Coming Out of Darkness Part 10 by Gary Sigler

Facebook note on Wednesday, 30 March 2011 at 17:08

Transformation not Condemnation Part 4

This renewing of the mind is a process, not an instant change. No matter how carnal you think you are, if you will keep hungering after God, you will be renewed day by day. Everything in life takes time. First you have a seed, then a small blade, and eventually a full ear of corn. We are the seed of God. His seed is growing in the midst of our carnality, and eventually that seed of His life will grow and consume everything in us that is not of God. This is a work of grace, not a matter of self-effort or natural willing. "It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy" (Romans 9:16). As mentioned earlier, we have inherited habit patterns from our forefathers. The sins of the forefathers are visited upon the children for generations, and it's not a spiritual thing, it's a natural thing. Those things have to be transformed. There are habit patterns which have developed, sometimes for generations, that you inherit. That's why I was full of lust; I inherited it just like a disease. And you know, we cannot receive anything from God except through the eyes of faith. If you are under condemnation and guilt, it's impossible for you to receive from God, because you feel that you deserve what you have. And again, nominal Christianity will teach you, "You deserve what you have -- look at what you are doing! You call yourself a Christian, and you are out there drinking and smoking and chasing women and doing all of the things you shouldn’t ." But you need transformation, not condemnation. One of the first things that will help you is to have the revelation that God and man are one. And I want to explain to you just a little bit about what I mean when I say this, because I have been getting letters recently from people (and these people are not critical; they are people who love me and haven't known me very long, but who have come to love the ministry that I have). They tell me things like this: "You should never say God and man are one, because the New Age people and the New Age movement, and this one-world religious thing that is going on out there are saying some of the same things that you are saying. So therefore, if you use this terminology, you have to be careful, because it's New Age." But if New Age people are proclaiming the truth, if a Buddhist monk is speaking some truth, then do I not speak that truth because somebody will think that I am a monk, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a New Ager? I have to speak it, because it is true! God and man are one. This is all through the Scripture, but let’s look at just a few verses (these are all very familiar verses, but again, we have not had revelation on just basic, Scriptural, practical things). In John 15:5, Jesus said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Picture that in your mind. Look at a vine that has branches. Are the branches and the vine two separate entities? I don't think so; they are one. Now that does not make the branch the vine, but it is a part of it, and the same life flows through both the vine and the branches. That is why I say over and over again that I believe with all my heart that I and my Father are one. But I am not my Father. I'm not God! However, I inherited God traits from my Father, just as I inherited natural traits from my natural father, and I am a human because I have a human life. If indeed Jesus lives in me -- and as the Apostle Peter and others have told us in the New Testament, the Divine life and nature of God are in me -- then how could I not be one with God?

But if New Age people are proclaiming the truth, if a Buddhist monk is speaking some truth, then do I not speak that truth because somebody will think that I am a monk, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a New Ager? I have to speak it, because it is true! God and man are one.

The problem is that we identify with the human side, because we are in that fallen, darkened state, having our eyes darkened, being alienated from the life of God that is in us. That is the only problem. Jesus said we must be born again, because there is a natural birth and there is a spiritual birth. And as the natural birth is earthy, the tendency of that natural birth is to always be dragging you downward back into the earth. But he that is born of the Spirit is spirit, which means that that part of you which is regenerated and born again is the spirit in you, and the spirit is always ascending and rising above. This is where the conflict comes in! The natural human life is always drawing down toward the earth, trying to pull you down, but your spirit always wants to ascend. Another thing we haven't understood is that when you are born again you are as a little baby. I don't care if you are a hundred years old when you are born again, it is a spiritual birth just like a natural birth. But we take spiritual babies and we try to make them act like Father God! And they are just babies. Babies need only a few things: They need to be fed and properly taken care of. You cannot teach a baby about tithing, but you can feed him, and if you feed him properly, if you nourish your children properly, they may never understand the principle of tithing, but they will be givers -- oh they will be givers! "And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are" (John 17:11). How are Jesus and the Father one? The Apostle Paul tells us that the fullness of God, the fullness of everything that God is, dwelt in bodily form in the Man Jesus. Then Jesus has the audacity to pray, "Father, just as we are one, they are one." You see, if you have this revelation, your problems are over, but the biggest tool of the enemy today in Christian circles is fear; because, brethren, in the last days there are seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. If you are in that church system today and you are entrenched in that system, you have already been seduced -- terribly seduced -- and you don't even know it. The deception and seducing came in even before the Apostles died. "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee [Note that it is the same way!] that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" Now we can't believe these words, because we look with our eyes at what's out there in the system of Christianity. There is no oneness! You may say, "Brother, I'm not in darkness," but are you a Baptist, and are you entrenched in the Baptist tradition? Are you a Lutheran, entrenched in the Lutheran tradition? Are you a Pentecostal, entrenched in that religious tradition? Then you are in darkness!

-the biggest tool of the enemy today in Christian circles is fear; because, brethren, in the last days there are seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. If you are in that church system today and you are entrenched in that system, you have already been seduced -- terribly seduced -- and you don't even know it.

What is being produced in the religious system is for the most part a sham. There is a teaching in the system that sounds so humble. I was taught as a young Christian, "Brother, be careful, be very careful. Don't you ever touch the glory of the Lord. Don't you touch that." And one day I read, "The glory which you gave Me, I have given to them, that they may be one" (John 17:22). What is the glory? Most people don't know what it is. The glory of God is the expression of God. Wherever God is expressed, there is His glory. He said, "I have given to them My glory," and the same Spirit that was in the Lord Jesus is now in you and me! But because of the blindness over our spiritual eyes we don't know it. Oh, we are taught it, but we don't know it. Our preachers wouldn't even want us really to understand it, because if we did, most of them would be out of a job! Do you know what my job is as a minister? If I am a leader, my main function should be to teach you and raise you up in your awareness and abilities of God so that you no longer need my services, and I can go do it elsewhere. Where are the anointed men and women of God who are able to minister not by the letter but by the Spirit of the Living God, to write upon your heart and cause you to rise up and minister to one another? Most of God’s people have never had a proper vision of the Church. All we have seen is Mystery, Babylon the great, the Mother of harlots! You may say, "But Brother, there are precious, precious saints out there!" Yes, there are, and it says in Revelation 17 that Mystery, Babylon, that Mother of harlots, is decked with gold and silver and precious stones, which simply means that those are the characteristics of God. Gold is the Divine life and nature; silver is the redemption; precious stones means the transforming power of God. Yes, there are precious saints out there, but they have never had anyone to bring them out of the darkness and bring them into full liberty and liberation in the power of the Spirit. We haven't had many men in this age and generation to raise up the saints of God to minister to one another. A word of the Lord ministered by the Spirit will enter into your heart, and if you are hungry for God, it will nourish you and build you up.

If I am a leader, my main function should be to teach you and raise you up in your awareness and abilities of God so that you no longer need my services, and I can go do it elsewhere.

If, on the other hand, all you are receiving is head knowledge, you will think you are progressing, but your life will not change. Paul said to the Corinthians, "Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Corin. 3:3). When we ministered to the Church in Fall Creek Oregon, I used to tell people, "I don't care what your problem is; please come and be a part of us. If you will stay and let us minister to you your life will change. And no matter how long it takes, I will never condemn you. I will never come to you and say you cannot be a prostitute or gay. I will minister to you; I will pray for you; I will cry with you, and you will be delivered and you will be transformed by the Spirit of the Living God!" "Oh foolish Christians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth crucified among you" (Galatians 3:1). Paul is saying, "Don't you realize that Jesus Christ has been set forth crucified among you? Don't you realize that there is absolutely nothing that you need to do?" Now someone may say, "Well, Brother, I preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified." My reply would be, "Yes, but along with that you bring all your rules and regulations, and your shoulds and your shouldn'ts. Jesus Christ crucified is the end of the message! There is not one thing that you can add to that to make it any better; that's the end of the message." Jesus Christ crucified, buried and resurrected, that is the Gospel, and that is what will change you and bring you life. "This only would I learn of you: did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:2-3). Have you suffered so many things? Have you suffered for so long in this bondage? Has it all been in vain? "He that ministers to you the spirit and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith?" (Galatians 3:4). Listen. If I had to minister to you because of meeting the standard of the law, I wouldn't have a chance! If the qualification to minister is to be one who is fully transformed and in the likeness of God, I fail miserably. That is not it. It is because I have seen something of God, and because I have seen something of God, I have had that contact with the Spirit of the Living God that has energized me and brought some transformation in my life. That's what qualifies me to minister! It's not the result of going to a Bible school. William Law said many years ago that Christianity runs the Bible schools, thinking that they can put off Adam and put on Christ. That's not what happens in a Bible school.

Now someone may say, "Well, Brother, I preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified." My reply would be, "Yes, but along with that you bring all your rules and regulations, and your shoulds and your shouldn'ts. Jesus Christ crucified is the end of the message!

You go into a Bible school full of the Spirit of God, and may come out systematized. You'll be taught how to teach people to do everything but contact God, because most teachers don't know how to do that themselves. You will know how to do everything just as you should do it, but you won't know how to contact God in reality and in spirit

To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness Part 9 by Gary Sigler

Facebook note on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 at 16:08

Transformation Not Condemnation Part 3

There are a number of physical weaknesses in the human race which can be inherited, yet if somebody develops a disease; we don't condemn them, do we? Of course we don't. And I tell you, sin is a disease, and you can't help it. Can I help it if an illness develops in my body? (I'm speaking here in natural terms.) Can I help it, and am I condemned for it? When I go to pray, am I reminded of this disease and do I say, "Oh my God, I shouldn't have this!" and then fall under condemnation? But that is what we do with sin, not realizing that it is just the natural man. "I delight in the law of God, but I find another law at work in my members bringing me into captivity to the law of sin and death." And you say, "But Brother, do we always have to live there?" No. Transformation is the only thing that will cure the sin disease in your body. It is the only thing.

You can pray all day, you can read the Bible all day, you can do anything you want to do, and if it is simply done in the natural, if there is no contact with the living, energizing Spirit of God, there will be no transformation.

Do you remember that years ago, before Jesus came there were priests in the temple praying 24 hours a day for the Messiah to come? Yet when He walked among them, they didn't recognize Him. Prayer doesn't always help you. There is only one hope for you, and that is that you have a heart for God. That is the only thing that is going to help you. And if you don't have a heart for God, it is very easy to obtain. If you get around people who love God, you will just find yourself having a heart for God. (We need to learn the power of transference. Many of us who have been in the deliverance ministry have been taught in the past about the "transference of spirits". Well, let me tell you something: we need to learn about the transference of the Holy Spirit!) When we begin to grow up into God, and transformation begins to take place as the Spirit of God begins to flow into all areas of our lives and bring transformation, it becomes very easy to live godly. It becomes very easy to believe God. Why? Well, Paul tells you, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." The good, the acceptable and the perfect will of God. We take a verse like that, and we can break it down and preach doctrines forever on it. But the key is to have a renewed mind to see that at the cross, you were made a holy person. God would never look upon sin, and He need not, because He took the sins of humanity to the cross and into death, and they are no longer there. Many people say, "That sounds like Christian Science. Are you saying there is no sin?" I am saying that God took it away, but merely seeing that there is no sin won't really help you. What will help you is simply to realize that you need God And if you realize that your sin does not keep you and separate you from getting to God for the help that you need, that is "Christian sense", not Christian Science. In God's eyes there is no sin, and there is coming a day when we are going to realize that and begin to walk in it -- and then there won't be sin for us either. It was dealt with. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (the Greek word is metamorphoo, which means an actual transformation; it's the same word that we would use for a caterpillar that is transformed into a butterfly). Right now we might look pretty ugly, but there is a work going on. I can look back now, and I can actually thank God for those things in my life that caused me to seek Him. I don't care how bad the sin was; I don't care how deep the lust, or whatever it was that was in my life; those things were used by God to drive me to Him. There are multitudes of Christians on the scrap heap because they have never understood that they don't have to be any certain kind of person or live up to a certain standard to get to God. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 3, beginning at verse 2: "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." Now let's go on to verse 6: "Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

I have heard many, many messages on that verse, yet some of the very pastors who spoke that verse could not help me when I went to them for help for my condition.

"Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter." Listen. He said, "Able ministers of the new testament." Most of God’s servants today would say, "Oh, I don't minister by the letter." If we would just stop and think sometimes what is meant by these words, we would see that whenever you are ministering by the letter of the word you are ministering by the law and the law brings death. I heard a message on "giving" a couple of weeks ago, and it was one of the best messages that I have ever heard. It was given by Dave Davis. He was ministering not the letter, but the spirit. He said that when it comes to giving in the New Testament, it's not a matter of trying to figure out whether I should tithe or whether I shouldn't tithe, it's a matter of hearing God! What is God saying to you? For years, my wife and I have not followed a set rule or principle of tithing. God told me many years ago, "Don't try to walk in the spirit by the letter of the law, because the minute you try to put laws upon the people, the very thing that you're trying to get them to do, they will not do." They won't do it, and that is natural, because with the knowledge of the Law comes the bondage to keep you from performing the Law (Romans 7). But religion has made it sound so nice: "Our tithing is a part of our worship," and oh, I know that! It's a shame that pastors even have to talk and teach about tithing; it's a shame! Why can't we teach people, "I hear God and you can hear God also." And what is He saying to you? Is He saying to you to tithe? Then by all means tithe. My wife and I, if I may use us for an example again, have given away our rent money. We have given away our cars. At times, we have given way beyond the tithe. But if you put people under the law, some of them are going to fulfill the law. They are going to pay their tithe and then think that everything else they have is theirs to do with as they want. Not so! You need to do what He says. "For God has made us able ministers of the New Covenant -- not of the letter." Pastor, you should not be teaching people how to tithe; you should be teaching people how to enter into the presence of the Living God. You should be telling people, "Don't come to me and ask what you should do. Don't come to me and ask if you should tithe; come to me and let us worship together. Come to me and let me help you enter into the presence where He is, and then do what He says." I used walk into churches and hear forty-five minutes of teaching on giving, sometimes in every service. Then, when I ask the pastor, "Why are you doing that?" he will say, "Well, the people just aren't giving; they need to be taught how to give." Let me tell you something, pastors: If you are pastoring a church and your people aren't giving, the problem is not your people. Hear me! We pastored at Fall Creek, Oregon, for three-and-a-half years, and I never asked people for money. I was still in the church system at that time, and I still went by some of the rules of the system, because I was still a lot more ignorant than I am today. But you know, I've always had that heart to give. And God sat me down for about four years recently, and I didn't minister anywhere to anyone, except on an individual basis, and He said when He released me to minister, "Always remember: I gave My very best. Therefore when you go into a church, when you go into a home, wherever you go, go to give. Try to give even more than you can receive." God does have many in leadership today who will give. People tell me all the time, "Brother, it costs you money to make those books, tapes and CD’s, and besides, if you would sell them, it would enable you to have the finances to fulfill God's will in your life." And I say, "Read Revelation, chapters 17 & 18, please," because the principles of Babylon, the principles of the world, the principles of our so-called Christianity are those of buying and selling, and the principles of the Kingdom are giving and receiving. I never tell anyone, "I won't receive from you." If you want to write me a check for a million dollars, I'll say, "Thank you, brother!" and I'll cry, and I'll thank God. But if you try to buy something from me, I won't sell it to you. It's not according to the principles of the Kingdom. Our churches have to be brought into Kingdom awareness and Kingdom living. If our churches were giving churches, rather than taking churches, we would fill them! We couldn't hold all the people! God gave His very best. So, Pastor, if your people aren't giving, don't blame the people. If God wants to shut me down, all He has to do is to pull my finances away from me, and I can't minister, because I don't have anything to sell, I don't have any way to support my ministry outside of working physically. (We do that, but it's not enough to support a ministry. The most my wife and I can do together is to put about $200 a month into our ministry account to go toward producing the books and the tapes, but that is almost nothing.) So if I get crossways with God and He wants to shut me down, He can just pull the finances, and I can't minister. I would challenge every pastor and every minister: Let God do that in your life! One of the key things that God needs to reveal to us is that the benefits of Calvary are ours regardless of our condition. I cannot emphasize this enough! If you are a prostitute, or, if you are full of lust, envy, pride, jealousy -- whatever it is, all you need is to learn how to touch God. But yet, because of our Christian teaching, we have thought that to be impossible. We can't be a sinner and touch God! We can't be full of lust; we can't commit adultery and touch God! But the truth is, if you are an adulterer or you are caught up in lust or any other thing, and you never touch God, you will never change! It sometimes takes years for transformation to take place in our lives. The Apostle Paul says, "For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:6). The word "renewed" is anakainoo (Strong's 341: to cause to grow up, new, to make new). Thayer's says this means that: A new strength and vigor is given to one B) to be changed into a new kind of life as opposed to the former corrupt state.

To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness Part 8 by Gary Sigler

Facebook note on Monday, 28 March 2011 at 16:37 Transformation Not Condemnation Part 2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:1-2). How many times have we heard that passage preached as a call to consecration and dedication preached in the messages across America on holiness and right living? And if we have the religious mindset, we'll hear this or read this and we'll say, "Oh my, yes! Lord, I present my body to You," but then we will have brought up into our consciousness all those things in our life that we know should not be there. And after all, this word does say, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice , holy . . ." I used to say, "Oh God! I would love to do that." Oh how I would have loved to be able to go before God and say, "Father, I present my body to you, holy, unblemished and undefiled." I wanted so desperately to know the reality of the Scriptures. I wanted to be able to experience the heart-throb of God! Yet every time I would go into the Lord's presence, the light of God would begin to expose me, I would see all of those things in my life that should not be there and I would fall under guilt and condemnation. You see, most of us have not been taught about these things. We haven't been warned that there is no way that you can enter into the presence of God and not have the light of God expose you! If you move into the presence of God and you don't feel your weakness, if you don't sense your inabilities, if you're not aware of the sin and the habits in your life, then you haven't entered into His presence. But just because the light of God exposes all those things it doesn't mean that we should fall into condemnation. The light of God does what it is supposed to do; it exposes all the hidden areas of your heart. You'll begin to see things in your life that even you did not know were there. But it is not for condemnation; it is for transformation. God will never condemn you. He has paid the penalty for every transgression and disobedience in our lives. We need to spend time in God's presence to have Him reveal His heart to us. He said from the cross, "Father, forgive them; they don't know what they are doing." They had just nailed Him to the cross! He was bleeding, He was dying, and He said, "Father, forgive them!" Could He possibly have asked anything in that moment which would not have been granted to Him? The very men who pierced His side and hung Him on a cross will one day bow the knee before the throne of God, and they will give glory to God. They put Him on a cross, but because they did that, the price for their redemption and ours was paid. Even though they did the most criminal act in the universe, they acted under the plan of an awesome, almighty, all-knowing God, who works all things after the counsel of His own will. And that is why He could say, "Father, forgive them; they don't know." If you have sin in your life, if you have habits that you haven't overcome, and you fall under condemnation, you don't know the depths of God’s love! Because of the condition of the system calling itself Christianity, there is not much forgiveness in the Church either, unless you have a strong will and a strong character which is able to put down those things in your life that shouldn’t be there. Christianity as we know it today is only "the survival of the fittest". Those who have habits and things in their lives which they cannot overcome are not even welcome in many churches. We have an organization today in the United States called "Alcoholics Anonymous", but the Church frowns upon it because they talk about "a Higher Power". For the benefit of those of you who know nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous, I am going to give you a little information. First of all, it is absolutely impossible to be expelled from Alcoholics Anonymous if you have a heart that wants to quit drinking. They request that you have one desire in your heart, only one -- that you want to quit drinking. Now they don't require that you do that, they only require that you have the desire. And if you have the desire to quit drinking, you are welcome at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings anywhere in the world, and when you walk in they won't ask you what Chapter or group you are from; you will just be welcomed. And if you are a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and you come to a meeting after drinking, they will not throw you out. It is absolutely impossible to be expelled from Alcoholics Anonymous, if you have a desire to overcome. They have meetings several times a day, and their success rate is tremendous. You put their success rate up against the success rate in the church world, and they outshine it considerably. We Christians do not understand that we inherited a sinful nature. We are taught it, but then we are condemned for acting like it. Those of us who have been regenerated do have a new nature. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 7:22-23, "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." We are regenerated in our inner man, but that life in us must grow until it overcomes the law of sin and death. We have never been exposed to the truth that to stop sinning is a matter of growth and transformation. You can will to do what is right all you want and you should, but until the Spirit of God grows up in you, you will continue to fall into sin. Paul also says in Romans 7:18-20, "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." The flesh is the carnal man. As long as we are living out from our carnal man we will always be brought into captivity to sin and death. Overcoming sin is not a matter of exercising our natural will. We must hunger and thirst after God. We must spend time in His presence every day so that His life may flow into our soul life and transform every area. Paul says here very plainly that if you are sinning, and you have a desire to please God, then it is not you that sins (not your new nature) but the sin principle that is still operating in your carnal man. The natural man will never improve: he must be put to death by your learning how to live in the Spirit. There are no "How to" books when it comes to living in the Spirit. You must spend time in the presence of God to be enabled to live according to His life. I know I am treading on some dangerous ground here, but we think that homosexuals are homosexual because they chose that lifestyle. Or we think that a prostitute is a prostitute because of choosing that lifestyle. But when we were born, when we were brought into the world, every one of us picked up the concept of being alienated from God. I used to go before God, and I would say almost continually, "God, I didn't ask to be born this way! God, I am just so eaten up with this stuff! I didn't ask to have the lusts of the flesh. Why am I this way?" I prayed every day. I would get up early every morning, and I would go out and seek God, and sometimes I would cry and say, "God, it's not fair!" I'd see Christians in church all around me, and they seemed to be so happy, and they seemed to be so free. (What little did I know!) But a lot of you can identify with this: If you are born on that side of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that has a nature tending to do evil, and you want to be a Christian, the so-called "Christian" community will not accept you. You don't have a chance as things stand today. There is absolutely no hope for you outside of finding the reality of Christ within you. You can love God and still be a failure at living the Christian life. Let me tell you something: One of the most miserable conditions you can ever be in (and many of you, again, can identify with this) is to have the love of God in your heart, yet basically you experience Romans 7:22-23, "I delight in the Law of God, but there is another law in my members bringing me into captivity to sin and death." I tell you, that when I met God in 1969, oh, I delighted in Him! And I had no knowledge of what I should and shouldn't do, I just delighted in God. And for a time after I was saved, in the evenings I used to open my Bible, and I would just read and cry -- and I would have a cigarette in my hand! I did that until someone told me, "You can't do that and be in God's presence. You are being deceived. You are getting a false spirit, a false sense of peace; you cannot enter into the presence of God with a cigarette. You can't do it." What a terrible thing, to tell someone they can’t get to God unless they clean up their life! We were born with a nature that is both good and evil. That is why Jesus went to the cross.We don't understand. We don't know why we act as we do. I didn'tknow why I acted the way I did. I wanted God, but I wanted what I wanted. I

couldn't help it.

We don't understand. We don't know why we act as we do. I didn't

know why I acted the way I did. I wanted God, but I wanted what I wanted.

I couldn't help it.

Have you ever been addicted to something, but, no matter how hard you tried, you experienced Romans 7: "I find another law in my members that brings me into captivity to the law of sin and death"? If someone has that natural characteristic in them which loves the things they shouldn’t, they cannot be a member in good standing in many churches that I know today. But if they are on the "good" side of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then they are accepted. We really don't understand that what has been raised up out there calling itself "the Church" is absolutely antichrist. I'm not talking about people; I'm talking about the system, and the way that system has been set up is antichrist. A homosexual cannot be a member of such a church, a prostitute cannot be a member of such a church -- unless they change and clean their lives up. Someone might say, "Brother, don't you know that Paul said that you shouldn't even eat with someone who is in adultery?" Well, there is one thing I know in these days: I know the heart of God. I know what people need is not condemnation, I know what they need is not adjustment, I know what they need is not laws and regulations. What they need is to understand the love and the heart of God, because at Calvary the debt for sin was paid. God's people have been in bondage too long, thinking that there is something wrong with them, thinking that they don't really want God or they would be able to quit this habit or that habit. "Present your bodies a living sacrifice and holy." In God's eyes, every one of you is most holy! How can we say that? We can say it because "Your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more." And, "As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed the transgression of my people." And you say, "But, I'm still sinning, and I’m still doing things I shouldn’t!" It doesn't matter, because when you understand God's concept of sin and His concept of Calvary, it will free you up from the guilt of just simply being who you are, and will then allow you the access into His presence which will bring to you transformation. I have been speaking this for years -- if the Spirit of the living God is never formed in you, so that He begins to grow up in you and be expressed in you, you will never change inwardly! And if you only change outwardly, it doesn't help you anyway, because outward conduct and outward change do not produce anything but a better outward person. But what God needs is for His people to understand that because they are the way they are, because they inherited that nature from Adam, they need to feel no shame, no guilt, and no condemnation. I inherited all of those things that I was in the natural because of not knowing my true identity and nature and have believed the lie that I am separated and alienated from God because of my conduct. To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness Part 7 by Gary Sigler

Transformation, Not Condemnation I believe with all my heart that the Church today needs a word to make us realize that God is God!. We have not realized in the Church the depths of what Jesus said from the cross: "Father, forgive them; they don't know what they are doing." Many of God's people suffer continually under condemnation for things in their lives over which they can't seem to reach victory. These things have to be transformed by the infiltration of the Spirit of God into our soul-life. We all have God in us, but what we need is for Him to grow in us and to transform us into His image and likeness. We need never be condemned for the condition of our natural life; we just need to keep hungering after God and seeking Him until He comes fully alive within us. This will take care of our faults. We also need to realize that this is a process that takes time as Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith, works in us to bring us fully into His plan and purpose. Religion, by contrast, tells us that when we come to God, we know what we should do, that we must do only those things we know we should do, and that this then allows God to be able to bless us so that we can grow spiritually. But oh, I am telling you, we are so ignorant, because we do not understand that today, as surely as God is upon the throne, He is saying, "Not guilty." You are not guilty. God would never bring you before Himself and remind you of your sin. I am sure you are familiar with verses that say such things as, "As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed the transgressions of My people. Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more" (Psalm 103:12; Hebrews 8:12). Thank God that His people are beginning to get the message that they are not guilty! You are not guilty. You do not need condemnation; you need transformation. Let’s look again at Ephesians 4:17-18. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." I can assure you that we all fall somewhat into this category. If the Church were not blinded and alienated from the life of God, there is no way that the Church which we see with our physical eyes could be in its present condition. It is in that condition because for two thousand years the results of the work God accomplished at the cross have not been understood! I have made the statement that there are men and women all over the earth today who are about to be loosed upon the Church. For the most part, they are men and women who have been totally outside of the system of today's so-called Christianity and are therefore unknown to many of God’s people. But, thank God, the Church is beginning to open to them. If we are honest, we have to look at the situation today and say of the two thousand years of Gospel preaching, "What has it produced? Not a whole lot!" Yes, people are saved and people are blessed, but God's full purpose has never been fulfilled by the institutional church. God’s purpose is to fill the Church with Himself and to build us up together into a habitation of God. "In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" Ephesians 2:21-2. One of the saints whom God has raised up to reveal His purpose for the Church is J. Preston Eby. He is one of those lights shining in the darkness. I feel that every one of God's seekers needs to hear what this man is saying to the Church. The following is an excerpt from one of his recent monthly newsletters. Jesus came into the world in the time of the Roman Empire. He was crucified on a Roman cross, pierced with a Roman spear, and sealed in His sepulcher under a Roman seal. But praise God! He burst the bands of death, shattered the seal of mighty Rome, and arose the conquering Christ. And not only that, He ascended victor over all the powers of darkness. Having brought to naught the prince of this world, having brought in eternal redemption for a lost world and redeemed all back unto Himself, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High and poured out on the first few citizens of his Kingdom the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Kingdom of God was birthed and gathered from Jew and Gentile alike a vast multitude into its bosom. What a flood of light and glory and power fell upon the world in the ministry of the humble followers of the Lamb! And oh what glorious days those were. How God blessed His Gospel. Mighty signs and wonders were performed as God confirmed His word with signs following. The word of God, anointed by the Holy Spirit, swept the world like a prairie fire. It encircled the mountains and crossed the oceans. It made kings to tremble and tyrants to fear. It was said of those early Christians that they had turned the world upside-down. So powerful was their message and spirit, in spite of persecution, in spite of untold thousands of saints impaled upon crosses, burned at the stake, and fed to hungry lions to the thunderous applause of wild spectators, the word grew and multiplied. For God dwelt mightily in the midst of His people. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord covered the earth as the waters cover the sea. Paganism fell. The mighty Roman Empire shut up its idol temples, sheathed its persecuting sword, and sat down as disciples at the feet of Christ and His apostles. Oh, but there was another spirit at work also. A spirit and system set in among the saints of the Lord, and the manna of yesterday began to breed worms and stink. Refusing to follow on to know the Lord, they began instituting rules and regulations, laying down laws and formulating creeds, observing days and ordaining sacraments and ordinances, elevating human government, becoming disciples of Paul, of Apollos, of Cephas and many others. Before too many years had passed, men began to set themselves up as bishops and lords over God's heritage in place of the leadership of the Spirit. Instead of conquering by the power of the Spirit and truth, men began to substitute their ideas and their methods. Soon the glory and the power, the presence and the word of God in the morning-time Church began to be eclipsed, and the power of carnal-minded men gradually took the place of the awesome presence of God. Consequently, man's carnal understanding was put upon the Scriptures, and as the Spirit of Christ fled from their midst, men established a vast and elaborate system of substitutes to take His place. The festivals of the Church were created along the lines of pagan celebrations. Costly and ornate edifices were constructed for worship. The services became ceremonialized and elaborate. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. The Church, with its array of godly-bedecked clergy and its imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that belonged to the heathen system that it had once supplanted. Christianity was now a pageant, a ritualism, a vain philosophy, a superstition, a social club, indeed an antichrist, a pot full of manna infested with the worms of carnality and death. The Gospel preached by the nominal Church will never get the job done. It will never bring the Kingdom of God in power to deliver mankind from sin and death and restore all things to God. The Church world is using worldly means and soulish methods to promote its programs today. It is conformed into the world's way of doing things. This is true not only of the historic denominations, but also of the Pentecostals, the Charismatics, and, alas, some groups who profess to be deeper life, Kingdom, or sonship people. Churches compete against one another, who can have the most in Sunday School, who can build the biggest building, who can win the most souls, which evangelist can draw the largest crowds, each one pointing to the success of their ministry, glorying in the size of their outreach or work, stressing how much could be accomplished with more money, and, to hear them tell it, just about the whole world is being brought to the feet of Jesus through their efforts. The Church world today is totally conformed to the world's way of doing things. Because of that, it is really no better off than the world it is trying so desperately to save. Because the average Christian today has been brought up with a certain "other" than Christ, he is totally unable to think except in terms of established orders, sects, denominations, credentials, creeds, assemblies, Church ceremonies, Church buildings, doctrines, meetings, communions, baptisms, programs, campaigns, crusades, choirs, pastors, rituals, ceremonies, vestments, offerings, conferences, Board meetings, committees, elections, Sunday schools, theological seminaries, fellowship halls, stained glass windows, platforms, special members, numbers and a thousand other things. Take all these things away from them and they would be spiritually destitute, totally incapable of doing the work of the Lord. But after they have spent a whole lifetime of this feverish Church activity, how many people are there who have ever taken the time to wait on God long enough to hear Him speak and divulge His will to their seeking hearts? I declare to you of a truth that any man or woman who will take the time to seek God and God alone, hungering and thirsting after God's mind and God's will, that man will find himself drifting away from all the aforementioned things and from them on to the mind of Christ. And lest any think that we are being brash or heretical to even suggest a departure from those things listed above, I invite you to carefully examine that list to determine which one of them Jesus Christ had used or even needed in His wonderful sonship ministry. It is astonishing to realize that Jesus knew absolutely nothing of any of it, yet He more effectively ministered the life of God, the power of God, the glory of God and the Kingdom of God than any man who has graced this planet. And, I do not hesitate to add, strip all of these away from a son of God, and what he will have left is Christ, only Christ. I tell you, God has men and women all over the earth with the message for the Church. Will you open to them? Because they are not religious, they will not condemn you, but they will minister life to you and cause you to grow up into Him. I am thankful that many of God's people are willing to listen to a message that will set them free, because to be set free, it takes the Spirit and the light and the word of God to break loose our mindset from religious tradition. And I know that every one of us likes to think that we are not religious.

Almost every pastor I know who has a church says, "My church is not religious." Yet in every church I enter, almost without exception, I hear the sounds of bondage and religion.

To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness Part 6 by Gary Sigler

Facebook note on Saturday, 26 March 2011 at 16:18. Coming Out of the Concept of Hell You all are going to have to bear with me on what follows, because it may take a long while to teach and to reveal all of the misconceptions in the doctrines that we have learned. And I am just going to touch on one of them now, the subject of hell. I will cover this in more detail as we go on in this work. There are many other authors who have covered this subject in the true light of God’s nature, and I would be happy to recommend them to you. The biggest question in people’s minds is the question of hell and the seeming teaching in Revelation about the eternal torment of hell. Let me just give you a little concept of what hell is. Hell is simply the grave. What most people call hell is the Lake of Fire in Revelation. The lake of fire is something that everyone is going to experience at one time or another. Jesus Himself said that everyone would be salted with fire. Matt. 9:49. In the New Testament, the fire began on the day of Pentecost as tongues of fire on the apostles. John said I baptize you with water but one coming after me will baptize you with fire. (More on this later.) Let me give you an example of the lake of fire. Do you remember a few years ago when the man heading the biggest ministry in the world confessed publicly, before the whole world, his sin? That man went through the lake of fire. Not only did he go through the fire because he was caught and had to publicly confess, but he also suffered under the opinions of others—especially Christians. And I want you know that when I first heard about that, God revealed to me the heart of Jimmy Swaggart. He showed me a man who was not a hypocrite, as the world and as most Christians assumed, but he was a man caught in the web of the knowledge of good and evil. He had the largest ministry in the world but his message was very judgmental and critical. If you ever heard Jimmy preach, you know that he was a hell-fire and brimstone preacher. Why? Not because he was a hypocrite, but because he hated so much what he had inherited through Adam, and he struggled so desperately with that thing. He didn’t want anybody else to ever have to suffer what he suffered; and he did not understand, nor did he know, the extent of the love of God. There is a book I wrote called Coming Out of Condemnation. Right after this happened to Jimmy,God revealed to me that he needed intercession. I wept and I groaned and I travailed for that man. I felt his suffering. I felt his agony. And God said,"It is time that My people understood that they don’t need to feel condemnation." (I wrote the book, and please get one—not because I wrote it, but because I can guarantee that you, too, suffer under condemnation, and you need to read that book.) And God said, "Write that book, and send it to Jimmy Swaggart." And of course you know how we all think. I thought,"Well, you know, he has this big ministry, and he’s in the middle of this; how can I even get it to him?" But I just addressed it: "Jimmy Swaggart, Baton Rouge, Louisiana," and I sent it off. Within a few days, I got a letter from Jimmy thanking me for sending it. A lot of Christians do things they would not want exposed to the world, they just haven’t been caught.Now I realize that in our natural character, there are some who are very strong-willed, and they are able by their self-effort to be very good people. However, they will condemn you something fierce, because you are not able to do what they can do. And they will preach hell-fire and brimstone to you and have your ears smoking. Yet God has men and women positioned all over the earth today who understand what I am telling you. Judgment is coming, and I believe it is coming quickly. The Lake of Fire is coming to the earth. The fiery indignation is coming to the earth in a fully righteous judgment. The fires of God are coming, and the Word says that our God is a consuming fire. I have been judged by that fire many times. Do you think that Jimmy Swaggart didn’t go through a burning? Can you imagine what it would be like if you had your deepest sins revealed to the world? How about even to your family? (Now I know this is not still true for all of us. Right now I don’t have a problem like that, but years ago I did. I would have been absolutely humiliated to have the world exposed to my sin.) Yet you know that Revelation says that there is a day coming when we shall stand before God and the books will be opened. Do you know what that book is? Paul says that you are living epistles, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God. Each of us is a book. There is coming a day for everyone when their book will be opened. But let me tell you something: the fire of God, the judgments of God are never vindictive! We are taught a doctrine of eternal punishment. I will provide more detail later, how the concept of eternal punishment all happened. I will tell you now that it began basically with pagan religions. It was brought into the New Testament church by leadership in the Church, who wanted to instill fear into the hearts of God’s people. We know that the Bible says that perfect love casts out all fear, but yet the churches, almost everywhere in all denominations and in all sects, have within their Gospel and their teaching, of fear. If we need to fear anything, it is the carnal self-life that keeps us separated in our mind from the life of God in our spirit. You have heard this expression: "If you really do love someone or something, let it go." Let it go, because if you try to hold onto it, if you keep it in bondage, there can be no genuine love flowing. God’s people today need to be set free. Behold the Lamb 0f God that takes away the sin of the world! If the religious concept is true, the victory at Calvary was a very, very small and a very, limited victory. If the religious concept is true, when this thing all winds up, there are going to be a few on God’s side, but the devil is going to have the masses of humanity. That is not a great victory. Even common sense tells us that. God knew that when He brought you forth into this life you were going to be separated and alienated in your mind from His life, and there are people who live seventy or a hundred years, and for one reason or another, they never, never, hear someone preach the true Gospel to them. Oh, they hear the religious gospel. But they don’t want that. They don’t want to hear, "You’ve got to change your life. If you want to be used by God, you can’t do that! Do you want the blessings of God? You can’t do that!" They don’t want to hear that, because they are just like you, they are selfish. Self wants what self wants. But when God regenerates your spirit, then you begin to want the things of God.If people begin to realize the extent of God’s love, they will flock to Him. Can you imagine what it would be like for a prostitute to walk into a church where everybody knows she is a prostitute, yet they would love her, they would minister to her, and they would draw her into worship? Can you imagine how long she would be a prostitute? (And even if she was, that’s God’s business and not yours.) Do you have enough conviction in your knowledge of God and in the words that you speak to believe that you could speak life into her? Because if you can’t, she doesn’t need your church. If she only hears how she needs to change her life and clean herself up, it is useless. She can’t and she doesn’t need to hear that. If you will love her and minister life to her and not the letter of the law, she will begin to grow and change. Let’s go to Romans 5:12-21. "Therefore just as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned. For before the Law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by the breaking of a commandment. (These verses are so plain!) As did Adam who was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass, for if the many died by the trespass of one man (and we know "the many" was the whole world) how much more does God’s grace, and the gift that came by grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many (Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin.)for judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. (That doesn’t compute in our minds!)For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. (The next is a key verse:) Consequently just as the result of the one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of the act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." How can we separate those two? How can we say "in Adam they all die, but in Christ they are not all going to be made alive"? We would rather read it that "condemnation was for all men, so the result of the one act of righteousness was justification to those who receive Jesus and begin to walk in obedience to His commands." It doesn’t say that. . What am I saying? Do I have the liberty to live any way I want to live? Are you telling me that I can do anything that I want to do, and that eventually I’m still going to be OK? If your attitude is, "If what you are telling me is true, then I am going to go live it up," then my answer to you is this: you do not know God, and you desperately need to be saved. But I will tell you this, you do not have a free will. Being lowered into this dense physical world took care of that for you, it bound up the human race into the will of the flesh. You do not have free will. We can obtain freedom in our will only by learning how to contact and fellowship with God in our spirit. By spending time in God’s presence, and learning to live there, His Spirit will flow into our natural will and transform it into His will. The Pentecostals love to say, "We are filled with the Holy Ghost." Well, let me tell you something: If you are really filled with the Holy Ghost, you will be a holy person. But you cannot be that way by trying to be that way. Trying to do the right thing doesn’t work. If you are full of the Holy Spirit, you will be controlled, moved and motivated by that Holy Spirit. But you can’t work for it. You can’t "live right" for it. You can’t try to choose the good over the evil for it, because that puts you into the works of the flesh. Trying with your carnal nature to choose the good over the evil puts you in that category of being alienated in your mind from that life that is in your spirit. You can’t make it that way. "As the result of the one trespass was condemnation for all men, so the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life to all men." So, can you live any way you want to? Yes. But here is the problem. You’re going to go through the lake of fire one way or another. God had a plan in the very beginning for every human being that was ever born, and that is why I have shared so often that the scripture says we have been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. That is God’s design; that is His plan, and that is His purpose, and your little will cannot stop God’s purpose for your life. Absolutely impossible! I have done everything in my life but curse God. I have told Him, "Leave me alone! I can’t do it anymore. I can’t make it any more." God would just say, "Too bad, it’s too late for you. You consecrated yourself to me and there is no turning back." To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness 5 by Gary Sigler

Facebook on Friday, 25 March 2011 at 15:03 It was not a surprise to God, that His creation was going to be lowered into the physical realm. Every man that was born after Adam was separated in his consciousness and his awareness from that life that was in his spirit, and every man was then left with nothing but the discernment to choose between good and evil. Man was cut off in his spirit rom the knowledge and the life of God, and because of it he had nothing left but the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore some men would become very good, and other men would be very evil. The people of the world as a whole, looking only through eyes of good and evil, would see that there was a group of good people and there was a group of evil people, and they would imagine that all the evil people needed God, but all the good people were pretty much OK. But listen! In God’s eyes, every man that is born, is born in death. He is alienated and separated in his mind from the life of God that is in his spirit. He is left only with knowledge of good and evil. John 1:9 says that Jesus was "the true light that lights every man that comes into the world." Proverbs calls the spirit of man, “the candle or light of the Lord." So every man that comes into this world has a spirit, has hidden deeply in his being that candle, that spirit from the Lord which needs to be ignited. We can go to men, and we can tell them about the Gospel; we can convert them, we can even get them to believe intellectually that Jesus is the Son of God. But then we begin to teach them how to live according to the Bible, to choose the good over the evil, and we have done the same thing that Adam did in the very beginning. Even within ourselves we try to choose the good over the evil, rather than learning how to contact and live by that Holy Spirit of God that is within us. Can’t we all see that? That is what is happening! We do not have, especially in the Church in America, many godly people who are manifesting the life and the character of God to a lost and dying world. We have many good people. And most of them think that because they are good, they are OK, and they are always trying to convince the one who is evil to change his ways so that God can help him—not realizing that good and evil are the same tree. We need the light of God to see this! Whether you are very good, or whether you are very evil, it is the same source of life that is cut off from the life of God. Look again at Ephesians 4:17-18. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you walk not as other gentiles walk, in the vanity of t heir minds, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." This is the situation today. We have people all over the earth who have been regenerated by the Spirit of the Living God, who have never learned other than to discern the difference between good and evil. Let’s go back and take another look at Calvary. God realized that because of Adam, the whole human race would be raised with a concept of knowing only the good over the evil. And He knew that it was absolutely hopeless. Paul told the Ephesians that before Christ, they were alienated. They were not members of the same family. But through the cross, God put into one both Jew and Gentile. Now one has to understand the mindset in those days, which was that the Jew was very "godly," and the gentile was the "ungodly." So Paul says that God by one offering put both the Jew and the Gentile into one body, thus bringing peace. The scripture says Jesus was "the Lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world." The question we have to ask —and this is a hard one to fight, this religious concept—is this: Is the magnitude of Calvary’s victory limited only to those who are able to choose the good over the evil? I questioned God about this for years, before I came into the understanding that I am sharing with you. I used to question God, because I was so full of the lust of the flesh, as a young person, and even as a Christian! I loved God. I used to cry at night over my condition. But I wanted the things of the world. I wanted everything that you are not supposed to want. And I went through hell on earth as a man living to the full extent the experience of Romans,chapter 7. And the only reason we go through that is because of having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God that is in us because of the blindness that is on our hearts. We have to realize the magnitude of Calvary’s victory. The Emancipation Proclamation from the cross of Calvary was that you are not guilty. You are living your life by the knowledge of good and evil if you are not one who has the ability and who has learned how to exercise your spiritual being so that you can live by God’s life. It makes no difference how good you are, or how evil you are, your life source is still coming from the wrong place. In God’s eyes, there is no difference. In the man or woman who is not living by the life of God, there is no difference between the good and the evil. It is all from the wrong tree. And all we have had for two thousand years, in Christianity, is religious teachings, trying to teach us how to be godly, trying to teach us and warn us to choose the good over the evil. We need to read again Romans 5:12-21. You see, God understands our condition; we don’t. Because of our religious traditions, we think that we deserve all the guilt, we deserve all the shame. But I didn’t ask to be born having all the lust and wanting all the wrong things. I didn’t ask for it; that was Adam’s gift to me. And so because Adam made a mistake, religion tells me that I came into this world constituted and filled with the character and the nature that loves to sin, or maybe I’m fortunate and I have been born with a character which is good. But religion will tell me that because I inherited a life that loves to sin, and loves to do all the things that I’m not supposed to do, I somewhere have to find within myself the power to put that down and to choose to live right, so that God can bless me and I can someday die and go to heaven. Yet the very first thing that was said of Jesus by John was, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" I can testify that if you cannot overcome sin no matter how hard you try, if you will continue to seek after God, He will eventually grow within you, and you will overcome! The Christian life is not a matter of will power, but a matter of the Spirit of God flooding every area of your being, and that takes time. We are as "newborn babes" and it takes some of us many years to be transformed. Church isn’t a happy place today. Why? Because we are under so much guilt and condemnation. When we get together, there are times when we break through and we touch the Spirit of God, and there is some rejoicing, but it is so limited! It’s so limited, because when you have the slightest—and I mean the slightest—bit of guilt in your consciousness, it separates you, and you can’t break through to the Spirit of God. The very first thing John said was, "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!" Did He do that? If you are religious, you will say He did, but you won’t believe it, because your religious concept says, "Yes, He took away the sin of the world, but only for those who say, ‘Jesus I receive You,’ or only for those who learn to live and choose the good over the evil." Calvary is only beneficial to those who learn to make the right choices, that is what religion teaches us! And so we have multitudes of people all over the world who genuinely have been regenerated by the Spirit of God, but they never have been taught how to live by that life of God that is in them. All they are ever taught is how to choose the good over the evil. And when you do that, it alienates you from the life of God in you, and you become like an unbeliever, having your eyes blinded. You see, an unbeliever has no consciousness, no awareness at all that they have the Spirit of God in them. But if you have been regenerated, you do have that consciousness. At times you will experience the flowing of God, but because of your concepts, when you sin it will cause a blockage, for guilt cannot enter into the presence of God! The only people who enter into the presence of God and live there are people who know how not to be guilty. As long as you are in the flesh, I can guarantee you every day of your life you are going to err and miss God. Since 1969 I have avidly, every day of my life, sought after and hungered after God. In 1969, when I had the experience of being caught up into the heavenly realms and of experiencing God flooding me, I became extremely hungry for God. And I have spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours on my face and in the Word of God, hungering and seeking after God. I have been one of the most hungry-after-God people, yet I still make mistakes every day. It is because I have not learned how to live fully by the life of God within me. And, in fact, it is not even a matter of learning. It is a matter of God’s life growing, it is a matter of the Spirit of God maturing within me. It is a matter of my seeking, every day of my life, not after something which is in a distant heaven, but that which is within—learning how to contact the reality of the Spirit, the energizing, quickening spirit of God, so that every day I can enter into His presence, and I can feast upon the spiritual manna. From that experience, I am energized and quickened and enabled a little more to walk in the life of God. But when I begin in my consciousness to choose the good over the evil, I am separated in my consciousness from God, alienated from that life. And I am left as Adam was again, to struggle around in darkness trying to choose the good over the evil, trying to whip my flesh into line. Jesus did say, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." But that has been so misunderstood in the Church, because there is no way that Adam, your carnal man, can put himself to death. It cannot be done! That is why the Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 8 that if you through the spirit put to death the deeds of the lesh, you will live. The Christian life is totally a life of learning how, through the spirit to live godly. You will never do it in your own strength. You will not live long enough to learn how to live godly. All you will be is condemned because you can’t make it. The flesh cannot live godly. God’s concept of death is having the consciousness of being separated from Him. You simply need to behold the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world! You have absolutely no problem with God except in your religious mind. God’s people have a hard time believing the goodness and the loveliness of God, because we feel that we have to be justified in His sight by what we do, rather than by what He has done. Yet I can go to anyone on the street, I can go to a prostitute in the gutter, and I can say to her, "Lady, you have absolutely no problems with God, absolutely none." And I can guarantee you that when I begin to speak this way, the words that flow out of me will begin to generate in her. I will say to her, "Little lady, there will come a day in your life when you will fully reveal and manifest to the world the glory of God." There will come that day! Another verse we need to look at says that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. What is God’s concept of death? It is living not by His life, but by a life of good and evil. God’s concept of death is having the consciousness of being separated from Him. If you are separated from God, then you are in death; so for the last enemy, death, to be destroyed would mean that there would not be anything, anywhere, in any place that was not reconciled to Him—for if there were any place, anywhere in the universe, that was not reconciled to God, then it would be in death. To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness Part 4 by Gary Sigler

on Facebook Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 15:10

All Shall Be Made Alive

In the first message, I shared with you a passage which has become very controversial in the Church, and I want to pick up with that again. That is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 20 and going through verse 23: "

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming."

You remember the question I ask earlier, is the "all" in Christ any less than the "all" in Adam? Because if we can take that verse literally, just as it is spoken, As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. the question is answered. And to understand how this could possibly be, how we all died in Adam, and are made alive in Christ, we need to go back to the very beginning of creation to see what God’s original purpose was for creating man.

I know we have all heard this, but God’s original design, intent and purpose was to create humanity to contain and express His life on the earth. That was His intention from the very beginning. "Let us make man in our image, and let them have dominion over the earth." So man was created to have the very life, nature and character of God, and then to be a possessor and take dominion over the earth. But we all know what happened: For as in Adam all died . .

That caused Adam to die? Every one of you could tell me that when Adam chose the wrong source for his life, it brought to him death, and then that death passed to all mankind, because we all choose to live by the knowledge of

good and evil. That is what the Word says. So that means that you had nocontrol over this life of sin and death when you came into this world. When you came from the womb, you had absolutely no control over the life that Adam gave to you. Now religion gives us a totally different picture. Religion tells us that you are a free moral agent, and God has given to you a free will, therefore you have the capability to choose right or wrong; you have the capability to choose either God, or a life of self; you have the capability and the free will to choose. We do have the freedom to choose, but as we will see, our will is bound up in the fall of Adam.

The Knowledge of Good and Evil Brings Death

When I was a struggling Christian with much bondage in my life, I was told, "The devil doesn’t make you do the things you do. You have a choice, and if you will choose to do what is right, then that will enable God by His Spirit to work in your life. But you have to make the right choices." And you know what? I never made the right choices! I often tried making the right choice, but I found that I seldom had the power to carry through with it. Now I know a lot of people do, but I didn’t have the character, nor the strength. I wanted God, but I also wanted the life that I had which was not compatible with the Christian life. I know a lot of people live at that place where I was. But all I was told was, "Gary, it’s up to you. You have the free will to make the right choice."

Then one day God revealed to me that my choice was made by Adam! Romans 5:12 says,"Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so in this way death came to all men,

because all sinned." Now I have to ask you again: What brought Adam into death? What in the world did he do that caused him to die and caused me to die with him? God placed him in a garden with various things to eat and gave him very few instructions. When God created Adam He didn’t give him a rule book, He gave him just a couple of words. He said, "Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat. But the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you are going to die." That is what brought death to humanity. I have been teaching this for years, and I still do not have the full realization of it; I still don’t have the full experience of it. But I’ll tell you this that the root of the darkness, and the alienation in our minds from the life of God, is the fruit of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now consider: "Knowledgeof good and evil". Think about the teachings of Christianity, or any religion in the world. What is the basis of their teaching, if it isn’t based upon the knowledge of good and evil? I know of no religion in the world, including Christianity that does not base almost everything it teaches on choosing the good over the evil. Yet God says, "The very day, that you begin to eat that fruit, the very day that you begin to discern the difference between good and evil, is the day that you will die."

Why did God call it a death? It is because when God created Adam, He breathed into him, and we know that the word "breath" is the same word as "spirit," so what God breathed into Adam was His very own life and His nature. It says there was a Tree of Life in the midst of that garden, which simply means that Adam could have chosen to depend wholly and solely upon the life of God that was in him, the life that God literally had breathed into him (and there is so much in that life of God!). The life that God breathed into Adam was simply everything that He was. He breathed into him His energizing, quickening life. He breathed into him His power, His authority. Adam was an example of everything

that God wanted on the earth. And God said to him, "Don’t partake of the knowledge of good and evil, because the moment that you begin to eat of thefruit of that tree, you will die." You will be cut off from My life. Your consciousness will be separated, and you will become in your consciousness separated from Me, as a separate entity. And you will begin, then, to live your life not by the knowledge of the life that I placed within you, for that will be cut off, and you will have nothing left but a knowledge of good and evil. You will struggle all of your life trying to discern and trying to choose the good over the evil, but you will be cut off from My life. And then you will take this nature that is separated from Me, and you will produce sons in your own image." That is what happened at the fall, and that is what the Bible says. Adam and Eve then produced sons after their image. They lost the image of God.

What was the very first thing that Jesus did on the day of resurrection? The Word says in John 20:22 that on the eve of His resurrection, He appeared. The doors were closed, but He appeared in the midst of the disciples, and the very first thing that He did, it says, is He breathed on them and said,"Receive ye the Holy Ghost." That act restored back to those men what Adam had lost in the garden! Jesus once again, as God did in the beginning, breathed His

life into them. 1 Corinthians 15:45 says, "Christ was made aLife-giving Spirit." And that’s why Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. Do you really want to live by God? Then you have to know how to eat of Me. Do you really want to live, do you really want life?" He said, "As the Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father, whosoever will eat of Me will live by Me." That is the promise—if you eat of Me, if you learn to assimilate My life, you will live by Me.

This is why Paul said, "Don’t be as the gentiles, walking in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God." To be alienated from the life of God means that you believe in your consciousness that you and God are two separate entities. To be in death simply means that

you cannot possibly even imagine that you and God are not two entities, but one. But that is how it was in the beginning; Adam was a full replica of what God wanted in humanity. That is why he was called "the first Adam," and Jesus is called "the second Adam" and "the last man". Jesus fulfilled that which Adam failed to do. Jesus restored man back to the Tree of Life. Humanity can once again live by the life of God, instead of trying to choose the good over the evil.

Now, not only did Adam make a fatal choice, but here is where Christianity as a whole has made the same mistake. Very, very shortly, just within a few years—in fact even beginning within the lifetime of the Apostle Paul, men began to revert back to the knowledge of good and evil, rather than learning how to discern and live by that life that was breathed into them by the new birth. Religion tells us this: "God loved you so much that He sent His own Son to die for you on the cross." And we are told that for the joy that was set before Him, Jesus endured the cross. But the magnitude of that victory, in the Christian’s eyes, is so limited, because we have been fed for two thousand years from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. "If you are good, God will bless you; if you aren’t good, God won’t bless you." The magnitude of Calvary’s victory, according to the religious eyes, is that, yes, Jesus died for the world; He suffered on the cross, but His victory is limited only to those who, first of all, receive Him as Savior, and then after that learn to live by His rule book.

The book of Ephesians talks about the eternal purpose of God. The eternal purpose of God is that man would live from the flowing of God’s life within him. Paul mentions several times in the Book of Ephesians, especially in chapter 3, the "mystery" of the gospel. We all know that if something is a mystery, it is sometimes not that easy to figure out. The Gospel is a deep and hidden mystery, especially from religious eyes, especially from people who have been trained all of their lives to discern the difference between good and evil. Now I know that there is a verse in the Bible which says that some have exercised their senses to discern both good and evil. But it doesn’t say that they have learned to

discern the difference between good and evil. It says they have learned to discern good and evil, yet both are from the same source! It’s not too hard to discern evil, but it is very, very difficult to discern the truth about good sometimes. The truth is that you can be very good, and still not have God’s character and His substance formed in your life.

If what the Word teaches us is true, just as sin entered into the world by one man, and through that sin death passed to all men, then what passed to all men was that seed that Adam took into him from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are born into this life with that seed in us. I know this is a repeat, but we must hear this and clearly get an understanding of it. Before God’s people can ever grasp fully the reconciliation that He wants to bring through them, they have to understand His heart, because if you don’t understand the heart of God, and you do become filled with His authority and His power, you will use it to judge, and you will not judge righteously.

To be continued

Related Subject Matter : http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-like-itbut-it-isnt-tree-of-good.html