Now how about salvation?
So here was mortal MAN — and his wife — Adam and Eve, the first mortal humans. Bear in mind, GOD is composed of SPIRIT — with immortal life inherent — self-sustaining. God does not have to breathe air to live. He does not have to have a physical heart pumping blood all through the body. He does not have to eat food for fuel, nor even to sleep to recoup strength. Man is in God's form and shape — but not composed of self-sustaining SPIRIT as is God.
But God did put a spirit in form of spirit essence in man. This is no part of man — it is something IN man from his first breath until he dies. It empowers his physical brain with intellect. Unlike animals, therefore, man has a mind quite similar to God's mind — with one exception.
What is that exception? The spirit in man is not an "immortal soul." This "human spirit" cannot of itself see, hear or think! The physical brain sees through the eye, hears through the ear, and it is the BRAIN that thinks.
But UNDERSTAND THIS. This is VITALLY important! God DID NOT COMPLETE THE CREATION OF MAN when He created Adam and Eve. He has not completed it even YET! Man was made to NEED another Spirit —the Holy Spirit of God — to join with the spirit that is in man from birth until death. God did not yet finish the creation of man when He created Adam and Eve. Nor was it finished when their children and their children's children were born.
The Spirit of God, needed to be in man with man's own spirit, further empowers man to comprehend SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE. Without God's Holy Spirit added to the spirit with which man is born, man CANNOT UNDERSTAND NOR COMPREHEND SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE. Realize HOW IMPORTANT this is. All man's problems and troubles and evils are SPIRITUAL in nature — not physical nor mental nor emotional. Without God's Holy Spirit added, NO WONDER man cannot understand nor solve his problems, troubles and evils! Further, God's HOLY SPIRIT, on entering within a human person, begets that person with eternal immortal GOD-life — so that, by a final resurrection man, through the Holy Spirit, may be BORN of GOD — which means born a very GOD Being!
Yet people today think they are "born again" when they merely say or profess that they "accept Christ," or "receive Christ." They think they "GET" Christ. When I received God's Holy Spirit, it was when I "GAVE" my very self and my whole life over to Christ. He had bought it and paid for it with His shed blood. I belonged to Him. And He has been USING IT! It was not a matter of "GET" — which is SATAN'S way! It was a matter of "GIVE." That is GOD'S way!
Man merely the raw material
It is important to understand this. God's process of reproducing Himself out of MAN (who is so much dirt or earth made into organic or living MATTER) AIM only STARTED in the creation of Adam and Eve.
All we humans, born by the physical reproduction process, from them, are merely so much material CLAY in the hands of the Master Potter who is GOD. God says: "But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" (Isa. 64:8).
Let me here remind you of God's PURPOSE — to make of us immortal divine GOD Persons, who, with and under CHRIST, shall RESTORE the government of GOD over the earth. That process is still going on after nearly 6,000 years. And none but Jesus who was mortal has ever yet been resurrected Immortal God! The government of God has not yet been restored to earth!
Now at this point consider another important point in the government of GOD. It is NOT "democracy" — government from the bottom of the people being ruled. It is government from the TOP — from GOD the Father on down.
God delegated the government —HIS government — into the hands of a super archangel, Lucifer. Lucifer had been trained in the operation of GOD'S government from God's throne in heaven. He was set on earth's throne to be the executive ruling the earth WITH GOD'S LAWS AND GOD'S GOVERNMENT.
God's government regulates the WAY OF LIFE of those ruled by it. The WAY IS "GIVE" — but Lucifer rebelled and chose the way of "GET." For Adam or any human to QUALIFY to RESTORE God's government over the earth, that human would have to 1) reject Satan's way of "GET" and 2) accept and choose GOD'S WAY of "LOVE." Adam had that chance.
Before Adam in the Garden of Eden were two symbolic trees. One, the tree of life, symbolized receiving God's Holy Spirit, which Adam so sorely needed. But first Adam had to REJECT Satan's way of "GET" and that was represented by the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of GOOD AND EVIL. Satan wanted to remain on that throne in POWER over the earth. HE DID! He got to Adam by deceiving his wife Eve!
The one who replaces Satan on that throne over the whole earth must be one who will never — NEVER — NEVER turn against God's law of LOVE — God's WAY of "GIVE" — but must rule people IN living in that way that will CAUSE universal PEACE, happiness, joy, abundance!
Satan is the most unhappy, discontented, resentful, embittered, spiritually MISERABLE personage anywhere in the vast universe!
Satan caused Adam and Eve to make themselves unhappy, living the WAY that produces sorrow, pain, suffering, anguish, discontent, resentment, bitterness, anger, desire to "GET" from others and make others unhappy.
The whole world (Adam's children) lives that way today. In our sports we talk about "the ecstasy of WINNING and the agony of defeat"! For one to enjoy ecstasy, he must cause his opponent to suffer "AGONY"! Even in human government! I'm writing this November 7. Just three days ago Ronald Reagan enjoyed the ECSTASY Of WINNING by a landslide, and Jimmy Carter the AGONY of defeat. They FOUGHT bitterly, even accusing one another! Mr. Carter and wife went alone into a room and bitterly wept! Four years ago they ENJOYED the ECSTASY and exhilaration of WINNING, and causing President Gerald Ford and wife to SUFFER AGONY of defeat! Four years ago, did it hurt Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn that Gerald Ford and wife were suffering AGONY? Somehow I wish they might read this and realize the VAST DIFFERENCE between our vaunted "democracy" and GOD'S government, whose basic constitution is the way of LOVE to ALL — "GIVE" instead of selfish "GET." Then they should read my booklet, Just What Do You Mean — Born Again?
You see, human people must be REALLY "born again" — born very GOD Persons — with the HOLY, RIGHTEOUS, PERFECT SPIRITUAL CHARACTER OF GOD actually inherent within them — that is, GOD Beings who CANNOT sin or go contrary to God's way of "GIVE" (I John 3:9).
Physical and spiritual phases of man!
As mortal Adam failed to reject Satan's "GET" way of life — REJECTED God as Revealer of knowledge of good and evil — took to himself the reasoning out of the knowledge of what constitutes good and what is evil or sin — REJECTED God as Ruler — rejected the government of God — rejected God's WAY OF LIFE — sinned by transgressing GOD'S LAW — as Adam did all that, so Christ rejected Satan and his way of "GET" — conquered Satan, KEPT God's LAW, OBEYED GOD and QUALIFIED to RESTORE the government of God.
So of the TWO phases of God's MASTER PLAN, the physical and spiritual: 1) The physical stage of God's PURPOSE for man began with Adam, and 2) The spiritual creation of man began with the second Adam, Jesus Christ!
God made MAN'S decision — made by the first man, Adam, for all his family, which constitutes the world — BINDING upon Adam's family UNTIL the government of God is RESTORED to earth. Christ the second Adam qualified to do that. But Jesus ascended to God's throne in heaven, there to receive the Kingdom over the whole earth from God the Father.
God made one exception in BINDING Adam's decision upon mankind. God reserved to Himself the prerogative of calling certain individuals to come out of Satan's world — OUT OF Adam's family and be begotten into GOD'S FAMILY. And WHY? To prepare a people who would choose GOD'S WAY and God's government — who would reject Satan and his way of "GET" — who develop in this mortal life the holy, righteous, perfect spiritual CHARACTER of GOD — who shall have REJECTED Satan's way of life. Who, in other words, have REPENTED of SIN, and have chosen to receive God's own righteousness and character. And who, in a word, have overcome Satan and QUALIFIED to reign with and under Christ when He RESTORES the government of God to earth!
Actually, put another way, God is calling those of His CHURCH out of this world to be trained in a real Christian life to HELP SAVE ALL THIS WORLD WHEN THE TIME OF THEIR JUDGMENT FINALLY COMES! True Christians are called now to resist and overcome Satan, in order to HELP save the whole world when God's time comes to judge and save the world!
Jesus affirmed God's decision
The fact that God did make binding Adam's rejection of God — that Adam cut himself and his family (the world as a whole) OFF from God is made plain in Genesis 3:22-24: "And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: Therefore the Eternal God sent him forth from the garden of Eden . . . So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
Jesus affirmed man's being cut off — all except the FEW individuals God specially calls when He said, ,"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (John 6:44). Unless specially called and drawn by God the Father, no man can come to Christ. All have been CUT OFF from God! WHY? Really two reasons — Adam's decision, and every man's own SINS have cut him off. And none can be reconciled to God the Father except through Christ. Yet none can come to Christ except those called and drawn by the Father! And that narrows it down to the FEW individuals out of earth's billions of today — the comparative FEW who compose God's CHURCH!
Now recount: Satan is still on that THRONE — and Satan is of such great invisible evil spiritual POWER that he has deceived the whole world, which is cut off from God. Satan has made it his world. He is the god of this world. The world is living his way of "GET." And mankind (except the Church) is CUT OFF from God! UNTIL, that is, Satan is banished from earth's throne and CHRIST is ruling on it!
Jesus Christ QUALIFIED to replace Satan on earth's throne, and to RESTORE the government of God (and way of life of "GIVE") to the earth!
But now observe the CHURCH. They are the ones God has called out of this world — out of its way of "GET" — to repent of that way, to believe God and His Word and to receive the GIFT of God's Holy Spirit. Remember at this point, man was created with a spirit in him. I call it a "human" spirit. It empowers him with physical and material intellect, but NOT with comprehension of SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE! Man was made to NEED a second Spirit — the Holy Spirit from GOD — to open his mind to spiritual knowledge and beget him with God-life as a son of God to become, by resurrection, an actual GOD Person.
But the CHURCH is composed of those who have turned from sin (the way of "GET") and turned TO the law and way of life of GOD. They have received the Holy Spirit, opening their minds to GOD'S WAY — His spiritual LAW.
As Jesus QUALIFIED to replace Satan on the throne ruling the whole earth, so each member of the Church must QUALIFY to sit with Christ on that throne RULING with the RESTORED government of God. When resurrected as very GOD Beings, Children of GOD, they with God and with Christ shall constitute the KINGDOM (or Family) of GOD!
But the begotten true Christian in the Church must, in this human Christian life, overcome Satan and this world, and develop the holy, righteous, perfect spiritual CHARACTER of God Himself — of a GOD BEING! That is the process of the MASTER PLAN of God working out His PURPOSE!
But WHAT ABOUT all the rest? What about the billions and billions of people uncalled — as yet?
THEY SHALL BE!