The Firstborn From the Dead.

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The Lord Jesus Christ is the Firstborn from the dead, meaning He is the beginning of a new race. Actually the adamic race is being made new in Him. God is making all things new. When Christ said "It is finished," the perfect atonement had been accomplished. In addition, the entire adamic race came to an end. The work of redemption does not fix up our adamic nature. In Christ there comes forth a new creation. Old things pass away. All things are made new. All things then are of God.

(9/2/2007) As I see it, there is a problem in contemporary preaching. Today’s Christian thinking can seen in the current books with such titles as: "How Christ Can Improve Your Life"; "How Christ Can Make You Rich"; "Christ Can Make You a Success." I have made up these titles, so if there actually is a book with one of these titles, it is a coincidence.

You could have a title such as, "How Christ Can Make You a Better Person." And it certainly is true that Christ can make us better people. But given the American emphasis on self-centeredness, self-improvement, self-love, the pursuit of happiness (often meaning the pursuit of fun), self-interest, such a title probably will give the prospective purchaser the impression that if he will receive Christ, his life will become interesting, pleasurable, and successful by the American standard of success.

The thirteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation speaks of the False Prophet who comes out of the earth. He has the two horns of the lamb but speaks with the voice of the dragon.

The current emphasis on improving our life through the Lord Jesus Christ is the voice of the dragon. It is the voice of the False Prophet. It is this spirit that will support Antichrist during the closing days of the Church Age.

The spirit of Antichrist is that of love for the world and for the things of the world, rather than love for God and His Christ.

The spirit of the False Prophet, that which supports Antichrist, is that of seeking to use Christ to facilitate our life in the world.

The spirit of the False Prophet is prevalent in Evangelical Christianity. I do not have knowledge of other Christian persuasions.

It absolutely is true that Jesus Christ makes us a better person. But He does not do so by improving our lot in life. Rather, He asks us to lay down our life for His sake and the Gospel’s. He commands us to present our body a living sacrifice that His will may be performed. He tells us that if we save our life we will lose it.

Christ indeed offers us eternal life, but such life can come to us only as we die in Him.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Firstborn from the dead. He is the Beginning of the new creation. Those who would have fellowship with Him as His brothers must also be born from the dead.

When we think about the suffering of the saints, as outlined in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, we readily can see how far removed we American Christians are from the Gospel of Christ. The testimony of our behaviour is leading the Arab people to believe we are a synagogue of Satan, as indeed we are in numerous instances. Certainly the moral corruption that issues from Hollywood, California is sufficient to validate the belief that we are "The Great Satan."

The term "born again" is bandied about in Evangelical preaching. Being born again is thought to occur when we first make a profession of faith in Christ. This hardly is true.

To be born again is to be, like Christ, born from the dead. To be born again means that we have become a new creation. To have become a new creation means that we have followed the Lord through a rigorous, thorough examination of each aspect of our adamic personality and have put it to death under the Lord’s direction. It is then we are fed with the body and blood of the Lamb.

What is the result of such death, life, death, life, death, life?

The result is a blend of Christ and our personality such that all of us is made new. Is it we who are living?" Yes, and no. It is a new creation. It never has existed before. It is a unique infiltration of the Divine Life of God into our personality. We are living. Christ is living. It is one new man.

We all want Christ to walk with us, to be close to us. He indeed wants to walk with us, to be close to us. But more than this, He wants to infiltrate our personality until He can see His image in us.

I wonder how Adam felt when he first saw Eve. You know, Adam actually was looking at himself. Every aspect of Eve’s body was taken from Adam’s body. There was no wedding ceremony. The marriage occurred as Eve was fashioned from Adam.

And so with us. We do not wait until we go to Heaven to be married to the Lamb. We are married to the Lamb as His Life replaces our life.

I don’t imagine the Lord to too overcome with joy when He sees what goes on in the churches that are called by His name.

But I do believe He is overcome with joy when He sees an individual who has walked with Him until every part of that individual has come from Himself. He now is looking at Himself.

Has the Apostle Paul become Christ? Yes, and no. Paul is not the Lord Jesus Christ, he still is Paul. And yet it is Christ who is living. This precisely is true of Christ and the Father. Is Christ the Father? No, He is not. Yet it is the Father who thinks, speaks, and acts in Christ. It was the Father through Christ who created all things.

Here is the greatest of all mysteries. He who has seen Christ has seen the Father, because the Father lives in Christ. It is God’s intention that ultimately he who has seen a member of the Body of Christ has seen Christ, and thus has seen God.

It is the desire of the False Prophet that we keep on viewing Christ as our means of gaining a better life by American standards: more money, more things, success in the material realm, perfect health.

The truth is, Christ brings us through deep waters that we may die, and through that death come to experience the Divine Nature.

You can hear the morning sermon at morning. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

You can hear the evening sermon at evening. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

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