…With Me from the Beginning

(from journal entry, 12-8-21)

It was early morning, and I was still in bed. I opened my eyes, and the first thought that crystalized out of the foggy dream mind was – “The Beginning.” The “beginning?” Why was I thinking that? Then another thought came that answered the question: “… with Me from the beginning.” With ME. I was with Christ. I knew that it was the Spirit speaking to me through thoughts. I began then to ponder these cryptic words. What did the Spirit mean?

So, I looked the word “beginning” up in the Greek. The “beginning” comes from the word arche, #G746 in Strong’s. It means “the origin, the active cause, used absolutely of the beginning of all things.”

Christ said, “I am the beginning and the end.” Christ is the “active cause.” He is our origin (Revelation 1:8-11,17-18). “In the beginning was the Word.” Christ is the beginning. Therefore, in Christ was the Word. Word = Logos [the purpose and plan of God]. Christ is the “active cause” in the creation of heaven and earth. “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3).

Our Savior, the “Word made flesh,” came to earth to bear witness to the truth, that He is the truth. And we, too, are to bear witness to the truth because we were with Him in the beginning. Christ said, “And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:27). This is not speaking of the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry. The Greek word arche is used for the beginning of all things. It is used as such in this verse: “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1).

 We are a part of the record in heaven of the things that will occur on earth. We were with him in the beginning. He knew us before because He created us as a member of His body in heaven before the earth was formed. Then He dipped us into the earth as we slid out of the matrix of our mothers’ wombs, and then we were cast out into the sea of lost mankind.

We, who had once basked in the glorious light of our Father in heaven, were now left to grow up, barely afloat in the treacherous rip tides of sin. Sin was our task master, and we obeyed his desires. The bondage to sin weighed heavily to the point of us drowning, and then we cried out in anguish and disillusionment, and then a hand reached down, a strong hand of love, and He pulled us up out of the quagmire.

He cleaned us up at the cross. He allowed us to identify our sinful selves with the Lamb, the sin sacrifice, and we died with Him. With the death of our old man, we believe that we are now buried with Him and raised with Him, now to walk in a “newness of life.” We now know and believe that “he that is dead is freed from sin.” We now spiritually step out on the water and walk in the Spirit (Rom. 6:1-11).

And then our earthly past died, and we began to grow as a seedling, tasting its first rays of light. Through study and communication with the Spirit, we grew and grew until He showed us that we had a special calling to fulfill, a special job to do. We are to share the love that saved us, by telling others the story of deliverance through His great love.

As we grow, we become a part of the witness in the earth of the record in heaven. God already knew that we would respond to His voice. He knew us and knew what we were made of. He made us, before the things we can see with our earthly eyes were made. For we were with Him in the beginning. And He has chosen us and given us a destiny way back there at the “Beginning.”

“…God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30). Yahweh predestined us, not to just be saved, but to be “conformed to the image of his Son.” At Christ’s return to earth, He will change our weak, earthly body, “that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Phil. 3:21).

We are talking about being like Christ and His apostles! Nothing less. But before this greatest of honors is bestowed upon us, we must “arm ourselves with the same mind.” We must know and do the apostles’ doctrine and add to our faith seven spiritual attributes of Christ.

We have so much knowledge to receive. Knowing His mind will finally drive out every thought that is contrary to His purpose and plan. The mind is the battlefield where we conquer the enemy’s errant desires for us. Amid the battle, it is easy to forget that we have already won, for “we are more than conquerors through Christ.” In Him lies our power, strength, and will.

O, let us shower Him with thanks for granting us the exit visa at the cross. Repentance from sin comes when we realize that we “are dead and our life is hid with Christ…” We are a part of His body now, unencumbered by that spiritually corrupt old life. We now believe that we are a part of Christ, and the Father’s heart of love dwells within us. All this happens because He mercifully allowed us to be with Him in the beginning.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Renewing Our Minds Changes Us

To renew our mind—how do we do it? We do it by adding Christ’s divine thoughts to our faith.

Peter tells us to “gird up the loins of your mind” (I Peter 1:13). The first item of the armor of God is to stand, “having your loins girt about with truth” (Eph. 6:14). Every Christian knows that the truth is in Christ. But the young Christian [and the old as well] has thoughts and concepts about Christ that are not Christ’s thoughts.

The apostles were writing to Christians who evidently needed to have their concepts of Christ’s gospel straightened out. Or they would not have been receiving those letters to the churches. It is the same today. The spiritual battleground is in the mind. We are led by our thoughts.

And God has given us the power to chase negative thoughts away and banish false concepts out of our minds. When our thinking has been purged and cleansed, then we will have been transformed, or changed. How is one transformed? “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove [discern, reckon as genuine] what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2). We will be able to know what God’s perfect will is and how to walk in it. But our minds must be free from false doctrines. That is how the renewal begins.

Definition of Renew

To renew means “to make new again.” You mean, our minds were new once upon a time, and then they got sullied, and now they await a cleansing and a restoration to the purity they once held?

Could this “renewing of our minds” entail us thinking what Christ thought? We are admonished to let Christ’s mind be in us (Phil. 2:5). Think like Christ thinks. Let Christ’s mind be in you. You mean we must allow it to reside in us? We do this by moving out our old thoughts to make room for the new thoughts, which are Christ’s thoughts, thoughts that require faith/belief.

So what did he think about?  He thought of the invisible heavenly things, not the things consumed by the five senses. “Take no thought for your life,” your visible earthly life (Matt. 6:25-31). He was submissive to the father in all things and taught us to do the same. In so doing, he was humble, giving glory and praise to the Father.

We must “let” His mind take over our mind. To do this we must know the plan and purpose of God. Christ always said, “I must be about my Father’s business” (Luke 2:49). He always did those things that pleased the Father.

Knowing the true plan and purpose of God is a big chore, but what is bigger is eliminating the old desires we had for our lives– our plans and schemes, our dreams for our own little futures. And they are little “compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us.”  Our old lives are but “dung” compared to eternally being at His side.

The Cross

Christ always taught His followers to repent from sin. This is the first step in getting rid of the false concepts about Christ. It is the cross that puts to death our old sinful selves, along with its desires, and enables us to “be raised to walk in a newness of life.” This shows us where our old thoughts were leading us and where the thoughts of God now bid us come.

First, we must get to that place of submission. We must leave the old life at the cross and take on Christ’s mission, which is establishing His Kingdom of love and righteousness throughout the earth and sharing his throne with his elect. That takes much study and prayer.

All this is for those human beings who renew their minds with Christ’s thoughts and are changed from selfish sinners into compassionate monarchs, soon ruling with Christ in His Kingdom right here upon earth. “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne…” (Rev. 3:21).

New Book, The Eleventh Commandment, Is Back from the Printer

Free promotional copies—with free shipping—are now available to all who ask. Just send your request to my email: wayneman5@hotmail.com. Include your name, mailing address, and the title of the book. Overseas requests will receive a pdf of the book.

Here is what to expect in the book: The premise is that Christ gave us another huge commandment—the eleventh. He said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34). This commandment has been hiding from us in plain sight. But in it He commands us to do something that is impossible for most people—to love like Christ and in so doing to be like Christ. Nobody believes that anyone can actually do that.

Because of its difficulty, the Spirit has given us many easier to obey imperatives. Like, “Forgive.” That is something we can accomplish. Forgiving is a facet of loving each other the way that Christ loved us. God’s love flows through us when we forgive another. This helps us to obey Christ’s eleventh commandment. Christ forgave us; now we, to be like Him, forgive each other.

The book shares a dozen of these easier-to-obey commandments, like “put on the armor of God” and pray like Christ prayed, to name a few.   This is how we fulfill God’s purpose in us, which is this: God is reproducing Himself—in us.

Order your copy now of this Spirit inspired knowledge. May He bless you on your journey back to His heart.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

From My “Beginning” to THE BEGINNING

I say, “In the beginning was the ________________.”

And you say, “Word.”

And I say, “Right. The Word is in the beginning. The Word is the beginning.”

Many confuse God’s initial call on their life as the end all, be all. And they keep going back to those first experiences when God made Himself real to them. I know because God gave me wonderful revelations while I was a stark raving sinner. While others were seeing imaginary pink elephants and purple paisley wall coverings visually melting, I was seeing the oneness of God and how we should all be living together and loving each other. I called these experiences my Jesus trips.

And I held on to them as my life became unbearable because I was unbearable. In fact, one of the revelations became my sign: The old self had to die. This began my search for the truth. And I vowed that I would follow the philosophy or religion that could teach me the death of self.

For I was studying all the religions at the time. And none of them could tell me how the old selfish ego dies—until I heard the answer from this preacher who had just set up a Missionary Training Center in East Texas twenty miles from where I was visiting my mother and stepfather. I had no idea that the Bible would give me my sign. But there it was all along. The preacher taught from Romans 6, where the Spirit through Paul speaks about how our old man is crucified with Christ.

My early experiences were preparing me for the day when I would meet my mentor who would teach me the intricacies of being crucified with Christ. But at first I held on to those original experiences. I wanted to stay at my “beginning.” I did not fully realize that God reveals things to us—wondrous things—as a way to call us out of darkness. But that initial calling is not Him choosing us to be like His Son. Those that are chosen by Him to be in His first fruits company of manifested sons and daughters must go into basic and then advanced training. I learned from my mentor that there was so much more knowledge than those first experiences that God used to call me out of darkness.

Yes, they are wonderful experiences where He shows us a glimpse of what our walk here on earth can be. Those experiences were our alarm clock that woke us up to the fact that God is very real. And it is not that we are to totally forget those experiences. But we are to use them to get to the real purpose that He has for us. They are the first stepping stones that lead us across the creek. If we keep going back to that first stepping stone, we will never get to our destination, our destiny in Him. The objective and purpose of the stones is to get across. We are not to stay on the first stone and admire its attributes.

­­­­Remaining in our past, in the “beginning” of our new existence with God, will never help us to grow to be like Christ and His early apostles. We need to speak what they spoke. They “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine. They spoke the words of Christ’s teachings (Acts 2: 42; Heb. 6: 1-2). They spoke of God’s purpose, and His plan to fulfill His purpose. This purpose of reproducing Himself in us will not be found in our “beginning,” in our initial experiences when God was calling us out of darkness. His purpose will only be found in THE BEGINNING—Him and His words. If we are to ever be counted as one of God’s future kings, sitting alongside the King Himself, we must realize that it is all about “His beginning.” He must take pre-eminence in our thinking.

“In the beginning was the Word.” Our King Yahshua is the Word. In Him are all of the Father’s details and plans to accomplish His purpose. And we can only get to where He desires us to be by studying Him, the Word.

We must study His plan to know it inside and out. What future king worth his salt does not prepare himself through studying his father’s will for the kingdom? The apostle Paul was clear on this: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3: 13-14).

How do we change our words and speak of His purpose and plan? “We” cannot get it done. It will be the Spirit of Truth abiding in us that will change our speech from our “beginning” to The Beginning. The Spirit of Truth is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Christ promised to send Him to us. The Spirit of Truth is our guide into all truth. His presence in us insures that we will not speak about ourselves. When He abides/remains/stays in us, He will take over our words that will only speak from the mind of Christ (John 16: 13).

Someone will say, “Well, what should I talk about then?” Study out His vision of sonship and share it with others. Share about His soon coming Kingdom. Learn the apostles’ doctrine and give it to others. Study out true repentance in Romans 6. That is the message for new followers, not our initial experiences. It is not about “us.” It is about Christ and His vision for us all. Study out the armor of God and teach it to others. Study out the Father’s purpose and plan to fulfill His purpose.

Finally, my brothers and sisters, feed His lambs and sheep. Not with old manna that was good for the purpose of calling you out of darkness. Feed them with the hidden manna that the Spirit of truth channels through us to others. Thank Him for those initial experiences and for the change He has made in your life. And then thank Him for the truth, for Christ is the truth, and He is the Word that was from the beginning (I John 1: 1; John 1: 1). kwh

[All these things and more are explained in my books—The Apostles’ Doctrine, The Royal Destiny of God’s Elect, The Unveiling of the Sons of God, and Yah Is Savior. They are free with free shipping. To order one of the books: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/donate/ ]

Receiving Authority to Cast Out Satan and To Heal

We saw in the October 23rd post that when we “resist the devil, he will flee from you.” We resist by thinking God’s thoughts seen in the metaphor of God’s armor (Eph. 6:13-18). The Spirit says to “arm yourselves” with the mind of Christ. Think His thoughts; they are found in the armor of God. God is the armor.

But we Christians have a problem. We are not fully dressed with His armor–His thoughts. And we wade out into the spiritual battlefield to combat our enemy, Satan. And many of us do not believe that we will have the victory over him. Many of us are plagued with the thoughts that the giants are too big. Many of us do not approach the fight like David did facing Goliath. David had no doubts about who would win. His trust was with Yahweh working through him. He defeated Goliath and the Philistines melted in fear and ran.

How did David walk in such authority? God says that we have that same power in the spiritual realm today.  He said that we now have the power to heal, to grow in His Spirit, and basically to become like the early apostles.

Questions come to mind. Why aren’t we Christians using this power more effectively? How does the power to cast out of Satan happen exactly? How does God do it through us? Knowing the truth about this will make us free of spiritual impotency when we come face to face with the enemy. Which piece of knowledge ushers us into this kind of authority over Satan?

Sovereignty

The answers lie in an understanding of God’s sovereignty. We should realize that our thoughts are not God’s thoughts initially. When we study His word, ideally we discipline our minds to think how He thinks. It is a kind of self-sacrifice, an abdicating of our innate human-centered stance in favor of our Creator’s thoughts about us and our position in the universe. And our position as His son or daughter is one with authority.

First, based on His words about Himself, God is sovereign; we are not. Mankind is so humanistic that we actually think that we make the choices that govern our existence. When all the while it was God behind the scenes working His will out on the earth’s stage. He chose us, and with His choices, He has guided our direction back to Him. “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit…” (John 15: 16).

For we in our first state have not the power to say to ourselves, “Live on forever.” Sooner or later we are faced with that disappointing reality called death. God rules in the kingdom of men. It is not our ball game; it is His. And with purposeful precision He has laid out the ground rules for us humans.

He Created Good and Evil

God in His sovereignty, created both good and evil. “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the LORD [Yahweh] do all these things” (Isa. 45:7). But why the evil? God uses evil to develop and mature the good in those whom He has chosen, which are His elect. He foreknew that mankind would have a precocious predilection for self; He made man that way. He foreknew that the humans He had created would rebel and fall; He was the producer of that tragedy—for a purpose: that mankind would cry out to Him, seeking solace from their Creator. Our tragic fall into the evil of sin would be the very environment that would produce a grateful heart upon our deliverance.

God is sovereign; He does it His own brilliant way. We would not have written the script with evil causing us to suffer. We would write it where we would not have an antagonist to struggle against. God’s thoughts are not ours, but we can make them ours.

He Created Angels To Be Our Servants

He created the angels to be “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Heb. 1:14). “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (NIV).

Lucifer is one of the angels, an angelic spirit created by YHWH to minister to the sons and daughters of God. Lucifer received orders from Yahweh to become the minister of evil here on earth. Lucifer became Satan and is the god of this world. He dispenses the evil under God’s supervision. He and his cohorts are sent to serve and minister sufferings to us. We become stronger in God when we overcome Satan and the sufferings. Therefore, Satan is my servant and minister. Yours, too. The irony is rich; what Satan means for harm, God uses for good. You cannot out-god God. All angels, then, are spirits created by God to help us reach the goals that He has set for us. They exist to help us grow up to be joint-heirs with Christ of the Father’s kingdom.

We Are Satan’s Master

Fifth, even though Satan is the minister of evil, he is an angel, and by definition, he is still serving and ministering to us. Satan is our servant. Therefore, with the Holy Spirit inside, we are Satan’s master. We have power over him. We have power from God to cast him out, “to loose the bands of wickedness and undo the heavy burdens,” and to heal those oppressed of the devil. When we resist Satan, he flees. We are to resist him in others, not just ourselves. We have power over our own servant.

When we really believe this truth, we will walk with authority, knowing the truth about our position and our enemy’s place in God’s plan and purpose. And because we understand now that we are Satan’s master, we will command him to leave and be gone from the people we love, and we will give them “beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning” (Isa. 61:3).

For it is this authority, presented to us through the knowledge of the holy, that generates the power to first cast out the devil and then to heal others. Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

Resist the Devil by Thinking God’s Thoughts

On our sojourn to the Eternal City, the New Jerusalem, we are to overcome many road blocks and hazards along the way. These are imposed and green lighted by our Father. He knows that our struggles against our adversary Satan will strengthen and fortify us and prepare us for kingship, which is His plan and purpose, after all.

God has authorized us to overcome Satan. He said, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Before we came to Christ, we were children of selfish darkness. We overcame the sin in our lives by coming to the cross and letting our old sinful self be “crucified with Christ.” And by belief in His literal bodily resurrection, He has raised us up to spiritually walk in “a newness of life.” HalleluYah! A wonderful freedom!

But that is only the first few steps of our walk with God. Satan is still around, trying to invade our minds with improper thoughts. He still “comes against us” by trying to direct our thoughts into retaining false concepts. Therefore, we are encouraged to “bring every thought into captivity unto obedience unto Christ.”

Those called and chosen are locked into a battle of the minds. Will we conquer, defeat and destroy every thought that comes against God’s plan? Will we search and destroy the vestiges of the carnal mind within us? When we receive Christ’s Spirit, we receive a new spiritual beginning. But in the Holy Land of our minds, thought-nations reside; they must be destroyed like Joshua and the Israelites were directed by God.

These are selfish little thought-nations; they are fearful little cowards that say, “The giants are too big. We cannot be like Christ. Nobody can.” These dastardly little beliefs have remained in the Holy Land of our minds, and they must be conquered and annihilated. We are to “bring every thought into captivity.” Studying His word will give us the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and will enable us to do battle.

There is a fight, a war that is waged against Satan. Much war imagery is used by the early apostles to describe what we are going through. But it is this very struggle with evil that strengthens us spiritually. We grow as we overcome Satan and the negativity that pervades his agenda.

In the parable of the tares, if the workers pulled up the tares, which are the evil ones, it would root up the good wheat and disturb their growth. So the Lord of the harvest told His servants to not gather up the tares. “Let both grow until the time of the harvest.” The children of God need to grow in the presence of the evil ones. Prematurely up-rooting them would impede the spiritual growth of the elect. This is why in God’s plan that evildoers inexplicably prosper while the righteous suffer. It is because the wheat needs the evil ones in order to grow and overcome and become stronger. The children of God have to suffer at the hands of the evil ones. These are the sufferings of Christ—our temptations and over comings (Matt. 13: 24-30, 36-43).

This is what helps us to grow as we overcome. The sons of God, the elect, need things to forgive so that His divine nature can mature within us. We need battles to win. We need the sick to heal and the dead to raise. By overcoming Satan, we grow into the manifested sons and daughters of God.

So how do we overcome the devil and all his wiles? First we have to learn just who and what he is. We need to know his purpose and the source of his power. And through our entire enquiry, let us remember that his power has limits. Why? Since Satan flees from us when we resist him, then he does not have unlimited power. Righteous resistance thwarts his attacks.

And God has provided us a way to resist. It is clear cut and to the point. The Spirit writing through His apostle Paul tells us to put on the armor of God. “Take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm” (Eph. 6:13-18 NASB). We resist the devil by arming ourselves with “the same mind that was in Christ” (I Peter 4: 1). When meditated upon, the armor fills our mind with the same thoughts that Christ our example thought upon. The literal armor represents aspects of God’s vision and plan to fulfill His purpose. His armor is spiritual, clothed in thoughts—Christ’s thoughts. As we exercise all aspects of the armor, we will resist the devil by standing against him and for God.

The devil works through our mind. We are, after all, led by our thoughts. We then must repent of our old thoughts and think God’s thoughts. The armor of God is an array of His thoughts, likened to parts of armor, both offensive and defensive. Thinking these thoughts allow us to resist the devil: truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and prayer. But they must be free from old leaven teachings in order to be effective.

To more efficiently fight Satan, we need to know just who he is and for what purpose the Creator has loosed him on the earth.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[Ordering My Free Books in Paperback

I am now able to send you a copy of my books absolutely free with free shipping.  Please specify which one.

Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality explores the deeper meaning of our Savior’s Hebrew name Yahshua, which means Yahweh is the Savior.

The Unveiling of the Sons of God explains how the whole creation is waiting and longing for the manifestation (the unveiling) of the sons of God for these latter days. Christ will be totally formed in His elect as they will have grown and matured spiritually into His likeness and power.

The Royal Destiny of God’s Elect. It explores God’s vision for us, to be kings with Christ and how He will use us to reproduce His nature of Love.

My latest book is The Apostles’ Doctrine. Their doctrine was Christ’s teachings. And the early church walked in those teachings. This book reveals just what they are and how to walk in them.

Send your request, specifying which one of my books you desire, to my email address:  wayneman5@hotmail.com  Include your name and mailing address. For those outside the United States, or who may prefer a pdf copy of the last two books mentioned, please specify.  Also, you may read the first two books online at my website Immortality Road found here:   https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com

God bless you and your family, and thank you for taking a stroll with me on Immortality Road.]

What Do We Do Next? We Continue Steadfastly in the Apostles’ Doctrine

A brother the other day asked me, “I am understanding about how the walk with Christ is training us to be kings with Him. But what exactly do we do next?”

The operative word in his important question is “do.” Do we just “go to church” like the generation before us did? Do we pay our tithes and offerings, sitting patiently in the pews for something remarkable to happen?

That is not what the apostles taught the early church. Somebody will say, You cannot work for salvation; you cannot “do” anything; it is a gift. Yes, salvation is a gift. But we obey His commands because of the gift–not to receive the gift. That would be “works” that we do in order to be saved. We do not do things to be accepted by our King; we do what He has told us to do because we love Him, His purpose, and His plan. To grow spiritually we do what He has commanded us to do; this helps us to “make our calling and election sure.” In a word, He wants us to grow out of spiritual childhood and into fully matured spiritual giants in the faith.

The following are a few of those things that He has asked us to do after we receive salvation:

(1) “Put on the whole armour of God” (Eph. 6: 11-18). Here the Spirit uses an extended  metaphor that compares the spiritual arming of our hearts and minds to the physical armour used in mortal combat.

(2) Moreover, we are to “add to your faith” certain attributes of the Spirit; this is “partaking of the divine nature” (II Peter 1: 4-10). These seven additions must be studied out and applied by faith.

(3) Also, we are to get rid of false concepts about God, which is called “purging out the old leaven” (I Cor. 5: 7). This is a tough one. For instance, can we ditch the Christmas tree and the Easter eggs and bunnies and especially, what they represent?

(4) We are also told to pray in accordance with the model prayer the Savior gave us called the Lord’s Prayer. It is not to be mouthed by rote with little understanding, but as the pattern prayer. We are to study its concepts and mold our prayers to reflect what is on the Master’s mind.

(5) We are to follow the New Testament examples and “continue steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” (Acts 2: 42). There are more things we are to do, but these will get us started. [I have shared extensively on these things on this website; just use the “search” slot on the home page to get to them or click on the subject headings on the right column]

The Acts of the Apostles is, of course, the complete title of the book of Acts. It is a recounting of the things that the early apostles did, right after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. It is a record of their actions. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter preaches to the crowd repentance from sin and faith toward God and told the new converts to be baptized. And these newly added souls to the body of Christ “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” (Acts 2: 38-42).

If we want to be like the early church, then we need to do what they did. They “continued.” To continue with something, we first must have that something working in our lives. What the early church had was the doctrine of Christ. He gave His teachings to His disciples; having His doctrine made them apostles. And they in turn shared His teachings with those gathered at the Feast of Pentecost where 3,000 believed and were added to them that day.

The Doctrines of Christ and His Apostles

So what doctrines did Christ and the apostles teach? We have already cited three of them two paragraphs up. We can pour over the New Testament again and again, looking for “the apostles’ doctrine” that the early church continued in. We can take somebody’s word for it next time we talk to a preacher. Or we can go to where an apostle has already listed them for us in the scriptures. We can listen to the office of teacher show us where to find it and explain it to us. The teacher is the Spirit of Christ.

The “apostles’ doctrine” is called “the first principles of the oracles of God” (Heb. 5: 12-14).  The apostles’ doctrine is the elemental, foundational precepts of the very utterances of God. These teachings are also called “the principles of the doctrine of Christ.” It is at this juncture that the apostle writing Hebrews lists them: repentance from dead works, faith toward God, doctrine of baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement. Christ builds His house on these principles—nothing less. And these teachings will infuse His life within us unto perfection, which is the fulfillment of Christ reproduced in us (Heb. 6: 1-2).

They should sound familiar. Peter in Acts 2 mentioned four of them. We need to first know about them and then study them out so that they are a part of our heart and soul. And then we are to continue in them. But this takes the gift of a God-sent teacher to introduce and then expound on them and their relevance to our new life.

These doctrines make up the foundation of His house, “whose house are we.” Taking them seriously and learning about them and getting them deep within our hearts is “building our house upon the rock.” When the winds and rain come from Satan, then these teachings make us strong to weather the storm. Having them solid in us helps us spiritually grow out of babyhood and childhood and makes us ready for the strong meat of His word. These are the teachings about the governing of His kingdom during the 1,000 year reign of Christ. The meat of the word is beyond these doctrines; the meat of His word brings into us a preparedness to rule with Him in His kingdom, bringing peace to a chaotic earth. He is going to use those who are prepared and “fit for the Master’s use.” Those who count His teachings as a light thing will be sorely surprised when He says, “Depart from Me…I never knew you.” This thing is real and heavy and we better take heed to His voice while it may be heard. For there is coming a day…   Kenneth Wayne Hancock         {To be continued…}

[You need to send for my new book The Royal Destiny of God’s Elect. It is totally free to all with free shipping in the USA. I want to give it to you; I love you all. I want you to have this knowledge; you are going to need it. 300 followers of Immortality Road Blog and only 20 have sent for the book. I wrote it for you and any other person interested. It will help you solidify the vision of God’s purpose and plan. I don’t know what more to say. Just send me your address and I’ll get it right out to you. To: wayneman5@hotmail.com  On subject line put “New book”]

Love Makes Known the Plan of God

We know that God is love and God is light. Therefore, Love is Light. Since light makes things known, then Love makes manifest as well. Love sheds light on what and who God is. Where agape love is present, the Spirit of Love makes God known. We see God when we see love–true selfless love from above, as we see in Christ’s laying down His life for His friend [1].

Christ said, “I am the light of the world.” In this He was saying, Through my life, death, and life-after-death, I make known the Father’s purpose and plan of reproducing Love. If you believe in Me and the love that I showed when I laid my life down for you, then that same Spirit of Love will engender in you a new life that will, in turn, enlighten others who now sit in darkness. He will give us His own Spirit of love. Consequently, we will become  the light of the world because He will be living His life through us, His body  [2].

In a word, in a seed thought, God is Love. He is the greatest thing in the universe. Everyone will agree. All the poets and writers of song down through the ages confirm that Love–selfless love–is a divine thing and that it should be emulated by mankind.

Man knows this, even down into his DNA. He knows that he should love his fellow man. The truth is that God created him to be the “glory of God.” Man is designed to contain the Spirit of Love, which is God. Man was created as a temple for the Spirit of Love (God) to dwell in. Man knows that this kind of love is what we should strive for [3].

We are moved by the soldier who fell on a grenade to save the lives of his buddies, or the stranger who died in a house fire saving a little child. And millions are touched by the selfless love shown by our Savior on the cross.

God is Love and is the greatest and most powerful thing in the universe. And because Love by its very nature shares with others and gives, God could not but create a plan to share Himself with His creation.

He purposed it and being all-powerful was able to implement His purpose and plan of duplicating and reproducing Himself. He planned this all out in His mind. He thought it into existence. Thoughts are comprised of words that occupy first His mind. And He has given us the power to think His very same thoughts. First we must have the knowledge of the thoughts about His purpose and plan. Then we must choose to surrender our restless minds to His thoughts. When we start thinking His thoughts, then “the peace that passes all understanding” will come upon us.

His purpose is to reproduce Himself, to reproduce Love throughout His entire creation. He is the Seed of Love that will reproduce itself. He became the Seed, which is the Word, which is the Logos, which is comprised of the thoughts of His Mind. And this “Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” His plan was to pour this reproductive energy into a human vessel that could “fall into the ground and die” and through the resurrection, would “bring forth much fruit” at the harvest.  The much fruit is the thousands of manifested sons that will sit as kings with Him on His throne upon His return to this earth.

Those that overcome all things in this era have a royal destiny. They are chosen; they are elected by God for this honor. They do respond; they do study and pray that they be counted worthy for this honor, but it is all through His grace. For it is God that gives them the strength and power to continue against the gainsayers, the unbelievers, the worldly, and the ones with precious little faith. God gives them the determination to get up and face the spiritual enemy who lurks in the halls of minds. God helps their unbelief and sees them through to the finish line.

For they serve their great invisible Father Yahweh, who resides in His Son, who is the Head of the body of an organism called the church. And when this vision becomes as crystal in their hearts and minds, they will realize that all scriptures that pertain unto Christ pertain unto them, for they are His body. When we abide in Him, the scriptures speak of us.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1.   I John 1: 5; I John 4: 8; Eph. 5: 13
2.  John 8: 12; John 15: 13; Matt. 5: 14; Col. 1: 18
3. I Cor. 11: 7; I Cor. 3: 16, 6: 19

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Do We Do Now to Grow Spiritually? Part Two–Additions to the Faith and the Armor of God

We cannot do things to achieve salvation from God, but we must do certain things in order to grow His Spirit within us after we receive a new heart, after we are “born from above.”

Because our Creator has a purpose of reproducing Himself (Love) in us, He, of course, has a definite plan to fulfill His purpose. He has thought it all through and lined it all out in His written word. And in His scriptures of truth is contained the thoughts of the Son of God, the “Word made flesh.” And these thoughts contain admonishments, and when done by us Christians, we will grow up to be like Him, which fulfills His purpose.

In Part One we explored the apostles’ doctrine as the first thing we need to be learning and doing. We also saw that we are to “purge out the old leaven,” which are the false concepts and teachings about God that we learned coming up.

The Additions to the True Faith

The apostle Peter admonishes us to add to our faith certain spiritual qualities of the King. In order that we may “partake of the divine nature,” we are to add virtue to our faith, and “to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness charity (agape love).” He goes on to say that we will be blind without them. But with them we will “make [our] calling and election sure, and that will ensure our entrance “into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 1: 3-11).

These additions are not little romper room words to be pasted on a bulletin board. Rather they are facets of a jewel of great price, and that jewel is His very character. These additions are aspects of God’s divine nature. A shallow perusal will not do. They must be studied and prayed over and sought with a whole heart in reverential awe.

Peter sums it up by saying, You better take heed to what I am saying to you. I have a “more sure word of prophecy.” I know what  I am talking about because I was there with our Savior on the Mount of Transfiguration, and I beheld His glory. I am speaking to you now as “a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts” (1: 16-19).

God has miraculously preserved Peter’s words to us for all these 2,000 years. The Spirit still speaks through him to us. We need to study this out thoroughly, or we are going to miss something very big in God’s plan.

[For more on the additions to the faith go here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/category/additions-to-our-faith/ ]

The Whole Armor of God

The fourth thing we are admonished to do is put on the armor of God (Eph. 6: 11-18). Since “God is a Spirit,” Paul is talking about spiritual things. He uses earthly military metaphors that a combat soldier of his time might wear to elucidate the spiritual. For we are in a spiritual war “against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” It is spiritual wickedness that we battle, not literal things.

The battlefield is in our minds. So it is the replacing of erroneous thoughts with thoughts about godly truth that will shield our minds from succumbing to the adversary, the devil. We are told to “arm yourselves with the same mind” as Christ (I Pet. 4: 1).

So the whole armor of God is thinking the thoughts that Christ and His apostles thought. Peter also tells us to “girt up the loins of your mind” (I Pet. 1: 13). The first piece of armor is to have “your loins girt abut with truth.” Think on the truth; get rid of the false concepts that we know to be in error.

Then we are to put on the “breastplate of righteousness.” We need to study out the word “righteousness” to take to heart its real scriptural meaning. It has to do with the purging of sin out of our lives.

The we are to have our “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” The gospel of the good news of God’s kingdom coming to this earth along with the King’s return (Mark 1: 14-15). We should study it out and think God’s thoughts about it. We should be prepared to share these thoughts about the “gospel of the kingdom of God.” For His kingdom is the good news.

We are to take the “shield of faith.” Knowing and believing in His faith, which has been “once delivered to the saints,” will protects us from attacks of the wicked one. And then we must take the “helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of
God.”

All these are portions of the armor of God. But it would not be the whole armor without “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.”

Prayer is the last but not the least of the armor. For it is the most difficult to exercise, it would seem. For we all must be taught to pray, as the disciples asked the Savior to teach them to pray.

It was then that He gave them a prayer to model their prayers after. It is called The Lord’s Prayer. And it has been used and abused so often that the deep meaning has been lost. We are not to mouth vain repetitions of this very prayer, but rather pray according to its precepts. It is not a poll parrot incantation to mindlessly repeat; it is a blue print of how to literally touch God in heaven.

But the old leaven about this prayer is so thick that few can get through it to the truth the Savior was trying to teach us.

[For more on what the Lord’s Prayer means go here: https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/the-lords-prayer-is-not-an-incantation-chant-or-ritual/                                        https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/the-lords-prayer-blueprint-for-building-gods-temple-us/ ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in the “Now”–Having the Mind of Christ

Now is the only sliver of time we have to actually live the life God wants us to live.  Right now is when we really live in the Spirit.

Yesterday is but a memory of a “now” long past, an aging “now” that was already lived. The “past” is a fruitless tree for the hungry pilgrim today.

And tomorrow is a hoped for “now.” It is a dream of what a future “now” might be. But tomorrow’s promise is empty for most, for it rarely delivers our desire of what we would have the future hold. It usually does not work out as anticipated. So when “tomorrow” finally comes, it becomes “today.” It becomes a “now’ that is disappointing, for it rarely measures up to our imaginations of what it should be.

And so today’s “now” does not satisfy individuals who ponder their pasts and futures. Their “now” becomes blah. And because their present moment is not fulfilling, their minds race yet again to the past and future.

Monitor your mind for thirty minutes, and you will see it jump to thoughts of things and situations that have already occurred or things that might occur in the future.

So there is only one thing to do. Right now we should open our eyes and see the sun’s rays reflect light off of the trembling leafy mirrors of the pear tree. We must inhale the song of the boisterous blue jay clothed in myriad shades of azure. We should listen to the bubbling of a toddler’s joy, reaching down to hold their trusting hand. In a word, we should experience our own “now” with its accompanying sights and sounds and tastes and smells and touch.

It is this “now,” which is free from the fears, frustrations, regrets, and anxieties of our pasts and futures, that is the only environment in which we may hear that “still small voice” of God. He will not try to compete with the cacophony of nonsense our thoughts portray. They will drown His voice out every time. It is only the quiet mind, listening in the “now,” that He will speak to.

For prayer is not just us speaking to God, but it is a conversation. He would like to speak a word to us, too. He wants to speak to us right now, but we can’t hear Him if we are thinking about our pasts and futures.

Radio Noise

Our minds are like a radio, receiving thought-signals constantly. If we are listening to the trivial worldly signals, our lives become a worldly broadcast. If we train our minds to block the thoughts of our pasts and futures, then we quiet our minds to live in this very moment. And it is in this very moment, that God can speak to us.

Other voices speak out of our pasts and futures. When we listen to these interior monologues, we cannot hear clearly God’s transmission to us. We cannot hear the “still small voice,” nor can we hear the “voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD (Yahweh).”

As Christians, we are to “let this mind be in you that was in Christ.” He was not thinking about our pasts and futures.” We are to “arm ourselves with the same mind” as His.

Gaining the knowledge of what was in His mind is half the battle. The other half is arming ourselves with His very thoughts about His plan and purpose, free from worldly imaginations and “old leaven.” This is putting “on the whole armor of God.” And this starts with the purging of our old thoughts and replacing them with Christ’s thoughts, which can only be added in the “now.”    Kenneth Wayne Hancock