The Christian Trick

The trick in Christianity is to believe that you ARE Jesus Christ and ARE God in all contriteness and lowliness of spirit, and that you have all authority as God while being in complete submission to Him. It is kind of remembering Who you are while remembering also where you are in Him. He is one thing with different PLACES. The Father sends the Son who IS Him, but is in a different, constricted place. God is the consciousness of the Ineffable, thus Its manifestation. And we are the manifestation of that. All one thing, but in different places. As I just said in previous post, God separated the waters above from the waters below:

"...the Spirit of God was over the layers of the water...and He differentiated between the water below the sky and the Waters above the sky, and it was so."

This world IS that world. We are just a different layers of the same thing. This part has been ignoranced by amnesia that it might develop - be generated by discovery - into being like that layer. Practice where we are GOING as though being there.

"Did Jesus exist?" Wrong question. It should be, "DOES Jesus exist?" Then WATCH!

Jesus prayed in the early morning, RECEIVED with praise and thanksgiving at that time, and it materialized throughout the day.

This world is that world, but God has separated the waters above from the waters below.

Matthew 6:24, Your Uncles And The Family Business

Per Alexander, the Aramaic word for ‘mammon’ in Matthew 6:24 is 'mamounah', i.e., "uncle." Uncles typically run the family business. They have you working in the shop, cleaning, making deliveries, etc. They have free labor, and they are going to use it for the family. You have your responsibilities. What are you going to do for God? When? You cannot work for God and work for your uncle. When Jesus called his disciples, they left their family businesses. THAT is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 6:24. The idea of wealth as material security is in Luke 16:9, 11, and 13, where mammon is the wealth of this world, "abominable security," or the wealth of abomination. We cannot work for God and work for that, either. That world really upsets this world, though they really are the same. We have just got to really see that: this IS that world.

A Peculiar Repair

Agnostics. atheists, and deconverts from religion reject God on the basis of their not having any evidence of His reality. I was with them in this. I also rejected God on the same basis, until I had such evidence. Once I had the evidence, I was convinced and converted. Instead of pursuing evidence such as I found, though, the irreligious reject those who do have evidence for their faith. What kind of sense does that make? "I don't have evidence, so you can't?" This reminds me of the many discussions I have had with anti-Charismatic Christians who reject the baptism in the Holy Ghost and the gift of speaking in tongues. "I gave my heart to Jesus, and I love Him and am as surrendered to Him as anyone can be, and I haven't spoken in tongues, so you didn't either." Uh, it doesn't work that way. We do not get baptized and speak in tongues when we accept Him, but when He accepts us. Your church may be giving you wooden nickels. Search for God's economy, and get the real deal.

Does John 3:16 Recall An Ancient Fulfillment?

Something to think about:

"So that every human [being] who believes in him does not [go to] oblivion, except that they may have life everlasting (to [the end of] the universe). For this is how [much] God loved humanity, that he gave forth his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him does not perish (go to oblivion), except that they may have life everlasting. For God did not send his Son to the world (the people) to condemn (judge) people, except that people shall live (be saved [by Him]) by his hand (grace)" (John 3:15-17 Alexander).

Gave. Jesus says at the BEGINNING of His ministry that God GAVE His Son. When? As the Season of Grace was a snapshot of Biblical history (Daniel's 70 weeks culminating in the Milta's appearance, Who was "from the beginning"), I understand that Jesus was this Milta Who was the Beginning in Genesis 1. Barasheeth - "As the Beginning (the SON of God Who IS the Beginning of all things) creates the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1 Alexander, parenthesis mine). God gave Him AT the beginning AS the Beginning. Creation is His crucifixion. He is crucified upon us, even as we are crucified upon these bodies. God so loved humanity that He created the universe for Himself to become man, that man might become Him. That is the course we are on. I am sorry that Biblical history, which is symbolic metaphor, allegorical illustration of this course, does not match the record of secular history. It is true, nevertheless, of what it is about, which I suggest we all pursue.

The Most Incredulous Estimate

Thomas Westbrook, the Holy Koolaid, has many holes in his logic in rejecting God. One of his premier arguments in rejecting the possibility of a real hell is that the Jews have never believed in hell. Dude, these are the guys who killed their own Messiah and still reject Him, and you are going to take their word over scripture? Don't you think maybe they are missing something? I do not believe in the modern Christian fantasy hell of eternal torment, but what its reality-correspondent state is I DO NOT WANT TO FIND OUT. The Scriptures have enough warning about it that I am not going to try to earn it.

Religious NDEs For The Religious Only For A Reason

Note that few temporarily dead people have NDEs, and that it is the few religious/aware-of-religion who have religious-themed experiences. Judgment begins with the church, whatever religion it may be. Those who haven't heard either get restored to hear or wait until later mass judgment (a possibility you do not want). Note also it is the religious who are not compliant with His nature who get sent to hell, even if temporarily. Whatever this picture illustrates of the greater reality, you do not want it. Few who have hell as a T.A.D. (temporary assigned duty) are willing to return. Do not go with the possibility of staying.

Christianity IS A Mystery Religion

I noticed in passing a Christian author rejecting a cult (I think it was Mormonism) as non-Christian because it had a goddess, which indicates oneness. He said that that made it a mystery religion. I agree that mormonism is a cult, perhaps semi-Christian at best, but Christianity nevertheless IS a mystery religion. In Jesus' native language, Aramaic, all reference to the Holy Ghost is feminine gender. THAT was the holy ground Jesus stood on before any of it was translated into Greek.

God Of The Gap Is A Person, And That Person Is You

Neal Tyson jokes that what we call God is simply the gap in our scientific knowledge. What we do not know is attributed to God, and as we learn more science, God becomes ever smaller. Except, Neal, that what we learn of science is still God. We are just on the way to understanding Him better now. I have no doubt the remaining gap will be filled with scientific knowledge, but will still be a person, Him, as He is us. The gap closes with the realization that the Him...is me. The woo in the voodoo, Neal, is that we, by virtue of the oneness of God, are the Gap and the Science. It, we, are all the One.

The Gap is not a void. All "science" WAS gap, and is now all we know. The remaining Gap, though it become science, we will discover to be a Person. We will find It to be Him, and we will find It to be us.

Belief Belief

Back in the 1950s and 1960s (I was born in the first half of the previous century) there was not a stigma upon being religious. Belief in some god was expected. Now there is much ado about "deconversion," with the stigma of ignorance upon any and all believers. I am honestly torn a bit between the two, because while I hate religion for diverting the religious FROM God, I am an evermore ardent believer in God. 'In' being the operant word here.

"Illusion never changed into something real," goes the song "Torn." Faith without evidence. The religious believe in whatever is their god. They believe that it is, that it is a rewarder according to its scriptures, and that the stories and reports about it are true. They may have a relationship with their god, with what they know about it. Hands raised in praise, they worship it, which is its and their fault: it is to them other. Else, i.e., outside and different than we, there is separation between it and us. God is not like that. It is one thing, which is everything. Other than everything DOES NOT EXIST. The Jewish/Christian illusions from our ignorance - as we learn and experience - change into something REAL. Anything less is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

I was reading from "The Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, 177," in my A New Eusebius (J. Stevenson [ed.], 1957/1960, London: S.P.C.K., p. 31-41), and marveled of Sanctus, who had been severely burned and bruised for his testimony. Giving it another try a couple of days later, his tormentors applied again the burning instruments of torture, only to find Sanctus HEALED despite them. His belief was belief; illusion became real.

How I pity deconverts, the agnostics and atheists who have believed the Bible’s sacred history to be secular history and false church doctrines to be Biblical doctrines. Religion has lied to them, and they have fled religion going the wrong way. “Narrow is the way, and few are they that find it.” It is one thing to believe that Jesus died for you two thousand years ago, and another thing to believe that YOU died two thousand years ago. Relish your death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Reign with Christ.

Christianity's Fatal Flaw

Thomas Westbrook (Holy Koolaid) complains Christianity's fatal error is its lack of instruction. For decades before him I complained that God became a man...and left no instructions? The All-knowing taught a dozen or so verbally and by demonstration, and left it at that? It was not as if the Guy could not write. Granted, the Jews destroyed everything they could of Christianity. From the first fifty years or so of the Palestinian church's writings THERE IS NOTHING. The Jews were nothing if not thorough. Knocky-knock; erase-erase.

But suddenly that was all resolved. For just the other day I saw that NO INSTRUCTIONS ARE NECESSARY. God became a man and died the death Jesus Christ died...for me. For all who would repent of rejecting Him. "For this is how [much] God loved humanity, that he gave forth his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him does not perish (go to oblivion), except that they may have life everlasting." I saw it in a vision when I first became a Christian. It was a vision because He spoke audibly to me in it. He said, "Come unto Me." That was all the instruction I or anyone else needs. What do you do with a gift like that? You do anything and everything you can for Him. If I need specific instruction, He is alive and able to instruct mano-y-mano right inside my head-ball.

And here is something for Tom to consider: where the heck did the idea of God being omni-benevolent come from? I never heard nor thought of anything like that in 47 years of seminary, church, or Bible study. Omni-benevolence? It is a doctrine out of left field, kid. An all-loving God? Someone sold you a bill of goods. You have a faulty Bible and are not even dealing with real Christianity. The one God that is there cursed the earth at the fall, and that curse still stands. His benevolence is very, very narrow. From the Beginning to the End there is but one way out of His wrath, and that is the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He died for you, and you go from His reception of that. How much instruction do you need to love? You want evidence? You will find it there.

The Old Testament God Is The New Testament God: Same Same, No Difference

Same requirements, same grace, same condemnations. Only now we know how much He loves us. "I became a man, went through that for you." Not to be dissed.

"And Just As Moses Lifted The Darkness By The Light Of Life, This Is How You Should Glorify (Lift Up) The Son Of Man" (John 3:14 Alexander)

Question: How did Moses lift the darkness by the light of life? For that matter, what is the darkness, and what is the light of life by which it is lifted?

Darkness is certainly ignorance, the lack of perception man lives in. We do not perceive that this world is the Biblical world we are eternally judged by. We do not see the spiritual correlations between them. We are born already judged, cursed in ignorance for the variance between the interests of the Life of God and the carnal, sensuous interests of "our" world. We have died the death and are reserved in chains of darkness awaiting the final judgment and its destruction.

THAT is the status quo of our daily life. Moses illustrated a way out of this ongoing condemnation and wrath to eternal life: honor and respect to God and acceptance of His love by substitutionary sacrifice for forgiveness. Moses illustrated Christ. Christ, the Light of Life, provided salvation from this state. We illustrate Christ.

THAT is to be the status quo of our daily life.

The Purpose Of Life Is To Love: To Love Consistently As He Is "Obedience"

A Quora commenter asked God what the purpose of life was. God sighed and said, "The purpose of life is to love." I noticed this while I was wondering why God demands obedience. In a way, it answered my question. God does not demand obedience. He demands conformity, for us to be like Him, whose manifestation we are (are supposed to be). He is Love. The purpose of life is to love. To conform to the One He is consistently is "obedience."

Salvation Surprise: This Is The World Of The Pummeled Christ, The World That Rejects Christ

It was simple enough. I went forward to accept and confess Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. About eight days prior I had been in an occult meditation exercise, and my mind's eye was opened to see the demonic spirit which had been influencing me, trying to wrangle my lowering my authority over it so that it could enter my mind. It took like zero IQ to realize that I must then be of higher authority than it, and that whoever had opened my mind's eye with out my permission had higher authority than me.

Although I had long since left Christianity, I figured It was Jesus. I went to tell my mother's best friend (we lived very close to each other in Honolulu, Hawai'i). She excitedly greeted me with a story of a miraculous response healing at the name of Jesus, and took me to the House of Praise. So I had evidence that Jesus Christ was what the Bible says he is when I went forward. I had no ecstatic experience when I went forward, but the other guy who got up broke down sobbing, raised his hands, and then broke out in tongues. I had a little catching up to do.

While I walked back to my seat, my mind tripped on the fact that this world is not as I had assumed from all my experience in it, and as all my education had taught me. This is not the world of science and physics and matter and gravity: this is the world the Bible speaks of, of God and Jesus and angels and demons. THOSE are the real things going on while we deal with this world as though it were all there is.

I sat down. In the parlance of modern Christians, I had accepted Christ and had become a member of the church. In reality, though, Christ had not yet accepted me. Because I had not really gone to him. I held myself in reserve, a distance between me and him. God was still "other"; if I did not like what he did with me, I was going to take myself back. It would be a few more weeks before I would be confronted by God mano y mano and become, by real repentance and submission and his baptism, the body of the First Born.

The First Born is the surprise I want to talk about. We figure that because he took our punishment, thus paying the price for our salvation, we can pretty much do anything we want. Some time after my baptism, I saw Jesus scourged, beaten, going into shock carrying the cross, and the act of his crucifixion. My fantasy. In this act he turned his face to me and said, "Come unto me." That I audibly heard a voice not of my own imagination is not my point here. Jesus just highlighted for me the fact that that Jesus I am to go unto was pummeled. Symbolic or historic, he was stressed, arrested, spat on, slapped, beaten, his beard pulled out, tried, insulted, crowned with thorns, whipped, harassed, intimidated, made to carry weight almost to the point of death, made to lie on his scourged back on a rugged timber -- to which he was spiked, given vinegar to drink -- virtually suffered all hell could throw at him, for me. It lasted hours, to exhaustion. Jesus was pummeled, tormented, and tortured. He DIED. He took my punishment, and believe me, I deserve quite a bit. If he took all that for me, can't I do whatever I can for him?

It is the pummeled Jesus who says, "Come unto me." Not the bright and happy Santa Claus Jesus. We are not here to get whatsoever we want. We are here to pay him, the Passover Lamb who gave himself for us, back. To love him like he loves us is to love who he loves like he does. "I went through that for you. Can you help me out with this?"

So what is our relationship to him now? We are the body of the First Born. WHAT DOES HE DO? The name Jesus means "God (Yah) saving us." How do we do that? We do that in his world, the Bible world, where our hearts and minds and tongues are. We are its (Yah saving us') agents, his body. We are not representatives of a secular history. We represent a living, conscious Power present and active in the here and now. We give him voice; he gives them evidence. Irrefutable evidence that this is indeed the Bible's world.

At least that is what I am SUPPOSED to be doing. I wish I was actually living it. Some can get right into it. I wish I could. I know what I OUGHT to be doing: "He made his angels into spirits and his servants into a burning light" (Hebrews 1:7 Alexander, italics mine). I/we should be flaming beacons. Blogging is not enough. Consecration is required. Pray for flames for the harvest of the field.

The Story Is Enough

"There is no evidence for Jesus." Okay, I get it. For some people, perhaps, no amount of proofs would ever suffice. If He appeared and smacked them upside the head with a two-by-four, they would just say they were hallucinating. They are right, there is no evidence for Jesus. But then again, neither I nor any other person I have ever heard of throughout history, save perhaps the actual, historical characters of the stories, ever believed on Jesus Christ because of evidence. We only have the stories. What the cynics, critics, and skeptics might miss is that Jesus does not need to have ever existed as a human being for the stories to be true soteriologically.

The stories are all we have, and they save us. Our believing them, that is. For believing the stories demands the production of faith in our factory. The stories are true in the realm of what God is doing. Faith in the stories satisfactorily engages us. It does not matter one bit that a human Jesus ever walked the earth, as long as we believe the values of the heavenly one.

No evidence? No photos, no fingerprints, no signed affidavits? No problem. He, the heavenly, turns out to be real. Faith connects us, produces us as Him. That is evidence enough for me to live right before Him, enjoying His love and His care in His world. A thousand affidavits to the contrary would dissuade me not one bit. If this is hallucinating, so what, as long as it continues, as long as healings multiply, demons are cast out, and deliverance is wrought? THE ONLY THING THAT IS NECESSARY IS FOR GOD TO BELIEVE IT. IF HE ASSUMES IT IS TRUE AND REAL, IT IS.
IS!! FOR GOD'S WILL MUST BE BEING DONE.

No one has ever had anything to believe other than the stories. Believing them, we receive the reward. And then we DO have evidence--evidence we could drown in. The stories are true in HIS world. That is enough. When we find that truth true in this world, it turns out that the historic, human event has never really been necessary.

Looking For God In All The Wrong Places -- Go For The Gap!

I am sorry if I seem to rag on about Thomas Westbrook, the Holy Koolaid. He is just the poster-child for the most recent order of Phariseeism. Well, was. Thomas has left religiousness, which in its way is the fulfillment of Phariseeism, because it does not work. Phariseeism yields nothing finally but scattering, destruction, frustration, disappointment, and death. God certainly has not been impressed with it: the Temples were destroyed, Jerusalem razed, and the land emptied. Hardly an endorsement.

But I kind of like Tom Westbrook. I too am a de-convert from traditional fundamentalist Christianity, except I am trying to go the other way, to Jesusness. I get something of a perverse edification (and sadness) hearing Thomas tear Christianity apart for the Bible being unscientific, self-contradictory, lacking instruction, etc., etc.  I struggled with all that, too, and especially that I believed that YHWH, God Himself, incarnated as a man here two thousand years ago AND DID NOT WRITE ANYTHING. The All-knowing was here and just said, "Hi," provided a way out, and left. WHAT?! Why not explain everything while You are here?

He did not need to, did not want to. That is not what is going on. The gap was enough. "No sign shall be given but the sign of Jonah," which is the gap. In Jonah, a man who had died, was DEAD, inexplicably rose from the dead and warned the living.

I had a gap experience: I found that my left arm was a fraction of an inch shorter than my right. Charles Hunter asked Jesus to make them the same length, and I WATCHED my shorter arm grow out that small distance. How? What did it? I TOOK THE WARNING.

If you want to prove Christianity, if you really want evidence, go for the gaps.

Heading For Healing 30: You RECEIVED The Reward

God is not a man. It, "God," the consciousness of the Ineffable, is a glorious being much greater than the infinite universe (which It also is). It is the Source of all the universes and of all the life within them. God through them becomes, is becoming manifest, and we are a part of that process. God desires His own manifestation complete, and that end will be accomplished. The dross will be burned off after some manner. Jesus is our imagination trying to get us saved from that into the completion of the process of God's manifestation. That gap, by the way, may be exactly where to find evidence of God.

There is a higher religion that the traditional modern fantasy Christianity. We do not need to believe the empty stuff. We can be mano y mano with God. God blesses those who find this in traditional Christianity, but one can hardly stay there. There is a communion with God in sincerity and holiness submitted to Him. The pictures are easy: digestion, growth, reproduction, seedtime and harvest. This is an imagic world. This is the picture, He is the 'of.'

I am convinced we are spirit "divided severally" imagining we are these bodies which are also spirit imagined in their forms, combinations of God's imagining power. "He made His angels into spirits, and His servants into a burning light" (Hebrews 1:6 Alexander, and note that it is 'light,' not 'lights' - cp. Psalm 82:6). We are called to minister.

God is not a primate of light sitting in a big chair. He is infinitely more than everything there is. You ARE a fool if you doubt that It is, whatever Its glorious, ineffable Self is. Part of that Self is our fulfilled prayer world. Convert your list to fulfilled prayers. Thank Him for it/them, for all the desires He has given you, and has given to you. Do not forget to come back from your fulfilled world.

Man was free of disease. We were in Adam back then. Then we fell. Satan, our adversarial ignorance, caused illness. It is bad imagination. Then Jesus defeated Satan. Human beings in Jesus are free of Satan and his illness. "He has nothing in Me." In Christ we died. Being free of Satan and his effects is the reward, the euangelion (the classical Greek word euangelion means “a reward for bringing of good news” or the “good news” itself --Britannica). Do not just believe the Gospel, RECEIVE the reward, the reward of being free of Satan and his effects: "He has NOTHING in Me; i.e., YOU!" That is you! Put that realization, the realization of the reward of being in Jesus and completely free of Satan, on your prayer list, and BELIEVE YE RECEIVED. Thank Jesus - God - Whom you are in, for your victorious freedom.

Siti On Our Being Faith Factories

Dan

Interesting post...the medical world would say that iron man had a case of 'hemochromatosis', and  therefore failed his desire to give blood. An over abundance of iron in the body made him toxic.

Our minds being faith factories is a good term...as Neville would say, “be it good, bad or indifferent,” it works! For iron man it worked, but in the opposite direction.

You mentioned “what we believe, accept and assume does exist (or is possible) is what actually does become our experience in our future.” That reminds me of Proverbs 23:16, “My body* rejoices when your lips speak truth” (Alexander). His footnotes regarding this verse reads "'kidneys,' or 'as the poisons (venomous words) are secreted by the kidneys.' The kidneys secrete uric acid and poisonous byproducts." Talk about a factory in your mind that is producing good, bad or indifferent, exemplified in the Bible...Proverbs is full of it.

“What God moves to is the Faith our imaginations have manufactured.” For we are One, every creature God has created has a spirit in them. Genesis 1:26 “We shall make the human being in the image of our likeness, and they shall have authority... Genesis 1:27 “ And God created the human being to resemble His own visage...” we were made Co-Creators as Jesus said, “Amen, Amen, I AM telling you, that whoever believes in me, these works that I do, they will also do; and greater than these they will do, [now] that I go to the Father” (John 14:12 Alexander).

As I read that, I understand that the Genesis 1:26 image is the 2nd Adam/Jesus/Spirit man/me. That the man in Genesis 2:7 is the 1st Adam/man of dust/flesh.

In your fourth paragraph talking about Lazarus and the rich man, Lazarus means El/God, and Azar/to help, or God Has Helped or My God is Helper. It is true Lazarus lived in ignorance with his mind “accepting his sickness, poverty, oppression losing out on this, that and the other.” But scripture says “the angels carried him to the bosom of Abraham Luke 16:22 (Alexander)...the Father, Full of Grace.” The rich man also died and buried...in the dirt.

“If the iron man at the blood drive had always imagined himself grateful to God for his health and well-nourished body,...” you are right, he wouldn’t have needed iron supplements. He would have God, and be grateful for the gift of LIFE. And if he became a serious seeker of Him, he could be blessed by the Power of that gift that would sustain his health, not to mention the transformation that could take place in his mind factory/mental diet if you will. (Edit: readers, please take note of this.)

I say could take place, because the “rich man” of the same culture as Lazarus had opportunity of means and ability to leave his ignorance, but chose to worship his idols: stature, position, wealth physical health/ability, attitude. All external, outside of himself and ignorant of knowing who he is. He almost willfully disregarded the kingdom of God, and chose to follow the “herd.”

“For, amen, I am telling you, that whoever tells this mountain here, ‘take up and fall into the sea,’ and he does not doubt (divide) in his heart, except he believes that what he says shall happen, he shall have what he says. Because of this, I am telling you, that whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you will receive, and it shall be given to you. And when you stand to pray, forgive what you have against people (leave the thing that you have over the human being [have built up in the mind factory]), so that your your Father in heaven shall also forgive your foolishness. If you don’t, He won’t” (Mark 11:23-25 my take on Alexander’s translation).

Siti
______________________________

Thank you, Siti. I tried not to change anything.

I realized today that I, too, am a de-convert from modern "traditional" Christianity. I do not believe the empty stuff, but not like those who go to atheism. I am going the opposite way. William Branham rejected the Pentecostal moniker. "The people in the upper room were not the Pentecostals," he said. "The people outside, there in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost, were the Pentecostals. The people in the upper room were the Church of the First Born." Jesus was a de-convert from the Judaisms of the day. He took a higher route. The route He took superseded them all. We are here as the church of the First Born, His body, and His manifestation. God help us find that higher route.

The Latter Rain Evangel, January, 1909

The request for prayer by the laying on of hands by a Bible student, which began the Topeka Outpouring of 1900, came to mind. Agnes Ozman turns out to have been the student. The Beautiful Feet website linked me to an article she wrote for The Latter Rain Evangel, "Where the Latter Rain First fell." In it she reports convincingly (to me, anyway) that the gift of tongues is not the only indication of the Spirit's Baptism. She also notes the superiority of resting alone with God. The next article, "The Yielded Life," is not bad, either.

We Are Faith Factories: BUILD!!

I went to a blood drive and happened to overhear the interview of the fellow before me. He was in his late fifties or sixties, and he excitedly explained to the nurse how important it was to have a good diet with plenty of iron to produce good hemoglobin, and how he ate many foods that were rich in iron - he even listed them! - and made sure to include iron supplements so that he would be able to donate blood. Oddly, and sadly, his blood sample failed the test, and he was denied the opportunity to donate.

By then I was being interviewed myself, but I immediately saw why, in spite of everything the man had done to make certain he would pass the iron test, he had failed. He had feared failure, and thus always imagined his blood failing the hemoglobin/iron test. His imagination had been a faith factory, and no amount of solution to the problem could supplant the cause he had created.

Our minds are faith factories. What we actually believe, accept, and assume does exist (or is possible) is what actually does become our experience in the future. "Faith moves first; then God moves in answer to faith," said Smith Wigglesworth (Hibbert, 1982, p. 72). What God moves to is the FAITH our imaginations have manufactured. If we accept it, so does He, for we are one. What we accept is the problem with our imaginations, for this part of Him is IGNORANT. In our ignorance we accept that we may be sick, may be poor, may be weak, may be diseased, may be oppressed, may be servant, may lose out on this, that, and the other--always the victim of Satan's whims.

Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) lived his life in this ignorance. Dying, he saw the truth and became as Abraham, the Father Full of Grace. The rich man always thought he was doing it, and never got it - he stayed in the hell of his ignorance. Believing it forward like Abraham is the trick I believe Siti is working on. If the iron man at the blood drive had always imagined himself grateful to God for his health and well-nourished body, I do not think he would have needed iron supplements to donate his blood.

What exactly do you want? Jesus said, "When you pray, believe you have received it, and you will have it" (Mark 11:24). I do not know, but is this some kind of rocket science we cannot comprehend? Imagine the world is as you want it, that it is the manifested answer to your prayer list.

Proven Reality And Excuses: The Test Is Doing

Our assumption that hell could not be is an ingrained whitewash. "God is too kind to punish us harshly, He loves too much," we excuse ourselves as we sin. "Hell is apocalyptic imagery, a linguistic demonstration of how much God hates disobedience, but He is patient, forgiving, and accepts us for Christ's sake." We guess. Thomas Westbrook and his ilk seem to think that none of the stuff in the Bible actually happened, at least not the miracles. But if that stuff did not happen in GOD'S reality, how do they explain the thousand's of responsive miracles to T. L. and Daisy Osborn's preaching of the Gospel all over the globe for so many decades? An international collusion?

Maybe the Westbrooks in raising Thomas were not Osborns - we forgive them that, they did what they knew and could do - but seeing the Osborns' and many other such evangelists' preaching receive such miracles, why do we and Thomas not get it and head THAT way? Not the nerve and humility? "That is not my world," we deflect. Well, it is Christ's world, and the way to prove it is to DO it by preaching His Gospel AS THE BIBLE SAYS. For this is not the science world.

You may want to skip the first half of each of these videos; the world is a lot more dark and ignorant than we know and can even believe. Man is a mess. We really need His world.

Black Gold- Africa Crusade 1950's and Holland Wonder- European Crusade 1950's

T.L. Osborn - Athens of India (Madurai, India 1961)

The Tell of Love

A 'tell' is an indication of what someone is thinking. In Genesis 1:1, that the Son of God as the Beginning (Aramaic beresheet) first created (i.e., imagined) the heavens before the earth is a tell. For the heavens are the younger of the two. The heavens (the good end of the inner man) are what were desired, loved by God, BEFORE the creation of the earth they would result FROM. The younger is preferred, is what is sought through the older. Eve brought forth Cain, but Abel was what was wanted. Noah from Seth, Shem from Ham, Isaac from Ishmael, Israel from Esau, David from Saul, you from this life. God LOVES us, desires our GOOD END, wants ONENESS with us. Go the way of the younger. Go to God's love. The older will be removed, and you do not want to be a part of that.

The Tragedy Of The Church: Going The Wrong Way Because Our Personal Vision And Understanding Of God Is Too Small

It goes back to the ancient days. From the original scriptures people have balked. The depth of understanding, the dedication, devotion, discipline, intensity, integrity, and fidelity - the work and the faith involved - has been too much sacrifice. "What about my life?" Miracles fade. Then stop all together. "Aw, it's all a load of pooh." No, no. THAT stuff wasn't. This stuff is. The tragedy of the church is that there are no miracles to confirm the reality of the reward for going THAT way. We lose sight of the lives of successful saints and turn towards failure. Toward our own way. We should head the OTHER way, toward greater understanding, dedication, devotion, discipline, intensity, integrity, and fidelity - the work and the faith involved. The Word as it is is how God reveals Himself. It is not a historical record; it is an explanation of Him: His Word. The Bible is a history created for revelation, not record. It is "thus sayeth HE WHO IS," not "thus the record sayeth."

May I recommend the book Smith Wigglesworth: The Secret of His Power (Albert Hibbert. 1982. Tulsa OK: Harrison House)? We are to go the way of Jesus as Jesus did, as Wigglesworth did his best to. Have a BIG God.