Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: School of the Spirit (SOS)
Date: Thursday, 24th March 2022
Ministering: Pastor Emeka Egwuchukwu
Everlasting life is a journey and an inheritance that we have been called to attain. It is an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled and that fades not away. We are all on the journey towards this inheritance (1 Peter 1:4). One of the proofs that a person has inherited everlasting life is that he or she is incorruptible. Whosoever claims to have attained everlasting life must have attained incorruptibility. God wants to teach us how we can be incorruptible.
Scriptures are layers of light or truth. When we understand a particular scripture at a level, we should not think that is all there is to that scripture. We usually do not want to agree with a deeper understanding of God’s word especially when we have gotten results with a previous understanding.
The words of the Lord are pure words and they give understandings at different levels (Ps. 12:6). Scriptures were written so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing we may have life through His name. (John 20:31). By the time we are getting to the perfect level of understanding, we should be touching Eternal Life.
When one is a child, he or she will read and understand the scriptures as a child. However, when the same person becomes aged in the spirit, he or she will see scriptures more accurately. The aged is a father in the spirit, and it is an allocation of stature that is only found in everlasting life. The season of everlasting is a season of fathers. John was writing to fathers because he was a father of fathers (1 John 2:13). He could write to children, young men and fathers in everlasting life.
God will always speak to fathers, because they are the ones who have an inward constitution or arrangement that can comprehend Him (Exo. 6:3). God only speaks for the purpose of making covenant. God will not go lower than the realm of fatherhood in order to make covenant. God speaks to fathers to the end that His covenant will be made in them.
It is possible to be born of God to a point where one can no longer commit sin (1John 3:9). Some men believe that sinlessness is not possible while one is still in his or her mortal body. People do not know that the body responds to laws and, if there is a change of that law, the cravings of the body will also change.
Whosoever is born of God is one who has inherited the incorruptible laws of God (1John 3:9). The law is a seed and it is possible for that seed to not remain in a man. There are two activities or operations of the incorruptible seed; it lives and then abides. We often do not allow the seed to live in us. The seed does not live by mere confession but by living a life that is according to the demands of the seed. A man must have learnt how to use the seed to live for the seed to abide in him.
The living and abiding operations of the incorruptible seed only take place in the heart. One of the challenges of this generation is that we respond more to the externalities of life and pay less attention to the matters of the heart. Satan has created a lot of external activities to bind us to the outward physical life.
We can be so engrossed with the externalities of life that we begin to doubt the word of God, or believe that a man cannot come to the state of sinlessness. David was taken with the prosperity of the wicked on the outside but later understood their end when he paid attention to the matters of the heart or the sanctuary (Psa. 73:17).
For the incorruptible seed to remain in our hearts, we must have used it and obeyed the demands of the seed. A seed that a man has not used as life cannot remain or abide in him. Every seed has things that make it up. The incorruptible seed is made of words of the Father. Whosoever God has made a father of many generations is one to whom God has committed His seed. It is that seed that will generate many nations.
Receiving the seed should be followed with obedience to the seed as life. A father is one who has possessed the seed of God. The Father is a carrier of seed and this is what He uses to reproduce. The Father begat Jesus and the Son also became a father that can also begat. God gave the incorruptible seed to the Son for the Son to give it to the church.
The seed that God promised Abraham multiplied into twelve only when it got to Jacob. Twelve is a number of God and it speaks of the perfection of the world to come. Everything about that City is twelve. Even though we are in time, God is seeing us in eternity. Just as the Lamb had been slain before the foundation of the world, we also have existed before now and God is also seeing us in the future. We must strive to get there, and we do so by following the prophecy of the book and fulfilling its demands.
“As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” (John 6:57). Jesus also used the Father to live. He did not get to perfection or become the captain of our salvation just because He was the Son of God, but by living by the words of the Father. God sent the Son by giving Him words. When God is giving you His words, He is sending you, and this means He is showing you how to live.
What raised Christ was the glory of the Father (Romans 6:4). This is so that men may live in the newness of life. However, a man cannot live by the Father when he has not lived Christ life. After living the life of Christ, we can then go on to eat the flesh of the Father and begin to live by Him.
God can give birth, and He does so by giving the incorruptible seed to the soul of a man. The job of the man is to live by the seed. The seed will not live in a man who does not live by the seed. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7). The word “if” shows that this is conditional. Therefore, it is possible for a believer not to live by the words of God. We are supposed to make the revelations that are coming to us living; they are supposed to be a life that we live by.
It is our duty, not God’s, to translate these words from just being doctrine to a principle of life that we live by; God has given us that capacity. 1 Peter 1:14 tells us that a man can fashion himself in a certain way. We fashion ourselves by what we obey. While God may present truth to a man, He would not force him to do it; he has to decide to do it.
The devil provides the ground or arrangement to disobey but he does not make anybody do anything. By our ignorance, we have given the devil more power than he really has. Satan will present an immediate gratification to us long enough for us to lust after it, just like he did to Adam. If a man listens long enough to Satan, he will be overwhelmed and fall in.
It is not enough to live by the words of everlasting life, we need to abide by it. To abide is a teaching to not go outside the allowance of the incorruptible seed. It takes lessons in the spirit for a man to get a point where he cannot sin. This is a gradual process and does not happen instantaneously. We will learn how to abide after we have learnt how to live. We are going to live to the point where the seed becomes an abiding seed that can bear fruits in us.
The word of God comes to us first as seed and we gather it gradually and are commanded to live by it. The living is what graduates into becoming abiding. We cannot abide where we have not lived. We cannot be said to be abiding where we have not first lived God’s life. To abide means that it is not only an inheritance but it has become ours.
The word of God cannot abide in a man except he has moved from loving or obeying the word to learning how to abide in the word. The incorruptible seed has its perimeters or things that it does not allow. The sin of that seed are the things that the seed does not allow. Whosoever is born of God has no commitment to sin which is to harbor things that violate the seed of God. The seed of God does not like other seeds.
It takes time for a vineyard to be made. The husbandman is the one who takes time to till the ground. The Father works on the ground, purifies and sanctifies it until it becomes a pillar and ground of truth. This is what is referred to as the Church of God (1 Timothy 3:15). The church of God are souls of men that have been sanctified by Christ unto fervent charity.
We are God’s husbandry, the sheep of His pasture and also His building. These all refer to the soul. The sheep of God’s pasture are the sheep that the Father can give pasture to. The Father will pasture them with His meal. Whoever cannot take the Father’s meal cannot be His flock.
Whosoever is born of God will not allow another seed. Cain for example, took another seed. God committed a seed to Cain but he was not obeying the words of that seed fully or with all his heart. When we find out that we are partial in our devotion to God, we should quickly repent because it will be revealed sooner or later.
The incorruptible seed does not allow another seed. A man who has been born of the incorruptible seed must have gone through seasons where he rejected Satan’s seed. Satan presented his own seed to Adam and Eve in the garden, and it always looks simpler and easier to work with. Satan has mastered the art of stopping men from living and abiding. Satan stopped Adam and Eve, Cain, etc. Satan knows how to stop men from living and abiding by God’s seed.
We cannot attain eternal life if we have not allowed the word of eternal life to live and abide in us. “Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.” (1 John 2:24). When the word from the beginning abides in us, we will continue in the Son and the Father because of the promise. This continuity is living and abiding.
According to 1 John 2:27, the holy unction is what teaches a man to abide. He teaches him how to discern seeds. This unction comes as a result of the Holy One. As a man is learning from the Holy One and obeying Him, the holy unction is passed into him. When a man grows in the knowledge of the Holy One, he will have the ability to discern wrong seeds.
Periods when we are faced with the challenge of choosing between life and death are times of necessity or need. The holy unction is what comes within us to sharpen our judgment in such times. This is a time of allowing God’s seed or else, compromise.
When a man has waited for a long time over a matter, and comes to a point of choosing or fulfilment, it is usually a time of necessity. Ishmael, for example, was another seed which was designed to hinder Isaac from obeying God and inheriting what God has called him for. Ishmael stands for the choice of flesh. When we succumb to an option of life that is different from the one that God is offering, it becomes difficult to stop and agree to God’s life.
The abiding seed has the capacity to wait for God while the wrong seed has a habit of complaining, murmuring and grumbling against the demands of God’s seed. Whosoever carries offence in his heart is carrying a wrong seed. We should get to the place where we are born of God and can no longer sin. Satan knows that when a soul attains this state, he has lost the soul completely.
Ishmael was sent away when Isaac was still very young. God did not allow them to grow together. This is because Isaac was supposed to live and abide in the house. It was in Isaac that Abraham’s seed will be. Therefore, it is not enough that Isaac is born because receiving him does not mean that one has received God’s seed. The season of receiving Isaac was a season of learning how to live and abide. It was at mount Moriah that Abraham received the ultimate seed.
The proof that Isaac had gone through the season of living and abiding was that he could totally yield to God. If he had grown up with Ishmael, Ishmael would have taught him how to resist his father and fight against God’s intention. The seed that teaches us how to evade God’s death is an evil seed and may God uproot them from our souls. May we live and abide until we are born of God.
Summary
1. Everlasting life is a journey and an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled and that fades not away, that we have been called to attain (1 Peter 1:4). One of the proofs that a person has inherited everlasting life is that he or she is incorruptible.
2. Scriptures are layers of light or truth. When we understand a particular scripture at a level, we should not think that is all there is to that scripture. The words of the Lord are pure words and they give understandings at different levels (Ps. 12:6).
3. God will always speak to fathers, because they are the ones who have an inward constitution or arrangement that can comprehend Him (Exo. 6:3), for the purpose of making covenants.
4. The law is a seed and it is possible for that seed to not remain in a man. The seed does not live in one by mere confession but by living a life that is according to the demands of the seed. A man must have learnt how to use the seed to live for the seed to abide in him.
5. The living and abiding operations of the incorruptible seed only take place in the heart. Satan has created a lot of external activities to bind us to the outward physical life. We can be so engrossed with the externalities of life that we begin to doubt the word of God, or believe that a man cannot come to the state of sinlessness (Psa. 73:17).
6. For the incorruptible seed to remain in our hearts, we must have used it and obeyed the demands of the seed. A seed that a man has not used as life cannot remain or abide in him. The incorruptible seed is made of words of the Father.
7. God gives birth by giving the incorruptible seed to the soul of a man. The job of the man is to live by the seed. The seed will not live in a man who does not live by the seed (John 15:7). The revelations that are coming to us are supposed to be a life that we live by.
8. We cannot be said to be abiding where we have not first lived God’s life. To abide means that it is not only an inheritance but it has become ours. The word of God cannot abide in a man except he has moved from loving or obeying the word to learning how to abide in the word.
9. (1 John 2:27) The holy unction is what teaches a man to abide. As a man is learning from the Holy One and obeying Him, the holy unction is passed into him. When a man grows in the knowledge of the Holy One, he will have the ability to discern wrong seeds.
10. The holy unction is what comes within us to sharpen our judgment in such times when we are faced with the challenge of choosing between life and death. The seed that teaches us how to evade God’s death is an evil seed.