Category Archives: death of self

March 14, 2012 · 3:43 am

What Prevents Christian Growth–The Deceitfulness of Sin

As the sons and daughters of God, we are called to do one thing– “to  fulfill the word of God” (Col. 1: 25).  That is our destiny and what we are to do.

God has spoken from the beginning His word about what will transpire on this earth.  And it is a mystery to unregenerate natural man.  It is also a mystery to babes in Christ whose senses have not been exercised “to discern both good and evil” (Heb. 5: 14).  What God has spoken and written down for His earthly creation is a “mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations,” but now it is being made known to His elect, the ones He has chosen for the end time happenings (Col. 1: 26).

It is then to His elect that He is revealing this mystery, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (v. 27).  To get Christ fully formed in His elect–to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus/Yahshua”–that is the work of His called out ones.  That is the “word of God” that we are “to fulfill.”

What Hinders the Spiritual Growth to Get to “Christ in You, the Hope of Glory”?

What hinders the new Christian’s growth?  In a word–sin.  For they are taught by their pastors, preachers and priests that they will never stop sinning. But that is a lie. The apostle Paul urges new Christians to “be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Eph. 4: 14).  The way of growing from a spiritual child to a spiritual adult is not be deceived any longer by cunning and crafty men who teach false doctrines.

Paul already has said in this same chapter that God has given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers “for the perfecting of the saints”!  Perfection of Christians sounds like a stupendous growth in God.  You mean it is possible?  I mean, to grow up and be just like Christ?  Paul believes so.  In fact, he says that this perfecting through the teaching of the truth will continue “till we all come…unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ!”! (4: 11-13)  And we know that this perfection cannot be attained if one is still sinning.

Paul spends most of the rest of the book of Ephesians urging new followers to put away sin out of their lives and “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (4: 24).  No more lying, selfish anger, no more stealing, filthy talk, and malice (4: 25-31).  In other words–No more sinning.  “For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Let no man deceive you with vain words” (5: 5-6).  How can a man deceive the new Christian with vain words? By

telling him that he can do all these things and still have an “inheritance in the kingdom  of Christ and of God.” Or to put it another way: You can be a Christian in good standing and still sin.

This Is a Hard Saying–Who Can Hear It?

Many reading this will stop and say that I’ve gone too far.  That’s fine.  “They that have ears to hear, let them hear.”  This message is for the few–like I stated in the previous post last time.  But this is crucial for those wanting to grow all the way in this thing.  It is to you I am writing anyway.  All others with God’s help will be what they are meant to be.  My job is to teach the truth to the elect so that they can grow.  And He has shown me that this concept is what will hinder the elect from growing.  This is crucial.  Bear with me, and let me explain more fully.

Faith (Belief) Is the Key

Now this growth process inside of a believer is an invisible spiritual happening.  It takes belief without seeing first.  Faith is believing, having not seen the evidence as yet (Heb. 11: 1).  It is believing what God said, not what some man said He said.  And this goes for the sin question, too.  It is all about believing His word as to how to get rid of sin (and sinning) in our lives.

Sin is deceitful.  It is born in deception and it breeds deception.  It was born of a lie and it spawns more lies.  And its most powerful lie tells new Christians that they can’t escape its clutches.  Organized religions keep people in the prison of sin through the lie that they can’t live without sinning–that you are a sinner and will die a sinner.  Ironically enough, some preachers pridefully preach this every Sunday!  They say that you will always be held captive by sin–that you cannot escape its bondage!  In other words, they tell the people that God is not strong enough to break sin’s hold on you.  But be not dismayed; God will accept you even though it is impossible to stop sinning against Him, if you just accept Christ.

But wait a minute!  I thought “with God all things are possible” (Mark 10: 27).  And, “With God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1: 37).  And, “All things are possible to him that believes” (Mark 9: 23).  I mean, even the LORD, Yahweh Himself, answered Sarah’s incredulity about having a baby with this question, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD/YHWH?” (Gen. 18: 14).

And so He is asking every one of us: Which is easier for Me to do?  Grant Sarah a child in her old age, despite the “deadness of her womb,” or grant unto you a new heart that does not sin against Me?  Which is the “easier miracle” for Him to perform?  To God it is all the same.  If it is in His will, He makes it happen.

The preachers say that you are in bondage to sin; you can’t escape.  But God says “he that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom. 6: 7).  The preachers say, “I sin every day.”  But God says, “He that is born of God does not commit sin, for His seed remains in him and he cannot sin because He is born of God” (I John 3: 9).  If we are not saved from sin, then what have we been saved from?

You won’t hear the message contained in Romans 6.  “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”  Shall we go on sinning, breaking the Ten Commandments, so that His grace can be exercised to its fullest extant?  Answer:  “God forbid.  How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein” (Romans 6: 1-2).  Since the true salvation experience begins at the cross, baptized into His death, how can we continue to sin when sin has died inside of us (6: 3-11)?

Of course, very, very few will be preaching on this come next Sunday morning [or Saturday, for that matter].  Even if they know about this message, very few understand it, and fewer yet believe it, so they stay away from Romans 6 like the plague.

But it is this very message of the death of our old sinful self that opens the door.  What door?  The door to the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  The door to the secret of Christian growth.  The door to the overcoming of sin in our lives  and growing up to be like Him.

This “hope of glory” is not just a ticket to heaven, which is what the little babe in Christ wants from the Father.  No.  This “hope of glory” is our hope that Christ would be fully formed in us during these latter days–that the “greater works” that He promised His followers would do–that would be fulfilled in and through us!  That we could actually walk like the early apostles and the prophets of old!

That we could be the “called according to His purpose.”  That we could actually be those He knew before we were ever born, those who He gave a destiny before we were  born “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”  And so He pre-destined us, called us, justified us, and soon, oh, so very soon He will glorify us! (Romans 8: 28-31).

And there is nobody that can separate us from Christ’s love for us.  And there is nobody who will succeed in stripping away our glorious growth into His manifested sons through lies and deception.

But this vision of full spiritual Christian growth hinges on getting past the deceitfulness of sin.  “The counsels of the wicked are deceit” (Prov. 12: 5).  Or, in other words, The words of the sinner are deception.

Their unbelief in God’s power to deliver keeps people in bondage to sin and sinning.  This is where the deception lies.  A Christian cannot grow when they believe that they cannot keep from sinning with God’s help.  This is the key that will unlock the door to Spiritual growth.

Through Christ we receive a new heart; the old heart is passed away once and for all.  Man says that it is impossible to be rid of sin in your life.  But God says, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18: 27).  Christ’s own words.  Hallelu Yah!

[If you find someone that teaches these things, you have found a very precious thing.  Hold them near and dear and never let them go.]  KWH

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February 28, 2012 · 1:03 am

How the Old Self Dies–Baptized into His Death

Chapter 28 to the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

     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.  [I invite you to read my whole book and make comments.  God is calling out His elect (chosen) sons to be manifested in our time.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock]

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January 15, 2012 · 3:22 am

“You Gotta Die Before You Live”–New Song on the Cross Experience of Christ

People talk about the cross of Christ a lot in some churches, but few teach the central truth about what that experience does in a human life.  Our old sinful self, our old heart, must die with Christ, “who was made to be sin for us.”  We identify and repent of our sinful ways by surrendering to this death on the cross.  Then we “are buried with Him” in an immersion of that old self into His death {water baptism being the type and symbol}.

Then, by believing that Christ literally rose from the dead the third day, we too can be raised from the spiritually dead, and we are then “raised to walk in a newness of life.”

HalleluYah!  This is real biblical way to repent–“by faith in the operation of God that raised up Christ.” This is what this song is about.  I wrote it back in 1975; it speaks of the  great paradox–life out of death–just like a seed buried in the ground.  This is a great mystery “kept secret from the foundations of the world,” and I am blessed to have been given it to share with the world–in a song.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

You can see the video and hear the song that contains these revelations here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeDb5WdFHS0

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January 10, 2012 · 9:23 pm

I Will Remember Him That Way–Elegy for My Mentor

I thought of my spiritual mentor who passed away some nine years ago now.  Without him and his love and patience, I would not have come out of the depraved selfish existence I led in my old life.  I wrote this elegy upon hearing of his death.  I want to share it with you.

I Will Remember Him That Way

I will remember him, but not for his last days on earth.

I will recall three decades ago, when the world was mad

and senseless and cruel,

When a young man and woman so in need of love

and patience

And so full of fear and loss and alienation, with cynicism

in full rotten bloom—

I’ll remember him that day, that warm April East Texas

spring day

When the joy emanating from his countenance hit me right

in the chest

As I strutted in with a smirk that said,

Okay, show me what you got,

Because I’ve just about given up the search for truth,

although I talk about it all the time,

And I know that my old self is my nemesis, my master, my

ruin,

And I can’t get rid of it by myself, because my self is my

very problem,

And I know that it has to die, and I’ve looked three years in

books from India,

And books from China, and books from Persia,

And none of the sages of the East could tell me how to put

my self to death,

And live to tell about it,

And I knew that I would waste my time

In looking to the christian buildings which cannot hold

moms and dads together in love—

So as a last futile foray for the truth before I give up

And sink into the numbness of nothingness,

I was thinking, Okay, show me what you got.

And he did, as I remember the joy and the love that swept

down on me,

As he spoke of a certain writer named Paul who spoke of

an old man Adam

Who was now put to death with the Lamb in a Roman 6

finality

And who could be raised to walk in a newness of life.

“You mean that my old self, my old ego, can die?”

I asked out loud that April morning in the cedar cabin in the

East Texas woods.

“That’s exactly what Paul is saying.”

And so I had finally found my sign that I had searched for.

I’ll remember him that way,

As the joyous messenger of my joy in God.

I’ll remember how he let me keep sleeping till noon the first

time we spent the night,

Under his breakfast table in the tarpaper shack,

For I was bidden to come and rest, and he let me rest.

I’ll recall the joy and deliverance from tobacco, drugs, alcohol,

and cursing.

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll remember the countless times I robbed him of his rest,

And he would smile,

Knowing I was special in the hands of God.

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll remember a man who believed in me like no one had done

before.

I’ll remember the days of Pepsi and popcorn,

And winter mornings, wood burning stove, kettle on top,

Cool mornings full of hot tea and scriptures,

When riches meant nothing and material possessions held no

power over us,

As we sat laughing into the gentle breezy piney woods evenings,

Secure at last that, yes, there is a God with a plan and purpose,

And all was as it should be here on earth at this moment.

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll remember Tom as the mentor of my youth,

Who awakened me to greater things than my old self,

Who showed me how to speak to tens of thousands

about the Kingdom.

I’ll remember him as the one who helped me

along the road to God,

Who patiently in those early days,

taught me all the Truth he knew.

And so I ask, What more can any one man do?

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll not let those early days be blotted out of my memory

By judging him on his last days on earth—

No matter how much it hurt—

I’ll leave all judgements of him to God and to bitter little hearts

Who can’t remember him in the early days.

But I’ll remember him that way.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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October 16, 2011 · 9:21 pm

Borderline Personality Disorder–Reaching Out to the Depressed–Christ and the Man-Who-Lived-in-the-Tombs-and-Cut-Himself

The other day I happened onto a blog by a person who says she has BPD–“borderline personality disorder and other mental illnesses as well.”  As I read her post entitled “I Am Worthless, Pointless, and Hopeless,” I saw how her condition was destroying her.  She confessed that she was contemplating suicide and showed photos of her cutting herself with a razor blade and yearning to end her emotional misery through taking her own life.

I immediately thought of the time that Christ encountered “a man with an unclean spirit, who was dwelling in the tombs.”  He was “always, night and day…in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.”  Christ went on to cast the unclean spirit out of the man, who later was found “sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind.”  The man even wanted to go with Him.  But Christ told him to “tell them how great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you” (Mark 5: 1-19).

And so I was moved to write this comment to her post: 

My darling girl,

There is another way to end all the pain and misery besides offing the physical body.  The death of the old self, the old ego, the old nature that we were born with, that old blue monkey crouched on our shoulder, screaming in our ear to do bad things to ourselves and others–yes, that selfish old adamic nature must die–not the body, mind you–the old heart inside of us, the old spirit that we have always been–that must die. 

I searched for 5 years desperately seeking solace and was led to the pits of nothingness.  Then, miraculously, while I tripped out on “sillysideburns” one day, it came to me: The old self had to die, not the body…I studied all the philosophies and world religions and did not find out how it is done.  

But then,  a wise man, seeing my plight, told me, “You need to die with Christ on the cross.  Just let all the bad inside of you go, by revelation, up on that cross, and let your old selfish self die.  When He died, you died.  When He was buried, you were buried, and when you truly believe that He arose from the dead, then you will arise from the dead, too.  And you will  walk in a newness of life.  You can read all about it in Romans 6 in your Bible.”

“Why doesn’t the churches teach this?  Because I know they don’t.”

The wise man replied, “Most of them don’t have the truth about real deliverance from sin, which like a serpent, coils around our inner being and has us enslaved. But this truth whereof I speak will deliver you, once and for all.  You are enslaved for now.  Follow my words and you’ll be free from the bondage you are suffering.”

And so, after reading all the books from the East and the West with no surcease from the emotional pain I was experiencing, I did it.  And a complete change happened in my life.  The drink, the smoke (of all kinds), the obsession with music, the womanizing, the cursing, the depression, et al, left.  And it has never come back in all these 40 years. 

I hear your cry, little one.  Read more here on my blog, ImmortalityRoad.wordpress.com
You are not alone…  Wayneman

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August 21, 2010 · 4:21 pm

Life Out of Death–The Ultimate Paradox

A paradox is “a statement that seems contradictory or absurd but is actually valid or true.”  Life coming out of death is a paradox.    Yet any seed must lose its identity before it will spring back to life in another more glorious fruitful form.  The seed rots and dies in the moist earth and then, through a miraculous Lifeforce, it multiplies itself at the harvest.  One grain of corn yields two or more ears of golden corn.

God is wanting this to play out in our mortal lives here on earth.  The death of self is the only sacrifice that God will accept from us.  He wants us to be a part of Christ’s body, but the only way to get that Life that lasts forever is through a spiritual death.

This death is the baptism that the apostle Paul talked about–being baptized into His death, so that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we to can be raised to walk in a newness of life [ 1 ].  It is His resurrection in us that is our only hope  of transcending the grave.  For the only pay that we will receive in our old selfish life is a certain physical death.  “The wages of sin is death” [ 2].   So we need to die now and avoid the rush. 

Let’s get it done.  Many are teaching that you can never get rid of sin in your life.  Where does it say that?  I thought that “all things are possible with God.”  If it is “no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me,” then “Is Christ the minister of sin?  God forbid!” [ 3].  Let’s “present our bodies a living sacrifice,” for this is the reasonable thing to do in gratitude for all He has done for us [4 ].

Let’s identify our old self with the sin sacrifice of the Lamb of God.  He took on our sins on Himself on the tree, providing a way for us to be made free from the old sinful cravings and dark selfish actions that we were a slave to all our lifetime [ 5].  We are going to pay for our sinful selfish actions sooner or later.  He said we would.  The upside is that He has provided a way for us to take on His Life after we let our own selfish nature die on the cross.

Most have not heard this true message of what the cross is all about.  They are told that Christ is our substitute.  No, He is our example, and we are to follow His steps [6 ].  This “preaching of the cross” is just a bunch of foolishness to those who are dying in their sins, whether they know they are or not [ 7].  But to us who He is calling and choosing, it is an absolute lifeline, and it is the power of God to change lives.  It is the only way for us to complete what we have been put here on earth for.

What we are doing here

And what is that, you ask?  He is using an elect chosen few of His redeemed ones from all of humanity to reproduce Himself through [8].  He is going to take only those who have submitted themselves to the death of the cross;  He is taking them into His heart to reveal His very essence to them.  They will be in awe of Him and revere His name and will bow to His magnificence as He overshadows their earthly physical plight to do His immortal work on them and then through them.  Those who submit to Him will be changed into His glorious image as His own sons and daughters when He returns to this earth to set it all in order [9 ].  They will rule with Him and be in His inner circle while the rest outside wait for their word on the day’s business of the King’s Government.

Now that is the Life that He’s talking about.  To be His son or daughter, to be a prince or princess by His side as He trains us up to be rulers with Him in His kingdom soon to fill the whole earth.  That is the great destination, the wonderful reaping of our initial humble planting of ourselves into death with Him on the cross.  For “if we have been planted together with Him” into His death, we shall also be raised together with Him in His resurrection [ 10].

Dying with Him does not make sense to the world

Yes, dying with Christ is utter foolishness to the worldly mind.  But to us who He is calling and choosing, it is our ticket to the big show.  And we will be on the stage of this earth, together with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Noah and Job and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Peter and Paul and all of His sons and daughters who have followed Him in this death of self [11].  If He was good enough to literally and physically die for us, why then should we not spiritually die for Him and, better yet, allow Him to live out His life in us? 

In so doing we are then made free from sin.  And as we take in His Spirit into our new hearts through belief in His resurrection, sin shall not have dominion over us, for we are made free from it and its power over us [ 12].

But how?

It is just too simple and yet, too wonderful to just believe.  Our small, weak, finite minds fail to grasp just how to do this.  How do we get our old self to die and then receive a new life in Christ?  We have to just reckon it so.  We have to count it as a done deal.  He has.  He said that it was already done; the “works were finished” [ 13].  All we need to do is agree with Him and walk in this truth.  He said that our old man “is crucified  with Christ” [ 14].  Notice that is with an –ed, meaning that it is already done and over with in the past.  That’s how God looks at things; that is how his faith and belief works.  Now we need to believe what He believes about us.  It is His faith in His own power in our lives that is the key.  We just need to believe what and how He believes, and we will be changed into His image.  We are now alive unto Him who said that He has raised up all who believe Him [ 15].

Life out of death is the ultimate paradox.  The Savior said that very thing.  “He who seeks to save his life shall lose it.  He who loses his life for my sake shall save it” [ 16].  You will not hear this message in the vast majority of churches; they are trying to increase numbers–not lose membership.  For “few there be to find this way of truth” [17 ].  Yet, those to whom He is granting His grace and favor to at this time will hear this and they will respond and take their old self to the cross, thereby enabling the new man to grow into His likeness.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. Romans 6: 6
  2. Rom. 6: 23
  3. Galatians 17-20
  4. Rom. 12: 1
  5. II Corinthians 5: 21
  6. I Peter 2: 21
  7. I Cor. 1: 18
  8.  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/the-law-of-har…oduces-himself/
  9. II Cor. 3: 18
  10. Rom. 6: 5
  11. Matthew 8: 11; Luke 13: 2
  12. Rom. 6: 18, 22; 8: 2
  13. Hebrews 4: 3
  14. Gal. 2: 20
  15. Rom. 6: 11-13
  16. Mark 8: 35; Matt. 10: 39
  17. Matt. 7: 14

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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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