Category Archives: Uncategorized

What Is the 11th Commandment?

(The Preface of the Book)

I have written a book entitled The 11th Commandment. I know. You, like me, thought there were Ten Commandments. Not eleven. After all, it was Ten Commandments that Moses received on Mt. Sinai. In a Christophany, in a miraculous display of power, Christ our Savior wrote them with His finger on stone tablets.

And now you are being told that there is one more, the 11th Commandment. The natural question would be, “What is the 11th and where did it come from?” Christ is the All-Knowing and has the answer. But instead of His finger carving tablets of stone again, He wrote the 11th Commandment with His own blood onto the tablets of our hearts.

It reads: “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34). Love each other like I loved you. The 11th Commandment is this “new commandment” Christ gave us. We read the words, and it sounds simple enough. But how to love like Christ escapes us. Doubts creep in. Nobody can be like Christ. Why would He command us to do the impossible?

This book answers these and other questions: How do we obey the 11th Commandment? How do we love others like Christ loved us? We will see that in the scriptures, Christ gives us smaller commandments, that when obeyed, add up to the keeping of the 11th. Christ’s 11th New Commandment issues organically out of God’s purpose, which is to reproduce Himself—Love.

Christ is the answer to all questions in our search; it begins and ends with Him. He said, “Seek and you shall find.” Seek God and His purpose in multiplying Himself. Every word that He spoke pertains to this purpose. Christ is the Seed Son. He compared Himself to a grain of wheat that dies and then springs to life and grows to full maturity bearing “much fruit.” Thus, the law of harvest is complete. Since He is the Seed, then the harvest will be Christ fully formed in us. We will be just like Him, for each seed bears its own kind (John 12:24; Gal. 6:7).

God has a plan to accomplish His purpose. It is to use humans as the medium to reproduce Himself through. Because it takes time, His plan has been written down and has come to us in the pages of the Holy Bible. But unfortunately, it is a closed book for most readers. It is full of mysteries because people do not know His purpose in creating the earth.

For example, He commanded us to forgive each other (Mark 11:25). When we forgive, God’s Spirit grows within us, much like our muscles grow when we use them. God’s purpose is for Him to grow in us to a point that it is all Him inside of us.

His New Commandment is to love each other the way He loved us. Under this overarching Commandment are many other new commandments. When we obey them, we will have obeyed the larger 11th Commandment: Love each other the way Christ loved us. Christ knows that for us, it is a big order to fill. So, He breaks it down into smaller steps.

To continue our example, we ask Him for more of His Spirit to help us forgive another, thus loving that person. For it is only His Spirit now growing in us that can do the forgiving and loving. We do not strive to obey His new commandments to obtain salvation or reward or to be pleasing in His sight. We obey that He may grow in us. By obeying them, we develop His “divine nature” within our new heart.

How the Book Is Organized

The first section of the book gives more background information, elucidating the spiritual setting of these New Commandments. The second section will address a dozen of them.
There are many more sprinkled throughout the New Testament. It is the author’s hope that this book will encourage readers to explore and investigate other commandments that the Spirit will show them. Joy comes when He reveals a new one to us as we study His word. They are like pearls just under the surface of the sand, waiting for us to discover them.

It is our hope that this book will bring awareness of Christ’s new commandments and their importance for our spiritual growth. When we keep them, we are obeying the 11th Commandment. May it be used to help carry us all on down the road to immortality, that God may reproduce Himself in each of us, thus fulfilling His purpose for you and me. Understanding all this prepares us for bearing much fruit. This is the 100-fold fruit bearing that He has for His sons and daughters. But it all starts with understanding God’s eternal purpose. Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[Order your free copy with free shipping of this book. Just send a request with your name, mailing address and the name of the book to my email address: wayneman5@hotmail.com]

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

In the Beginning Was the Seed—Part Two

(Knowing Christ from the beginning is the key to maximum spiritual growth)

Knowing Him from the beginning is so profound that we need to slow down—way down—in our perusal of its meaning. We must not rush past this truth in hot pursuit of more knowledge. Knowing Him from the beginning is deep, though it is taught in the simplest of words: seed, garden, sow, reap, harvest. Our Savior used these very words to bring Light to our eyes. We must slow down and savor His words of inspiration. We must not bolt this food, for this is “strong meat.”

The apostle John writes to little children, young men, and fathers—30, 60 and 100-fold fruit-bearing Christians. “I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him that is from the beginning” (I John 2:13). The fathers know that God is the Word in the beginning. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:13). Fathers know Him who is from the beginning. They know that all those who receive the Word/Seed are regenerated from the Seed/Son, who is the impetus of all life. God/Spirit/Word/Seed was at the beginning of everything. And we are in Him; we are inside the Seed! Therefore, we were in the Seed at the beginning, too!

A Seed, a Promise

A seed is a promise of the fruit to come. We receive the seed, having not seen the future fruit. It is a word of promise, a covenant, a pact, that if you take the Seed and believe the word of promise, then you will bear “fruit, more fruit, and much fruit.” This is 30, 60, and 100-fold growth explained.

Christ is the Seed. His earthly life is an enactment of the spiritual seed reality. Christ, the Son of God, is the Seed that is planted in us humans. We are the spiritual seed bed, that the Seed/Son is planted into. “The seed is the word of God.” Christ is the Sower; He sows the word of His promises into our hearts. When we walk with Christ in a higher growth, we are a part of His spiritual body. We become one with the Sower as we begin to sow the seed, the word of God.

All this is activated by faith–His faith. He believes in this spiritual miracle that changes us. He believes and has faith that what He has instituted will stand forever. When we take the leap of faith, we are really beginning to believe what the Son believes. He has faith that we will change and witness in us His glory.

Look at us! Despite our pitiful weaknesses, Christ believes in His own word of power to change us. We just need to ask Him for the strength to believe what He believes. And this power is not just about our earthen vessels. Upon His return to earth, those who are walking in 100-fold growth will wield power, executing His will for the earth.     

When we bear witness to the testimony of the Seed/Son, we will have explained and walked in 100-fold fruit bearing growth. The caveat is that the closer we get to bearing much fruit, the more persecution we can expect from our adversary the devil. For he does not want this truth out there. The word “testimony” is translated from the Greek word martyria. “Death works in us” (II Cor. 4:12).

The Seed Must Die

But the seed must die when planted. Christ in His earthly ministry did it all. He raised the dead and healed the sick, by the thousands. With His power He could have called down ten thousand angels to take over the world, but He didn’t. Why? Because in His first advent, He was the Seed, not the harvest. He had to die because seeds must die and lose their identity to bear fruit.

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit” (John 12:24 KJV). In another version: “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (NIV).  Christ, the Son of God, is the kernel of wheat that had to die to bring forth “many sons unto glory.”

The harvest of “many sons” is fast approaching. His sons and daughters are rising out of the long-neglected seed beds and are springing forth into the Light. Like blades of corn, they have bent toward the Light. They are expanding their roots into the moist earth, and they are now hungry for the pure spiritual nutrients needed for their growth.

The sons and daughters of God will grow until the time of the harvest, which is fast approaching. The evil seed is planted and grows alongside the wheat. It is careening and stomping through God’s field of wheat, crushing some good fruit in the process.

Satan, the god of this present world system, “knows that he has but a short time” before the harvest. He is marshaling his forces, pushing toward that day when–he thinks–he will be crowned the god of all creation. It is the same spirit that was in the garden of Eden, the same irritant that Yahweh allowed to strut on to the world stage, the same “accuser of the brethren,” who is the deceiver in charge of this world system. But His word promises this: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed… it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44). That is His word of promise. It’s the Kingdom. That is the “mind of Christ.” It is what the King thinks on. The Kingdom is the gospel, the good news (Matthew 4:23; 24:14; Mark 4:14). It is what we are to seek first. He is asking us to think on these deeper truths, truths that, when obeyed, will make His will our will.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Abraham, Faith, and the City of God

(An excerpt from Chapter 29 of  The Apostles’ Doctrine)

Abraham “looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11: 10). He looked by faith. God appeared to Him several times and told him about New Jerusalem. And Abraham believed God, having never seen the city. “And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God” (James 2: 23). God’s friend looked for God’s city. If we want to be God’s friend, we better start looking for the heavenly city. We better study it out thoroughly. We better start walking this faith walk like New Jerusalem really exists.

Faith Is the Only Path to the Invisible God

Abraham looked for the heavenly city because he believed God. He had “faith toward God,” which happens to be the second of the apostles’ doctrines. Faith is being assured of something’s existence before seeing the evidence that it indeed exists. Believing before seeing (Heb. 11: 1).

But this world lies in deception. It is designed to lure every human who is striving and seeking God to rely only on their five senses for their reality. God transcends our five senses, which are like five blind guides falling with their patrons into a ditch. Furthermore, citizens of the five-senses-world rush to rescue us every time we get a little closer to God by exclaiming, “Come to your senses!” How deceived some are, for they do not understand that God is not in the ceremonies that you see, nor canned chants you hear, nor burning incense you can smell, nor wafers you can taste, nor hymnals and trays you can touch. He can only be grasped by faith.

So, like our father Abraham, we are to look for this New Jerusalem. It is what we are to seek after, just like the father of our faith and the other prophets did. This grand and glorious city, located on the real estate of old Jerusalem, will be our home and will be the governmental offices and throne of our King Yahshua.

This is what the story of the Hebrews is all about. And this Kingdom will bring to the earth the peace and love that we all have desired for thousands of years. It is a peace that only the Prince of Peace can bring. Un-regenerated man cannot bring peace to this earth. He has had 6,000+ years to get it done, but he has only left misery in his wake. Christ will get it done; that is the gospel, the good news—Christ the King bringing in His Kingdom that will correct the wrongs and bring judgement upon the evil doers, thus paving the way for peace and prosperity.

This is what we are working for. This is the only thing worth working for. For “all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” All else is fruitless and futile in the end. Nothing else will stand. All things besides His Kingdom will crumble and dissolve into the sands of time.

The sad part is that the masses will not cry unto God for His return to earth until they have lost everything. Historically in the Old Testament, the Israelites waited until they were conquered and made destitute by a foreign power before they cried to Yahweh. Then He would send them a man of God to be their champion. We in the West are living on borrowed time, for all our governments have borrowed trillions of dollars and are in debt to international bankers. It is only a matter of time before we go belly up. Then we will cry unto God for deliverance. Hate to say it, but history is a strict teacher of the truth. We all will reap what we have sown. The sands of time are running out.

We are told to “walk by faith, not by sight.” Christians can only do this by believing His word to us: “I will dwell in them, and walk in them” (II Cor. 5:7; 6:16). Where are we walking to? It is New Jerusalem.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock [Send for my book, The Apostles’ Doctrine. It is free with free shipping. For details, click the link: Ordering My Free Books in Paperback | Immortality Road (wordpress.com)]

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

New Book Back from the Printers–Order Your Copy Today

“The Additions to the Faith” explains how we are to grow spiritually. Growing is a process, and this book explains the process. This book is for those who believe they are called and chosen to be like the early apostles.

The apostle Peter admonishes us to add to our faith certain spiritual qualities of the King. In order that we may “partake of the divine nature,” we are to add virtue to our faith, and “to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness charity (agape love).” He goes on to say that we will be blind without them. But with them we will “make [our] calling and election sure, and that will ensure our entrance “into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 1: 3-11).

Today, Peter would tell us that these additions are not little romper room words to be pasted on a bulletin board. Rather they are facets of a jewel of great price, and that jewel is His very character. These additions are aspects of God’s divine nature. A shallow perusal will not do. They must be studied and prayed over and sought with a whole heart in reverential awe.

Peter sums it up by saying, You better take heed to what I am saying to you. I have a “more sure word of prophecy.” I know what I am talking about because I was there with our Savior on the Mount of Transfiguration, and I beheld His glory. I am speaking to you now as “a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts” (1: 16-19).

God has miraculously preserved Peter’s words to us for all these 2,000 years. The Spirit still speaks through him to us. We need to study this out thoroughly, or we are going to miss something very big in God’s plan.

To order your free copy [with free shipping], send your name, mailing address, and name of the book to my email address: wayneman5@hotmail.com

[For more on the additions to the faith go here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/category/additions-to-our-faith/ ]

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Origins of Christmas Season Found in “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT”

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Seeking and Finding God Is Not from a Magical “Poof!”

Seeking and finding God is not about one day falling into a glorious cavern of His spiritual treasures, where you look all around, overwhelmed with the power and glory, and you begin to run around with your hair on fire, seeking other humans to share this vision with.

Sounds nice. Whatever it takes to get your attention. But that is not the way things will happen based on this precept: “That which has been is now, and that which is to be has already been. And God requires the past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15).

“God will call the past to account” it says in the NIV. The past is important to our Father. For example, He inspired His prophets to write His exploits down for the generations to come. For us—especially for us destined to be a factor in “the time of the end.” The things that happened to the twelve tribes of Israel back in the day is “written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come” (I Cor. 10:11). We must look to the past to secure our steps on our current spiritual walk. How did the prophets and apostles of old seek Him? What happened to the true seekers of Yah? What did He reveal about Himself to them? God requires once again that we seek and find Him the way they did in the past. We must remember what He said: “I change not.”

To find out more, let us go to the apostles. They had 3 1/2 years of everyday hands-on instruction. 3 1/2 years Christ taught them. Christ’s teachings recorded in the Bible would take just a few hours to read. They had a thousand days with Him. Think about the things He taught them that are not recorded!

They were prepared vessels, taught by their Master and chosen by Him to be in the upper room at Pentecost. It was not a magical “Poof!” that transformed them into the powerhouses we see in the book of Acts.

What They Were Taught

Brothers and sisters, we can be taught the Master’s doctrine right now. His teachings are His doctrine. And Christ taught his disciples well. It was first the book learning, and then the on-the-job training as seen in Matthew 10.

The point is this: His apostles have left us His teachings, that when followed, will prepare us for not just a Pentecostal experience but how to be the saviors of this sick planet.

Since today God requires the things of the past, then we must study how He operated in the past. For example, Christ walked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection. They could not recognize Him until He “expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Christ had upbraided them. “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25-32). This again shows how studying the scriptures (both Old and New Testaments) are so important.

But someone we’ll speak up and say, “But I already am walking with Christ!” Not if you are espousing false doctrines. Not when you still confess that you are a sinner. Not when your old selfish heart raises its ugly head. Not when you still don’t realize that we have been baptized into Christ’s death (Romans 6). We are dead with Him, buried with Him, and resurrected with Him, to walk in a “newness of life.”

People of God, this is repentance from sin, the very first of the apostles’ doctrine. The apostles got His teachings directly from Christ. And now they have given it to us. There are six more of his doctrines/teachings. These will prepare us for our appointment with Christ when he empowers us to be just like his apostles after the baptism of fire.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit and the baptism in fire are not the end goal for the elect. They are stages of spiritual growth to enable us to be used by Him to work in His harvest of souls. Those two baptisms are not the end, but rather they are means to the end. And that end is the fulfillment of all the prophecies “spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began.” Kenneth Wayne Hancock

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Birth Adventure of Our Daughter Sara

[A joyous yet cautionary tale]

Sara was born in Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. She was almost born on the road to Linares. She came rather rapidly once her time had come to enter this world. That was February 1, 1974. Sara’s first adventure was almost being born on the side of a mountain.

We were living 62 kilometers up the mountain from Linares on Hwy. 60–due west in the Sierra Madre mountains. It took one hour to travel those 37 miles, no matter if you were going uphill or downhill. The road was steep, so steep and curvy that going 20 miles an hour sometimes would throw you against the side of the van.  

It was a beautiful drive most of the time. Kilometer 62 was our address and was exactly a mile high, cool and dry in the winter. But just one hour away lay the sultry tropics of Linares. The city was surrounded by enormous orange and grapefruit orchards for as far as the eye could see.

The week before Sara was born, my wife Linda had false labor. She thought it was time. “Hurry, Wayne! It is time to go to the hospital!” So, we ran to the van and drove like crazy to get there in  time, only to find out that the baby was not ready. Disappointed, we drove on back to the mission and resumed our day-to-day activities.

The days clicked on. Linda got bigger and bigger and still no baby. She would have some twinges and pains here and there, but nothing serious seemed to be happening. Or at least she thought that.

Linda kept waiting and waiting, thinking it was just false labor again. Things got serious on February 1st. The contractions were getting harder. At first, they were four minutes apart, and then two minutes apart.

“Hurry! This must be the time!” Linda moaned. We sped down the mountain faster than usual. I know I was jostling her way too much. The extreme rocking motion probably helped to bring it on even faster. Down, down, and round and round we sped down that mountain, and all the while Linda was crying out in pain, “It’s coming! It’s coming! Hurry! Oh, God, it’s coming!”

We pulled into the hospital driveway in front of the receiving ward. Thank goodness that it was on the near side of the city on our highway. The side doors flew open. I called out for help. Medics rushed over. We got Linda onto a gurney, and they wheeled her swiftly down the hallway to the maternity delivery room. All the while, she was moaning in a wild-eyed blonde frenzy.

It was not five minutes after we got there that Sara came into this world. It happened so fast that they did not even have enough time to take Linda’s dress off and put her into a gown. I shouted to the nun nurses, “I want to come into the delivery room!”

“No, you cannot come in here. You must stay outside the doors.” The double doors had glass windows about eight inches above my eye level. So, I had to jump up and take a split-second glimpse of my first daughter being born. I didn’t have time to jump too much because the baby came quickly.

Usually, Linda had a difficult time because our babies had such large craniums. But, thank God, not Sara. She came so quickly that she just popped out, and there it was, the miracle of procreation once again gracing the stage we call earth. Hello, crazy daddy, jumping up and down to catch a glimpse of the precious little miracle. And finally, there it was!

“It’s a boy!” I shouted out at the top of my lungs. “It’s a boy!” I was announcing boldly through the cracked door to all the attendant nuns and to the radiant mother herself, now holding her new infant.

“No, it’s not,” said Linda calmly, patiently smiling at the ecstatic father. “It’s a girl.”

“But,” I said, looking down between the baby’s legs.

“That’s the umbilical cord wrapped around her.”

“I thought it was… that’s OK! It’s a beautiful baby girl!”

This is one of the most memorable adventures, not just as missionaries to Mexico, but in our entire life. Sara has been adventurous ever since. I guess it is in her DNA.  

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Outline for Teaching and Evangelizing

God’s Purpose

  1. To reproduce and multiply Himself
  2. He is Agape Love
  3. Therefore, His purpose is to reproduce Christ’s Love
  1. The Plan to fulfill His Purpose [See pp.41-48 in The Royal Destiny].
  2. Law of Harvest—You reap what you sow. God does, too.
  3. Human beings used as the medium to reproduce Himself in
  4. The Word is the seed. Matt. 13, The Parable of the Sower
  5. The Word/Seed Son fell into the ground for three days and three nights in the tomb.
  6. Christ died on the cross and was raised from the dead.
  7. He desires us to spiritually die with Him on the cross. Belief in His resurrection germinates the Seed, the Word of God, in us (Romans 6:1-12).
  8. We now become “babes in Christ.” This puts us on the road to growth by His Spirit within.
  9. Spiritual growth is measured by three levels—30, 60, 100-fold growth. Knowing, Doing, and Being. “Children, young men, fathers” (I John 2:13-14).
  1. What we must do to have the Spirit grow within us. We cannot do anything to earn the salvation of God. But we certainly must do things to grow to be like Christ.
  2. “Continue steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” Do what they did. Their doctrine was Christ’s teachings (Acts 2:42-43) [See book The Apostles’ Doctrine].
  3. Add to your faith  (II Peter 1:4-[See book The Additions to the Faith]
  4. Obey Christ’s “new commandments.” [See book The Eleventh Commandment]
  5. “Purge out the old leaven” so that we can become holy. Repent of false doctrines and concepts about Christ our King.
  6. “Put on the whole armor of God.”
  7. If we do these things, we will grow, or His Spirit will grow in us, that we “be no more children, tossed to and fro, carried about by every wind of doctrine” that the devil throws at us. Doing all these things builds a sure foundation.
  8. Study His word, His thoughts, His purpose, His plan. God’s approval is given to those who study, who “accurately handle the word of truth” (II Tim. 2:15).
  9. The above are the “first principles of the oracles of God,” the “elementary truths,” the “milk of the word.” Strong meat comes after mastery (Heb. 5:12-14; 6:1-2).
  10. “If you do these things, you shall never fall.” This provides “an entrance” into that dimension that Christ and His apostles walked in (II Pet. 1:10).

[See you on Immortality Road blog: immortalityroad.wordpress.com. Use the “Search” tab on the home page to research any of these topics. To order my books, free with free shipping: Send name, address, name of book to my email: wayneman5@hotmail.com]

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Husbands and Wives—Conversations with the Seer

(Formerly in Israel, if a man went to inquire of God, he would say, “Come, let us go to the Seer,” because the prophet of today used to be called a Seer. I Samuel 9:9)

Brotherly love, the sixth addition to the faith, begins at home. Loving one’s wife is loving one’s own self. She is one flesh with her husband. This is the first step in loving others. That first step is usually the hardest one. It takes us changing.

Change in us may begin its work in a flash moment, but it completes its work in decades of walking down Love’s humbling path.

I was having marital problems. I was young, stuffed with the pride of youth that directed my tongue. So, I broke down and decided to seek help.  I barely had enough time to sit down, and before I had spoken a word, the Seer asked, “Troubles with the wife?”

“Yes.  How did you know?”

“The Spirit, if your heart is attuned, picks up on these things.  It’s really not difficult to discern because ‘all things come alike to all.’  We all come up the same way” [1].

“My wife is always bringing me down. It’s frustrating. I’ll get a wonderful revelation about God, and I am so enthused, and I try to share it with her, and all she has to say is, ‘Yeah, that’s great, but would you help me, please? Could you do something around here?  Help straighten up the house. Check on the kids.’  Things like that.”

The Seer just looked at me as if looking through a window at the wind blowing through a white oak tree. “We on our spiritual walk back to the Father’s heart must not get too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.”

I looked at him as if he were speaking Chinese. “What?  What do you mean?”

“It is all about taking the heavenly things like love and mercy, and putting them into action here on earth.  Christ did it and then taught it” [2].

“She makes me mad,” I continued.  “It’s like she deliberately throws on me all this negativity, like a wet blanket. Instead of rejoicing with me, she just smothers me. I try to correct her and get her to stop, but that just sets her off and we start fussing and fighting.”

“Oh, you mustn’t try to stop her,” the Seer said. “Goodness, no.  Never try to prevent someone from doing God’s will.”

“God’s will?”  I asked.  “A wife so earthly minded that she can’t get past the pots and pans and diapers is doing God’s will?”

“They are your pots and pans and your children’s clothes. Let me explain what is spiritually happening. God Himself has created your wife exactly the way she is in every respect. He has made her to be your absolute complement. She, with all her faults and all her many unappreciated virtues, is exactly what the Great Physician ordered–for you and your perfection.”

“My perfection?” I asked.

“She’s your help meet, isn’t she?” [3].

“Yes.”

“Well, then, she is being a good help meet because she’s helping you meet God. Look. She is merely speaking what is in the script written by God–as if He had with a thoughtful quill inked upon her DNA the lines she speaks to help you mature spiritually. And her reactions to you and her ‘negative’ comments to you about your ways are all ordained, scribed, and orchestrated by God to get a rise out of you.”

“It does that,” I said. “But she should be honoring her husband and not putting him down all the time.”

“You don’t need a wife that praises your every word or whim. That would not bring you to perfection. In fact, it would ruin you for God’s purposes.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“You see,” the Seer continued, “You have many faults that must be purged out of your life before full spiritual maturity comes. God uses wives to help us grow from a babe in Christ to a young man. A ‘woman shall be saved in child bearing’ [4].  She not only rears your earthly children, but also helps to rear the spiritual child of God in her life–you, her husband. She cannot change the way she has been created. She is saying exactly what the Father has entrusted her to say to you.”

“It just makes me mad,” I said.

“There. Right there in that thought–that unjust anger is an example of the kind of things that God desires to erase out of your life. And your wife will continue to bring it out–not to be mean, as you suppose. She has to. She doesn’t even realize that God is using her for the purpose of burning out the dross that lurks around your new faith. Yet, she will continue saying her lines as a faithful player on the stage of life–until you get it.”

“Get what?” I asked, still not understanding the depth of the matter.

“When you finally understand these words I’ve spoken and believed them, then you’ll have gained several precious life lessons. Number one. That God is totally sovereign and in complete control. He uses anyone and anything He desires to effect a change in one of His chosen ones–one of His elect sons of God. Two. God’s ways are not our ways. We would not perfect us the way He does. We would much rather sit in the sunshine munching Oreos as the way to make big changes in our life. Third. We need to be grateful for God’s love to us. He has chosen us as His offspring. He did not have to pick us to reveal Himself in us. So, just be grateful for your wife and don’t be bitter towards her [5]. God is using her to do a great work in you.”

“It doesn’t seem so great right now,” I said.

“When you receive this truth that I’ve shared with you, you won’t get angry and frustrated with her. You’ll know the truth that it is all God’s doing, flowing out from His heart of love. Right now you are buffeted for your own faults [6]. What will you do when you are persecuted unjustly?”

“I don’t know.”

“When it happens, just know that it is still God doing His work of perfection in you.” The Seer paused. “But, enough of this now. Tell me. What is your wife’s favorite candy bar?”

“Almond Hershey.”

“Tell you what. Go buy her one. And with no fanfare, hand it to her and tell her that you love her.”

I did what He said. And that little gesture generated a smile on her face that said, “He understands.” But all I understood that day was the magic of chocolate.  She would receive several Almond Hersheys throughout the years. But it would take decades for me to finally understand and appreciate the message he gave me that day.  [This is Chap. 55 of my new book The Additions to the Faith.]

  1. Eccle. 9: 2
  2. Acts 1: 1
  3. Gen. 2: 18
  4. I Tim. 2: 15
  5. Col. 3: 19
  6. I Peter 2: 20

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Christ’s Dream, Cause, and Vision Redux

What cause would be worthwhile enough for you and me to give up our current goals and aspirations to take up that cause?

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream–a vision of a world of racial equality and justice, and he went all in to help make it come true. What dream, what vision would put you and me all in?

For what cause would we be willing to wager our entire existence on, to see it  come to pass?

Christianity was founded by a personage that laid it all on the line, that put it all out there for His Father’s cause. And that cause was to bear witness to the truth that He was the King of the Kingdom of God (John 18: 37). And now He asks us His followers to do the same thing: to go all in for the cause of truth, to lay down our lives as He did.

But instead of a physical bodily sacrifice, we are to “present [our] bodies a living sacrifice.” The death we experience is the death of our old selfish lives, and in their stead He resurrects in us a “newness of life” where “old things are passed away and all things are become new.”

How does that happen? Because we now have a new cause, a new vision, a new dream for our lives here on earth. In Christ we no longer languish under the  load of our petty little dreams of self-respect.  For in Christ the old, weak, selfish, small-hearted goals are replaced with His thoughts, His goals, His dream, and His vision.

But herein lies the problem. What exactly are God’s true cause, dream, and vision? There are over 2,000 denominations, each with their own interpretation of Christ’s vision for us and this world.

The Solution to the Problem

Which ones are false and which one is true? The answer is found in Christ’s very own words. He placed a premium on the words. “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Mt. 12: 37 NKJV).

He also said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (12: 34). What a person is all about will come out of their mouth. So to know Christ’s vision and to understand His cause, we must study the words that He spoke concerning His goals. And we then must make them ours. That is what He said to do.

So what words came out of His mouth? From the beginning of His ministry, He “began to preach and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Repent of your old selfish sinful ways. For it is time to change and get a new cause, a worthwhile cause, a new vision, and a new dream for your life, for I the King am come to you. My kingdom is very near you right now. The new cause and vision is standing before you right now. Therefore, repent and turn from wickedness and receive a new vision for life on earth free from sin and injustice–beginning in you! Your old selfish life is not worth it. It ends in the dusty tomb of death, just another existence, forgotten forever in a generation or two. Get this new vision of walking with Me in My “kingdom wherein dwells righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 4: 17, 23).

“And Jesus (Yahshua) went about all Galilee, teaching…and preaching the gospel…” Which gospel? The Catholic gospel? The Baptist gospel? The charismatic gospel? No. It was the “gospel of the kingdom.” He proclaimed the good news of His government coming to earth with Him as its Sovereign (Mark 1: 14).

His kingdom is a literal and spiritual government, instituted by God. It is literal! It will literally be established on this earth in the near future upon Christ’s return. Now He is the King in exile, waiting for His followers to mature “till Christ be formed in us.”

We all need to shout this to ourselves and to the whole world: “It’s the kingdom, stupid!” Christ spoke of it incessantly, scores of times. When he spoke about being “born again,” it was so that we could enter the kingdom of God. Preachers talk a lot about “born again,” but rarely do they speak of His kingdom, which is the gospel, the good news.

It is all about the Kingdom of God. All of the parables, the secrets kept from the foundation of the world, concern His kingdom. They answer the who, what, when, why, and how about it.

When will we all awake out of the slumber? When will we stir ourselves up and start running the race set before us? It is when we “purge out the old leaven.” The old leaven is the erroneous teachings about Christ that block and cloud over His true expression of  that which He spoke of–His kingdom. He is returning for His kingdom. His kingdom is His cause, His dream, His vision.

His government is so important to Him that He said this: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” and everything else will be supplied. Go all in for His cause and vision, and He will have our backs when it comes to the earthly life’s necessities. We don’t have to strive for them. He’ll give us what we need to bring His cause to fruition. He has our back when we have His!

When we make His dream ours and work for it, when we make His cause ours and strive for it, when we make His vision ours and seek first for it–then He will know that He has our hearts and we then will become men and women “after God’s own heart.”

For we must remember this: Somebody will sit down with Christ on His throne, on the throne of this very kingdom that He spoke continually about. Somebody “redeemed from among men.” Somebody delivered from the slime pits of sin and cleaned and groomed and prepared in spiritual maturity to rule with Him for a thousand years right here  on earth. Is that someone you and I?

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized