The Bread from Heaven—Doing His Will

(From Journal, 3-11-18)

Christ said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (John 4:32 ESV). The disciples knew about earthly food. Therefore, Christ was speaking of a spiritual bread, a bread from heaven. So, we see that food = bread = manna. That food is the “hidden manna,” the invisible heavenly bread.

What is this bread from heaven? Let Christ teach us: “My food/bread/manna is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34). In other words, the heavenly food, the bread of God, is the doing of the Father’s will and finishing His work. This is what will sustain us on our pilgrimage.

Our trek here on earth is to do His will. Christ prays: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” Most speak these words but have no knowledge of what they mean. His will for this earth is for His Kingdom to literally come and for His throne to be established in Jerusalem, the city of the great King. Yahshua is Yahweh in human form; He is the Anointed One. He is the “King of kings.” Most do not know of His will, yet. When this stone Kingdom arrives, and when the King prescribes orders to establish righteousness throughout, then He will have finished the works. The kicker: He is using us to fulfill His will.     

His will is extremely important. “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven.” Those entering the kingdom of heaven are doing His will; they obey Christ’s directives on how His government will spread throughout all the earth.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (John 4:4). Doing-what-His-word-says is the food we are nourished by.

But many are not being fed, though they go to the church buildings every week. Notwithstanding, a few at present are learning what His will is and the word that explains His plan. The word that God speaks tells of His purpose, and His plan to accomplish it. His will is His intention to fulfill His purpose, which is to reproduce and multiply agape love, which He is. His word is the logical explanation [the logos] of how He will accomplish it. His word through the Spirit of Truth leads us into all truth. His word is the spiritual bread of life that feeds us and gives us overcomers strength to make it to His throne. 

Prayer that Fulfills His Will

Prayer is communing with God, who is our Creator, our Father, the great Spirit of love and truth. We enter His courts with praise and thanksgiving, acknowledging that He is “our Father,” that we are only one member of His royal family.

The loins of our mind must be girded with truth, for He is the Spirit of truth. Prayers uttered in error fail to move Him, but prayers founded in His truth works with Him and His plan and purpose, and those prayers penetrate the brazen dome of heaven and enter into His ears.

Prayers that exalt His will for His creation are answered. And what is His will? It is His intention to bring it all into Christ, that love be multiplied, that He who is love, would be reproduced throughout the universe. If we ask Him with this in mind, He will answer and give us what we need to finish the Father’s work.

(For more on this see purpose | Search Results | Immortality Road (wordpress.com)

The Lost Sheep, The 144,000–God Searching for His People

God is searching for His people in these latter days.  Granted, He loves the whole world and everyone in it, but there is only one people on the face of this big wide earth that He is actually searching for.  It is the people He chose way back in Abraham’s day, who would be called by Abraham’s grandson’s name—Israel, meaning “Prince with God.”  Yes, salvation is open to all of His creation, but He has “not cast away His people which He foreknew.”   He is searching for them now.  To understand His heart and the importance that His people have in His plan for our day, we must rehearse their trail through Bible history.

You know the story about His chosen people—how Yahweh the Creator chose out a people to reveal Himself to and through—a people who came out of the loins of Adam and Eve about 6,000 years ago, a special creation with a special purpose in the mind of God.  How Abraham and Sarah were promised a miracle son in the book of Genesis—how he would be called Isaac, and he would have Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel.  And Jacob/Israel had 12 sons, and they multiplied and remained the chosen people of God.

And then for most people it gets fuzzy.  Most remember a few “Bible stories.”  Few study the Bible in depth to see where the thread of prophecy leads.  The 12 sons married and multiplied into small clans or tribes. Jacob/Israel’s favorite son Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers.  Famine gripped the land and Jacob/Israel and his 11 sons and their families had to go down to Egypt to buy food.  In the mean time,  Joseph had by the miraculous hand of God become the governor of Egypt, Pharaoh’s right hand man.

Joseph, a type of the Messiah, has mercy on his brothers and their families, forgiving them and setting them up.  The Hebrews then stay in Egypt and have it good there and grow over the next 400 years to 3 million, a country within a country.  In the course of time, these 12 tribes of people, all the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel, are enslaved by the Egyptians.  Moses, a Hebrew child reared as an Egyptian prince by Pharaoh’s sister, is called by Yahweh to deliver the children of Israel (all 12 tribes).  Through many miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, Moses leads God’s people into the Promised Land, into the land of Canaan.

After much adventure and misadventure, Joshua, Moses’ protégé, leads them on in, and they conquer the land.  Each of the 12 tribes gets an inheritance of actual real estate and they take up residence.

Their form of government is a theocracy—God ruling them through His representatives, the prophets and the judges.  They are, however, extremely unruly, and seek after other gods and provoke Yahweh to anger and jealousy.  When things go bad for them, they cry out to Yahweh and He comes to their rescue.  When things are good, food and prosperity plentiful, then they forget Him and, what He calls, “whore after other gods.”  He likens them to His wife.

This goes on for about 500 years, from about 1500 B.C. to 1,000 B.C.  At this time they want to be like the other nations around them; they want a king like they have.  And so, against Samuel the prophet’s warning, God gives them King Saul, who is later deposed for His sins, and then has Samuel anoint “a man after God’s own heart,” the illustrious David, the son of Jesse, the ancestor of Jesus/Yahshua.

Later, David’s son Solomon is crowned King of Israel, meaning he is the king of all twelve tribes of  Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel.  Solomon was a great man, but his kingdom would be torn in two because of His idolatry.  For he “loved many strange women…of the nations concerning which Yahweh said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go into them…” (I Kings 11: 1-2).  So God told Solomon that because you have done this, “I will surely rend the kingdom from thee” (v. 11).  For David’s sake, Yahweh waited until after Solomon’s death to divide the 12 tribed kingdom.

In about 975 B. C., a civil war broke out and it split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel with ten of the twelve tribes, and the Kingdom of Judah with the other two tribes.  The Kingdom of Israel (10 tribes) lay to the north with its capital Samaria.  The Kingdom of Judah lay to the south with its capital Jerusalem.  They both had their own kings, with their own religious and political systems.  In fact, one can read about  them at war with each other in many parts of the Bible.

Yahweh warned them that He would punish them for their evil ways going back hundreds of years.  And really nothing changed after the split.  Both Houses, both the House of Israel (10 tribes) and the House of Judah (2 tribes), kept doing evil in God’s sight over the next 300+ years.  They kept breaking His 10 commandment law.  Yet He was faithful, sending prophets to both kingdoms, admonishing them to turn from their evil ways.

Until, finally, Yahweh had had enough.  For His chosen people’s own good, He would do the unthinkable.  He would scatter them to the four winds.  He would raise up terrible nations to sweep down upon their little kingdoms, and to gobble them up and slay some of them and to lead them into captivity.  He had warned them through His prophets of this very detestable thing, yet they would not hearken.  Prophets like Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, among many others cried unto them, reminding them of the great heritage, and warning them to repent and turn their hearts back to God, but they would not hear of it. They were smug in their assurance that their new way of worship was proper.  But they had other gods before the true Creator God, and had forgotten the Rock “from which they were hewn.”

And so, in 721 B. C., the fierce Assyrian Empire swooped down upon the northern Kingdom of Israel (ten tribes) and led them back east to their capital city of Nineveh.  And these enslaved offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel became lost.  They lost their identity as part of God’s chosen people.  They disappeared into the mists of time, and modern scholars are hard pressed to shed light on just where they went or what happened to them.  But “God has not cast away His people which He foreknew” (Rom. 11: 2).

They are mentioned in the “New Testament,” however.  Christ said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Matt. 15: 24, NIV, ESV, RSV).  He spoke no idle words.  The lost tribes of Israel are extremely important to Christ, and consequently, to the Father.  And the apostle James addresses his book “to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, greeting” (1:1).  That has to be the descendants of the Kingdom of Israel (ten tribes) or to the whole House of Israel (12 tribes).  James, who had the same mind of Christ, cleared that up by writing to the 12 tribes that were already scattered all over the world.  Also, the apostle Paul said that as of A.D. 62, the twelve tribes were not only in the earth, but were “instantly serving God day  and night” in hope of the promise of the resurrection of Christ (Acts 26: 6-7).

Kingdom of Judah Carried Away

That same fate that happened unto the northern Kingdom of Israel (10 Tribes) happened to the southern Kingdom of Judah around  603 B. C. by the Babylonians.  Citizens of this two-tribed kingdom, by now called “Jews,” were carried away captive, but they did not lose their identity.  The original Hebrew religion instituted by Moses had by now changed into the beginning of the modern religion of Judaism, which, according to the Savior Yahshua, was hypocritical, evil, and was not pleasing to God (John 8:44).  By 29 A.D. many Edomites (Idumaens) had converted to the Mosaic religion and had changed it into something altogether repulsive to Christ.  In fact, He told them, “You are of your father the devil.”  Judaism had become now the religion of the “serpents” and “vipers,” the Pharisees and Sadducees, who are the progenitors of the modern Jewish religion today.  This is the “synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie,” spoken of by Jesus/Yahshua Himself (Rev. 3: 9).  85% of modern Jewry are not from the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe). 

Because the Israelites (10 tribes) were lost to history, people now think that the only Israelites left are Jews.  But the true Jews made up only two tribes out of the original twelve.  That leaves the vast majority of the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” out here in the world, their identity lost, waiting for God to reveal it to them.  For these of the lost ten tribes do figure prominently in prophecy for these latter days.  144,000 of them are detailed specifically in Revelation 7 and 14.  12, 000 from each tribe are mentioned by name.  “Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand.  Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand.  Of the tribe of Gad…” and on through Benjamin “were sealed twelve thousand,” to a total of 144,000.  So a remnant of the lost tribes will be revealed in these latter days in order to fulfill these scriptures.

The 144,000 from the Lost Tribes of Israel

These have a very precious and wonderful calling, for they will be sealed by God as His servants before His throne (7: 3, 15).  They will have “their Father’s name [Yahweh] written in their foreheads” (14: 1).  They were “redeemed from among men,” meaning that they are not super heavenly entities, but came from the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They were washed in the Lamb’s blood like every other Christian, but they have grown to full spiritual maturity and are the “firstfruits unto God” (v. 4).  They are “without fault before the throne of  God” (v. 5).  Without fault!  Perfectly mature manifested sons of the living God!

And they come out of the twelve tribes of Israel.  That may not be politically correct to say, but that is what Revelation 7 says.  This is the reason that it is extremely important for us to study the prophecies concerning the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” out.  Christ said that He was sent to them!  It was important to Him.  Is it important to us?

Some doubters will say that the 12 tribes are lost, and “What difference does it really make anyway?”  Well, it would not make any difference if the future of His chosen people did not matter to Him.  God says that His manifested sons will come out of these twelve tribes, and it does matter to Him.  He said, “My ways are not your ways; my thoughts are not your thoughts.”

We are told to seek the mind of God.  Know His thoughts.  What is He thinking about?  Is He still thinking about His people, the lost sheep of the House of Israel?  Yes.  “Has God cast away His people? God forbid…The gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:1, 29).  Yahweh called them and a remnant of them will come back to Him in these latter days.  The question for us is this: Are we one of them?  Will we be one of the “firstfruits of God” who are very close to the Lamb and do the greater works that He promised some would do?

Kenneth Wayne Hancock   {Please make a comment.  I would love to hear from you and where you reside in the earth.}

“Thy Will Be Done in Earth”–The Coming of the Sons of God

     God’s will is to present His Sons to the world at the end of this age.  It is His wish and purpose, and it will be accomplished “in earth as it is in heaven” (see The Will of God–His Wish and Desire at   https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/the-will-of-god-his-wish-his-desire/ ). 

     God’s will is His game plan.  He will win.  The Kingdom of Light will overtake and destroy the kingdom of darkness.  Like Gideon’s army, He will use human beings that are weak and powerless in their own eyes.  “Not many mighty” according to the flesh will He use.

     His will is to magify Himself in a body of many sons and daughters.  He is the Seed, and there will be a great harvest of “many sons unto glory.” 

     This is what the scriptures are all about–the overcoming of evil, which Yahweh created (Isa. 45:7), by humans who know they need Him to overcome the adversary the devil.

     Through this victory of good over evil, He will receive great glory as He helps His body of sons and daughters do this.  His name will be honored and glorified.  All will know that Yahshua means Yah Is the Savior.  And He shall enact what His very name means as He saves us from destruction in the latter days.  Yah will deliver us out of the ashes of a smoldering world system.

     Christ wanted us to think about this and pray to Yahweh with this understanding.  This is why  He included “the Father’s will” and how it is coming to pass in the earth as it is in heaven.

     But to comprehend His will, one must understand and believe pre-destination and pre-determination.  In short, they mean having a destiny lined out, determined, and known before it takes place. 

     Thus it is with the sons of God.  Being in in His heart, their destiny is all written out in  heaven before it takes place here on earth.  It is scripted.  The book of life has been penned in heaven.  He is the “Author …of our faith (Heb. 12:2).  

     Many will reject this truth because it is not politically correct.  It disagrees with the tenets of secular humanism, the sly opiate that dopes humans into thinking that because they exist, then they must be the center of the universe.  But “my thoughts are not your thoughts,” warns Yahweh.

     The apostle Paul knew that he was an apostle only  because God had willed it.  He starts many of his epistles saying that he is an apostle “by the will of God” (I Cor. 1:1; II Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; Col. 1:1).  He understood that God had ordained and pre-determined him to be “conformed to the image of His Son.”

     Make no mistake about it.  God’s will includes Him purposing in Himself to insure that He multiplies Himself through many offspring. 

     We are “the called according to His purpose.  For whom he did foreknow, He also did pre–destinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:28-29). 

     His will is His purpose in the earth, which is predicated on what He wrote down in the book written before the foundation of the world.  He chooses them because He knew them before, like  He did the prophet Jeremiah (1:5).  He gives these elect a destiny to become a son before they get here on earth. 

     These He calls and justifies through the cross experience.  They grow up spiritually until sanctified.  And finally, He glorifies them.  This process of spiritual growth is encripted in several key scriptural phrases that come in “threes”: “the blade, the ear, full corn in the ear;” “children, young men, fathers;” 30, 60, and 100 fold fruit (Mt. 13). 

     Christ spoke plainly about the Father’s will.  “And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raise them up at the last day.”  He promised us that He would raise us up at the last day!  He would raise up God’s sons; none would be left behind; none would be forgotten, whose names were written in the book of life.

     So, when we pray, Christ want us to have the Father’s will in mind about the coming of the sons of God, encapsulated by these words: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”  KWH

“Our Father”–The Father of the Sons and Daughters of God

God is not everyone’s Father.  He is the Creator of all, but not Father of all.  I’m just saying; that’s what the English says.

Christ told the Pharisees, who were very religious, “You seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth…You are of your father the devil…a murderer from the beginning…a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:40:44).

We see, then, two spiritual fathers at work in the earth: “Our Father”  and “your father the devil.”  And to help the sons and daughters of God, Christ left us the salutation in His Blueprint Prayer, “Our Father” to distinguish our Father from their father.  (To read more on them and their father, see “Children of the Wicked One” under “Recent Posts”).

The words, “Our Father,” also signifies an engendering by God, begetting several spiritual offspring.

The LORD (Yahweh in the Hebrew), told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jer. 1:4-5).  God knew Jeremiah before his earthly conception and gestation!  And God chose him and ordained him a prophet before he “came forth out of the womb.”  Jeremiah was “born from above”–begotten by God long before coming to earth.  Jeremiah was in the very heart of God–and so were we, His sons and daughters, before the time of our earthly, fleshly sojourn.

Our Father “has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).  He knew us before and has pre-destinated us “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).   He has given us a destiny to be like Christ before the world was ever founded.  This is nothing less that God’s purpose–reproducing Himself.

And so the cycle goes: seedtime and harvest.  God the husbandman has great patience waiting for His children to grow up until they are “conformed to the image of His Son.”  He will endure the “vessels fitted unto destruction” in order to create His “royal priesthood,” His ruling offspring.  This is our destiny, ordered for us by “our Father.”

For make no mistake.  Christ told it like it is.  He warned that in the last days, many will be deceived by false prophets and false teachers who lead the sheep through the wide and broad gate to destruction.  They are wolves in “sheep’s clothing.”  They show themselves as God’s spokesmen, but are really modern day Pharisees, whose father is not “our Father.”

And to the many who are deceived by them Christ warns: “Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:13-23).  They mouthed a bunch of half-truths but didn’t do the will of “our Father which is in heaven” (v. 21).

There is a lot in the phrase “Our Father, which art in heaven.”  We must begin to pray with the understanding of His words.  It is a great privilege to call Him “our Father.”  Not everyone truthfully can.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

The Lord’s Prayer–Blueprint for Building God’s Temple–Us

The Lord’s Prayer is a blueprint showing us how to become His temple, which is the habitation of God.  It is not a ritualistic chant.

An architect’s blueprint contains blue lines and white paper that to the trained eye reveal what the building should look like.

The Lord’s prayer is a spiritual blueprint that shows us what the temple of God looks like and how to build it. Christ said that His house “shall be called of all nations the house of prayer” (Mark 11: 17).  And in His example prayer to us, we understand what those prayers consist of in His temple.  And His temple is us (I Cor. 3:16).  We, His sons and daughters, born from above, born of the King, are now His princes and princesses in training to rule with Him.  “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3:21).

So what do we do with a blueprint?  A building contractor would not stand around repeating the dimensions found in the blueprint. By merely reading and repeating the words and figures found on the blueprint, the edifice would never get built.  Rather, he has to study it, visualize it, believe in the vision of the architect for the building, and get to work in order to make it a reality.  This is what God’s children need to be doing–studying out His example prayer and understanding what it means, and then do it.

To illustrate, the disciples asked Jesus (Yahshua in Hebrew–the same name as the anglicized name “Joshua”… <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/joshua> ).  “Teach us to pray.”  And He told them, “After this manner pray,” and then He spoke the model prayer.

“After this manner…”  After this way.  Make your communication to God based on these precepts I’ve given you in this example prayer, He was saying.  And the precepts are based in selflessness.

But many prayers that are offered up to God are shameless petitions for self–asking for material things.  These prayers cannot penetrate the brass of heaven’s dome.

To be heard by the Almighty, we must get on His wavelength.  And God’s all about reproducing Himself.  We are now “born of that incorruptible seed, the word of God.”  But that is just the start.  We must grow up into him, no longer content to be little babies in Christ, always wanting something from Him.

We must study to unlock the secrets of His kingdom, secrets held close to the heart of God, secrets that He will reveal to them that are in awe of Him, secrets encrypted in a spiritual blueprint called “The Lord’s Prayer.”

So, let us dig into it, line by line, phrase by phrase, extracting His thoughts about how He is going to get Himself down into His temple, us.  This I hope to do in the next few posts, beginning next time with “The Lord’s Prayer–Our Father.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

The Will of God–His Wish, His Desire

     God’s will is His wish, His desire.  And whatever the Creator wants done in His universe, that is exactly what will come to pass.  And we, His royal offspring, should make it our life’s goal to find out what the King’s will is and do it. 

     But it’s a great mystery finding out exactly what God’s will is.  The word, “will,” is an overused word that has as many meanings as there are denominations.  His wish, His desire, His will is like a mighty invisible river that flows from His heart throughout the earth.  He is the cause of all things; His desire causes His vision for His universe to come to pass.  Nothing can stop His will from being done.  Nothing can stop Him from accomplishing what He has set out to do.  The King will make his wishes reality.

     As his royal offspring, we need to study His immutable word to find out just what His will is.  For if we have a purpose or desire or wish in this life on earth that is not His desire or wish or will, then we will feel thwarted and blocked.  Nothing will work out.  Futility will haunt our endeavors.  All the pleasures of this world will seem “cold, stale and unprofitable.”  It will be “all is vanity and  vexation of spirit” if we are out of His will.  It will be as if we are paddling a canoe upstream.  We thrash about in life, working so hard at what we believe is the best direction to take, and yet we are working against the current.  And that current is His will/desire/wish.

     So, what exactly is God’s will–not just for our lives, but for this life here on earth?  God desires to reproduce Himself.  So much so that in the end, “Christ is all in all,” according to the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.  In fact, all his letters ring out this truth:

“It’s no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me…”

“Christ in you, the hope of glory…”

“Bringing many sons (and daughters) unto glory…”

“That you might be filled with all the fulness of God…”

“Perfecting of the saints…”  And many other passages too numerous to mention in this article.

     God’s will is to magnify Himself, to multiply Himself into a spiritual body of many sons and daughters.  Everyone and everything is either flowing with the stream of God’s wish and desire or they are struggling in vain against it.   (More later)                                           Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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