You Can go Further

Sorry for staying away so long, but it’s not like I’m disappointing a big crowd!

Life continues to improve, and I keep getting new revelation.

Last night I went to a class my church provided. They’re doing an eight-week series on the Holy Spirit. My old church, Trinity, was pretty useless when it came to teaching. They taught a lot of outright lies, and they didn’t bother giving people basic guidance. People I know think astrology is fine. They don’t understand the baptism with the Holy Spirit. They think Steve Munsey’s lies are sound doctrine. Very sad. New Dawn Ministries is giving people the fundamentals they need.

The text of the booklet my class is using was written by a man named Maldonado, who runs a church called El Rey Jesus down in Kendall. It’s very good. They say his church is wonderful. My pastor canceled our own Tuesday service one week and told us to go to Maldonado’s church, but that church had some kind of emergency, so there was no service. One day I’ll make it.

I disagreed with something the teacher said last night. He was teaching about the need to change the soul (mind, emotions, will) as well as the spirit. When we accept salvation, our minds aren’t transformed instantly, and we need to be renewed so we have hearts like God’s. We read the passage where Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be born again. My teacher said all Christians are born again when they receive salvation.

Here is what I believe. There is a difference between “saved” and “born again.”

The crucifixion was clearly a conception, not a birth. The Temple symbolized the body of a woman, and the holier areas represent the private parts and womb. When Jesus died, the bloody veil, which represents the hymen, was torn. The crown of thorns represented circumcision. The tearing of a hymen and the cutting of the foreskin represent covenants with God; a man who represented God circumcised Jewish males, and when they married, they “circumcised” their virgin wives on the wedding night through sex, and then the seed passed through two cuts on its way to the womb.

When he died, Jesus provided for our impregnation with God’s seed, which is the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He also provided for our salvation.

Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be born again in order to enter “the kingdom of God.” He did not say “heaven.” Heaven is heaven, and the kingdom of God is the kingdom of God. While you’re here on earth, the kingdom should be in you, and you should be in the kingdom. God should rule inside you and in your immediate vicinity, as America rules an ambassador and embassy in another country. Even if you don’t live in the kingdom of God while you’re on earth, you can receive salvation and go to paradise.

Nicodemus asked if a man could re-enter his mother’s womb. He did not understand. Rebirth doesn’t mean re-entering a womb of flesh. It means entering God’s womb. You are to come into God’s presence, as it was in the Holy of Holies. God lives in you (a temple), and you live in him.

It’s very clear that there are Christians who are not born again. There are crooks out there who perform legitimate healings, for example. Turn on TBN, and you’ll see them. They don’t have the character of God, so it can’t be said that God rules inside them. They’re greedy, arrogant, obnoxious, selfish, and sometimes sex-crazed. But they are definitely Christians, and God does things through them.

Unbelievers love to ask why Christians do such awful things and have so many problems if we’re born again. We make up excuses, saying Satan is really strong, or it’s persecution. That’s not right. We have the same problems unsaved people have, because most of us are not really born again. We’re like embryos that haven’t grown. We’ve been fertilized, but that’s where our growth ended.

The Temple had areas of differing significance. The closer you got to the Holy of Holies, the fewer people were eligible to enter, and the closer they were to God. Any idiot could walk around in the outer area. You had to be a priest to go farther in. Only the high priest could enter the holiest place. He went in once a year, on Yom Kippur, to take away Israel’s sins. It’s still this way now. Any carnal person who is afraid of hell can become a Christian. Some will draw closer to God and experience growth. A few will get very, very close and see great power and blessings in their life.

Jesus said you had to be born of water and the Spirit. Many Christians think “water” means immersion. I don’t think so. We still do that, as a way of expressing our commitment, but it’s very clear that you can be saved without being baptized. It’s also obvious that baptized people are often nasty and sinful. If Jesus had been referring to water baptism, then we would expect quick results from immersion, and we don’t usually get them.

Paul stated unequivocally that “living water” (the kind of water Jews use for immersion, which is what we imitate when we baptize) was the Holy Spirit, flowing inside us. To enter the kingdom of God here on earth, you have to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and that water has to cleanse you from within, not from the outside, as the mikvehs cleansed.

Remember what Jesus said. He criticized Jews who were clean on the outside but not the inside. He was referring to a cleansing they could not perform without God’s help. You may be able to obey God, but you have limited power to change your heart so the compulsion to disobey (what we call “iniquity”) leaves. Through the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and prayer in tongues, you will, over time, be cleansed. Not by willpower, but by supernatural means for which you can’t take credit.

A Christian on earth is like a baby in the womb, who is helped by blood from the umbilical cord and the water of the amniotic fluid. You’re supposed to grow and develop, like an unborn baby. But most of us don’t get very far. Satan loves contraception, abortion, miscarriages, stillbirths, and infanticides, not just in the literal sense, but in the spiritual sense. He finds ways to hold us back, and often, he uses bad doctrine which sounds good because we don’t have the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom.

Satan’s mindset is revealed in his obsession with preventing reproduction and killing off the young. In Jacob’s time, men murdered their firstborn sons, cut off their heads, mummified them, and used them as oracles. Satan gave people information, so they could achieve their carnal goals, in exchange for their children. In Canaan, people murdered their firstborn sons and put them in jars in the walls of their homes, to bring good fortune. In Judea, Jews murdered their children by sacrificing them to Moloch. Satan went after Abel to prevent him from giving rise to a righteous people. He murdered the Jewish firstborn in Egypt to prevent Moses from defeating him. He murdered the babies in Bethlehem to prevent Jesus from being born. Today he pushes contraception and abortion, and we’ve even reached the point where blind morons refer to the killing of live, viable babies–outside the womb–as “abortion” and not “murder.”

When the Babylonians conquered the Jews, they took the best young men and castrated them. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had their testicles cut out. These were men of nobility. They would presumably have given rise to powerful Hebrew leaders. For that reason, Satan castrated them. If you can destroy the seed, you will never have to cut down the trees.

I think the material I’m being taught is very good, but I can’t agree that people like Steve Munsey are born again. If this is the end result of the crucifixion, what was the point? Did Jesus die solely so slavedrivers and pimps could go to heaven without changing their ways? If that were true, he would not have talked to us so much about our behavior and our desires.

It’s not hard to get into heaven. The thief who was saved on the cross got in just by calling Jesus “Lord” and believing he would save him. But the path to the KINGDOM of heaven is “tight” and the gate is “narrow,” according to Jesus himself. The difference is obvious.

The farther you go into the kingdom, the more power you have. You will have persecution, but you won’t live in defeat, unless God is a liar. Look at Jesus. He had all sorts of persecution, but he was unscathed until he chose to lay down his life. They tried to kill him in Nazareth, and he walked through the angry crowd unseen. The Holy Spirit guided his parents to Egypt before the Bethlehem massacre. He was guided away from enemies on other occasions. We don’t have any stories about Jesus being beaten, jailed, tortured, or afflicted with disease. He was a winner, until he chose to move on.

I keep seeing things happening, as a result of telling people about the Holy Spirit. God used me to get Ward Brewer going on it, and he says he talked to a leader of three Baptist churches about it the other day, and now these three churches are rethinking things and heading for a major shift. Obviously, that’s not my doing, but I was part of the pipeline, so I can say I’m bearing fruit. I have friends who are having wonderful breakthroughs from praying in the Spirit. No one ever comes back to me and says it doesn’t work. They always have a glowing testimony, or they admit they quit.

Don’t die in the womb. Be washed with the water. Grow and become strong. Don’t be afraid of the enemy, because he will never have the power you will have. He is temporary. He is sterile. If you’re going to be afraid, be afraid of the all-powerful God who created our weak, mortal enemy. Don’t mistake Satan’s PR for the relatively puny reality. If he was as strong as you think, you would never have been born.