A Voice for the Gathering Saints
Duane Stewart
03.21.2016
Letting God arise from the hearts of the people is more than spoken words, or knowledge gained through much study and natural intellectual learning. Letting God arise speaks more about the dwelling place of God as He seeks to dwell and live within the hearts of His created people. How is it that most men, with all their knowledge, continue to remain vessels removed from God’s indwelling presence? Could it not be that any works proceeding from the flesh, which proceeds out of the hearts of carnal men, stands in opposition to God and His true ways? This speaks to us of all fleshly carnal works, regardless of the classification by man as good or evil, this flesh wars against God. Rom. 8:5-8 declares, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh … For to be carnally minded is death, … Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God”.
The above passage of scripture makes plan that regardless of what man may say and do while living under the dictates of the carnal mind, it, has no spiritual value. With the carnal mind yielding itself to and minding the desires of the flesh, it cannot please God for it stands in enmity against Him. Does this not speak of the fruits that are the characteristics of carnal man and cannot manifest a Christ-like nature? What then is of the flesh? Flesh is that which produces itself from the man in his fallen nature. If creation is of a fallen nature, this speaks that creation had a position and time in God when it was not fallen. This means that creation was not to be of “a fallen nature” and neither was he to remain a prisoner to it. Classification then places creation in the realm of possibilities to live after a fallen nature separated from God, or to live after a resurrected Christ-like nature, which is restoration to creations original purpose in life as it came out of God. This act of becoming a “new natured” people is made available to man through Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross. According to this truth, let us understand that Christ died as our sacrifice for more than passed sins that humanity has committed. His death on the cross was for the reconciliation of the whole man, the spirit, soul and body.
It is very important for humanity to receive an understanding about creation in order to know God’s plan of restoration as it is available to man. The pattern was set in heaven even before the foundation of the world. Then God revealed the pattern to men through the process of time until the total man, spirit, soul and body come to know the resurrection made available through Jesus Christ, the sacrifice. Moses was given the pattern purposed for the natural children of Israel in the form of laws, types and shadows. Then this purpose was made into the structure and the furniture of the wilderness tabernacle. These types and laws were to finally reveal to man that in and through his fleshly natural ability, he could not manifest the nature of God. Nevertheless, the pattern revelation and types were and still are for spiritual minded men and women to receive, not only understanding, but to also know change by incorporating the revelation into their lives. In this, God’s desire is for the complete and total change of the spirit, soul and body of men through the process of continual revelation. In order to increase man’s ability to receive such a changing revelation, God established a physical tabernacle made by man’s hands. The temple was a manufactured temple patterned after that which Moses received from heaven. This temple speaks and reveals the pattern God completes through creation according to God’s original purpose for man. God’s original purpose is for the man, with Christ being the first of many members, to become His family made into His likeness and His image.
In this truth, it becomes necessary for man to find understanding of revelation and know resurrection in completing the pattern. This completing of the pattern speaks of becoming a walking, talking manifestation of God’s nature revealed throughout all creation. Without this, man is lost without hope for any eternal future with God, except each man accepts and yields to the progressive resurrection power of God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that part of God, which brings the necessary changes in perfecting each yielded vessel. In this, Jesus the Christ, fulfilling the natural pattern of laws and types became the pattern as God’s first-born son, and from Him who is the seed, He is birthing many more sons. Of Jesus it is said in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”. “Dwelt” among us literally means “tabernacled”. The analogy is that of the tabernacle in the wilderness where God pitched His tent among the Israelites to manifest His glory there. Herein Jesus identifies Himself with humanity by becoming flesh, fulfilling the wilderness tabernacle type, that in Him we might behold God’s glory. The purpose for which we are to behold His glory is to become as He, the pattern, is. Heb. 2:10-11, “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, inbringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason, He is not ashamed to call them brethren”.
The word “sons” as used in the above scripture is the Greek word “huios”, which has the meaning of, “a son, or male, having reference to origin and nature, including that of a relationship to the Father”. The meaning of the word “sanctified” as used above is to become one with Jesus in “a state of holiness that is opposite to common or unclean”. This word describes a manifestation of life produced by the indwelling Holy Spirit by becoming one in and through Christ. Thus, God’s pattern son is but the first-born son of God, manifest in the flesh as the pattern in which other sons are to be born. These are sons birthed after the order of Jesus Christ, purposed to become the body of Christ with Jesus Christ the seed, bringing forth after His own kind. Therefore, a linage and a generation birthed, that is resurrected into that same priestly order as Jesus Christ. This is an order of priest, according to the power of an endless life, which is life according to and after the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, king of Salem, was a priest of the Most High God. Heb. 7:2-3 states, “To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all [pointing to the first-fruits – body of Christ], first being translated king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, meaning king of peace, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the son of God, remains a priest continually”.
The above verses speak to us of an order that came forth from God. This is an order that is not the product of the flesh, the fallen man. In this order, we see that God’s order, purposed for His creation, was an order of life that is eternal in its duration, which is not of fallen man’s genealogy. This speaks of God’s pattern son, Jesus Christ, who is of the order of an endless life and the seed of regeneration unto all those birthed from Him into that same endless life. This endless life is a life that has no beginning, nor human qualifications, but a life that came out of God liken unto Adam as He breathed into him, that clump of dust, God’s own life giving spirit so that man might become a living soul. Therefore, from and through the fall, God has progressively made available the way, which is Christ Jesus, to restore the man back into that beginning purpose with God.
The man in Christ has available a new covenant that is not patterned after laws or rules nor the ability of the fleshly carnal man. That covenant of law, becoming old and useless because of fault in sinful man, has now become obsolete and is to vanish away. Heb. 8:13,“In that He [God] says, a new covenant, He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away”. With the vanishing away of the old obsolete covenant, a new covenant with the authority to overcome is bringing forth the necessary changes in the fallen man. This is a change from living under the dictates of the carnal fleshly nature to becoming one with the resurrected Christ-like nature of God. This is not a change brought about by laws obeyed in man’s own ability and strength, but a new nature patterned after the same endless life of the Christ, God’s eternal endless nature. Heb. 8:10, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel [Abraham’s spiritual seed – from Isaac, and also known as the firstfruits] after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws [government of God, His nature] in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people”.
Thus, we see God’s purpose coming forth from Him, which before time began He was to have for Himself a people in which He could dwell, from which He could manifest Himself. 1 Cor. 3:16 declares of God’s desired dwelling place, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” With man’s triune body becoming the temple of the Holy Spirit it then belongs to Christ. This means that man is called and empowered to cease allowing the fallen flesh man in having authority and ruling over his life. The old man, even with all his religious acts and works of the flesh, is to become as dead so that the person might now begin to live totally unto God. This speaks of a life, a living, not according to the laws ruling over and through the flesh, but now having a new nature ministering to and through him. 1 Cor. 6:19, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” Thus, there are a people coming to the realization that God has resurrection designs for the body, that is, the physical body changed into that glorious glorified body to manifest God’s greater glory.
Paul the Apostle received the revelation from God concerning “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. The Christ in you results in receiving and understanding the eternal divine order, the divine government of God. Man should know then that Christ was destined to dwell within His people. He, as a seed, planted within the receiving souls of man, would mature and be manifest. This seed, bringing forth after its own kind, from the early church until today, has been in the process of continual revelation, whose purpose was and is to produce continual spiritual growth from within the receiving vessel. This spiritual growth was to increase until perfection is manifest; that is, to reveal the Christ that dwells within. This growing process was and is the fruit generated as the results of submitting to necessary changes, living in the spirit of obedience.
For the church to continue on this maturing pathway, the Apostle Paul was by revelation given the order necessary for the building of the church and the coming forth of these manifesting son’s. Their purpose is for the revealing of the Christ from within. Eph. 4:11-13 shouts out, “And He [Christ] Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelist, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ [understand that the manifesting body reveals the person], till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”.
The establishment of the divine order of God for the purposed of equipping the saints unto perfection has been set aside by the majority of the Christian community even unto today’s church. With the majority of the carnal church saying, the ministries of divine order are no longer needed nor wanted, what are we seeing the church of today manifest? Is it not true that God’s order established before all creation was and is God’s prescribed order for the building of His house, His dwelling place? However, we see the results of the carnal Church in sitting aside and rejecting God’s prescribed order and its ministries, as stated by the Holy Spirit in Eph. 4:14, is a church “…tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting”. Is this not the witness of the majority of the Christian community? Nevertheless, God, always faithful to His own word and order, is continuing on to the completion of His divine purpose. God is even now restoring the true people of God across creation by perfecting His first-fruit people, the completing of His house, a house in which He dwells. This house, His true house, is for the purpose of the fullness of Christ stature being manifest through this perfect completed man.
All creation shall see the finished product manifesting God’s eternal kingdom here on earth in and through His completed man. These first fruits shall know the true love of God as each member supplies the effectual working of his part. This house is the many-roomed mansion of God’s dwelling place, the temple of God manifesting his fullness, His nature, throughout the earth. Eph. 4:15-16, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love”. This temple, the dwelling place of God that is matured and has escaped Satan’s carnal minded deceitful plotting, shall become the appearing of God’s house and a people becoming God’s many room mansion, His dwelling place.