Before the foundations of the world, we were. God knew us from the beginning, our mind does not comprehend that but none-the-less, it is true. In His creation, He created us Man.
What I mean by this is that in every male, there is a woman, or should I say a female, and a Man also. In every female, there is a Man, and a woman also. The Man within is Christ. So, before the foundations were made, we were there with Him. Each and every one of us was made in His image, in the similitude of God, therefore we are in Him and He is in us.
Which means that the Man, meaning Christ or the Spirit is built into each and every person whether we are on earth born male or female. We were born into iniquity, but still were given a sort of head start, by having the Man within. The woman in each and every one of us is represented as our soul. This is what Paul was writing about in Ephesians, chapter five, when he was speaking of the marriage between the man and his wife. The Spirit in man coming together with his soul, to be united in marriage, spiritually speaking, as one. So individually, we are to unite, come together as one with our soul, that we would not be divided within, but instead, as Christ did, the two working in a union as if they were one, and they were. Spiritually this is called the marriage.
Let me here speak a little on the esoteric messages of the bible, especially in the Gospels. The allegoric symbols given to us have an entirely different meaning than that of the earth level, or could say literal level. Therefore many have not had an ear to hear, nor an eye to see, as many were taught that the scriptures were a history book instead of its intended purpose, speaking on this level an individual can understand the man within.
So let us take a short look at the parable of the ten virgins. This parable is about reaching a higher level, called the Kingdom of God, and the five wise and the five foolish virgins. These virgins were not some abstract person, they are us. Whether we are of the wise or the foolish, is determined if we seek the higher level of God or satisfied with the literal, or the earth level, which many were taught.
Then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, behold the bridegroom comes; go you out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, not so; Not so lest there be not enough for us and you. But go you rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily, I say unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man comes. K.J.V.
The wise were distinguished from the foolish by possessing oil, and refused to give their oil to the others, but instead told them to go back to the world and buy oil for themselves. The parable must be viewed entirely away from its literal meaning. The lamp represents light, understanding, not the literal light, but the comprehension of truth, but in itself cannot give light unless it has oil, which is the Word understood in its higher level of meaning. This understanding is over and far beyond man in his earthly thinking on the lower level. Darkness is what we walk in when walking only in the sunshine. This light, the lamp with the oil, is a level which brings us out of that darkness, when we put on the mind of Christ. I could say repent, but not the repenting we’ve been taught, but the Greek translation is ‘changing of the mind’, so then looking at life in a whole different illumination.
The five foolish virgins accepted that there was a higher level of truth, light to be had and believed it was true, but did not possess it in their everyday living. Therefore they were still living in the ‘do something for the reward’ or lower level. The foolish, knowing the teaching of the higher level still chose to get theirs from the world of buying and selling, from reputation, from having good morals, having respect, moving up in this world and conforming to the social rules of society, therefore not possessing oil, or the understanding of the higher level of truth. All of which is in the Word of God, and can be seen when we look at the deeper meanings and not viewed as earthly or could say literal value. While the foolish were gone seeking in a different direction, the bridegroom came, and the wise entered and then the door was shut. Notice here that scripture does not state how the door was shut, but none-the-less it was closed. The bridegroom did not shut the door, the five foolish virgins shut it on themselves. That’s exactly what we do when looking at God’s Word from the literal standpoint of view, and not seen or comprehended by the man within.
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I’m wanting to touch on a subject just a little about Adam and Eve, the garden of Eden and the two trees that grew in it.
Adam was God’s first creation of man and there is a story in these scriptures that is worth looking a little deeper into. Eve was then later on made by God as Adams companion, out of his rib.
Now I’d like to approach this with; Adam is the Spirit man, the tree of Life man that walked with God, and Eve, taken from Adam and made by God as part of the creation of Adam, was separated from her husband and the two walked in harmony together in the Garden of Eden. Eve is represented here as Adams soul and were at this time one flesh as were both walked with God. Until the day that Eve, listening to the lies of the serpent took and ate of the fruit and gave to her husband also. Adam knew the Father, Eve only knew the thought of Him.
The soul of man is that part of us that contains our personality, our demeanor, our attitudes and the place where our feelings come from, our soul-ish realm (the mind). And the serpent played on that with Eve as he seduced her with a lie that they would become like God, and don’t forget the delicious taste of the fruit that he tempted her with. Then giving to her husband Adam, he ate of it also, as Eve tempted and seduced him.
At this point they surely died and their eyes were surely opened to the things and products of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They then saw their nakedness and tried to hide their shame from God.
I’ll just fast forward here to remind you that Jesus (the second Adam) that went to the cross to redeem man back from his sins, the ones started in the Garden, was then stripped naked, shamed, but had no shame to hide our nakedness that man again could walk with God.
God in creating Adam was his crown, and Eve made from Adam and being made to be by his side was to subject herself to her husband, so then Adam was the crown of Eve.
The two trees are represented as the duo man, that is to say the two natures of man. One from Heaven, the Spirit man, the tree of Life man. The other part of us as the flesh man, natural man, the tree of knowledge of good and evil man. One is of Heaven, the other from below. From the earth He created him in His own image. One lives life down, but the other won’t let life go. One nature of man is hidden, is plain, is simple not desiring notoriety, and the other wants to be seen. One abides in Truth, the other will be destroyed in the brightness of God’s revelation. One shall be taken and one shall remain.
We are not to yield to our soul as Adam did to his, his wife Eve. Our tree of Life man, the Spirit man is what keeps us in fellowship with God. So the lie that was started in the Garden is still very much with us today. It’s in religion, our thoughts, our attitudes and everything else that man can conjure up to promote himself.
Since the tree of knowledge contains both evil and good, can we not see that since no tree can produce both good and bad fruit, that both evil and good is the same thing? Both are the efforts of man and good can do nothing to help in maintaining us in a right fellowship with God. Therefore man has become his own idol………But one life that has been crucified changes everything that’s known.
Religion is based on doing ‘good’, and has it foundation built on the works of man, and can certainly not be depended on. The Cross, when it is ignored, not received what had taken place there, is man’s way of saying that the goodness in him, that is his good deeds, his efforts is what’s going maintain him in fellowship with God. And therefore will justify himself.……… AND IT IS NOT……We will heed our own good deeds or the cross, not both. The tree of good and evil will never in a million years justify that man is lost, out of the fellowship of God.
The Tree of Life does justify man as represented as Jesus hanging on it, because it is a gift that can’t be bought.
The man has been placed in every child, and I liken it to an acorn. Now an acorn is not a tree, but a seed. It was sown in every man before the foundations of the world. The man, or seed, or in this case I’ll call an acorn was planted in every living soul. This seed can and did lay dormant until sometime after we were born, probably should say awakened.
The acorn is not a tree, much less an oak tree, but within the seed is a potential tree. We are going to look at this as if the acorn is man, or better said the potential man, sowed in all that was made in the similitude of God. Some were sowed or fell by the wayside, some on stony ground, some among thorns, and he who is among good ground is he who hears and understands, evolves, or changes from an acorn to a tree that bears fruit and produces, some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty. And notice that in Matthew thirteen that the seed is referred to as ‘he’. Those that hear the Word at varied stages of their lives, may receive the Word on a fleshly level as in stony or thorny ground, or by the way-side, these are they that are either snatched up by the wicked one (the mind), or are choked out (deceived), or the cares of this world enables him to become unfruitful. Simply put, this means the acorn will not grow to become an oak tree because of the literal, or again I could say fleshly, level he has received the Word.
The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, Christ said, and is seed, and is waiting to turn, to be transformed from an acorn to an oak tree. The acorn is not going to be reformed to a tree, but transformed. It is not to change from a seed to a seed producing tree, but must begin its tree life as a sapling, a twig with two small leaves. And as our ears and eyes are opening, so the twig will grow with the potential of producing fruit, in this case, acorns.
The seed, the man within, was planted inside of me, as in each one of us, as a child, and even though I struggled through many years of my life it began to grow to a man, and again I will say twig. A twig is an oak tree, I admit as small of a tree as one can be, but an oak tree never-the-less. So the seed within had been waiting to be transformed, and thus continue growing until it also will produce fruit, acorns in this case.
Let’s look back to when we were young, when I say young, I’m talking of the teenage years, but more precisely our young adult years. The young adults could be in their twenties, thirties, even in their fifties or older, the adult child is what I’m referring to, the boy in a man’s body. You girls or women are in this too, and will have to place yourself where you belong, but for the sake of talking about this I will speak of boys and men.
As immature people, we saw our self as if we were on top of the world, as having the bull by the horns, as cocky, we had things figured out and knew somewhat of where we were going, when in fact, we only had a small clue of what this life is about, and very little knowledge of how to live it. Many so-called adults still think the same way today. We would get ourselves in and out of many varied situations, and not having knowledge of how life should be lived, were tempted many, many times to go in this or that direction. So by trial and error we managed to get by, and often don’t really know how we got here, whether life was like a box of chocolates, as Forest Gump says, or were we just floating or guided by a breeze, settling where we fall as Lt. Dan saw things.
Folks, it was the struggles in life, the temptations that brought us to where we are, that and good teaching, and bad teaching for that matter, that we learned from here or there. To put this in a prospective, it may have been designed individually for each and every one of us. We certainly know that at least many of the bible characters were ordain, if you will, by God to live a specific life in a specific way, such as John the Baptist, Joseph, Judas, Abraham, Moses, even Jesus, and many, many more. Have you ever noticed that each one was tempted, and I mean tested by God to bring them to a higher level, to a place that God was going to use them. Each had to go through trials and tribulations to strengthen them to obtain what God had stored up for them.
No man is tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted. But temptation is allowed to strengthen those that are called to follow Him.
John the Baptist could have backed down in front of Herod, Joseph from the multi-colored coat, and his brothers, Moses through his threats from the Egyptians and his own people and Jesus by His hunger and many other trials and temptations. Each one of us are built on by the; what we call ‘bad’ situations in our lives, and have either grown or continue in these trials until we see and understand what they are all about. Yes, I believe that God in all his blessings, blesses us with these temptations until we have seen the glory of His power and submit to Him all of our earthly qualities. Without any temptations there will be no transformation. As Moses was led into the wilderness, actually pushed into the wilderness, (a bewildering place, dry, plain and without the convenience of familiar life ), by the Spirit, and the Israelites with him, were in this place of refuse and dryness to bring them to a level of acceptance of the will of God, in this case the Promise Land, and what it took to get there. You and I are in the same place, a place of bewilderment, a desert, a place to accept that our inadequacies and qualities are not sufficient to carry us to any higher level. And ever noticed that the ideas and plans that worked before, no longer do what they use to do, and we sense that our lives have stagnated from the same-o-same-o? That is unless we have filled our lives with lots of stuff, therefore have a lot of noise going on, and cannot hear the Spirit as He is speaking.
We are being tempted of every aspect of our self that all that is useless is put behind us and all that can understand and grows is put in front. Everything or person that can aggravate us is being place smack dab in the middle, by God, of our face until we can see through them and then, see what has been in store for us. We are as God’s remnant, being purged of the flesh and all that pertains to it. This is not a terrible thing, no, it is the time, the season, to let go of what the world and the traditional teachings have given to us, and He preparing His children to begin preparations to cross that river Jordan and step to that land where nothing else matters but Christ.
Laying down our life, and all the traditions, all the unscriptural teachings, all that promotes man, all of our doings that are done to get something back, and our ways of thinking, and come to that area that the child within is replaced by the Man within. Really it’s not appropriate to say replaced, but transformed as a seed that would sprout into a tree. Jesus spoke; that he that shall be first shall be made last, and he that is last shall be first. The first is the flesh man or can be called the lower level person, and the last is when we have entered in to the understanding of the man that God has created inside of us. When the development of this understanding has taken hold in our Spirit man, or inner man, he takes presidents over the outer man, that is to say flesh man. Then the flesh man, who was first, takes a back seat, and only then will the Spirit, which use to be last will then become first. The lower man, flesh man wants to be seen, wants his appearance to be noble, wants attention and to be obeyed, will likely stick to truth of the law, the letter of the law as did the Pharisees, but never find the goodness of the law which leads us to the Grace that was given to us through the teaching of Jesus.
The law was not given to us as an end, but as a means to the end, that the law itself becomes not a stumbling block. Once this way of thinking is apprehended inside of man, we will then begin our transformation to the new man, Born Again.
The only enemy that a person has had in their adult life, with the exception of guns, knives and true threats, is within the flesh man, our self. We, as adults cannot use the blame game of what we were taught or anything else that has happened to us, because if we did not put away our childish toys, we could have. Granted, when we wanted to learn things, and felt a yearning toward the things of God, we went to the only meeting places that we thought were right to teach us, this thing that we call ‘church’. We were sincere in wanting to grow and worship the Lord, and by tradition, we knew of no other place to go. They did make clean the outside of the vessel, and were true to their traditions, and talked the talk that they were there to bring us to the saving knowledge of the Lord, but were instead, were full of dead mans’ bones.
I’m thankful for the days that I spent in this thing we call ‘church’, maybe even grew a little, but not much past the first grade. What else could we do, where else could we go, we were babes in Christ, we didn’t understand that of the closets, under the trees, nor that the Holy Spirit can and will teach us all things, that man need not teach us. This experience was an ‘all thing’, and did work together for good.
We were taught the law, and the law as an end, but still again were not taught that the law was a means to the end, which was Christ, and Him living in us.
Let us look at the first miracle of Christ in the marriage at Cana, as spoken of in John chapter 2. Here we can see that literally there was a marriage, and Jesus turned the water into wine, but looking closer on another level we can see the higher truth of which He spoke about, and then can maybe understand more of why these meeting places, just simply don’t work.
And upon the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there: and Jesus also was bidden, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus says to him, They have no wine. And Jesus said unto her, Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour is not yet come. His mother said unto the servants, Whatsoever he says unto you, do it. Now there were six water pots of stone set there after the Jew’ manner of purifying, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus said unto them, Fill the water pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he said unto them, Draw out now, and bear onto the ruler of the feast. And they bare it. And when the ruler of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants which had drawn the water knew),the ruler of the feast calls on the bridegroom and says to him, Every man sets on first the good wine; and when men have drunk freely, then that which is worst: you have kept the good wine until now.
Notice here that Jesus’ mother is there and represents His former life when saying ‘What I have to do with you?’ And will be eventually destroyed by the people of His former life that His mother represents. The marriage itself represents a union, or a new stage in His life. We must look at this in the esoteric, that is to say allegoric message, for the literal story has little meaning save that of the history of Christ, or the literal meaning of having 153 gallons of water and wine. Have you ever noticed that the first miracle had 153 gallons of wine and the last miracle had 153 fish?
So looking at the turning water into wine, we see six stone water pots, which represent earth, the flesh, the literal man as he is in this world. Stone is what the ten commandments were made of, or what Adam came from, or what Moses’ rock that he struck that poured out water (truth), therefore stone means the literal truth, from which all began. The truth that was taught to us as a child, by our parents, school teachers, Sunday school teacher and such, it is earthen, ridged. Water here is a higher form of truth that can be attained by looking slightly deeper into the meaning of truth, and its’ values, such as the water that poured from the rock that Moses struck. Water is the intermediary as his mother also is, that takes us to a level that we know something is there, a transition place, but just can’t quite get a handle on it. A deeper truth, but not really quite there yet. But wine is something completely different. The Truth at its’ highest level, sometimes called the Kingdom of God. The complete understanding of our existence. A level that raptures us from this earthly vessel to an understanding of the deepest meaning of Truth and its’ Goodness. A place that we act on Truth and Its’ goodness without having to think about the goodness in the truth. Making our self-do a goodness is acting on the ‘water’ level, but on the ‘wine’ level, goodness is the main-stay of our Man within. A possession in the inner man that takes us to that higher level of thinking, and understanding, a place where we are transformed, not reformed, into the body of Christ, that is to say; fitly joined together in Christ and Him as the head.
There are five ways that our Lord is named in the scriptures that I would like to address. They are: Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, Christ Jesus, and the Son of man. Each of the five have a different meaning and can give us a deeper insight to exactly what God is saying to us as we read His word.
Good or goodness is symbolized as Jesus. Truth is symbolized as Christ. Goodness as it pertains to Truth is symbolized as Jesus Christ. And Truth as it pertains to goodness is symbolized as Christ Jesus, and the Son of man is the Mary side of Jesus that has overcome. So when reading, we can place a little more value on exactly what God is telling us in the higher level of thinking. You know, I could say; changing of the mind (repent), or putting on the mind of Christ. Never-the-less, all that is in the four gospels are in parable form, and must be viewed at this higher level of thinking before they are to be even slightly understood.