Two sides are fighting the war. Most Christians think the enemy we need to be fighting is the unsaved. And, obviously, I wouldn’t waste your time with this chapter if they were right. Let’s examine this topic to learn what the two warring factions are, which will help us better understand the war.

Back when the physical creation was part of the Kingdom of God (KOG), unity and harmony existed. Then Lucifer coveted physical things and the war started. No unsaved people were involved. I say again, the war was caused by God’s children with everlasting life. Satan won that which he coveted, the Kingdom of Heaven (KOH). God created for Himself a physical beachhead in the KOH called the garden of Eden. The garden of Eden was a type of the KOG as well as of the future, new KOH – called Zion (KOH/Z). God put Adam in the garden to contend with the Devil. In order to be successful, all Adam had to do was let God do the thinking; Adam was simply to obey the literal meaning of God’s word. Alas, the Devil succeeded in getting Adam to activate his self-evident knowledge of right and wrong, and mankind was denied the tree of life, which revealed that our flesh-and-blood bodies are cursed because the carnal old man does not have everlasting life, cannot receive spiritual truths, and cannot go to heaven (Mt 16:17; Ga 1:16; 1 Co 15:50).

Our flesh-and-blood bodies, because they are part of the Devil’s physical KOH and therefore can’t be part of God’s kingdom (1 Co 15:50), are Satan’s body, his bride, his church. The flip side of 1 Co 15:50 is Jn 3:5 because instead of a physical body being associated with blood, there is a spirit body associated with water. Could it be that water is – or is a type of – spiritual blood? Ac 20:28 makes it seem that God has blood, and a careful reading links it to the Holy Ghost. Water and the Holy Ghost also seem linked when 1 Jn 5:7 and 8 are compared in order to match Father/spirit, Word/blood, and Holy Ghost/water. So, since Christ came as Son of God AND Son of man, not just the Son of God only, but by water AND blood (1 Jn 5:6), and since in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Co 2:9), that adds meaning to Jn 19:34.

Flesh and blood is not a good combination: The flesh/body is supposed to serve the head. Ideally, the flesh would say to the head, “Your wish is my command; I have no life except to serve you.” But when the flesh gets a life of its own from blood (Ge 9:4; Le 17:11,14) it declares its independence from the ruling “tyranny” of the monarchical head. The life of the flesh is in the blood. It’s the blood that makes the flesh alive, independent, influential, demanding, and damning. As Christians who will one day be ruling others we must first demonstrate that we can rule well our own house/body. We must learn to provide for its needs while at the same time training it to be in complete subjection to the authority of the head.

If the flesh dies, that is, sheds the life thereof, we are freed from our bondage to the Devil (Ro 7:1-6). To that end Christ became flesh and blood so He could shed His blood, which makes the flesh no longer have a life of its own. Bloodless flesh is properly submissive and obedient. That’s why before Adam sinned he was flesh and bone. (Adam’s wording in Ge 2:23 is not specific, perhaps in order that we might figuratively apply the flesh-and-bone glorified body to his pre-fall condition.) Christ, Who was flesh and blood before the cross (He 2:14) was flesh and bone after the cross (Lk 24:39). When we are born again it is true that the old man remains carnal flesh and blood, but the new man is part of Christ’s flesh and bone (Ep 5:30), which may be a reference to our future glorified bodies. The war is between these two entities. Our soul must choose to walk after either the flesh-and-blood old man or the spirit of the new man.

Having blood is a curse because it gives your flesh life, a will, influence, power, authority. Instead of existing to serve the head (monarchy – only one authority), the flesh and its members acquire life and equality and a will of their own and strive against the head in democratic rebellion. That’s why both Testaments prohibit the drinking of blood (Ge 9:4; Le 17:10,12; Ac 15:20; 21:25). Satanists drink blood as a toast to the fact that blood gives life to the body and makes it another authority.

Women, as types of the church, suffer from “the curse.” The seven days of their uncleanness in the Old Testament (Le 15:19) shows that our flesh is unclean until it has shed its blood. This takes seven days (not six), and since a day is as a thousand years (2 Pe 3:8), the week represents the seven-thousand-year “period” or “curse” that Christ’s bride must endure. The seventh day, the sabbath, the day of the Lord, the Lord’s day, the millennial reign of Christ, is part of our “curse.” Some people think we get our circumcised hearts and glorified perfect bodies on the seventh day. That is incorrect because we are not circumcised until the eighth day. Not until the eighth day do we get our flesh-and-bone bodies with their circumcised hearts (that pump pure water instead of blood so that the life of the glorified body is the water/Holy Ghost?) That is why the seventh-day millennial reign takes place on this old earth; our corrupt flesh-and-blood bodies cannot enter the eternal realm of God’s pure kingdom and the new earth He is preparing. After the war is won, right as the seventh day is turning into the eighth day, we’ll be circumcised/consummated/clothed (Ge 17:12; Ex 21:5,6; Ezek 43:26,27; 2 Co 5:1-4; Re 19:7-9) by being given our glorified bodies. When Christ was resurrected in His glorified body right at the end of the third day/the beginning of the fourth day (covered in chapter D33), that may have been a hint as to the timing of our circumcision: It will happen at the one moment that can be both the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth days (see D33 and Jn 7:22,23).

Our old man, our carnal mind, our flesh and blood, are the KOH body of the Devil (Ro 7:4,14-25 with emphasis on 4,18,20,23,24. See also Ep 2:2,3,15-17; Ro 6:16; 8:1-8,12,14; Mt 16:23; Jn 8:44; He 2:14-16; 1 Jn 3:8.) And if you want some deeper and more obscure Scripture concerning the fate of the Devil’s body and how it becomes everlasting fuel in the lake of fire put all these verses together: Mk 8:24; Ezek 31:5; 28:18; 20:47; 21:31,32; Is 26:11; Ge 22:6; Le 6:7,10,13; Jn 15:6; Mt 3:10; Jb 24:20; Ge 6:13,14; Is 34:9; Da 3:27; 2 Pe 3:7; Jude 7; Is 13:6,8,9; Ex 3:2; Je 5:14.

The opposite of the Devil’s body of willful Christians is Christ’s obedient church (He 10:1,5,7,9,10.) Our new man, which can have the mind of Christ if we study the Bible, is the KOG body of Christ. This is a mystery, God manifest in the flesh (1 Ti 3:16). We the church are the mystery: God manifest in our obedient flesh (Ep 5:30-32). Let’s see how failure to understand that leads to problems.

 

CLEAN AND UNCLEAN MEAT

Failure to distinguish between our two bodies, the old man and the new man, causes well-intentioned Christians to unwittingly glorify Satan’s whore – our fallen, sinful, corrupt, physical old-man body. For example, they take 1 Co 6:19, then fail to compare it with v.15 (which would show it’s referring to the new man), and use it to justify their doctrine that smoking cigarettes, eating pork and leavened bread, etc., defile the temple of the Holy Ghost – which they think is the sinful, smelly, waste-producing physical old man! They don’t actually pronounce the words old man when saying we are the temple of the Holy Ghost because they don’t understand the Bible well enough to really know what they’re talking about; they lack awareness. The Pharisees had exactly the same problem; they focused on the old man by thinking that, because they were saved and were physical descendants of Abraham, they had it made. That’s why the Lord rebuked them for not knowing they should focus on Christ’s body, the new man, not Satan’s old-man body (Jn 3:2-6,9,10). God’s people were interested in making the old man (and its sepulchers) look good on the outside because they lacked the Biblical understanding that would enable them to be aware of the need to preserve the new man from corruption, because if any Christian defiles his new man, which is the temple of God, him shall God “destroy” (1 Co 3:17). (We saw when discussing Mt 10:28 on page D7-1,2 destroy means to be thrown into hell – a destination only the new-man/born-again body can reach.) By focusing on the old man the Pharisees missed the point of Old Testament laws such as circumcision, unclean food, etc. Christ used Mk 7:14-16, which illustrates the difference between the old man and the new, to rebuke and educate them. Sadly, Christ then found out His own disciples, who’d caused the clash by offending the Pharisees when they “defiled” their physical bodies (Mk 7:2), did not understand the important distinction between the old man and the new, either (v.17). That means the disciples in their ignorance agreed with the Pharisees and “all the Jews” (v.3) that eating with unwashen hands did defile the temple of God. So the really sad part is, believing in their hearts it was sin, they did it anyway! That is sin. The Lord, exasperated again with His disciples, explained that the old-man body isn’t the issue. The issue is whom you are inside. If your soul allows evil things to come out of you (by not ruling well over carnal Reason), they defile you.

 

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Pork never was unclean from a physical standpoint. People today waste time talking about how terribly pigs are raised and how flawed is their digestive tract. Irrelevant. God only declared animals to be clean and unclean when He wanted them to typify the condition of humans. Note, for example, that Adam and all of his descendants were Christians. As a picture of that, all animals were clean and could be eaten.

When God divided the human race in Noah’s day: There were “unclean” humans who would “miss the boat” and there were those who found grace in the eyes of the Lord and would spend a year at sea in the navy, and to typify that division God declared some animals to be clean and others to be unclean (Ge 7:1,2). Then when Noah stepped off the ark (Ge 8:20) he made a clean animal sacrifice (type of the Lamb without blemish on the cross), and the human race became homogeneous again: all people were Christian descendants of Noah. True to form, God told Noah the unclean animals were now clean (Ge 9:3).

As we know, God later divided the human race in Abraham’s day. Only this time He didn’t drown anybody; He made their offspring dogs. The Jews became His people; dogs did not. Therefore clean and unclean animals again made their appearance (Le 11).

Then the clean Lamb on the cross instituted the New Testament and opened the gospel to all mankind. With the human race again homogeneous (Ac 10:28,34; Mk 16:15), God again made all animals clean (Ac 10:13-15) to symbolize that fact. There are indications that in the future when we rule with Christ some or all of the old ceremonies, feast days, and laws will be reinstated. I believe one of those reinstated laws will be clean and unclean meats to symbolize the difference between the ruling class of saints and the working class of dogs. That would be consistent.

Some people think Peter’s vision in Ac 10 should not be taken literally when it declares all meats to be clean. They think the figurative meaning – opening the gospel to Gentiles – should be its only meaning. Obviously they’ve never noticed or understood any of the above. Neither can they come up with any plausible figurative meaning for the words kill and slay in Ac 10:13 and 11:7. Those words are crucial to understanding the passages. Yes, God now approves of both killing and eating all kinds of animals because the Great Commission makes all kinds of animals/humans clean/eligible for the gospel.

 

REASON AND DISCERNMENT

Once we understand the important distinction between the old and new man it is easier to understand how Christians have gotten so far off track in the Old Testament. Steeped in traditional doctrine, for example, the disciples couldn’t help but carnally focus on the physical. When they mentioned the bread they forgot in Mt 16:5, Christ, who always concerned Himself with the welfare of the new man not the old man, warned them not to eat the leaven (v.6) that would defile the body. Christ then gives us a lesson about reason: He mentioned reason at the same time He declared them to be of little faith (v.8) for thinking His reference to leaven, in response to their comment about physical bread, also had to do with physical bread! Accusing them of being of little faith just because they didn’t pick up on His change of subject is pretty extreme if not downright unfair, brother! Wait, we can’t think that way; it’s our Lord we’re talking about! He was fair and correct when He said that. We just have to figure it out, which is easily done by seeing in the ensuing verses that He wasn’t concerned with physical food – but with doctrine and the new man. But how could the Lord connect reason with a lack of faith? And that’s the key: Carnal Reason, or Natural Reason, is reason without faith; it is philosophy pure and plain. Look at the following verses and note that the bad kind of Reason is utilized independently of any knowledgeable consideration of the Scriptures, and sometimes is actually used to argue with God: Jb 9:14; Lk 5:21,22; 9:46; 20:14; 24:15,25; Ac 6:2. Good reason, on the other hand, involves dying to self by submitting our mental processes to the guidance of God and His word: 1 Sa 12:7; Is 1:18; Ac 17:2; Ro 12:1. The reason (not Reason) I call the good kind of reason discernment comes from my appreciation for these verses: 1 Ki 3:9-12; Ezek 44:23; Mal 3:18; 1 Co 2:14; He 4:12; 5:14; Ps 119:97-100.

 

MYSTERY, GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH

The mystery we usually hear spoken of is God manifesting Himself in the flesh of Jesus Christ. But here we shall address God manifesting Himself in the obedient (as opposed to carnal) flesh of us, His church. Ro 12:1 and He 10, among other places, teach that we are God’s body. Jn 14:12 shows that God’s work is not only not complete but that He expects us, His body, to continue working – God manifesting Himself in our obedient flesh. The mystery is the unseen Husband being revealed by the visible actions of the wife (1 Ti 3:15,16; Co 1:24-27). Notice in Ep 5:30-33 the mystery isn’t man and wife being one flesh, it’s God and us being one flesh. When you read Ep 3:3-10 you must understand that the principalities and powers in heavenly places are not good angels under God’s authority, but rather Satan and his minions. The mystery is being made known to them. By whom is it being made known to them? By the church (v.10)! What did Satan not know before, which, had he known it, he would not have crucified the Lord of glory? In other words, ignorance of what led Satan to make a mistake he regretted when he crucified Christ? Satan, like Christians today, didn’t understand marriage. He didn’t know the mystery of two becoming one flesh applied to Christ and His church. You see, Satan had all saints in history safely locked up in Abraham’s bosom as his brides. From his ignorant perspective that was good because it looked like he was winning the war. He didn’t understand that crucifying Christ would make them suddenly dead, thus making them legally Christ’s brides. (Sex, marriage, and divorce are so important to understanding the Bible.) The crucifixion was an “Oh, ye of little faith” error because Satan was focusing on the physical old man by thinking Christ’s death on the cross would help the gates of hell prevail over the church. The crucifixion turned out to be a big setback for Satan, and now that he realizes his mistake his tactics have changed, and he’s been doing very well. Why is he doing well? Because we are not doing a very good job of manifesting God ruling our minds and bodies. Instead of living by faith in God and His word we are living an Enlightened Christianity. In other words Satan is being manifested in our flesh! Some people think 1 Jn 4:2,3 and 2 Jn 7 have to do with accepting or rejecting the historical, physical existence of Christ…but Judas accepted Christ’s human existence. The verses are speaking of how to know if someone is a good Christian or not. And it is based not on whether they’re Jew or Gentile, but on whether their old-man bodies reveal the Lordship of Christ by their works.

 

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MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT WHORE

We have a new man and an old man. But the new man doesn’t become our primary body until the old man dies. Until then our old man has to do it all. When we discern the will of God through much Bible study, mentally incorporate it, and overcome our fear by making our old man be an obedient doer of the Bible, we are said to be walking after the Holy Spirit (Ro 8:1). In that way we are being the bride of Christ, we are revealing the mystery – God manifesting Himself in our submissively obedient flesh. But when our actions are based on Reason, which is doing what we honestly and sincerely think is right and good, we are said to be walking after the flesh (Ro 8:1). And since our master is the one to whom we yield our old man’s members, when we walk after the flesh we are being the bride of Satan, we are revealing the opposite of the mystery of godliness (1 Ti 3:15,16), we are revealing the mystery of ungodliness, Satan manifest in our willful flesh.

The mystery works in two ways. We are Christ’s bride manifesting His Lordship in our flesh whenever we are submissively obedient to the word of God. And we are Satan’s whorish bride manifesting his lordship in our flesh whenever we serve Christ with Reason the way Peter did in Mt 16.

Let’s use discernment to see how easy it is for us to be independent-thinking, liberated, militantly feminist wives of Satan like Peter. Our text is Mt 16:21-24. The Lord has just revealed that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die. Peter, who loved the Lord, was the only disciple willing to put feet to his faith by speaking up for Jesus. No, speaking is too mild a word. Peter knew so unquestionably that suffering and death were bad (and therefore wrong), and was so sure Christ’s ministry shouldn’t end so soon, and he loved Christ so much and was trying to be so helpful that he actually began to rebuke his Master! Did I say Master? If Christ were Peter’s Master he would have controlled his emotions and carnal mind and submissively said, “As you wish, Sir. What may I do to help?” Peter’s God was his belly (Ph 3:19), that is, his flesh. Peter honestly didn’t know he was motivated by the feelings emanating from the bodily organ that damns more Christians than any other – according to Je 17:9.

You and I know (your red flag should have just gone up because you and I know nothing) how Christ should have reacted. He should have recognized the love and concern that were motivating Peter, and He should have focused on those positive feelings while at the same time gently, patiently explaining the big picture. But, of course, because we are smarter and more civilized than they were “back then”, we know Christ was just a product of His ignorant, boorish, impulsive, unEnlightened culture, and...well, you get the point. In fact, I firmly believe one of our failings in Christianity is that we aren’t more Christ-like in the way we treat each other. Let’s look at Christ’s example, which He didn’t put in the Bible because He wanted us to think He was boorish – He put it in there so we could learn to be like Him.

Christ’s rebuke was just as public as Peter’s had been: He called Peter by the name of Peter’s master, Satan, just as Christian wives are called by their husbands’ names. This lets us know for a fact that God Almighty is of the opinion that Peter was, at that moment, a servant of the Devil.

Christ also told Peter that none of Peter’s “feelings”, “intentions”, or opinions counted because Peter was “an offence unto me.” To see how much Peter’s thoughtless carnality offended Christ see Ro 8:6-8. And since enmity is “violent hatred” we can see that it also makes Scriptural sense to read Christ’s statement as, “Thou art waging a violently aggressive war against me.”

Then Christ simply told Peter why all of the above was true: Peter was being carnal.

How did Peter react? The same way you and I would react to a rebuke that our lack of understanding made us view as wrong: Peter was emotionally hurt and intellectually offended because the validity of his “value system” – that is, who he was – was being attacked.

In Mt 16:24 Christ says Christians must overcome their Natural carnality in order to follow Him.

When we read v.25 we wonder, wasn’t Peter trying to save the Lord’s life, not his own? Read Jb 2:4 and then read another get-thee-behind-me-Satan input from the disciples in Jn 11:8 and see if it isn’t an exact parallel of Mt 16:21,22. Then see at the end of Jn 11:16 whose death was really on the disciples’ minds. But our lives don’t have to be at stake in order to be carnal. Peter’s rebuke of Christ is almost identical to a carnal rebuke by Abraham in Ge 18:25 when he had the gall to tell God what was right!

When we are carnal like Abraham and the disciples were in these examples, we are not being Christ’s submissive and pure church. We are not manifesting God in our flesh. When we are carnal we become Mrs. Satan, the Devil’s church, a willful whore, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

For years I was convinced the Great Whore was the Roman Catholic Church because she is perfectly described in Re 17 and 18. Most Protestants today, because they’ve been Enlightened by Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and our f-ing fathers, have very few differences socially, politically, or doctrinally from Roman Catholics. Is the slide toward Rome because she really is the Great Whore and is seducing Christianity? No, and fighting the Catholic Church won’t do you any more good than it does to campaign against pork, porno, homos, and Democrats. The slide toward Rome is caused by the fact that when two are agreed they walk together. Catholics think with their carnal minds. And Christians think with their carnal minds. That’s the problem! There is no “conspiracy.” The Antichrist is being brought in by the Natural actions of the carnal mind – which is the same way we got Xmas. We are all “conspirators” when we do what we think is right.

 

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The Catholic Church is a physical type of us when we walk after the flesh and not after the Spirit. Her history is similar to ours because it is a story of gradualism. She has gradually reduced the importance and authority of the Bible by casting doubt on its veracity and by increasing her own importance and authority in matters of faith and practice. Is this because of a Catholic conspiracy? No. For example, is there a Catholic/Protestant conspiracy to get people to honor Satan by duping people into celebrating Xmas? Yes! say the conspiracy buffs as they produce historical records of a society that rejected Xmas changing into one that loves Xmas. (I use our old whipping boy, Xmas, as an example again because it combines faith – religious stuff – with practice – everyday social stuff – and is therefore an efficient proof that the Bible is not, and has not been for a long time, our sole authority in all matters of either faith or practice.)

God has never told us to stop Catholics or Philistines or Egyptians or Satanists from celebrating their religious rites like Xmas, even though He has always prohibited His own people from celebrating those same pagan practices. What bothers God is not when pagans do their thing, but when His people adopt pagan celebrations (1 Ki 11:1-9; Je 44:2-5,15-17,22,23; Ezek 8:5-18; Dt 12:30-32). The Catholic Church adopted various pagan practices over time and called them Christmas. Up until about the time of the U.S. Civil War Christians refused to have anything to do with the Xmas their Catholic neighbors practiced. But our Reason later convinced us to ignore discernment by “letting our conscience be our guide” because, as Christians, our “value system” was “faith based.” Get thee behind me, Satan! There was no big conspiracy; there was only the carnal mind doing what it thought best. And that is exactly how the mystery of iniquity doth already work (2 Th 2:7), and that is what Mystery, Babylon the Great Whore is – it’s you and me, and Peter, and Abraham, and Judas, and Lucifer, when we are carnal. And that is how we become the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth – we give birth to the fruit of our carnal minds.

It’s perfectly fine for Catholics to celebrate Xmas. But once we are saved, as we mature in Christ we must begin to base everything we do on the Bible. We must learn to die daily to anything that comes from “the goodness of our heart” because it is an offense unto Him since it is not of God but of men.

The Whore sits on a multi-headed beast. The multiple heads represent the democratic entity that is created when a servant has a carnal mind. Since Christ is our Head, when we are carnal we become competing heads, competing authorities. And that competition is the war, a violently aggressive war. Carnality makes us an abominable whore riding a multi-headed democratic beast. That being true, it is easy to dredge up a few “names of blasphemy” referred to in Re 17:3: Equality, revolution, independence, freedom, and Reason. Those words embody the essence, the spirit, of democracy. Those words embody the essence, the spirit, of antichrist. Those principles make us anti Christ.

The Antichrist is called “that Wicked” in 2 Th 2:8, and we can’t help but be reminded of chapter D10 on the wicked. The Antichrist will be a born-again Christian. His Enlightened end time “Christianity” will capture the votes of most Christians. It will be his belief in Reason and other democratic values that will make the Antichrist anti Christ. Other than that he’ll be a nice guy – like Lucifer, Adam and Eve, Judas, and Matt Seven. Anyone who espouses democratic principles is anti Christ.

The very philosophy we were warned about in God’s word makes us members of the synagogue of Satan, Mystery, Babylon the Great. Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins (Re 18:4). Does it say, Come out of her Catholics and Philistines? No, it says, Come out of carnality, Peter, Abraham, and all of my saints. It says the same thing as, Get thee behind me, Satan.

We Christians are the Mystery, Satan manifest in the flesh, Babylon the Great Whore whenever we walk in the wrong one of our two bodies by failing to combine discernment and discipline to produce submissive obedience to Christ in accordance with the written words of God. Because we do have two bodies, and because we are his servants to whom we yield our members, we have the ability to be two mysteries, because a mystery in the Bible refers to a wife demonstrating the lordship of her husband. Therefore, we can either be Mystery, New Jerusalem the Submissive Wife, or we can be Mystery, Babylon the Carnal Whore. We must understand how important it is to use discernment rather than Reason.

 

THE NEW EARTH: THE MISSING INGREDIENT

God always knew this war would happen. He knew He’d have to cast some of His children into the lake of fire, burn this present earth, and create a new earth. When God said Ge 6:13 to Noah, He was not talking about Noah’s flood because the flood destroyed neither the earth nor all flesh – He was talking about fire (2 Pe 3:7,10,12). We are going to zero in on why His intent to destroy all flesh not only includes the destruction of this earth, but also includes the creation of a new earth (2 Pe 3:13; Re 21:1). I believe the new earth has been an important part of God’s strategy from the beginning, is a perfect example of how loath He is to cast His pearls before swine, and sheds light on glorified bodies and on slaves in eternity.

The debate about bodies: Before we continue let’s identify some “problems” or “inconsistencies” in the Bible that are related to this topic so we can think about them as we progress.

Problem 1: In chapter D16 we saw that God has always intended that unsaved humans be our slaves forever (Le 25:46). The “problem” with that is verses like 1 Co 15:50 and Jn 3:3,5 say flesh-and-blood “corruption” cannot see, enter, or inherit the KOG, which seems to indicate that born-once, flesh-and-blood slaves will not be able to see or enter the KOG in order to serve us, and it has, together with the fact that Enlightened Christianity thinks slavery is a sin, caused some Christians to doubt the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible when it says slavery will exist “for ever.” They think slavery is evil and will not exist in the KOG, which causes them to think unsaved mortals (both animals and humans) won’t be there, either.

Problem 2: Another “problem” has to do with the future tense of 1 Co 15:49,51,52. Those verses have been used for centuries by various denominations to “prove” all Christians are as yet merely born of the flesh, do not yet have spirit bodies, and won’t get spirit bodies until we’re born again in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump.

But if we do not have born-again spirit bodies now, verses like Ro 8:7,8; 1 Co 2:10-16; Ec 3:18,19; Mt 10:28 indicate that without the spirit body we are no different from animals, cannot receive and know the things of God, cannot please Him, and cannot enter the spiritual, eternal KOG such as heaven and hell.

 

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Those are good and valid questions that either expose contradictions in the Bible or reveal a lack of understanding on our part. It is a lot easier to eliminate the apparent contradictions by ignoring the verses that offend denominational traditions than it is to put the Bible, here a little and there a little, together. But if we get to know the Bible thoroughly, believe what it says, and put it all together, we’ll find out there have never been valid reasons to doubt God or to ignore anything He says. Those questions merely indicate that a large gap exists in our understanding of our physical and spiritual bodies.

I already knew we Christians had to have born-of-the-Spirit bodies now in order to learn, serve, and grow. And that didn’t contradict the view that our future bodies spoken of in 1 Co 15 are the “glorified bodies” patterned after the body Christ had after His resurrection. But in order to learn more about our spirit bodies – which we cannot see – I examined the spirit bodies the angels now have. The angels are obviously our “brethren” (Re 19:10 and 22:8,9) because they, too, are spirits (He 1:7) who are children of God (Jb 1:6). They are capable of sinning, as proven by Lucifer and the bad angels. And even the good angels are plagued with temptation and the ability to sin, as indicated by the implicit fear in the word durst in Jude 9, and to a lesser degree by the mysterious wording of 1 Co 11:10. That angelic ability to sin bothered me because verses such as 1 Jn 3:9 indicate God doesn’t want potential sinners in His kingdom for eternity...He wants that problem permanently fixed.

I also noticed the angels are not content – they’re not fully satisfied – in their present spirit bodies. For example, Lucifer coveted the material riches of this physical earth (Ezek 28:4,5). And, certain angels lusted after the physical bodies of humans (Ge 6:4) – in fact, those angels actually married human women (Ge 6:2).  Devils also possess humans. And, while possessing humans could be for the sole purpose of furthering their cause, it doesn’t preclude the possibility that longing for physical flesh is part of their motivation. These are all indications that the angels are not satisfied – they want physical flesh! However, the physical flesh they covet, the flesh we now have, is not the answer because it is mortal, corrupt, able to sin, and yearning for something better. The fact that the present spirit bodies of the angels do not satisfy them suggests the body we are longing for (Ro 8:23; 2 Co 5:2) is not the spirit body of the good and bad angels (which is presumably the same spirit body we born-of-God saints now have); the body we are longing for is the future glorified body Christ had when He resurrected – the one in 1 Co 15.

We’re getting closer to dealing with the glorified body and its relationship with the new earth, but I think it’ll be helpful to briefly review the two bodies God’s children have now.

The mortal body: We are born with a mortal human tabernacle that has the capability to sin. The bad news is the mortal body is a curse because flesh and blood is no different from beasts, cannot see or enter the KOG, cannot receive and know spiritual things of God, is not subject to the Bible, and cannot possibly please God because the mortal physical body’s heart is uncircumcised (Je 17:9; Pv 28:26). The good news is the mortal body can die (which is what Christ did for us on the cross) so that we can be espoused to “another” husband, Christ (Ro 7:2,4).

The spirit body: We are born again with an angelic spirit body. The good news is the spirit body enables us to receive and know the spiritual things of God, and it gives us everlasting life by making us immortal. That makes us higher than beasts because beasts are merely physical flesh-and-blood mortals (He 2:9). Our spirit body makes us sons of God, which makes us subject to the rules our Father put in the Bible, and we become capable of pleasing God. The spirit body also allows us to reckon ourselves to be circumcised servants of God (Ro 5:1,2; Ph 3:3; Co 2:10-14; 1 Jn 3:9; Ro 6:11-14). The bad news is this angelic spirit body has the ability to sin (1 Co 6:3). That means we need to be circumcised daily by walking circumspectly (Je 4:4; Ro 2:25-29; 3:30; 4:9,10; 1 Co 7:19), which means there are things we durst not do, and it means we must routinely confess our sins (1 Jn 1:9,10).

 

SET YOUR AFFECTION ON THINGS ABOVE, NOT ON THINGS ON THE EARTH

God is going to “make all things new” (Re 21:5), and the new earth shows He has always planned to make all things new. The new earth shows that God never intended this present earth to be the eternal setting of His kingdom. We see a pattern: The new earth is better than the present earth, and the glorified body is better than both the present physical and spirit bodies. It looks like God deliberately made the first earth and the first bodies inferior to the later ones. That and the fact that history repeats itself help us figure out some things.

When God created the first earth He deliberately made it imperfect, He deliberately made it a snare. When Lucifer was told to husband the garden of God, he foolishly fell into the trap by coveting what he thought was God’s perfect physical realm. Lucifer did not know at the time that this present physical KOH is flawed and was never intended to be the Promised Land. And when Lucifer rebelled and won dominion over the KOH in one of the early battles, he didn’t know God always intended this KOH to be the lake of fire.

When God created human beings He deliberately made them of this flawed earth. That’s why His Book tells us to covet neither this world nor our physical lives. Our physical bodies are corrupt because they are made from the wrong earth.

The glorified body: I believe verses like 2 Co 5:1-4, Ro 8:23,29, and 1 Co 15:42-54 are talking about the future glorified body. And the Jn 3 “ye must be born again” verses are talking about being born spiritually now in order to receive an angelic body in order to gain the capability to serve and please God.

The glorified body is both spirit and physical. Christ told His disciples to touch Him to verify He wasn’t just a spirit (Lk 24:37-39). And the Lord walked right through the disciples’ closed door to show that neither was He merely a physical body. It seems the glorified body has capabilities of both physical and spirit bodies – such as the ability to eat physical food (Jn 21:13) and to pass through physical objects (Jn 20:19). Some people think we’ll have glorified bodies during the Millennial Reign because we’ll be resurrected. But the glorified body isn’t the only body we can be given after we are resurrected: Notice in Mt 27:52,53 the bodies of the resurrected saints were not glorified bodies that could walk through doors – because they needed their graves to be opened in order for them to get out! That suggests they were in the same physical body we now have.

Christ’s glorified body, which is a perfect marriage of physical and spirit, is the type of body He has always wanted us to have (Ro 8:29). In other words, it appears that our present spirit bodies, which alternately long to be clothed upon with righteousness and lust after things of this earth, will be joined to a new physical body. And the fact that our first physical body is made from the dirt of this corrupt earth (Ge 2:7; 3:19,23), combined with the fact that God says He’ll “make all things new” (Re 21:5), combined with the fact that history repeats itself (Ec 1:9,10), suggests that God will once again utilize soil when He makes our new perfect physical bodies – but He’ll use the good soil of the new perfect earth (which will make our bodies flesh and bone rather than flesh and blood?)

 

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That is why our glorified bodies cannot be formed by combining our present spirit bodies with our present physical bodies – this present physical body is made from this corrupt earth. And that is why the bad angels, who became “one flesh” with human women, were barking up the wrong planet – the physical bodies they coveted were made from this flawed earth and therefore cannot satisfy. We can only have glorified bodies and the circumcised-heart walk-through-doors perfection that God has in mind for us when He combines our present spirit bodies with new-earth physical bodies. In other words, the new-earth bodies are the missing ingredient the angels and we have always unknowingly longed for. Indeed, the physical and spiritual perfection of the glorified body is part of our reward for faithfully dying daily to self and setting our affections on things above rather than on things of this earth.

The new earth also provides an answer to the question of how our slaves gain entrance to God’s future kingdom: They will be included in God’s “I make all things new” statement; He’ll make them out of the new earth so they won’t consist of the old prohibited “flesh and blood”, they’ll be “flesh and bone.” That does not mean they’ll have circumcised hearts or everlasting life; they’d have to have glorified bodies for the former and spirit bodies for the latter. And if we have a tendency to think mortal humans will somehow pollute God’s kingdom and therefore shouldn’t be in it, it is only because we still tend to view dogs through our equality-loving, tradition-soaked, Enlightened brains. Unsaved humans are no different from beasts, and there is nothing wrong with God having butterflies, birds, sheep, lions, deer, and dogs in His kingdom – as long as their mortal bodies are made of the new earth.

I think the good angels also get new, glorified bodies. I believe God not only wants the new earth to be perfect, but He wants His children to be perfect. In other words, the present uncircumcised spirit bodies of His angels and His saints (uncircumcised because they are capable of sinning) are not satisfactory for the rest of eternity: the good angels will get glorified bodies so they’ll never lust after anything again.

Lk 20:35 says saints who obtain “that world” (the new earth) won’t marry (like they did in Ge 6:2). And then in Lk 20:36 it says the saints in that future world won’t be able to die because they are “equal unto the angels.” Even though having born-again immortality makes us equal in that respect to the angelic spirits now, I think the verse is speaking of the angels in the future, in eternity, when we all shall occupy the new earth in our glorified bodies. In support of this is the end of the verse that calls us “the children of the resurrection,” which brings to mind the glorified body of the resurrected Christ with whom we’ll become one flesh. The reason we won’t marry in the future is we will no longer have to marry in order to have children because our glorified bodies will be whole, complete (as discussed in chapter D26). Producing offspring without marriage/sex is, according to Ge 6:2,4, beyond the capabilities of angels in their present angelic spirit bodies. But they and we will be able to do that in eternity in our glorified bodies according to Lk 20:35,36. In other words, once we have glorified bodies the good angels and we will never again want or need sex with someone else because we’ll be in a perfect blend of spirit and physical that will satisfy and fulfill us for all of eternity; the KOG and the KOH will be one.

Take a look at Jb 26:5. It says “dead things” inhabit “under the waters” where they were formed. It appears to go along with what I’ve been saying: This present KOH earth, which is under the Deep and is the soil from which we “dead things” were formed, is to be the everlasting habitation of those who covet it. The Bible tells us to set our affections on things that are above (on the new earth), but the bad saints and fallen angels who covet the physical life and objects of this earth will be damned by living here forever because everything under the great Deep will become the lake of fire. In other words, Lucifer took the bait: When he coveted this earth and its kingdoms, he was living by lust in the present rather than living by faith in the future, and that showed he didn’t love or deserve God.

God’s damned children, such as Lucifer and Judas, will spend eternity in the lake of fire in their present imperfect/incomplete spirit bodies. They will never know the wonderful fulfillment of having their spirit bodies combined with the perfect physical bodies made from the new earth. They will be forever damned because they coveted self and they coveted the wrong earth. They will spend eternity having exactly what they coveted, and in the lake of fire they won’t be able to say they experienced the new earth and the glorified body and found God’s pearls weren’t really all that great. In other words, God carefully refrained from casting His pearls of the future before His children…because He knew some would turn out to be swine.

One last thought about the glorified body. All of that Greek philosophy mumbo-jumbo about “we’re all one with the cosmos, with the grass, the trees, the rocks, and with the gods, so let’s sit cross-legged and hum and commune with God through nature” only makes possible sense in the context of eternity and our glorified bodies. If our glorified bodies are made from the perfect and pure soil of the new earth, and if the new KOH/Z is going to be one with the KOG (a perfect blend of the physical and the spiritual), it may be that all of creation will actively glorify God. The birds may sing hymns or psalms to God (2 Pe 2:16; Nu 22:28-30; Re 5:13). The trees may do the same, especially in the fall. How might we hear the trees sing? Via our perfect and complete hearing. We can now only see – but not hear – the visible light spectrum because our ears cannot detect the wavelengths of light. But with our glorified ears we may hear all of the glorious colors of the fall leaves singing beautiful symphonies of praise to God. I mean, just walking around might be a tremendously fulfilling and religious experience that will draw us even closer to and help us be one with God. All of our perfect senses may contribute to our joy, our wonder, and our worship of God. The physical and the spirit – as in the KOH united with the KOG – will truly be one-derful.