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11 Minutes Today, we are at the beginning of what will quickly become the complete downfall of humanity. There are still those who will cease to reject, to rebel against God. Matthew 24:6-12 We see the truth, or rather the misunderstanding of truth, turn unity into separation. No one ever made a belief true by believing it. Belief does not make something true. You believe your perfectly new car has fuel in it. You get others to believe it too. You try to start your car. It grinds but no turnover. Your belief was not true. You substitute belief for truth. Believing won’t even put fuel in your car. That’s why saying “what is truth to me”, is so destructive. Truth is so important that we must not fail to understand that it is unyielding in the face of beliefs. Truth is what God has put in creation to help us understand reality. If our beliefs are true, we are enabled to deal with reality effectively. Truth must always match up to reality. Most people do not know how to work with truth. The broom is in the closet. We know how to find out whether or not that statement is true. We go look at the broom in the closet. Reality. All truth is not that direct. That’s why reasoning with revealed verifiable statements will lead to truth in reality. Jesus spoke the warnings of truth for the last days. Our response is to see the reality of his words. The time of trouble is just as the bible says it will be. And if we want to be responsible to the truth and for the truth, to lead others in that path, to be prepared for the time of trouble, that can be only effectively done by being steadfast followers of Jesus Christ in our whole life. We must have truth beyond opinion, the truth about truth. It can’t be done any other way. Let us not be casual in our approach to this “timed” event. People unblinkingly focus on their pleasure. Giving no thought to God, they are casually uninterested in the moral welfare of our children, our friends, our families, that are collapsing into utter depravity. Shame for sin has disappeared. The nations are falling. Society shows significant breakdowns in three vital areas: in political and business leadership, in family life, and inability to tap into the spiritual resource of God. Specific blame is shaping up to be placed on a specific people. Rebellion, obstinacy, betrayal, distrust, shamelessness, and greed, comprise an audacious self-centeredness against God and fellow man. These are the characteristics of a nation that will completely abandon all things godly. Sin has gradually carried less of a stigma in the world. The sense of shame has been slowly replaced by a growing boldness of an attitude of acceptance, a flaunting of sin. Much of that sense of shame has disappeared from the American psyche altogether. Bold immorality has become the way of life so that sin is now blatantly committed. Civility is becoming a thing of the past. Rudeness and open, brazen misconduct is becoming the normal way of doing things. This nation has formed herself into that cruel beast of prophecy. This is the kind of conduct the "whore's forehead" pictures. It represents the blatant, audacious sin of the people, openly displaying what they are, promoting themselves, and tempting others to engage in sin with her. The whore's forehead represents obdurate practice of sin done overtly with no attempt to camouflage. This attitude is reminiscent of the story of righteous Lot dealing with the homosexuals in Sodom just before God dropped the fire and brimstone on the people of that vile city. This relaxed and careless acceptability of sin did not happen overnight. It has gradually become tolerated over decades. Its growth is significantly aided by a so-called christian church that abandoned its responsibility to God. We must be very careful to guard ourselves from succumbing to the temptation of being drawn into the same casual approach. It is our responsibility to overcome sin. God is using these final days leading to the time of trouble to accomplish His will and refine His people. We are approaching a season of severe testing that will make Job’s testing seem as a sunny day in the park. We need a closer relationship with God to deepening our faith in and reliance on Him. We will be in the time of stygian gloom so deficient of light that all human interaction will be toxic. It will be as a black abyss. But no matter how dark the situation will be, believers can rest in the promise that God “will not leave you nor forsake you”. And it is for this cause that regardless of our troubles or difficult circumstances, we will make an impact by sharing the truth of the word of God, our Creator and our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that God has decided to make this terrible time short. We are in a season of acceleration towards both the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the greatest hour of temptation in world history. The bible makes it clear that both darkness and the glory of God will increase to unprecedented levels together in the generation that Jesus returns to. No other generation has had to navigate these two extremes. This will create a situation in which many will be afraid and confused, searching for answers. That is one reason why the Lord put more information in the bible about that one generation - us. We must have God’s perspective on saving souls. We must understand the biblical narrative related to the coming difficulties. It is now in this day that God’s people are to have a burden in a way that will help them and others to grow in deeper love and peace with a steadfast faith in Jesus’ excellent leadership. Isaiah 60:2 The greatest harvest of souls is coming in context to the end-time trouble of the nations. This time of trouble will be like a “perfect storm,” affecting many areas of life; financial, political, societal, spiritual, military, and more. It is in this context that God’s glory will be seen and magnified in the world. I do not ask anyone to accept my understanding of what the scripture shows me on the end times unless you can clearly see them with your own eyes in your own bible. In other words, trust the truth of reality. We are learning these truths together. We cannot afford to make a mistake that will leave multitudes of God’s people spiritually unprepared when dark events escalate more in the end times. We can only have a mature understanding as we honor, relate to, and learn from one another across the different streams in the body of Christ. No one group of people will have it all. But together, the unity can gain a mature understanding of the end time of trouble. We need each other to grow in this understanding. We must study the books of Daniel and The Revelation. The time of trouble my friends will intensify our suffering. This darkness leads to the manifestation of God’s hatred for sin...the beginning of His wrath. Darkness is a visible sign of God’s judgment and displeasure. There will be unexplained moments of desolation and thoughts of abandonment. But we will be conscious of our Father’s presence because every truth, every word of God will sustain us and we hear “lo, I am with you alway, even unto theend of the world”. No truth will be distant from us. We will know our experience is in accord with God’s declared word. God’s Word is true and His Word was here long before we became the spectacle of display that would be exposed to great hardships for the glory of God. However, God certainly does not need our experiences to validate the truth of what He says, but we need God’s Word to validate our experience. The world will witness our persecutions, sufferings, patience, and magnanimity. They will see that we suffer willingly for our fidelity to Christ, and how we suffer; how great and imminent are our dangers, and how determinedly we encounter them; how sharp our sufferings, and how patiently we endure them, by the power of divine grace and our faith in truth principles. In our coming to this time, we must be more than faithful messengers...we must be the perfection of true biblical servitude and spirituality.

15 Minutes Prophecy is not so difficult that we can’t understand it, or else God would not have put it into scripture. Prophetic passages confidently reveal something about the role of America in the end times. After all, God, who exists in all times, who sees the end of history from the beginning, who indeed sovereignly governs every moment of history - God, who reveals key end- time events in the prophecies of scripture, can’t possibly have omitted from His opus the most powerful, most influential, and by many counts most God- blessed of all nations that have ever risen. There has never been a more urgent time when God’s people have need to know of the last days. The best of our knowledge cannot fathom what the great time of trouble will be like even as we head into the little time of trouble. The most vivid presentation cannot reach the magnitude of the ordeal. There is no degree of insightfulness that we can stretch our mind to manufacture the atrocities to be put upon God’s people. These words have no intent to frighten you. The intent is to accelerate the understanding of the necessity to take a full account of how God sees you. Please do not think to believe that God sees you as you see yourself. God sees us through the blood of Jesus. We will either have a right standing in His sight owing our life to Jesus or we will be condemned by the blood of Jesus. We need to have a greater want of that wisdom and love which would prevent all discord, and keep God’s people in unity in Christ with themselves. Please understand that we will need an experience which we do not now possess. We will need the enabling power of atonement. Though defeated and cast down at the cross, this once before covering cherub is a fierce foe. Please keep in mind the purposes God has for this period of time. Examine yourself. Enduring times of trouble is an opportunity to demonstrate the level of faith and strength God gives us; God’s glory revealed in us. We will not be brought from the time oftrouble...we will be brought through the time of trouble. We have patience and faith to the uttermost. Time must be cut short else none would survive. Every opportunity to become well instructed in every word of God is to be seized upon with no disputation. Romans 14:1 There is a time of trouble that is soon to break upon this world, and the main force of it will be directed at God's true commandment keeping people. And we’re not talking about the effects of the plagues on mankind, we are talking about the end time demonic activities that will see all but 144000 of God’s last day people choose to die rather than renounce their belief. The power of a single angel destroyed seventy thousand men. What might be the results when Satan and his millions of powerful angels have full control of the earth? And the second phase of his war is poised to resume against God’s elected multitude and very elected remnant people. The time of trouble will inscribe the wickedness of the world to such an extent that God’s patience cut short will usher in the weightiness of the plagues. His patience is immeasurable and matchless, but not endless. Demonic assaults will overcome untold numbers of the wicked and all the world will be hardened in their sin. The people of God will be sustained and shielded by the sovereign grace of God from granting the wicked the satisfaction of enjoying the afflictions placed upon them preparatory for their sacrificial offering. Here is the entering in of the vindication of God’s holiness. We must begin to understand why this time of trouble is going to be so much worse than anything this world has seen as it develops into the great time of trouble. If our experience is not now daily with Christ, then when the time of trouble hits and we find ourselves under great persecution, we will find it difficult to stay true to our faith. Please have this understanding...as faithful believers there is a difference in our position and in our condition. Sin will affect the condition. Faith can make certain the position. Please know that righteousness is a positional performance. The time of trouble coming upon the world will be but a moment, but the intensification will wrap a lifetime in a meditative experience. Life will be lived one moment at a time. As a day is as a thousand years to God so will every moment of trouble be to God’s people. Morbid and surreal thoughts will attempt to detach our minds from transcendent love that immerses our faith even deeper beyond our circumstances, our abilities and weaknesses, tragedies, regrets, guilt, shame from our past and our fears about tomorrow. We will know that God is greater than anything we are facing and anything we will ever encounter. Sorrow will fill our hearts. There will be so many enemies to come against us. We will guide them forward and repay them with comforting words. Our righteousness will not be sealed up. We will not be shy to talk about our love for Christ. Our faith and compassion will be bold even in the face of their growing hate. Pause and reflect on this...find yourself the kind of friend who builds your faith in God...find this friend now! It will prepare you to cling to Jesus when the time comes. Compel yourself to practice the word of God. We are going to be hurt in the process of loving others, but that is what it costs to serve God. The time of darkness will not define the people of God. And those who refused acceptance of the truths of God, and those who so pretentiously veiled themselves in righteousness will have not even a wisp of hope. The time will be the darkest period of the world’s history, in comparison with which the cruelties of the Assyrians, the fearful sieges of Rome upon Jerusalem, the Siege of Masada, the tortures of the Inquisition, the campaigns of Napoleon, the transatlantic slave trade, the Trail of Tears, the conflicts of the Haitian Revolution, the bloodshed of two World Wars, the Asian american experience, the terroristic devastation of the Tulsa, the Colfax Louisiana, the Wilmington, the Atlanta, the Elaine Arkansas, the Rosewood massacres, and the atrocities perpetrated under the Nazi regime will fade into insignificance. The ending of the little time of trouble, at the beginning of the plagues, will see God’s last day remnant immersed into the terrible time of godliness, that great time of trouble that will culminate in the fearful battle of Armageddon. I Thessalonians 5:1-11 SOP - The events connected with the close of probation and the work of preparation for the time of trouble, are clearly presented. But multitudes have no more understanding of these important truths than if they had never been revealed. Satan watches to catch away every impression that would make them wise unto salvation, and the time of trouble will find them unready. {Great Controversy, page 594.1} Spiritual darkness results in spiritual death which is distinct from physical death and the second death. This is the degree of sinfulness willfully desired by the wicked. Before the plagues there is this great purge that brings many out of Babylon. The final crisis will be initiated by the urging and enforcing of the mark of the beast. A strong source of motivation for many to repent and turn to faith in Christ is what they observe the people of God willingly enduring for the sake of Christ. They remember the messages heard upholding the law of God. They saw faith lived by defeating death. SOP – (excerpt) The commencement of that time of trouble, here mentioned does not refer to the time when the plagues shall begin to be poured out, but to a short period just before they are poured out, while Christ is in the sanctuary. {EW 86}

15 Minutes The sabbath is our greatest temple. No Rome, no America can burn it. Apostasy cannot change it. The main theme of our faith lies in the realm of time...prophecies and events. What was the first thing sanctified, made holy in the history of the world...the Sabbath. There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness. God did not establish a holy mountain, He did not build a sanctuary, God sanctified the seventh day sabbath. Holiness in time, the Sabbath comes first. When history began, there was only one holiness in the world, holiness in time. When at Sinai the word of God was about to be voiced, a call for holiness in man was proclaimed: “Ye shall be unto Me a holy nation." It was only after the people had succumbed to the temptation of worshipping a thing, a golden calf, that the erection of a Tabernacle, of holiness in space, was commanded. The sanctity of time came first, the sanctity of man came second, and the sanctity of space last. Time was hallowed by God; space, the Tabernacle, was consecrated by Moses. Are we beginning to understand “from one new moon to another”, and “from one sabbath to another”? Undeterminable space is called infinity...undeterminable time is called eternity. The Sabbath is entirely independent of the month and unrelated to the moon. Its date is not determined by any event in nature, such as the new moon, but by the act of creation. Thus, the essence of the Sabbath is completely detached from the world of space. On the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in measure, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. The Sabbath is last in creation, first in intention. It is "the end of the creation of heaven and earth." It is not the interlude, it is the climax of living. The seventh day, in its atmosphere, is a reminder of adjacency to eternity. The Sabbath is an expression of glory in the presence of eternity. We speak a word for an emotion almost too deep to be expressed: the love of the Sabbath. This conception of love of the Sabbath, the love of a day, of spirit in the form of time. What is so luminous about this day? What is so precious to captivate the hearts? It is because the seventh day is a mine where spirit's precious metal can be found with which to construct the stronghold in time, a dimension in which the human is at home with the divine; a dimension in which man aspires to approach the likeness of the divine. For where shall the likeness of God be found? There is no quality that space has in common with the essence of God. There is not enough freedom on the top of the mountain; there is not enough glory in the silence of the sea. Yet the likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise. God is the time of rest of the Sabbath. What a mysterious grandeur of the climax of creation. As God sanctified the seventh day, so shall we. The love of the Sabbath is the love of man for what he and God have in common. Our keeping the Sabbath day is a paraphrase of His sanctification of the seventh day. What would be a world without Sabbath? It would be a world that knew only itself; a world without the vision of a window in time that opens into eternity. Law and love, discipline and delight are fused together in the Sabbath. Its observance is the reach of the exalted soul beyond the grasp of ordinary man. On the Sabbath we accept all excellence from the Spirit of God. The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds; this world and the world to come. For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come. So, how may it be that we come to worship before God at what seemingly are timed intervals? Divine temporality, a prioritization of tasks. Since eternity is the chronological passage of time, in relation to the past, the present and the future, God can provisionally cause its use to be concurrent, occurring simultaneously, or sequential, not happening at the same occasion. This can also be viewed as the maturing of eternity. In eternity there may be an other to “passage time”...”lived time”. Divine temporality is derived from a higher non-temporal state of eternity, which is co-extensive with the infinite and eternal now of God. The greatest phenomenon of time is the future. It is not yet revealed. However, God’s presence is always the “now”. So, it is as though with God the future comes toward Him and is always the “now”. So, with our being in God’s presence in heaven, in eternity, we are in His “now”. No time is taken, no space used. God is greater than eternity, so everything in eternity if God’s "having-been-ness". God can seize the past, the present, the future and hold on resolutely to make His “now”. Since God is outside of time altogether, time is inside God. The Sabbaths, the months are in God. And we can have a moon without night because the light reflected will be the Son of God. Allow us to reason with the account of how God relates to events, things, people, and the universe and of how God is related to what we could call the structure of the universe. That is, how God is related to space and to time. God never began to exist, and God can never go out of existence. And God experiences all events yet knowing of their succession. And this reasons that God is “omnitemporal.” Whereas we possess one moment of life at a time, God possesses all life at once. That implies duration. An eternal being must have life and this life is without duration. How such a God is related to temporal events is the wonder of omniscience. God has an eternal-temporal- simultaneity reference. The thoughts in God’s mind can be individuated by their respective lengths of duration or at least by their locations within the duration. So, there can be a sabbath, there can be a month, individuated temporally throughout eternity having no connecting interaction. God is the essence of existence for even existence is in Him. God’s life is the event whereby all things are captured. In Him is timeless duration. He is always a “present” God, a “now” God. God can be present, though not temporally present to the world. He can have a life which is an event having duration, though not temporal duration. With God not all whens are times. However, eternity, in the sense of being a timeless space, can also be a when to God. “At eternity” is the answer to the question, “when does God act?” He is timelessly and independently 'prior' to creation of anything. God has within Himself and He knows the whole of everything that was, is, and can ever be. God lacks nothing. He does not have to believe, He knows. His foreknowledge of all things is what determined all things. God’s life is so eternally stretched out that the entirety of time is one indivisible present while each point can be made a temporal reality of an event...even an event occupying space. In the fullness of His Being, God will position the Sabbath in eternity to situate as a present event. He can do anything that it is possible to do. He is maximally merciful. In heaven we will not long for the past nor will we long for the future. For in God we will have the attribute of experience that captures simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life. We will lose nothing in the passage of eternity. We will have the “property of rest” in God always. At creation of the heavens and earth, which He willed from eternity to appear temporally, time began, and God subjected Himself to time by being related to changing things. God causes eternity to pause...a pregnant pause if you will in that our God is determinative. He will cause “time” and “events” to have “space”.

15 Minutes We will be ever finding different ways of describing the superiority of the Lord Jesus Christ in that he gives the rest that both Moses and Joshua sought for the people of God. Joshua 22:4 I Kings 8:56 But there is a sabbath rest that remains for the people of God. Hebrews 4:9 And this rest remaining is a rest of grace, and comfort, and holiness. A rest in glory, the everlasting sabbatism of heaven, which is the repose and perfection of nature and grace too, where the people of God shall enjoy the end of their faith and the object of all their desires. There are two who have actually taken possession of this rest: God and Christ. It is certain that God, after the creating of the world in six days, entered into His rest; and it is certain that Christ, when he had finished the work of our redemption, entered into his rest; and these were not only examples, but earnests, that believers shall enter into their rest. Please see that the “all things new” mean we cease from works of righteousness, and from the works of the law, as God and Christ have ceased from their works of creation and redemption. There is no works in the new creation. As we are still, silent, present, and allow God to work in us on earth, we rest in every spiritual provision, we rest in the increase of our being with God, we rest in the deepening of our relationship with every being in creation, we rest in the love, the hand and the heart and the mind of God. In the new earth the sabbath is more than the day. It is Jesus. In him is the promised rest in eternity. Remember, the “rest” was in the sabbath, before the sabbath was in the law. Jesus is Lord of the rest. He is God in creation. It is our rest in Christ that frees us from the works of the law, allowing us to rest in the finished work of Christ to forgive sin. When the heavens and the earth were finished, God did not start His work again on the eighth day...He was finished. Our entering into the sabbath in all its truth means we no longer “work”. We “rest” in all that Christ does. The rest found in Christ is much better than the one day of rest found in the cycle of seven days. It is Jesus Christ that makes us right with God. It is here that our worship will be as it ought to be. God is a Spirit. Jesus is the truth. We will be the answered prayer...God in him and he in us...that’s worshipping in spirit and in truth, attributing worth, reverent honor, and homage to God the Father and God the Son. Heaven will be where God is...on the new earth. The shrouding of our new clothes will not be material...but a fabric of light. They won’t be cotton, but compassion. Not linen, but love. No silks, but service. We will adorn spiritual garments of holiness, of anointing, of grace, of gloriousness. But we are fitted for our finest covering while here on earth... Romans 13:14 The seventh day sabbath on earth was given to teach us how to spiritually use our two primary sources of experience to discern God’s will; choice and time. The choice to be obedient and the time designated by God to set apart for remembering the sabbath day. Neither of these sources will be required in the “all things new” realm. In this life we sacrifice time to gain space. But man’s ignorance, thinking to have more, means to be more, terminates at the borderline of time...life will end! God has given the time of sabbath where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain. Man attempts to make God a god. He has much enthusiasm for the idea that God is present in the universe, but that idea is taken to mean God’s presence in space rather than in time, in nature rather than in history; as if God were a thing, not a Spirit. When we fail to reason every revealed attribute of God, saying what God cannot do, we are literally fashioning God...might as well use wood or stone and determine God to be but a shadow of man. Most people resist the sabbath principle because they have a deeply rooted dread of time. They see it like a furnace incinerating every moment of their lives. The higher goal of spiritual living is not to build up a wealth of information or materialism, but to look toward sacred moments. These experienced moments are not a thing that imposes themselves on man but are a spiritual presence to reason with God to come to truth. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight when the time opportunity to just reason was abandoned rather than the space where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time and space. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal. And what is eternal is truth. Time and space are interrelated. They are components of creation. Remember, God spoke to us in moments of time showing the things that occupy space. We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. The time that Light was brought forth outweighs the sun’s coming on day four. The timing was God’s order, the thing was spaced in its time. The sabbath on earth is a special time. God set the world in a dimension of time to complete His plan. Events over countries, history over geography.

21 Minutes God, who is the perfect Master will have a perfect servant. We have seen a perfect servant...once. We should get instruction from him. Being made perfect may be being made to burn in fire, or hung up to the stars, or buried in the earth, or dragged through the sea. Or it may be showing faith enough to stand on truth for the elemental reason that truth is the truth and that's just the truth. We should rejoice in any price we might have to pay for perfection. Perfection must be an absolute certainty for Christ to speak it. Why would we put off being like Christ when God the Father Himself tells us to be holy? I Peter 1:15, 16 Leviticus 20:7 Why we should be perfect...is the faith God gives us perfect...is the love God shares perfect...is our hope perfect...are God’s purposes perfect...His promises...does God possess all possible perfections...can perfect come of suffering. Hebrews 2:10 Our being made perfect is the counteracting of divine power through the Holy Spirit. It counteracts the tendencies of our sinful nature. Moment by moment trusting in Christ renders our bias to sin weaker and weaker. We will never claim sinless perfection. We are all painfully aware of our lives. In Christ we are brought into a right position to overcome. And we are for never, by even a thought, to come to believe that perfection leads to the conclusion that both Christ and the Holy Spirit are unnecessary even once this state of eradication of the sinful nature is reached. Christ is the life eternal. Being made perfect is an increase in dependence, an increase of repentance, and constant prayer for forgiveness. Christ is our sole perfection, our sole righteousness. In this life we are capable of not sinning, capable of being good, capable of righteousness, but it is as we are all Christ’s. God cannot act wrongly. And Jesus recommends us to God. And here is the wonder in that; is it not a strange thing that the advanced believer, as we are made to reach to the very height of reverent reasoning, having fidelity to the very root of truth, just comes to the spot where Jesus commenced our eternal being? Do we not begin at the cross, and when we have climbed over so high in our learning of the spiritual ascriptions of God, that the clarity or intelligibility of perfection and righteousness, is it not at the cross that we come again and again for there is where is shown divine perfection? Here is where we resolve all tension. We stop trying to solve the mystery of how God makes us perfect, we begin to experience it. It was not the crown of thorns that showed him king...it was the crown of blood about his head. It was not the rusted spikes entering his body that held him to the cross, it was the unleashed light of life from the wounds that caused him to stay that we may have life. It was not the flow of the blood and the water from his side that proved his death, it was the flow of the many bodies of the saints which slept that appeared to many and the flow of the word of truth from the centurion; “truly this was the Son of God”. This is the ground for our confidence in being made perfect. None can be made fit for this purpose except Christ be in them. Have you ever learned that elephants “sound” the ground they walk on? It is for their safety, it is for their direction, it is a way of listening with their feet. As we walk for God, we must sound the ground. It is not good enough just for us to see others take a path that ensures that path is the right way. We know that God’s word is sound footing. His covenant is the strenght of His promises. Psalms 119:133 II Samuel 22:33, 34 We are in the court of divine inspection in order that it may there be proved that we may be made perfect. It is here that we bring our faith to God’s tribunal. And the terrors of God’s law are not loose. No transgression is hidden from view. We must stand silent in the perfectness of Jesus Christ as his blood speaks for us. Be not presumptuous in your faith. Thinking you are chosen when you have no evidence of it. Let not confidence lead to idleness, but to thoroughness in service to God. We must begin to have higher thought, elevated thinking, that we may realize our higher self and the revelation of Christ inside. Our right judgment and our spiritual wisdom must go beyond the perception, the knowledge of pretension. We are called to a more complete reliance on God and a more diligent level of study. We have a conscious acquaintance with the Source and a desire to express the wisdom of Spirit. The word, the truth, the promise of God says He will not forsake us in temptation; do we not know that with just as much presence He should be with us in communion with Christ and with others? It is our faith in the word that grants us access to God on the footing of perfection. Hebrews 10:14 We are perfected through the blood of Jesus Christ as were the vessels sprinkled for service in the sanctuary. God can accept our worship. And now, whatever God uses us for, He uses us as a perfect instrument, regarding us as being perfect in Christ Jesus. Faith before perfection is a submitted humility. Faith embraces God’s sovereignty and all that is Christ...his suffering, his obedience, his love, his voluntary sacrifice, his heart and his mind, his offer of salvation and eternal life. The bible gives a specific reason for the ability to come to an understanding of biblical truth. The reason, that the bible gives, is that God’s Spirit leads one to the understanding of these truths. We must be the ground of truth. The term “ground of truth” conveys an essence of completeness. There is going to be a people of God who will be standing on the ground of truth. When we look at the “commandment keeping” people of God today, we see a disarray, a true disorder of beliefs. It is clear that the people do not represent a body that has received the promise of truth that we have just read, or the perfection that we have been looking into. So, what has happened? There are some in the body who receive what they ask for. Their pursuits have been to a large degree skewed in nature. These are interested in a more sensitive relationship with one another. Then there are those who have desired to have a greater “joy in the Lord”. These ask for what is in God’s will...the perfecting of His people. These have the desire to grow in truth. We declare our memento of duty. Let no events of the day override our duty of the day. John 14:13-17 The text just read is a plain, dynamic, and wonderful promise for those who have a need to live for truth. By our conscientious care we perform our trust, in universal obedience to his commands; this is better than sacrifice, better than tears. With this relationship between our asking, the keeping of the commandments, and the indwelling of the spirit of truth, we are brought to the perfecting of truth. Why is this needed? As of now, the truth of a matter is not sufficient enough to motivate us in all that we do. We push truth aside for relations that border idolatry. Siding with another for the sake of need. Forced to feel a certain way or do certain things opposing truth when in a relationship. Friends of convenience, rather than a friend of truth, being in the same friend group. This is lacking the love of the truth. Are you in spiritual relationships that promote questioning, decision making and a definite commitment to things proven true in all areas? Let’s stop for a moment, and consider our normal attitude in regards to valuing truth. We all know that the truth of a matter is not sufficient enough to motivate us in all that we do. This is borne out, as a regular occurrence, for all of us to one degree or another. Our popular health message is a prime example of our tendency to push truth aside. In this case, for convenience and taste. Worldly variations, as opposed to milestone viewing of important and significant events in the development or history of discovery and life’s progress in television viewing would also be an area of concern. As we look at our daily routine, we can easily see the concessions that are made to something other than a way that would reflect the true instructions of the Word of God. Perfecting is doing everything possible to fulfill that command in the spirit of truth. The instruction is perfectly complete...be ye therefore perfect. How then are we able to grow into the stature of the person this is speaking about? We have to ask for it in faith, with a devout heartfelt desire - a desire that God knows is the truth. What should we be asking for? That every question that we could possibly have, be resolved with a perfect answer from God. We are not yet the bride of Christ. We must lay a true foundation. When God’s word gives evidence that we can use to make a decision, we have a responsibility to effectively use that evidence. By His spirit, we can reach for the calling and the perfection that is being offered to us. Without that reaching, and asking, we won’t come close. It is becoming clearer and clearer who we really are. Being made perfect is a considerable subject in itself. Truth, plain and simply makes a point. The first fruit is only a total of 144,000 people, our calling is commanding, and beyond our present ability to really understand its greatness. This thing is clear. Because the number is that few, the perfection that God speaks of is well called for. To help qualify the possibility of that number we should notice that the “great multitude which no man could number”, has repented and been cleansed by the blood of Christ but have yet to receive “life as perfected” as we have. Hebrews 11:39, 40 We are the callen chosen of unprecedented value. This may bring a new appreciation of the work being done in us, an understanding of the degree of righteousness that our Father is guiding us into. We will stand on the ground of truth. We will be made complete. When that will be, is the question that we are learning to resolve. Being made perfect is a higher calling than being made very good. The “very good” was designed to achieve God’s intended eternal purposes – to perfect us that we might be worthy. Being made perfect is the redemptive purpose to restore His intent, it is not a plan “B”. This path inoculates the faithful and true believers against defection from the faith. You cannot contend that it is impossible for a child of God to come to perfection in Christ. This mystery carries with it overtones of true conversion. With this faith comes rank, favor, and priviledge. God’s perfected are viewed in a separate class as spirits of just men made perfect. The “perfectedness” is not the result of human merit; the glory is to God yet certainly does not exclude our obedience to the Lord’s requirements. We are being brought to completion of the promised victory and there to abide in. Our trust is grounded in Jesus. Being made perfect requires a faith greater than any fear. The fear of God is the only acceptable fear. This fear comes with wisdom, understanding. Enormously difficult, hurtful, harmful, high risk times will be the norm in the last of the last days. Very serious decisions will need to be made. We must be determined to live by faith, rather than in fear. Faith is grounded in truth; fear is grounded in misrepresentations. Fear is not wanting to hear every word of God. To have faith in God means to trust in His integrity. What kind of fear causes one to resist searching the word of God for truth? Unless we seek to serve God with our undivided affections, we will fail to perfect holiness in His fear. SOP - The Lord has pledged His glorious perfection that those who seek Him with humility of heart, confessing their sins, will find Him precious to their souls. But those who refuse to obey, for fear of displeasing earthly friends, cannot be friends of God. {TDG 153.5} What kind of perfection are we talking about in reference to God? Being made perfect has to do with knowing God and His ways spiritually. To do this means that we need to refuse to accept ungodlike thoughts and strive to express genuine, God-given qualities, such as love, forgiveness, and wisdom. As God’s goodness is reflected in our lives, it brings restoration to a likeness with God’s created intent. Our thoughts begin to with divine perfection. Through our prayer and study, we see more of spiritual reality and divine harmony. Matter loses its importance as we see its unreality and begin to understand the purpose of God with spiritual consciousness. We become aware of our spiritual identity. Being made perfect is not something that sounds good in theory. Perfection is obtainable because God has made divine provision for each of us to become perfect. It is the highest aim of what God, in His great power, can do for us. There are no degrees to perfection. It is not based on any type of measurement, but upon expressed, visible character virtues. And as far as being made perfect...you either are, or you’re not. We realize how far from the perfection of Christ we really are. And we know that no amount of human effort can make us perfect as Christ is perfect. Our dilemma - we are commanded to strive for perfection while inhabiting a body incapable of achieving this perfection. We embrace this command just as we embrace the command to keep holy the Sabbath day because we are called to it by Christ. Perfection is the standard by which we examine our lives despite the knowledge that we are not yet complete. We strive for this perfection because in doing so we demonstrate our sincere faith in Jesus, godly perfection in human form. Because of this faith, therefore, God considers us perfect in His eyes now, while we await our transformation.

22 Minutes Psalms 138:8 This text charms me. It contains in itself the very essence of the grace of God. It reads like music to the soul, and is like a flagon of water in the desert. May I ask you to read it again... Let’s spiritually understand this statement. It literally means “be complete”. We are to, with all our spiritual might, reach a singular level of maturity in our growth in terms of spiritual integrity. Moral excellence, upright righteousness are imaged attributes of God. We are to be devotedly and eminently set apart as we run hard after God. And it’s not just us...God wants a holy people. Jesus says to be perfect, the belief would be that he would not require us to do something that is impossible for us to achieve. Please do not allow doubt to blind you. There is a special work of the Holy Spirit that God assigns us whereby we can have victory over all sin, over all intentional sin. Perfectionism is not that target. The ongoing struggle with sin has to be met with “it is written”. Can a person be perfect? Even Hezekiah walked with a perfect heart. Job 1:1 Genesis 6:9 Being perfect is finding it never, ever necessary on any occasion to choose to sin. It is being diligent in our behavior. It is not some metaphase that transforms the structural composition of our bodies. Too many are fiercely self-critical as opposed to trusting in the word of God. Please, have no grief in misunderstanding. Jesus expects us to be all that we are supposed to be. The sorrow for our sins is to be perfect in our truthfulness with God and with ourselves. The enmity that God gave us perfects our hatred for sin. It ensures that God is loved above all else. You are not inadequate when you are in Christ. Jesus was enjoining us to be perfect and praying that we be made perfect, for perfect love perfects us, perfect contrition perfects us, perfect suffering perfects us, perfect obedience perfects us. Being perfect is Christ’s life manifested through us. Matthew 5:48 John 17:23 God knows how we receive His word to rise above our broken natures. And He gives us the grace to share in His power. By the power of God’s promise, we become what we were made to be: partakers of the divine nature. II Peter 1:4 Perfection is not more of a concern about actions we perform to a certain level, spiritual perfection is about becoming totally dependent on God, letting Him work through us to perform His will, not ours. It is not concerned about “self.” We don’t have to make ourselves perfect. It is God who perfects us in Jesus Christ. It is in our reconciliation with God by Christ, that God sees us perfect. We may, or will make missteps, but remember, the perfection spoken of in scripture is not about what we do; it’s about what Christ does in us. Hebrews 6:1 We must not lose them, we must not despise them, we must not forget them. We must lay them up in our hearts, and lay them as the foundation of all our profession and expectation; but we must not rest and stay in them, we must not be always laying the foundation, we must go on, and build upon it. Philippians 3:12-15 Hear this word, “this one thing I do”... Blessed are we who can give this same personal testimony. We have received permission from the Almighty God to go on to perfection. We are apprehended of the life of Christ in all its fullness. The life of Christ, which we have attained to so far, does not stop us from further heavenly pursuits. The race of following Christ is not something we have to do, ought to do, or must do; it is something we are permitted to do, something that is “privileged.” We serve in the newness of the Spirit and the result of its work is our sanctification. Our exit from this earthly life becomes a rich entrance into an eternal life. The powers of an eternal life, exampled by Christ, have already increasingly permeated our mind and life. Our life is a testimony of love and devotion to our God and to our Savior. It is as we have given each other our “yea, yea,” and our desire is to be united for all eternity. This is also by permission of our God. The truth of being made perfect is in our faith in the imputed and imparted righteousness of Jesus...God restoring us to favor. With this favor is God’s enabling grace, that moral power to obey with high regard His every commandment. This faith makes us right with the law of God. This is how God saves as many as desire to be saved. He transfers His own righteousness to us. This is what adorns the change in our spiritual nature whereby we can be made perfect. Just take a moment and contemplate the power received in reasoning with God. The believing family of God now present are the very ones who can know truth as it is in Jesus. Use your faith in the truth to act as a staff whereon we may rest through the pilgrimage of the most dreadful times and events ever to come upon humanity. Perfection was to be the heritage of mankind. In the very bowels of the prayer of Jesus is that promise that is ours. We are to now have a concern, in and a concern about heavenly things. We are to know that eternity concerns us more than time; that the mansions of heaven are more worthy of our consideration than the material stuff of earth. Immortality looms brilliantly before us and we’re casting more hope toward these perishing bodies. Faith is knowing that the life of the present is preparation for the ultimate perfecting when we see Jesus. This faith means that we have no perfection and no righteousness of, and in ourselves; that we must trust wholly and solely in Christ. The things that concern God must concern us...that is His perfecting us. We must appropriate the things the Holy Spirit is guiding us into and teaching us as though we are concerned. Any delay in our faith is the sign of spiritual retardedness. We should, each of us, put one hand upon our heart and lift the other to God and say, without stammering, as in the sight of God; "I am concerned about the things of God, of Christ, of salvation, of eternity. I may not yet understand His assurance, but I have concern. If I cannot say, I know in whom I have believed, I can say I know in whom I desire to believe. If I cannot say, I know that I am where I must be, I can say I desire that I may be found in him at last, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing." And I say this to my soul; suffer Christ not to take any part of his precious perfecting; it is all mine. Jesus was manifested to show us the Father, but his blood, his life was manifested that we might see the Father. Brothers, sisters, I just cannot hold this any longer...there is this most secret place, even more secret than a mother’s womb, that God has revealed to me, that irregardless of any circumstance, I might view from the perspective of perfection every discernible sufficiency that God makes available for my being made perfect. Christ himself...HE IS THE SECRET PLACE OF THE MOST HIGH GOD. We must endeavor to do all righteousness that is found in him. Psalms 18:24 There can be no cleanliness apart from the blood of Christ; and we can never be purified apart from the purifying operations of the Holy Ghost. Being made perfect is having the work of God in our heart. And the spirit of prophecy records as it is the testimony of Jesus, that what human power can do divine power is not summoned to do. God makes a way that in our flesh we can be born of the Spirit. The human power is the choice to accept that power of God...grace. And with God’s grace we are to celestially focus on His word, we are to suck all the sweetness from every word, that our faith becomes so strong, and our love so hot, that there is no “if’s” or “buts”, about our being made perfect, it is as “though” He has done it all, and will do it all. We must come to trust God as far as we can see Him. And we see God in all things. When there’s no food to eat, we see Him in the ravens coming. And if the ravens do not come, we see Him in the faith of His word...bread, water will be sure. When death threatens to end life, we see His promise of eternal life. We cannot wait to believe the thing of perfection until we get it, we have no doubt that we have the perfecting now. We take the “Lord will” as it is future. The “Lord will” is now. Everything is always present with the Lord. We say not “the Lord may make us perfect”. We say rather, “the Lord will make us perfect”. That means “now”. If we would only accept the fragrant aromatic incense of the priviledge of a confident faith. Have we not witnessed how the purposes of God are being fulfilled in our higher learning? The purposes of man will be defeated.

18 Minutes If you have prayed sufficiently through the Holy Spirit and are in peace of mind with your fellow sisters and brothers, it may be that this reading may allow us mental and spiritual access to the third heaven by faith to learn of the truths not yet uttered. If not, your understanding will reside in the atmosphere of earth only. This is not just an academic exercise. It is one of holy reason. All our enquiries are to be made to God, in full submission to the authority of God, seeking understanding without making things up about God. Let us draw ever nearer, to a deeper level of intimacy, to greater faith through greater understanding, on our knees in adoration and prayer, to a recognition with fear and trembling of the awesome true sense of the holiness of God and to a breathtaking, life-giving, humbling gratitude that this Holy God calls us, His creatures, to be holy too. This is not just a writing task for me. My hope is that is offers us a sobering effect. The particular end is one of devotion for us. Good sounding writings have their place but on our knees in prayer, in our hearts and minds engaging with scripture...that is where and when we take our leave from this world, from self. Understandably we will be limited by our verbal and conceptual tools, but God’s truth will be rendered and revealed through the testimony of His word illuminated by the Holy Spirit. We are covenanted with the heart of God. Our complete surrender to Christ involves God’s command and promise. This third heaven is to be understood as a place where spiritual clarity is given. It is not with intent to attempt to peer into what God says should not be spoken...sayings of God too sacred for words. But coming to know the character of God the stunning experience humbled the man. This experience prayerfully enhanced the repeated teaching that our temporary suffering in this life is not worth comparing with the glory believers will experience in eternity. That gives understanding as to why the experience was mentioned in order to introduce the consequences of that experience. Hope tells me that what was spoken to the man was the revelation of the power of resurrection. Might this be the source of inspiration written by the man based upon the experience at Lystra. II Corinthians 12:1-5 John 11:25, 26 Acts 14:19, 20 Matthew 22:29-32 Could the unspeakable words be what the voice of the archangel might sound to bring forth the dead in Christ? Most will miss out on not having this experience. God trusted a man to hold his peace. This teaches us that there are things God reveals to some and not to others. There are some who know God and His Word more intimately than we would ever hope to. Have you ever read a passage over and over again only to have another believer teach you something about the verse that you had never known before? I believe this is not because people are heedless, but because there are some people to whom God gives understanding because of their trustworthiness. God reveals His truth to those who will use His truth for others. The bible makes this very clear. Psalms 25:14 God reserves such an awesome manifestation for few. Watch God’s man stand. Where were the disciples when Paul was being stoned? Where were the disciples when Jesus was being crucified? Paul and Isaiah and John have been granted the opportunity before death to hear the counsel of God. It is in the Holy Spirit that we ask to be given a glimpse of heaven while we are still on this side of eternity. Pray that we keep ever in mind our frailty and complete reliance on God’s grace. We check our motive for wanting to know the closeness of God. That it be not for the boasting or pride of reaching higher. Whatever encounters God allows are to be humbly acknowledged. We must open no breeding ground for the enemy. Our emphasis is to be brought to the brilliance of the basics of truth in our walk with Jesus. Inclusive of what we learn must be our desire to serve others and to demonstrate the love of Christ for them. This third heaven experience, though joyful and profitable, is not the attaining to where the final people of God will dwell. There are far greater heights of coming to God that will be gifted to His people. Ephesians 4:10 Holiness is the heart of God’s covenant with His people. It is the covenant invitation to be God’s people, and the command for these people to be holy as God is holy. The holiness of God is the perfect rectitude of His nature, whereby He is absolutely free from all moral impurity, and, in all that He does, acts like Himself, and for the advancement of His own honor; delighting in what accords with, and abhorring what is contrary to His nature and will. Holiness is the glory of all the divine perfections. And every perfection is an act of God’s self-revelation. God’s self-revelation is, by its very nature, an act of God’s graciousness. God’s graciousness is life-giving, but in giving life also opposes sin. Holiness is opposition to sin. Holiness is tasked as our word in speaking of God. Our language has no degree of comprehensiveness meaningfully adequate to express the character of God revealed, even in the biblical witness. Holiness suggests that there can be no promotion of any of God’s perfections above the others. And God’s perfections are a study of God’s character. God possesses all possible perfections. And there is not the least resemblance to be found among any of His creation. God is unbounded in every perfection, love, wisdom, power, wrath, mercy, forgiveness. Biblically revealed is the perfect knowledge of God is competent to none but himself, whose understanding is infinite. He knows all things, not by information, nor by deduction. Job 11:7 Holiness is an exercise in holy reasoning characterized by weakness and a sense of inadequacy in the face of the “high and holy matter to which it is called to bear testimony.” This sanctification of reason, by the work of God’s Spirit, is the process whereby reason is made alive to the terrifying and merciful presence of the holy God. God is intimately present; and His immensity extends infinitely beyond the boundaries of all created substance. God fills all places at once with His essential presence. Jeremiah 23:23, 24 He has all life, glory, and blessedness, in and of Himself. His existence is necessary and underived. His holiness results from absolute perfection of His own nature. And all His perfections are infinite excellencies. God does not leave His present behind Him as the past to proceed toward the future. His livingness is His own essence. We cannot grasp God is our creaturely reality. He is what He tells us He is. Holiness is characterized by the truth that God is always God. It is in holiness that we realize that covenantal relatedness is not settled, static, or fixed. God emerges new ways in response to our faith and restoration from the sacrificing of animals to the circumcision of human flesh to His writing upon the heart and mind His law. This holiness of the covenant is God’s way in the sanctuary. The agreeing spirit to offer sacrifice justifies our faith, the work to remove the deadness of self sanctifies our new born life, and the written law in our heart, our mind, glorifies our sureness of salvation. We are in the Way of the Word. This Way is the Spirit of God acting upon and in us. We obey with or without understanding. This faith opens our eyes to the power and glory of God. Thiscovenant between God and God’s people does not take away from God’s sovereign Lordship, it demonstrates His perfections which are incomprehensively broad, long, high and deep. The covenant shows that grace and holiness are not separated, neither are mercy and judgment. It is because of the intolerance of God to anything that tries to take away from His holiness, that we are faced with the wrath of God. It is by the covenant that we are made alive in Christ. Romans 6:11 Holiness is bringing us into the full force of divine truth. As we study to know and understand, the Holy Spirit will ingrain in us such a liberty of consciousness that God will give us that extra Word that only those who are reconciled to the doings of the law can have true peace with God through Jesus Christ. Faith is our principle that without acceptable works cannot be performed and our salvation cannot be attained. Let it be clear, holiness affirms wholesomeness in God. And it is only by, in, and through the meritorious righteousness of Christ. That makes holiness contingent upon God. What, then, of God’s command to “be holy as I am holy”? This command is not to be attained or attempted by efforts toward status or merit, but rather by cleaving to God’s grace. Thereby becoming holy in virtue of the holiness of the God who graciously takes action on His own behalf. Our attention and submission to the gospel is indicative of our election and the imperative of obedience. Holiness is our response to God’s act which by God’s own decision, allows God to act on our behalf. God’s people are holy because God is holy and graciously intervenes on our behalf to make us holy as He is holy. How, then, are God’s people made holy? They are made holy by God’s intervention through Jesus Christ, God with us. Do not think that holiness is a state which rests passively on the hearts of an individual without requiring anything more. Holiness is an election to pursue all that is Christ. The pattern of this is characterized by mortification (putting to death) and vivification (bringing to life). From this arises the “movement of holy living,” turning away from ourselves and toward God, whose we are. We are God’s election; submitting to God, the Holy One who elects us to enter into relationship, standing under the authority of the scripture that attests this Holy God, bearing witness to the risen Christ who speaks this word into being, and declaring in praise and worship: “Behold, our God!” This is our joining together in Christ. The dwelling place of God is us, a spiritual temple, built and sustained by God. Here is the relational wonder of holiness... God’s holiness is not only that which separates us from God in His transcendence, but it is also the majestic sovereign power which descends down to us as grace in our midst as God’s condescension. This condescension is central to the covenant God made with Israel, in that as holy God, He offers us, the called people, to be God’s people, purifying and maintaining us against all threat of sin so that we may be God’s possession. Go to the sanctuary...this is the reconciling mission of the Son and the outpouring sanctification of the Holy Spirit. This is the determinate act of the Godhead. The movement of holiness is the purposed revelation of the 2520 prophecy...God’s condescending to elect and gather in communion those who are found in holiness of God with the plentifulness of grace to live that “God is Almighty”. There is a greater holiness in Heaven. With holiness God’s people go beyond prophecy, beyond faith, they go to love. Let’s put that in perspective to God. Ready? Read this next sentence to gain all you can. Ready? HOLINESS IS SO OF GOD THAT HE DOES NOT NEED A REASON TO LOVE. Stop...pause. We say, “we love because”. Is there a reason behind our love? God loves us in Himself...that is where we are. Let’s sound this out scripturally. Revelation 12:17 Our dependence on prophecy is both to delineate and bind together the events of God determined for fulfillment of His purposes. Prophecy offers inspiration, compels obedience and corrects our behavior in circumstances, gives us reliance upon the word of truth. Revelation 14:12 Central to Jesus’ faith is our entering into the Kingdom. It is with this faith that we please God. Prophecy is time and event measurable. Faith is hope and hope is not limited to time or events. God gives His elect the strength of obedience and prophecy. He gives His very elect the strength of obedience, prophetic witness, and the blessed hope to look for the glories of another world, to which a sober, righteous, and godly life in this world is preparative. It is the great thing we look and long and wait for. Prophecy events the accomplishing of our hope, our faith and the sureness and greatness of it. We prophesy and hope to the second appearing of Christ. And there is something that does not come by prophecy or faith... II John 2, 3 Beyond prophecy, beyond faith is this truth and love that we are to put on and wrap ourselves in, which is the perfect bond of unity, for everything is bound together in agreement of these. These do not insist on their own way, they embrace holiness. Determining prophecy based upon faith is the strength of the study of the Revelation and the 2520 revealed in the vision. There is a present darkness that will cause many to be everlastingly too late to rise to the light of holiness as is the truth and the love of God. Let us come into the radiance of what our holiness is to be like. And it is the Sabbath which is an illustration on how the Lord makes us holy. This will be our completeness. The Sabbath did not make itself holy. This seventh day was totally powerless and helpless, bordered by sunset to sunset as it was created after day four. It was the seventh day of the world. God set the honor of that day. Genesis 1:5 Psalms 74:16 As the acknowledgement of God is the constant succession of day and night, God made the seventh day holy. Likewise, we can do nothing to make ourselves holy, yet God can make us holy just as He made the seventh day holy. Thus, the Sabbath is all about grace. It is a sign that all of God’s work is complete, and we can rest without trying to add anything to His work. So, we rest our faith in His amazing grace. The Sabbath is as are we...the climax to a purpose of God...the Sabbath to His creation...we to His plan of salvation. Both are for our rest...rest from our labor and rest in eternal peace. Holiness is belonging to a God of infinite love and power. We are to have hope to come into the presence of a holy God and survive the experience. We must be discerning of the hope and holiness relationship. I Peter 1:13-16 This shows what we have been given and how we are to act upon it. God chose us, He has caused us to be born again, giving us a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has promised us an inheritance. This is a salvation in which we greatly rejoice, even in the midst of trials, of sufferings, because the fruit of those trials and sufferings is a more pure faith and greater confirmation, greater certainty of the genuineness of our faith proven under trial. This pursuit of holiness is to fashion our character after Christ. We must have a fully engaged mind. We are to be confidently and reasonably expectant of all events to try us, to try others’ willingness to stand for what God reveals as truth. This without dilution or distraction. Lives will be lost because of former passions or even by emotions. The truth that you can know must be sought through the convincing of the Holy Spirit. He purposes that you not conform to the desires of your former ignorance. God will set you apart alone to strengthen you in holiness. The goal of our holiness is God’s glory, so He will not leave us on our own and let us struggle in our pursuit of holiness. Hope will motivate holiness, and holiness strengthens our hope. II Corinthians 7:1 The lamb that represented Jesus had to be without spot because only perfect holiness is acceptable to God. Our life is to engage with God and others in holiness. Remember the Sabbath because God is interested in our holiness.

22 Minutes In the calling of the chosen is the redemptive design revealed by God purposefully that there is full legitimacy to the question “who then can be saved”? God is revealing to us an unbreakable fetter that starts in eternity past, goes through time, and on into eternity future. This bond is forged by God Himself, and has five unbreakable links: God foreknows, predestinates, calls, justifies, and glorifies. As God's faithful people struggle through difficult times it helps to look back on the way He has led in the past. When we see His faithfulness and recognize over and over again that He is in complete control over the affairs of planet earth, we marvel and feel greater confidence as we look to the future. Who are the called, the chosen? We are God's true and loyal followers in every age whose love for Him. We are committed to Him. We are too strong in the truth and too deep in the faith to be shaken. God has always had a people, a people called to stand separate from error and compromise and lies and counterfeits. God has always had a people, a people chosen to show and tell the world what He is really like and to defend and proclaim His truth. And God still has a people standing in an unbroken line of the faithful to every word of God. God has a called and chosen remnant today. And to His remnant people, God has given the urgent task of reaching out to the world with His good news of winning them to Jesus Christ so that when He returns soon to this earth, they will know Him and be ready to meet him. Who is called? Who is chosen? By God’s determination you are called to a cause, you are chosen to a purpose. God makes the choice to chose you. Your being chosen is based on His choice. The called are not always the chosen, but the chosen hear and accept the call. Those chosen are those who have humbled themselves and obeyed through faith the gospel of God. It is God's will to choose those of faith who follow His commandment of the gospel. We are elected by God on account of our faith, by His grace. Israel was selected by God to be God’s witness to the world. Our calling indicates a relationship with Him. Deuteronomy 7:6-8 Isaiah 43:10-12 One’s calling is an act of God. And the true blessing is to be called out of the confusion of erroneous teachings that are so extant in this world into the light of God’s truth. John 6:44 I Peter 2:9 To be chosen, a person must accept his or her calling, be grateful for it and move forward in serving God and His Son. The combined decision by God to both call and choose His people, indicates these are to hold fast to what they are taught, whether it came from God’s Word or from one whom God uses for His glory. These must be and remain obedient to God. Ephesians 1:13 We have to make a decision after we hear the word of truth. We are to be obedient to God. We cannot just accept the wonderful calling of God and continue to live a life following our own desires. We are to be the elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Being called is to embark on the life changing path to become more and more like Jesus and to be converted. The called are to play a vital role in aiding in the saving of humanity from total annihilation in the crisis at the close of this age. The called-out ones must be spiritually prepared and be clothed with righteousness. Job 29:14 I Peter 5:10 It is the will of God to open our minds to His truth. He wants us to remain faithful to Him after our calling, so that we can be His chosen, His elect. There must be an effectual calling based upon truth. There is a calling that is a general appeal. Matthew 22:13, 14 Romans 8:29, 30 John 11:43 And the dead man was given life by the call. The call creates the obedience, the call creates the life, and, the called will be glorified. It is true that Jesus died for all people and all people have the ability to choose out of their own free will whether or not they will accept God’s grace, God’s calling and be saved. Yet, on the other hand, it is also true that there is a sense in which each person is predestined. God has determined to place each person He will create into a unique circumstance in history. By placing each person into certain circumstances and knowing how each person will freely choose in those circumstances, one could say that God “predestines” those who are “elect.” Is God’s Sovereignty to be questioned? God purposefully orders the world so that, by the end of human history, as many people as possible are placed into circumstances in which they will freely choose to be saved. God orders the world the way He does for good reasons. And God knows that everyone who is lost is a person who would reject God and be lost under any circumstances. Predestination applies to each individual individually responding to God’s necessary grace by their personal response in faith. Here is the beautiful approach to being the called, the chosen...God foreknew. He did not know something about particular people chosen, He knows them in the individually equivalency as of living out their entire life in Him. Is their faith the cause or the results of their being chosen? All are not foreknown by God in the sense spoken of. Jesus saying “I never knew you” was because he knew the choices you’d make to foster an evil character so as not to be regarded as an object of his favor. Few are called according to God’s purpose. These are His. God needs no other compelling reason to differentiate what is presupposed. Foresight of faith is in accord with every determinative action of God. It is not the foresight of difference but the foreknowledge that makes the difference to exist, not a foresight that recognizes existence, but the foreknowledge that determines existence. It is a sovereign distinguishing love. Amos 3:1, 2 These are qualified in the mind of God to be conformed to the image of Christ. God knowing particular individuals, it often means that He has special regard for them, that they are the objects of His affection and concern. God had a special regard for Jeremiah before he was in the womb. Now with this God shares His determining power. And determining power can bring you to salvation. The faith that God gives is the effectual limiting of the number chosen. Understand what trust in God means. God does not in the spiritual content decide who will be saved. He rather refers to the destiny appointed for those who are chosen. He unconditionally sets His favor on whom He will, then, He destines them for their role in life. It is in His chosen that aims at and secures the end which God must have in order to be God and the end which we must have in order to be the preeminent glorification of Christ. II Timothy 1:9 Believers are chosen in grace before the eons, before sin, before creation and before any decision. This great faith and confidence in the sovereign God is gratuitously granted to some now without cause except that it is God’s choice beforehand according to what pleases Him to accomplish His purpose. Foreknowledge and the human will are propositions of faith. God’s foreknowledge is not in time. And God knows the truth of every event before it occurs. This is where human will intersect God’s foreknowledge. The will carries maximal causal force due to the necessity that we must make choices. But the truth or the falsity of that choice is in knowing the past, yet the sufficiency of that choice is in knowing that God knows what is going to happen. This is “the ordering of the times”. There is no changing truth about where the future is headed. Faith fills the gap between divine knowledge and human will. God knows of all the evidence and other knowledge-conferring factors that human beings are aware of in all situations. God’s knowledge makes present all future contingents in the same way that our discernment can know them. Circularly, God knows. He knew whether our every choice would lack truth or accommodate His determined future. Too many misrepresent God’s knowledge because they wrap God in time. God is not in time and God has no temporal properties. All temporal events are before the mind of God at once. To say “at once” is to think of the whole of reality as being before God’s mind in a single presence. It is a presence in which God has a single complete grasp of all events in the entire span of time. God knows who His are because God sees who His are in the faith of their doings. God’s presence to each and every moment of time is compared to the way in which the center of a circle is present to each and every point on its circumference. God is the very center and the circumference of all creation. This is why and how free will is never threatened. This is why and how God knows those who are His. We are in Christ’s infallible foreknowledge and the freedom of his created will is in us. It is as though we are choosing to be chosen by our faith in Christ. And in that truth there is no accidental necessity. We are God’s foreloved. Understood to be equivalent to those who are the objects of God’s love, marked out for salvation. God’s forelove is in agreement with the efficient and determining action which is so conspicuous in every other link of the chain; it is God who predestinates, it is God who calls, it is God who justifies, and it is He who glorifies. Foreknowledge, with reference to God, connotes foreordination. The doctrine of election affirms that God chose those whom He would save. It also occurs in the same kind of construction and where the thought of election is manifestly present. The doctrine of election affirms that for purposes known only to Himself God chose those whom He would save. He did not choose them because of anything about them but for His own “good pleasure”. Election is grounded in foreseen faith. This is a divine initiative by God, not a response. Election is according to grace, the outworking of His purpose. Romans 9:11 II Peter 1:10 Romans 11:5, 7, 28 On one level we respond to the call of Christ and in that sense “chose” him. What the word plainly indicates is that it was not, in fact, our choice of him that determined his choice of us; it was, rather, his choice of us that determined our choice of him. Sovereign election comes first. John 15:16

8 Minutes When we grasp the purpose for our being, we will become rooted and established as God’s chosen elect. We become rooted and established in Him as our solid foundation. Here is a great reality that stands at the center of our life. Jesus Christ lives by his Spirit in the soul of every true believer. His prayer expresses this, “I in them”. Think of the mind of Jesus settled in your conscience, in your thoughts, or even in your memories. You would be an entirely different person. Your experiences would be different, your awakening would be to a spiritual realm, your rest would be in God-given hope, dreams, desires. Your active faith of living the blessed life that God intended for you will be your unique mix of divinity and humanity. It would be your full expression of yourself as Jesus in you. At all times your focus would be shifted to his truth. As with Christ in us we discern the approach of every trial and temptation. The presence of Christ in us, the consideration of Christ toward us, the strength of Christ in us, that is what gets us through. He is our hope of glory. The assurance that we will be glorified. It is this mystery that says he in us that we may be made perfect in him. Colossians 1:27, 28 And it is Christ in us by which we are the temple of God, the dwelling place for His truth. The degree to which God and Jesus Christ dwell in us depends on the extent to which we follow the leading of God’s Spirit and use its power. When the Holy Spirit is in us, it empowers us to actually become the likeness of God the Father and Jesus Christ in nature, character, spirit, attitudes, approach and love. Christ in us is under our will and control, not his. God wants us to choose for ourselves to live as Jesus lived. He doesn’t force us to do it. This involves a humble, earnest seeking to become like Jesus Christ, so his life becomes our life. He becomes formed in us. II Corinthians 6:16 Galatians 4:19 We in Christ is where we are placed according to God’s purpose. Our position is in Christ. In the fullness of time God has this place for us. If we in Christ is where we are placed according to God’s purpose, then Christ in us is where he is placed according to God’s purpose. If all that is Christ’s belongs to us when we are in him, then all that is ours belongs to him when he is in us. Ephesians 1:10; 2:5, 6 There is a mystery that is made manifest to us. Being born again, we are not only moved to a new place in Christ as a new creature, but we are changed from the inside out as we are in Christ. Christ is the covenant and we being in him places us in agreement with God. We live by our faith in Christ. Christ is the end of the law and we in Christ is us in the law. We must come to this knowledge, and we are to make all men see it. "In Christ" is a positional term. It means to be in Christ before God. Being in Christ is likened to being taken in the spiritual reality to the presence of God. Romans 8:1, 38, 39 This place is secured for us through faith in Jesus. And Christ in us is understandably his character, his power to overcome, his love, his wisdom. It is the capacity to have his principled features formed and displayed in us. With Christ in us comes righteousness, sanctification, justification, redemption, and the ministry of reconciliation. If Christ be in us and we in him then our relationship with all others is to seek justly, rightly, and faithfully for the Christ that is in them. Christ in us implies that the new kingdom to which we now belong is now resident within us. And we are his character of display having a new frame of mind. It is a wonderful blessing for us to be in Christ but until Christ is found in us, the blessings of the kingdom will elude us. It is the level to which Christ is formed in us that determines the degree of liberty we enjoy in our outward life. Again, the level of development of Christ in us is solely dependent on us as an individual. It is our responsibility to let him have absolute pre-eminence by habitually feeding on God’s word and submitting ourself to it. We must embrace and nurture the word of God with a Christ consciousness within us and our outward manifestation of God’s glory will be noticeable and indisputable. Christ is in us because the Holy Spirit begets in us a new life. We in Christ is as having clothed ourselves with Christ in his righteousness. Galatians 3:26-28 We are right where our faith is...in Christ. We were in him on the cross where he paid for all our sin so that now, being hidden in Christ, God can look upon us, for He sees Jesus. Spiritually, we are now really alive for the first time. The intimacy that our hearts crave for our Lord Jesus and our Father God can now be satisfied. We become the righteousness of God in Him. II Corinthians 5:21 We are in Him. He is in us. His word abides in us. We are his Righteousness. We are his Life. We can do his works now. That is why he says, “greater things than these shall ye do”.

32 Minutes Through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, we are being transformed into Christ’s image, both mind and heart. This is the promise of the new covenant and God’s eternal purpose for His elect, so that Christ would be over all and in all. With a divine mind and heart our intent is not just to talk more intelligently about God, but to “come to Him”, to encounter Him, that we may reason with Him. Too many read the word but never hear His voice in the silence of His expressed thought. We must “seek” the Word exposed in the word. The joy of revelation is acquiring interaction with God, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit. Let us always think of God as present and speaking with us, disclosing His mind, His heart, His will. Our God is articulate. He talks with us through His word. We are to reflect upon His words until His higher thoughts begin to take form in our mind. Oh let us pray that we be given a divine mind and heart to come to God. The power of the Holy Spirit reveals God’s word and the mind of the Lord is His thoughts. When we study His word, we are reasoning with His mind. He tells us what we are to know, to want. He tells us how He feels towards us, how He loves us. I Corinthians 2:16 We are to take occasion and measure to endorse all that He says that what He says may echo back to our hearts and our minds. Use spiritual deliberation with each word that we may negotiate what is truth with what we may not yet understand. Prayerful contemplation until God’s heart, His mind is revealed so that His word flows into the very recesses of our soul and our hearts and minds are exposed. As we see His faithfulness in reasoning with us through the truth of His word as He knows our thoughts we will see His unfailing love that motivates us to love Him more. We will savor His every word. So much of our pursuit to attain a divine mind, a divine heart depends upon our temperament, our character, our spirit. When we approach God this way He gives us more of Himself. We can never understand God through our intellect. His ways are too high for us. So He gives us the Holy Spirit who gives us insight from the purity of heart – from love, from humility, and from the desire to obey. Matthew 5:8 The more of God’s truth that we know and obey, the more we come to know. There are those who believe they believe in God, but by their willing ignorance they believe only in the idea of God, not in God Himself. You cannot make your heart love God. You cannot make your mind obey. Reason with God. This humbling will cause you to think more deeply, to respond more intensely. Esteem, cherish, regard your alone time with God, we can learn from, and find out God in our solitude. Making visible the invisible. Behind our whole spiritual quest to be like Christ must be our profound expression of the deep hunger we have for the Word. With a divine mind, divine heart, we come to divine sonship, what it means and why it matters. In the word we hear God speaking, in His doing we see God working, in His reproach we know God’s judgment, in His love we are His heart. If this be not true, we know nothing of God at all. If it be true, and we know it is, then Jesus is God manifest in our flesh, unique and incomparable, bringing Christ in us as God is in him. We can be of a divine mind, a divine heart. There is a purpose of God to explain why we need the Christ-self within us. It is for us to overcome our shadow that is our internal darkness that is caused by our blocking the light. The divine heart includes the lesser, to experience divine love to awaken our divine core to connect with the heart of God, the Heart of Hearts, and we can, with a divine heart, then love others with what is experienced. Praying together, studying together and sharing in God’s love can quicken the awakening of the divine heart within each human heart. God has an illuminated people whom He causes divine light to spring up in their minds, and He has taken them into His favor and covenant. He gives these the sufficiency of truth to reason with others. But there are some things that the thunders uttered that we are yet to know. The truth that God has revealed is sufficient, but it is not exhaustive. There are many things that God will reveal to us in the last time. Things that He will require of us and expect us to know. And for that, we need a divine mind that can hear what the Spirit saith. Adam and Eve were given insight into future salvation. Moses suffered for Christ. Genesis 3:15 Hebrews 11:26 A divine mind is key to trusting every word of God, revealed and being revealed. The bible is able to be understood, but will not be reasoned with for truth by the majority of the people. Every believer should study the scriptures for themselves. Nowhere do we find the scripture telling believers that they should only listen to some “teacher” to know the truth. The source of our learning, our reasoning, our hearing the truth is divinely appointed. John 16:13, 14 John 14:23-26 Please understand what Jesus is saying when he says “keep my words”. He is not only referring to the written word. Jesus is saying that there is a divine aboding with him and his Father based upon the love of a divine heart to reach a divine mind. He says he messages a word, a word that is uttered by a living voice, a word that embodies a conception, an idea, a thought which is continuous in its narration for discussion for a divine mind alone to reason to know the intent. When we are being led by the Holy Spirit it demonstrates in us a growing maturity in the purposes of God. The more we can do things God’s way the more we will experience the greater happenings of God in and through our lives. And we can only do that as we are sensitive enough to hear His voice to us, telling us what He wants us to do. And so it is with a divine mind that it is therefore absolutely imperative that we live in God’s Word because of the nature of scripture as God breathed and is profitable for doctrine or teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction or training in righteousness. The word of God is of divine revelation, which we may depend upon as infallible truth. Do we not realize how much power God invests into His word? Truth is the fundamental principle that absolutely answers all questions. And truth is that which conforms to the mind of God. And where we study about God’s thought, we are studying about the mind of God, and that therein lies all truth. Truth matters. This same word of God breathes reason into us while breathing revelation among us. With a divine heart the harmony of the word is received as accomplished truth, purity, and is transcendently impressive. And the wonder of God’s word is how He performs it. No spoken word from God shall be without power or impossible of fulfillment. God, Himself, stands over and watches over His own Word, making sure it is fulfilled. What is the performing that gives us confidence in God? Our having a divine mind and a divine heart are predicated upon where we stand with Christ. And to stand with Christ means to do absolutely nothing, not anything that is contrary to God’s will. And this entails us being in Christ as our eternal hope and Christ being in us as God’s performance of perfection. And so it is that God opens the eyes of the divine heart and the ears of the divine mind that we being His chosen may see and hear the truth of His every word. Every word is tested, tried, and proven... Colossians 1:27, 28 Romans 8:9 Jeremiah 1:12 Matthew 13:13 There is a spiritual seeing through and beyond natural seeing. There is a spiritual hearing through and beyond natural hearing. There is spiritual discerning through and beyond natural reasoning. The great majority of people have personal ideologies, deep self and beliefs they are not even aware of. Put two, three people together to look at the clouds and each say what they see. Different views huh. What rationale does one have in chosing a political party? Can there be intelligent people on opposite sides? People don’t always see the same facts, the same evidences before their eyes. And so, with similar logical abilities, they conclude different things. The heart, the eyes of the heart...our diverse experiences, our personality, our deep self. All of these are filters we have which make us see things differently. There is much power related to our choices - and sometimes, even if we understand reasonable arguments, it will take more than this to fully persuade us that what we hear, what we see, what we reason is the truth - very deep inside these make themself the Youniverse. Love for God should conclude reasoning to love the truth. The mind and the heart are to attune each other in the truth. When one hears the truth who is it from? John 7:17 Jesus is talking about a “heart-mind-reason” recognition where a just person hears the truth and says immediately, “yes, that is truth”. We have this witness in our hearts that we were made for His glory. When the mind becomes hostile to the word of God it reflects the hardness of heart. This is a deep aversion to God bordering on self exaltation. And so it is that those whom God chooses have a responsibility to realize the power of words and be mindful of their trajectory. These have a responsibility to pay attention to how words may land on the hearts of others. These have a responsibility to be aware of the potential consequences of words and use them as wisely as possible. How others hear words is of their choosing, but God’s people are to be ready always to present the evidence of the word to those who will hear with mind and heart letting one inform the other to mature reasoning. God’s people give forethought not to think what is truth, but to know the thought of truth. That is the mind of God revealed in His word. The divine mind and the divine heart are the passionate products of divine faith. Divine faith is possible because God gives us the grace to believe. We are able to listen to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens the mind and moves the will and therefore makes it easy for us to accept more than just what we read but also what God has revealed. This is a divine injunction into the spirit of every born-again believer that enters into the privilege to be born of the WORD of God, born into a divine nature of Christ in us. This faith changes hope into reality and acts in the face of contrary evidence because “We Believe God!” His divinity bursting through our humanity equals divine favor, divine plans, divine ability, divine life, divine power, divine healing, and divine principles. All this and more of His divine will come through His Divine act. Divine faith is a violent force, spiritually speaking. Our faith must be aggressive. Matthew 11:12 Luke 16:16 With a strength, and vigor, and earnestness of desire and endeavor, with fervency and zeal, we are required to strive. With a divine mind and a divine heart, the self will be denied. The frame and temper of the mind will undergo hard sufferings. We will be in an agony with a strong desire for the contention of entering into the kingdom as the divine life of Christ is the force within us.

10 Minutes There is no other mind but the divine mind of God. At creation our mind was one with the One Divine Mind. And because God is all-in-all, we are of His mind. God is the word, the name given to our source who is above and beyond all names and who, in the purest sense, we know as absolute truth and absolute divine love. Like drops of water in the ocean, our minds are individual components of this singular mind. In truth, there is no separation between what we experience as our mind and the mind of God. This is the eternal thought of God that possesses all the divine potentials we will ever experience. One of the primary purposes of the word of God, because God is our creator and He is infinite, is to reveal the true source of individuality. As a pattern of this one mind, our individualized mind extends the spiritual attributes of the One Mind into creation, giving it form. Our mind, individualized and without boundaries, manifests particular expressions of the divine mind. He will leave the ninety and nine to search for the one. The person that we are, with all our uniqueness, exists for the glory of Christ and the glory of God. Followers of Jesus are called to find their identity in him. Our true identity is ultimately based on what God has done in us. In Christ, we are loved. We were created with a purpose. We are not just a convenient carbon copy of someone else. We were created uniquely and with intention. God lovingly designed every detail of our person. Can you imagine the love involved with that intricate design? Christ in us makes us not only loved but chosen. God sent His own Son to earth to die in our place so that we could be included in His family. God was not obligated to choose us based on our performance or credentials. He chose to carry out an intricate plan that involved the death of His own perfect Son, which allowed us the opportunity to be a child of God. In order to be counted a child of the perfect Father, we had to be free of sin. That is, we had to be perfect with regard to doing right and not doing wrong. That is an impossibility on our part considering our nature. But Jesus was perfectly sinless for us in his life and is perfectly sinless for us when we come to justification by faith in him. Not one of us can attain perfection by our own effort. We are individually justified in Christ alone. Because Jesus, who was without sin, died the second death for us if we cease to sin, we can be forgiven of sin, otherwise the penalty will be due us. All that Christ did, all that Christ is, was accounted for us. This forgiveness allows us to be considered a child of God. Therefore, in God’s eyes, if we have accepted what Jesus did for us, we are completely forgiven. From His perspective, we are without sin. It’s not that we won’t sin, but when He looks at us, He calls us forgiven knowing our faith in Jesus. That is something on which we can build our identity. God wants us to understandthis for ourself by studying His Word. It is so important that we go to the word of God to find out how He thinks about us. Our identity should never be based on a hope or a guess. God gave us His Word, written, so we can know Him and know who He is making us to be in Him. We can be God’s righteousness. We are His goodness and rightness because of what Christ did on the cross. This allows us to be an ambassador to others around us. Because our righteousness is not earned but freely given through faith in Jesus, we can share this gift with others and invite them to be God’s righteousness too. With the likeness of a divine mind and a divine heart as someone who is forgiven, we can now freely forgive others. God’s extended grace is undeserved favor to us. We can extend that grace to others around us. A divine mind does not align with mental faculties alone. We have heard the saying, think before you speak. Why, in moments of strong emotion or ignorance, words that do not edify are weaponized. The biblical concept of the heart is broader than love and affection. The bible reasons that the heart and the head are combining elements of mind, will, fundamental commitments, hope, trust. What the heart trusts, the mind justifies, the emotions desire, and the will carries out. If our heart actually includes how we think in our mind and behave along with how we feel, then the expression of this collective wholeness demonstrates the composition of our desires through our words, habits, and behaviors. The words that flow from our lips are a sample of the content that lies within our hearts. In this we should come to realize the godliness in Christ that patterns both a divine mind and a divine heart...divinity garbed in humanity. Without the guiding of the Holy Spirit our own desires, affections, thoughts, and actions are bent toward sin at all times but by the grace of God. When the word of truth is heard by the natural mind, the carefully guarded “christian façade” will be exposed through the words that are spoken impulsively without thought reflection. Conviction and faith by the Spirit, and redemption through Jesus, causes the natural heart state to being transformed to the spiritual seeking to put to death the desires of the flesh and direct our hearts and minds toward the Spirit. Jesus’ teaching on this point is not that we must will ourselves toward holiness, but that it is through relationship with him that the desires of our heart are transformed, cleansing the outward expression of our hearts through our words and actions to now reflect him in place of our attempt to gain advantage, which entice us and drag us away. A divine mind and a divine heart are vital to this kind of creative discernment. The functioning of this capacity to discern actually happens through the unity of mind and heart because without love, there would be no compassion or sensitivity to the mind’s discernment. Understanding the capacity of both mind and heart presents the experience of the transformation of life to a loving desire to know truth bringing life into the process of revelation. Here’s how the Holy Spirit guides the mind into all truth. The moment we make a right judgment, we are seeing an implication, which reveals another possibility of experience or another dimension of knowingness. In this we are acknowledging God to be the source of all that is right. We are all living in God’s mind; we are creations of God’s mind, contents of God’s mind. And it is in this capacity that we can trust that God, as the One Divine Mind, is forever imparting all the wisdom we need. We can be confident that whatever answer we need is His word and we can receive it as we humbly hear what the Spirit says. We are being conformed to the image of His Son not only to reason upon God's thoughts expressed in His word, but to ask God for that which we need. That requires the examining of our heart and the evoking of our thoughts, which happens when God's Word becomes the orienting center of our common existence as His people, shaping our very perception of things as we have spiritual consideration about them. Our being transformed is an intricate process commencing from conversion that requires active attentiveness to avoid “careless” or “useless” words slithering out at times when our diligence wains or our flesh wins. When truth overwhelms the natural mind, our willpower and capacity to resist temptation is impaired. It is in this time that our prayers ask God to allow the Holy Spirit to isolate our consciousness acknowledging that the Holy Spirit works on our behalf to give words and interpretation to our groanings. A divine mind and a divine heart work to promote a constant vigilance and care of our whole self. We reorient our mind, our heart toward God. With Christ in us there is loving power with a divine heart. We all have sinned and will still often remember our sins, and those memories can make us feel unworthy, keeping us from accepting our true identity. We know what we have done; we may also remember what people have done to us. Maybe we were mistreated at some time or another like as was Jesus. Maybe someone rumored an untruth thing about us like they did about Jesus. The world is broken by sin. There are people who have experienced unspeakable injustice. From gossip to verbal and physical abuse, outside messages are trying to shape our identity every day. Those outside messages can lead you to believe that you are unworthy of what the word says is true of you in Christ. How do we respond? We forgive. Our spiritual individuality is substanced in Christ. Do you recall how the first man’s mind was in complete agreement with the mind of God? With this knowledge, please do not balk at the idea that God is the only true source of intelligence and identity, that He is the actual Mind of each individual, including ourself. We realize that most people don't often act as if God is their Mind. And all having the same mind...what would happen to individuality? Mentality is influenced more by carnal thinking than by a divine mind, but that is not the ultimate reality of things. You have a choice to reason carnally or spiritually. Whichever you choose, God is the true source of all intelligence and all wisdom, and He knows your thought even before you were born. Knowing that, and because God desires all to be saved, He has designed a distinct path that expresses your capabilities...let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Jesus' profound sense of individuality and effectiveness was not limited by his turning to God as his only mind. Jesus' dependence on God was responsible for his every decision, his every choice. Dependence on God is true wisdom. When our true identity is God's spiritual image, then our individuality is expressed in the true expression and recognition of Jesus’ unique contribution...he became flesh, sinful flesh like as we have and did no sin that we might by reason of a divine mind cease to sin like as he never did. God created our inmost being. And He filled us with ways to deepen an intimate relationship with Him. The divine mind is to be the fount of wisdom flowing with the spirit filled sensitivity of the Holy Spirit. This sensitivity is the maturity of the divine mind and the divine heart. With this sensitivity the mind, the heart focuses on hearing from God, then we will hear words from Him that others will not pick up. We will have such a closeness of relationship, a willingness to “not miss a word” that God speaks to us, to demonstrate a priority to Who comes first in our lives. We will have “God opportunities” come to us that, when acted upon, will cause us to be more effective and fruitful than the norm. The divine mind makes clear the purpose for which Christ became us. It is so we can know what it is to be filled, led, used more effectively, in those things that can impact people in time that will last throughout all eternity. God desires us to become more and more mature in His purposes so that we have the joy of being led by the Holy Spirit. Being led by the Spirit is the evidence that we are the sons and daughters of the Living God. Sons and daughters do what their Heavenly Father wills for them, because His love acquaints us with His divine essence, His perfections, plan, and His sovereign right to command and direct our lives. Galatians 4:6

28 Minutes God is the ultimate cause, the ultimate source of what truth is. Our ultimate truth is our abiding confidence in God our Father that can never be shaken. It is when we come to God unitedly to reason with His word that we go from strength to greater strength, from faith to increased assurance and confidence in the truth to know the righteousness of His cause and purpose for us. The ultimate truth is that rock upon which we firmly stand in the principles of the word of God. Because ignorance is a miserable dark bottomless ocean, knowledge is the float with a light on it. At the end there is the dawn of right knowledge, that which is essential to understand the word of God, to raise the mind to the best possible order - the knowledge of the ultimate truth. And similarly, the resultant right attitude of the person desiring to learn, willing to reason is the attitude of the ultimate truth itself. As Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, so he becomes our being. On our way to this truth, through reasoning, we are shown the hard realities of the word of God. We are being transformed by every step. In fact, the passage has only just begun. Let us pause and check ourselves, whether we are qualified enough to be here in a passage that few, very few will traverse. Bring the vastness of the universe to your mind. God’s truth is infinite and love for the word is the power that widens the corridors of our mind. Our aim is to know the ultimate truth that we may come to the ultimate reason of our ultimate purpose. And the ultimate truth is that our ultimate purpose is that God’s glory is clearly displayed in the faithful obedience of His last day people to show the same love He offers us, to others so they can come to know him. This is done in God’s over-arching purpose for all true believers: to conform us to the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ. God’s glory must be uppermost in His purpose. If God would put anything else before Himself, He would be guilty of idolatry. He sovereignly chose to make His glory and grace known to and through His Son and His chosen few. Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14 What may we conclude from this reasoning of redemptive history? We may conclude that the chief end of God is to glorify God and to so enjoy our salvation in Himself forever. He stands supreme at the center of His own affections. This is His ultimate truth. I John 5:20 If you read this verse you know that God is the true God. But if you hear what the word says then you know the truth of truthfulness says that in the fulness of His being, God is the ultimate truth of power that brings life from the beginning. In the person of Jesus Christ is the evidence that we should run after it with all our hearts. And it’s even the more reasonable to search for ultimate truth in God. We are in the throes of compassion orienting the mindful heart to understand the basis and the appeal of the ultimate truth. God is the truth. He is truth absolute, ultimate, eternal, in contradistinction from all that is relative, derived, partial, and temporal. And when we know this, the foregoing comments show that it is of the triune God in the mystery of unity in triunness and triunness in unity that we make this affirmation. Only triune unity can explain such terms as “the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” together with the correlative teaching of scripture respecting the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit also is the truth. John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13 When we speak, therefore, of the sanctity of truth, we must recognize that what underlies this concept is the sanctity of the being of God as the living and true God. He is the God of truth and all truth derives its sanctity from Him. This is why all untruth, all error, all willing ignorance, all unwillingness to reason is wrong, all misapprehension, every deviation from what is true in thought, feeling, word, or action is a contradiction of that which God is. This is why He asks us to come now to the bar of right reason and let us talk the matter over. God welcomes us into covenant and communion with Himself. It is His perfection to be consistent with Himself. God’s word reasoned is expressed in His faithfulness and is exemplified in the certainty and immutability of His promise that He cannot lie. God’s reasoning is of faithfulness to such an extent that what His word reveals is the fulfillment of the essential features of the covenant concept. And there can be no doubt that the specifically redemptive name of God, “I am that I am,” points distinctly to the immutability of His covenant grace and promise. There is a huge mound of evidence of ultimate truth for God, Jesus, and those who are emptied of self. And based on this evidence, it’s reasonable to believe that God reveals truth through revelation. Where can we find revelation today? And what do we learn from it? The best source of revelation is God’s word—every experienced event in the bible. Here is where and when the relevance of precept is contained. When we are of the truth and know the truth, we discern in the inscripturated word of truth the living voice of Him who is the truth, and there is no tension between our acceptance of the living God as “the only true God” and of His Word as the truth. I John 2:21 Be not uninformed of how God voices His truth. It is the certitude which is the only appropriate response to confrontation with God Himself that His Word, the Word of Scripture, must bring forth. God’s Word is truth because He is truth. And the truth must be informed in us ultimately. Discount no witness of scripture because of the imagination of the thought, of the heart. In the bible, God gives us history lessons, unfolds His plan of salvation, and gives us guidelines for how to live our lives. The word holds the truth for all kinds of circumstances, and we can trust it for answers to all kinds of questions. It is the ultimate truth of revelation that gives the best account of the true God and administers the best eye-salve for our discerning the living and true God. The Son leads us to the Father, and we are in both, in the love and favor of both, in covenant alliance with both, in spiritual conjunction with both by the inhabitation and operation of their Spirit: and, that we may know how great a dignity and blessedness this is, we must remember that this true one is the true God and eternal life or rather this same Son of God is himself also the true God and eternal life so that in union with either, much more with both, we are united to the true God and eternal life. Then we have, as is the ultimate truth, an incomprehensible Spirit that has begotten us to God. We are brought to cleave to Him in faith, and love, and constant obedience, and in opposition to all things that would alienate our mind and heart from God. Knowing the truth is being the truth. And beingness in Christ will go on forever. Coming to ultimate truth is the realization that the unique phenomenon of choice sounds the expression of an Almighty Righteousness. I Corinthians 1:30 Christ in us is our righteousness. We are to be his expression of perfection. And with that and beyond, it means that we are an expression of God’s righteousness.This means we make the right decision the first time. It means we think the right thoughts. We choose the right words. We go to the right places. We do the right things. We are righteous in and to and for and with Him. And our consciousness of that reality is what enables us to do life right. The groaning of the Holy Spirit is that crying out for the manifestation of God’s people to display the life of Jesus here on earth. I Peter 2:9 We are not yet perfect family, but the reasoning with the word of God has been given to us to attain exactly that. And the precisification, the countable and uncountable aspects of ultimate truth, as our knowledge grows, distinguishes that which resembles truth from that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of Christ. Ultimate truth is the way things really are because God declared it so and made it so. Therefore, God is the author, source, determiner, governor, arbiter, ultimate standard, and final judge of all truth. It is Christ’s rightful declaration of his deity. Jesus makes it clear that ultimate truth is defined in terms of God and His eternal glory. Jesus also said that the written Word of God is truth. It does not merely contain nuggets of truth; it is pure, unchangeable, and inviolable truth. It is ultimate truth that scripture cannot be broken. Truth means nothing apart from God. Truth cannot be adequately explained, recognized, understood, or defined without God as the source. Try defining truth without reference to God. The whole pursuit of ultimate truth is to have the thought of God in the mind. When any abandon reasoning with every expressed biblical truth, unrighteousness is the inescapable result. Just watch and you will see the widespread acceptance of homosexuality, rebellion, and all forms of iniquity. Truth and knowledge are coherent significant parts from a fixed source, namely, God. Embody every aspect of every truth of God and you will construct ultimate truth. You will come to the revelation of Jesus Christ. How one responds to this truth is conditionally crucial. Ultimate truth adds divine measures to an infinitely divine God. His realms of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience are accompanied by His omnibenevolence. And in wisdom’s growth other omniproperties are to be learned. Ultimate truth is eternal. And in God’s plenitude of Being, the highest holiness of existence, in the richness of the diversity of beings, all related, all communotheistically equal, will show the principle of the continuity of ultimate truth. Everything will be possible. Every creature-being will share the attributes of every creation. The redeemed will seek for nothing, possess nothing, has need of nothing, yet have everything that overflows to all others. Ultimate truth unites and provokes a divine experience. And in its search through reasoning with God is achieved the most fundamental highest and deepest source of fulfillment. The image and likeness of God had no intention of simplicity. All possibilities were to be determined. Ultimate truth is discovering truths that engage the relational mystery of how God created in its entirety that which He determined was necessary to be between Nothing and Something. How God’s creation of the world through and for Jesus was to meet its ultimate purpose in Jesus' sacrifice for "the sins of the whole world" is the mystery of ages. There is an ultimate truth to be revealed in the mysterious group who will sing the song. The mystery of God’s exhortative approach to this group is the ultimate truth of prophecy to bring the likeness of Christ to the behavioral conduct of these assigned to be sealed. The ultimate truth reveals the deliverance of this approach. As these understand the written mysteries, only after that will the unwritten mysteries happen in some mysterious way. What the seven thunders spoke must be in agreement with the ultimate truth of God. Our contentment is in our reasoning with God who will give revelation. God's concealed mystery is being revealed to us that we may come to a more clear understanding of it. The advent of the new creation, its mysterious and ultimate reality existing for absolutely all eternity, in a spaceless, timeless environment tells us more of the transcendent, infinite judgment of God. I Timothy 3:16 It is that glory that is the mystery to be ever sought in the ultimate truth. It centers and sources in God who is Truth Himself. Mysteriously known wonder will create new wonder through divine disclosure of ultimate truth. God has brought us to Himself, and our hearts are content as we find our rest in Him. Ultimate truth is knowledge of the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit — the One Three-Personned God. This will be God’s testimony of His Truth...when man comes to perfectness, God, who is over the truth, will crown us with an amaranthine love.