Category Archives: death of self

Wisdom Is the Principal Thing–Key to God’s Treasure House

     Those of us who are on this quest for immortality must have the key that unlocks the vault to God’s treasures.  He has left it in plain sight, for He wants us to find it.  That key is wisdom.

     “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom” (Proverbs 4:7).  We’ve got to get wisdom.  It is the main thing.  Why?  Because we cannot find God without it.  He didn’t say that we first need to come down to the front of a church building, go to meetings or tithe or jump through  manmade hoops.  We need wisdom, the key that unlocks God’s spiritual treasure house.

     Many people have tried to enter into the vaults of the  Supreme  Being where His treasures are stored.  Many  have  wanted  to  explore   the   unsearchable riches of Christ–without wisdom.  Many people have tried to clone the Messiah or make temples and buildings to please Him, without wisdom. Mankind sometimes uses interesting but futile chants, hums, repetitions, songs, shouts, “slayings-in-the-spirit” and the like, but the Almighty is not impressed by them. He seeks people to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

     Many have twisted the word “riches” to mean only money: filthy lucre, mammon, riches of this world that finance luxurious cathedrals midst the poverty,  wealth that  the  world  and  Satan  can  give  ( “I’ll  give you all the kingdoms of this world if…”).

     And yet, Wisdom personified cries to us, “Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness” (Prov. 18: 8).  The durable riches, those that will last, are with wisdom.  And the righteousness that will last and endure is with wisdom, as well.  In the end man will be destroyed “that made not God his strength; but trusted in the abundance of his riches…” Psalms 52:7-8. 

 

The True Riches

     So what are the true riches of God that comes with wisdom?  Paul said that “all the treasures of wisdom” are hid in Christ (Colossians 2:3).  After we get rid of our old selves on the cross, we then are “dead and our life is hid with Christ in God.”  We receive His Spirit in us.  We then have the opportunity to grow up spiritually into Him-walking-around-in-our-body! Which has now become His body!  Think about it: Us doing the same things that He did 2,000 years ago!  Christ did say that those “who believe on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works shall he do also” (John 14: 12).  

 

     That right there should put us in awe of our Creator–which, incidentally, is the very definition of “wisdom.”  More on this next time.  {This is from chapter one of my book, Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality found here:  http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/yahch1.htm )  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Filed under body of Christ, death of self, immortality, sons and daughters of God, Uncategorized, wisdom

“Baptized into His Death” Frees Us from Sin–The Doctrine of Baptisms

The early apostles’ taught their third doctrine–the “doctrine of baptisms” with an “s.”  For there are several baptisms in the Christian walk–not just the one with water.

The first baptism mentioned was John the Baptist’s “baptism unto repentance.”  He encouraged the people to repent of their sins, be baptized in water, thus pointing them to the Lamb of God, who would soon become the Sacrifice for all men’s sins.  “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I…he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Mt. 3:11).  Here we have three baptisms in one verse.

The baptism in water is symbolic of the death of our old sinful heart (see post on this at https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/baptismempty-ritual-or-symbol-of-death-of-self/ ).  Paul taught that it was symbolic of being immersed into Christ’s death.  “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?” (Romans 6: 3).

Just How Are We Immersed into Christ’s Death?

     Just before Christ died, this perfectly sinless man took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, past, present, and future.  Sin was transferred onto this sin offering, and He died with all our sins upon Him.  Consequently, when He died, my old self died.  When He died that day, our old selfish egos died.

When He was literally buried in the tomb, our old lives were buried.  Gone.  Over with.  And when He rose from the dead, we rose from the deadness of our sinful existence, into a brand new wonderful life, energized with God’s Spirit now within (for more on this, see “Introduction” of my book The Unveiling of the Sons of God  found at the top of this page).  All this has already been done for us by God.  We have to only believe it when we read it in Romans 6: 3-7 :

     “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.  If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.  For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.  Because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”

     We are now free from sin–if we really believe it.  Free!  We are no longer slaves to the pulls, urges, and demands of that old spiritual nature that held us in bondage to do sinful acts!  I’m talking about revolutionary freedom here!  We were dead to sin, but now we live unto God by faith in the Spirit that He has given us.

     Water baptism is just the symbol of this immersion into Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.  Believing and walking in this truth is the reality.  But God has promised his sons and daughters more and greater baptisms–the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of fire, which takes us into the very presence of God’s transformative power.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Filed under apostles' doctrine, baptism, death of self, repentance

“But Deliver Us From Evil”–From the Evil Within the Heart

     Evil comes in three sizes: the personal, the inter-personal, and the national/inter-national size.

     Christ is teaching us here in the “Lord’s Prayer” to ask the Father for deliverance from all evil, beginning with the evil that lurks within the heart of natural man.

     Christ spoke sharply about the spiritual state of those who do not have the Spirit of God within them–those who were not re-generated by His Spirit. 

     He exposed the religious hypocrites who asked Him why His disciples ate with unwashed hands and not “according to the tradition of the elders.”  He told them that it’s what comes out of the man that defiles the man, not what goes into the man.  “For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit…blasphemy, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:20-23).  In a word, these sins come from within the heart of the old nature.

     The prophet Jeremiah knew of the treachery of the old Adamic heart when he wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?

     This old heart is natural man’s dirty little secret; it is what propels people into doing evil things that they don’t really want to do (See ch. 27 of my book Yah-Is-Savior: The Road to Immortality at http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/yahch27.htm ).  The apostles call it “being a slave to sin.”

     Secular humanism, however, teaches that the human being, though flawed, inately has the answer to his own problems–already within himself.  It has made a man’s SELF his god!  It teaches that the human being is its own physician and savior. 

     But try as people may to clean up their old sinful self, eventually “the screaming blue monkey” crashes into their minds, demanding that they do what they know they shouldn’t, demanding that they take the path of darkness, a trail that leads them to guilty shadows of loneliness far from the light of the sun.  This monkey is the selfish little bastard-child ego, incessantly wanting to be worshipped by all.

     This evil presence in unregenerated human beings is not being dealt with in the vast majority of churches.  It is too raw of a confrontation.  And many lives are being destroyed “for lack of knowledge” of these things.

     It takes honesty and humility to take that old self to the cross.  This “personal evil” in one’s heart has to be crucified with Christ, or it will always flare up.  It must be recognized, renounced, hated, and crucified (in spiritual revelation).  Then buried with Him, and then raised with Christ’s Spirit now within, thereby becoming a new creature.  “He that is dead is freed from sin” (Romans 6:3-7) {See post “Love from Above–Down and Through” at https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/love-from-above-down-and-through/ }.

     The old heart and old spirit of man keeps God’s Spirit away, for He will not dwell in an “unclean temple.”  We are, after all, to be God’s temple.

     But God has provided us a way to do away with the personal evil within at the cross.  But other evils still exists.  And we are to pray to be delivered from them as well.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Filed under cross, crucified with Christ, death of self, old self, The Lord's Prayer

“Forgive Us Our Debts”–Love Is All We Owe

     We owe mankind only one thing–love.  In the “Lord’s Prayer,” Christ is teaching us that loving others is all that we should owe anyone.  As the princes and princesses of the King, we are held to that high standard.  Owe no man any thing, but to love one another (Romans 13:8).

     God the King is Love, and we His children are born of His nature, which is love (I John 4:8, 16).  Loving others, then, is how we pay our debts. 

     So when the Savior, in teaching us to pray, tells us to say, “And forgive us our debts,” He want us to mean this: Forgive us Father, for the times we didn’t love others the way You love them.  And when Christ instructs us to say, “As we forgive our debtors,” He wants us to mean this: Father, grant us a forgiving heart to all who do not love us as You love us.  He did tell us, “Forgive and it shall be forgiven you” (Luke 6:37).

     To love one another–this is one of the “new commandments” Christ gave us.  “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).

     Loving one another is the sign that God resides in us.  “If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (I John 4:12).  The caveat: we cannot love one another with the agape “love from above” if we do not have His Spirit within us.  Human love will only stretch so far and then it snaps ugly on somebody. 

     Love is the fruit produced from the sap (Holy Spirit) within us, the branches.  And we cannot be grafted in to the vine (Christ) until we go through the death, burial, and resurrection experience with Him {Read more on this in my book The Unveiling of the Sons of God at   http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/sonsintro.htm }.  We must be “raised to walk in a newness of life” through faith in God’s promise to give us a new heart and a new spirit if we put to death our old sinful self on the cross with Christ (6:1-6).  When we receive His Spirit into our hearts, then the love will start flowing down and through us to others (See post, “Love From Above, Down and Through” at https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/love-from-above-down-and-through/ ).

     The “debts” spoken of in the “Lord’s Prayer” is much more than money or material things.  It is spiritual love that we owe each other.  We owe mankind a heart of love in gratitude to God for the love He showed us by providing the Sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and thereby giving us a way to escape sin and corruption.  It is now about Him channeling Himself (Love) through us on out to others. 

     These things should be in mind when we pray to our Father, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”–The Bread of God

     We are to ask for the heavenly bread–not physical bread.  Christ told us specifically to not ask for food.  “Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it” (Luke 12:29, NIV). 

     Christ in the Lord’s Prayer tells us rather to ask the Father each day for the spiritual bread from heaven.  But what is it exactly?  Some churches believe that a round wafer is magically and     mystically turned into the body of Christ, the bread from heaven.  This practice is not found in the scriptures of truth.

     Christ gives a treatise on the heavenly bread in John 6.  The “true bread from heaven” was not manna which fell for the Israelites in the wilderness.  They all died.  But, My Father gives you the true bread from heaven (v. 32).  The spiritual “bread of God is He which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (v. 33).

     Physical bread is the staff of a physical life that ends.  But spiritual bread is the staff of the spiritual life that never ends.  This bread feeds the new inner spiritual man; it is our sustenance.

     Then Jesus (Yahshua) declares Himself to be that Heavenly Sustenance.  “I am the bread of life: he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst” (v. 34). 

     The key word here is “believes.”  It is believing on Him–that is how we partake of His Spirit.  You take into yourself what you believe.  You become what you believe.  You are what you eat. Believing Him and His word about who He is, and what He has done, and what He will do–this is what it’s all about.  Belief.  Belief is not a material thing.  It is a special invisible, spiritual thing.  To believe Him and what His name means is to eat of the spiritual bread from heaven.   

     He would later say that His body is the “bread of God” and encouraged us to eat it.  “Eat” here is to spiritually believe what transpired with His body–the death, burial, and resurrection.  He was saying that His flesh, His actual physical body was going to be presented as the one sacrifice that would purge our sins.  Believing this in truth is eating (taking in) this spiritual, true bread from heaven.

     “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” (v. 51).  Here we see him giving His physical body so that we could have immortality.

     He was teaching us to pray–not for ourselves with things for ourselves, food, material things.  No.  We are to ask for more of His Spirit, more faith, more belief of what He has done for us.  We should recall and thank Him for allowing our old nature to die with Him on the cross, to be buried with Him, and to be “raised to walk in a newness of life” with Him (Romans 6:3-7). 

     The words, Give us this day our daily bread, contain a profound lesson in our learning to pray.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Filed under belief, body of Christ, cross, death of self, immortality, Sacred Names, sons and daughters of God, Spirit of God, The Lord's Prayer

“Thy Kingdom Come”–The Gospel of the Kingdom of God

The true gospel is the good news of our Father’s government literally coming to fill the whole earth with His righteous ways.  

Christ in this section of the “Lord’s Prayer” teaches us the importance of the Father’s kingdom.  A kingdom is a literal form of government headed by a monarch.  He is the King.  Thy kingdom come…in earth as it is in heaven.  His kingdom already rules in heaven; shortly it will rule completely on earth. 

This is the good news proclaimed in the four gospels in the so-called “New Testament” of the Bible.  Many scriptures back this up.  “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15).  Believe what gospel?  The “gospel of the kingdom of God.”  He is saying, God’s government is here.  Because it is at hand, you need to repent from your old selfish life, and believe this good news of God ruling on earth. 

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14),  It is this gospel, this true gospel of the kingdom of God that must be proclaimed throughout the whole world before the end of the age will come.  The gospel that is going out now is another gospel of Christ–one of salvation, a salvation that usually does not include the death on the cross of the person’s old self (See Romans 6:6…( http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/yahch27.htm ).  Salvation is precious but it is just the first step.

In the next verse, Christ quotes the prophet Daniel concerning the end times.  In Ch. 2 Daniel saw the Father’s kingdom coming down out of heaven smashing the world system to pieces. 

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms.”  These are four literal, political, historical world governmental systems–Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome}.  At this present time we are seeing the last revival of the old Roman Empire.  Think “Euro, the EU”.  We are coming to the end of “the days of these kings.”  “Thy kingdom come.”

To God’s faithful, this collapse of the present world system is “good news.”  To others it will be “bad news.”  Good or bad, the Father’s Kingdom is coming in a fullness.

We, then, should pray with this grand and glorious vision that Christ had, when He taught His disciples to pray.  A vision of an earth free from corruption and cruelty–free from addiction and selfishness–free from hunger and desperation–free from greedy leaders who cast the poor in chains of lies and deceit–free from husbands and wives betraying those who love them the most–free from broken-hearted children thrown out like trash by selfish parents–free from the evil that rapes and pillages every soul on earth–

This is the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  This is the good news that will fill the earth when Christ comes back and sits down on the throne of our invisible Father.  And His sons and daughters will sit alongside Him in His kingdom right here on earth.  And He will dispatch us His princes and princesses out into the ravished earth to rebuild and restore what the evil ones wasted.

“Thy kingdom come” evokes much about the glorious vision God has for His earth.  We need to pray toward this end.  He told us to not ask for things for ourselves, but rather, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock  

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Baptism: Empty Ritual or Symbol of “Death of Self”?

     “Why were you baptized?”  a survey taker asks, cornering us with his microphone and camera.  Most of us would have to say, “Because they told me I should do it.” 

     Question 2: “What does baptism mean exactly?”   Here most of us would scratch our heads and say, “Well, I’m not sure.  The minister and congregation were very supportive, and I feel that it was the right thing to do.”

     But the right thing for us to do is to “dig deep and build our house on the rock,” as Christ admonished us to do.  We dig deep by digging into the letter that He has left us, the scriptures of truth. 

     Baptism is an outward symbolic action of an inward, spiritual, and transformational happening.     The meaning of baptism is laid out in Romans 6:3-11.  “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death” (v. 3).  We are immersed into His death.

     Water baptism is a symbol of us identifying our old self dying with Christ, being buried with Christ, and being raised up with Christ.  It is where we identify our old sinful self with the Lamb of God, our sin sacrifice.  “He was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” 

     When He died, my old self died.  When He was buried, my old evil nature was buried.  When He was raised from the dead, I  was raised from the dead!  Hey, this is not just my testimony; it is all of His children’s testimony. 

     And baptism in water is a symbol showing the world and God how we are regenerated. 

     How is this transformation done?  By faith, which is having assurance of its reality before we actually see it with our own eyes.  We have to reckon it so through God’s power.  “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God” (v. 11).  God has already reckoned the death of our old self and our resurrection with Him.  Why shouldn’t we reckon it so?

     Baptism is a symbol of our transformation into being right with Him.  We are now free from sin.  “For he that is dead is freed from sin.  We are now the children of the light, having escaped darkness.

     God’s sons and daughters, His princes and princesses, shall see through the empty rituals of Churchianity.  They will shine forth as lights “in the midst of a wicked and perverse nation.”  Their clarity of vision will help them sift through the barren sands of man’s traditions to ultimately find the “one pearl of great price.”     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If this has been helpful, make a comment and/or pass it on to someone you care about.  I would love to hear from you.  You can read more about this in Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality, Ch. 28Click the Blogroll “Yahweh Is the Savior” link to your right]

 

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God’s Desire: To Reproduce Himself–in Us

     In the last post we saw that the Creator has a will that will prevail.  His will is His desire or His wish for His creation, humankind.  Humans are strongwilled; most desire things for number one.  And their number one usually is not God, although it should be.  If we have any other desire for what is to happen in our bodies, other than what He wants, we struggle against His wishes.  This is where frustration comes from. 

          What is his desire for us His crown of creation?  He has magnificent plans to actually reproduce Himself in us!  Nothing less.  Let me repeat this important point.  According to the prophets and apostles who wrote the scriptures of truth, what God wants is that He magnify Himself in a “body of many sons” and daughters.  All the other religious catch-words that we have heard like “salvation,” “faith,” “hope”–these are facets of the diamond, but reproducing Himself in His people–this is the precious gemstone of truth as to what God is doing.

     It is up to us to get into the flow of the Creator’s desire and wish.  To do this, we must relinquish our meager little desires, putting our old spiritual nature on the cross and die with Christ (Romans 6:6).  We must spiritually sacrifice our selfish desires and take on His desire, which is to use us as His temple, His dwelling place on this earth.  Then we must bury our old self with Christ in the grave, identifying our sinful core with the sin sacrifice that He made for us.  And then, by believing that He was literally raised bodily from the dead after three days and three nights in the tomb, we, too, “can walk in a newness of life.”  He arose; we arose.  This is first step in becoming a new creature in Christ.

     We, then, “as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word” so that we can grow up into Him until “Christ be formed in you” and I.  Wow!  In His eyes we are already there.  He sees us as His sons and daughters, His princes and princesses, His future kings and queens in His soon-coming kingdom.  That is a big wish, a big desire, a big will, a big heart.

     God’s not messing around.  He is calling out a body of sons and daughters that will lead the way for the rest of humankind.  And “whosoever will may come.” 

     What can we do to be of service to Him and His wishes?  First, we need to surrender to Him and His will, desire, wish.  And in due time He will grow up in us, and He will speak through us as He did in the prophets of old.  His Spirit will flow down and in and through us out to others, and He will multiply Himself by “bringing many sons unto glory.” 

     We just need to get with His program.  If we are on the same page as He, then we can ask what we will, and He will grant it.  Why?  Why wouldn’t He answer the prayer of one of His children who is asking for more of His Spirit so that His wishes can be carried out.

   It’s all in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heaven.”  That’s one prayer that will be answered.  It’s going to be done.  We need to search it out and do it.

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Untraceable: A Movie Review with a Christian Perspective

   Let’s see.  You take a computer wiz with a grudge against a society that he feels doesn’t care.  Then watch the geek’s hatred transform himself into a serial torturer/murderer/exhibitionist.  Yes, he puts the horror live on his website for all the world to see.  The catch?  The more the masses clamor to see the victims writhing in agony, the quicker the death comes.

     The killer says to one of his victims, “I’m not killing you.  The people clicking on to the website are to blame.  If no one wanted to view your death, then you wouldn’t be dying today.”  The cruel madman seems to take more of a sadistic pleasure in implicating society in the murders than the killings themselves.

     Diane Lane plays Jennifer Marsh, a recently widowed FBI cyber-agent who tracks down internet criminals, and, of course, gets heavily involved in this particular case.

En route to the predictable ending, we must endure three slow, gruesome murders.  We viewers of this movie are not alone for 15,000,000 people in the movie click on and view it with us as we see the counter rushing the poor victims to oblivion.

     I was reminded of the gruesome games during the era of the Roman Empire.  Christians and other innocents were fed to the lions in the Colliseum and other venues.  The Roman citizens were guilty of the blood of these martyrs, for they gawked and cheered and revelled at the slaughter.  And yet, I am sure that if they had been asked about the spectacle as they strolled home, the Romans would protest their innocence.  Reading the emails of those who watched the live streaming video of these deaths, one got the same thought.

     Untraceable.  The killer thought that his deeds were undetectable.  He worked diligently at covering his cybertracks.  He put up an effective front, slipping back into “normal” society when convenient.  He was the ultimate hypocrite and deceiver.

     “The heart is deceitfully wicked above all things; who can know it?” the prophet asks, knowing the old heart of natural man.  Many humans think that their thoughts and deeds are untraceable and undetectable, hidden from the eyes of the Creator.  Because people cannot see the invisible Spirit God, they think that He can’t see them.  It’s the ultimate self-projection and self-delusion.  In their lofty imaginations, they think that He can’t see them do their shameful selfish acts.

     But all will “give an account of every idle word,” for God “is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”  And we’ll all stand before Him someday to answer for all the deeds done in our body, which actually is designed by Him to be His temple, His residence.  For some, there will great weeping and gnashing of teeth while those who got right with Him through the “death of self” will shine as the sun.

     Untraceable?  No.  Our deeds and thoughts are most detectable.  We humans cannot hide from the eyes of God.                        Kenneth Wayne Hancock

(If this review was helpful, please leave comment and/or send it to your friends)

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