< Chapter 24 | INDEX | Chapter 26 >
Herein it has been stressed how a spirit requires TIME to grow up.’ As it also takes TIME for a youngster to complete school, and acquire the training and skills essential to successfully meet the responsibilities of life.
Wherefore, the inquiring mind will naturally ask: HOW am I to acquire the fullness of needful lessons unto SONship to God, when I am nowhere near to that at the point of death?
Here again is where the dogmas of carnal priesthoods have befogged the issue, making the simplest questions appear insoluble.
You and I went to school many days. The days added up to months, and terms and years. Neither was our qualification to victoriously meet life, fully realized at the termination of our formal education. And how far beyond that until most of us came up to the mental and moral stature of a revered parent? But HEAR the word of God:
“A thousand years are but as a day with the Lord Ps 90:4; 2 Pet 3:8
Said the Christ: “Abraham rejoiced to see my DAY.’ (John 8:56) and again “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is DAY” (John 9:4)
Was it a solar, 24-hour day that Abraham saw in the life of Christ? Or was it but a similar moment in time that He worked the works of God? Nay! But His entire life was that ‘day’ which Abraham saw, and that ‘day’ in which He wrot the Father’s will (“come; I delight to do your will” – Ps 40:7-8)
As 1000 years are but as 1 day with God; then by contrast is man’s life-span 70×24 = l hour, 40′, 48″; or about 1000 “minutes” in God’s sight. And during much of that time one is too young to understand.
*”Come, let us REASON together, says the lord” (Is 1:18.)
WHERE did you leave your ‘reason’ when you concluded that God expected you to attain unto SON ship in ‘100 minutes’ (‘in His sight’) of an earth-life ?
* “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? Said our lord (Luke 12:57)
Did YOU stop to JUDGE WHAT IS RIGHT, before you accepted the hell-tripe that ‘a soul fresh from the hand of God’, spends in conditions of ignorance on earth, less than 100 minutes ‘in the sight of God’, on the basis of which a spirit-monster assigns it to ‘the tortures of the damned’, time without end?
* “In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die”: – said God to Adam.
Adam ate, but did he die in that 24-hour day? He lived hundreds of years thereafter! But he did die within that 1000-year ‘day’ of God.
But our blind theologians talk about a 24 hour ‘solar day’!
We who were begotten by God, and destine to become ‘after His likeness’, send our children to school many DAYS. And an immense number of DAYS do we allow to pass before we even wonder if our children are coming ‘into our image and likeness’.
Why not credit God with having that much sense and reasonableness?
HE has told us the length of His ‘days’ with reference to man.
In the course of ETERNITY, should it be construed as impossible, or even as difficult for an Almighty Being, to apportion many school ‘days’ on earth, unto each child? And specially so when that ‘child’ got into bad company which led him into disobedience. It should not call for a Solomon to perceive that such may require many disciplinary ‘days’ on earth!
Behold the word of God:
“Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you and ordained you a prophet to the nations ” Jer 1: 5
This word as used by God rendered ‘know you’ is far more than acquaintanceship or awareness. It is even as used in the days of Moses concerning Israel how He wanted to test them and try them that He might KNOW them (as to what they would do).
THUS did He ‘KNOW’ Jeremiah before he was formed in the womb! Does that look like ‘a new soul fresh from the hand of God – – – ?’ – according to the spurious dogmas of the church! This Scripture boldly declares a PREexistence with God. Otherwise it would have been impossible for God to know the spirit of Jeremiah before he was conceived! Yet look again:
“Thus says the Lord: A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children because they were not.” Jer 31:15
This ‘were not’ implies they were dead And to that attests Mat 2:17, 18, showing us that it was fulfilled thru Herod’s slaying of the young children some time after Jesus had been born. But see the next words of the prophet:
“Thus says the Lord: Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears: for, your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord; and THEY SHALL COME AGAIN from the land of the enemy.” – Jer 31:16
Let the reader make sure to not confuse this verse with the one following where God TRANSPOSES the same principle-in-operation, by assuring Israel that the children of the dispersed would again come to their own border. Overlook not the opening word of v.17 “AND— . ” Which word does not annul, neither interpret the previous verse, but leaves it as stated. And what did He state?
Children of Rachel were to be slain, occasioning great grief and lamentations. Their spirits (clothed in soul-bodies) had been precipitated into ‘the land of the enemy’ (a common expression for the realm of DEATH). But hold your tears and refrain from weeping – COMFORTS OUR GOD – saying: ‘they shall COME AGAIN out from the land of the enemy !’
Should it be considered incredible that an Almighty Father would wish to send back to ‘school’, a bunch of youngsters which had been abruptly dismissed? So He COMFORTS ‘Rachel’, giving the assurance that there is to be a great reward because of this sacrifice, when her ‘children’ shall come again from the ‘land of the enemy’ —-entering new, infant bodies.
God conforms all His operations to A CENTRAL PATTERN. Neither can He vary His conduct in principle.
Therefore He set those two verses together that we should not fail to see the comparison; Weep not, for, your slain children shall come back to you from the Land of Death: Despair not over the future, for, the children of those carried to Babylon, shall return again to this – your land! HE expects us to understand the one by contrast to the other.
* “And I will give them a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you — that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances.” – Ezek 11:19-20
What! Do you impute abominable evil unto God? IF you say that the ‘heart’ and the ‘spirit’ above, refers but to a different mind and nature (put there by God); then you have made Him fully responsible for all the evil and degradation of humanity up to the present moment! IF it lies within His power to make some future generation good and holy, then HE is fully responsible for all hell out of the past and up to this moment!
On the other hand, IF you will come and ‘REASON together with Him’; IF even of yourself you will ‘JUDGE what is right,’ then you will perceive at once that the iniquitous generations of the past have been indwelt by young, obstreperous spirits in the early days of their disciplinary ‘schooling.’ And the coming generations of which He speaks who are to be obedient to Him, will be indwelt by spirits towards the end of their school ‘days’ – when they are coming to understanding. When you ‘REASON’ with Him, you will realize at once that He meant exactly what He said: A NEW SPIRIT, and a NEW HEART. Figuratively, the heart is used thruout Scripture to denote the SOUL, for, the soul has its seat in the human heart.
Hence, the generation which shall receive NEW SOULS and another SPIRIT will HEAR His word – even as our own children in their maturity will HEAR the parent’s word.
Again He brings out the same thot and Truth thru His mouthpiece Isaiah when He forecast the desolations of Egypt. Have you supposed that your magician God merely said in His displeasure: “Egypt, you go to the dogs” – when, Bang! They went to pieces? But HOW did God know that they were heading up towards ruin? First, THAT was His judgment upon the people. They had served their great purpose in His will and plan. So He commanded a host of younger and rebellious spirits to incarnate in Egyptian babes, which would bring about the desired destiny for the land. See His words:
” The Lord has mingled A PERVERSE SPIRIT in the midst thereof; and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit ” – Is 19:14
It is even like appointing an inexperienced battery for a baseball team; or sending some young cadets to take charge of an army locked in battle. The tragic results are inevitable. Egypt was THE great nation which had led the world. But when God commanded a wave of immature, spirit-rebels to have their ‘day’ in Egypt, then was her greatness a thing of the past.
As we peruse Scripture, the evidence ever increases that God is JUST and RIGHTEOUS, HE decrees a just retribution unto all peoples: even to the Canaanites, Egyptians and Babylonians – all of whom were without His LAW. And, since He is A JUST God, we must carry His righteousness into action for the spirits who have departed their earthly bodies. To postulate such ‘equity’ is to be meted out to them in a furnace of fire, where they endure the tortures of the damned’ time without end, is but to postulate a spirit-monster at least one million times worse than the devil. People who propagate such monstrously blasphemous horror, are not fit citizens of a ‘civilized’ society – to say nothing of a Christian one regardless of the ‘cloth’ they wear.
* “- – – -when I cast him down to hell (the ‘UNseen’) with them that
* descend into the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and
* best of Lebanon, all that drink water, SHALL BE COMFORTED in the nether parts of the earth.” – Ez 31:16
* They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her
* multitude: her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised, * slain by the sword – borne their shame with them that go down to the pit——” Ez 32:25 (but see all of that chapter).
‘Hell’ and the ‘pit’ come from words in the Hebrew and Greek which mean the Unseen world, and have not the faintest connection with the current associated thot of torment. Here God speaks of ‘a bed’ (resting) and also of being comforted. Nowhere in the chapter is there any hint of torment, nor even punishment; but rather a state of awaiting. Now look at this one:
* “Hell from beneath (‘in the nether parts of the earth’) is moved
* for you to meet you at your coming: it stirs up the dead for
* you, even all the chief ones of the earth; IT HAS RAISED UP
* FROM THEIR THRONES (in the pit) ALL THE KINGS OF THE
* NATIONS,” – Is 14:9
There is one instance of what they are waiting for: the purpose of their abiding in the UNseen world, to be STIRRED UP, and RAISED UP, or to he caused to ascend from their beds or their thrones in ‘hell’, in order to incarnate on earth at the right time to be of the nations’ and rulers – of one class or another – at the psychological time when Lucifer is to have his great spree on earth.
Church indoctrinated people may scream in righteous horror at such thots; but the fact remains it is BIBLE TRUTH with no other possible or alternative thot attached unless we wish to enter into interpretations’ – which God has forbidden.
Christians who believe in the word of Jesus – will realize that He declared the same Truth when He said to His disciples concerning John the Baptist:
“But I say unto you that Elijah is indeed come! Mark 9:13
The same Truth God exemplified thru His chosen people by sending them into dispersion, and much later bringing them back into their land for another chance.
‘Fundamental’ religionists turn purple with rage at the mention of ‘another chance’ Yet what is the analysis of this? Have not such ‘purplish religionists’ granted unto their own children ‘another chance’ – time and again? In other words, they are BETTER THAN GOD! So they get livid with fury when someone dares to point out that God is just as good as they!
* “In the DAY you eat thereof, you shall surely die,” Later He said thru His prophet: “The soul that sins, it shall die.”
Since the body of Adam died within that 1000-year ‘day’ of God, we know that his soul (-body) also perished within that selfsame ‘day’. In the case of Adam, there was but 70 years left for his soul to survive (at the maximum). That left the spirit denuded – to await the time that God had another ‘day’ prepared for him.
Of this class of denuded spirits we are told in 1 Pet 3:19-20, when the liberated Christ-spirit went and ‘preached unto the SPIRITS IN PRISON’ which were disobedient in the days of Noah.
Noah’s flood closed one dispensation. Even as here on earth when a school semester closes, there is a time of waiting before they can again go back to school. So, two and a half thousand years later, these same rebellious spirits were still ‘doing time’ in “prison” – awaiting the time for their next chance (another ‘day’).
Contrast that Scripture to Rev 6:9 “And when he bad opened the 5th seal I saw under the altar the SOULS of them that were slain for the word of God.”
There he specifies SOULS. Those were not denuded spirits; for, their SOUL (-bodies) had been ATONED for by the BLOOD OF THE LAMB. They were not subject to death!
The Christ said that the blood of ALL the prophets, shed from the very first, would be required of ‘this generation.’ (Luke 11:50) According to history, that generation paid to the hilt! But HOW could a just God, avenge the blood of all the prophets on that one generation? Simply answered when we recognize the Truths He has patiently tried to hammer in. The spirits of the guilty ones out of the past had been commanded to reincarnate in ‘that generation’ that He might deal with all the culprits at once, and show forth JUDGMENT both to Jew and Gentile.
In earlier days when the world population was small, denuded spirits had to wait longer in the UNseen before coming back. But now for a long time, bodies have been more available.
An approximate 1000 years has been the customary interval between earth lives since man’s life-span dropped from its early record. Yet this too varies immensely in some cases, especially where some one has been cut off in early life. I came across one such instance where the spirit returned in less than a decade.
