I Will Remember Him That Way–Elegy for My Mentor

I thought of my spiritual mentor who passed away some nine years ago now.  Without him and his love and patience, I would not have come out of the depraved selfish existence I led in my old life.  I wrote this elegy upon hearing of his death.  I want to share it with you.

I Will Remember Him That Way

I will remember him, but not for his last days on earth.

I will recall three decades ago, when the world was mad

and senseless and cruel,

When a young man and woman so in need of love

and patience

And so full of fear and loss and alienation, with cynicism

in full rotten bloom—

I’ll remember him that day, that warm April East Texas

spring day

When the joy emanating from his countenance hit me right

in the chest

As I strutted in with a smirk that said,

Okay, show me what you got,

Because I’ve just about given up the search for truth,

although I talk about it all the time,

And I know that my old self is my nemesis, my master, my

ruin,

And I can’t get rid of it by myself, because my self is my

very problem,

And I know that it has to die, and I’ve looked three years in

books from India,

And books from China, and books from Persia,

And none of the sages of the East could tell me how to put

my self to death,

And live to tell about it,

And I knew that I would waste my time

In looking to the christian buildings which cannot hold

moms and dads together in love—

So as a last futile foray for the truth before I give up

And sink into the numbness of nothingness,

I was thinking, Okay, show me what you got.

And he did, as I remember the joy and the love that swept

down on me,

As he spoke of a certain writer named Paul who spoke of

an old man Adam

Who was now put to death with the Lamb in a Roman 6

finality

And who could be raised to walk in a newness of life.

“You mean that my old self, my old ego, can die?”

I asked out loud that April morning in the cedar cabin in the

East Texas woods.

“That’s exactly what Paul is saying.”

And so I had finally found my sign that I had searched for.

I’ll remember him that way,

As the joyous messenger of my joy in God.

I’ll remember how he let me keep sleeping till noon the first

time we spent the night,

Under his breakfast table in the tarpaper shack,

For I was bidden to come and rest, and he let me rest.

I’ll recall the joy and deliverance from tobacco, drugs, alcohol,

and cursing.

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll remember the countless times I robbed him of his rest,

And he would smile,

Knowing I was special in the hands of God.

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll remember a man who believed in me like no one had done

before.

I’ll remember the days of Pepsi and popcorn,

And winter mornings, wood burning stove, kettle on top,

Cool mornings full of hot tea and scriptures,

When riches meant nothing and material possessions held no

power over us,

As we sat laughing into the gentle breezy piney woods evenings,

Secure at last that, yes, there is a God with a plan and purpose,

And all was as it should be here on earth at this moment.

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll remember Tom as the mentor of my youth,

Who awakened me to greater things than my old self,

Who showed me how to speak to tens of thousands

about the Kingdom.

I’ll remember him as the one who helped me

along the road to God,

Who patiently in those early days,

taught me all the Truth he knew.

And so I ask, What more can any one man do?

I’ll remember him that way.

I’ll not let those early days be blotted out of my memory

By judging him on his last days on earth—

No matter how much it hurt—

I’ll leave all judgements of him to God and to bitter little hearts

Who can’t remember him in the early days.

But I’ll remember him that way.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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“Forgive Us Our Debts”–Loving the Unloveable

We had a saying during the mission years–those years in the ’70’s when a small group of us had come out of the world system and had lived and worked together–all of us longing  to become more like Christ. 

It went like this: “Love Tom and save the world.”  Tom was our teacher and mentor.  He was also the one who did the correcting and the admonishing.  And we all at one time or another bristled at his rebukes, our egos being bruised.

Of course, the saying can contain anyone’s name–anyone, that is, that you are having a problem with.  “Love ______________and save the world.  You fill in the blank with the person that is the most difficult  for you to love today.  For if you can do that, then you will have arrived where God wants you in your Christian growth.  You will have in your vessel the Spirit of God Himself, who is Love.  And with the power that comes from His presence of Love inside of you, you can then save the world.  And, boy, does it need saving right now.

I am getting a fuller understanding of that old saying today, almost 40 years later.  If we can humble ourselves enough to ask God to grant to us His loving and forgiving nature to love that person who we are having trouble loving, then we will have manifested God in the flesh of our bodies.

In the normal everyday walk of our lives, certain people enter whose actions we despise.  They grate on us and both irritate and disgust us.  My earthly sister was such a person.  She was a drug addict–addicted to hydrocodone for 40 years.  She played my poor old mother, who was her enabler.  She stole from her–even my mom’s pain pills that her broken down 80 year old back needed.  Many times my sister left her without medication for two weeks.  This went on for decades.  My darling mother suffered greatly because of her. 

I tried to get my mom to forsake her, the tough love Bible way–to not let her use her, but Mom could not do it.  We buried Mom in June of last year.  And to this day, my sister has never apologized for all of the lies and thefts and shame she brought upon our family.

Now my sister lays up in an intensive care bed with tubes running out of her face.  And I visited her, and told her I loved her and prayed for her that God would comfort her.  And although she could not open her eyes, tears washed over her eyelids and began to fill the sockets.  I know that she is feeling bad about things she has done.  

My sister before this latest bout has really been trying, but because so much dirty water has passed under the bridge, it is difficult to love her.  I do love her with a earthly family love.  But I mean it is difficult to love her with a deep, resounding,  joyful love. 

And so the memory of that old saying from the mission clangs on my heart tonight.  ” Love her and save the world.”  I should be like that man who woke up from a dream and had the revelation that he should begin today to forgive everybody

We are told by our Master to pray, asking the Father, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  What debts is He talking about?  A debt means that we owe something, but what do we owe?  “Owe no man anything but to love one another.”  To love each other–that is our debt!

So we ask God to forgive us when we don’t love each other, and He does this as we forgive those who don’t love us as they should.  This is us forgiving their debt of love to us. 

So we need to realize that, yes, other human beings owe us love, but most are in their selfish, carnal nature that prevents them.  So we should just pray, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”  They do not realize that they should love everyone.

Our debt, then, is to love one another.  We need to have an attitude of forgiveness to all who don’t love us.  And here is the kicker: This is what God does.  And if each Seed bears its own kind, we as His seed, His children, should do the same as He does, which is loving the unloveable.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Repentance—Departing from Evil—Pre-requisite of Immortality

Chapter 27 of the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

      A few of us humans will achieve immortality  when we are given a new spiritual  body  at  the  time  of the resurrection, the time of the Messiah’s return.  But not everyone that says that He is Master of their life will become immortal.  It will only be those who are alive and have the Spirit of God dwelling in them in a reality, or those who had the Spirit of God dwelling in them at the time that their earthly bodies fell asleep, these also will be given a  new immortal spiritual body during the first resurrection.

     You have a mortal, fleshly body at this time, but God Almighty has unlimited power and he is quite capable with the mere power of his word to give you a new spiritual body as it has pleased him in his eternal plan and purpose laid down since before the beginning of the world. (II Cor. 5:1).  He will have called many, but few are chosen for this the greatest of all honors—to be one of the many sons and daughters  that God is bringing to glory.  It is a great love  that  will  bestow  this  on  a  select few, for few there will be to find this way of truth.  It is quite easy to find the way that leads to destruction, misery, and  desolation.  A narrow gate awaits those who enter the way that leads to love, honor, and glory.

     The sole criteria in achieving immortality is that we receive the Spirit of God somehow into our bodies.  But therein lies the problem for mankind.  The Spirit God will not dwell in unclean temples.  The human body was created for the express purpose to house the Spirit of God, the essence of Himself.  God made  his crowning creation, man and woman, to house Himself.  Mankind is to be His temple.

     However, God cannot dwell in the fleshly, earthly tabernacle called the human being until He cleans out the temple first.  The old carnal nature dwells in unregenerated man.  Man in his original fleshly state is abominable before God.      

     If He were speaking directly to us, perhaps He would say, “Your actions toward your fellow man make you filthy before Me.  The inside of you is dirty.  It is your heart that needs cleansing.  Your nature of selfishness is an abomination before God.  You lie, cheat, steal, kill, commit adultery, want other people’s worldly possessions–even their sons and daughters and wives and husbands.  Nothing is sacred to you humans anymore, but then it was always that way.   I gave you a simple ten point law and you refuse to keep it because there is nothing in it for yourself. You worship other things besides Me, your Creator God.  And you don’t keep the one day that I said to keep holy, the sabbath.  A very simple law, but a very profound law.

     “You humans basically worship yourselves, think of yourselves first, put your thoughts for your lives first.  Always first, first, first.  And before you realize it, there is little if any thought for, or even about Me in your thoughts.  You see, your thoughts make the temple, your body, unclean.  Your center is not right, is not on Me the Creator, and so, man and woman live out their little mortal existences, leading their little desperate rut-like lives, never glimpsing the truth of the potential of what could be for them.  And that potential is immortality, never ending life, everlasting life, eternal life, a life of infinite years.

     “But man’s problem is that he wants his own life to go on without end.  He wants his own selfish little existence to continue unabated with everyone worshipping him and centering in on his every whim and inordinate desire.  He wants to live forever in his way of getting for himself.  And yet he doesn’t realize that that way of life cannot last forever.  The way of getting selfishly will end up in death.  Labor in the fields of selfishness, and all you are paid is death. In all man’s thoughts these things should not be, but that’s the way of all man’s flesh that doesn’t heed the higher call.  This is man’s grief—that he can’t take it with him.  This is the proverbial vanity of vanities.  No profit under the sun of all one’s labor spent upon oneself.”

     So God cannot live in the midst of all that selfishness—a lawlessness that is called sin, for the breaking of the ten commandments is sin.  And God hates sin because it is so against His nature.  He wants to live in man and woman, but He can’t because when man is full of himself, then there is no room for God.  Selfish action is a selfish spirit and  is  the  opposite  of  God’s  Spirit,  which  is the action called Love.

     So there again is man’s problem; he wants to live forever, but wants to live his own selfish life forever, and this thinking breeds mortality, the way of death.  In order to gain immortality, man must have God’s Spirit living within him.  But the Spirit of God will not dwell in temples (bodies) that are unclean (have actions done in them that are sinful in breaking the l0 commandments).  Mankind that comes as far as this knowledge on the road of life comes to a fork in the road.  He must chose to either remain as he is and how he has been living, or he must seek a way to repent, to change the error of his ways.  In other words, he must find a way to stop breaking the l0 commandments.

     And men have tried in the past to do just that to keep the ten commandments of God.  They have failed miserably, for they have tried on their own strength and power to do so.  It is impossible to keep them without God’s help.  We are created that way, so that we must, in order to please Him, turn to Him for his power and strength to keep His holy law.  The mightiest of body and the noblest of mind found among men cannot obey the law without His Spirit doing it in and through them.

     One would ask then, “What can a person do in order to keep the law?”

     First, he must through a broken and contrite spirit and heart be sorry for the way he has treated his fellow man and God.  This sorrow can grow and eventually yield a desire to not do those things again.  He will then repent of his sins, turn away from that way of getting for himself, and throw himself  on  God’s  mercy to forgive him.  God is rich in mercy and wants to receive his creation back into the fold of His plan and purpose.  If they are sincere, He will forgive them and cleanse them from the filth and uncleanness.

     We are cleansed by the shed blood of the Lamb, Yahshua, Yah-in-human-form, who gave Himself up in sacrifice for us. 

     It all hinges on faith and belief in the sacrifice that God has ordained–the only sacrifice that can  take away a person’s sins.  The sacrifice is the Lamb of God, the only one who lived a sinless life.  If you can really believe that your sin was placed upon him the day of His death, that when He died, your sin died with it, and that when He was buried, your sinful life was buried, and when He was resurrected, you also were raised again to walk in a newness of life—if you can believe all this, then you can receive into your body (temple) that same Spirit and power that raised Him from the dead.  It takes belief, faith.

     If you ask Him, He will give you a portion, an earnest, a down payment of His Spirit.  And that Spirit will come into you to replace that old spirit and will grow like a tiny seed in a large garden.  You must water it with your prayers and feed it with your study.  And that little portion of His Spirit will grow up into a full-fledged son and daughter of the Spirit who will someday be transformed in a twinkling of an eye and will be changed when immortality will come down out of heaven to swallow up that which can die.

     For without God’s Spirit dwelling within us, we are only a member of the walking dead who spend a few nightly whispers with loved ones and then bury their  dead  and  wait  to be buried in turn.  Without that entity, the Spirit of God, that makes alive whatever it touches and lives in, we are just as good as dead.  Without His Spirit, if we are walking around, we do it on borrowed air in an  incredibly delicate and fragile shell.  And our  shell will in a few moments, comparatively speaking, go back to dust from where it came, and our brief stint at self-glory here on earth will not be remembered anymore.  Every thing that man says and does without the Spirit of God is vain and of no profit in the final analysis. Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Understanding: To Depart from Evil

Step Five on the Road to Immortality: Repentance from Dead Works

“To depart from evil is understanding.” Job 28:28.   “Knowledge of the holy is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10

Chapter 26 of the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

     So far we have taken some very necessary steps on the road to immortality.  We have discovered that Yahweh-Is-Savior is that Road to Everlasting Life.  We have learned how to be in awe of Him, which is the obtaining of wisdom.  We have learned His true name, His nature, and His eternal purpose and plan.

     But all these steps have amounted to the mere acquisition of knowledge—extremely important, of course, and necessary, but knowledge nonetheless.  In this next step, however, we must do and not just know.  We will learn to put this knowledge into practice.  We now start doing what we know to do.

     Talk is cheap; action is expensive.  “If you know these things, happy are you if you do them,” said the Master.  Conversely, if we gain knowledge of the holy things and do not begin to do them and walk in them, then we will not be happy. …The latter end is worse with them than the beginning.  For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. II Peter 2:21.

     Receiving knowledge of the high, sanctified, set-apart things of God is the gaining of understanding.  Now at first this does not make much sense to us because we have man’s definition of what understanding is, much like we had man’s definition of what wisdom was in step one.  When we think of the word “understanding,” we think of comprehending something—the ability of making sense of something. But this is man’s interpretation.  When we begin to attain knowledge of the holy things, the secret things, the things that the Supreme Being reserves only for those who fear Him and are awe of Him—that is understanding!  And this knowledge of the sanctified things, the things that the Almighty has set apart and reserved for only a few—that is understanding and that will bring us into the desire to flee the evil of our ways, to depart from the old life and get into the flow of His new life within us. …The knowledge of the holy is understanding. Proverbs 9:10…To depart from evil is understanding. Job 28:28.  Understanding is knowing about His true ways which leads us to depart from evil.

     True knowledge about the Most High’s sacred truths will lead us into doing something about it; it will lead us to fleeing the evil.  But how do we do really ever be rid of the sin in our lives?

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Check Out My New Video–“He Shall Be As the Light of the Morning”

I composed the music to this song almost 40 years ago now.  The lyrics are taken from “the last words of David,” the great Psalmist and King of Israel, found in II Samuel 23: 1-4. 

As a young man, I was struck by the simple beauty of the words.  It was many years later that I received a portion of their profound meaning.  God said to David, “He that rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” And that ruler of men “shall be as the light of the morning.” 

In other words, projecting on into the soon-coming Kingdom of Heaven age after Christ’s return to earth, His rulers will have His Spirit within them, as their guiding principle; they will be impartial, for God “rains on the just and the unjust.”  They will not be respectors of persons, for they will be His children, made in His image.  

And because they are the “children of light,” they will “let their light so shine on all men.”  They will love all men, as the morning sun shines its rays on everyone on earth.

It’s on youtube here    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJlJgd9x1s

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Back to the Father’s Heart–The Eternal Purpose in a Bedtime Story

Chapter 25 of the Book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

 [I wrote the following bedtime story for my grandson Cody Hancock. I wanted him to know the truth about creation, about the Creator and His plan and purpose.]

 Long, long ago, before the earth or the heavens were, God, the Supreme Being, existed. He was and is the Self-existent One and needed nothing else to sustain His life, for He is Life itself. He was and is the great, wonderful, invisible Spirit. And in the beginning, He realized that even though He was great and all-powerful and magnificent, He was alone.

 He knew that He could be any way He wanted to be and make happen anything He wanted to see happen. He could create things only to destroy them and watch the fires consume them, or He could create beautiful things, things with meaning, things that would endure forever. So He had to make a choice whether to be a mean, selfish destructive creator/destroyer or to be a sharing, compassionate, kind and loving creator/sustainer. So He looked inside the core of His Spirit and heart and recognized immediately that there was nothing but Love inside. All He wanted was to share and give and spread around this goodness and peace that was His essence. His nature was Love.

 And because He was and is Love, He wanted to share His essence with someone else. That is the nature of true love—sharing and giving. Having all power and able to do anything that His nature of love could dictate, He began His creative power by making the Original Form.

 Now this Original Form was a body composed of spirit. Our bodies are made of earth, dust, and clay. His was a body that could not die, for it was made of His essence, which is Life. It was an immortal, spiritual body through which He could speak and listen and make Himself known. He could speak the Word now that would show and express what was His essence. This was the form that He chose to express Himself through.

 Through the mouth of His spiritual body He could express in a word what was inside Him. And this word that He could now express was “Love.” In the beginning was the Word and that Word is Love. He could now speak through His own mouth the things in His heart. He could speak into existence the heavens and the earth.

 He would create magnificent stars set in a universal expanse so vast and wonderful. He would create a home called Heaven for Himself and the helpers He would create. He would create a special star of undying energy and warmth, a star we call the Sun. He would create on a plane of physical existence a planet that would revolve around that warmth, a planet perfect for a special life He would soon create for His own purposes.

 And so He said, “Let the galaxies with their stars and planets appear.” And it happened! And as He framed the worlds and created the heavens and the earth He kept in mind His ultimate purpose for making all things. He wanted to reproduce Himself. He wanted to multiply Himself. He desired to multiply Himself as the seeds of the earth produce their own kind of fruit.

 And so He thought and thought about ways in which to express and demonstrate just what was inside His heart. He asked, “How do I show just what I, Love, am about?”

 So He looked around at the absolutely astounding heavens that He had created. And He said, “They are good. They are beautiful, but yet, they cannot appreciate who made them and the love wherewith they were made. For they cannot feel, think or love in return.”

 And so He thought and thought some more and came up with a plan. “I will create a living creature, a human being out of the dust of one of my planets called earth. I will create him with the mental and spiritual sensibilities and capabilities to be able to comprehend just who I am and what I am about–which is Love.”

 And He said, “But I will need helpers, emissaries, and messengers to help me carry out my plan to reproduce Myself. I will create immortal angels, composed of spirit, and they will assist me in ministering to the needs of the human beings.” And so He created the heavenly hosts and instructed them and assigned a third of them to the planet earth to prepare it for His crowning creation. And He called His crowning creation Adam, meaning in His original Hebrew tongue, “to show blood in the face, to flush or turn rosy, to be made red or ruddy.” In our language he is called “Man.”

 Over this third part of the angels He sent one of His arch-angels whose name has come down to us as Lucifer. Lucifer knew that God had a plan to reproduce Himself and that the earth was the place for this reproduction. But the archangel said in his heart, “I will ascend and be like the most high God. I want to be like God. I’m already immortal, I’m beautiful, and I don’t see why it can’t be us, who are doing all the work during the heat and length of the day. It is not fair.”

And so Lucifer became Satan and led the angels that were with him into rebelling against the Creator who had brought them into existence and had included them in His plan. These angels made a choice to rebel and so sin entered into the universe. Pride goes before a fall. But God knew beforehand what would happen.

And so they ascended up from earth to heaven to try to overthrow the Creator. Lucifer and his angels fought against Michael and His angels. After the greatest battle the galaxies will ever see, the faithful angels overcame the evil ones, who were cast out of heaven back to the earth.

After the heavenly dust had settled, the Creator went on to the next step of His master plan. He still, however, did not have in place what He needed to express Himself and multiply Himself.

So He thought and thought some more, and He continued His plan. He said, “In order to reproduce my nature of Love, I must testify as to what the greatest Love can be. Now there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. But I am a Spirit dwelling in a spiritual body, and I cannot die in this form, for I am immortal.

And then it came to Him. He would give up His life on His throne in heaven and would come to earth and dwell with his crowning creation, man, in a human body like theirs! He would walk among them and love them and care for them and show them how to do what He does and show them by His life what He is, which is Love.

He would heal their sick and raise their dead, and He would give them the example they needed in order for them to love like Him. He would be clothed in flesh for a time. He would walk humbly, knowing that it was the Great Spirit of Love within Him that was doing the works of love. And then He would do the ultimate act that would show Love; He would die for his creation; He would give up that human life He was walking in and then three days later, He would raise it from the dead. He would do this willingly and lovingly.

In doing this He would accomplish many things. It would set an example for man to follow. It would provide a perfect sacrifice to atone for man’s sins. And it would defeat His arch-enemy Satan on earth. And God would defeat Satan when God was at His weakest, in a human death. And He would show His most excellent power in raising His body from the dead. And then He would glorify that body that He had walked in and had laid down in death. He would change it into a spiritual body, an immortal body. And He would promise man that if they followed Him in spiritually laying down their lives for others, they would receive immortality also.

Yet the most astounding, beautiful, wonderful thing about this is that this glorified spiritual body of His that He raised from the dead, that body now is the same body that He originally made for Himself in the heavens before the worlds ever were created!

For He is the Beginning and the Ending, the first and the last, the root and offspring of David, the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

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The High Calling of God

Chapter 24 of the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality    

 Yahweh has a special calling for His people.  “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  Those that “make their calling and election sure” become the elect.  But what is this calling exactly?

      “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  When they don’t have the vision for themselves that Yahweh has for them, then they will perish and wither on the vine.  What is this vision that Yahweh has for this special people in the earth?

     He said that He wants to make His people a kingdom of priests and kings.  For He is the “King of kings.”  He also is the High Priest of many priests.  He says that He is making us a “peculiar nation, a royal priesthood, a chosen generation” (The word “priest” in your center column reference is rendered “teachers,” teachers of Him and His precepts and His government). 

     If we as Israel the people of God don’t know where we have come from and where we are going in His plan, then we are still part of the Lost Tribes of Israel.  We are not found yet.  We have not discovered our identity yet.  But when we awaken, when His vision is quickened in our hearts, and we really see what He wants us to be as His chosen people,  then  it changes everything.  We begin to get on fire.  We begin to say, Wait a minute.  I can do this.  I can be what He wants me to be.  But that brings us back around to the question that we must ask: What is it exactly that He wants His chosen people to be? 

     Paul talks about a “high calling” for the people of God.  In Phillipians 3:7-15, “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge.”  His people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge of who they are, who He is, and what His plan is.  The knowledge of what now?  Paul is saying that he is counting everything that this world has to offer as a loss for this one thing–“the excellency of the knowledge of Yahshua Messiah my Master, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Him,” that I may be part of His company of many sons. 

     Many times when we say the words “Savior, Messiah, the Son of God,” we think of one historical personage, but there are many members of His one body where many will walk as He walked. That is what He is wanting.

     But someone will question this and say, “What do you think you are, a bunch of little Jesus Christs?” No.  It is His Spirit; He wants to multiply Himself.  He wants us all to manifest His Spirit of love, joy, peace, just like Paul and Peter and the other early followers.

     And then someone will gainsay, “You can’t be like Him! You can’t be like Him!”  And I don’t claim to be.  But if you won’t let me be like Jesus, is it okay if I be like Peter?  Is it okay if I be like Paul?  That would be good enough.

     So in the above passage Paul is going to win Yahshua and be “found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law.” That means when one tries to keep the ten commandments on their own strength and not with the Spirit’s help. “But that which is through the faith (belief) of the Messiah, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (v. 8-9). 

     “That I may know Him” (talking about this knowledge without which we as His people are destroyed) “and the power of His resurrection…”  Many times in the past I thought that knowing the power of His resurrection meant that I know what it is to have raised somebody from the dead.  But that thought is all centered on ME and how great and powerful I have become! I was musing on this mighty resurrection power of the Creator and how it  would surge through me to raise up a dead body.  No.  That is not it. Knowing the power of His resurrection means experiencing HIM changing me from a mortal to an immortal being!  It is Him granting this vessel of mine immortality!  Praise Yah!  When this mortal puts on immortality! That  is really knowing the “power of His resurrection!”

     In verse 11: “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”  These are fine phrases; these are wonderful words, but what exactly is this knowledge that He is talking about, this resurrection of the dead?  “Not that I had already attained…”  I am still mortal, Paul is saying.  “Either were already perfect…” When that which is perfect is come—being changed from mortal to immortal—all the other temporary things like our earthly bodies will be done away with—“but I follow after, if that I may  apprehend  that  for  which also I am apprehended of the  Master.”  The Master says that you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you to bring this glorification upon. 

     Pretty heady stuff.  It just sounds so prideful when you are talking about getting glorified.  The Master said in John 17:22, “And the glory which you gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”  That was His prayer! That all of us would be glorified and be one with Him!  But it is difficult to fully be one with Him if we are still living in a fleshly, earthly body, for He now dwells in a glorified, spiritual body.  But some will say that He was just talking about the original 12 disciples 2000 years ago, but in 17:20 He states that it is not just the 12 that He’s praying for but for “all those who shall believe through their word.”  That is us!

 Immortality: The High Calling

 

     Paul continues in Phil. 3:13: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended…” He is saying, I’m going after this thing; I want to be one of those who He is going to change into an immortal.  And He knows there are many of us that it is going to happen to.  “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God” (I John 3:1).  But Paul now is going to forget “those things that are behind and reach forth unto those things which are before.” 

     What is the greatest thing in our life that we have in front of us, before us?  It has got to be immortality,  everlasting  life,  life eternal.  Paul says that he is forgetting all the things in his life that have gone on before.  He is forgetting the old conversation, the old worldly things that he used to talk about, forgetting the old ways of thinking, the old habits, the old way we used to be.  Counting all those things that we were and that we did as dung—that old pride and arrogance—and start walking in this newness of life. Paul is saying that he will forget all the old things of his past and reach forth for this immortality that is coming.  He says that he is pressing on for “the mark of the prize of the high calling” of Yah-in-human-form.

      “Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.”  He didn’t say as many as “are” perfect.  “Be” is the infinitive which speaks infinity, a place where there is no time or tense.  He is saying, in other words, those of you that lay hold of this message of your soon coming immortality, you need to think on these things that I am telling you.

     Yahweh’s high calling is for Him to be fully formed in you.  Paul talks more about this in Roman 8:18.  “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  In us?  For the creation is waiting for the making known of the sons of God, Paul says in the next phrase. God subjected the whole creation to vanity, to no profit, to futility.  “Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption…” (the physical corruption of our mortal bodies) “…into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (His immortal ones, just like Him).

     Paul is talking immortality here, as he did in I Cor. 15,  the  resurrection  chapter.  At  His coming,  this earthly body, that may die and turn to dust, will be changed like unto His immortal body. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things God has prepared for those that wait upon Him and that love Him.”  Immortality!

     The whole creation is groaning.  The people of this earth need to be delivered from the deception of worldly governments and economic systems.  Look at the evil in high places.  And we are groaning under the high taxes that we have to pay to the private banking corporations, the Federal Reserve System and the other Central Banks all over the world that are squeezing the people dry.  These private banks, that sound so governmental, print the paper money, loan it to our government so that they can throw it away on $500 toilet seats, and we, the taxpayers, have to pay the interest on this national debt with our income taxes!  This nation and all the nations of the world are in bondage, for the borrower is servant to the lender.

     America is in trouble.  “The creation is groaning and travailing in pain until now.  And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit.”  Even us who have a bit of truth, a small portion of His Spirit, we are groaning right along with the rest of creation waiting for one thing; we are waiting for this great event to happen: the adoption, the redemption of our bodies, the putting on of immortality!

     This is the high calling: to be one of the immortal ones, one of the manifested sons of God.  He knew beforehand all those that He places this high calling on.   And  He also  gave them this destiny—to be one of His immortal offspring.  To be just like Himself in human form. These are the elect, the ones He has chosen before the world ever was.  “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.  For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.  Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified…Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” (Romans 8:28-30,33).

 Destroyed for lack of knowledge

     But, His people are being destroyed because they do not know who He really is.  They do not know who they are nor the wonderful, pre-destined promises that He has made especially for them.

     We Israelites need to realize that in not knowing this, we don’t know where we have come from.   We don’t know our history nor the prophecy given over us.  We don’t know where we are going.  The word of Yahweh spoken over our ancestors, the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel through His prophets, all this is there to be quickened within us by belief.  For His word will not return unto Him void, but will accomplish the purpose for which He spoke it.  He spoke it over our ancestors, and He is speaking it over us today.  And if we will take it to heart and walk in it, this world will turn around.

     His purpose for His elect is immortal sonship!  In Revelation 7 and 14 there are 144,000 “redeemed from among men and are the firstfruits unto God.”  They are with Him in Spirit and truth, and they are standing as an army, immortal as He, for each seed bears its own kind.  And where does Rev. 7 say He gets these immortal ones from?  He will select them from the 12 tribes of Israel.  Not from just Judah, but from the 12 tribes!

     To be like Him—that is the high calling.  And we need to make this calling and election sure by studying and proving all things.  We must read, dig deep and put our house upon the rock where these truths will be solid.  And after we have finished, we will be able to stand with Him and walk with Him.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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“The Ancient People” of YAHWEH–His Everlasting People

Chapter 23 of the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

All the way through the scriptures you can see the way Yahweh lavishes His love on His special people in the earth, even calling them the “ancient people.”  The Hebrew word translated “ancient” is the same word used in many places for “everlasting.” And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient (everlasting) people? Fear ye not, neither be afraid…you are even my witnesses. Isa. 44:7.  In other words He is saying, I will use you true House of Israel descendants as a testimony and fulfillment of this scripture by granting you everlasting immortality!

     The Spirit of Yahweh is addressing Jacob/Israel from verse one on.  Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen. There it is.  Jacob/Israel is an appointed people, some of which will be elected by Yahweh to fully reveal Himself to the world.  They will be His testimony in the earth, His witnesses that will give evidence and a witness to this whole earth. 

     This is the very reason that Yahweh took the 12 tribes of Israel on as a wife in the first place.  He needed a wife in order to reproduce Himself.  The Word, the Seed, bears its own kind, and fully manifested sons of God will be the 100 fold fruit that will  come out of the womb of the 12 Tribes of Israel.  They will be the full fruit 100 fold offspring of Yahweh.  “Can the children of the bridechamber fast as long as the bridegroom is with them.”  He spoke that about His disciples.  They were the children, the sons, the offspring of the relationship of the Seed and fleshly Israel, Yahweh’s wife. 

     His plan from time immemorial was that He would fully reproduce Himself through His chosen people—a line from Adam, Seth, on down through Enoch, Noah, Shem, and on down through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel and his 12 sons, and on down through to us.

     You mean that He will choose out certain individuals from this line of people to be just like Him and  to do great things in the earth?  Yes. 

     But a thought will come up?  What about these people over here who are not of the 12 tribes of Israel, who are not of the Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Scandinavian, Western European, Caucasian lineage of people?  It sounds so elitist, so racist. You mean they are all okay in the sight of God just because they are the descendents of Jacob/Israel?

     Absolutely not. If they do not repent, they shall all likewise perish.  For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.  Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.  On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. Rom.9:6-8. If the natural descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs do not repent and believe, then they are not the children of God. 

     Yahweh is fair.  Just because a person is of the lineage of Jacob/Israel, that does not guarantee anything.  He does take a special interest in these people.  He definitely said He did, and if we ignore this fact, we shall have ignored the thoughts of Yahweh’s mind.  And we ignore this fact at our own peril.  He is fair and kind to all.  Anyone who repents and turns their heart to Him, He will in no wise cast away.  Yet His fairness must not be construed as His total plan and purpose.  He has an everlasting people who He loves with an eternal love.

      And Yahweh made promises and a covenant with them in Abraham that He would not only bless him and his descendants, but would also bless the whole world through them. You may read in the first 10 chapters of Genesis how like a mother hen, Yahweh meticulously protects and keeps His chosen people separate from the other nations around them.  They are a heavenly race, not of this world.  They were strangers and foreigners and looked for a heavenly country, their country.  They were different than the others.  The whole conflict of the Hebrew people was Satan trying to deceive them into thinking that they were the same as the other nations! 

     And now in our time the Spirit will fuse with some of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel.  They will become the body of Yahshua in the earth for these last days.  When we read about the Messiah’s body, we usually only see Yahshua, the Savior.  Yes, He is the Head. But He is the Head of a whole body of sons.  “Can the head say to the hand, I have no need of thee?”  Who is going to be His arms?  Who is going to be His legs?  Who is going to be His mouth?”   It is a corporate body  of many sons.  These will have full power, just like their Head Yahshua. They are His body.  They will be strong and do exploits in the land.  These are they who have answered the high calling.

 Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Who Is “the Apple of God’s Eye”?

Chapter 22 of the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

 If someone is the “apple of your eye,” you think about them and are greatly concerned about them. You care about them deeply and wonder how they are doing, how they are feeling, if they have any needs or necessities. It is interesting that most of us who have an “apple of our eye” have a child or a grand child as that loved one.

 But who or what is the apple of God’s eye? Who or what entity occupies His thoughts? Who is He mindful of? Who does He think about all the time? The answers to these questions will lead us to the thoughts that we should be thinking on, for they will be the very thoughts of Yahweh Himself!

 We are exhorted in the scriptures to have the Master’s mind. We are encouraged to let His mind be in us. What was His mind like? What kind of thoughts did He have? Yah-in-human-form claimed that He had no original thoughts. If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father…I and my Father are one…I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. When the Son spoke, it was the Father speaking. So then, if we go back into the old writings, we can directly see just what are the thoughts of Yahweh!

 Yahweh’s thoughts are far-reaching, permanent and unchanging. “The counsel of Yahweh stands forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” Psm. 33:11. Whatever it is that He is thinking about, it is forever, and it will stand for all time. Speaking about Him, Job says in 23:13 that when the Creator gets it in His mind, it is permanent. “But he is in one mind, and who can turn him?” Yahweh is single-minded; He has a plan and purpose, and it really does not matter if Satan or man tries to spoil it. Yahweh will perform it. His thoughts will not be denied their fruition.

 So, who are these thoughts about? Many, O Yahweh my Elohim are your wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto you: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. Psm. 40:5. His thoughts are wonderful and without number toward “us,” David says. The “us” here is Israel, for David was king of Israel, the whole 12-tribed House of Israel. And Yahweh is mindful of His covenant with His people Israel (Psm.111:5).

 So there we have it. Yahweh’s thoughts are about His chosen people. His people under David and Solomon were direct descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel. After sojourning in Egypt for 400 years, they were delivered by Moses and took the land of Canaan, the land promised to Abraham, under Joshua. There each of the twelve tribes except Levi received land grants for their families. After several centuries of the Judges and prophets ruling over them, all twelve tribes became a kingdom with Saul and then David as their king.

 During the reign of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, the Kingdom of Israel (12 tribes) was torn into two separate kingdoms around 950 B.C., the Kingdom of Israel with the 10 northernmost tribes and the Kingdom of Judah with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to the south. At that time they had separate capitals and were different kingdoms with a different line of kings ruling. Many times we find them at war with each other.

 The Kingdom of Israel (ten tribes with their capital at Samaria) sinned greatly against Yahweh. Their leaders changed the sabbath day and set up worship of false gods throughout the northern tribes. True prophets were sent to them, yet they repented not from the false worship. They were warned that Yahweh would allow Assyria from the east to lead them into captivity. This happened in 721 B.C. Assyria put the entire nation of Israelites into their Assyrian cities and eventually the 10 tribes would migrate “north and west” of Jerusalem “into a country thou knowest not.” They eventually ended up in Western Europe, the British Isles, and North America. They include the Scandinavian, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Scots-Irish peoples. Exhaustive studies have been made of this throughout the centuries and are easily attained though libraries and internet sources under the “lost tribes of Israel” and “British Israel”[See Appendix A].

 These 10 tribes of Jacob/Israel became lost. They lost the sabbath; they lost their own identity as being the fleshly chosen people of God. They became lost in the paganism that they embraced—the same paganism that had caused their captivity in the first place. But something of a spark was left in some of them—an ability to respond to the truth.

The 2-tribed Kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem lasted until the sieges of the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. when they fell to his armies. They were carried captive to Babylon, and after 70 years a remnant was sent back to restore worship in Jerusalem. At this time Judaism, the religion, was born of the Babylonian Talmud, which superimposed many manmade ordinances and replaced the ancient Hebrew worship established by the patriarchs and prophets. Many converts like Herod, who was a descendant of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, converted to this religion. Esau, known as Edom, father of the Idumaens, had sold his birth- right to Jacob and had gone against the word of Yahweh in taking wives of the other races.

The Pharisees and Sadducees, leaders of sects of this Judaism religion, were strongly rebuked as “children of the devil” by Yahshua, the Son of God. What they had, evidently, was the opposite of what He is.

“I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel”

And so in the heat of this cauldron of religion and politics of a Roman-dominated Judea, we have the Master, the Messiah, say, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” An astounding statement, but it proves that His thoughts toward His chosen people in the earth are solid and permanent. And even if they did not know who they were at that time (as most do not in ours), He still did not forget them 750 years after their captivity! He was still thinking about them and had not forgotten them! He is ever mindful of his covenant. He has shown His people the power of His works, in giving them the heritage of the nations. Psm. 111:5.

So we see that Yahweh was and is thinking about a lineage of people out of the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel. This people He made a covenant with that He would stick with them and eventually, even though they rebelled against Him, they would return to Him and be His people.

His people are His portion

These people are so special to Him that “when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For Yahweh’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance” (Deut. 32:8-9). The true people Israel are so important to Him that they are His portion; they are what God gets out of all of this. We get Him; He gets us. We are getting the better deal. God “found Jacob in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye” (v. 10).

Jacob/Israel is the apple of God’s eye. They are special to Him; they are his chosen people. God is no respecter of persons, “not willing that any should perish,” but He is a respecter of nations and peoples.  A mild perusal of Genesis 1-10 will show that some nations were cursed and some were blessed.  And from the beginning, God was blessing a certain seed line from Seth through Enoch and on down through Noah, Shem, and on down through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose name He changed to Israel.

And Jacob/Israel had 12 sons, but the apple of Jacob/Israel’s eye was his son Joseph, who was the firstborn son of Jacob’s wife Rachel and who received the birthright.

Jacob loved them all, but Joseph was special, as we can see in Genesis 37:3. This is that same Joseph who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children.” We see this also in the blessings of Jacob on his 12 sons in Gen. 49:1: “And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.” And Jacob begins to give prophecy as to the future of his sons’ families who would become nations in the earth. Most are rather short and uneventful, until he gets to Joseph:

 “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall: the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: but his bow abode in strength and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of IsraelJ Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb: the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hill: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren” (v. 22-26).

Jacob/Israel in this prophecy says what shall befall his sons in the last days. Of course, he means the descendants of his sons. It is here that many reject that the descendents of Jacob/Israel, the lost tribes of Jacob/Israel, are in the earth today. Many just do not believe that the lost tribes of Israel can be nations in the earth at this present time.

Proof that the descendents of Jacob/Israel are nations in the earth today and not just the modern day Israeli nation

But the prophet Jeremiah tells us that they positively are in the earth as nations! And Yahweh puts His ordinances of the lights in the heavens on the line to insure the continuance of Israel as a nation in the earth! “Thus says Yahweh, which gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divides the seas when the waves thereof roar; Yahweh of hosts is his name: if those ordinances depart from before me, says Yahweh, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.” Jer. 31:35-36.

To prove to ourselves that the 12 tribes of Israel are a nation today, we have to only ask ourselves one question: Can we count on the sun and moon and stars to do what He made them to do? Are they still giving light and helping us to keep time and seasons? If we can answer yes, then we know that the seed, the descendants of Israel, are still a nation in the earth today.

Jeremiah prophesies that Yahweh’s people “Israel and Judah will return to the land that I gave their fathers, and they shall possess it” (30:3). Some say that that was fulfilled when the Israeli state was set up in 1948. One thing is wrong with that statement. Jeremiah says that both “Israel (10 tribes) and Judah (2 tribes)” will come back.

He says that during “Jacob’s trouble (v.7)” (the Great Tribulation) that His people will turn to Him and return to the land He promised to their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. “In the latter days you shall consider it” (30:24). “At the same time, says Yahweh, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people” (31:1). In the latter days all the 12 tribes will be restored to Him as His people. Question: How can the Jews fulfill all this at this present time when the lost tribes of Israel don’t even know who they are, much less be restored into the promised land? He said, “All the families of Israel” would be His people. The Jews cannot by definition fulfill that. If modern day Jews were from the fleshly lineage of Jacob, they would only be the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, with a few of Levi thrown in [85% of today’s Jews are not natural descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, according to Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe].

“God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew,” says the apostle Paul in Romans 9. But Yahweh will take the whole House of Israel through Jacob’s trouble, the tribulation. He then will restore them through a remnant that He is calling out from them to be a light to the rest of the world. The Israelites that respond are the “apple of His eye,” a peculiar nation of kings and priests (teachers). He will bring these sons and daughters to immortality to be just like Him. Those are His thoughts toward the “apple of His eye.”

That is what He is thinking about—reproducing Himself in His people. Those are His thoughts toward the true fleshly lineage of Jacob/Israel. They are His special people with a special calling. They are the apple of His eye, the fruit of His vision. And inside the fruit, is the seed, the word of God, if so be that they have received Him. And as the Word (the seed) was made flesh and dwelt among us, so also shall that same word/seed grow in Israel and come to full fruit.

The Word will once more be made flesh and dwell among the other nations, and Immortal Ones shall tread the earth and show forth Yahweh’s thoughts and nature throughout all eternity, until He fills the whole universe with His essence and nature. And that essence and nature is loving the good and hating the evil.

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The 100 Fold Fruit Bearers in God’s Kingdom

Chapter 21 of the book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

Knowing about the 100 fold fruit bearers is crucial in order to understand Yahweh’s plan to reproduce Himself.  What is the purpose of a seed?  Obviously, it is to reproduce itself.  His plan then is reproduction of Himself because He is the Seed, the original Seed.  He wants to reproduce Love.  He wants to reproduce Joy.  He wants to fill all the earth with Himself—“the fullness of Him that fills all in all.” 

Understanding that there are many mansions in the Father’s house is crucial in understanding His plan of reproducing  Himself.  Some  people will  be children in His plan.  Perfect little blades of grass.  “First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.”  And some will grow to near completion.  And some will grow in Him so much that the Seed will reproduce Himself in them!  It will be Yahweh HIMSELF in human form—again!  There will be absolutely no realization in those individuals that they exist other than it is Him living in them fully.  The following passages will show that “each seed bears its own kind.”

We are talking about the “secrets kept from the foundation  of  the world.”  He is the Word, the Seed.  And He is about to reveal His greatest secret.  Now the secret (parable) is this:

“Now  the  parable  is this: The seed is the word of God…In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”…Luke 8:11. John 1:1, 14.  The Seed, the Word, took on a human flesh body and lived and walked among us.  We become heirs of God by the  faith  of  Abraham. Some of us are not only the fleshly posterity of Abraham but also the spiritual heirs of promise by believing. It was to “Abraham and to his seed were the promises made.” And receiving this truth leads us into what is His plan to reproduce Himself. 

Yahweh has a special ground, a special piece of earth to place Himself, the Word, the Seed, into.  In the parable of the sower, the seed, the word, fell into the good ground of a good and honest heart.  He has a special ground, a special piece of earthly dust (human flesh) that He pours the seed into, to reproduce the seed.  And that is what all of Genesis is about.  That is what all of the first five books, the torah is about. That  is   what  all  of  the  scriptures are about. 

With all this in mind, this is the message: Yahweh wants to reproduce Himself in a 100 fold capacity in a special body of believers, the elect, the sons and daughters of God. That does not mean that they are the only ones in His kingdom!  There are also, according to Yahshua, some who will bear 60 fold fruit, and some who will bear 30 fold fruit.  They are in his kingdom, but they are not  to be the manifested sons, the kings of the “King of kings.” 

The elect will come through a special people, carefully nurtured unto Himself, even though Adam, the first of the line, sinned.  Yahweh, through His foreknowledge, knew that this would happen and, consequently, had already made provisions for  Adam’s  offspring  to  fulfill  His  plan  (through  “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”).  He meticulously kept their line pure, forbidding them to marry the other peoples they lived among.  Remember Abraham when he made Eliezer swear unto Yahweh that he would not take a wife for Isaac from any other nation than Abraham’s own people.  Also, what did Rebecca, the wife of Isaac say when Jacob her son was going out to find a wife?  She was trembling, stricken with fear, when she said to him, “My whole life will be in vain if you go and take a daughter of the strangers in our midst” (Of course, that was exactly what Esau, Jacob’s twin, did).  

But why would she feel this way?  Because she knew Yahweh’s purpose in having a special seed line in the earth—a lineage of people chosen for Him to reproduce Himself through. This special line of people in the earth was “the apple of God’s eye.”

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