Below is an interesting prophecy:
Below is an interesting prophecy:
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. (Hosea 6:2)
He replied, "Go tell that fox, 'I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.'" (Luke 13:32)
I believe the two days speak of the two thousand years of the Church Era, in which God is identifying and training the members of the Royal Priesthood. During the third day, God will release us from sin and self-will and fill us with the Fullness of the Holy Spirit.
You know, the procedure for putting to death the cravings of sin and the practice of sin has always been in the New Testament. But as has been the case also with speaking in tongues, the Spirit of God had to bring it to our attention before we began to believe for it and then practice it.
One of the procedures for removing the cravings and practice of sin is as follows. It always has been in the Bible. Why didn't we see it? Maybe its place in the unfolding of the plan of redemption had not arrived until recently:
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)
I think by "misdeeds" the translator means "sins."
Name some sin you are practicing, a craving you cannot seem to control. Then ask the Lord Jesus to forgive you and put the craving to death. I believe you will be pleasantly surprised.
Again:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9)
It appears obvious that the two passages above are speaking of deliverance from the cravings and practice of sin, and not just forgiveness.
May I be so bold as to suggest that the Day of Redemption has begun?
It is a time to wash our robe and make it white in the blood of the Lamb.
We mentioned previously the three aspects of sin: forgiveness, cravings, and practice .
Now let us think about the three sources of the sin that binds us.
The first source of sin is our love of the world.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. (I John 2:15,16)
I must confess that during my preaching over the past fifty or more years I have not paid enough attention to the problem of worldliness. I have been focusing on the sins that dwell in our flesh, and the problem with self-will.
The other day as I was writing about sin and the coming Day of Redemption, the issue of Christian worldliness came into my mind. I began to do a computer search of the New Testament exhortations concerning involvement in the world-antichrist spirit. I realized that the spirit of the world also is a source of sin.
I realized also that while self-will, rebellion against God's will, may be the primary cause of the difficulty we have in serving God, the people in the Lake of Fire have (perhaps because of their self-will) yielded to one or more of the sins of the flesh until they personify that sin.
I expect when they die and pass into the spirit world they will be the very embodiment of the sin.
Let me explain further:
The sins that dwell in our flesh are described in several passages of the New Testament. The list of sins I frequently employ is as follows:
Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)
Compare the above with the following:
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)
Do you notice any difference between the two lists of sinful behavior?
The first list is of various works of the flesh. The second list is of people.
It is not the sins that are thrown into the Lake of Fire. It is people!
How can one account for this?
Notice that one of the sins of the flesh is fornication. One of the kinds of people who make their home in the Lake of Fire are the sexually immoral.
I believe this means that if an individual keeps yielding to fornication, impurity, and licentiousness, they will be characterized when they stand before the Lord Jesus as an immoral personality. Their home for eternity will be the Lake of Fire.
"But," one may protest, "what if that individual has 'accepted Christ"'?
The Books of Galatians and Revelation were written to God's people and apply to God's people. They were not written to the world.
So after considering the sources of sin I have come to the conclusion that there is the world; then there are the alien spirits that dwell in our flesh; and then there are the sins of our personality: many of which have been inherited; and many of which have been formed as in our self-will we have continued to yield to the spirits of sin that dwell in our flesh.
We American Christians have a deadly enemy. It is the antichrist spirit of the world; the idolizing of money, sexual lust, entertainment, and luxury.
Our children grow up nourished by Satan's personality as they gaze for many hours at Satan's values of lust and violence on the electronic communication and gaming devices. Some of these devices were not even in existence fifty years ago, so it may be too early to evaluate their impact on people.
However, any Christian who has read the Bible knows, or should know, that the daily immersion in the television, Facebook, Internet, and the handheld devices, is not approved of by the Lord Jesus. The parents of the children will see the day when this kind of sowing produces an undesirable harvest. Only continual prayer can break the bondage of the worldly media.
There is no doubt that being a consecrated, godly believer is quite difficult in America. We are running counter to the tide of worldliness. This is especially difficult for children and young people from Christian homes. They often do not have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, and it appears to them that their parents are being hateful and mean by not letting them wallow in the various electronic games "like the other kid's parents do."
So the first enemy of those who have their sights set on becoming one of Christ's life-giving spirits is the antichrist-world spirit. To be successful in this warfare requires a closeness to the Master that we may not have known in the previous years of our Christian discipleship.
The second source of the sins that war against our becoming a life-giving spirit is the sins that dwell in our flesh—that probably are spirits. There are at least three main lists of the sins of the flesh: in Galatians, in Ephesians, and in Colossians. Also there are references to the sins of the flesh in several other of the Epistles.
One of the three main lists is found in the Book of Colossians:
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.
But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (Colossians 3:5-11)
Many of these sins may be spirits that we inherited or acquired during our lifetime. They can be put to death and their power over us broken by the instructions in the two passages set forth above (Romans 8:13 and I John 1:9).
Try it and see? This is a powerful work of redemption that is being emphasized today by the Spirit of God.
( the following passages are adopted from : The Third Day Has Begun )
From my point of view, the New International Version does us a great disservice in its translation of Romans 7:18:
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature . For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
"In my sinful nature" should be "in my flesh."
Since I am not a Greek scholar, there may be some linguistic reason why "in my flesh" can properly be translated "in my sinful nature." If so, I stand corrected.
However, since in this essay I am making an important distinction between the sins that proceed from cravings, "spirits" (perhaps), dwelling in our flesh, and then the sins that proceed from our personality, from what we are and not from alien spirits dwelling in our body, to change sarki (Greek: the flesh) into sinful nature is an unfortunate substitution.
Next Part Notice also: