Mortality versus Immortality

Chapter 1

 I believe that so many of in the body of Christ today have not been delivered from slavery to "Pharaoh," who represents the carnal mind. Many, are just like the children of Israel, who had been slaves making bricks for Pharaoh for four hundred years, and yet even after they were set free, they wanted to return to slavery again. I am not sure that everyone has had enough of slavery to the law of sin and death, to really desire the truth that will make us free and restore our fellowship with God! I believe that God wants to speak to you personally today concerning freedom from all that would enslave you. John said in 1 John 1:1,

"That which was from the beginning." 

Our lives have been impregnated with a sense of mortality. We have been taught that our lives began when we experienced natural birth, and that we were born into this world as a flesh and blood human being. In other words I was born and I am going to die. I came from the dust and I am going to go back to the dust. Because of his sin God told Adam in Gen. 3:19,

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; or dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Paul said in Romans 5:14,

“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.”

As a result of these scriptures the carnal mind has concluded that death is something we must look forward to and after all Heb. 9:27 says,

“It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment” 

Jesus died once and for all for all men and fulfilled that scripture but because of the lack of understanding of the scriptures this deception has imprisoned us and dictated the course of our life. However, Jesus declared that we would "know the truth and the truth would make us free." We have all believed the lie that God has withdrawn his presence and fellowship from us because Adam sinned. This is the same lie that put Adam out of the Garden of Eden. Many Christians find themselves today, living in bondage to this false concept of life that is really "death."  

John begins his own personal testimony by saying, "That which was from the beginning." Well, where were you in the beginning? You were in God. God said to Job, "Where were you when I put the stars in space and when the morning stars sang together, you should know, because you were there."  But even beyond these earthly restrictions, we find our mortality has far greater ramifications in the spirit world. Paul said in 1 Cor. 15:50,

“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”

Flesh and blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, so we are prevented from sharing the blessings of living in Father's house. John in his gospel tells us that if we are "born of blood (mortal) we cannot be a son of God," John 1:12-13,

“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the    sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: ¹³Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Just as in the days when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, when the going got tough they wanted to go back into bondage. Your mortality will never allow you to leave the land of Egypt, for this is the very thing that made us slaves to Pharaoh who represents our carnal mind. Your mortality is your prison and sets the limitations on your life. You are subject to all kinds of sickness and disease, and death has the power to determine the number of your days. As a mortal human being you are subject to the law of sin and death, and you have no possibility of being set free.

If it was a lie that put Adam into a wilderness and separated him from God, then what is required to reverse the process? The answer is simply the truth! Here is where religion has also deceived us by telling us that what Adam believed was not a lie, but the truth, and that God was angry with Adam and as a result cast him out of the garden. Then religion further compounded this deception by developing various ways by which we can appease God, and in the process we became further enslaved to the whole religious system. This is because they told us that no one can stop sinning while they are on this earth, so the best we can achieve is to believe God crucified his only begotten son on the cross as just payment for our sin. God considered that his Son's death and shed blood was then sufficient to appease his wrath, and on that basis he agreed to forgive our sins, but only if we believe.

So religion established the formula for salvation and sent it around the world. Believe that Christ died for your sins and repent, then ask Jesus to come into your heart and you will be saved, and be a son of God and you will go to heaven when you die. Of course this does nothing to answer the question of our mortality for it assumes that death is inevitable, and neither does it answer the question of our slavery to sin.

The Apostle John brushed aside all the debate and conjecture by saying, "that which was from the beginning." It is here "in the beginning" that we discover we were created in Christ Jesus, as spirit, in the likeness and image of God. There is no mention here of flesh and blood, for we were created as spirit. The truth is that God never created a flesh and blood man. The body of Adam was formed out of dust and when God breathed the breath of life into that body it became a living soul. The light of God energized Adam's body up to the time he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The moment he did that the light began to congeal, forming the blood that presently flows in our veins. But as the Christ consciousness is again raised in us, the process will be reversed, and our bodies will again be filled with light, just as Jesus demonstrated on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus declared, "I and my Father are one," and he also said, "If you have seen me you have seen my Father."  Jesus said in Matt. 5:14,

“Ye are the light of the world.”

For most Christians their mortality has bound them to the law of sin and death, so that the former things have never passed away, and the "new things" cannot be imparted to them.

So John says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard...." How many of you have heard something that was from the beginning? When you hear something from the beginning, then your life will begin to change. It is not that which you may hear from the time when you were born into this life, nor from the time when you gave your heart to Jesus, or from the time when you consecrated your life to Christ, but what have you heard that was from the beginning. Well, what is there to hear from the beginning? John said in John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word." There was a Word in the beginning. "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." So we have to hear something that actually came from the beginning.

What does that mean? Before God said anything, there was a thought in his mind about something special he wanted to create. Then that thought began to develop into an idea, and in that idea God said, this creature that I am going to create will be called man. This man will be in our image and our likeness, with the ability to have dominion over all the works of my hands. Nothing will be able to defeat him and no enemy will be able to overcome this man. So this idea developed in the heart of God until the moment when God spoke it into existence. "Let us make man." And "the Word" that God spoke became the man who was the full expression of the thought and mind of God. Beloved, we are the manifestation of that Word God spoke to all mankind, in the beginning.

"That which was from the beginning which we have heard." Have you heard that Word yet? If you haven't, you have not discovered your true identity and will remain bound by the thoughts of your carnal mind. You have to understand, that you are that Word! You are the expression of that Word that God spoke in the beginning. If we fail to give expression to that Word we are hiding the truth from all humanity. Jesus said in Matt. 5:16,

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, …”

You are that Word! Can you hear this? You are that Word!!!

You have to know that you are that Word, and that God is still speaking to all humanity through you as the manifestation of that Word, declaring man's true identity. If Jesus Christ had not expressed that Word that he was no one would ever have known his true identity. Why do we have the Hitlers, the rapists, murderers, and terrorists out there? Because they have not heard or seen an expression of the "Word" God spoke in the beginning. God help us to become the expression of that Word. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard." I have heard that Word and I know today that I am who God said I am! I am God's Word to this world! I am that Word that was in the beginning with God and that Word which was God! Now you can stone me if you want to, just as the Jews tried to do with Jesus, but that is what the Word is, and if you haven't heard that Word then you will continue to express the illusion, which is a mortal human being.

At twelve years of age Jesus remained in the temple while his parents were on their way home, and they had to come all the way back and found him teaching the religious leaders in the temple. They said, "Son, you know you have caused us all sorts of anguish, for we were half way home and we have had to come all the way back to find you. What are you doing?" He said, "Don't you know that I must be about my Father's business?" He knew he was the Word, and that he was the true expression of what God created man to be. But the reason you have people in the world today who are murderers and all the other crazy people, is because they do not know who they are. For they have never seen a true expression of the Word that God spoke in the beginning.

John 1:14, says, "and the Word was made flesh." The Word that God spoke, which was His word to all of humanity, has now taken on the same flesh and blood form that we have, to prove to us that the "form" does not alter the reality of what we were created in the beginning. The Word that was created spirit in the beginning has now become flesh. So the "flesh" is now "spirit" that has been "materialized." When this happens it means that the natural laws which govern our flesh and blood body, must give way to the spiritual laws of heaven. Jesus Christ was never sick, and he could just disappear from the midst of the people. He could appear in the midst of the lake, and even cross the lake without a boat. Remember Jesus did say that we could do all the things that he did, and even greater things. But we have never believed that our body could be so energized by the spirit. We would rather retain our sense of mortality and consider that our salvation does not include our flesh and blood body.

However, Paul tells us in Rom 8:22,

"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain   together until now, and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."

Also in Phil 3:21,

"Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."

There is nothing concerning our natural body that can prevent Christ from achieving such a victory. What are we to understand by Paul's words, "the redemption of our body?" We know that the spirit within us is Christ and scripture speaks about the salvation of the soul, but we rarely hear any one talk about the "redemption of the body." The body is not evil in itself, but the problem is that it is aligned with the soul and therefore expresses soulish life, which is governed by the carnal mind. When Eve was separated from Adam in the Garden of Eden and took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in that new realm she had entered, she "married" the body, even though the male and the female were united in creation by God. This resulted in the light beginning to congeal, forming the blood that presently flows in our veins  and the life (soul) is now in the blood according to Lev. 17:11. So the soul hijacked the body, using it as a vehicle for its own expression, instead of the Spirit expressing Christ as God intended.

This situation is depicted in the parable Jesus told in Matt 21 of the "Master of the House" who planted a vineyard, dug a winepress, and built a tower leaving it in the hands of "husbandmen" while he went away. The "householder" is our heavenly Father, who gave into our hands the vineyard he had prepared, which would provide him with a good return on his investment. This vineyard represents our body with all its faculties, having the capacity to produce fruit that would satisfy our Heavenly Father. But we have acted the same as the prodigal son and taken the "vineyard" that belongs to the Lord and made it our own, counting whatever gain it could create as our own. When the servants of the Lord sought to establish the Father's claim to what belonged to him, we "despised" them and cast them out. Finally we were confronted with Christ, God’s only begotten son, who pressed His Father's claim to that which belonged to Him, but we responded by "killing" Him saying, "We will not have this man to rule over us." Each one of us is just as guilty as the husbandmen in the parable. However, note the judgment pronounced upon these husbandmen, "The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation (a people) bringing forth the fruits thereof." Matthew 7:14. "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

Sickness disease and death cover the world in plague proportions, and Christians are not exempt from this evil. There are just as many Christians with cancer and every other sickness, as there are among the people of the world. Death continues to determine the number of our days, and religion has no answer for this situation. I am personally aware of a resistance among some of God's people to even consider immortality as a present day reality. Their excuse is, that immortality is already ours because it is only our body that dies because we are spirit and spirit is eternal and cannot die. However let me remind you that mortality and immortality relate to the body and not to spirit. The "redemption of our body" is the divine intention that God will assert his rights over his vineyard according to the parable given by Jesus in Mark 12:1-11. Thus the vineyard (our body) will yield fruit to the glory of God.

As we establish the authority of the voice of God within us, the "book of Life" will be opened to us, revealing our heavenly state of consciousness. Jesus proved to us that a man born of a woman does not have to sin, for he condemned sin in the flesh. Jude verse 6 says that "the angels who kept not their "first estate" (their beginning or origin) but left behind their God ordained habitation, are reserved in age abiding chains as prisoners of darkness unto the judgment." So this is a warning to us that if we do not embrace our original habitation in God we will remain prisoners of the darkness that rules this world. However when we come to Enoch the seventh from Adam he says, "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all who are ungodly." This is the work not of a saviour who comes out of the sky, but these are the Elohim company that Jude calls the saints. This is speaking about those of us who have returned to our first estate in Christ.

We are told the things that are seen were not made of things that do appear, so even the dust of our being has come out of the realm of spirit. God was our Father in the beginning, for we came out of him, and God is still our Father even though we have a flesh and blood body. The "Word" that became flesh retained the same glory it had before the world began, for John says, "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth."

I want to tell you, you are that Word. "The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory." But the glory of that Word is also your glory. I want to tell you, that sitting right there where you are, you are clothed with the same glory that you had with the Father before the world began! You still have it! It has never left you, but you have not seen it, and you haven't believed it because you are imprisoned by the thoughts of your carnal mind. You may say, "I was born and I am going to die. I have come from the dust, and I am going to go back to the dust." No! You were in the beginning with God! And you are today that same Word that God spoke in the beginning and is still speaking to all of humanity, and when we truly express that Word, the whole world will want to join with us. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." That is what we are!

Leviticus 17:11, and the scripture says, "The life of the flesh is in the blood." Of course the word "life" there should really be "soul." The "soul of the flesh is in the blood." It is our mortality that is being expressed by the soul through our body today. If your life is in your blood, then you are mortal and subject to every disease and all of the corruption that is in this world.

When you are sick your doctor will take a sample of your blood to send away to be analyzed. When it is returned with the pathologist's report, the doctor can tell you what is wrong in your body. However, my life is not in my blood, because my life is hid with Christ in God. That is why there is nothing in this world that can touch my life! I will not die of a heart attack, nor will I die of a stroke, and I will not die of cancer, nor any of the other complaints that go around, for my life is hid in God.

We have got to break the deception that sickness and death are simply a part of life on this earth! Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." He did not say I am come to give you life and health, or life and prosperity, but life in abundance that cannot be affected by anything, for it is eternal. He said that we were to look and see that he has made all things new. The old things of time and sense, sickness and health, failure and defeat, life and death, have now passed away and "behold I make all things new." I have been made one with life itself, and that is God. Once we enter into this reality, we will begin to "live and move and have our being in God."

We have got to move out of this mortality that has bound us to this earth, and begin to discover who we are! I want to tell you, if Jesus Christ on the earth, believed like most of us today, he would never have done what he did. He would never have invited five thousand to have lunch with him out in a desert, or walked on the water. Lazarus would never have left his grave, and the blind would still be blind. He was able to do all these things because he knew his true identity and he was one with the Father. On the other hand, most people today are being limited by their mortality which determines what they can and cannot do.

I John1:1, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard... and which we have handled...." What have you handled that came from the beginning? I mean have you had anything to do with that which came forth from God, complete and perfect, as a manifestation of his likeness and image? That life is a manifestation of the power and presence of God flowing as a river through us. This is the reality we need to be handling every day. This is the same reality the disciples saw in Jesus Christ. What have you done with that glorious life you received in the beginning? How many of us today, look in the mirror and say, "This is me"? Because, if that reflection is what you consider your true identity to be, then you are living out of the illusion of life, and you will be subject to mortality, with all of the limitations that it places upon you.

Christ does not dwell in us so we can run around and "do miracles." Understand this, "Of myself I can do nothing!" Unless I see my Father do it, I cannot do it, and this is the Lordship of Christ. Jesus said, "In that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy Name, and in thy Name we have cast out devils, and done many wonderful works? Then will I profess unto them I never knew you, depart from me you that work iniquity."

Things have changed since the days of the charismatic renewal when people went around saying, "What is your gift, brother?" And I would reply, "My gift is the Holy Spirit, what is yours?" One person says, "I have the gift of healing," while another would say, "I have the gift of knowledge or I have the gift of prophecy." However on the day of Pentecost Peter said that we would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is my understanding that my gift was the Holy Spirit. But people did not understand and so they said, "You cannot have the whole nine gifts, you can only have one!" They did not understand that the Holy Spirit is the gift I have received from God, and He can manifest himself any way He so desires. How many of Gods people today seek for the gifts and not the Giver? Instead they seek for power and for the divine ability to perform miracles in order to build their own Kingdoms. Jesus told us, "Lo, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I come to do Thy will O God."

We have to begin to express the Word that was made flesh! Because when you were created you were spirit, not flesh and blood. God never created a flesh and blood person. Do you hear that? The only man God ever created was Spirit, and he was the only begotten Son of God, and that was Christ, Genesis 1:26. But don't get the idea that he was just an individual entity, because Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10, "We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus." For when Christ was created in the beginning, all humanity was created in him. So whatever he is, that is what we are! That is the law of biogenetics, which says, whatever the parents are that is what the offspring will be. So if I am a Son of God, and God is Spirit, then I must be Spirit. However that poses a problem for many people because they have a flesh and blood body! But, so did Jesus Christ and yet he declared, "I and my Father are one!" Then one day Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was? Peter answered, having received revelation from God, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Peter could never have discovered Jesus' true identity through his natural senses. That knowledge had to come to him by the spirit, which is Christ dwelling in him.

Peter not only discovered that Christ was the true identity of Jesus, but saw in him a reflection of himself as having the same identity. Later he declared, "Being born from above not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." So Peter recognized the "seed" from which we have come is immortal and cannot be corrupted. When we understand these things the veil of our human understanding is rent and the truth is revealed. Until the veil is rent we will continue to live our lives as the actor in some stage drama, changing clothes and becoming the very person or character you are playing. But now we are awakening out of the long night of sleep into the dawn of reality. Everything of the past, our birth, race, religious convictions, and human education, can now be seen as part of the Adamic dream. But as the Light of God illuminates our heart and mind, we see the divine activity uniting us with the invisible God, who fills all things. In union with God there is nothing that can hurt, harm or destroy, and we discover there is nothing to fight.

When we speak of our "mortality" we are not simply speaking about our flesh and blood body, for in itself it is not wicked or evil. Mortality is a consciousness and a system of belief sponsored by the carnal mind. This is the snake that Eve conversed with in the Garden of Eden, which convinced her God did not mean what he said, when he told Adam that he would die in the day that he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead she believed eating the fruit would make them as gods. Adam chose to join Eve in eating of the fruit thus lowering himself from his high estate in God. His body of "light" became flesh and blood, which was suitable to the earthly condition in which he now walked. God was not angry with Adam, for he searched for him among the trees. But something changed in Adam that brought about thoughts and concepts that alienated him from God. His mind created another "world" that appeared as a wilderness in which he found himself, and now he was in conflict, with forces that seemed to be arrayed against him, and he earned his bread by the sweat of his brow.

Religion has called this whole episode "The Fall of Man," making God the prime mover in everything that befell Adam, by casting him out of the garden, and setting up an opposition in the "seed" of the serpent, that would oppose everything Adam sought to do. This is precisely the consciousness that has brought about our mortality. What was it that actually formed this consciousness and how can it be reversed? Paul says, there are two laws that function in humanity. One is the law of sin and death, and the other is the law of the spirit of life, and this particular law functioned in Jesus Christ.

Mankind has functioned under the law of sin and death for six thousand years, so it has become firmly established in us. But when Jesus Christ came into the world he lived life on a completely different level, making him appear different from other men. Religion has brushed aside any investigation into why Jesus Christ lived differently to those about him, by saying that he was "God," even though he was created in the beginning. However this does not explain the true difference, seeing that all mankind came out of Jesus Christ in the beginning.