Category Archives: faith

January 11, 2014 · 1:32 am

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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December 28, 2013 · 10:53 pm

Making Our Calling and Election Sure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding Seven Spiritual Attributes Insures Three Things

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

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

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

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

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

A Serious Assignment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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October 26, 2013 · 12:40 pm

The Apostles’ Doctrine–Baptisms (Plural)–Immersed into Christ’s Death

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 and burial 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; your old self died with all of its sins.  When He died that day, our old selfish sinful 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 here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/ebook-the-unveiling-of-the-sons-of-god/ ).  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!  Why?  Because we believe what God believes about us. 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–a transformation that will carry us to eventually sit with Him on His throne.

But first, before that glorious day, we need to be like the early disciples of the Master, who “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine,” the first of which being “repentance from dead works,” explained through the “doctrine of baptisms.”  Being baptized into His death is how to repent from sins that bring forth death (Acts 2: 42; Heb. 6: 1-2).

{Being baptized into Christ’s death is just the first step.  Read how this leads us to the “hidden wisdom” of God.  For a deeper look into these mysteries, read this: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/the-hidden-wisdom-and-the-power-of-god/ }

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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October 19, 2013 · 4:30 pm

The Hidden Wisdom and the Power of God

It is hiding in plain sight, this great mystery that the apostles and prophets wrote about. It is not in man’s old nature to see and understand what it is, for this hidden wisdom of God entails attributes that are completely opposite of the old nature man is born with.

In fact, when old man Adam glimpses the hidden wisdom in operation in a human’s life, it appears as foolishness. But God has chosen the foolish, weak, base, and despised things on this planet to confound the current powers that be–those humans who think that they in their own strength and position rule their own destinies (I Cor. 1: 25-29).

So just what is this wisdom of God that is hidden from men? What is this secret mystery of God that He withholds from carnal man’s eyes? The answer is in that first letter to the church at Corinth that the apostle Paul wrote.  In it he upbraids them for their lack of spirituality, citing many instances of their carnality and lack of the Spirit.

Paul explains early on in the letter that he was not coming to them “with enticing words of man’s wisdom,” but in the Spirit and its power” (2: 4).  They were hung up on following the teachings of a man. Some were saying, “I am of Paul and I am of Apollos, and I am of Cephas” (1: 12).  Sounds like, I am of Luther; I am of the Pope; I am of Wesley; I am of Russell; I am of…ad infinitum. Denominationalism was already in full bloom by AD 59. “Only by pride comes contention.” And such contention as seen in the modern day churches comes in believing that they are the only ones who have the truth.

It is this vain glory that causes the divisions and schisms in the church (1: 10-17). Most denominations, distrustful of each other, labor in carnality, thus showing a lack of the wisdom of God.  We all should be “perfectly joined together.” But how? “By having the same mind.” Which mind? “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ,” which was a mind of humility, which is exemplified in the cross.

The Preaching of the Cross

The cross experience is for us to go through, not just observe in another.  Man’s wisdom looks at this as the man Christ dying on the cross for our sins.  But Paul speaks of the hidden wisdom of God as “the preaching of the cross” and what it spiritually represents.

Had the rulers of this world in Christ’s day known of this hidden wisdom of God, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”  Make no mistake of who they were.  They were the offspring of Edom who had converted to Pharisaism and by Christ’s day held most of the top posts in the religious hierarchy of Jerusalem.  They were the chief priests and religious henchmen who conspired on trumped up charges to get rid of Christ.  They goaded the people and the Romans to crucify Him, which is just what God wanted them to do. They thought in their carnal man’s wisdom that they were getting rid of Him, when they were in reality ensuring that “the cross” and the humility of God that it signified in the hearts of all mankind would ring down like joyful bells through the ages.

Of course, if the rulers at Jerusalem knew of this hidden wisdom of humility, they would not have crucified Christ.  For His cross experience put to death our old sinful nature, which was placed upon Him just before He expired on that cross.  Not only our sins died with Him that day, but also our old sinful carnal nature died as well. When He died, our old sinful self died; when He was buried, our old lives were buried with Him.  When He was resurrected, we were also “raised to walk in a newness of life.”  We are free from the bondage of having to sin,” for “he that is dead is freed from sin.” Those who believe this become “new creatures” by faith, and we receive His Spirit within and receive a new heart.

This is the preaching of the cross.  This is the hidden wisdom; this is that special knowledge of God that is hidden from carnal man and definitely hidden from the rulers of this world system, as it was hidden from the rulers of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. This act of humility–giving up our old lives–is the cross experience and is the hidden wisdom put into action in our hearts.  It is the only sacrifice that God is pleased with, for it takes faith.  It takes believing that He has done all this for us.

Those who go through this cross experience receive the resurrection power of the Spirit into their new hearts and their lives begin to change, and through proper nurturing, they will grow up into Him and He in them. But they are the desperate ones to change, and they will love much, for they will know that they have been forgiven much.  In this crucible lies the hidden wisdom and the power of God.     KWH

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July 2, 2013 · 10:32 pm

Casting Our Pearls Before Swine–When to Share the Sacred Names

A fellow Christian asked me one time, “Why don’t people believe me when I share the sacred names of God with them?”

I related to them that first of all, this walk that we have been called to is a lonely pilgrimage.  I have found that for the vast majority of people on the planet, their basic spiritual need is not the sacred names but the cross experience.  The sacred names are wonderful revelations, but they are “meat” and not the “milk of the word.”

People need to be brought to the “cross.”  For they cannot spiritually comprehend the deeper things of God without the “spiritual eyes” received by a true conversion to Christ.  They must first die with Christ, be buried with Him, and by faith be “raised to walk in a newness of life” through faith in His resurrection.  Then they will be ready to go deeper into the heavier spiritual food, the “meat of the word.”

That begs the question: How will we know when to share the deeper truths with someone?  What is the characteristic sign that shows us who needs “the milk of the word” and who needs “meat”?  The person who uses and needs milk are the babes in Christ, or children.  They haven’t grown into spiritual adulthood yet.  For they “are unskilful in the word of righteousness” (Heb. 5: 13-14).  The word of righteousness is present in a Christian when they have the gift of the Spirit called the
word of knowledge.”  This is the ability to explain and teach another how the righteousness of God is attained.  They have experienced the cross and “have been raised to walk in a newness of life.”

In that same passage we see that “strong meat belongs to them that are of full age.”  Through their many spiritual experiences, they with God’s help can “discern both good and evil.”  They can discern what is true and what doctrine is false.  A child of God is “dull of hearing” and lacks discernment.

We must “not cast our pearls before swine.”  The Savior knew that if we give stronger truth to those without a new heart, that they would reject it out of hand.  Paul, experiencing this very thing said that “he was determined to not share anything with them except Christ crucified”–or, the death, burial, and resurrection of their old selves with Christ.

I’ve done the same thing, sharing wonderful things of God to those who cannot receive it.  But I know that some will.  Those  nurtured through the apostles’ doctrine–the first two being “repentance from dead works” [the aforementioned cross experience] and “faith toward God” (see Hebrews 6: 1-2).

We must first lay the “foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God.”  In order for someone to be the spiritual temple of God, they must have a good foundation.

Those of us who have run into this experience should be encouraged that we are not alone in our spiritual trek, and that there is a reason why God has revealed Himself and His truth to us.  And, of course, our first reaction is to share it all with everyone.  We all have done this.  But He does not want all of it shared with everyone.  I know that is ironic, but it is true.  Just look at the parables, which are the “dark sayings” that deliberately cloud the meaning of the mysteries of His kingdom for those who are not meant to receive it!  Incredible.

We still need to witness the truth to others–but that part of the truth that really meets their true need, which usually is the cross experience.    KWH

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June 15, 2013 · 3:23 pm

First Step in Becoming a Son or Daughter of God

A seeker once asked the Seer, “How do you get into the family of God?  I see what you mean about respecting God’s awesome power and sovereignty.  At least a little.  But what do I have to do in order to get involved in this sonship the Bible keeps on talking about?”

“The first thing is to feel in you inner being, in your heart, that you need to change.  Unless  a person admits that he is not living right before this awesome Creator God, that person cannot get closer to God.  God has a written law, handed down by the Son of God himself to the prophet Moses.  It is called the Ten Commandments.  It was in effect from the creation of man and woman.  It was in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.  They are called the commandments of righteousness.  And everyone has broken them.

“God laid down the law: You shall have no other gods before me [especially ourselves].  You shall not make for yourself a graven image and bow down to it and serve it.  You shall not lift up the name of God [Yahweh] falsely.  Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Honor your father and mother.  You shall not murder, nor commit adultery, nor steal.  You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.  You shall not covet or desire for yourself anything that belongs to your neighbor.

“Those are the commandments as found in Exodus 20.  Mankind, led by their old nature, breaks them.  Many people who claim to know the Bible say that the law was done away with.  But the Savior Jesus (Yahshua) said in Matthew 5: 17, ‘Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.  I have come…to fulfill them.’

“And the way He fulfills the law is giving us His Spirit.  But this only comes after we identify our old sinful self on the cross with the dying Savior, and let our old sinning heart die with Christ.  This is repentance from sin.  Then we must believe that when Christ resurrected from the grave, we, too, were raised from the dead–to walk now in a sinless existence–through belief that His Spirit is now leading and guiding us in this new life in Christ.  This is faith toward God, the second of the apostles’ doctrines.

“And it is with these two extremely important and fundamental truths that a new son or daughter of God is born–born of the Spirit.  But a person must have a need.  God knows His own; He is aware who is written in the book of life, and He will help them and favor them (grace) and lead them into these truths.

“But this is only the first step in the growth to becoming His son or daughter.  For this is the foundation that must be built upon with more of His truth and Spirit.  For never forget this one thing: Salvation is just the first step in God’s growth cycle.  He wants us to mature into full grown fruit-bearing capability as His ruling cadre in His kingdom during the 1,000 year reign!  Go and learn what that means.  Seek God for it.  Study, dig deep, for the kingdom’s treasures are much greater that gold and precious diamonds and jewels.

“Ask Him to send a true teacher who will help you get started.  And then, as you get stronger and more mature, you will have no need that any man should teach you, for you will have the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, leading you into all truth” (John 14: 16-26).

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May 18, 2013 · 2:16 pm

Believing the Resurrection in Us–How the Holy Spirit Comes Down Into Us

The everyday pressures and the stress of just living on this planet causes us much grief.  The demanding bosses, the irate public, the disgruntled co-workers, the incessant bills, and the constant drain of having to deal with earthly things all day long is just too much to cope with.  With all this confusion going on, the children of the King begin to feel like spiritual paupers instead of heirs to the throne.

Yes, the Father allows this to happen to His children because He wants us to finally get our fill of it and call upon His name for deliverance.  He has made us “subject to vanity.”  He created us, in other words, in our original earthly state to feel the futility of living on earth no matter how much material wealth we may have.  “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.”  Simply put, we’ve got to get sick of it.

So enough of this world’s insanity already!  The answer?  God, we need more of Your Spirit working inside of us.  We need more of Your love abiding in us so that we can return love to those who slight us out here in this world system.  We need more of You in us, more of your Spirit welling up in love, joy, and peace.  We need You, God, to fill us like you filled your chosen people in the days of the early church.

Yes, that is our need, but how do we get more Spirit into us?  What did You say in your word about this?  It all boils down to believing in the Resurrection.

Paul lines this out in Ephesians.  He is saying to them that through God’s mercy, which is based in His infinite love towards us, He has made us alive where once we were dead in sin.  He has done this through the power of the resurrection of Christ.  When the Father infused that dead sacrificial body of the Lamb and raised him from the dead, all sinners who believe this were raised up together with Him.  “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ…and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Yahshua Messiah” (2:4-6).

This miraculous turnaround from the darkness of sin and sinning to light and righteousness in a person’s heart can only be realized through belief. [I know what some are thinking: “We’ve been hearing about the resurrection and righteousness and sin and belief all our lives in church.  You are not telling us anything that we don’t already know.”]  If what we’ve heard all our life were enough, then why are we so weak spiritually?  Why aren’t we walking in the joy and victory that God has promised those who follow Him? Why?  “Because of your unbelief,” the Master said.

The transformation to power in our lives is by believing what God said about the resurrection and us—that if we believe that our old life died with the Lamb 2000 years ago, that if we believe that we were buried with Him, and if we believe that God raised Him up out of the grave after three days and three nights—if we can just believe this, we can also ourselves be “raised to walk in a newness of life” (Romans 6:4-6).

We are delivered from depression and death by believing what He said He did through the resurrection and how it regenerates our hearts and consciences.  For His Spirit comes into us by believing the truth of His word to us about our being raised up with him to walk in a new life.

A new life is what He has promised us.  However, if we are still thinking the same way we did before our experience with God, if we are still doing the same things we did before our “conversion,” if we still are the same earthly-minded person, then how is that a new life?  How does it differ from the old?

Let’s cut to the chase.  If we are still lusting after women, how is that a new life?  If we are still desiring another person’s material things, how is that new?  If we put our own self before others, how is that new?  If we are breaking any of the commandments, then how is it a new life?  We were breaking them before we came to God.  So what has changed?

If we are still sinning, or breaking the Ten Commandments, then we have not died, been buried, and been raised from the dead-in-sin.  We have not actually believed it yet. Our need is for the Spirit of Christ to live in us.  But how do we abide in Him and He in us?  “That Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith…” That the Spirit of God may live in our hearts—but how?  By just believing it!  It is God’s word!  It is the truth!  Believe it before you feel it.  You have to believe it first!  Then the evidence of the reality will come.  The trouble is that unbelief is such a part of the human condition, the human heart, that we have trouble believing what we see.  “I can’t believe my eyes,” is a common statement.  God is asking us to believe before we see.

We attain this righteous state not by us trying to be righteous and keep the law.  No.  It is a gift from God.  We cannot attain the righteous state by working for it.  Faith attains it and then the works we do with the help of His Spirit within witness to the fact that He in us is righteous.  “By grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

Actually, we in our newness of life, in our newly received righteous state with Him, are a product of His work—not our own work.  “For we are His workmanship…” (v. 10).  And God’s work through His own faith in us is good.  He said, “Let there be light, and there was light, and He said it was good.  We are His doing, His creation.

He definitely knows what He is doing.  He through this new life derived by Him raising His chosen ones up with the Messiah—He has through this new life created a new creation—the second Adam, the second man.  And He has created us in Christ unto good works (v. 10).  I repeat: We have been created in Christ with the expressed purpose of producing good works.

Not some good works through us and some bad works.  No.  He has spiritually created us anew “unto good works.”  We need to believe this.  He has not created us unto bad works or corrupt works.  No.  He has made us in our new life to bear good fruit.  The Master said, “ A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bear good fruit.  You will know them by their fruits.”

“We are his workmanship, created in Yahshua the Messiah unto good works” (v. 10).  And the kicker is that God has already foreordained for us to walk in the spirit and thereby do these good deeds.

And this great treasure-life is opened to all that our God has called.  For He took all the sin of the whole world upon Himself and became sin for all of us, and when He died, all of the sin of the whole world died with Him.  That’s your sinful heart and my old sinful heart.  And by His shed blood we all were brought close to Him.  So close, in fact, that all who believe this and respond are “one new man” (Eph. 2:15).  And all believers, whoever they are, through Him “have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (v. 18).

And we all are spiritually built upon the “foundation of the apostles and prophets, Yahshua the Messiah Himself being the chief cornerstone.”  We are a building made by God Himself, built on this foundation.  He is building us up; we are growing into “an holy temple in the Master, builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (v. 22).  God will inhabit us His temple.  He will live in us through His Spirit.

Later Paul reveals the mystery of how God is opening up His Spirit to come down on whomever can receive it—be they Gentile or Israelite.  Paul prayed (Eph. 3:15-19) that God would grant to the Ephesians power and strength by His Spirit in their “inner man.”  Power, strength, and might, Paul knew, were needed in the spiritual new creation within the heart of each new believer.

And this strength was to be given how?  How do believers receive this strengthening?  “By His Spirit in the inner man.”  But how does this spiritual power come from His Spirit into our inner being?  It comes by faith.  “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.”  This spiritual anointing comes to us by us believing it. Because He said it, spoke it, and His prophets wrote down His inspired words about the power coming, we need only to believe that He is good to His word about Him giving us more of His Spirit.

We have to believe that the invisible Spirit is giving us strength, and now is the acceptable time for this to happen.  We’ve got to believe it before we feel the strength.  Believe it because He said to believe it, and the strength and power will come.  “All things are possible to him that believeth,” the Master said.  “Have the faith of God,” He also said.  God believes it already about us; why shouldn’t we?

He said in Eph. 2:21 that we are the spiritual building of God, and we are in Him and He in us, and we are growing “unto an holy temple” of God.  This strengthening that He does on us in our inner man is the growth of the Spirit with us.  We grow in His love in us, and we grow spiritually out to others.  This spiritual growth ends up with us being “filled with all the fulness of God” (3:19).

We are to finally through humility “grow up into Him in all things” (4:2).  We are to be “renewed in the spirit” of our mind, “putting on the new man” wherein we walk in love and forgiveness one to another.

Paul is saying that by believing it so, we can walk in His Spirit.  We can leave the pride and arrogance of the old life and walk as obedient children.  His Spirit can live within us and can grow in us—if we believe.  For it all happens by faith—by believing what He said about it.  That is what makes it so.  It is not believing in something that is not there.

This new life that God has declared is already a reality in His eyes.  Our new life in Him is not an illusion, some figment of our imagination.  No.  Our new life in His Spirit is a reality already spoken into existence by our God.  We need only believe that it is real. Through us believing it, we actualize it and witness it.  It is like the priests with the Ark of the Covenant stepping out upon the Jordan River and the waters peeling back for them that they go over on dry ground.  God said it; they believed it, and they achieved it.  A miracle happened that day at the Jordan River.

And a miracle was done in our hearts when we believed that He had taken the old one out and had given us a new one.  This is how miracles are done.  Miracles will come through believing that they are already foreordained to come.  The disciples asked why this impotent man was lame.  Was it his sin or his parents sin that put him in this pitiful shape?  The Master said, No, because of neither, but that the glory of God could be seen when he was healed by one of God’s believers.

This is not believing this life of strength and power into existence.  No.  This new life He has for us is already in existence.  Our new life in Christ’s Spirit already exists.  It is His with Him.  When we believe His resurrection, that power is witnessed in us again and again.  We then have the witness within our own selves.  This is a miracle of transformation.  Let the miracles continue.  Let us all walk on, believing what He said He would do for His children and through His children.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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April 27, 2013 · 6:05 pm

Gold Tried in the Fire–Overcomers and the Time of the End

Somebody at the end of this age will sit down with the Savior on His throne.  They will be rulers with Him during the 1,000 year reign right here on earth.  This is promised by Him.

This promise of kingly rulership for some of His followers is conditional.  During the last age of the church just before His return, His followers will be lukewarm in their service to Him.  They will think that because they are affluent in material things, that they are rich in spiritual things.  They will take pride in “knowing God,” and they will say that they spiritually “have need of nothing.”  But they do not know that they are in His eyes “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked” (Rev. 3: 14-17).

They do not know that their faith in Him is a poor approximation, a poor substitute for His vibrant faith.  They do not have the higher richer knowledge of His plan and purpose.  Consequently they are spiritually blind and naked.

And so, He counsels them to  buy from Him three things that will correct their spiritual deficiencies: “gold tried in the fire, that you may be rich; and white raiment, that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness does not appear; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see” (v. 18).

And then He makes an astounding promise to them.  If anyone in this end time age hears His voice concerning these matters, and hears His knock on their door, He will come in and have a feast with them, sharing intimate details of His soon coming kingdom.  And then the promise: “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (v. 22).  Now you’ve got to have an ear that is attuned for these things.  He says if you do, then hear what the Spirit is saying to you about these things (v. 22).

So, the first thing we need is the “gold tried in the fire” (1).  We know that this gold is our faith and belief in God.  We believe in Him, having never seen Him nor the outcome of His kingdom plan, for faith is the “evidence of things not seen” (2).  It is like the Holy Spirit, which is invisible but is “leading us into all truth” and thereby comforts us as the Comforter” (3).

The “gold tried in the fire” that we are to “buy” from the Savior is the purification of our faith/belief through trials and temptations, “if need be.”  Most of us will need the times of  “chastening” that He will give unto His elect–the ones who He has chosen to sit with Him in His throne (4).  This chastening is in the form of correction.

This fire that purifies our faith is much like the pruning of the vine that Christ speaks about (5).  And what He lops off of us is the old erroneous concepts about Him that we have learned from those who taught us in the past.

“Purge out the old leaven that the lump may be holy” is a similar concept (6). Spiritual leaven is what puffs us up.  He calls leaven hypocrisy, insincerity, falsehoods, and misconceptions.

Those that submit themselves to the Spirit/Teacher and endures this fire, pruning, chastening, and purging–they will be the ones that will overcome in this the Laodicea Church Age.  They will be the ones who “humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (8).  Yes, exalt you.  And there is no greater exaltation than to share in the glory of sitting with Him on His throne!

This glory, this exaltation that some will receive–this honor will only come to those who pass the fire test.  To illustrate this, two scenarios are presented to us.  Which is the more difficult to accept?  A rant that denies that Christ is the Savior or a doctrinal fine point that you’ve never heard before?  It is new to you, but there it is in black and white in the Bible.  Yet, you have never heard it or seen it before.  In fact, to receive this new teaching, you must admit that you did not have the whole truth.  And this takes humility, which is the ability to be taught of Him and His Spirit.

For He did say, “The Spirit of truth will guide us into all truth.”  So, the Spirit, to fulfill this verse, must take us to truth that we do not already have (9).

The elect who will sit with Him on His throne will be the teachable ones, the humble ones, the hungry ones.  For having to humble ourselves is a fire that will purify our faith, our gold, our belief.  It will purge out pride in our prior knowledge about God.  And these overcomers will come out on the other side unto “praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Yahshua the Anointed One” (10).  And this “appearing” is the same word translated “the manifestation of the sons of God,” which is the appearing of Christ in us!  The unveiling of the sons of God.  The whole creation is groaning and travailing for them to come onto the scene, for God will save this planet through them!  If you have an ear that can hear, then hear it and walk in it (Rom. 8: 18-19).

The humility of a child

But it is going to take the humbleness of a little child for us to overcome in the last days.  “Whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” said the Master (Matt. 18: 4).  The greatest in any kingdom is the King and His sons and daughters, the princes and princesses.  But in God’s kingdom it takes humbleness to be the greatest–like a little child.

And why are we to be like a little child?  Because they don’t think that they already know it all.  The wonder of discovery of the earth and its natural beauty fills their eyes and ears.  They know that they don’t know it all, for they are too busy learning. That is why adults are so drawn to them; we are hoping that a bit of that wonderdust that a child collects like bees do pollen might fall on us, that we could experience just one more time that spontaneous burst of uninhibited joy brought by the “splendor in the grass and the glory of the flower.”

So now God is calling us to be “as newborn babes” and little children, to have a newfound wonder of the spiritual realm of our heavenly calling.  He is asking His future overcomers to be open to Him as He shows them new wonders that far eclipse those earthly wonders.

Listen.  Quit thinking our own thoughts for a moment and let us just listen to that “still small voice” that is talking to us.  Can we hear His voice whispering to us?  Can we hear Him faintly knocking?  We won’t be able to hear Him is our thoughts are all we hear.  Listen.  He is calling us.

And if we humble ourselves, He will show us the unglimpsed and unheard wonders that “God has prepared for those who love Him” (11).  He’ll show us His government that will transform this earth, purging it from all evil and hatred and suffering, and creating on it a holy habitation for the Righteous King of kings, our Savior Yahshua.  But He will only show these wonders to the humble ones, to those who listen to Him, to the overcomers.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1.  Rev. 3: 18

2.  Heb. 11: 1

3.  John 16: 13; 14: 16-17

4.  I Peter 1: 6-8; Heb. 12: 5-11

5.  John 15: 1-2

6.  I Cor. 5: 6-7

7.  Verse 8

8.  I Peter 5: 6

9.  John 16: 13; 14: 26

10. I Peter 1: 7

11. I Cor. 2: 9; Isa. 64: 4

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April 6, 2013 · 7:01 pm

The Next Great Move of God

God will appear to certain individuals of His own choosing not many months or years hence.  He always has; He always will.

How can I be sure of this?  God’s history of His dealings with His people serves as a prophetic blueprint of what He will do next.  “That which has been is now.  And that which is to be has already been, and God requires the things of the past” (Eccle. 3: 15).

In fact, the Holy Bible is a record of God’s literal appearances to people.  Before every great move of God, He has appeared to someone.  He intervenes with His presence, shattering the dull, numbing grind of human earthly existence with His incomparable light.  We humans evidently need this astounding experience in order for us to be sure that God really is real and means business.

These stupefying manifestations begin, appropriately enough, in the book of Genesis, the seed book of beginnings.  There we see God speaking to Adam and Eve in the Garden.  “And they heard the voice of the LORD God (Yahweh) walking in the garden,” (Gen. 3: 8).  He was in a human form, “walking in the garden,” and they were afraid of His presence there.  A bit later we see God having a lengthy conversation with Cain.

Before Yahweh destroyed by water the wicked, He talked it all over with Noah, who “found grace in the eyes of Yahweh” (6: 8).  And “Noah walked with God.”  And so it was that God confided in Noah His plans, instructed Him to build an ark, and established the Noahic Covenant with him, ensuring the continuance of His righteous seedline.

We next see  Yahweh appear to Abraham, the father of our faith.  “And Yahweh appeared unto Abram,” and established the Abrahamic Covenant with him, giving him and his heirs the Holy Land of promise (Gen. 12: 7).  And “after these things the word of Yahweh came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (15: 1; 17: 1-19).  And God makes a great move and promises Abram that of his own loins he will have a son in his and Sarah’s old age, and his seed will be as numerous as the stars of heaven.  And Abram believed what Yahweh told him.  And it was that very faith and belief that God appreciated so much that God “counted it to him for righteousness.”

This is huge.  This is a great move of God as He shows mankind that just believing God and His word will establish us in a right standing with God.  Getting right with God comes from believing Him.  Period.  This is when faith triumphs over man’s puny attempts in his own strength to keep the ten commandment law of God.

For the law was not given to us as a goal to strive for or a moral ideal, as it were.  For we in our human strength cannot successfully keep the 10 Commandments.  No.  The law was given to man as a mirror to show him of his own unrighteousness and sins, and to show him his innate wickedness.  “The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers…for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars…” (I Tim. 1: 9-10).

God granted to Abraham, because he believed Him and His promises, a new heart that keeps the commandments of God, which is when God counted his belief as righteousness, or being right with God.

What Does This Have to Do with Our Generation?

The take away for us in our generation?  God has promised us a new heart and new spirit that keeps His ways and commandments if we believe Him.  God commands us, “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit.”  How do we make this happen?  By just believing His promise: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezk. 18: 31; 36: 26).

This new heart that does not transgress and break the 10 Commandments is called “righteousness” by God in the scriptures.  It is the state of being right with God, and it is attained the same exact way that Abraham obtained it from God.  By believing God.

And this way of receiving a new heart and new spirit from God that does not break His commandments is outlined in the New Testament scriptures.  Although written in plain sight in black and white, you won’t hear those passages preached in the pulpits Sunday morning, for most pastors don’t believe it (for more on this read the “Introduction” of my book found here:

https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/ebook-the-unveiling-of-the-sons-of-god/ ).

No, most modern day pastors don’t believe that after letting our old heart and spirit die with Christ on the cross, that God will give us a new heart and new spirit that does not sin against him.  The pastors don’t think God can do that.  They don’t believe that “whosoever is born of God does not commit sin” (I John 3: 9).  It is right there in black and white, but they don’t think it is possible.  But I thought that “all things are possible to him that believes” (Mark 9: 23).

Do We Believe God Can Do It?

Abraham certainly did not let the “deadness of his wife’s womb” keep him from believing that God was able to keep His promise that they would have a child.  He was 100 years old and Sarah was 90.  Which is easier to believe?  That a 90 year old woman, decades past the age of bearing children could get pregnant and deliver a baby or God being able to change our hearts to not sin against Him?   Yet Abram “did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.  This is why it was credited to him as righteousness” (Romans 4: 19-22 NIV).

Let us not waver either through unbelief of His promise to us of being His righteous sons.  We simply must believe like Abraham did.  That God will give us a new clean spirit if we believe Him; He did promise it to us if we believe that He will.

And so Yahweh appeared to Abraham and promised him much and established the way for Abraham’s spiritual children–us–to walk by faith in these last days.  Faith.  Belief.  This is what is holding us back from becoming the manifested sons of God, the princes and princesses of the Kingdom of God.  If we cannot believe Him that He will give us a pure sinless heart and spirit–a new heart that He promised–then how will we ever grow up into being like Him and those men of God that He appeared to?

Time would fail me to outline all of those men and women of faith that God appeared to–Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul–to name just a few.  He appeared to them all before a great move of His in the earth.  He will do the same today, for He changes not (Mal. 3: 6).

The Criteria

Wait a minute.  That will be the criteria.  He will appear once again to those who believe Him for a new heart and new spirit, which is being right with God.  For Christ did say, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16: 10).

For a new spirit is just the beginning, as it makes us a child of God.  We must keep growing spiritually into spiritual young men and fathers.  For God will bring forth in the last days His kingdom.  That is the good news.  And ruling with Him right here on earth will be the over comers.  “To him that overcomes, will I grant to sit with me in my throne.”  Some will sit with Christ on His throne.  That is a promise.  But it will be those who are full of faith and belief, those who have bought from Christ “gold tried in the fire,” and “white raiment” to hide their nakedness, and have “anointed their eyes with eye salve that they may see” (Rev. 3: 14-22).  Those are the over comers; those are the manifested sons and daughters of God; those are the ones He will appear to in these latter days to strengthen them and encourage them for the battle to take back the earth and establish His literal kingdom and government right here on earth.  K. W. Hancock

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February 2, 2013 · 7:47 pm

Adding Patience–Enduring All Things

We are admonished by the apostle Peter to “add to our faith” certain divine attributes, calling this procedure, “partaking of the divine nature.”  Yes, right now, we are to do this.  When would he expect us to add these things–after we die?  No, “now is the acceptable time.”  Now is the only time.  Whatever we humans are going to do in our fragile fleeting existence on this planet, we better do it now.

And some of us have been called to “partake of the divine nature.”  “Something (or Someone)” is pulling us, leading us, and yes, even commanding us to seek a higher path.  And so we seek that better way.  And some of us begin to see that that better way is Christ, for He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14: 6).

And some of us now are seeing that we are to become like Him.  That is right.  For we are told by the apostles to “let this mind be in you that was in Christ” (Phil. 2: 5).  And, “Let us go on unto perfection” (Heb. 6: 1).  In fact, the Savior Himself commands us to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5: 48).  “Perfect” here is from the Greek word meaning “full spiritual maturity.”

Our perfection, our maturity in the Spirit, is the main reason that the scriptures of truth have been preserved for us.  “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…that the man of God may be complete (perfect), thoroughly equipped for every good work” (II Tim. 3: 16-17 NKJV).

So how do we arrive at perfection (completeness)?

Our completed growth in Christ is brought about by adding to our faith the attributes of the divine nature that Peter admonishes us to do.

Compared to instant messaging and world wide telecommunications and instant mashed potatoes, the steps toward full spiritual growth and ultimately maturity in Christ take a long time.  “Instantly” is not in God’s vocabulary.  That is one of the main paradoxes in this modern age.  Everything happens in the blink of an eye, except the growth of God’s Spirit in a human being.

We are given but a short space of time here on earth.  Our time on the planet is short lived.  The older we get the faster our allotted time runs out.  And most fritter their precious moments away on ludicrous pursuits.  But those that Christ has chosen will redeem the time, “that they may be made perfect in one (John 15: 16; 17: 23).

Spurred on by the Spirit, they will study, dig, and search out the truth as to what this life is all about.  And when they find out that life is Him, His plan and purpose, and His ballgame, then they will commit themselves to Him–though it take a lifetime.  They will endure any hardships along the way.  That’s the way the elect are built; it’s in their spiritual DNA.  They will endure all things.

And their studies will lead them to that attribute of the divine nature called in the English language “patience.”  But in the Greek (G5281), the word means “endurance, steadfastness, constancy…a patient enduring; sustaining; perseverance” [1].

This word is from the verb (G5278) “to endure.”  I Corinthians 13 lists the attributes of  agape love, God’s nature that is to be matured in us.  It “endures all things” (v. 7).

What things?  We are admonished to “endure to the end” and be saved (Matt. 10: 22; 24: 13).  Trials and tribulation will be endured by the elect.  Christ describes the treachery of the world at the time of the end of this age.  “Brother shall betray brother to death and the father the son.”  Children will betray their parents unto death.  And ones He has chosen to become fully matured in His image–they  will be “hated of all men for My name’s sake–but he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved” (Mark 13: 13).  This is the patience/endurance that Peter is telling us we need to add to our faith.

Because this patience, this endurance, this perseverance that we must maintain speaks of a time of trials and tribulations, and persecutions and betrayals.  As God begins to squeeze the evildoers, they will lash out at the righteous.  We have to know that this is coming.

“Tribulation Worketh Patience”

“Tribulation worketh patience.”  Or, tribulation brings about patience.  Or, more clearly put, trials and tribulations are the very thing that fashions endurance, which is definitely a big part of God’s nature.  Without trials, patience/endurance will not be formed in us.  And without this endurance factor in our spiritual lives, we will not fulfill our calling as His sons and daughters.  For the law of harvest reads, Each seed bears its own kind.

After we are “illuminated” by the light of God’s truth, He has the adversary, the devil, present trials and persecutions to us, to which we will endure “a great fight of afflictions” (Heb. 10: 32).

In fact, Peter warns us about these afflictions.  “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you” (I Pet. 4: 12).  It is not a strange thing at all, but part of the plan of God for our perfection.  It is in the script.  Already conceived by Him and written down.  After all, Christ is “the Author and Finisher of our faith.”  And all the additions to that faith (Heb. 12: 2).  Yes, and in that same verse, it tells how Christ “for the joy set before Him, endured the cross.”  As our example, He has endured all the sufferings before us.

These “fiery trials” that will try us will come, and we must endure it, for we are “partakers of Christ’s sufferings” (I Pet. 4: 13).  These sufferings are those trials we endure for His sake.  These are “also the afflictions Christians must undergo in behalf of the same cause for which Christ patiently endured” (Thayer’s Lexicon).

So we see that “patience” is much bigger and much more profound as we discover its meaning in the inspired scriptures of truth.  We now see that it is an attribute of God’s presence, and we should seek to understand it according to God’s thought of what it truly is.

Patience is enduring the sufferings needed to bring God’s plan to full fruition.  Enduring at all costs in the face of hardships–God did that first.  It is His “divine nature” we are to add, after all.  He did it first.  He endured the insolence of one of His created angelic beings to provide the sufferings for us all.  He endured the old nature, especially of His chosen people Israel (12 tribes), witnessed in the Old Testament.  He endured the shame of their sins and whoredoms.

And now He asks us, the little flock, who He knows will answer the call, for He has chosen us–He asks us to add this part of His wonderful divine nature–patience, endurance.

Us enduring, enduring, enduring the sufferings entailed in these finite earthly decaying mortal bodies.  As one of their own poets said, enduring “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

We now have been called into the “fellowship of His sufferings,” taking part of the same things He endured (Phil. 3: 10).

Agape love endures all things.  Like putting up with the evil men in control of this world system–that’s part of enduring the sufferings.  Wanting to do something immediately to banish the evil and injustice from this earth, and knowing that we now must wait on Yahweh–who will do this–but in His own time, according to His timetable.  That’s part of the sufferings.

Enduring.  Continuing undaunted in our pilgrimage to the City of Immortality.  Unwavering.  Stedfast.  Unswayed by the temptations to tarry here or take respite there.

Enduring by faith, entrusting our whole earthly existence on the seemingly impossible assumption and belief that somewhere an invisible Creator has life all mapped and charted for all of us.

And that He has sent us out on this dangerous dark sea, as we trust this invisible Spirit as our Captain to guide our hands on the rudder and sails, believing that He will somehow lead us through the angry storms and deposit us in a warm protected harbor where a wave is a mere warm froth lapping at our toes.

And so we wait.  And endure all things, trusting the Captain by trusting His word, which is the blueprint, the Plan and Purpose.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1.  Thayer’s Lexicon (http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G5281&t=KJV).

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