WHAT
is 'to be born again'? WHY should we get 'born again'? HOW do we
get born again? WHO is to be born again? WHEN and WHERE to be born
again?
Foreword:
So
you have been born from the amniotic fluid water world into the air
world, and you have grown and learned to read this language, and you
might wonder what this 'born again' notion is about. You may not yet
believe this, but the very Creator of the Universe, Creator of time
and space and all that is seen by us and all that is unseen by us is
glad when you would ask such a question. He, the Creator, has
actually given the answer to that! It will help you to understand if
you believe there is a Creator God and that He has used men in the
past to relate His words to us, but believe it or not that is not
necessary at this point in the rendering!
There
is an included appendix listing the Bible passages not quoted in the
text, as rendered with the English Standard Version. You do not have
to believe the Bible is the Word of God, but it helps. If you do not
believe fully in the Bible, just follow the logical progression about
to be offered. Many have done that and ended up trusting that the
Bible is a supernatural communication from The Creator.
God
wants all of us to be born again. He gave us a body and a soul and a
spirit and wants us to gain full use of all those aspects of our
nature. But to do so, to get the full measure of what God desires
for us, we must reach a point when we are born again, born of the
Spirit after being born from the water world.
There
is a God-designed progression from the moment God creates our
rudimentary self. We are given physical life in the womb of our
mother when our most elementary stage of life attaches to our
mother's uterine lining and we begin receiving life support from her
life.
While
in the realm of the water world we build a body for living in the
realm of the air world. While in the air world for however many years
we develop a soul presence, a sense of self as different from the
inanimate realm of the air world. We humans are a spirit, a soul, and
a body. We build the body in the water realm, we develop the soul
while in the air realm, but what of the spirit that is in the soul?
That is what being born again is all about, kind of like canvas
buckets, all about getting life in the spirit, developing the spirit.
To
explore this notion on more than a simple level we will need to
explore what is the nature of the Universe, and more particularly
what is there of the unseen Universe that we may come to recognize.
We will start with a really neat scene in Palace Party Central,
Babylon, and a gathering intended for praising the gods of gold,
silver, iron, wood and stone.
Part
One:
The
Old Testament Book of Daniel, Chapter Five, English Standard Version
of the Bible:
1
King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and
drank wine in front of the thousand. 2 Belshazzar, when he had
tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and silver that
Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple at Jerusalem be
brought , that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines
might drink from them. 3 Then they brought in the golden
vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in
Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines
drank from them. 4
They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze,
iron, wood, and stone. 5 Immediately the fingers of a
human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the
king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as
it wrote.
The
scene takes place during the siege of Babylon by armies of Darius,
king of the Medes and Persians. The city was surrounded and under
attack, but for a long time the walls held and supplies were feeding
the inhabitants. Fresh water ran under the walls and nourished the
people and the crops inside the walled city. Belshazzar trusted the
walls to keep the invaders out. In his pagan mind praise was due to
the gods of things, things like stone and iron and wood. But his
error was in misusing the cups and articles used for worship in the
Temple of God in Jerusalem. That very night the city fell to the
invaders. The writing on the wall was a proclamation of judgment: in
Aramaic, 'mene mene tekel upharsin' (or in mixed languages, mene mene
tekel and parsin); in English weighed weighed found wanting. [
Daniel's interpretation for the
king: 24
“Then from His presence the
hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. 25
And this is the writing that
was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. 26
This is the interpretation of
the matter: Mene, God has numberedg
the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; 27
Tekel, you have been weighed in
the balances and found wanting; 28
Peres, your kingdom is divided
and given to the Medes and Persians.”]
Here
is an aside:
For
many decades scholars believed the entire Book of Daniel to be a
fabrication, a story book of events, written hundreds of years after
the purported origin. Events prophesied in Daniel, by a writer
looking back in History, were asserted to have imagined a king named
Belshazzar. But in the modern epoch, Archaeologists excavating the
foundation for a tower in the old city of Babylon found a clay tablet
bearing cuneiform writing that named Nebuchadnezzar and his son
Belshaazzar (actually grandson) in dedication of the tower.
And
from the old man, Daniel: upon entering the city, Darius received an
astonishing revelation of his conquering Babylon, written more than
150 years earlier in the Prophetic scriptures. For being shown that
prophecy fulfilled, Darius ordered the return of the Hebrews to
Jerusalem and their freedom from Babylonian captivity.
There
is what folks call a supernatural aspect to the scene in Palace Party
Central. I am sure you caught it: the hand appeared and wrote a
judgment on the wall; just the hand was seen. There appeared a
disembodied hand which wrote on the wall! But that hand was attached
to an arm and a body of a living being located in a realm, a space
and time coordinate system not seen by the partiers or the king. The
scene bespeaks a realm of space and time reality where real physical
beings exist, yet the entire realm is totally un sensed by us. An
aspect of the Universe God has Created exists no further away from us
than the length of a hand, a realm with space and time coordinate
reality yet it is totally unseen!
Here
is another aside:
For
the Universe God has created, without time events do not occur and
without space a thing does not exist. Since the being in that other
realm did something -reached into the Party room- there is time in
that realm, and since the hand was visibly taking up space as it
wrote on the wall, the being exists in the Universe God has created,
BUT in a realm with space and time coordinates not accessible to us
in our space and time realm.
For
many scholars that passage is an example of a 'Christophany', an
appearance of Jesus beyond /
before His birth to Mary and Joseph, an appearance possible because
in His present glorified state He has access to all of time and space
and can appear to Moses on the mountain, and to Daniel by the River
Chabar, and to ... well you get the point. [ Frankly, there are other
humans who could be the messenger sent by God to deliver the
judgment, humans who did not taste physical death and were translated
into God's Presence without dying (Enoch and Elijah). That notion of
not tasting death and being whisked away from Earth will arise again
soon in this exploration.]
There
are other scenes in the Bible, two of which are worth noting here as
bespeaking space and time coordinates not usually seen by us. When
Stephen was being stoned to death for angering the rulers of Israel,
he looked in the sky and saw into the Third Heaven, where He saw
Jesus standing beside the Throne of God (Acts 7). The men with stones
could not see what Stephen was seeing then. In the Old Testament a
realm at first unseen is opened up for a young man to see, where an
entire army was camped along the ridge nearby, protecting Elisha the
Prophet and the young man from the king of Syria forces which
surrounded the little town of Dothan to capture the Prophet (2 Kings
6).
Part
Two
Recorded
in the Gospel of John, chapter three, is an interesting exchange
Jesus had with one of the foremost teachers in Israel. Let's listen
in:
John
3, English Standard Version:
1
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of
the Jews. 2 This
man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that
you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that
you do unless God is with him.” 3
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4
Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? 5
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is
born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6 That which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit. 7 Do
not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its
sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So
it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
9
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10
Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you
do not understand these things? 11
Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear
witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.
12 If I have
told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe
if I tell you heavenly things? 13
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from
heaven, the Son of Man. 14
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must
the Son of Man be lifted up, 15
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Did
you catch that? Jesus tells this educated teacher that one must be
born of the water world AND the spirit, in order to enter the Kingdom
of God. There it is, life more abundant, life in the otherwise dead
spirit. Why say dead spirit? Because we inherited from Adam something
God intends for His life to animate, the spirit of each of His
created humans.
God
put a spirit in the soul of Adam, not by Adam believing, but just by
God's creative gift. Then God breathed into Adam and the alive man
became a living soul, a soul with the Light of Life in his spirit.
To
have God's life in the human spirit but then lose it when sin entered
the soul might be illustrated by a watch with a face sensitive to
light such that the dial glows when a strong light activates
fluorescing chemicals ; the glow of the hands and dial points fades
if no new light energy is shone upon the watch dial. We will soon
contrast that slow fade with what happens when a person is born
again. Instead of a stimulated glow, it is like a sudden source of
power to produce the flow is inserted into the watch face.
Adam,
when he rebelled against God's command, forfeited the life glow God
had shone upon Adam's spirit. But the spirit remained, though dead,
'for in that day they should surely die' (Genesis 2:17). 'Somehow'
all of us via DNA descended from Adam have a dead spirit, thus the
world is constantly wooing our flesh .
Here
is a quick aside: our soul without life in our spirit is
connected to our physical body in the world. That combination is 'the
flesh'. The term refers to the behavior mechanism of mind, will, and
emotions which direct the body's behavior.
Adam's
'death' was a spirit thing even as the physical body continued alive.
Satan's great lie hinged upon the humans not realizing they had
levels of life, so satan's lie was you shall not surely die,
referring to the physical which he knew would not end then, but
hiding his lie behind the couple's ignorance of the spirit life they
possessed by grace 'shining' upon the spirit component of their
being. The reality of these levels of life is related to the
coordinate realms, for the soul is real and the spirit is real, thus
they are in the Universe God has created.
Now
we can get into the meat of this 'born again' notion.
Here
is another aside: Paul, when writing to the little band of
Christians he established in the city of Thessalonika, wrote a
blessing to them citing their spirit and soul and body. He identified
the three aspects of everyone, spirit, soul, and body (1
Thessalonians 5:23). In another passage he wrote of the origin /
author of sin in us (Romans 7:16-18). With no spirit life in the
spirit, our soul learns sin, not righteousness. Thus each of us is
identified as being dead in trespasses and sins. There are so many
degrees of 'fleshly' deadness, but only one degree of spiritual
aliveness. Only the spiritually alive can enter the Kingdom of God,
because the spiritually alive have the righteousness of Christ
imputed to their spirit, by the power of God's Spirit.
Part
Three:
The
question many ask at this stage is 'so why do I have to be born again
since I am enjoying life as I am now?' The answer is at first simple,
then very involved.
Simply
stated, you can continue on in life with your spirit dead in
trespasses and sins. God will not force you to accept His Life into
your spirit.
We
see all around us varying degrees of this deadness, from the extreme
criminality to seemingly harmless little lies, from drug abuse to
only a little glass of wine in the evening, imbibed to settle our
conscience for sleep. The little glass of wine is not sin, it is the
use of it to absolve the conscience of the sins during the day, that
is the sin so well disguised. God desires that all come alive in
spirit, but He shares His glory with those who actually want it. He
does not force His Life upon you for it is received as Grace not
merit or by command.
Some
want spiritual life because they have come to realize there is more
to living than being tossed by cares of the world, tempting the
flesh, by an evil source. There is more aliveness and more reality
coming which requires that God's Life is abiding in their individual
spirit. They have also come to realize that sin in their record of
living in the body makes them unfit to be in God's Presence and they
have accepted the Grace God has provided so that they can be
spiritually, perfectly righteous before God.
So, you might ask, what is coming that requires me to have an alive
spirit? Good that you ask, because God has arranged for the future to
be understood through prophecy. And here we will tap into the
dimensional stuff mentioned earlier.
There
is coming (sooner rather than later) a supernatural event which will
snatch all those who have been born again -whether alive now or long
since dead- away from the Earth and the coming wrath of God poured
out upon those who have refused the Grace of God offered through
Christ Jesus. That is the simple answer, now the involved answer.
The
Bible tells us (thus God tells us) that the Word of God is sharper
than any two-edged sword, able to separate soul and spirit (Letter to
The Hebrews 4:12). As we are when born from the water world, our
spirit is attached to the soul. The truth declared by the word of God
found in the Bible can slice apart the spirit from the soul.
Separated from the fleshly soul, the spirit can be cleansed and have
God deposit His Spirit Life in the newly cleansed spirit.
When
God works this miraculous change, He then abides there in our human
spirit and 'it' our newly alive spirit cannot then sin because God's
Seed abides therein (1 John 3:9). Does the fleshly soul continue to
sin? Yes! But if we submit our fleshly soul to the directing of God's
Presence within our spirit, gradually (sometimes quickly with many)
changes in the behaviors of the body by renewing our mind with a
desire to do right things is the result of being born again (Letter
to The Romans 12:2).
So
you might now ask, 'how is this behavioral change important to this
snatching away of all believers?'
Here
follows the involved part, the dimensional characteristics part. In
one of his letters, Paul writes the following to the believers in
Thessalonika, to address the worry some were having regarding Jesus
returning for His Body of all believers and the reality that some
believers had died since he was with them, teaching:
1
Thessalonians, 4, English Standard Version:
13
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those
who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no
hope. 14
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,
through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
15 For
this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are
alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede
those who have fallen asleep. 16
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of
command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the
trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together
with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will
always be with the Lord. 18
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
We
need to add one more clue before we dive into the scene. As Jesus is
now, He is described as in a glorified state of physical existence.
Physical because presumably Thomas could feel and see the wounds from
the crucifixion (John 20:26-29; Luke 24:32-43).
Jesus
has a body that is able to appear and disappear, able to enter a
locked and shuttered room without opening any portal, able to eat
broiled fish, able to leave a stone blocked burial chamber without
rolling away the stone, able to walk with disciples then suddenly
disappear after speaking a blessing over the supper bread. He
ascended into Heaven, just drifted upward as He was speaking a last
blessing on His followers, when He left this planet after His
resurrection from the dead.
The
Bible obliquely indicates that only those who believed in Him
actually were able to see the resurrected Jesus (1 Corinthians
15:3-8). [On the road where Saul -renamed Paul, the Apostle- was
confronted by Jesus, Saul saw Jesus but the men with Saul did not
see, much like Stephen seeing into the Throne Room in Heaven but the
stone throwers could not see it.]
But for those who now
believe in Him, when He returns to snatch away the believers we shall
see Him as He is because in that moment we will have been transformed
to be like Him (1 John 3:2). This change of appearance, for us, will
happen so fast we will just disappear from view of those around us
who are not alive in their spirit (1 Corinthians 15;50-53).
Why
do we say we shall disappear? Well, in His glorified state Jesus was
not visible to those who did not have God's Life in their human
spirit. Our transformation will be a sudden phase shift from our
current space and time coordinate existence, into a different space
and time coordinate system as illustrated in Daniel chapter five,
with the hand writing on the wall yet the being to whom that hand was
attached remained in a different, unseen realm of space and time.
Friend,
there is a very real event about to happen, wherein those who have
died with God's Spirit abiding in their spirit (1 John 3:9) are going
to be given new bodies and a new behavior mechanism (that flesh
thing) and then whisked away into the clouds to meet the Lord in the
air! No doubt this will have some sort of physical effect upon the
space and time realm we now sense. But these risen people will not be
visible and will be whisked away so fast that anyone who thought they
saw something will perhaps shake their head and deny it. These not
snatched away will also be told a great lie, no doubt issued from the
deceitful media, to explain away the departure of His body of
believers.
To
top that, we who are alive at the moment the dead in Christ rise to
new bodies and souls for their alive spirit, well we will be suddenly
transformed in the time it takes a photon to pass from outside an eye
to inside (and that photon is traveling at the speed of light in that
short distance). This event will be a world-wide scene.
Imagine
what catastrophic effect the sudden disappearance of millions in
America will have! There are believers in Jesus who fly our planes,
drive our buses, direct our trains, and drive cars on the freeways.
There are believers who maintain our infrastructure, farm our food,
drive our delivery trucks, and stand as defenders of our society, in
the military and law enforcement capacities. Jesus is taking all of
the believers out of here before the wrath of God is poured out in
increasing severity upon an unbelieving world.
There
will be some countries and regions which might have to watch CNN to
find out something catastrophic has happened! Those are the places
where unbelief in Jesus is the norm, places where mocking the
spiritual phase shift is a comedic interlude. Those places, found all
over the planet reject the notion that God offers an easy means to be
born again, born in the dead spirit, places where heresies are an
everyday belief, and blasphemies are common ritual. The event program
for this horrific time in Earth's History is written down and saved
in The Revelation of John, the last book in the Bible.
To
avoid being on Earth when that horror begins to unfold Jesus says you
must be born again, you must come alive in your spirit before He
comes to snatch away those in whom God has placed His spiritual Life.
Part
Four
Hopefully,
by now you are asking how does one get born from above, born again?
That
is the easy part. By an act of your will, which is a part of your
fleshly soul, you can turn to Jesus, turn to God-with-us and simply
trust that He IS and that He is telling you the truth through His
Word that you have a dead spirit. You believe with your will and God
springs into action on your behalf! The very God Creator will create
in your human spirit a clean well kept place where He will abide in
you. You will be alive forever more by His Grace and power, not by
anything you could do to earn such a gift (1 John 3:9).
And
because of
him you are in Christ
Jesus, who became to
us wisdom from God,
righteousness
and sanctification
and redemption
In
that little verse, Paul tells us there are three parts to our
salvation:
justification by His
righteousness
imputed or gifted to us; sanctification of us by transforming our
soul's mind; and glorification /
redemption,
the moment He returns and makes for us a new body and behavior
mechanism fit for eternal living. After Paul taught a group who
became born again, he would write to them giving exhortation to live
clean lives thereafter. He said it is God who is in you both to will
and to do of His good pleasure. [This is our cue to explain what
follows new birth.]
When
we believe and are born again we are considered justified before the
God, justified in God's Presence, with the righteousness of Jesus
Christ imputed to us, to our spirit. His righteousness is not dripped
into us as if an intravenous infusion as we work our way to what we
hope will be eternal life. In the instant you believe in your heart
that Jesus is Savior righteousness is imputed to your spirit. Our
new born spirit is alive forever more. But the soul which has been
trained in sin remains and will sin. Since the spirit has been
separated from the fleshly soul, the spirit does not sin for God's
seed remains therein, by the Promise of God not efforts on our part.
But there is still sin in and by the fleshly soul. God says that
blemish is erased from the records of your soul when you confess that
sin to Him. That is sanctification happening, the renewing of our
fleshly mind, the transforming of our flesh to move us away from sin
and closer to our God Creator.
In
Paul's letter to the (Romans 8:10) we read that if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because
of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ in you.
Here
is the canvas bucket aside:.
The
following is an analogy for the human spirit before born again and
after born again:
When
I was a little boy of two (1947) an Army Colonel three doors down
from our home used to wash his big car in the parking lot out front
of his home. Not having a hose, he used canvas buckets to hold soapy
water and then clear water to rinse the car. These canvas buckets had
a large steel ring sewn into a swath of canvas and a smaller ring
sewn into what was the bottom of the canvas bucket. These were handy
during the war, to carry water for the engine cooling radiators of
jeeps and trucks and tanks, and to make a wash basin for refreshing
the tired or sleepy soldiers. When not filled with water they stored
well in the crowded vehicles since they flattened down when empty.
I
squatted down at one of the rinse buckets which was full, with water
sweating out the canvas sides. When I poked the canvas with my
finger, water would spill out over the rim.
When
we are born our human spirit is like the canvas bucket when empty of
water. The bucket is flattened, with the smaller bottom steel ring
resting inside the larger top ring. The bucket is not fulfilling the
goal for which it was created. Without the water of the Spirit, er, I
mean without the Life of the Holy Spirit in our human spirit our
spirit is not fulfilling the purpose for which it is created.
The
spirit in the man is designed to drive the behavior mechanism, the
flesh of the man. Without life in the spirit there is no director, no
king in our body temple. There is a declaration in Judges, the Old
Testament, chapter 21, verse 25 which states that 'in those days
there was no king in Israel so every man did what was right in his
own eyes.' Without liquid in the canvas bucket, the bucket is not a
bucket fulfilling its purpose. Without the Life of God abiding in the
human spirit, every soul, every flesh does what is right or pleasing
or powerful in its own eyes. The dead spirit cannot direct the
behavior mechanism so the flesh does the directing. The results are
not behaviors that are righteous before God so they are lumped under
the broad heading of sin, and every man has sin in the life of the
flesh.
Being
born again, born from above, brings Life of and from God into our
before dead spirit. And by His Promise He then abides there with us,
without any sin tainting our spirit thereafter. When Jesus comes back
into the first heaven (Biblically the atmosphere and space
surrounding Earth) to snatch all His believers away, all believers
trusting in Him will receive new bodies and a new behavior mechanism,
to carry our eternally alive spirit around God's Creation.
And
that is why we need to be born again in the now, because the
snatching away is very close now, based upon what The Word of God
tells us to watch for as signs of the spiritual season of His return
for us. And to get born again one needs only to believe God is and
that Jesus is Whom God has sent for the empowering of our faith, then
ask Him to be your redeemer. In response to that belief, that faith
in Him, He makes our human spirit to have His Life in us.
Believing
on The One lifted up on that cross for our deliverance heals the
poison of sin and makes us alive in Him. Moses lifted up the brass
serpent in the desert, and ALL who looked to that brass serpent
believing God's Promise to deliver them from the snakes were
delivered from the poison (Numbers 21:4-9).
Here
is a last aside
On
the night Jesus was betrayed, He and the disciples took the Passover
together in the Upper Room. After Judas Iscariot had left to alert
the Jewish leaders of where they could capture Jesus that night, the
disciples asked to be given a sign to assure them that Jesus was the
Messiah sent from God. Let's pick up the conversation as recorded in
John 14:
1“Let
not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I
have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4
And you know the way to where I am going.” 5
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.
How can we know the way?” 6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. 7
If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From
now on you do know him and have seen him.”
8
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough
for us.” 9 Jesus
said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not
know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you
say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but
the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or
else believe on account of the works themselves.
12“Truly,
truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works
that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am
going to the Father. 13
Whatever
you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified
in the Son. 14
If
you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
15“If
you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to
be with you forever, 17
even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because
it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells
with you and will be in you.
In
that exchange there is an important lesson regarding God and
the Universe of His creating, along with an obvious promise by Jesus
to come for all believers in whose spirit God abides. God is Spirit,
to be worshiped in spirit and truth (John 4:24)
When
Philip asks Jesus to just show them the Father Almighty and that will
be enough to convince them, Jesus gives these men a sort of Physics
lesson. In essence Jesus tells them, all that they can see of God the
Father Almighty is where He, God, is in their sensing range as Jesus
... as the spirit director of Jesus who was named hundreds of years
before His birth as 'God With Us'.
What
Philip asked was not possible given the space and time sensing
limitations of these men. God is so much greater than the dimensional
extent of these men, of our world, that the only place we can sense
or see God is where He is intersecting our limits. We are limited to
three variables of space and one of time. God is unlimited, but He
intersected and passed through our limits as Jesus.
As
Jesus is now, in His glorified body of much more complex space and
time coordinates, we cannot see Him, but when He appears we will see
Him as He really is because in that moment we will have been made
like Him, existing in a much greater, more complex space and time
coordinate system. But to experience that Kingdom of God we must be
born again, born in the spirit, right now and wherever you are, for
we do not know how close is the transforming event, the snatching
away before the wrath of God is poured out on an unbelieving world.
The
spirit and soul exist and are real in space and time. Let God put
Life into your spirit, today, wherever you are as you read this
essay, by just believing Jesus is and is your deliverer from the
spiritual poison of sin.
APPENDIX
The scriptures cited, here quoted from the English Standard Version
Acts
7:
2
Kings 6:
Genesis
2:17
1
Thessalonians 5:23
Romans
7:16-18
Hebrews
4:12
1
John 3:9
Romans
12:2
John
20:26-29
Luke
24:32-43
1
Corinthians 15:3-8
Numbers
21:4-9
John
4:24
