KINGDOM BIBLE STUDIES

"Teaching the things concerning the

Kingdom of God..."

Union by Fusion

By J. Preston Eby

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http://www.kingdombiblestudies.org/tablecontents.htm

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UNION BY FUSION

Chapter 1

Some time ago I read the following report: "On the morning of November 1, 1952, an event took place which was to forever change our world. It happened on Elugelab, a small island in the Pacific, about one mile wide. On it were a number of buildings and weapons. Floating in the bay were several ships. Early that morning the first full-scale hydrogen bomb was exploded there and the island of Elugelab forever disappeared from this world. In its place was a hole in the bottom of the ocean, a hundred and seventy-five feet deep and over a mile in diameter. The buildings disappeared. The tanks and ships in the bay were totally vaporized. One who watched the event and sailed over the scene a few hours later, saw that the waters were perfectly clear. There was no debris, no sand, no material from the ships or buildings. There was nothing but a gaping hole in the bottom of the sea. The first fusion bomb had been exploded with a power equal to seven hundred and fifty times that which leveled the city of Hiroshima. The hydrogen age – the fusion age – began!

"It had been speculated since 1934 that such a thing as fusion energy or a fusion explosion was possible. Fission was first discovered whereby the heavy element of uranium was split in two. It was known, however, that it was possible to create energy in the way stars create energy, by taking the light element of hydrogen and fusing the atoms of hydrogen together into an atom of helium. That is the way suns create their energy. But it was considered entirely impractical and impossible because in order to produce this fusion it was necessary to create a heat of twenty million degrees centigrade. Such a thing was totally beyond the realm of possibility in 1934. After 1945, however, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the possibilities became very real because in the center of an atomic explosion there is created for a moment a temperature of one hundred and fifty million degrees centigrade. So the possibility of fusion was again examined" – end quote.

I trust it is clear to all who read these lines what fusion is. It is a joining, a blending, an intermixture, a merging, an amalgamation, a unification of two or more items. It is more than an adhering. It is different from merely gluing something together. It is a commingling of the elements. We have come today to participate in an event of spiritual fusion, whereby we are told that we, being many separate individuals (atoms as it were), are fused together into one in Christ Jesus. "For we being many are one bread, and one body..." (I Cor. 10:17). "And the glory which You gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and You in me, that they may be made perfect in one..." (Jn. 17:22-23).

So we are talking about union by fusion. How does this come about? It comes about because of the white heat of the passion of Jesus Christ causing a spiritual fusion in three parts: First, the tremendous heat of the love of Christ, then the breaking down of the individuality and selfhood and the fusion of a whole new element, our spirit joined to His Spirit, making one spirit, one mind, one will, one nature, one purpose, one Elohim! Finally there is the release of the tremendous energy of Christ through the body. That is what Christ has called us to experience. That is what it means to be a part of the body of Christ – to be fused into Him who is the Head. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17). What does that mean – a new creation in Christ – old things passed away? It means that we are something that never really existed, yet we know that we existed before in a different form and state.

When you come to the New Creation you get into all kinds of paradoxes. Our Creator is a God of super-abundant generosity. Look at the universe and the world around you. His generosity is evident. He has given us more than enough air to breathe. He has given us water to waste. He has given us an earth with resources vast and unlimited. We have the moon to stimulate our romantic impulses and to decorate the night sky. In addition to the sun and moon, God has provided the dazzling planets for our wonder. Then He unselfishly filled the shimmering heavens with myriads and multitudes of countless twinkling stars. He could have given only a few hundred stars, but our super-abundant God MORE than filled the vast entities of space with them. The Bible states in Jer. 33:22 that "the host of heaven CANNOT BE NUMBERED." During the thousands of years before Galileo's invention of the telescope, such a statement was considered to be either false or at least a gross exaggeration. The stars uncountable? The universe, they said, was too small to contain that many stars! However, using such giant telescopes as the "200 inch" on Mount Palomar in California, astronomers have estimated that there are billions of billions of stars in the visible universe. More specifically, astronomers estimate that their number is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or one sextillion. Is this an uncountable number? That is – the number that can be seen through the telescopes! But as far as man can see the universe stretches on and on into infinity – he has never discovered its outer perimeter. We therefore conclude that the term "uncountable" is indeed a very appropriate description of the number of stars in the universe.

Now God has produced this immense universe of suns, stars, planets and moons, vast galaxies composed of hundreds of billions of heavenly bodies. In all of its majesty, splendor and glory the fact remains that the totality of it is made of some mixture of less than one hundred elements. The scientist, Dr. Harry Rimmer, recorded the following incident. "The clearest discussion of this problem of the whence of physical matter was presented to us one evening by a little lad who perhaps did not realize that fools may ask questions that the wise cannot answer. In this case, however, he challenged our interest by the rather abrupt query, 'In all the whole world, how many different kinds of things are there?' His mother interrupted to say, 'You don't need to answer that question, doctor; I didn't know what he was going to ask you.' But we said that we would like to try to answer that question. Turning to the boy we said, 'Freddie, I don't know much, but I happen to know that. In all the whole world, the heaven, the earth, all the stars and suns and moons and planets, there are less than one hundred different things.' The boy looked at us in amazement and said, 'Aw, you must be spoofing me. I know there are more than a million, because I know a million different things myself.' Matching his seriousness with a like mien, we replied, 'Now let's examine this and see. You can't know a million different things, for in all the universe there are only ninety-six different things, which are called elements.' The lad shook his head with stubbornness and said, 'I know there are more than that!' Entering into the spirit of the argument, we said, 'All right, what is one of those things that you know?' Being in sight of the supper table, he said, 'Well, salt is one thing.' That one was easy. We said, 'No, Freddie, salt is not one thing; salt is two things. Somebody has taken a piece of metal called sodium and a piece of a gas called chlorine, and mixed the two things together. The result is what chemists call sodium chloride and we common folks call salt. But salt is not one thing; it is two things in combination.'

"'How about water? That's one thing!' 'No, water is two things. Two pieces of a gas called hydrogen and one piece of a gas called oxygen are mixed together, and they make water.' 'How about air? Isn't that one thing?' 'Wrong again. Air is always three things. Seventy-nine pieces of a gas called nitrogen mixed with twenty-one pieces of a gas called oxygen, and a tiny, tiny portion of carbonic acid gas, make up the simplest kind of air. Air is not one thing. It might be as many as twelve or fourteen things, depending on how close you live to a glue factory or a garbage dump!' The boy laughed with keen appreciation and said, 'Oh, I see! It is kind of like arithmetic, or like the alphabet.'

"That is the perfect figure of creation. The whole world of mathematics resolves itself into two divisions. First, we have the factors that men call the numerals. These factors are figures from one to nine, with the cipher added for convenience in multiplication. With these ten factors, combined with intelligence, we can solve the problems of mathematics, and arrive at the solution of the most intricate of these problems. Mathematics, then, is predicated first upon factors, and secondly upon intelligence to manipulate those factors! The science of figures would be utterly impossible without intelligence of a high order, capable of making absolutely innumerable combinations of the few factors. The universe, then, is a combination of factors on purely mathematical formulae. These factors number ninety-six. But factors alone cannot be resolved into mathematics. Intelligence is the more important element in the juggling and arranging of these factors. The entire physical creation is a solved problem in mathematics, for these various elements are combined in different proportions to make up all the intricacy of the physical creation" – end quote.

Ninety-six individual elements – and the almighty Creator takes of those ninety-six elements and joins them in innumerable ways by an omniscient pre-arranged plan to make everything that exists in all the unbounded heavens! Oh, the mystery of it! Oh, the wonder of it! Will any such terms as Spontaneous Generation, Struggle for Existence, or Survival of the Fittest suffice as an explanation for the majesty of the universe and the beauty, complexity and nobility of life? The question answers itself. Only an infinite MIND can be behind the origin and composition of matter. It is a wonderful fact that your body is composed of just twenty of those elements. One fifth of all the physical substances in the universe was used to produce the body that you inhabit on this planet. So when God makes anything on the material plane, He reaches into that storehouse of ninety-six elements and devises a formula, some measurement and process, to manufacture a new thing. The new thing is something that has never existed before, and yet it has been before.

There is a wonder beyond even this. These ninety-six elements we call matter. We now know that matter is primarily energy. We can agree to call it matter, if by matter we mean that form which energy takes so that we can see it, or hear it, or feel it. What is the nature of this substance that occupies space, and makes a visible, audible, tangible universe? Of what does it consist? Modern physics and chemistry find, first and basic in matter: – energy – vast, unknown, unseen, a primal thing, out of which all things in the physical universe come. Energy is not the result of the ninety-six elements – rather energy is itself the cause. Energy is first. That is self-evident. Second, modern physics and chemistry find, growing out of energy, embodying energy is motion – that great, unceasing, unresting motion of waves, of electrons, which fills and which is the physical universe. Motion, which embodies energy, is second. That is equally clear. Third, there are phenomena, through which motion touches the senses – light, sound, heat, hardness, scent, moisture, dryness – all the multitudinous impacts of motion upon our sight, hearing and touch. Motion issues in phenomena. This is the absolute order in matter. Energy is the source. It begets motion. It begets it perpetually. It embodies itself in motion. It works and acts through motion. Phenomena proceed from motion. They are the ways in which motion touches human beings. They reveal and interpret motion. But remember – all begins with energy.

It will be a wonderful day for you, dear one, when first your soul becomes enthralled with the revelation that God, before ever the world began or ever the ages were formed, looked forth from His temple of wisdom and omnipotence to chart with resolute care the course and purpose of all things. Your heart will throb as you read the opening proclamation of scripture, "In the beginning – GOD!" In the beginning of what? Not in the beginning of God, certainly, but in the beginning of His creation of all things, in the beginning of time, in the beginning of the orderly procession of the divinely destined ages. In the beginning stands God, omnipotent and omniscient, creating, sustaining and guiding all things and all people and all ages of time according to the purpose of His own will. No purpose ordained by God from the beginning can possibly go astray or be hindered by the efforts of devil or man. Oh, for the hour when creation will grasp the beautiful message, "From Him everything comes, by Him everything exists, and in Him everything ends!" (Rom. 11:36).

If God be the Creator of all things, then it must of necessity follow that GOD IS THE SOURCE OF ALL THINGS. We read the passage quoted above from Wilson's Emphatic Diaglott, "Because OUT of HIM, and THROUGH HIM, and FOR HIM are ALL THINGS, to Him be the glory for the ages, Amen." All things are out of God, all things are through Him, all things are for Him, and all things are unto Him, ending in Him. The clearest possible rendering is given by Goodspeed, "For from Him everything comes; through Him everything exists; and in Him everything ends! Glory to Him forever! Amen." The Bible opens with the simplest and yet most profound statement ever recorded by human hand, "In the beginning – GOD!" The sweet singer of Israel declared of Him, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God" (Ps. 90:2). Our God was the great active force, the cause of all that began to happen "in the beginning." How awesome the thought that there was a "time" when there was nothing – absolutely nothing – but GOD! There was no blue-green orb called earth, no silver-shimmering moon, no diamond-studded heaven of stars and planets, no angels, no devils, no man – nothing but GOD HIMSELF! There were not even the ninety-six elements out of which everything in the universe is constructed – there was only God. Paul caught something of the sublimity of this eternal and Self-existent One and wrote, "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him: and HE IS BEFORE ALL THINGS, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1:16-17).

Let me emphasize this wonderful and important truth: "He is before all things." This can mean nothing else but that God is not one of the "things." He is before all things. He is before all things. And just as majestic is the truth that "by Him ALL THINGS CONSIST." Young's Literal Translation renders this literally from the Greek: "Because in Him were the all things created, and HIMSELF IS BEFORE ALL, and the all things IN HIM HAVE CONSISTED." This means not merely that God existed before any thing, but that apart from Him no thing could have existed – He is the great CAUSE!

This raises an important and interesting question. If God was "before all things," then OUT OF WHAT did He CREATE the all things? When I was a boy we had a "Sunday School" definition of the word create. "To create," I was told, "means to make something out of nothing." That was a satisfactory answer at the time. To my young and unlearned mind it sounded altogether logical. After all, I thought, if God is God, and God can do anything, then surely it is no problem to God to make something out of nothing! But as I grew older and learned something of the laws of physics, I discovered a simple but demonstrable fact, namely, that out of nothing – nothing comes! Also, out of something you get no more than that thing is able to contain. You cannot take a gallon of milk out of a pint bottle unless you refill the bottle again and again. You cannot put a hundred dollars in the bank and take out a thousand. The man who seeks to take out of the bank more than he put in will find himself a recipient of free board and room for many months to come! This, then, is a fundamental point of natural law. We recognize that out of nothing, nothing comes. And even God, in all His omnipotence, does not violate His own creative principle, and MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING!

If there was only God, and absolutely no thing other than God, what kind of material did God have at His disposal out of which to construct all things? If you were standing completely alone, with nothing outside your own being existent, what material would be available for making something other than yourself? The answer is, of course, NOTHING! YOU WOULD HAVE TO MAKE THE "THINGS" OUT OF YOURSELF! And friend, this is exactly what God did. Now we can understand the full import of those words inspired by the blessed Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul: "Because IN HIM were the all things created, and Himself is before all, and the all things IN HIM HAVE CONSISTED" (Col. 1:16-17, Young's Literal).

God could not at that time make everything out of the ninety-six elements, because the elements are themselves the "things" created. He couldn't form the stars and planets of any combination of atoms, for atoms themselves are the "building blocks" or raw material of which "things" are composed; furthermore, atoms, with their electrons, protons and neutrons, are "things". Can we not see by this that God pre-dated and pre-existed the whole universe of atoms, elements, and compounds! It should be abundantly clear to any thinking mind that since God is before all "things", it was IN HIM that all "things" were created, and IN HIM all "things" were set together and arranged in order – the very source and substance of all "things" is GOD HIMSELF! OUT OF THE ENERGY AND SUBSTANCE OF HIS OWN BEING GOD BROUGHT FORTH AND CONSTITUTED ALL THINGS. So all these things we perceive on the physical plane are but projections of that which existed eternally in the energy which God is. In creation God takes of Himself, sets it in motion, compounds together, producing an effect that never was seen before – God Himself compounded in that unique and particular way.

THE FORMATION OF GOD

There is an interesting and significant statement in Isaiah 43:10. "You are my witnesses, says the Lord...that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am He: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me." Now, let us hear this! "Before me there was no god..." No god – what? "FORMED!" Before me! He didn't simply say, "Before me there was no god." It is not the existence of God that is in question in this passage. We know that God has eternally existed, from everlasting unto everlasting. He is greater than all, before all, and after all. The subject here is not the eternal existence of God, rather, the FORMATION of God. "Before me there was no god formed." It is interesting that the word "formed" is from the Hebrew word YATSAR meaning "to squeeze into a shape, to mold into a form as a potter, fashion, frame, make." In other words it means to produce an effect – a phenomenon. So God is saying that before Him there was no god that was squeezed into a shape, there was no god that was molded into a form. There was no god whose energy was set into motion to produce a phenomenon! There was no visible One made visible, no intangible One made tangible, no inaudible One made audible. There was no god that had produced an effect by which he could be seen, touched, heard, and felt – known and understood on the level of creation. So, "Before Me there was no god formed."

How did God become formed? What do we mean by "formed"? We mean that God projected Himself into an image – a likeness. All the ancient gods of the heathen had images – but they were dead images – statues made by men's hands. The pagans liked gods they could stroke and behold and form into little olivewood or stone incarnations. But our God was "formed" or given an image and likeness before any god! And independent of men's hands! So we must go back in history beyond any of the gods of the nations, beyond the gods of ancient Egypt, Assyria or Babylon. Let us go back to the book of Genesis. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and said unto them...have dominion" (Gen. 1:26-28).

More and more we are becoming aware of the wonderful fact that the book of Genesis deals largely in typical representations, that is, figures of spiritual realities, brought forth in the language and form of the physical world, the old creation, but pointing to that which is higher and grander, the NEW CREATION IN CHRIST JESUS. One cannot read Paul's epistles under the illuminating light of the Spirit without perceiving that he saw far more in Genesis than the mere letter. The creation with him is the figure of another work, which God accomplishes in every man who experiences the redeeming, transforming power of Christ. Says Paul, "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 4:6). Again, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17).

It should be clear to all who have the eyes of their understanding enlightened that the apostle is showing how, just as God began to work upon this earth, when all was dark and without form and void, and worked upon it, step by step, bringing order out of chaos, light, warmth, life – vegetation and animal forms – until finally the image of God, the man created in righteousness, was seen to rule it all; so it is in the life of every man, darkened, unconverted, unregenerate, without spiritual form and void, lacking understanding, psychologically disoriented, living out his life in emptiness and spiritual destitution, without God and without hope in the world. What form or shape can be attributed to such purposelessness as a life without the Lord? Darkness hangs like a shroud over the soul that is dead in trespasses and in sins, a man stumbles blindly through life knowing not from whence he came, why he is here, or where he is going. But then! comes the life-giving wind of the Spirit of God, brooding upon the void, breathing into the chaos, and the Word of God pierces the darkness with this command: "Let there be light!" and there is light. It is when God says, "Let there be light," that the Spirit illumines our minds with the light and the glory of Himself, and it is only when the blessed Holy Spirit moves upon our lifeless souls that we are suddenly awakened from our long sleep of death in sin – and life, truth and reality spring forth within. Then, step by step, from one stage of development to another, the creative processes of God continue in the apprehended one until as a new creation in Christ Jesus the new man within is brought to maturity and rules every faculty within and power without.

In order to understand God's purpose for mankind we must return to His original order. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: so God created man in His own image..." In this text the fall is shown not to be man's normal state. Man today, like Adam, may be far from God, yet in his heart, as in the scriptures, a witness will be heard, saying that this distance is through self-will. He may live in sin and sorrow; but deep in his conscience he knows that such a life is in opposition to the will and purpose of his Creator. Therefore the man in God's image is shown before the fall – to confirm the voice that speaks to every human heart, and declare that though all men walk as Adam, sin and death are not a part of God's eternal order, but a mere temporary arrangement in the working out of God's great plan. Man's proper place is seen IN CHRIST, the last Adam, prefigured by the first Adam before he fell. Adam, in the image and glory of God, ruling all the works of God's hands, is the type of man in Christ, as God ordains him.

By such stature, nobility and rulership committed to Adam we get some idea of what sort of beings we are. One might be so impressed with the majesty of the silent, speechless mountain that lifts its white peak high above the clouds as to worship in silence at its altar – so suggestive is it of the Infinite. But what is a mountain, or a star for that matter, or billions of galaxies of stars and suns and planets and moons as compared with a man? They think not, they speak not, neither do they feel or hope or love or plan or build or have a duty or a destiny. Man is God's image and likeness! It is interesting to note that the almighty Creator fashioned and formed everything of nature throughout all the unbounded heavens and unto the depths of the earth and then, after completing and ordaining all, He gave us the true estimate of man's greatness and purpose when He said, "Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness: and let them have dominion." Man therefore is not only the most important creature on the earth, but the most important creature anywhere in the universe. Can we not see by this that Adam stood in the midst of the vast creation as the REVELATION OF GOD to it all. In man in God's image the invisible God became visible to the natural creation. God's purpose was to reveal Himself to His creation and bring everything everywhere into intimacy of fellowship and vital union with Himself.

Adam was God's special gift to the entire creation, from the highest heaven to the lowest hell. He came not from the brute ancestry, nor from the muck of some primordial sea, nor from the mire of the jungle but from the hand and spirit and breath of the Divine Creator. Time will not allow us to dwell on the glories of man in God's image, but Adam was perfect, pure and powerful. He was without spot or stain, taint or tarnish, pure in character, perfect in holiness, powerful in personality. He was the embodiment of all wisdom and knowledge. He was able to do on the morn of creation what no sage, scientist, or naturalist could do today. He found himself surrounded from the beginning with vast kingdoms of living things – fish, birds, animals. These were brought to him and at the command of God he gave them names. In the typology of scripture a name denotes a nature. Make no mistake about it, my friend, Adam did something greater far than merely classifying all the creatures which God had created in the world. When he "named" these creatures the wonderful truth is that he "natured" them – that is, he spoke creatively into them the nature that his mind of wisdom and knowledge conceived. Sovereignty and authority rested like a crown of glory upon the head of Adam the magnificent. He was made the Lord over all the creation of God to rule and reign as the visible expression of the invisible Creator. In him God was to be seen and known and touched by everything everywhere.

We are never told how long Adam lived in that wonderful Garden where the glory of God was revealed through him in dominion and blessing to creation, but that glorious reign of wonder and peace under the direction of a son in the image and likeness of God was but a dim figure of the day when a whole company of sons in God's image would reign in splendor over all things in all realms throughout all worlds and all things in heaven and in earth would be gathered together into union with God in His life and purpose. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the first and Head of this glorious company, and as typified and shadowed by the first man Adam He is the connecting link between God and creation – in spirit from God, in body from creation – the revelation of the invisible Father to the physical worlds. A God who is unseen and unknown, or who is only the product of inferences from creation, or providence, or the mysteries of history, or the wonders of my own inner life, the creature of logic or of reflection, is very powerless to sway or influence men or to affect creation. The limitations of our physical faculties and the boundlessness of our hearts both cry out for a God who is nearer to us than that, whom we can see and love and know. The whole world wants the making visible of Divinity as its deepest want.

Christ meets this need. How can you make wisdom visible? How can a creature see love or purity? How do I see your spirit? By the expression and deeds of your body! The only way by which God can ever come near enough to the material creation to be a constant power of eternal life and light and love is by creation seeing Him at work in a Man who is His image and revelation. Christ's whole life is the making visible of the invisible God. Christ is God speaking in a language all can understand. He is the manifestation to the world of the unseen Father. Jesus Christ in all His words and in all His works is the perfect instrument of the heavenly Father, so that His words are God's words, and His works are God's works; so that, when He speaks, His gentle wisdom, His loving sympathy, His melting tenderness, His authoritative commands, His prophetic threatenings, are the speech of God, and that when He acts, whether it be by miracle, by wonder, by transforming grace, by creative energy, what we see is God working before our eyes as we never see Him in any other creature or thing anywhere in the whole universe.

I do not hesitate to tell you that the name of God is Jesus. The Hebrew form of the name, Yahshua, means YAHWEH IS SALVATION. "God has highly exalted Him and has freely bestowed on Him THE NAME that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth..." (Phil. 2:9, Amplified). The name of Jesus, or the nature of Yahweh as Salvation revealed in the man Christ Jesus, is higher than ANY OTHER NAME IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH – higher than Elohim, higher than Yahweh, higher than El Shaddai, higher even than the Old Testament El Elyon – Jesus is the only name before whom all things should and must and shall bow. So we say to creation, "Come and let us introduce you to God. His name is Jesus." But you cannot mean that seriously, you say. You don't honestly think that a Galilean peasant could really reveal to men and angels and demons the Creator of the world? Surely this sort of talk belongs to a bygone age, an age when man lived in a little world, with small ideas of space and time? Look up at the stars, and think of them in terms of modern astronomy, and you will see how absurd this is. The calling of the Creator by a pet name, is like trying to domesticate Mount Everest. That sort of thing was all very well before science came and taught us the real nature of the universe, and disclosed to us its unfathomable immensities; but surely now it is absurd? Knowing what we do why should we suppose that we matter more to God than a colony of ants matters to us, or that He cares any more for our troubles, sins, sicknesses, sorrows and death than we care for the squabbles of puppy-dogs upon the hearthrug at our feet?

Let us pause here. The grand fact is that this Jesus of Nazareth, by the sheer force of His personality, has so impressed Himself upon mankind, and upon human history, and upon principalities and powers in the heavens, and upon spirits in the darkest underworld, and continues to impress Himself, that the only adequate description we can give of Him is that He is Emmanuel – God with us; that in the Man Jesus dwelt and dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, under bodily conditions. In Him all we can ever know of the invisible Creator becomes concrete, and therefore becomes powerful to save. If all this has been effected by one son of God revealing the Father to creation, what, I ask, shall be the result when a vast company of sons shall be brought to rule and reign in His glorious image and likeness over all the earth and throughout the vastnesses of infinity forevermore. Ah! What an Eden of God's glory shall be when judgment is given TO THE SAINTS of the Most High, when all the OVERCOMERS out of all the ages SIT WITH THE CHRIST OF GOD IN HIS THRONE even as He overcame and is set down with His Father in His throne, when SAVIOURS shall come upon Mount Zion to judge the house of Esau (flesh) and THE KINGDOM SHALL BE THE LORD'S (Obadiah 21). Then shall the earth be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Then shall all things in heaven and in earth be reconciled and gathered together into one in Christ. Then shall God be All-in-all.

You see, there is an image of God. There is a likeness of God. And before our God, there was no god who ever had a form, who ever had a likeness, and neither shall there be after Him. God is the God who is FORMED; the God who projects Himself into an image. Now the scripture says of Jesus, "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God" (Phil. 2:6). Do you want to know what the form of God is, what the formed God looks like? Look at the Lord Jesus Christ and you see the form of God. "Philip says unto Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us. Jesus said unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet have you not known Me, Philip? He that has seen Me has seen the Father; and how can you say then, Show us the Father?" (Jn. 14:8-9). Further, the apostle Paul wrote to the saints in Galatia, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be FORMED IN YOU" (Gal. 4:19). We're still talking about the formation of God. We're talking about a New Creation. We're talking about God reaching into Himself and taking a variety of elements out of Himself and compounding them together to produce an image that will reveal what He is!

The energy of creation is God. Creation is the energy of God in motion producing phenomena. This means that you as a person, a personality, are ENERGY. Energy has many forms, but it is not something that you can see or hold in your hand. You can think of energy as something that can make things change. For example, a moving object has energy because it can change things by crashing into them. Heat is another form of energy. It is a sort of motion, too – the disorderly motion of the tiny atoms and molecules that make up all materials. Heat energy can melt ice, changing it to water, and heat it more, changing it to vapor. It can run the engine of an automobile, jet plane or rocket. There is another kind of energy, called chemical energy. It is in the coal or oil that heats buildings. It is in the food that nourishes your body and keeps you active. There is atomic energy which can be set free from the atoms of some materials. Then there is the energy carried by light waves, called electromagnetic energy. It is the electromagnetic energy in sunlight that warms the earth. Light waves, streaming out of the sun, carry energy to us across nearly a hundred million miles of space. When the energy of the light hits the earth, part of it changes to heat.

Another kind of energy that we, the people of God, are aware of is SPIRIT ENERGY. In physics energy is known as the capacity for doing work. The Greek word for energy is ENERGEIA or ENERGO. These words are used in the Greek New Testament a number of times. Because of the association between "doing work" and "energy," the words are generally translated into English as "working." Since so much has been learned about energy in recent years it would now be better to translate these words for just what they mean – energy or energize. Let us look at a couple of scriptures. "That you may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working (energizing) of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead" (Eph. 1:18-20). Yes, it was ENERGY, GOD'S ENERGY, which raised Christ from the dead! The record further states that He was raised up by the SPIRIT of God! Not only did Paul say that it was God's energy that raised Christ up, but he went on to say in Eph. 3:7 that it was that same energy of God that transformed his own life and made him a minister of Jesus Christ. "Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working (energy) of His power." Then on top of this Paul declares that it is this SPIRIT ENERGY of God that is working within us to bring us unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. "From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working (energizing) in the measure of every part" (Eph. 4:16). Finally, this energy of God shall so work in us, shall so change us, that we shall be changed even in the atomical structure of our bodies, as it is written, "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working (energizing) whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself" (Phil. 3:21). All spirit is ENERGY, and exerts a force, or influence, upon our lives. God is the supreme source of energy – the highest and purest form of energy!

The Holy Spirit is God's ENERGY FORCE. It is God's motion, action and influence in one measure or another upon, in, and through man. Yahweh accomplished the creation of the universe by His Spirit or ENERGY FORCE. Regarding the planet earth in its early formative stages, the record states that "The Spirit (energy force) of God was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters" (Gen. 1:2). Psalm 33:6 says, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath (spirit) of His mouth." Like a powerful breath or living wind, God's Spirit can be sent forth to exert power even though there is no bodily or physical contact with that which is acted upon. Where a human craftsman would use the force of his hands and fingers to produce things, God uses His Spirit. Hence, that Spirit is also spoken of as God's "hand" or "fingers." Jesus told the Pharisees, "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come unto you" (Mat. 12:28). But Luke, in recording the same event, expresses it thus: "If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you" (Lk. 11:20). The Spirit of God is the finger of God, the working, the activity of God usward. How great is His working!

The invisible and powerful INWARD ENERGY FORCE that motivates and transforms our lives into the image of God is the HOLY SPIRIT. Only by the Holy Spirit are we guided beyond the outer senses, and beyond the letter of the Word, into the glorious and eternal reality of "the deep things of God," even all those things which God has in reservation for them that truly love Him, which the human eye has not seen, the human ear has not heard, neither has entered into the human heart to understand and appreciate. Each of the characteristics of God is a form of the energy of God, one of the elements of God. This energy is transmitted from the spirit into the soul and body to produce its power within us, just as electricity is transmitted from a battery to an engine to make it function in a certain way. When the "Spirit of Holiness" is transmitted into our lives and consciousness we begin to function in our personality in that characteristic of God's holiness, thus becoming holy. When the "Spirit of Wisdom" is transmitted into our consciousness we cease from our own natural reasoning and commence to act in accordance with the higher wisdom of God. When the "Spirit of Life" permeates our being even our bodies shall be quickened by His life within until this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality. Then shall be fulfilled the word which was spoken, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed" (I Cor. 15:51).

The Bible declares that God is LOVE. It doesn't say that God has love, but God IS LOVE. That is His nature. Did you know that love is energy? You won't have to think about that very long to realize that it is true. Love is a powerful force that can influence and CHANGE THINGS. Love is invisible, like the wind, but it is powerful! And love can be transmitted, invisibly, from person to person, even as light rays are transmitted from the sun to the earth. We read in Rom. 14:17, "For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." Do you believe peace is real? What does peace look like? Is it round? Is it square? Can you measure it? Can you buy a bottle full of peace, or a truckload? No! Peace is invisible, isn't it? And peace is powerful, isn't it? Peace is SPIRIT! And spirit is ENERGY! You can know when peace is present. You can sense peace, experience peace, speak peace, manifest peace and minister peace. How about joy? You cannot put joy in your pocket or roll it up like a wad of bills. Joy is SPIRIT! Joy is ENERGY! Righteousness is SPIRIT! Righteousness is ENERGY! Righteousness is attainable on this earth now because of the right spirit, the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit. I have good news for you – you can receive a new spirit, a new ENERGY FORCE, Holy Spirit, Holy Energy, and as a result attain a walk in righteousness. HOLY ENERGY – this is what God IS! God is revealing the energy flow of His life today through New Creation Men.

THE NEW CREATION – ONE SPIRIT

Great is the mystery and the wonder of it, but the apostle Paul explains in I Cor. 6:17 that "He that is joined unto the Lord IS ONE SPIRIT." One Spirit! He that is joined (fused) is one. We can easily understand this in the natural creation. Have you drunk a glass of water today? How many things is water? To us water is one thing, one item, one substance. But no – water is actually two things! Two parts of a gas called hydrogen and one part of a gas called oxygen are fused, and they make water. But water is not gas! When the two gases are mixed they produce an effect. You have something new, something different, something of another quality – liquid. God has used that simple principle of compounding to make everything that appears in the material creation. So now we can understand how it is that he that is joined or fused to the Lord IS ONE SPIRIT. I didn't get up this morning and tell myself that I needed a glass of H2O. It was unnecessary to bother with the chemical formula. I just knew that I needed a glass of water. If I never knew anything about hydrogen or oxygen it would make no difference. Water is water. God knows how He made it. Scientists discovered God's formula, but God invented it. You don't go into someone's house and ask for a glass of cold H2O. You just ask for water – the one item. In like manner it is no longer necessary to see God and yourself as two persons or two different items – for HE THAT IS JOINED UNTO THE LORD IS O-N-E  S-P-I-R-I-T.

As I pointed out in a recent article – when the Spirit of God came in and quickened your human spirit, His Spirit and your spirit became ONE. One spirit – just as when a man is joined to a harlot they become one flesh – one humanity, male and female, Adam. Bible translators have found it difficult to decide whether "spirit" in some passages refers to the Holy Spirit or the spirit of man. The reason for this difficulty lies in the fact that in the believer the Holy Spirit and the human spirit are joined as ONE SPIRIT! So, when Paul says that if we walk after the spirit we shall live – does he mean the Holy Spirit or our spirit? The solution lies in the knowledge that we are one spirit with the Lord. When you look at the water or drink the water you cannot tell what is hydrogen or what is oxygen. In their combination they have formed a new substance – water. In the water the two are one. In like manner, such a united spirit makes it difficult for anyone to say whether this is the Holy Spirit or the human spirit. The two are compounded and fused as one. We may say it is the Holy Spirit, and yet we can also say it is the human spirit. Sometimes we make a beverage by mixing two kinds of juices – apple and cranberry. After it is mixed it is difficult by taste to tell what kind of juice it is. Is it apple or cranberry? We would have to call it apple-cranberry. In the realm of the spirit it is wonderful to see that the two spirits, the Holy Spirit joined with our spirit, ARE ONE SPIRIT.

Ah – Christ is in us today – but where is He within us? In what part? It is abundantly clear – Christ is in our spirit. There is no need to be vague and say, "Oh, the Lord is in you and the Lord is in me." The last verse of II Timothy 4 definitely states that Christ is in our spirit. "The Lord be with your spirit." The preposition "with" is from the Greek SUN which denotes "union." The Lord is in union with our spirit! There is a mighty working taking place within God's people – no more to have that duality – our spirit, His Spirit, but to be so fully merged into one with Him that HIS Spirit is mine, and my spirit, quickened by His Spirit, is swallowed up into His. "There is ONE SPIRIT," says the Lord (Eph. 4:4). That one spirit is neither the Holy Spirit nor our spirit – it is His Spirit joined with our spirit, the ONE SPIRIT of God in His sons and daughters. Whenever you move by the spirit, that is God moving. Whenever you speak out of the spirit, that is God speaking. Whenever you act by the spirit, that is God acting. It is not merely God moving, speaking, and acting through you – it is God moving, speaking and acting as you. It is you moving, speaking and acting as God! And it is the Spirit of God in you that is now speaking to your mind and heart, saying, "You are my son." The import of that word is now germinating in your consciousness. You are letting that precious mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

Since there is ONE spirit I should not concern myself about upper case or lower case S's. It's completely irrelevant. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. He that is joined to the Lord IS. And what is he? He is the One Spirit. That's all there is. It's not my spirit. It's not His spirit. My spirit is not the One Spirit and, believe it or not, precious friend of mine, God's Spirit is not the One Spirit. The One Spirit is the one that is fused to the Lord. The One Spirit is my spirit and God's spirit in union. There is one spirit, just as there is one body. God is combining. God is joining. God is fusing. God is creating! God is mingling the elements in His heavenly laboratory, making a New Creation in Christ Jesus the Lord – something that never was before!

Chapter 2

I want to make abundantly clear to all who read these lines exactly what fusion is. It is a joining, a blending, an intermixture, a merging, an amalgamation, a unification of two or more items. It is more than an adhering. It is different from merely gluing some things together. It is a commingling of the elements. As members of the body of Christ we have come today to participate in an event of spiritual fusion, whereby we, being many separate individuals (atoms as it were), are fused into one in Christ Jesus. "For we being many are one bread, and one body..." (I Cor. 10:17). "And the glory which You gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and You in me, that they may be made perfect in one" (Jn. 17:22-23).

So we are talking about union by fusion. How does this come about? It comes about because of the white heat of the passion of Jesus Christ causing a spiritual fusion in three parts: First, the tremendous heat of the love of Christ, then the breaking down of the individuality and selfhood and the fusion of a whole new element, our spirit joined to His Spirit making one spirit, one mind, one will, one nature, one purpose – one Elohim! Finally, there is the tremendous release of the energy of Christ through the body. That is what Christ has called us to experience. That is what it means to be a part of the body of the Christ – to be fused into Him who is the Head. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17). What does that mean – a new creation in Christ – old things passed away? It means that we are something that never really existed, yet we know that we existed before in a different form and state.

The Kingdom of God is filled with divine paradoxes. Two of these great divine paradoxes are found in Galatians 2:20. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live" – that is the first paradox. I'm crucified, but I live. Paul didn't say, "I was crucified and I was resurrected." No! He says, "I am crucified and I do live." I like that. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live. I'm crucified, but in spite of it I am alive. What a paradox! The second paradox is no less amazing than the first. "Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me." So Paul says, "I am crucified but I live, but just in case you don't understand the mystery of it, it's really not I that is living, but Christ lives in me – the true personality within is Christ." Divine paradox! What are we talking about? We're talking about items, elements. When Paul says, "I am crucified," he is talking about the outer. There is an outer reality, an outer consciousness, an outward man. The outer man is composed of soul and body of this gross material realm we have known since our birth on planet earth. We have understood ourselves and all men in that outer realm. We have known ourselves according to that outward realm, according to the influences of our environment, and according to our heredity on the physical plane. We have known ourselves as creatures of the dust, men of the earth, full of faults, limitations, weaknesses, problems, sins, frustrations, hostility, fear, sorrow, pain and death. We have known, assessed and judged ourselves and others in the outer sense realm. We have discovered that all is vanity and vexation in that outer, temporal, passing order. We have condemned ourselves in that outer realm, because all have sinned in that realm and come short of the glory of God.

So Jesus came to reveal the cross. And it is there at the cross that Paul says of this outer, carnal, failing and perishing man, "I AM CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST." You must see that by the spirit. If the apostle was speaking in the natural he would have put it in the past tense – "I was crucified with Christ" – because it is a great historical fact that Christ Jesus was ignominiously crucified on a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago. If he was speaking of an historical event where twenty centuries ago Jesus hung suspended between heaven and earth – and if in some mystical sense we were there with Him on that cross, crucified on that cross, dying on that cross – he would say, "I was crucified with Christ." But in the Greek text the verb is in the present perfect tense. And while the present perfect tense denotes an action that is completed – I have been crucified with Christ – it may also, according to the rules of grammar, indicate action that is continuing unto the present. What the present perfect tense clearly is not is the PAST TENSE – I was crucified. This is why the King James translators chose the wording, "I AM crucified with Christ."

In spite of the awful fact of Calvary's dreadful scene I would be remiss if I failed to tell you that the cross of Christ was not a cross of wood. The cross on Golgotha's hill was undoubtedly a wooden cross, but the cross of Christ that the apostles preached, and in which they gloried, and by which the world is reconciled to God, and which does its powerful work within us, is something more than a wooden beam. When in wisdom and holy expectation our Lord exhorted His disciples, saying, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up HIS CROSS, and follow me," He was not making reference to a cross of wood, but to a cross that would bring death to one's own identity, will, and ways, and identify his life henceforth with the life of Christ. The DEATH OF THE CROSS is in some mysterious and divine way the gateway to the LIFE OF THE CROSS. The wooden Roman cross upon which Jesus was crucified was not actually HIS CROSS, for the cross of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, all the handwriting of ordinances of the law were nailed to His cross, He made peace and reconciled all things in heaven and in earth unto Himself by the blood of His cross, and by that cross we are crucified to the world and the world is crucified to us. No literal parchment was nailed to the cross of Calvary, there is no magical saving power emanating from the wood of that cross, the whole world is not today hanging somewhere upon that cross, being crucified unto us. Such literal thoughts are absurdities. The cross of Calvary does not even exist today, having decayed back into the dust long centuries ago.

It is my deep conviction, and I say it with all reverence and respect to my blessed Lord and Saviour, but the truth is that Jesus in the natural suffered no more on the cross than thousands of others who were nailed to a tree, or thousands of others who died on the rack during the Roman inquisition, or thousands of others who were burned at the stake, fed to the lions, or made blazing human torches at the Circus in Rome. The physical suffering was no greater. The cross of Christ refers to a greater spiritual cross and a greater spiritual death. The cross of Christ had its beginning that day in heaven, when the Word of God, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Fierce as was His suffering at Calvary, that fearful hour of agony and blood was but the final act of a life of the cross as step by step He descended from the majesty and glory of equality with God to the fearsome moment when in anguish He cried, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Truly, as the scripture testifies, He was the Lamb "slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). The cross did not begin at Calvary!

Though I am sure it is impossible to plumb the shining depths and the inexhaustible riches of the meaning of the cross, I would like to endeavor to set before you the deeper meaning of the cross of Christ. We will never understand the mystery of the cross until by the spirit of wisdom and revelation from God our eyes perceive the eternal cross in the heart of God Himself. The only true and eternal life in the universe is the life of God. He alone is self-existent. He alone is reality. He alone is eternal substance. If we are to fully know and partake of that life, we must die to all that is contrary to that life. Everything that exists in the universe has its opposite – and as surely as God exists there is the opposite for all that He is. God is love – and the opposite of love is hate. God is light – and the opposite of light is darkness. God is truth – and the opposite of the truth is the lie. God is life – and the opposite of life is death. Each positive has its negative, and all the laws of the universe reveal this principle of opposites. Jesus enunciated the fundamental principle of life when He said that except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die it brings forth the increase of life. Every negative must be brought to death. Everything in the universe must die to all that is contrary to divine life and nature, being born again of the spirit. This is the meaning of, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5). This has been the Father's plan for man – man in the image and glory of the incorruptible God.

The principle was set in motion with the first man, Adam. Adam had to fall into darkness, sin and death, not because he was inherently evil or rebellious, but because all that is contradictory to God must be stirred up, experienced, faced, understood, repented of, overcome and eternally put to rest in man's will before the image of God can shine safely and eternally through him. In recent times my whole understanding of why the cross is the gateway to LIFE has been clarified and crystallized within my spirit. I have come to see that God Himself dies to everything but His self-giving Self, which is love. God Himself dies to every dark principle that would sow selfishness, pride, strife, bitterness, trouble, bigotry, hatred, viciousness, pain, sorrow, chaos, disappointment, weakness, limitation or evil of any kind. The cross is the very heart of God, and the basis of why He is the ETERNAL GOD. He is eternally God just because He IS ETERNALLY all that makes Him God.

But how is it that God is unchangeable in His nature – is it because He cannot change or because He chooses not to change? Truly God "cannot lie" and God cannot be anything other than Life, Light and Love. But why cannot He be? The answer that the blessed spirit of Truth has revealed in my heart is because HE HAS ETERNALLY DIED TO THE POSSIBILITY THAT DARKNESS CAN ARISE IN HIS LIFE! The entire principle of darkness has its foundation in the life of God, for was it not God Himself who "divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night" (Gen. 1:5). "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things" (Isa. 45:7). This mystery of darkness in God's nature remains unrevealed because He has eternally willed to be Life, Light and Love. All the negative potential is there – the law of opposites – but there is a cross in God's heart – by which He eternally dies to all that would make Him anything less than GOD. This is ALWAYS happening in God's life, because the cross is an eternal fact. "Eternity" doesn't mean unbeginning time in the long ago or unending time in the inscrutable future. Eternity means NO TIME. Eternity is TIME-LESS. This means that the decision to die to the negative principle is not subject to review or change – it is forever settled and determined in the heart of God. That's why He says over and over, "I am the Lord; I change not." It is not that He is intrinsically set so that He cannot change. Rather it is that He has ETERNALLY CHOSEN not to change. It is an eternal, accomplished, irrevocable choice, born of wisdom and understanding. It is the eternal cross in His heart. Therefore He cannot change. He is forever love. He is forever pure. He is forever righteous. He is forever wisdom. He is forever light. He is forever life. And all that He is, is forever SAFE!

The cross is the secret of God's gift of love. It means that God does not live for HIMSELF. All the selfhood of God is forever crucified upon the cross in God's heart. Selfhood must be a vital characteristic in any life. The selfish desire that would cause God to live for Himself, and therefore be uncaring, vindictive, spiteful or cruel to His creatures – to this God eternally dies. He has willed to be a Self for others, instead of a Self for self, by eternally dying to the dark, selfish principle. Andrew Murray said that the spirit of love is AN ETERNAL WILL TO ALL GOODNESS. The best and the most wonderful word in the universe is Love. For God is love. What is love? The deep desire to give itself for the beloved. Love finds its joy in imparting all that it has, all that it is, to make the loved one happy and fulfilled. This is THE ONE ETERNAL, IMMUTABLE GOD that, from eternity to eternity, changes not, that can be neither more nor less, but an ETERNAL WILL TO ALL THE GOODNESS that is in Himself and comes from Him. The creation of ever so many worlds adds nothing to, nor takes anything from, this immutable God: He always was, and always will be the same immutable WILL TO ALL GOODNESS. So that as certainly as He is the Creator, so certainly He is the Blesser of every created thing, and can give nothing but Blessing, Goodness and Happiness from Himself, because He has in Himself nothing else to give.

The spirit of love does not want to be rewarded or honored; its only desire is to become the blessing and happiness of everything that needs it. The wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, only gives the spirit of love opportunity to be more triumphant. The rebellion (selfhood) of Adam but opened up avenues for mankind to experience and know the incredible depths of the love of God! God IS LOVE! And His sons are of His own nature. The Sons of Love! What a blessed title! Little wonder, then, that the whole vast creation, sold under slavery and bondage to sin, sorrow, and death groans for the manifestation of THE SONS OF LOVE!

From this flash-point, Life sheds forth Light and Love. The whole creation sprang out from this unselfish love, for God said, "Let there be..." and "God SO LOVED THE WORLD that He gave..." Life begins after the cross, even in the life of God. The cross is more than Calvary – it is the fulcrum or point of power in which the entire infinite might of the forces of divine desire issue in love, creation, and self-abnegation for others. This is why Jesus said, "Take up YOUR CROSS and follow me." We carry our cross with us in our walk in spirit – the cross that God has in His heart – not to suffer physically, necessarily, but to die to all negatives and all selfhood and selfishness and spring forth as rivers of living waters in life anew. So we become life and light for others. As Adam Parker wrote, "How does the sun in the sky give light? It is continually dying to produce light. We don't see the death, or the dark contracting forces in this great star. We only see the light. But death is the key to the light. And that light is the life of our world in the physical dimension. So also the Son, with the cross in His heart, is the Daystar risen in our lives. We share in His eternal death and new life, for He is our very life – and He in us is the light of the world that brings life to all men."

All the books in the world, though written with pens of silver and ink of gold, could never fully describe the glories of His cross, nor could all the learned tongues of men or the heavenly voices of angels explain to the mind of man how He, who was rich, for our sakes became poor that we through His poverty might be made rich. Eternity itself will not be too long to sing the praises of such a One, who came from the cross in the bosom of God to shed His life blood that all creation might find eternal life in Him.

Notice now these wonderfully meaningful words penned by John the Revelator. "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him (the beast), whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb SLAIN FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD" (Rev. 13:8). Let us notice just what truth is stated here. A better rendering would be, "The Lamb that was put to death from the founding of the cosmos." Weymouth's translation reads, "All the inhabitants of the earth will be found worshipping him; every one whose name is not recorded in the book of Life – the book of the Lamb offered in sacrifice FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD." The sacrifice and death of the Christ did not start with the events surrounding Calvary; it began away back there at the beginning, and culminated on Calvary. He was the Lamb who was put to death from the beginning. Just as the cross did not begin at Calvary, so the crucifixion of Christ did not begin at Calvary. Peter expressed the fact that the cross existed as a work of God before the foundation of the world in this manner: "Forasmuch as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was FOREORDAINED BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD, but was manifest in these last times for you" (I Pet. 1:18-20). The Lamb whose offering was already a glorious and eternal reality in the heavens, remained only to cast its shadow upon the earth, on Calvary's hill. We would have thought that in calling our Lord "the Lamb" this name would have been used only in respect to His humiliation in His earthly life and death. However, in scripture it is most often used in reference to His glory in the heavenlies. Peter saw Him as a Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world. John saw Him as a Lamb that had been put to death from the founding of the cosmos, highly exalted, standing in the midst of the throne. Actually, John saw the Lamb SLAIN IN THE MIDST OF THE THRONE! "And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne stood a Lamb as it had been slain..." (Rev. 5:6). What a wonder!

It was when the Christ hung upon the cross before the foundation of the world, and upon the cross of Calvary, that He became the one fruitful tree. He tasted death for every man and was made perfect through sufferings that He might lead many sons to glory. It was under the shadow of His cross, that we were found and were quickened by His Spirit. It is there He found us, and it is there that we found Him, and it is there that we are crucified with Him that He may live in us. It is there in the cross that streams of living water are poured out in the dry place; from that encounter the Rock follows us, and out of it, living streams are flowing more abundantly. It is the cross in our lives that brings the release of these living streams to mankind, for the body of Christ is the channel of His life by the extension of His cross. While we praise God for the cross of Calvary, and while the soul of man will ever love and thank Him who gave His life for us, yet I believe the triumph of the cross began at the cross in the heart of God before the foundation of the world and ends only when the race has received from God the Father, through the Christ, Head and body, the grace, power and glory of God that makes them sons of God like Himself. Hallelujah for the cross!

When God brings the cross into our lives, he doesn't bring it to us out of two millenniums ago – He brings it as a living reality out of the dimension of spirit right now! When by the quickening of the Spirit you saw Christ dying, you did not see Him dying twenty centuries ago, but in spirit you beheld Him. God brought Him out of that long ago into your NOW. God brought Him into your present. And you saw Him bleeding and dying, not two thousand years ago, but right now in this moment you beheld Him by spirit. And in spirit Paul exults with unspeakable joy, "I AM crucified with Christ!" Not then – NOW! Not was – I AM! It is neither history nor a future event. It's an accomplished fact in the eternal NOW. The eternal cross in the heart of God, the eternal cross of the Christ, now becomes your cross and you are crucified with Him, a participator in that same eternal death to all that is unlike God, to all that falls short of what God has chosen to be. I am crucified, nevertheless I do live, it's not the "I" that lives but the Christ who lives in me! The outer sense realm, the carnal, the vain, the fleshly, the passing, is placed upon that cross and crucified in order that the inner life of the spirit might find release. We only become holy as He is holy and pure as He is pure when the cross becomes an eternal reality in our lives. When the cross is no longer a historical event, or a doctrine, or a truth to be believed, but the cross is forever established in our heart, the cross in our heart will produce His nature within, the nature that willingly surrenders and cancels all that is not of life, light and love.

It is a great and glorious fact that your spirit is not crucified. If your spirit is crucified you could not say, "I AM crucified, and I LIVE." When we speak of death and resurrection we speak of two corresponding, parallel principles in the present. I AM crucified and I AM alive. Those are dual present and continuous realities. I am and I am. I AM crucified and I AM living. But what is crucified? Not my inward man – but my outward man. Paul put it this way: "Though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day" (II Cor. 6:16). The outer man, the sensual man, the soulical man, the carnal mind, the flesh – IS crucified. There is a work of the cross for all the negative realm, but just as the outward is perishing, the inward man is being joined and fused to the Lord – one spirit. The spirit is not conformed into the image of God by crucifixion but by union. Its form is changed by adding an ingredient. His Spirit is joined to our spirit. Our spirit is quickened by His Spirit. The outer man is put to the cross and is dying. But the inner man is receiving life and being renewed. It was on the cross that Jesus poured out His blood (life, spirit) for the life of the world. That is the divine paradox! It is both death and life. I am crucified and I live. I am perishing and I am quickened. Something is taken away and something is added. It is divine chemistry! It is union by fusion! And an entirely NEW CREATION is the result!

Nowhere is this beautiful truth of union by fusion more powerfully set forth than in John 17:20-23. "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 You, Father, are in me, and I in You, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that You have sent me. And the glory which You gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and You in me, that they may be made perfect in one..." That they all may be ONE! How does God effect this? May the blessed spirit of truth help all who read these lines to see the commingling here. God is so in us, and we so in Him, that you can't tell where He ends and we begin. This is the principle I want you to see – union by fusion – not gluing people together, not making them one by some kind of close association, not taking a dog and a cat and tying them up together with a rope – that's not union, and it definitely is not fusion!

Furthermore, this mystery of union with God is entirely beyond our being containers of God. We have had the notion that we are containers of God, in the way a bucket is a container for water, and that God is a great container for us. But when we see God in us as that which fills a container there is still a separation from God. When you fill a bucket with water there is no mixture, no commingling, no union, no oneness between the bucket and the water. The two touch one another, there is a relationship and association, but no blending of substance. The water is still water and the bucket remains the same. Each is separate and distinct from the other. When we see ourselves as a container for God and God as a container for us we remain one element while God remains another element. There is no fusion. And, therefore, THERE IS NO NEW CREATION. In fusion everything is so blended and compounded until each element loses its own identity and an entirely new thing comes forth. Something that neither element inherently possessed is brought into manifestation. How great is the majesty and the wonder of it! "Therefore," says the apostle, "if any man be IN CHRIST, he is a NEW CREATION: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17). Oh, may God help my reader to see this and cease separating between himself and the Christ! God is making a New Creation. It is the Word again made flesh, it is God birthed again as man. It is the glory of the incarnation. It is the compounding of the divine elements of God Himself with the elements of the human personality that God may be formed into an expression as man. There is ONE SPIRIT. "He that is joined unto the Lord IS ONE SPIRIT." The one spirit is not just IN you – it IS you. The one spirit is not merely God in you – it is God and you joined in union.

Stacy Wood has given an eloquent example of this truth. He says, "The scripture states in I Cor. 6:15-17, 'Know   not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? Don't you know that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? For the two, He said, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.' I realize the subject in this passage is fornication, verse eighteen tells us that clearly. But I also believe that Paul was reaching deeper into a principle, and where in this principle Paul was touching a physical act, he also takes it right on into a spiritual revelation. Verse seventeen makes that clear. So we need to understand that we are not on the physical level involved in fornication and adulteries – those things are of the flesh and are cut off in the first Adam. Let's get into the New Humanity now and see what the apostle is telling us.

"I was in New Mexico a few years ago and while ministering to a group I made a statement that I was corrected on. The statement I made was simply this. I said, 'There are some things in the earth, and also things in God, that are certain, immutable, unchangeable, ever the same. For instance, 1+1=2. If you have an apple plus an apple, you have two apples – and no matter how you figure it, how you calculate it, one plus one always equals two.' After the service a young man came to me, a young man that has a Doctorate degree, a young man who speaks numerous languages, a young man who is in my opinion a genius, and he said, 'Stacy, I want to share something with you – one plus one does not always equal two.' Well, he took me back. I just stood there and looked at him as if to say, Now wait a minute! I've been taught all my life that one plus one equals two – what are you trying to tell me? He sat down and with a formula and a series of pages he expressed to me what he meant. The man is a nuclear physicist. Of course I didn't understand the formulas very well, but he convinced me after four pages that he had a valid point that I didn't fully understand – that one plus one doesn't always equal two. So I considered this and then in the scriptures I began to see the reality that one plus one, even in God's economy, does not always equal two.

"Paul says it very plainly in the passage we have quoted. He says that one man joined to one harlot equals one flesh. Therefore Paul says that one plus one equals one. So when two things are joined and fused together they are no longer two things, but become one thing. Another example of this is found in Ephesians 5:30-32. 'For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.' This is a great mystery, but what Paul is declaring is the divine formula – 1+1=1. He shows that we are made one in the body of Christ. We must lose that vision of our uniqueness, particularness and individuality and grasp hold of the concept that we are one, not many.

"It is the principle of marriage. A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and joined to his wife, one man and one woman become one flesh. Most of us that are married look at that verse and try to imagine that in some mystical way we are one somehow, but we don't understand the conflicts and disagreements! We do our best to get beyond the differences and misunderstandings to truly become one so that we always think alike, desire alike and act alike. But that is not what Paul is saying. The reality is that God took one individual, me, and one individual, my wife, and has made an expression of one. I can tell you exactly when it happened – it happened when my daughter was born, and again when my son was born. For Jana and Stacy are Sheri and Stacy as one. When God joined Sheri and I, He put us together in such a way that we can never be separated. He took all of the structure of my life and all of the structure of my wife's life, and He joined them together between a sperm and an ovum and brought forth one new creation that is neither Sheri or Stacy – and yet it is both of us. It is a perfect joining and blending of the complete whole of both of us into one new whole.

"When we traveled with our children years ago, we made note of people's reactions when they would see our children. Often people would look at our son and say, 'He's the spitting image of your wife; and your daughter, man, she is so much like you – you can surely tell who belongs to whom.' Then we would go to the next group and someone would say, 'Your son looks so much like you, he doesn't look like your wife at all; and your daughter looks so much like your wife, she doesn't look anything like you.' After several years I was quite puzzled and meditated on this phenomenon for a while. Why is it, I wondered, that some people think Jana looks like Sheri, whereas others think she looks like me? And some think Stacy looks like Sheri, while others think he looks like me. Then it dawned on me – they are bound to look like Mama and they are bound to look like Daddy because all that we are, all our genetics are brought together and combined into one new form; both of us are so joined together that you really can't distinguish or divide between what is Stacy and what is Sheri. You can't tell where Stacy ends and Sheri begins in them, or where Sheri ends and Stacy begins. They are one new creation, one flesh of us two" – end quote. Can you hear the mystery that is great in that? When Jesus Christ, who is masculine, is joined to the church, who is feminine, His Spirit joined with our spirit equals one spirit. When the two are joined together you get a brand new spiritual dimension that has not yet been, and that spiritual dimension is called "the Christ." There is a joining of one plus one that equals – ONE!

The Tabernacle in the wilderness, with its High Priest entering within the veil into the Most Holy Place, and coming out again from that glorious precinct invested with the authority, power and glory of God to bless the whole nation of Israel – is surely a parable of our union with God. We now have boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter into the Holiest – but that is only one half of the divine equation. The other half is God entering into us. That's what union is – each entering into and becoming part of the other by fusion. "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the (Most) Holy Place; let us draw near" (Heb. 10:19). It is a call to God's elect to enter in through the rent veil, into the place into which the blood has been brought, and where the High Priest lives, and where the ineffable glory of the Most High God shines brightly, there to live and walk and work always in the fullness of the Father. Christ Jesus has opened the way into the Holiest! This is the full salvation and the full inheritance of God that belongs to the saints. Oh, the glory of the message! For fifteen centuries Israel had a sanctuary with a Most Holy Place into which, under pains of death, no one might enter. But now the call goes forth: Enter in! The veil is rent, the Holiest is open; God wants to welcome you into His bosom. Henceforth you are to live in union with Him. Son of God, daughter of God! Your Father longs for you to enter in, to know and dwell in His fullness forevermore!

To the faithful in Christ Jesus I now proclaim this message: As much as we desire to enter in, the God who dwells in the Holiest of all desires to get OUT! At the same time we are entering in, God is coming out. Not only does God intend to bring you, my beloved, into the fullness of Himself, but He intends to bring all that He is out into every dimension. So we are on the way in and God is on the way out. The inspired writer to the Hebrew saints says of our Lord Jesus Christ: "We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a MINISTER OF THE SANCTUARY, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man" (Heb. 8:1-2). What does he mean when he says that Christ is the "Minister of the Sanctuary"? In every temple there was a god, an unseen god, to whom the temple was devoted; there was a priest, the priest of that temple, who was to receive the petitions or the sacrifices of the worshipper and to get the answer back from God. So it was with Aaron in the Old Testament. It is said of him and of the priests of Israel, "they shall stand in My presence to minister," and "they shall go out and bless in My name."

There is both a Godward and a manward work in reconciliation and redemption. So our great High Priest, Jesus, stands as the Minister of the Sanctuary, as the Priest of the Tabernacle, the realm of His dwelling, and He ministers in a dual way. Christ as the Minister of the Sanctuary, has done these things: First of all, He opened the Sanctuary, the way into the fullness of the presence and life and power and glory of God. This He did by His blood, pouring out His life, making it available so that in its power we have access to God. When He ascended into the heavenlies He entered, with His own blood, by the energies of His own divine life, into the Holiest place. We read that with that blood, with that sacrifice – the better sacrifice of a divine life – the heavenly things were cleansed, and that in opening up the Holiest with His blood, He secured for us complete access into God's presence and glory. In Himself He brings us nigh unto God. He does more. There flows back from the Father to the Son, in whom He delights, a stream of life and blessing to impart to His people upon earth. Even so, as the sunlight streams from the sun, there flows forth unceasingly from the Son of God a river of life and light and love and power and glory unto all who believe. It is flowing even now. Just as surely as Jesus ascended into the heavens, just so surely "there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." Ah, yes, Jesus opened up heaven to us, and has raised us up and made us sit together in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. But God has also come down from heaven and has entered powerfully into us. Oh! we must realize this. We are entering in, and God is coming out. Christ Jesus brings us nigh to God, yea, into God in Himself; and in Himself He brings God into us. "To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" (II Cor. 5:19).

In the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement, and on that day alone, the High Priest entered in beyond the veil, from the Holy Place into the Holy of Holies. That great veil that hung there for so long kept out any who might enter into the presence of God. There in the Most Holy Place, in that secret place of the Most High, God dwelt in the Shekinah Glory between the outstretched wings of the cherubim on either side of the Ark of the Covenant, beneath which were the tablets of the law, the golden pot of manna, and the rod of priestly authority, and over which was the gold-covered Mercy Seat. Once each year, and only once, the High Priest could touch that veil. They had been carefully and sternly forewarned that should any man touch that veil, he would instantly be struck dead by God, reminding us that no man can enter into the realm of God unless he comes in God's way and in God's time and in God's appointed method. So the High Priest comes bearing the blood of the Everlasting Covenant.

The mystery of it is that ALL ISRAEL – every man, woman and child – were on that day identified in the person of the High Priest. He was a representative man, a corporate man as it were. The whole congregation of Israel went into the glory beyond that veil IN HIM. He drew nigh unto God on their behalf, and they were brought nigh unto God in him. The people of Israel never knew when the High Priest would come out again. They never knew whether the sacrifice for sin had been acceptable, and if he had done all things right, or that coming there in the secret place where God dwelt he might be struck dead. So they placed golden bells all around the hem of his robe. As long as they heard those bells tinkling they knew that the Priest was still alive and their hopes were alive in him. They knew that soon he would emerge from that awesome realm and come forth to bless them in the name of Yahweh. They knew that even as they had gone in beyond the veil in the High Priest, SO WOULD GOD COME FORTH FROM BEYOND THE VEIL IN THE PRIEST TO BLESS THEM, IMPARTING HIMSELF UNTO THEM.

The High Priest was thus the mediator between God and the people. He carried the people into the presence of God in him. He obtained from God the power to declare the remission of sin and the right of blessing the people. God drew nigh unto the people in the person of the Priest. God ministered of Himself through the blessing of the Priest. "And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation, and came out, and blessed the people: and THE GLORY OF THE LORD APPEARED UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE" (Lev. 9:23). The service of the priesthood is clear – to bring man unto God, and to bring God into man – effecting union. That is reconciliation – making two one again. This is the reality of the New Creation. This is the power of full salvation. This is the actualization of our inheritance in God and of His inheritance in the saints!

Let me illustrate. God is in our spirit. On the individual level our spirit is the Most Holy Place. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. There is the fullness of God in the Most Holy Place of our spirit. In the words of the ascended Lord to the Laodicean church, we see a remarkable picture of God coming out of the Most Holy Place to fill all realms. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20). We have traditionally understood this by the pictures we have seen of Jesus standing at the outside of a door, knocking, to gain admittance. The preachers have preached that Jesus is on the outside of the Laodicean church, standing at the door, knocking, trying to get inside the church – but Christ is NOT on the outside of the church, not even the lukewarm Laodicean church! The church is the very house of God, the saints are living stones built up a spiritual house, a habitation of God through the spirit. "For you are the temple of the living God; as God has said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (II Cor. 6:16). No matter how weak, or how carnal, Christ is never on the outside of any Spirit-begotten child of God. I do not doubt that many who read these lines are convinced that He is outside some of the churches you know – and He indeed IS outside the systems of man. But the church is composed of people, not the system they belong to.

A tremendous revelation was given to John the beloved on Patmos. He was shown in holy vision the seven candlesticks "which are the seven churches" (Rev. 1:20). The seven churches represent THE WHOLE CHURCH REALM THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE CHURCH AGE. If you want to know what the church is like, look at the seven candlesticks! There you have the divinely inspired portrait of the church realm painted by the brush strokes of the Holy Spirit of revelation. Were they not imperfect, carnal, childish, idolatrous, heretical, rebuked – a realm of mixture and duality? The Lord commends and praises them on the one hand, while warning and rebuking them on the other hand. Some of the saints are praised for their works and faith and love, while others are warned of impending judgment if they fail to repent, and some are even threatened with extinction. These seven churches reveal the true state and condition of the whole church throughout the age, and history and personal experience both testify conclusively that John was shown aright. The early church was a church of mixture and duality – flesh and spirit, truth and error, law and grace, spirituality and carnality. Even a casual perusal of the New Testament reveals this! And from that day to this, make no mistake about it – ALL CHURCHES HAVE BEEN THE SAME! They are today! The church in El Paso is a carnal church. Whereas one says, "We are of Luther," and another says, "We are Baptist," and another says, "We are Pentecostal," and another says, "We are of Christ," are they not carnal and walk as men? There are indeed some spiritual people and some spiritual groups of saints in the church in El Paso, but the church in this city is a carnal church. And should the church age continue on for another thousand years the church would not have changed – the revelation of the seven candlesticks immutably declares it! The seven candlesticks are the seven churches, and the seven churches are the church throughout the entire church age!

As soon as this point was made abundantly plain John heard a voice saying, "Come up here and I will show you things that must be hereafter." After what? Why, bless your heart, after the candlestick realm! The promises had already been given, not to the churches themselves, but to "him that overcomes" – a company out of the church. "Come up hither," the voice commanded. John is now shown another realm HIGHER THAN THE CANDLESTICK REALM! It is the realm of the overcomer, of the throne, of the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders. John is invited to leave the candlestick realm to ASCEND IN THE SPIRIT TO THIS HIGHER REALM where the Lamb is in the throne. This is what the brethren don't want to do! They don't want a change of order. How they cling to the candlestick realm with its five-fold ministry, with its old order system, methods and structure, with its rituals, ceremonies, and ordinances, with its limitation, imperfection, carnality, weakness, mixture, and duality. This revelation was given to John in the year A.D. 96. The churches of his generation refused to leave the candlestick realm and rise to a higher place in God, and within only a few years the great apostasy set in, and by the third and fourth centuries the apostasy was complete, followed by an awful night of great and terrible darkness. Even secular history refers to that time as "The Dark Ages." It was the great "falling way" that Paul prophesied in which the man of sin was revealed in the church, the temple of God, in all his dread and stark reality. I have traveled to the sites of the seven churches in Asia and I can tell you that today there is nothing there – not one church exists, not one saint can be found. The seven churches were in Asia which is the modern nation of Turkey. Within the whole country of Turkey there are only 1,000 Christian believers – all the rest are Moslem. There are no churches to be seen anywhere.

Today, my beloved, if we would be overcomers, pressing into sonship, caught up to the throne, we must hear and heed the call "Come up hither" and forsake the carnality and limitation of the candlestick realm to become related to CHRIST IN THAT PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WHERE HIS LORDSHIP SWALLOWS UP OUR LIVES, WHERE HE IS ALL IN ALL, WHERE HIS SPIRIT, MIND AND LIFE REPLACE THE OUTWARD STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH SYSTEM. But do not forget, the Lord is still out there in the candlestick realm, for John saw in the midst of the candlesticks "One like unto the Son of man." Oh yes, He is there, ministering on that level, blessing by His grace, saving and healing and helping. What love! What condescension! That Christ Jesus the Lord would "stand in the midst" of all the foolishness of creeds and doctrines, of rituals and ceremonies, of programs and promotions, to minister something of life on whatever level it can be received in spite of all. Oh, the mystery of it! Oh, the wonder of it!

If Christ is not standing on the outside of the church – where is He knocking? Is He knocking to get in, or is He knocking to get out? Christ is on the inside, in the spirit of man. There is a pure realm within man, an inner sanctum, an eternal dimension – the Holiest of all. Christ is in our spirit, knocking on the door of our soul. He is in our spirit, knocking on the door of our body. He is saying, "If any man will hear my voice, and open the door, I will not only be joined to your spirit and be one with you in spirit, but I will come out into your soul and be fused with your soul; I will come out into your body and be fused with your body, and you will know in your whole being the fullness of my perfection, wisdom, power and incorruptibility!" It is in this experience that the soul is truly saved and this mortal puts on immortality and this corruptible puts on incorruption, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. So you see, dear one, while we are entering into Him from without, He is entering into us from within! WE begin in the Outer Court and press our way into the Innermost Holy Place. HE begins in the inner sanctuary of our spirit and comes out into soul and body. Truly He already dwells within the soul and body as containers – but I am talking about FUSION. What is in a container does nothing for the container, but when fusion takes place there is a mighty transformation and a New Creation. As we go in and He comes out there is effected a perfect union, and in this commingling there is the formation of a New Creation. Hallelujah! Herein lies the power and glory of the Kingdom of God.

You can never in a million years transform your soul by imposing laws or demanding reformation. And there is nothing you can do for this body that will bestow immortality. The Holy Spirit could not have used a more descriptive term than "dust" in describing man. "Dust you are, and unto dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19). A chemical analysis of the human body reveals that twenty of the ninety-six elements that comprise the universe are present in man – substances such as carbon, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous, sulfur, chlorine, fluorine, potassium, sodium, magnesium, iron, etc. All the elements are those found on the surface of the earth. Health foods, vitamins, minerals, natural cures, exercise, herbs – at best these can only slow down the process of corruption and disintegration, postponing for a little season the inevitable catastrophe. You can eat bean sprouts and yogurt and drink teas and swallow vitamins, all of which are themselves but corruptible substances of earth, and have not one whit of power to administer eternal life to a corruptible organism. It is merely adding corruption to corruption! Immortality does not come through any natural, earthly, material, physical or temporal element that can be added to the body. So Jesus says – If you want a transformed soul and an incorruptible body – Behold, I stand at the door and knock! I'm knocking from the inside, and I'm coming out! When He marches triumphantly through the corridors of your soul and steps into the territory of your body, when His Lordship is established there, when the divine fusion takes place in those spheres, there will be a full and complete salvation of the WHOLE MAN! Hallelujah!

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2