The Mustard Seed Keeps Growing

I haven’t been up very long. I woke up a little before 8:30, and it’s about 9:22. I already have a testimony.

If you’re wondering why I get up so late, the answer is that I wake up in the middle of the night. It happens almost every night, so in order to avoid sleep deprivation, I turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep when it’s over.

This morning when I woke up, I did what I usually do. I gritted my teeth and checked the news. I always feel a certain amount of dread when I look at the news, because it’s so filthy. I read about disasters and catastrophes, and I see venomous people, including beloved performers and politicians, tearing at each other like unsupervised children in a schoolyard. There is also the danger of temptation; certain “news” sites throw revealing photos of women up all the time.

I should not have gritted my teeth. Reading the news is different today.

I used to fight anger when I read disturbing things about venal, cynical celebrities. I didn’t want to let them annoy me, but they succeeded. Look at the people who get obsessive favorable media coverage today. Some examples are Kathy Griffin, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Tlaib, the Kardashians, Alec Baldwin, Jim Carrey…they live to provoke people. They’re good at what they do.

I fought something else when I saw revealing photos posted by outfits like The Daily Mail and The Sun!

These days my experience is not what it used to be. For example, when I read that Christian Bale thanked Satan for inspiration in playing Dick Cheney in an attack movie, I didn’t get irritated. I didn’t have any problems with the publicist-submitted photos of morally lax actresses, singers, and models.

I’m not saying I felt nothing at all; just that things were very muted compared to what I would have experienced a month ago, and I was able to feel goodwill toward the misbehaving people in the news.

As I realized what was happening, I felt joy running through me. I’m not a teary person, and I think men who run around crying are silly and disgraceful, but I was not that far from tears today.

It’s good to resist negative urges and feelings. It’s much better not to have them in the first place.

I think I understand Luke 2:14 now. Here is what the angels sang when the birth of Jesus was announced: ““Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Jesus died partly to enable us to have goodwill toward each other instead of anger. Many of us enjoy anger and don’t want to part with it, but there are also many people who have a habit of anger and want to get rid of it. You can’t just make it go away by concentrating. You have to run off the spirits that drive it, and you need the Holy Spirit’s joy and love to flow in you, to fill the place anger and other negative things used to occupy.

Yesterday I wrote about the joy I had started feeling, and I said I didn’t know if it was permanent. I’m into my second day. That’s all I can tell you.

Most Christians (not including the fakers) are obsessed with improving themselves with effort. We have the idea that we can please God by working very hard to restrain and compel ourselves. We think God wants us to earn things from him. That’s completely wrong.

Over and over, the Bible calls us “heirs.” An heir inherits something someone else worked for. As for wages, the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.” Sinners get what they earn; believers get what Jesus earned. If this were not the case, the Bible’s emphasis on humility would make no sense. If you could change yourself and earn a ticket to heaven, you would have every right to be proud.

In numerous places, the Bible tells us to give God the credit for things. Why would he want credit for what we do? It would be absurd. He wants credit for what he does. He is the one who changes people.

The Bible says Jesus carried our sins, iniquities, and physical problems on the cross. In the Bible, Jesus did things like making withered limbs grow back. He never charged people. He never told them to earn their healings. He gave it to them for nothing. He never charged for forgiveness of sins, either. If forgiveness and healing are free, why is the third thing–relief from iniquity–something we have to earn? It’s not. God removes our iniquities supernaturally and replaces them with his virtues.

To make sure people understand what I’m talking about, I’ll define “iniquity” again. An iniquity is a sinful habit, not a sin.

Taking heroin is a sin. A heroin addiction is an iniquity. Hitting someone in anger is a sin. Wrath is an iniquity. What God is doing in me is the supernatural destruction of iniquity. The fruit of the Spirit are God’s answer to iniquity. When iniquity is removed, the fruit of the Spirit are supposed to replace it.

God calls our own puny righteousness “used menstrual rags.” That’s how highly he esteems it. How would you like it if you tried to send your son to a tailor to get a custom-made suit at your expense, and he saved the money and came home wearing used menstrual rags? Would you be pleased?

When we puff ourselves up with fake righteousness through hard work, God is not pleased at all. It’s just another form of iniquity.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to see myself being improved. I feel like I’ve waited forever for this. It’s like going to heaven. We all think about it, but it’s such a blessing, it’s hard for us to imagine it as something that will really happen. When God removes iniquity and replaces it with the fruit of the Spirit, it’s hard to believe.

It makes sense that I would be moved to compare it to heaven, because “the kingdom of heaven” refers to something we’re supposed to have inside of us. Heaven is a place; the kingdom of heaven is not. The kingdom of heaven is a state of being, in our hearts and minds.

The Bible calls us ambassadors. I’ll go further. We are living embassies. The ground inside an embassy belongs to a foreign country. The inside of a Christian should be part of heaven. It should be a place full of love, peace, faith, and joy. If you’re not full of the fruit of the Spirit, your insides are like hell. You’re full of lust, anger, covetousness, and so on. You may fight these things. You may know they’re wrong. They’re still there.

I don’t know what to do with myself. The blessing is overwhelming. I feel like I just received a pallet of gold bars.

Can it really be that God wants the rest of my life to be like this? Would he do that for me? How can it be?

We call the gospel “good news,” and then we hand people a bunch of burdensome rules coupled with anger and self-righteousness. That’s not good news. Good news is something that makes you want to exclaim. It’s good news when you get healed of blindness. It’s good news when God resurrects a dead child. It’s also good news when you realize the inner shackles you could never hope to cut have been taken off.

I want to hold onto this, and I want it to increase. I don’t care what I have to give up. It’s just like Jesus said: the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl a man would sell everything he has to own.

I can tell my recent baptism broke a stronghold and made these changes possible. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Before I was baptized correctly, even though I was trying to get God’s help with inner change, I was doing things out of order. I needed to go back and fix my foundation. God had given me this sentence: “I have built on a rotten foundation.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but now it seems clear.

In some ways, God is completely inflexible. He didn’t give us dozens of ways to become like him. He only provided one, and if you don’t accept it, you will only end up spinning your wheels. Baptism, meaning full immersion accompanied by intelligent repentance and dying to the flesh, is mandatory. You may get to heaven without it, but you will always be a stunted Christian.

I learned something fascinating the other day. The Bible has a “hidden verse.” It’s Acts 8:37. Many translations omit it. When the Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip if he could be baptized, Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” That’s what the verse says.

Old copies of the New Testament only go back so far, and the oldest ones omit the verse. That’s the excuse that was used for removing it. The problem with this logic is that the verse was quoted in works written before the oldest existing copies of the New Testament. The verse was quoted in about 180 AD, not long after the New Testament was committed to writing, and that establishes its validity.

Why would scholars remove the verse? Because they had concluded, wrongly, that babies should be baptized. They wanted to support this false doctrine. A baby can’t understand baptism, and without understanding, baptism is just a pool party, as Torben Sondergaard says. The verse says God only permits baptism for those who believe, and that excludes babies.

By creating the institution of invalid infant baptism, the old churches removed baptism from the church. They replaced it with something that is not baptism. As a result, generations of unbaptized Christians never reached maturity, and all sorts of bad doctrine grew up around them like thistles. Generally, Christians were not baptized, and they didn’t receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, so naturally, we entered an era of heresy and apostasy.

It’s amazing how much damage Satan did by taking baptism away from us. It was a master stroke.

I feel tremendous, and because this business is just getting started, I expect to feel even better in the future.

If Christianity actually works, what do we have to be worried about?

If you’re reading this, I strongly suggest you get yourself baptized correctly. You don’t need a priest or a preacher; just a Christian who is full of faith. You don’t need a church. You can use a bathtub or any container that will allow you to go completely under.

You have to examine yourself and repent. You have to make a quality decision to give your life to Jesus and forget the goals your flesh has turned into idols. You have to be baptized in the name of Jesus, not the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, believers were not baptized in the name of the Father or Holy Spirit.

When you do it, ask for the baptism with the Holy Spirit so you will be able to pray in tongues. If you can’t get it to work, ask yourself if there is anyone you need to forgive or any sin of which you need to repent.

Ask God to rid you of iniquity and fill you with the fruit of the Spirit.

God has given us tractors, and we are still plowing with arthritic mules!

That’s it for now. It ought to be sufficient!