Category Archives: eternal life

With Him in the Beginning–Out of His Treasure Things New and Old

   The elect of God were with Christ in the beginning. How can that be seeing that we are encased in flesh walking around this old planet earth in the year of our Lord 2014?

Yet Christ did say and the apostle John did record this, “And you also shall bear witness because you have been with Me from the beginning” (John 15: 27). With Him from the beginning. Which beginning? Some will argue that He meant since the beginning of the Christian walk. But the Greek word arche, #G756 in Strong’s, rendered “beginning” in the above quote, also appears fifteen chapters earlier. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God…and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…” (John 1: 1-2, 14). That was before our Christian walk.

   The word translated “beginning,” arche, equals in the Greek language “the absolute beginning of all things…” It is that in “which anything begins to be, the origin, the active cause” (http://www.blbclassic.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G746&t=KJV). Arche is that sacred spiritual matrix through which all springs. And so the Holy Scriptures relate an absolutely precious secret in that in this “beginning of all things,” a group of beings–now incarnated, now redeemed and bought back out of the degradation of sin–were actually with Christ in the beginning! That is what it says.

   How does that tie in with us, we may ask? When we partake of His Spirit, we are drinking into what we had with Him in the beginning. His Spirit in us transforms us day by day into what we were when we were with Him back then. We are restored by faith, back to that relationship we had with Him before the worlds were ever formed. Before the earth was ever made, before the seven day creation week, before the sabbath day was instituted–we, His children, were there with him in spirit.

   For what are we really without Him? Our bodies without His presence within are so much earth and dust. When we receive a portion of His Spirit, we receive into these earthly shells a spark of the divine One.

   He who was from the beginning now takes up His abode in our earthly bodies, and the only “I” now is His Anointed One (Christ) in us. For after our own cross experience with Him, it is no longer the old selfish “I” that lives, “but it is Christ that lives in me.”

   As we continue to walk this way, we can pray as Christ prayed, “Father, glorify me with the glory I had with You before the world ever began” (John 17:5).

We Must Go Back

    But we must go back, back, back into time–before the temporal, before the temporary shackles of our earthen bodies, before the clamor of the flesh’s demands and desires, before the worlds were ever slung into their ethereal pinnings–when we sat around with our Father, rejoicing with Him about the beauty of His plan, “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38: 7).

    We must go back there, before Satan was ever commissioned by the Father to be the “accuser of the brethren.” Before Satan became the prince and power of the air, sent down to try us and force us ultimately back to our Father for deliverance.

   For we have all strayed like sheep away from our Shepherd. We have strayed from the spiritual pastures we had with Him before He created the pastures of earth. When we return and let Him gather us and restore us back into His heavenly-minded fold, then we will know what it means to have “our conversation in heaven.”

 Passing the Test

    When we walk in this truth–that we were with Him in the beginning–then we have passed the test–the test to see if we will believe the lie that we are only animal and not children of God, or believe the truth that we are only temporarily in a mortal state before our change to immortality comes.

   This is the crux of the matter. When we are stripped of everything and reduced to our lowest state, do we believe that we are His spiritual children, with all the rights and responsibilities, or do we believe the lie? For this lie must be refuted by our walk on earth. Others must see “our good works and glorify the Father.” They will see that, yes, there is a God, for only God can shine the light of joy and love through a person like that.

   Why This is Hard to Believe

   The children of God were with their spiritual Father in the beginning, so declares the holy scriptures. This message is difficult to receive when a person, dwelling on the earth and its pulls, is full and fat, and is “doing great,” and is living high-on-the-hog.

   He has need of nothing, he thinks. But he does not know that as a selfish earthbound mortal, he is really blind to the heavenly way. He is wretched in his blindness to spiritual matters, for he can never be happy being earthly-minded. He is poor, for he lacks the Spirit that was in the beginning. And he is naked, strutting blindly on the earth, willingly ignorant of the truth about what is really happening “on earth as it is in heaven” (Rev. 3: 17).

   And the only thing that will wake up God’s people to Him is that He allows the engineering of an economic fall–one that will strip the toys and gadgets from the lost sheep of the House of Israel. In the Old Testament stories, it was always an economic collapse brought on by crooked politicians that finally pierced through the hard hearts. When they became destitute, “then they cried unto the LORD (Yahweh).”

   And He heard them and came down by making His Presence known to a prophet, who in turn, led His people away from the moral and spiritual abyss and led them back “to the beginning”–back to the pastures of the Father’s heart.

 How to Get Back to the Beginning with Him

    We will be restored back to what we had with Him in the beginning. How? We believe that we receive His Spirit–after we surrender our old self on the cross and let it die with Christ, who was the sin sacrifice (Romans 6: 1-6). This is the first step. Then through just believing God and His love granting us a new life, heart, and spirit, we begin to walk in this new life–His Life now incarnated in us.

    We believe that His Spirit within us now cauterizes eventually all connections to our earthly past. And then by faith (belief), we leave the bars and chains of earthly thinking with its negative demands, and we begin to walk in the Spirit, in the spiritual state that we  already “had with Him before the world began.” For the truth is that we were with Him in the beginning. The “We” here is the portion of His Spirit that we are now, not our earthly body.

For after receiving Christ, anything we are is “new” to our current earthly reality, but “old” in that our new existence in Christ is one we shared with Him before time as we know it began.

A person instructed in the Kingdom of God will, consequently, “bring forth out of his treasure things new and old” (Matt. 13: 52). The “old” is our spiritual relationship we had with Him before our earthly sojourn began. The “things new” is living now through His Spirit within our hearts–right now here on earth.

This sin-free spiritual walk in Christ is “new” and rare, for few have been priveleged to glimpse this; few have been given the eyesalve to anoint the earthen eyes that they may see.        Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes–A Eulogy

This solemn occasion, in which we gather to bury this loved one, brings the age old question to mind: How do we deal with death?  To be human is to have pondered this inevitable enigma.  The death of someone close to us hurls us into thoughts about our own mortality.  Death is that lonely part of the human journey, the ticket to that solitary ride into the mysterious cosmos and the life beyond.

Death, and how to deal with it, is one of the great themes of literature.  It is the constant concern that motivates thinkers, writers, and philosophers to dive into the depths of the human condition.

We want to know what follows this fragile earthly existence.  What really happens?  Not what this man says nor what that group claims, but what really transpires.  What is the truth concerning that first step beyond this dimension?

Being Christians, we will look to the bestseller of all time, the Holy Bible.  We will look to the ancient Hebrew patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and the Savior Himself for our answers.

What did they say about death?  Not what someone said they said, but what words did they actually write down to explain to us about this experience called death?  Moses reports to us that the LORD (Yahweh in the Hebrew) said to the fallen Adam, “In the sweat of thy face shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground, for out of it were you taken.  For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3: 19).  Later in Genesis, Abraham said, Look at me.  Here I am about to speak to Yahweh my Creator, and I am only “dust and ashes” (18: 27).  King David says to God, “You have brought me into the dust of death.”

And some say that that is all there is.  We are born; we walk around the earth for a moment in time; we laugh; we cry, and then we cease to be.  But according to the Hebrew authors of the Bible, that is only half of the story.

Yes, our bodies are composed of dust and ashes.  But another very special ingredient must be added.  Take the dust, mix it with water, and add the special spark of the spirit through the miracle of the Master’s touch, and you have the human being–what the apostle Paul called, “the glory of God.”

“There is a spirit in man…”

The prophet Job confirms this when he writes, “There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives man understanding” (32: 18).  Inside this miraculously fashioned body of dust lies a spirit given to us by our Creator through which He enlightens us.  Job goes on and says that God speaks to us “in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then God opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction, that God may withdraw man” from his own purpose, and hide pride from man.”

God reaches out to us as we walk “through this valley of the shadow of death.”  Job later explains how our “soul draws near to the grave.”  Then God says to his messengers, “Deliver them from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.”

God promises to restore us to our youth if we say to our Maker, “I have sinned, and perverted that which is right…then He will deliver us from going to the pit, and his life shall see the light” (Job 33: 15-28).

Hope in the Resurrection

Who will deliver us from the grave?  2,000 years before the Savior walked the streets of Jerusalem, Job wrote, “For I know that my Redeemer lives,  and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth,” and though my body be destroyed, “yet in my flesh shall I see God” (18: 25-26).

The prophet Daniel confirmed this hope of life after our earthly body passes away.  Michael the archangel told him that the resurrection will take place after the great “time of trouble” that will befall the earth in the latter days.  At that time your people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.  And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12: 1-2).

So, there it is.  In these few passages, we see a resurrection that will lift us up out of the dust of our graves.   The resurrection is our only hope, and that hope hinges on our Redeemer and Savior.  Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
It is now left up to us the living to seek out and find our own way with our Maker.  It is a personal thing.  We all must find the path that leads out of the dust and ashes of death and be reconciled with God.  We can help each other, of course, but we cannot “walk that lonesome valley” for someone else.

And so, now, we commend Scott Kenneth Hancock’s spirit back to the Heavenly Father from whence it came, and in fulfillment of scripture, we place his dust and ashes back into the earth from whence it came.

May God’s grace and mercy help us all on our journey back to the heart of God.  Amen.

[Remembering my Dad with these words spoken over his grave ten years ago.]        Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Immortality–Bringing “Life and Immortality to Light”

To live on.  To not have to die.  It is the common thread tying almost all cultures, religions and philosophies together.  Is it not what every nation has clamored for?

The furtive longings of a billion souls from a thousand civilizations have whispered their desire for it.  The baked clay tablets of Mesopotamia speak of it.  Fragments of Egypt’s fragile papyrus pages still share the dream.   The Gilgamesh Epic of Babylonia around 2,200 B.C. chronicles the hero’s quest for immortality.  The ancient Greeks thought that immortality was attained through courageous effort on the battlefield.  Shakespeare imagined immortality coming through the longevity of the lines he wrote.  The Philosopher’s Stone, with its lead-into-gold alchemic dream, symbolized transcending our leaden mortal existence into a golden immortal elixir of life and rejuvenation.  Time would fail us to include the Egyptians’ mummies, the Indians’ nirvana, and on down to our present day where actors and directors try to immortalize themselves in celluloid.

Each of these attempts have flickered and failed.  But the thirst for immortality will not be quenched.  Is it not the most important possession one could ever attain in this life?  To live on and silence the tears shed at your passing.  To trump and triumph over Death.  To laugh at Death’s rude intrusion into all you hold dear.  To negate Death’s mayhem.  To expose him to be a liar when he says that your expiration date is a welcomed conclusion to the human condition, and his boast that he is a friend to the infirm and decrepit.

And Then a Man Came on the Scene

Though a universal longing, all these attempts have collapsed in the dusty halls of darkness.  And then a man came on the scene some 2,000 years ago–a man said to have “brought life and immortality to light.”  He brought good news, announcing the way to conquer death.  He would know, for He defeated Death.  For He was raised from the dead Himself after “three days and three nights” in the grave, seen by hundreds of witnesses.

“After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1: 3, NIV).  He taught them during that time how to become citizens of His immortal kingdom.  In a word, He taught them how to become immortal.  He, of course is the Savior of mankind, known to the English speaking world as Jesus Christ and known to those very early disciples as Yahshua, which means in the Hebrew, Yah is the Savior.

He shared His Hebrew name with the Hebrew patriarch Joshua, the Anglicized rendition of Yahshua.  Many biblical scholars admit that their names are interchangeable [http://www.blbclassic.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G2424&t=KJV].

In fact, the angel of Yahweh told Joseph to name Him  “Yah is Savior” because “He shall save His people from their sins.”

The Words He Spoke…

Now many have a problem with Him, but all that know of Him will at least say that He is a wise man, a great teacher, and a prophet.  If He was such a great prophet and spiritual teacher, then why don’t those same people believe His words?

And it is the words He spoke about life and immortality that tests us in our search.

What did He teach?  He taught us that the Father Creator is an invisible Spirit, that He is Love, that the Father has a kingdom and a government, that there is a way to enter that kingdom of God and become the children of the Father God, and that He and only He is the way to eternal life, which is immortality.

He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No man comes to the Father but by Me” (John 14: 6).  Anybody who comes up another way is a “thief and a robber.”

He also taught a duality–that there was an enemy Satan, who has a kingdom here on earth, and that he and his evil spirits are warring against God and His children’s kingdom.

Christ taught that sin is the breaking of the Ten Commandments (I John 3: 4-6).  And we humans break the law early on in our lives because of the old nature we are born with.  And He taught that it is this sin nature in us that causes our death.  We are mortal because of the sin within our hearts.  Sin brings on death.  Plain and simple.  “But you know that He appeared so that He might take away our sins. And in Him is no sin” (v. 5).

“He shall save His people from their sins,” said the angel.  He “takes away our sins,” says the apostle John.  So if Christ takes our sins away, then we are free from sin, which opens up the way to immortality because it is sin that brings on our death.

Summing up, Christ “has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light” (II Tim. 1: 10).  He has “abolished death.”  He has abolished death by abolishing sin in our lives, and thus, He brings immortality to us.

He came to “save His people from their sins” by destroying sin in their lives.  But how does He do this?  It is through His death, burial and resurrection.  He took on our sins upon His sacrificial body, and He died.  He died, we died; our old sinful self died.  He was buried; we were buried.  He raised from the dead; we are raised from the dead–by faith in His resurrection [for much more on how He takes away our old sinful heart, see Romans 6: 1-12 and https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/life-out-of-death-the-ultimate-paradox/ ].

So the Savior destroyed the sin in our life, and thereby destroyed death, thus bringing “life and immortality to light.”  He destroyed sin and death, “for the wages of sin is death.”  Destroy sin and you destroy its after effects–death.

But He also said that most would not comprehend and do His teachings.  He said that broad is the way that leads to destruction and many will enter that wide gate.  But narrow is the way to eternal life, and few will find it.

And that last clause–“and few will find it”–should give us great pause.  He said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  Oh, to be one of His chosen, chosen to sit with Him on His throne, helping Him rule the nations during the greatest reign of peace this earth has ever seen–ruling alongside of Him for 1, 000 years, ruling as one of the immortal princes and princesses in His kingdom.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Patience–Enduring the “Sufferings of This Present Time”

As the sons and daughters of God, we are to add certain spiritual attributes of God’s “divine nature.”  This is how we become “partakers of His divine nature” (II Peter 1: 4-7).  This assures our inheritance as His sons and daughters. These attributes are added in sequence–in layers, if you will.  To our faith we add virtue, and then knowledge onto it.  Then we add temperance to that knowledge.  Then we add patience onto the temperance.

Patience.  Patience.  Oh, how we all need patience in this hurry-scurry world!  This world that careens through our conscious hours robs us of this important godly essence–patience.  The swirling, rushing pace of our 21st Century lives conspire against us in our search for truth.  Patience is needed to even read this simple article on patience.

For all that we see and hear is temporary.  We will be able to temper the appetites of our earthly bodies more easily when we realize how transitory–how utterly perishable our bodies are.  When we believe this and wholeheartedly acknowledge the need for God’s promise of our immortal house from heaven, we will more easily shift our focus from the temporary to the eternal.

The Next Step in Adding the Divine Nature

And that next step is adding patience to the temperance.  But in order to add patience, which is the ability to endure the sufferings of Christ, we must understand just what those sufferings are.  Paul speaks of them when he writes, “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8: 18).  This “glory” is, of course, that destiny of God’s elect after they have grown spiritually to full maturity, which is the evidence of them partaking of the divine nature.

But those “sufferings” spoken of by the apostle is the sojourn we are experiencing in these mortal earthly bodies.  For “we have this treasure [of the Spirit] in earthen vessels” (II Cor. 4:7).  And that is the root of our current spiritual problem.  Our bodies are, alas, mere temporary bottles holding the water of the Spirit.

“This present time” in which these sufferings are being endured is our time now  in our earthly bodies.  Our perishable fragile mortal bodies will too soon return to dust.  Now is our time of waiting with long patience, trusting God will deliver us from the long sleep that awaits us, tucked in dust in the tomb of the earth.

Temporarily housed in our earthly tabernacles at “this present time,” we have a universal thirst that yearns to be quenched.  And that desire is to live on.  And whether cognizant of it or not, we are waiting in “earnest expectation…for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8: 19).

And so we who have a portion of His Spirit, for a dry season at present, find ourselves trapped in a shell that will die soon.  And so we wait for our forerunners, the sons of God to be unveiled first, for they are the firstfruits.  And so we are waiting for these offspring of the Almighty to come onto the scene.

For they will give His other children great hope when they are seen striding this earth–a hope that they, too, can be “delivered from the bondage of corruption,” which is the cruel slavery that our present mortal bodies inflict on us in our new spiritual journey.

Slaves to Our Own Mortality

Our earthly bodies are decaying as they grow older each day, and we are not free to ascend and descend at will.  We are on a timetable, slated to expire, most likely before the age of 80–whether we want to or not.  That’s slavery; that’s being in bondage to our own mortality.  That is the “bondage of corruption.”  In the earthly sense, we are slaves to our own decay and impending death.

In our youth we were not aware of this impending decay of our earthly body.  Hence, we thought ourselves invincible and immortal.  But as we get older and see our bodies deteriorate, we see that we become the slaves to our own bodily limitations.  We begin to admit that we cannot do what we once did.  Our age, brought on by the ravages of time, becomes our master and limits us and dictates to us what we can and cannot do.  This is the “bondage of corruption.”

Aging is the accumulation of many miles and years on the human body.  Aging is that onerous sign announcing our impending physical passing.  But this daily physical decay of our bodies does not work on our spirits.  We can take heart in this, that “though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day” (II Cor. 4: 16).  And this renewing is the “partaking of the divine nature,” the adding to our faith of which we speak.

So why death?

And so we ask God, Why do we have to die?  Why give us a mortal body, God?  Why subject us to all this suffering?  The short answer: God created us “subject to vanity.”  He deliberately subjected us to mortality in hope that we would be delivered into immortality.  He made us to suffer this mortal existence in hope that we would seek Him, who is Life Himself, and in so doing find eternal life, which is the fulfillment of His promise to them who seek Him and love Him.

God has dangled death ever before us so that we would seek Him.  He reasoned that our looming demise would spur us to seek Him for answers to our dilemma.  Surely we would call on Him, the Giver of Life, to help us solve this problem of mortality if we were confronted with the sadness of first, the loss of loved ones and then, finally, ourselves.

God provided a law ingrained into the universe, as sure as gravity, that if we seek Him for the truth, we would find it.  “Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you,” Christ promised (Matt. 7: 7).

And so, confronted by the sufferings of our mortal worries, we turn to God.  And His words resound through the ages to our hearts and tell us the answer to the riddle of our faint existence.  He tells us that He is the Fount from which the blessing of immortality flows.  And it starts with believing in the resurrection of His Son.  And latching onto that faith in Him begins our own new life, ending in the complete inheritance of a new spiritual body that will swallow up this old earthly one (I Cor. 15).

He seems to be saying, Surely when they see my Son arise from the dead, they will turn to Me in great hope that My resurrection power will one day raise them up as well.

His resurrection is our hope to escape the dusty tombs of death.  And yet, the sufferings continue.  And as He teaches us and helps us to endure all things, we add patience.  For patience is that part of God’s nature that endures.  It lasts.  And as we continue our sojourn in these earthly vessels, He grants to us patience by infusing us with experiences that helps us endure, that gives us rather things to endure.

Yes, “tribulation worketh patience” or “suffering produces endurance” (Rom. 5: 3).  Earthly wisdom shuns all sufferings.  The wisdom from above prescribes it.  That is why He allows us to suffer–so that we can become like Him.  For He planned those very steps of suffering for Himself, and if we want to be His sons and daughters, we must suffer with Him.  That’s a tough one.  That is why “few are chosen” (Matt. 22: 14).  Those chosen are the elect, and they will submit to the plan along with its sufferings, much like those chosen for our Special Forces endure the sufferings that the training entails.  It all comes with the territory.  To reign with Him we must suffer with Him (II Tim. 2: 12).   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Add to Knowledge Temperance–On Being Puffed Up

Someone on this earth will sit down on the throne of God alongside our Savior and will be a ruler in the government that the King will establish in all the earth.  In fact, a whole company of over comers have been “predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8: 29).  Fully matured, they will stride this crippled earth after the Great Tribulation.  In God’s stead as His ambassadors of the literal Kingdom of Heaven will they rule with Him, for they will have His Spirit fully developed within them.  These are the “partakers of the divine nature” who will do the King’s business after the disasters that will smite the earth.

“No man takes this honour unto himself” (Heb. 5: 4).  It is God’s doing.  He has a plan and He is quite capable of helping them carry out His own plan.  And that plan and purpose is to share Himself with His creation.  He is Love, and all Love can do is love and share and give.

Those of us who have been called to this “high calling of God in Christ” have been left a textbook explaining how to receive immortality.  We now are in the process of studying it and taking it to heart.  We need this instruction in order to receive the proper training and education to be an effective ruler with Christ in the soon coming Kingdom of Heaven right here on earth.  That textbook is found in the “scriptures of truth,” the Holy Bible, which is God’s letter to us, a guidebook He showed to His prophets and apostles.  And He is now showing it to us who believe, who have faith.

Adding to our faith

The apostle Peter instructs those of us who have been called to “partake of the divine nature” (II Peter 1: 3-4).  He relates that God  promised us immortality, and it is by these promises, that we can get rid of our old sinful nature and receive His divine nature.   And God’s nature grows and matures in us to the point that in the end, it will be all Him.  The divine nature grows in us through receiving more true knowledge of Him and His plan.  And part of that is the additions to our faith.

“Add to knowledge temperance”

The apostle Paul wrote that “knowledge puffs up, but charity (agape love) edifies” (I Cor. 8: 1).  This puffing up is the sound of an inflated ego that has no place to go with the knowledge; there is no desire to flow the knowledge on out to others.  Agape love, conversely, flows out of its heart of love and shares and builds up fellow Christians, helping them in their walk with God.

The novice in Christ will get the bighead after gaining some of the true knowledge of God.  There is an innate tendency in the old nature of man and spiritual babes in Christ to have one’s pride inflated upon receiving this knowledge, which has “been kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 13: 35).

This knowledge flows out of the mind and heart of God and sheds light on the very mysteries of the acquisition of immortality.  This information is precious–so rare and fine a treasure, in fact, that “few there be that find it” (Matt. 7: 14).  A beautiful four lane highway is leading many to destruction.  “But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it” (v. 14 NLT).

Knowledge of these things will puff a person up.  Why?  Because they are still thinking that they are the object of God’s blessing and not the channel of it.

Therefore, knowledge of the holy things must have temperance added to it.  Self control must be added.  And the major lesson we must learn is that our little powerless self did not come up with this knowledge on its own.  It was not delivered to us for any great thing that we are or have done.  No.  It is pure grace flowing out of God’s heart to us.  It is all Him, favoring and having “mercy on whom He will have mercy” (Rom. 9: 15).  It is all Him.  It is our privilege to be a channel of this knowledge on out to His people.

Beware of False Teachers

Paul warns in another place about getting “puffed up” by knowledge.  He warns new Christians not to get entangled by men who teach a  “philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ (Col. 2: 8).

He is saying that men will deceive young Christians through all kinds of worldly earthly thoughts.  But Christ is all you need, which is knowledge about who He is and what He has done for His people.

“You are complete in Him” (v. 10).  You don’t need mumbo jumbo bells and whistles and gimmicks of worship, as it were.  “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily.”  And through His sacrifice of Himself, you have been circumcised spiritually.  His Spirit invisibly cuts out your old sinful Adamic nature, and He gives you a new heart.  “Buried with Him by baptism, wherein also you are risen with Him through the  faith of the operation of of God, who has raised Him from the dead (v. 11-12).

False teachers are “puffed up”

One who teaches false doctrines tries to “beguile you,” and is “vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” (Col. 2: 18).  Remember that they “come to you in sheep’s clothing.”  They appear as “messengers of light.”  They have a little smidgeon of truth, and it has puffed them up as they imagine vain things about God and ways to worship Him.

How does a false teacher or preacher first go astray?  He gets all “puffed up by his fleshly mind.”  “Fleshly” here is from the Greek word sarx.  It is a mind controlled by the “flesh” (sarx).  This denotes the old nature, natural thinking man, unregenerate man.  He has an earthly mind.  “He that is of the earth is earthly, and speaks of the earth; he that comes from heaven is above all…for He whom God hath sent speaks the words of God” (John 3: 31, 34).

The phrase “of the earth” points to the same origins as Adam in the garden, made of the dust of the earth, clueless as to the heavenly destiny for mankind.  These false teachers are puffed up with a bit of God’s knowledge, yet remain Spirit-less when it comes to the truth of God.

So, yes, temperance must be added to knowledge.  This entails, of course, self-control in all areas of a Christian’s life.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Add to Virtue Knowledge–The Additions to Your Faith

We have seen that some Christians are called to “go on unto perfection.”  These are the elect, the ones chosen by God to be “a kind of first fruits” of His glory.  They are the trailblazers into that spiritual country of immortality and will serve as princes and princesses in God’s soon coming kingdom that will subdue all of man’s governments and will fill the whole earth.

We have seen that these sons and daughters of God will not be content with “playing church,” but will forge ahead in study and prayer, searching for that hidden wisdom of God.  They are the ones who are searching for “a better [country], that is, an heavenly” one.  They are on a quest to enter into the heavenly New Jerusalem that will come down here to earth and will be the habitation of immortals, who are those who have spiritually matured.

They will understand that to fully partake of the “divine nature,” they will have to go beyond that initial flush of faith we Christians have all experienced.  These will see that the full spiritual maturity  calls for additions to their faith.  Just possessing in one’s heart a strong conviction that God is real and working in one’s life is not the nutrient that will foster the spiritual growth, which leads to the harvest called “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

And make no mistake, brethren, glorification is where the elect are heading.  It is in the mind of God; it is already done in His books.  We need to embrace this truth and make the necessary sacrifices that will bring about this maturity.

We have seen that in order to go on with Him on this path, we must add certain spiritual attributes to our faith.  Peter tells us to “add to your faith virtue,” which is that quality that helps us be proactive and not passive in this walk.  Virtue is that warlike energy that takes the fight to the enemy.  It gets us off the couch and into the fray.  It is the very strength and power of God’s Spirit [For more see these two articles   https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/add-to-your-faith-virtue-gods-strength-and-power-2-peter-1-5/   https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/the-additions-to-your-faith-prerequisites-of-receiving-immortality/ ].

Adding knowledge to virtue

The second addition to the faith is adding knowledge to virtue.  God does not want us running out there cutting and slashing with the “sword of the Spirit” at just any old thing that pops up.  Nor does He want us to be gullible and believe everything we hear about God.  We must have knowledge added to the zeal.

Many “little children” of God, energized with their new found faith, want to get out there and change the world.  So they rush out and tell everyone they meet about their experiences in God.  This universal reaction comes out of a heart that means well.  But like Paul says, “They have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10: 2).

There is a “knowledge” then that young Christians need to be in agreement with.  If we strike out on our new found Christian walk without this knowledge that the apostle refers to, then we will wander off onto a path that detours us away from the road to the celestial city.

Some detours

What are some of these detours?  They are imaginations; they are false teachings about the plan and purpose of God.  The apostles and prophets continuously warn us about not believing false teachers and preachers.

One detour takes an unsuspecting young Christian to “Neverland.”  It is the mythical concept that just accepting Christ grants us a ticket to heaven and not to the bad place.  They are promised by their teachers that they will go to heaven and stay in heaven forever with God.  That’s about it.  They are never told that Christ is coming back here to earth–what a stupendous event!  And He is bringing all the dead in Christ with Him.  They have never considered it.  And what about those who are alive when He touches down on the Mount of Olives?  What happens to His followers who are alive?  And what happens to the people who survive the Great Tribulation Period?  What happens to them here on earth?  All this never enters their minds.

Another detour that hinders Christian growth is the false promise of a rapture.  Total escapism.  Not going to happen.  But people rush out in their zeal and believe this because it sounds good and logical.  Yet, they never study it out and prove it one way or another to themselves.  It is tricky.  They have a zeal for God, “but not according to knowledge” [for more on this go here https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/?s=rapture ].

So what is this knowledge Peter’s talking about?

To answer that question, we must be prepared to dig deep into the scriptures of truth.  Knowledge is a noun translated from the Greek word gnosis (#1108) meaning “knowledge.”  We see it in the English words “diagnosis” and prognosis.”  The verb form of this word (#1107; #1097) means “to make known.”  So the noun means “that which is made known.”

But there is a lot of “knowledges” out there.  Which knowledge is he talking about?

So what has been made known?  What exactly is this knowledge that the apostles were so keen on?  First, God has “made known” to us through Christ’s resurrection the “ways of life,” as in the path we will take to arrive at a state of immortality or everlasting life.  Literally.  Not “crystal blue persuasion,” “floating around heaven all day.”  No.  God has given us the knowledge on how to obtain immortality.  That is how big this concept is.  There is a true way into His kingdom/government as His elect sons and daughters.  We can see this in the book of Acts where Peter is quoting David, “Thou hast made known to me the ways of life” (2: 28).

Christ’s resurrection, where His earthly body did not remain in the grave–this is our hope, that as He promised, we, too, can receive immortalityBut there is so much of this knowledge to learn.  True knowledge of how we will attain immortality does not come willy-nilly.  If our earthly jobs require a modicum of seriousness and sobriety to master and perform, how much more does our training to be His fellow rulers in His kingdom?

After all, Christ promises this to some: “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also over came, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3: 21).  You mean some of us will literally sit on the throne with Christ?  Somebody will, and He said, Whosoever will may come.  Kings and queens sit on thrones.  But to be sitting on the one and only throne designed by and for immortals.  That’s getting out there.  Need more faith?  Maybe we need  these additions to the faith, to grow it, to feed it, to enlarge and strengthen it.

What else is God “making known” to us?  “That He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory.”  Some human beings that He calls “the vessels of mercy” He has already prepared to receive “glory.”

Nothing more glorious than everlasting life.  The “glory that He has for us is immortality.  He is making known this knowledge of these true spiritual riches that some will be glorified with Him at the end of this age!  That is what He is making known right now (Rom. 9: 23).

He is making known the mystery of His will.  “That God would make known what is the riches of the gloryof this mystery…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory…even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations but now is made manifest to his saints (Col. 1: 27, 26).

This “glory” spoken of here is spelled out in Romans 8: 18-31.  It speaks of the adoption, where we mortals shall be redeemed by God through resurrection and receive a new spiritual body that cannot die like this earthly body that is physically corruptible.  God gave us a destiny unto this glorious state beforehand, that we would “be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (v. 29).  And if we are, indeed, one whom He has predestinated, then He has called us, justified us, and He has also glorified us (v. 30).  This “glorification” is all about receiving an immortal spiritual body.  [Read more in I Cor. 15  and here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/the-high-calling-of-god/ ].

There is so much more that He has “made known” to His children.  We are told to add this knowledge of His plan and purpose to the virtue/zeal and on to the faith.  Adding knowledge then is all about first learning His true plan and promises and incorporating them into our thinking.  This takes true teachings, much study, and much communication with our Savior.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[To read my books go to the top of this page.  Just click “Ebook…”]

 

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The Additions to Your Faith–Prerequisites of Receiving Immortality

Just having faith in Christ is not enough.  Now, wait a minute.  Hear me out before you jump.

Some have said, “Faith in Christ is all you need.”  To get into the first level of a walk with God, that is true.  But things must be added to the true faith in order for us to fully manifest God’s divine nature in us, according to the apostle Peter.

He says that we must make certain spiritual additions to the faith, so that we can be “partakers of the divine nature…Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity (agape love)” (II Peter 1: 5-7).

Peter goes on to say that if these additions “be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren (idle) nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus (Yahshua) Christ” (v. 8).

In other words, without these additions, we will not grow up “unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4: 13).  Nor will we without these additions “be filled with all the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 3: 19).  Why?  Because the person without these additions listed above “is blind, and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins” (II Pet. 1: 9).  These additions, then, serve as a kind of eye salve that anoints our eyes that we may see the spiritual road ahead of us.

In fact, the way we “make our calling and election sure” is to add these very things to our faith! That is why this is so important to the overcomers of all things.  For if we add these things to our faith, we “shall never fall” (v. 10).  The addition to our faith of these things is the key that unlocks the door to the “entrance…into the everlasting kingdom” of our God (v. 11).

Who was Peter writing to?

Peter is writing not to everyone, but to those “that have obtained like precious faith with us” (1: 1).  He is writing to “those who have already received by divine allotment” this equally honored and precious “conviction that God exists and is the Creator and Ruler of all things, the Provider and Bestower of eternal salvation through Christ” {Thayer’s Lexicon}.

It is God who has placed this faith, this “conviction” that He is real, in our hearts.  It is not something we “muster up.”  It is all Him.  It is His grace to us, which is to say, God favors us with knowledge of Him and His plan and word.  This brings light to our eyes and strength to our hearts.  God gives grace to some during this end time era with spiritual knowledge of Him.  This is His grace to us.

Now He gives this grace in accordance to “His divine power” which gives to the recipients “all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him” (1: 3).  For He “has called us to glory and virtue.”

Glorification = Immortality

God has tapped us on the shoulder in some way  to bring us to the stage of spiritual growth called “glorification”!  Yes, this spiritual road we have begun to walk down is leading us into being glorified with Him!  This is sonship; this is rulership with Him in His kingdom.

We have to add these things listed by the apostle Peter, if we are to fulfill our calling to be His manifested sons and daughters, His ruling family that He has called us unto.  That’s how important they are to Him, first, and should, therefore, be important to us.  Important enough to seriously study them out.

But the big take away of this opening chapter of II Peter is this: This conviction that God is and is in control through Christ–this faith, this conviction must have other attributes added to it, in order for us to fulfill our calling as His sons and daughters, the princes and princesses, sitting with Him in His throne.

Peter knows full well what it takes to “make our calling and election sure.”  He knows that our initial experiences based on God’s favor and grace in showing a bit of Himself to us and thereby “calling us out of darkness into His marvelous light”–he knows that those early experiences and revelations will not take us across the finish line in this race “for the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3: 14).

And it is through this knowledge of the holy things of God that we are given “exceeding great and precious promises” (II Pet. 1: 4).  God has promised to give unto us His followers immortality, or eternal life.  Immortality is it.  It is the biggest gift, the greatest promise the Immortal One can give to a mortal.  There is nothing greater for one who will die than to be granted eternal life.

And this immortality that God has promised us is what the aforementioned “glorification” is all about.  And Peter says by the Spirit of God that we are called “to glory and virtue.”  And God promised this to us from time immemorial.  “In hope of eternal life, which God, which cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Titus 1: 2).

All of this notwithstanding, in order to receive this precious promise of immortality, we must add certain spiritual components to our faith, to our conviction that God is real and true.  These additions are the elements of the very nature of God Himself.

How do we do this?  First we must study them out and receive the knowledge of just what they are, and then, reckon them added by faith.

Two points are worthy encouragers for us on this road to immortality.  First, He said of us in His prayer in John 17: 22: “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.”  In His mind, it is a done deal.  He is saying, I have already given them glorification, which is immortality.  With this, they are one with the Father and Son.  It is also good to know that “He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.”  He has full confidence in His plan, which includes us.  But the first step is to add to our faith virtue.   What virtue is comes next time.          Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Prove All Things with an Open Mind and Pure Heart, and the Spirit Will Lead Us into All Truth

 Chapter 18 from the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

We have come to a mysterious place on the road to immortality. Each step henceforth is veiled in secrecy and shrouded in mystery. God has purposely made the truth of His purpose difficult to see. In so doing He is weeding out the pretenders from the contenders.   His eternal purpose and plan of reproducing Himself is only given to a chosen few. “Few there be to find this way of truth.” From here on out the truth will be given only to those who are of an open mind and pure heart.

In fact, it is better to not come to this rarified knowledge if one is not prepared to go all the way. “For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.” II Peter 2:21.

 It is only the openness to new truth that allows the Spirit to lead us into all truth. In John 16:12 the Master said, “When the Spirit of truth is come He will lead us into all truth.” If we had not been open a few short months ago to new truth—new to us, anyway—then we would not have been able to receive the present truth we now have. We would have been ossified, stratified, and hardened up like a rock in our hearts to receive something new.

 There is a tendency for human beings to reject something that is new. There is a temptation when change is brought upon us to hold back and not get into it.

 If new truth is not being revealed to us, then usually one of two things is happening. Either that person believes they have all the truth and therefore have no need of truth, or the Spirit of truth is not leading them into all truth at that particular juncture in their life. So the exhortation is to us all: remain open.

 He said to prove all things. Not just the things we think are the truth. We also need to prove things out that we may not at first think is truth. He said to prove all things that come into our seeking. Because praying to Him and asking Him for guidance to discern if something is the truth or not will enable us to not miss some truth that comes our way. We need to ask Him to reveal this new thing, His plan to reproduce Himself, to us. He did say, “I will do a new thing in the earth.”

 For instance, the sacred name of Yahweh is an old thing, but it is new to us. By staying open and trusting Him for discernment, we can prove all things that come our way, whether they be truth or falsehood.

 In order to begin to take in the great and precious promises that Yahweh gave to our fathers the patriarchs, we first must realize that Yahweh wants to reproduce Himself. Reproduction cannot take place without a seed. We only have to look at the earth to understand this. John 1:1 could have read: “In the beginning was the Seed.” He is the Word, the Seed. The Master said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone.” He would have been alone had He not fallen into the tomb three days and three nights. And now by doing that, He brings forth much fruit. He lays it all out in a very simple situation with “first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear.” Mark 4:28. KWH

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“Heavenly Offspring from God’s Earthly Creation: How God Multiplies Himself”–Chapter 17 of the book YAH IS SAVIOR: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY

Chapter 17     Heavenly Offspring from His Earthly Creation

You believe that God created man and woman. You would not be reading this if you did not. But have you ever wondered why He created us in the first place? Why did He make us the way we are, making decisions, as it were, on matters of life and death, with the power to accept or reject our Maker and His plan for us. You have heard it said, “Why didn’t God just make us robots and spare us all the pain and misery brought on by our own doing?”

The key to unlock the answers to some of these questions comes in Yahshua’s reply to the Sadducees in Matthew 22:30. They did not believe in the resurrection and were trying to stump Him with a hypothetical story about seven brothers who had died in succession, each passing on the first brother’s barren wife to the next brother as each did in turn. They had all had her as a wife, but in the resurrection, whose wife would she be? It was a trick question, so the Master told them that it proved that they did not know the scriptures nor the power of the Creator.

The Sadducees presumed through their earthly thinking that if there were a resurrection, that humans would be mating and having children just like here on earth, for they said, “Whose wife would she be?” But he said in verse 30, “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” After man and woman are made immortal, they will be like the angels who do not marry nor mate. No reproduction will take place by the immortal ones. This takes place after “this mortal shall have put on immortality” (I Cor. 15). When this earthly body is “swallowed up of life,” when this earthly corruptible body of dust is changed into an incorruptible spiritual body, then at that time there will be no more reproducing.

“Marrying and giving in marriage” is synonymous with having children or reproducing. “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth,” is the command to the first earthy Adam. But the “last Adam is the Lord from heaven,” or the sons of God with their resurrected spiritual bodies. And they will not be reproducing or multiplying; they will be like the angels of heaven that way.

Reproducing heavenly offspring from His earthly creation

After the resurrection, some will be changed from mortal to immortal. We will not be of this earth anymore. This earthly body is a temporary housing for the faithful who will receive a spiritual body at that time. God, then, will have reproduced Himself !

We human beings are the only scriptural way that God can reproduce His spiritual body, and have heavenly offspring. He has to do it here on earth. How ironic! How it seems to be one way and it is really another. How it seems that we have our own little earthly life and we reproduce and take much satisfaction and joy in our children, and eventually we return to dust, and our children do the same, and theirs also, and very few human beings are remembered in history. And that is that. How it seems to be that way. But in reality, God is with great patience actually in the process of reproducing heavenly offspring out of His earthly creation!

How God Multiplies Himself

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it die, it brings forth much fruit.” John 12:24. Yahshua the Savior was the seed, the corn of wheat, that came to earth and died, that through His death much fruit will come forth; many spiritual sons and daughters will become like Him and achieve immortality.

Yahshua said that He was the first and the last, the beginning and the end. He created all things while He was in His original form, the pattern in whose image man was created. But just like the literal seed grain must die and thereby lose its identity and its initial life in order to bring forth much fruit, so did the Word, the Seed. The First, the Original Form, Yahshua, divested Himself of His celestial, spiritual body and poured His Essence into a word, into a sentence (“In the beginning was the Word”) that was to be carried and pronounced by one of His messengers into the ear of a maiden name Miriam (Mary) of Bethlehem. Because He was a Spirit Being and not material, the pre-existent Yahshua could pour Himself into a word (“The words I speak, they are spirit and they are life”). And that word, carried by the archangel Gabriel entered her ear and it took root in her heart and in her womb by faith, and she became with child of the Spirit. And He would grow up and eventually give His life for us that we might be His offspring—immortal heavenly children, made right here on earth by His resurrection.

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Eulogy for My Mother

[I spoke these words at the graveside service]

My mother passed away June 6, 2011.  Louise Billups was 85 years old.  For those of us who knew her, we lost a great treasure and a walking, breathing example of love, caring, and kindness, not only to her family and friends, but even to strangers.

I remember the time about three years ago in August, Mom and her husband Marion were riding back from town and saw a poor elderly man pushing his delapidated bicycle loaded down with all his worldly possessions up Whetstone Hill on Highway 60.  She said, “We gotta help him.”  So they went home and returned fifteen minutes later with a quart of good old homemade southern sweet iced tea and a sandwich for the man.  That was my Mom.

There’s an old proverb in the Bible: “It is better to be in the house of mourning than the house of mirth and laughter.”

I’ve often wondered why?  Because when a loved one passes away, we mourn for them. Our hearts become broken. The Bible also states that God is near to them of a broken heart. He is that invisible Spirit of Love that penetrates the cracks of our broken hearts and heals us and helps us. God can only get closer to us if we are humbled.

And a death of a loved one humbles us. And so God is near.

We are gathered here now to pay our last respects to a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a dear and kind friend, and most important, to our spiritual sister in Christ. And spiritual is the key. For the loved one that we all now mourn was a kind and loving spirit who inhabited this earthly body laying before us.

But this today is not the end. The Holy Scriptures says that we shall see her again–not in this old body but in a new, wonderful, everlasting spiritual body that will look like her in her vibrant prime.

We will see her again, for Christ has promised a new body for his followers upon His return to rule this earth for a thousand years. And so, let us take solace that her present pain and suffering has at last ended and her spirit now rests in God’s bosom. Without this truth, we wander around lost in not only sadness for this departed soul but in the solemn inevitability of our own mortality. Our resurrection with Christ upon His return is our only hope to escape the dusty tombs of oblivion.

But now today, we all have lost a priceless treasure in her departure, and that is Christ’s spirit of love actually walking around in another human being. That was my mother and spiritual sister in Christ.

My mom left us here on earth a few days ago. Her spirit went back to the Father who created her long ago. All that remains now lying here is her earthly body, a temporary vessel that God provided her to love through. Mom manifested the love of Christ by giving all to others.

And yet we can’t help but mourn the passing of this dear one, my very own mother, the vessel God used to usher in my entrance into this cruel old world. And she nourished me on her knee with warmth and food and milk and ran with me through the grass and held my hand as I grew up. And most importantly, she fed me the milk of God’s word which nourished my embryonic spirit within me when I was just a little boy.

And that Word she shared with me stayed with me. “Train up a child the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I strayed in my youth far from the Lord, but those words she had shared about Him were like a fish line and hook in my jaw that the Great Heavenly Fisherman held and kept reeling me into His boat, slowly but surely.

That was the kind of mother I was blessed with, who never gave up on me, even as I squandered my youth on drink and smoke. But she was always there to encourage me. For her testimony was such that on the very hour that I came into this world in that hospital in Long Beach, she had a vision from God that her son would serve Him.

I am her lasting legacy, for we share the same light and same truth: That there is but one God. That the Great Spirit of Love, the Creator of heaven and earth, came down and walked among us and sacrificed that vessel so that we all could be redeemed from the wasted wreckage of a sinful life… She knew God by His original Hebrew name–Yahweh–that in His name is power and healing and answers to prayer…that He is returning to this earth bodily to establish His government where He, the Christ, will rule and reign in the Kingdom of God, literally here on earth…that He is coming soon, after Satan sets up a counterfeit one world government…and then, the good news, Christ returns and begins His reign over all earth…

These and many more things my mom believed, and I will miss those hours of fellowship studying the Word together….But now we must put her body back into the earth from whence it came. But we are not burying her, for she is not here; she is a spirit now at total peace with her Father.

So help us, Father, through this time of passing. I pray not for my mother, for she is with you. Instead, I pray for all of us who are still on our journey back to You. Be with us, O God. Help us, for we are weak and need your strength. Give us all eyes to see and ears to hear your truth. Thank you. We ask in your name, Amen.

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