Between Two Worlds

When in our spiritual infancy and newly born state, we are faced with simple challenges as a young baby might be who is born into the world. We may look at a calendar and decide on which day to go to church. We might be instructed on what happens to a man when he dies. Does he go right off to heaven or does he go into the grave? Some toy with the notion that God's name should be pronounced or spelled a certain way. At the time, these grand themes seem to occupy man's complete comprehension of what it means to be a follower of the Messiah. Men are taught that they are saved by the blood of Jesus, and by the sacrifice He made, but they are completely unable to comprehend why, or to understand the mystery of it all.

Men are taught from their earliest times to be good, and obey God, but their notions of obeying God are varied and subjective. They end up trying to obey their own personal conceptions of God and trying to understand their own storybook. Men take stands and even give their life for the fantasies they have made up in their own minds. This is the old world in which we were born. This is a world of make-believe and a world based on one's personal conceptions of what it means to be happy. They build cities and relationships with the notion that it will bring joy to their hearts. Personal fulfillment is the goal of all their endeavors. This personal fulfillment is largely judged by the value one might place on himself. His self worth is how he judges whether or not he has attained. He clings to the earth and its assumptions. He lives unto himself.

Salvation does not consist of obeying certain laws and getting one doctrine or another correct. It is not the science of getting better. Salvation is a living thing, and it entails being translated from one world into another world. Salvation is being saved from something and delivered into something else. Being saved means the chains and bondage are ended. By and by, one is brought into new realities. These realities test and trouble his preconceived notions. He feels himself leaving the one world and entering into the next. This has with it not a few personal confrontations. He wants the new world but seems unwilling to let go of the old. His sentimental attachments keep him bound in a fantasy land of his own mental ideas. The comforts and pleasures one has become accustomed to must be released. He must let go of the relationships he valued in the first world and completely establish other relationships in the new. His understanding of what constitutes truth continually changes and expands so that His view of the world now approaches unto the Christ, which is the anointing. The anointing only has the true view of things as they are. This anointing is what saves a soul and gives him eyes to see what is true.

When a man seeks to win a soul to Christ, he is not winning a soul at all unless one considers the one he is winning is his own soul. He is simply working out his own salvation. He may argue over certain religious notions with the unbeliever, thinking he is doing the man good. He is only convincing himself and settling into his own ideas whether right or wrong. He is testing his own waters. Heaven, or the next world, is based on a higher principle than our doctrinal thoughts strongly defended. Words cannot describe the unspeakableness of its real experience. In this world, man has been chained to his earthly perceptions. He has built his happiness on the kingdom he has been able to form with his ideas. He has proven himself only on the approval of others, or his own well-being, and judged his life by the possessions within that domain, which may include his family and friends.

The new world we are now being introduced to is made of a totally different substance. Its love is not based on any expectation of return. There are no earthly marriages or personal possessions, since there are no possessions at all. While a man may still have children, and live with someone he previously pretended to be married to, his marriage is unto God and with God. There is only God. The experience of the new world is completely free flowing. Our own love is not based on any need. It only gives. This love expects nothing in return. In the new world we have no relatives, such as sons or daughters who may have previously had special meaning to us. Our families no longer exist in the old form, since there is only one family, and that is the heavenly one. There are no earthly wives or husbands, since there is only one Husband and only one bride in all the heavenly realm. This new world does not come easily. It waits until the soul releases the old one. New truth and experience can never enter in while one has any connection at all with the old. The new will not intrude, but only fill the place yielded up from the old. The soul must be empty and yielded for the new world and heavenly existence to appear. A soul cannot receive the new Husband until the old one has been yielded. One cannot become the bride of Messiah, until she is no longer the bride of man. An earthly view and an earthly marriage of any sort is adultery when viewed from heaven. A heavenly marriage and the heavenly view is adultery when viewed from earth. Adultery consists of mixing the two worlds. They, thereby, becoming adulterated. It requires a new wineskin altogether in order to hold the new wine. When I speak of marriage, I am speaking of the union of souls. Where is our allegiance? Where is our devotion? Truly, human marriages may not be adulterous ones, but too many are. They profess Messiah, but their lives are devoted to each other instead of the one object for which man was created.

When the children of God separated from the churches in 1987, they were thrust in between two worlds. They had to comprehend the difference between the old and the new in a great many new circumstances. The old quotes needed to be reevaluated and understood in the light of the gospel and the new light pouring out from the throne of God. Old doctrines had to be seen in a new light. There were also periods of great upheaval in the soul. There was a great shaking in heaven as the soul labored to grasp the meaning of the new realities. Fourteen years later the same process is taking place. The last of the old world must drop off and the fullness of the new world realized. This is not done without many new tools of understanding and new ways of bringing healing to the soul.

The realization that living constitutes much more than which day one keeps holy, what group he belongs to, or what happens to a man when he dies, is ever expanding. Which day one keeps dims as his holiness encompasses every day and everything. What happens to a man when he dies loses all significance, since no one dies. The old customary behavior is no more, since men are restored into the image of God. The animal restrictions and fences no longer apply in the way they once did, for love does no man injury. Instead of his laws keeping the man, it is the great love of a living God, momentarily and eternally directing all of his actions. His fleshly unctions never determine his actions. He does not retain a dissatisfied spirit but is satisfied in all things.

The man no longer checks into his past notions of what one should do to keep society afloat or his kingdom intact. Now he simply listens to the Word. "And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." Isa 30:21. They have learned to hear and obey, rather than act according to their notions of something they read at one time or another. They have previously acted on the interpretation of a word they have heard or a law they have thought truthful, but now, they hear a Voice and respond to that Voice. While the Voice does not do away with the law, it will expand the law and make it more honorable and meaningful.

The Rich Man

It has been said that it is harder for a rich man to enter into the kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. What has been missed is what constitutes a rich man. A rich man is someone who possesses anything. One is rich who has something in his hand. A man is rich who has something that makes him happy. He holds onto that something with all his might even though God has said, You shall have no other gods before me. This keeps a man locked into his earthly possessions and makes it impossible to traverse into the heavenly. Heaven is empty, filled only by God.

Men are married to their earthly possessions. This marriage might constitute a wife or a husband. One may be married to his job or the love of earth. Now, at the borders of the heavenly world, men are asked to divorce themselves from earth and be married only to God alone. Some men can give a mental ascent to such a doctrine, but few men will carry it out when the realities of it strike some cherished thing they possess. They are unwilling to exchange "Mine" and "My things" for God alone.

Some men can divorce themselves from earthly associations, since they are of such a bad temperament anyway, but they cannot divorce themselves from the pride of their opinion. They become temperamental and frustrated when working with others if they do not get their way. They get into moods if they do not get what they want and become unpleasant to be around. This one is hopelessly bound to his earthly riches and true salvation is impossible for him. It would be harder for that man to enter into the kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

The experience of salvation is easily spoken. Even though I can speak with the language of angels but do not love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. I may have all kinds of good reasons to do what I do, and can say them precisely, but my efforts and speech are no more useful than the noise of falling cans. And even though I have the gift, so that I can prophesy, and I understand all of the mysteries of religion, and though I can figure out anything which seems unfathomable to most men, and though I have so much faith everything works perfectly for me all the time, and have not love, it is as though I had nothing at all.

And even though I give everything I have to poor people and sacrifice my body for my religious faith, fasting and praying so much I lose weight and have large dark eyes from the stress of it all, and have not the loving faithfulness of God, it is all for nothing.

Love suffers a long time, and is very kind. Love has no envy of anyone else but always seeks for others to excel at what they do. Love does not seek to control another soul and dominate that soul for its own interests. Love does not think itself higher than anyone or better than anyone. Love never misbehaves, and doesn't seek its own thing ahead of the interests of another soul. Love is not provoked to anger or impatience and does not think evil, always trusting the Father for His gentle leading. Love never rejoices in evil, supporting those things which do not bring for a unified and fulfilled experience, but always takes pleasure in what is true. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, even though they may seem contrary to one's sentimental and emotional feelings. Love never fails at all, but stays true to the leading of God continually, even though it does not always understand the direction in which God is leading.

The true knowledge of God brings perfect unity. Sentiment is done away. One's needing to be someone or to have recognition is gone. One loves all men as himself, and one's ownership of others, especially in his family, is ended. He is freed from earthly desires and hopes. His hands are open wide and he has only one Husband. Human reasoning is left behind and only the voice of God is heard. This brings the man to perfect peace and quietness at all times and his joy is not dependent on his human connections. Unsettled spirits, and those who cannot find peace to their souls, are those in the service of another master.

Now men stand between two worlds. They can remain with the old, or translate into the new. The transition is now occurring but it remains to be seen who will be willing to give up playing God and yield to the true God. Yielding to the true God will require all that that man possesses, even so much as his self respect. Naked we have come into the world and it is certain we will be naked when we leave. The brightness increases and men are brought face to face with the truth of it. Will a man now lay hold of the new world and release the old, or will he call for his mountains and rocks to fall on him? This is what all heaven waits to see.