without Faith It Is Impossible to Please God–But How Do You Walk in It?

Faith.  Belief.  Without it, we will never please the Creator, which should be our foremost thought. 

If we are only alive to please our selves, then which god are we serving?  For make no mistake about it, to quote Dylan, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”  

And the only way to serve the Creator is by faith.  We are shut up to it.  Why?  Because God is invisible, and since He is an invisible Spirit, we must believe Him, having never seen Him with our eyes.  And that takes faith.

And then someone will say, “Well, I believe in God.  I must have faith and am all right, then.”  Not exactly.  For even the devils believe in one God and tremble (1).  The prophets tell us that we must believe on Him “as the scripture has said.”   The “rivers of living water,” which is His Spirit, will only flow out of those who believe on Him the way the scripture has actually portrayed God (2).

How to walk with God by faith

Every step we take on our spiritual pilgrimage back to our Father is done through faith. The first step is the renunciation of our old sinful life.  God commands that we put it to death on the cross with Christ–not literally, but spiritually.  We have to let it die in order to receive a new life and a new heart.  “We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  For he who has died is freed from sin.  But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (3).

The scenario goes like this.  Some will get sick and tired of doing bad things (sinning) and can’t in their own power stop.  Their conscience bothers them.  They want to stop sinning, which is breaking the ten commandments, but an evil unseen force overtakes them, and the good they want to do, they cannot do.  And the evil things they don’t want to do, they can’t stop doing (4).  This is the state of an unregenerated human being prior to the cross experience.  His old nature is still present.  So how does one put the old sinful heart on the cross to die with Christ and then to be “raised to walk in a newness  of life”?

The Reckoning

How do we do it?  How do we let the old self die and our new life in Christ begin?  We reckon it done by faith/belief.  We have to “reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through  Christ” (5).       We’ve got to reckon it done!  The word “reckon” is #3049 in Strong’s.  It means “to account it, to count it as such.”

God wants us to reckon it so, but He does it first!  He has already reckoned our change done.  When we believe Him, then He counts us righteous in His eyes even in our imperfect state.  It is His nature to “call those things that do not exist as though they did” (6). If He is this positive, then He would want His children to be the same.

He wants us to follow in His footsteps!  God “accounted”  righteousness  to  Abraham  because of his belief—before Abraham was righteous!  “Accounted” here is the same word as the one translated “reckon.”  We are commanded to RECKON some things done.  Now we have to reckon our sinful self gone—by belief—as though it were already done—for that is how God looks at it!  By belief!  Reckon it done through Him and His faith.  He said it.  Let it be done.  For what saith the scripture?  Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.  Rom. 4:3.  Yahweh imputed or reckoned to Abraham the ability to live in a upright manner, keeping Yahweh’s laws and  not  sinning, by just believing that Yahweh had done it!  We make it so hard through our hard heart of unbelief.  He is looking for childlike faith, the belief of a small child.  All we have to do is just believe that Yahweh has provided a way for us to actually put the old life to death and start living a new life in Him. 

The Churches Won’t Touch This

But the “Christian” denominations don’t believe it is possible.  The pastors won’t touch this, for it will get them fired.  The people in the pews don’t believe it, for they have been told all their life by those very pastors that they are sinners and that they will die a sinner.  The pulpits present no hope of ever really changing the heart.  The “deliverance” they preach is window dressing.  Just come to church, pay your tithes and offerings, and don’t rock the boat.  But the people in the pews still sit there in their private sins, undelivered.  But the future sons and daughters of God will long for more and will come out of her. 

They will take this first step by faith, by reckoning it done.  Then, by faith, they will take the next step, and the next, and they will begin to walk in the Spirit. 

But someone will say, “But we just can’t live without sin.”  Of course , we can’t.  That’s why we have to die on the cross with Christ and by faith receive a new heart, His heart, His Spirit.  We who do this have the victory–victory over sin and sinning.  For if we are still sinning, where is the victory?  Our faith is our victory (7). 

But we have to want this new life.  We have to pant after it like a desperately thisty deer.  We have to throw ourselves upon His mercy and break–break our hard hearts, and so He will come and comfort and heal us by giving His very Spirit into us, giving us a new heart.

Our part is to believe that “with God [in us] all things are possible.”  Even to live a life without sin and sinning.  Impossible, you say?  Not with Christ, for He said,  “And nothing shall be impossible to you…All things are possible to him that believes” (8).  And again, “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God” (9). 

Somebody is going to pick up the Book, believe its contents, and change the world.  By faith.   And He wants it to be us.       Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. James 2: 19
  2. John 7: 38
  3. Romans 6: 6-8
  4. Romans 7: 15-20
  5. Romans 6: 11
  6. Romans 4: 7
  7. I John 5: 4
  8. Mark 9: 23
  9. Luke 18: 27

{You can read more on this in my book, here:  http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/yahch30.htm

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August 20, 2009 · 12:26 pm

“Repent and Be Converted”–Returning to Our Previous State with the Father

“Repent and be converted…”  How these words of the apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost have been watered down by mainstream Churchianity today.  “Repent” has become “feeling sorry,” and “being converted” now means “coming to church.”

“To repent” is rather the changing of one’s mind, from the Greek word metanoia.  “Godly sorrow does work repentance.”  Ie, feeling sorry for our past sins to God will bring about a change in our thinking.  But for the mind to really be changed, we must go through the “cross experience”  whereby our old heart and mind are “crucified with Christ,” buried with Him, and finally raised up in newness with Him.  We then receive His Spirit, His heart, and His mind.  We then are poised to be “transformed by the renewing of our mind.”  Old thoughts of selfishness are “passed away.”  “Behold, all things are become new.”

Being Converted–What It Really Means

“Converted” is from the Greek word epistrepho, meaning “to revert, to return, to come again” (1).  “To return” inherently means that we were there before.  “To return to St. Louis” means that we have been in that city on a previous occasion.  Therefore, “being converted” to God means returning back to Him–reverting or going back to a spiritual position we had with Him before.

Truly becoming a child of God means that we have received His Spirit.  For “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Romans 8: 9).  We become a “new creature” with the Spirit we had with Him in the beginning now residing in our earthly bodies.  “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”  And this treasure is a portion of His Spirit, a bit of Him that we shared with Him before the worlds were framed.

If We Can Just Believe…

I know that is “getting out there,” but if we can believe  that we are returning to a spiritual state that we already had with God, then it will become easier to believe that we now have the great Eternal Spirit, Yahweh Himself, walking in us now.  For things are always easier to do, if we have done them before.  Can we with humility say, Been there, done that?

The Returning Prodigal Son

In the parable of the prodigal son, he returned to his Father.  He was once with his Father, but went to the swine pens of this world.  We, like him, have made a complete mess of our old lives, and are now returning, reverting to our prior position with the Father.  We are the prodigal sons and daughters of God, repenting from our old life and being washed from the slop and mire of sin.  We now in spirit have returned to our Father to the standing we had with Him before this wearisome walk on earth began.

“The Jews took up stones again to stone Him.”  Christ asked them, Which good work from my Father are you stoning me?  They said, Because you make yourself out to be God and you are only a man.  Christ then quotes from Psalms, “Is it not written in your law, I said, You are gods”?

The word “gods” is translated from the Hebrew word elohim, which is the exact word translated “God” over 2,000 times in the Bible.  Christ said that we are elohim.  That portion of His Spirit that He has given us was with Him in the beginning.  Remember when He said in Genesis, “Let us make man in our own image…so God created man in his own image” (1: 26-27). 

But we must not make the mistake in thinking that our old man Adam is God.  No.  Our old self must die, thereby blotting out our sins.  Only after believing in His resurrection can we receive His Spirit.  It is His Spirit that is God.  We are mere clay vessels that He has chosen to reside in.  It is all Him, not us in our natural thinking. 

This is difficult to comprehend when we look at this “after the flesh” and not “after the Spirit.”  Most still circle that same old mountain of sin in their lives, not believing that God is quite capable of “blotting out” our sins (Acts 3: 19).  Most will not believe Him and truly repent of their sins.  Sadly, most will not believe that “He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin” (I John 3: 5).  Their preachers don’t teach it, and most will depend on them for their spiritual food.

But a few will believe and repent and follow on in the Way.  They will receive Him into a new heart, and they will grow, and He will grow in them, “till we all come in the unity of the faith…unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4: 13).  These will be His fully manifested sons and daughters of God in these latter days.

We need to help them fulfill their calling.  In so doing, “there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior” (2 Peter 1: 11).

Repentance and being converted to Christ has a deeper meaning than some think.  But knowing and doing the truth about them will bear fruit.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock 

(1) Blue Letter Bible. “Dictionary and Word Search for epistrephō (Strong’s 1994)“. Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2009. 17 Aug 2009. < http:// www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?
Strongs=G1994&t=KJV > 

“converted” —  http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Strongs=G1994&Criteria=be+converted%2A&t=KJV

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August 15, 2009 · 2:27 pm

Conversion to Christ–Just the First Step Towards Glorification

God’s offspring, His future manifested sons and daughters for these last days, will realize that conversion to Christ is just the first step on their spiritual journey back to their Father’s heart. 

Their conversion, yes, is an astounding miracle performed by the Spirit of God, whereby their old heart is cleansed from sin and sinning, as they stand before the King justified by their faith in Him and His power to change lives.  This true conversion experience is giddy-wonderful, filling our souls with an inexplicable peace and love.

Charles G. Finney  described this experience of justification in his memoirs: “I felt myself justified by faith; and, so far as I could see, I was in a state in which I did not sin. Instead of feeling that I was sinning all the time, my heart was so full of love that it overflowed. My cup ran over with blessing and with love; and I could not feel that I was sinning against God. Nor could I recover the least sense of guilt for my past sins. Of this experience I said nothing that I recollect, at the time, to anybody; that is, of this experience of justification” ( http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/religion/conversion.html ).

Justification (just-if-I’d never sinned) is truly wonderful.  It is our ticket to Immortality and a Life in the presence of the King of the Universe.  But it is just the first step.  And it is here that many “babes in Christ” remain, for they are taught that this is all there is by well-meaning, unenlightened teachers. [For more see https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/the-manifested-sons-of-god-overcoming-the-law-of-sin-and-death/ ]

“Be Converted”

The sons and daughters of God will see that conversion is something even more grand than justification.  Being converted to Christ sets our feet on the path “to the glory we had with Him before the world began.”  Through it we revert back to what we had with Him before the worlds were ever created.  We are “called unto glory and virtue.”  After being “justified by faith,” we are to “sanctify ourselves,” setting ourselves apart for His purposes.  In turn, those who become sanctified may enter the rarified realm of glorification.

Yes, a few of His followers will be glorified, just as our example was.  The apostle Paul wrote of “the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  A few will complete Christ’s spiritual life-cycle; they will “suffer with Him” now, that they “may be also glorified together” (Romans 8: 17-18).  Yes, some of His followers will grow to the point that they will be “glorified together” with Christ!  You can read it in plain English in any translation; they all say the same thing. 

These that are “glorified together” with Christ are manifested sons and daughters of God (v. 19).  This is the “high calling.”  There is no greater calling on this planet than to be one of these.  For they will “sit with Him on [His] throne” and will become “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rev. 3: 21; Rom. 8: 17). 

Suffering With Christ

But this calling is only to those who “suffer with Christ.”  They must first suffer their own crucifixion, allowing their old self and old heart to die with Christ on the cross; to be buried with Him into His death, and by believing His resurrection, we believe that we are raised from the dead, from the death sentence caused by all our past sins.  We then receive His Spirit by faith.  This is justification (Romans 6: 1-16).

We then must suffer the Spirit of God to “purge out the old leaven” from our thinking.  We all in our old lives have been taught erroneous doctrines and teachings.  Coming off of these things that we were taught and believed our whole lives is difficult, but very necessary.  Difficult because of what friends, family, and acquintances will say.  We will suffer rejection from loved ones as we make a stand for truth.  They will not understand and will try and talk us out of our newfound beliefs.  It is all in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13.  All false doctrines and concepts must be gotten rid of.  This takes much prayerful study.  This also takes humility to learn from someone else who knows the way and has been sent to help teach the future sons and daughters of God.  This is part of the sanctification experience, the second leg on our journey.  Only those who make it through to the end of this process will go on to glorification.

All this is a process that yields an astounding spiritual transformation in a few good men and women.  They will do the “greater works” that Christ spoke of (John 14: 12).  They will shine as “lights in the midst of a wicked and perverse nation.”  The darkness is thick, but God, who is light, will pierce the darkness through, and will bring in a wonderful new government to earth.  And these manifested ones will rule and reign with Him.  Incredible, I know.  But that is what The Book says.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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July 10, 2009 · 8:59 am

“Let This Mind Be in You”–Thinking the Way Christ Thinks

We are to have God’s purpose in mind.  But therein lies the problem.  How do we know what God’s purpose, plan and priorities are?  The answer is found in the writings of the apostles and prophets.  And they speak of “the elect,” “the sons of God,” and of the wonderful works that God will do through them at the time of the end.

God Will Make It Happen

Because it is His plan and He is all-sovereign and all-powerful, He will make it all happen and come together.  He will call out His sons and daughters, bidding them to come away a while and learn of Him.  He will draw them away from the cacophony of man’s thoughts and rumblings and the vain trappings of the Spirit-less life and feed them with wholesome spiritual food.

Putting on the Mind of Christ

Shouldn’t we be thinking on the things that God is thinking about, too?  We are admonished to do this.  “Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus/Yahshua.”  We have to allow His mind to come into us and take over.

What was in His mind?  He knew that He was in God’s form, that His body was the temple of God, the place for God to dwell in.  Christ knew that His Father Yahweh meant all along to come fully into Him and dwell in Him.  He knew that He was the heir, that He would inherit the Spirit of God Himself!  This was in His thoughts and mind.  And we should have the same mind and thoughts as Christ did.

But Christ humbled Himself, knowing that humility is the way a human should walk on earth.  He submitted Himself unto death.  Now we are asked to follow Him in a “baptism into His death,” where sin and its sin nature dies with Christ.

Doing this, we will the become “blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2: 5-15).

Christ is our example, and He was always “about His Father’s business,” which is bringing forth His sons and daughters.  We now should make the “Father’s business” our business.  If we do, you know that He will be pleased.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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