Category Archives: faith

May 14, 2016 · 4:48 pm

The Vision of How God Fulfills His Purpose of Reproducing Himself

To walk in Jerusalem just like John, to speak the thoughts of God as the prophets and apostles did–that is our destiny, after all. But to do what they did, you and I must learn of God’s vision of His plan in establishing His government that will fulfill His purpose of reproducing Himself. And His purpose is composed of the Thoughts of His Mind, and they are poured into the Word and transformed into the Seed. And the Seed is the Word.

And the Seed was made flesh and dwelt among us. And the Seed was God, and the Seed was Love. For Love is the very nature of God; it is God. His purpose has always been to reproduce Love, which is Himself. He does  this by sowing the Seed of Love, His Son, into the earth. For the earth is the only place that a seed will grow. Faith in His resurrection germinates in the fertile soil of good and honest hearts, where it will grow and grow and grow until it fills the whole earth with Love.  “Until Christ (Love Incarnate) be all in all,” said the apostle Paul. And this is all contained in the Mind of the Son of God. And you and I are told to “let this mind be in you that was in Christ…”

Comprehending and understanding just how God will do this reproduction of Himself is  seeing the vision of God; it is being privy to the very secrets of God Almighty.  However, to be a “seer” of the  vision, an initiation of sorts must first be accomplished by the seeker of truth.

The Initiation

Natural man, the first Adam, cannot see the spiritual vision of God’s plan to fulfill His purpose. It can stare him right in the face. In fact, it is written in plain English and sits on a shelf in half the homes of this world, and yet, the Bible remains a dusty tome, mostly unintelligible. To understand what God is all about first takes a new heart and with it a new way of thinking and living.

The Word says that we must first be “born again,” which in the original says “born from above” before we can even “see” or “enter” the kingdom of God (John 3: 3, 5). The kingdom of God is the spiritual and physical environment in which God animates and enacts His plan to fulfill His purpose. Moreover, until the seeker experiences this spiritual rebirth, he remains blind to what God is doing and how He is doing it.

Being “born from above” begins with one experiencing his own spiritual death, burial, and resurrection in revelation on the cross with Christ. For we know that our old nature was crucified with Christ and then was buried with Him. And then by believing He was raised from the dead after three days and three nights in the tomb, we, also, are “raised to walk in a newness of life.” Our old selfish sinful heart spiritually dies with Christ, and that seed of faith, provided by His Love for us when we were down, begins to grow. And with this small step of faith, we begin to see and enter His kingdom. God is leading His children into these greener pastures, and He will send them a teacher with the vision who will explain to them the vision. We need only to seek with a hungry sincere heart, and God will not give us a stone, but the bread of life.

The cross experience must happen first. This is what the true “come to Jesus” moment is all about. This is the only place where we may strip ourselves of petty ego and let the old self die–with Christ (Romans 6). The only place. It is the only sacrifice now that God will accept from us. It is the only way to get right with Him. It is the crucible of true repentance from sin and faith toward God. This is the initiation that separates the sheep from the goats, the pretenders from the contenders. This is where a Christian must put his hands to the plow and not look back. This is where one sells all that they have, especially the delusions of self-glorification.

Once this has been done, the following pages explaining the vision of His plan to fulfill His purpose will begin to make sense. His true doctrine will enlighten our sojourn through the “valley of the shadow of death.” But Christ holds the key that unlocks death’s inevitability. And He will help our eyes to see and help our feet to walk on by faith in this invisible Spirit of Love.

Contemplating His Love

After these opening first steps of repentance from sin and faith toward God takes hold, we then can begin to comprehend His love for us. For we cannot help but wonder about why He loved us–warts and all–even before we met Him at the cross.

And then we realize that He is Love. He is agape, selfless Love, and all Love can do is love. And Love’s nature is giving and sharing with no ulterior motives.

And if He gives us insight to go all the way back to the beginning with God, we will see that Love is like a seed. Love gives itself, and the receiver of that love then begins to love. It is like planting a seed in a garden; it germinates and grows into a plant that will produce its own seed.

And so God in the beginning, of course, knew all this. In the infinite essence of His Love, He knew that He needed something to express His Love to. It would not be a beautiful planet, star, or galaxy, for they could not respond to the Love. To the contrary, it would be  a living being capable of receiving and feeling the love. Moreover, He would create a being especially designed to be touched and moved by Love, with a heart that could serve as the matrix for the further reproduction of agape Love. That being would be the human being, a being wonderfully made by his Creator, made to be the “glory of God.” The human being was created for this purpose of duplicating and multiplying God.

And so, in the beginning, because His nature was Love, God arrived at His purpose, which is to share this love and to multiply His nature of love. In a word, His purpose is to reproduce Himself.

To carry out His purpose, God formulated a plan to reproduce Himself. He would create a human being, and He would make them male and female. They would serve as a crucible for each other, forging through the fires of the human condition a purification, thus implementing His plan for their perfection in His love.

Furthermore, He would choose Him a family of people, picked from Adam’s lineage, to be a living metaphor and symbol of His plan in action. He would call out Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons and their families to literally act out in a reality the past, present and future of His plan, thereby unfolding His eternal purpose for all His creation to see.

The above is rarefied knowledge and constitutes the vision of God. This is the vision that He shared with a few Hebrew prophets, offspring all of the aforementioned patriarchs. We have their writings in the Holy Bible. They tell us of God’s vision in small doses and scenes and insights and revelations, fashioned from the lives of historical persons.

The words of the vision given to them have been “closed up and  sealed till the time of the end.” The time of the end is now upon us. Their words of truth are dots that are now being connected by the Spirit of truth. “None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand” (Daniel 12: 9-10).

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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April 30, 2016 · 1:30 pm

Finding Our Way Back Home to the Beginning

Our spiritual walk as Christians is about finding our way back home. We began our journey in the Mind of God eons ago. We proceeded forth from a thought in His Mind in the beginning. For the Word-made-flesh told us, “For you have been with Me from the beginning”.

We were  then deposited onto this terrestrial plain with no initial recollection of our spiritual origins–for a purpose–His purpose.

Our immersion into sin early on in our earthly life sent us on a quest for peace with our Maker. We needed to be free from the guilt and sorrow  that our first life provided. That was God’s purpose in allowing us to wallow in sin for a season–to send us on our search for His redemption. We would not have ever sought His solace without the misery and debasement that sin brought to us.

So we broke down and got real and humbled ourselves to our Maker, and He answered us in giving us a new life in the form of a new seed beginning that when watered, will grow into the same thing we had with Him before the foundations of the world (John 15: 26-27; Isa. 40: 21). And with this new life, we grew to not only appreciate God and His mercy in delivering us from degradation, but also to just plain loving Him.

It is this love that God, who is Love, is after–for us. His desire is to reproduce His nature of love in human beings, which are the only beings capable of reproducing His spirit of unselfish love. We are, after all, created in His image; we are a vessel to contain and to pour out God onto a thirsty land.

And the seed of this love for God grows from that appreciation we exhibit when we acknowledge God’s love to us. His love toward us is all in the plan to use His Son as the sacrificial Lamb that “takes away the sins of the world.” God’s self-sacrifice at the cross showed us the greatest love. There no greater love than that.

When we believe the testimony of the Seed/Son, we receive a new life in a seed, energized by the Spirit, which erases all our past sins along with the guilt.

We are made free, and as the ex-slaves of sin, we exalt our new Master who has delivered us from death. We love Him and appreciate Him. His life now through the resurrection affords us that same life inside us. And His Seed of Love is growing and growing, both in our own hearts and in the hearts of our brothers and sisters.

Christ is the Seed of a new beginning for us. When we believe His testimony, we receive the seed of faith into our hearts. There is no spiritual growth without the true seed being received into the ground of a fertile heart, a heart that’s honest and receptive and in need.

It is this internalization into our hearts of His resurrection power that generates within us the new life.

The Father/Creator/Spirit/Love/Light has poured His complete plan, purpose, essence and life into His Son. Consequently,  we cannot thrive in our brief moments here on earth if we do not believe God’s testimony of His Son.

When someone rejects the Son, they reject the Truth of the ages, and in so doing, they lose their own souls. If the doubters do not surrender to God’s plan as seen in His Son’s life, then their brief moment of self-aggrandizement will molder in a forgotten shallow grave. But if we walk in the Light, we shall overcome all things and bask in the glory we had with him in the beginning (Heb. 2: 10; 1 Pet. 1: 7; Rom. 8: 18).     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 20, 2016 · 5:51 pm

Faith He Rose Not Enough–With Him We Rose, Too

It is not enough to believe that Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead. We must believe that our old Adamic nature died with Him, was buried with Him, and by believing in His resurrection, we too are “raised to walk in a newness of life.”[Romans 6: 4].

This is what He requires us to do. It is not difficult to believe that Christ existed and went through what the scriptures said He went through. “Even the devils believe in one God and tremble” [James 2:19]. But He is requiring His followers to go all in, to lay it all on the line, to get skin in the game. And we do that by giving up our old lives, ambitions, haunts, addictions, habits–you get the idea. He tells us to “count the cost” to see if we have the right stuff to complete the spiritual growth process He wants us to go through in order to become like Him. I’ll repeat that: to become just like Him.

We must first realize that the moment Christ expired on the cross, your sin nature and mine died along with Him. That was us dying there. He took our sins upon Him and through death eradicated them out of existence. All the sins of every human being, along with the old nature that gave rise to the sin, died when He died [Romans 6: 1-15]. This is precious knowledge that is seldom heard on Sundays around the world.

And then Christ was buried, and with Him was buried all the sins of mankind. Your sins and my sins, along with our old sinful nature that generated the evilness in the first place–they died and were buried.

And then we believe that Christ rose from the dead. But it wasn’t just Him that rose, but we rose too! He is so merciful to provide a way for us to have a new life–before our physical body goes back to dust. He rose, we rose, by believing it so. He said it; He wrote it; we are now  just to believe it.

So it is not just believing that only Christ rose from the dead. We rose with Him. But all we have are His words promising this new life if we believe the above. We must believe words that express this truth, written down by Christ’s followers almost 2,000 years ago. And that takes faith, which is believing having not seen the evidence beforehand.

The Seed Germinates

When we really believe in our own death, burial and resurrection, which happened simultaneously with His, then the light of truth ignites within our hearts. It is like when a seed is planted in the garden. The warmth of the sun combines with the moisture in the earth and then–a miracle happens.

The old seed ceases to exist in its original state. It dies, losing its old identity. Its old outward shell goes back to dust as its new inner life springs out to the light and warmth of the sun. We as God’s offspring are given birth like those garden seeds. It is a miracle.

The original spiritual Seed is the Word of God. Christ is the Author and Finisher of our faith. An author writes the script. And this Author wrote the play of Life having Himself come in flesh and give Himself as a ransom for all of us. And He would be the Word of God enacted on the earth. And that Word became the Seed. And when that Word is believed by us–about Him and us as outlined above–then we become “new creatures in Christ.” We become part of the enactment of the Play. We are in it! Or rather, He is in us, enacting the love one to another, which is His nature and is an integral part of the Script.

““Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12: 24). That wheat seed that Christ was talking about was Himself. If He does not go to the cross, then He would remain alone. But if He dies, then many more grains–just like Himself–will be produced. He would have reproduced Himself through the self-sacrifice.

The same thing is true for man. If a person chooses to not die with Christ, then he will face the  lonely, dusty tomb of death.

But if we choose His way of life, then our old sinful heart dies and we are freed from its clutches. We were slaves to sin and sinning, but we now are liberated from the slavemaster sin.

And like that seed in the garden, through belief in the word of promise that the Son/Word/Seed proclaimed, we newly sprout up with the very power of the Creator surging with life through our new being.

Sprouted Wheat Grows into Grain

We like freshly sprouted wheat are together become potential grain that the Master mills into flour which He uses to make the spiritual “bread of life.” But we must grow to full maturity till we “come to seed” and can become flour for baking that bread.

For all this to happen, we must grow from that little sprouted blade of wheat. Christ explains that the kingdom of God is like the earth that brings forth fruit of itself. A man sows the seed, and it comes up–“first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head” (Mark 4: 28).

Brothers and sisters, we are His seed; we are God’s children. And we are meant to grow. That is our destiny: to become just like Him and to be used to make the bread of life. If we are not growing into maturity, something is wrong!

To mature like this, we must “purge out the old leaven” and the false teachings that well meaning people have passed down to us. We must be ready to “dig deep” and study His word diligently and do it in the face of the opposition that will come–mostly from those of our own family and circle of friends and acquaintances.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

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February 13, 2016 · 4:32 pm

Life Comes Out of Death of Old Nature

“You Gotta Die Before You Live” is the name of the song [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeDb5WdFHS0 ].

That really sums up the gateway into the Christian walk. The old sinful self must die on the cross with Christ, and then by believing in His resurrection, we, too, are “raised to walk in a newness of life.” There is no watering it down; no excuses. “The soul that sins must die.” That’s the law laid down in the beginning. Man is born with unwanted sinful compulsions. In the Adamic nature, he is born into a slavery to sin. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Sin dwells in the unregenerated human, making them do incredibly selfish sinful things to others. Who can deliver man from such bondage to sin? (Rom. 7: 15-25).

We Christians know that  it is God through His Son that has provided the key to unlock the chains of sin from our hearts. He said that He would deliver us from sin, but we have been told that you’ll be a sinner till the day you die, that you cannot stop sinning; just ask forgiveness. Many precious Christian souls are wrestling with the sin question as we speak.

“Sinner till the day you die…” The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. For death is the way out of the slavery of continual sinning. Not the physical death of the body, but it is the spiritual death of the old Adamic heart and nature within. That is the ticket to freedom.

What again is the answer to this dilemma?

Our Old Nature Must Die on the Cross

So how does one get out of the bondage of sin and sinning?  How do we deal with this sin problem in our lives?  The scriptures say that  “He shall save His people from their sins.”  How does this happen?  Can we ever get in a “right” state with God?  What must we do?  There is only one thing to do with the carnal sinful self and that is to confess our depraved state, identify it with Christ on the cross, and let it die.  There is only one way for the body of sin to be destroyed for the old sinful Adamic nature; it must be crucified.  But we cannot really do anything to bring this on.  It is a total work of God that has already been done—at the cross.  We cannot do anything to deserve this wonderful deliverance from this death caused by sin and sinning.  All He wants us to do is believe what He has already done to deliver us from the bondage of sin.

First, we must know this one thing: our old man, our old ego, our old self, our old nature, our old heart, our old carnal nature, the flesh, the depraved body of sin within us—it is put to death with the sacrificial Lamb.  Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Romans 6:6.

Paul did not say that our old sinful nature was going to be taken care of some day when we all get to heaven.  No!  He said that it is dead, already put to death on the cross! That is not a misprint or a mis-translation.  The sacrificial Lamb of God took our sins upon Him at the time of His death.  He was our scapegoat, as when the Levitical priest laid hands on the goat transferring the sins of the people onto it.  Christ died as a sinful lost man that day, for He “was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin that we may be made the righteousness of God in Him” (II Cor. 5:21).

He wants us to believe this—that our sinful nature died with Him on the cross, and that we was buried with Him, and that we were raised up with Him as well.  For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Romans 6:5.

Is this hard for us to believe?  Is it hard to have faith in this teaching?  Yet the elect will believe this word.  The others will fall as the children of Israel did through unbelief.  For you see that God is not asking us to do anything except believe what He has already done for us.  He first believed in His work in us long before we got here on this earth.

Entering the State of Being Right with God

And if we believe His word on this, then He will reckon a righteous status unto us. He will lay to our account that we are righteous in His eyes.  For it is God who makes the dead-in-sin come to life and imputes righteousness unto them because they believe Him.  Even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.  Romans 4:17.

Our part is to surrender our old sinful selves unto the cross.  Because of our faith in His redemptive sacrifice by surrendering unto death our own sinful heart, then He says, “You are now my child, and you are now righteous in My sight.  You are welcome into my arms of love and mercy.  Just walk in it by forgiving others and doing my words.  For it is not you that are doing it, for you are dead now, my sons and daughters.  It is the Spirit of the living God that I have dispatched into your hearts.  It is the Spirit of Christ within you who I recognize as the one motivating spirit of your life.  And soon you will be able to truthfully say what Paul said to the Galatians.”  I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Gal. 2:20.

When we simply believe His apostle’s word and identify  our  depraved  carnal  nature with the Lamb that day, and surrender to the punishment of death to that old selfish way of life, then He is pleased.  That faith pleases Him very much, for we believe the report that He has given us concerning the Savior.

“Righteousness” is the upright walk in God’s ways and laws.  If one is righteous in God’s eyes, then He approves of their walk of faith.  Our old carnal Adamic nature can never please God, for it cannot keep the ten commandment law.  But there was one who did, even the Savior Himself.  Our part is to just believe that He is living within, for He is the Spirit, and His Spirit within keeps us in that righteous condition in God’s eyes.  Remember that He is the one who “calls those things that be not as though they were.”  He believes in His own sacrificial power; He can’t go back on it.  If we believe what He believes about us in our redeemed position with Him within, then we are walking in faith.

[The above is an excerpt from The Unveiling of the Sons of God. You may read a portion of it here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/ebook-the-unveiling-of-the-sons-of-god/ or you may order a free copy of the trade paperback–details here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/donate/ ]  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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November 21, 2015 · 2:58 pm

Beware of Man’s Traditions

The early apostles constantly warned of false doctrines being taught to the new Christians. Since past is prologue and since there is nothing new under the sun, their warnings are valid for us in these last days.

A great deception was already sweeping through the little congregations scattered over the Mediterranean world. Paul is warning the Colossians. Walk in Christ the way you have been taught by His true teachers. And don’t be spoiled by men “through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2: 6-8).

What were they teaching? What were these “traditions of men” that were obviously false and spiritually injurious to young Christians? What was this worldly thinking that is so deceiving?

In other words, those who believe man’s traditions about Christ will try to deceive you concerning the Savior. Beware of them, Paul is saying. All these seemingly innocuous platitudes about Christ will have “grand” intentions, but they will hurt the hearers. Beware.

Then in the next verse,  Paul counters the deceptive traditions that they were teaching. “For in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (v. 9). Huh? At first glance, this does not seem to go with the previous three verses, but it has everything to do with them. For man’s philosophy and traditions are the opposite of the truth found in this verse.

First, the man Christ Jesus (Yahshua) had dwelling in Him the fullness of the Godhead. That means that the Father Yahweh dwelt fully in Christ. The Spirit dwelt fully in Christ. But man’s tradition teaches that Christ was only one person out of the three of the Tri-une God. They do not teach that Yahweh dwelt and walked around in the man Christ, even though He constantly told bystanders that it was the Father within Him that was doing the miracles.

“And you are complete in Christ, which is the head of all principality and power” (v. 10). Man’s tradition teaches that we need a priest to intercede for us and saints to pray to, that we need a church house and elders and a pastor and ceremonies and candles and tithes and offerings, et al.

And man’s traditions don’t teach that baptism is more than an outward show that you are joining the church. They don’t teach you that he that is “baptized into Christ is baptized into His death. “We are buried with Christ by baptism” so that our old sinful heart and spirit “might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin” (Col. 2: 11-12; Rom. 6: 1-12).

The churches say you have to be baptized to show obedience to Christ. But they don’t have the spiritual depth to explain that the old sinful self is cut out without man’s hands by faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The old sin guilt and desire to sin is cut out of our spirit and is replaced by a portion of His Spirit, resulting in a miracle heart transplant!

Sadly, in fact, man’s traditions teach just the opposite. They teach, You are a sinner saved by grace, and you will always be a sinner. And they say this with pride. But the apostles taught that you can in Him be free from sin (I John 3: 9).
Man’s teachings say that you cannot grow spiritually to eventually be like Christ. Their teachings, in a word, stunt a Christian’s growth like a seedling in the garden wilts under a sunless sky and brackish water.

These are some of the traditions of men that Paul warns us of. We must beware in order to grow up unto Him. For they will deceive and beguile and spoil the wonderful future that God has for those who believe His promises to us.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

 

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October 10, 2015 · 4:32 pm

Everyone Wants to Be Loved

Everyone wants to be loved–to be cared for, thought of kindly, smiled upon, approved of, praised as worthy.

Everyone wants to be loved. It is the universal spiritual need that stares us all in the face. When our eyes meet, we witness simultaneously the same longing ache that we see when we peer into a looking glass and see the loneliness reflected in our own two wells of tears.

Everyone wants to be loved. We spend much of our lives searching for “the one”–the one who can fill that longing. A cosmic vacuum exists in the human heart, and no one is there to fill its aching need for love.

And there is only one earthly organism on the planet that is specifically designed to channel the kind of love that we all need. Only one being on earth that is capable of loving another the exact way that they want to be loved. And that is the human being.

We are all human. So then, why can’t we simply meet the need and fill the vacuum and just love everyone?

Someone will say, Well, I love people. Yet, Christ tells us, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” Whoa. You mean we are to love everyone? He continues, “But love your enemies, and do good…and your reward shall be great, and you shall be the children of the Highest” [1].

Everyone wants to be loved. But natural man has an irrational fear of rejection. It is irrational because  even a two year old teaches us its folly as they unconditionally embrace us and drown us with wet kisses. They have no fear of rejection, for innately they know that everyone wants to be loved.

So what happens to us? After our brief taste of the victory of fearless love as toddlers, what prevents us from giving what everyone wants?

If we can agree that the Creator made us this way–both with the need for love and the capacity to selflessly channel it–then we must realize that He has made a way for us to do it–to be the riverbeds of the living waters of the love from above that will fill the vacuum.

God is this love–this agape love. He through His Spirit will flow this selfless love and help us fulfill our destiny as His conduits, channeling His love to those who need it. For everyone wants to be loved.

The Price

But to be one of the “children of the Highest” who will love everyone like their Father does, there is a price to be paid. It costs something. And we should “count the cost,” as He admonished us to do [2].

It costs us our old life and all of our allegiances to the people and things we deemed important. And to pay the cost, we must bear our own cross and follow Him.

How do we do that? We must let our old spiritual heart die with the Son of God on His cross. We must die with Him, be buried with Him, and be resurrected with Him. This happens when we believe that God raised up Christ from the grave. We, too, now are resurrected “to walk in a newness of life” [3].

It all starts at the cross–now our cross. We, like Christ, show the greatest love when we lay down our lives for another [4]. There is no greater love. He did it, and now as the “children of the Highest,” we do it. And then God’s love will flow through us. Then we will be used by our Creator to be His fountain of fearless love, His essence, agape love. For “God is love” [5].

Then we will conquer the fear of being rejected. For “perfect love casts out fear” [6]. With our old selves dead and gone, we will be able to channel Christ’s Spirit of love back to God by loving others.

And then great joy will be ours, for we will have the capacity to fulfill everyone’s desire. For everyone wants to be loved.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[For more:  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/what-the-world-needs-now-is-agape-love/ ]

 

  1.  Luke 6: 27-35     2.  Luke 14: 27-33     3.  Col. 2: 11-12; Rom. 6: 1-12               4.  John 15: 13     5.  I John 4: 8             6.  I John 4: 18

 

 

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September 26, 2015 · 4:35 pm

The Law and the Testimony of Love That Fulfills It–How to Prevent Backsliding

“Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Which law? The Ten Commandments, the breaking of which constitutes the definition of sin (I John 3: 4; Rom. 13: 8-10).

Which “love” is it then? It is the love from above–agape love. It is only through agape love that the law can be kept. Natural man without this love cannot keep the law, no matter how hard he works to keep it. It is spiritual, and it takes a new spirit from a brand new heart to keep it.

This divine law is the standard that man can and must attain unto, but it will be only through God’s Spirit helping him. In fact, that is precisely the point. The only way that a man stops breaking the Ten Commandments–stops sinning, in other words– is by receiving a new spirit from God.

The Greatest Love

In order for this to happen, one must visit the source of agape love. The source is God Himself and what He did for us. He gave us His Son. Yahweh was in Christ, “reconciling the world unto Himself” (II Cor. 5: 19). It is the laying down of His life on the cross that is the greatest love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15: 13).

When we believe this love that Christ showed, when we are grateful and appreciative for this selfless act, and when we do what Christ did, then this great agape love that He exhibited in dying for us is transferred into and through us to others. We then become a channel of God’s love, which is His essence, for “God is love” (I John 4: 16).

This agape love is the essence of His Spirit, which He gives to us. And this love inside our new hearts in the form of His Spirit, now courses through us.

We must see that Christ “was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (II Cor. 5: 21). And we must identify our old sinful law-breaking selfish nature with Christ on the cross. We must believe that when He died, our old sinful nature died with Him. Same goes with His burial. And–HalleluYah!–when we believe that He rose from the dead, we rise, also, to walk in a newness of life! He is not our substitute; He is our example.

It is all lined out in Romans 6. Our old sinful Adamic nature must die with Christ on the cross. And be buried with Him. And through belief that He arose from the dead, God will raise us up with a new heart! For which is easier for God to perform–raising Christ from a three day death or giving us a new heart that is free from sin and sinning?

This is the crux of the matter. This is the rock solid foundation that will never be shaken. Just feeling guilty about the sin in one’s life and walking down to the front of a church building will not sustain a young convert to Christ. How many have we seen “back slide” into the slop and vomit of their old lives?

The crux? Do we believe that Christ was raised from the dead? Not just the historical resurrection some 2,000 years ago. It is believing that Christ, when He arose then, now arises IN US. Do we believe that? For that is the crux of the matter. Even the devils believe in one God and tremble (James 2: 19). So believing that Christ’s historical resurrection is not enough. It is believing that His Spirit is resurrected in us–that is the important thing. That is the solid Rock in us that cannot be moved. That is what prevents backsliding into the old life of sin.

When this Spirit of agape love, now in us, begins to flow through us to others, then the law is fulfilled in us. Love fulfills the law in us. This is the testimony of God’s Spirit incarnate once again in us.

And now the old scripture passage becomes clear. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa. 8: 20). Those that speak of this law and the testimony that keeps the law through divine love, have the light of God. If they don’t speak in agreement with the law and this testimony of what fulfills it, then beware of them, for there is no light in them.     [For much more on this visit here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/category/light/ ]

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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August 1, 2015 · 2:44 pm

How to Repent from Sin–Once and for All

Most Christians are taught that they are sinners. They have never heard this verse preached: “He that is born of God does not commit sin, for His seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God” (I John 3: 9). They will be browbeaten about their sinful state but they will never hear this verse taught.

When one hears this verse for the first time, it is shocking.  And yet, there it is, the Spirit of Christ Himself writing through His apostle this astonishing doctrine. It was there all the time, but man’s traditions have been smeared over it, so much so that few have eyes have ever seen it.

This righteous message thrusts us to a crossroads–whether to believe it or not. Someone is thinking…Well, nobody at church has ever brought this out. Not straightforward like this. The preacher never quoted or preached on this verse. If he ever said anything about sin, it was that we are all “sinners saved by grace.” But we already knew that. He said that we would definitely keep on sinning, but the good news is that now we have a Savior to pray to, and He would forgive us. Just confess your sins–confess them. It kind of sounds like the same set up the Catholics have except they confess their sins to a priest, but we Protestants confess them direct to the Savior. But we are still going to sin. No getting around that, according to the preacher. You just got to confess them to get rid of the guilt. It’s like we have sin hanging over our heads just waiting to jump on you and make you do things you really don’t want to do. Bad things. Hurtful things to others. Selfish things that are lurking there in the back rooms of your heart. Just waiting to jump out and take over for a spell, and then, they recede after you confess them. You are going to sin; you just have to confess them. At least, that’s what they teach…

And that is the doctrine concerning sin that we have been taught. This teaching is not astonishing! It is frustrating and depressing. It does not make you want to shout, HalleluYah! There is nothing astonishing about it. It is just old and unenlightened and powerless. There is no liberty and freedom there. No deliverance. No saving them from their sins. No freedom from being a slave to sin. Christ did say, He who commits sin is a slave to sin. And no man can serve two masters.

But Christ also taught that we are more than conquerors through Him. He came to save us from our sins (Matt. 1: 21). He is not the minister of sin. When our old sinful nature dies with Christ on the cross, sin within our hearts is “destroyed, that we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.”

How to Repent from Sin

When our old sinful nature dies with Christ on the cross, sin within our hearts is “destroyed, that we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.”So we reckon ourselves dead to sin but alive to God through Him (Rom. 6: 1-11). Freed from the slavery and bondage to sin. Free! Now that is astonishing!

The key is just believing this. God said it; I didn’t. It is all in His written word. We must study it out and believe it. Here is some more on this from my book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality: 

Chapter 28  How the Old Self Dies–Baptism into His Death

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

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

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

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

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

He was made to be sin for us

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

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

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

     We make the Lamb’s soul an offering for our own sins by realizing that it was us in our sinful state hanging on the tree that day.  We must be immersed in this knowledge.  We must believe that our old self—that old monkey on our back, that old demon that we were, that selfish, egotistical, self-absorbed, sorry excuse for a human being—that old thing that we were is now, in God’s eyes dead.  Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin. Rom. 6: 6.
[You can read more of this book on line or order a free hard copy found here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/book-yah-is-savior-the-road-to-immortality/  and https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/donate/ ]

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April 25, 2015 · 5:29 pm

Christ’s Doctrine Is Astonishing

The most distinguishing characteristic of Christ’s doctrine is that it is astonishing. “And they were astonished at His doctrine, for His word was with power” (Luke 4: 32).

The word “astonished” in the Greek means “to be struck with amazement as by lightening.” The Latin roots of our English word is “to be thunderstruck.” In both, there is an attack on our complacency. We are shocked and shaken, as when a lightening bolt and its deafening blast of thunder hits so close that it frightens us and shakes us to our core. That is what the doctrine of Christ does to the hearer.

He owned the words He was saying, and they had a force that shook up the hearers. His word was with power because He did not speak words about  the word of God, but He spoke God’s words. Big difference. Christ’s mouth was God’s mouth, and His words were “spirit and life” to the hearers. And God is still speaking by His Spirit, now desiring to speak through us.

However, most preachers today, at best, speak about God. Many speak only about themselves. Just briefly listen  to them. They go on and on numbingly about their personal lives, and you keeping waiting patiently, but precious few have God speaking His words through them. Their teachings are not astonishing, for their words are not with power. Their doctrine is filled with words about God, not words from God. If the message spoken by modern ministers is not astonishing, then it needs to be re-examined to see if it really is the word of God or just words.

But Christ spoke the Father’s words, the word of God. And we know that the word of God is powerful (Heb. 4: 12). And the hearers of it will be astonished!

The Teachings that Bring Astonishment

What exactly did Christ say to them that shook them out of the rut of their everyday lives? He told them, “Repent,” the first of His doctrines [1]. And the hearers were “astonished at His doctrine.” Why?

When you and I bear witness to the heart-changing doctrine of true repentance from sin, when we stand up and testify before others that this hand that stole steals no more, and this tongue that cursed, swears no more, and these eyes that lusted after women desires them no more, and this mouth that lied in self-promotion and delusions of grandeur now issues forth the sweet waters of love and encouragement to those that thirst–this is an astonishing miracle of transformation of the human heart.

This is an astounding change that God has wrought in my heart–a change totally sustained by the heart that He has given me, a heart that is new, a heart that is born from above, a heart transplanted from heaven by the Great Physician who has done a truly marvelous work, a lasting work founded upon His great love and mercy in that while we were yet sinners, “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5: 6).

That is astonishing! To be in such a state of grace (favor from God) that I am now free from the slave master called Sin! “For he that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom. 6: 7). Dying with Christ on the cross is how we repent of our sins and how we are made free by faith in Him. I am now free from the bondage of sin and sinning! That is astonishing!

And you are free now, too. He has already secured our liberty from the bondage to sin! We just need to believe it! Which is, of course, the second principle of Christ’s doctrine, which is the milk of the word that helps us to grow up and be another Peter, John, James, or Paul. I know this is what we all want–to walk in power. But first things first.

First, we need to surrender our old self to the death of the cross with Christ, die with Him, be buried with Him, and by believing that He was raised from the dead, we too can walk in a “newness of life.” What’s newer than being freed from sin and sinning?

You know that Christ came to take away our sins, thus destroying the works of the devil. “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” [2].

That is astonishing! That is earth shaking and heart rending. This is it. No more playing around. This is repentance from sin, the first of the principles of the doctrine of Christ, the first cup of the milk of the word, and it is astonishing!

{Send this milk on to all you know and love. They are hungry for righteousness; they need it. Feed His lambs, brothers and sisters. Feed them…Visit my new blog The Milk of the Word devoted to the first principles of Christ’s doctrine found here: https://themilkoftheword.wordpress.com/ } Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1. Matt. 3: 2 & 4: 17; Mark 1: 15, 6: 12; Luke 13: 3 among others

2. I John 3: 5-9

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April 12, 2015 · 5:37 pm

The Milk of the Word

The spiritual growth life cycle revealed in scripture is like the natural human life cycle. We all start out in our new life as babes in Christ.

After that first flush of joy of entering into our new life, we start growing and we are hungry. Just like a baby. Peter admonishes us, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.”

But what exactly is the “milk of the word”? The spiritual milk is the “first principles of the oracles of God.” Paul the apostle uses this phrase in an admonishment to the Hebrews. He was concerned with their lack of growth, saying that they should be out there teaching the newcomers in Christ. But they had “need that one teach [them] again which be the first principles of the oracles of God, and have need of milk, and not strong meat (Heb. 5: 11-12).

Two “needs” are mentioned here–a need to be taught the first principles and a need for milk. So we see that they are one and the same: milk = first principles.

So What Is the “Milk”?

What are these first principles? The next verse says that if a Christian is still on the spiritual milk, then they are “unskilful” and lack spiritual experience, “for he is a babe.” Strong meat  is for mature Christians, meaning that their senses have been “exercised to discern both good and evil.” In other words, a babe in Christ finds it difficult to tell the difference between good and evil. Babes in Christ need to be taught the difference between the true doctrines of Christ and the false doctrines. And there are many (5: 13-14).

The “first principles of the oracles of God” are the “principles of the doctrine of Christ.” They are found in the next two verses of Hebrews. We are to learn them and then leave them! We are to walk in them but not circle the same old mountain like our forefathers did. Rather we are to do them, incorporate them as good spiritual habits, and then “go on to perfection,” which is spiritual maturity. That’s the place where there’s no more need of milk but strong spiritual food (6: 1-2).

And then Paul lists these principles of the doctrine of Christ, which is the milk of the word. “Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” That’s the milk that when fully consumed and digested, will bring us into a higher walk with Him.

These are the first principles of Christ’s doctrine, and we should know them backwards and forwards and be doing them. Yet, some churchgoers say that they do not want doctrine–they just want Jesus. Sorry. You can’t have Him without His teachings. He is the Great Teacher of Righteousness, after all.

These teachings comprise the milk of the word, and they are wonderful stuff and very much needed, but it should not be our spiritual food forever!

The New Blog

For those of us who do have need of the milk, I will be sharing a series of articles in a new blog with the working title The Milk of the Word. It will be there for new Christians as well as those in the body of Christ who desire to firm up the foundation of Christ’s doctrines, which will help us all to go on to perfection. “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4: 11-15). But first, let us imbibe the pure and sincere milk of the word.

{I will be announcing the new blog The Milk of the Word shortly here on this blog}

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