Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Believers’ Convention 2023 (Day 5 - Morning Session)
Date: Thursday, 10th August 2023
Minister: Reverend Olabode Busuyi
Transcript Excerpt
Salvation is the name of the Lord and anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. 10:13). God is bringing us closer to what He promised because Jesus began this message of salvation (Heb. 2:2-3). Although it was not understood by many, it was also misinterpreted. As earlier taught, salvation transcends the new birth. When God spoke in Genesis 1:26, He was actually proclaiming salvation ahead of time. God had salvation in view before man was created and this is what made man different from every other creature.
"But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: [4] In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." (2 Cor. 4:3-4). When Christ, the power of God, is preached, it is also the gospel that is preached. However, 2 Corinthians 4:3 is talking about another kind of gospel – the power of God unto His image. We cannot get to the image of God without power because the sphere of the image of God is not within the sphere or context of what man can see; it is in the realm of the unseen. Although the inheritance is in heaven, it is unseen; this is why the angels cannot see it. The gospel was kept as a secret in heaven; if not, the angels would have seen it and understood it. This is because the gospel is not theirs; it is the gospel of God for man.
The gospel was ordained before the fall. When man fell, the devil thought there was no more hope for man to be saved. He had no idea that the gospel nature is not the nature of the creation but of the Creator. When man lost his dominion on the earth, the footstool of God was removed. However, God has faculties within Him that have never been revealed until the need arises. Satan did not know that God could manifest in the flesh; he thought God is just heavenly, not knowing the creation of heaven and earth was a display of natures in God (Gen. 1:1).
Christ’s coming to earth was necessary because of man’s fall. However, God’s original programme of salvation – which is that man should be conformed to the image of the Godhead – existed before the fall (Gen. 1:26). Christ is God's wisdom to connect man back to the original programme the Godhead had in mind. The gospel of Christ is aimed at taking man from the dust and making him a spirit. The living soul is a spirit that can gravitate towards God; it can respond to the demands of heaven and receive the blessing or grace that changes the living soul into the image of God. Any man that will come into God's glory must pass through the sphere of acquiring His image, which is salvation.
Angels, because of their commitment to God's word, believe what God is doing; hence they are able to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation (Heb. 1:14). However, salvation cannot be manifested in the angels, it is exclusively reserved for man. God has a business – to make man acquire Christ and qualify for entrance (2 Pet. 1:11). Creation is yet to see the wonder that man who has fallen to dust can acquire God's image.
"And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, [6]And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." (Rev. 1:5-6).
God's foundation is everlasting life. Our foundation is Christ (1 Cor. 3:11). In God, Christ is hid (Col. 3:3). Anyone who does not have everlasting life has no part with God. We have gone beyond the level of just wanting to make heaven; the emphasis is now becoming God's building. God is a building, and that building has been existing before creation.
"For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (1 Cor. 15:53). We must put on incorruption. The present image we carry is called 'corruptible'; this is why our frame can collapse easily. Our present frame (image) is as a result of the fall. This same frame must put on incorruption. The essence of the preaching of salvation is to open our eyes so that the desire for incorruption becomes compulsory and weighty to us. We should attend to the matter of incorruption like we have no alternative, else we would not take it seriously.
"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;" Jesus became God's image, He was not born that way (Heb. 1:3). It means a man can take up the exact image of God. This is faith being preached to us. The faith for entrance into the Kingdom is called the faith of Christ. However, we need to change (that is, improve on) this faith, else, one would only be able to bear the meat of the word and not strong meat.
There is a frame in man that does not make him want to change meal easily, which is why Paul spoke the way he did to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2. Jesus has made provision for the possibility of entrance into the Kingdom for all men, when the veil between the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place was torn when Jesus died (Matt. 27:51). Although the veil was torn that day in the heavens, the veil in the soul of men is still intact; hence, the journey into the Holiest of All is still far.
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:" (Rom. 5:1). Being justified talks about what the power of Christ does. When we are made right, it shows we are making progress. There is a place close to the veil where we arrive at peace with God; this is where we can be certified as priests who are qualified to be clothed with salvation. While we are making progress towards God by the gospel of Christ, we see Christ as a hope because we are not yet Christ in our souls at New Birth. It is as we walk that we are changed. That is why to be conformed to Christ is a hope, it is an expectation and a place we hope to arrive at.
To be conformed to Christ, we need to have faith and the reality of the hope of Christ; we must also believe that we can be rid of flesh, hence, the need for the Church. The conversation that will take flesh away from us gradually lies in the Church of Christ. As we witness such conversations, we learn inductively.
There is a teaching of grace that brings us nearer to Christ (Tit. 2:11). To be justified by grace is to be justified by learning. This is different from the grace imputed in us at New Birth. This grace involves learning. Faith brings grace to us, which is the power that enables us to relinquish flesh, and exercise brotherly love and charity. The path to being justified is brotherly love; this is why it should be added to faith (2 Pet. 1:5-7).
After being justified by faith and having obtained peace with God, we are spirits declared to be holy. At this point, we can now be granted entrance because now we can be trusted; previously we only believed but did not trust. God cannot rely on our faith because of the nature we have inherited. So, He cannot trust man. During the season when Christ is being built in us, we still have a measure of man in us; and that makes us weak. Flesh makes us weak and gives the enemy an advantage over us. Our enemies are strong, but our God is stronger. We have to be stronger to displace the enemy’s footstool within us.
There is a measure of walk (of faith) we acquire in the wisdom of Christ that builds strength in us. However, God wants us to acquire enough stamina to help us withstand the moment of our waiting until we are perfected for entrance. It means men are not received at the same moment they get to the veil because the veil is another journey in itself. There is a path through the veil that needs to be understood and administered for us to withstand the process of entrance.
There is a patience needed to do the will of God but there is another patience needed after doing the will. The will is Christ. The patience we need for Kingdom access is also our character. In Isaiah 28:16, we see the different levels of stones the stone had to be subjected to, just to be used as a foundation. Jesus had to undergo processes to become a Chief cornerstone. If Jesus was not spared, then no one else would, since we are being brought to the same place Jesus is.
Every man is flesh. Powers and principalities hold their place in the souls of men by their wisdom. We inherited them and they used this wisdom to raise us. This is why we should be careful how we raise our children. Nevertheless, we cannot use the judgements of the Most Holy Place to raise our children, as that would be too strict on them, because all children have common challenges. For example, there is no child that did not bite the teat of the breasts while sucking. Those inborn traits, as well as others developed over time through home training and others, originate from courses of this world that were charted by spirits of the air (Eph. 2:1). They trained men with their wisdom.
Hence, spirits have their footstools (their training and tutelage) within souls. This is why it is possible for a man to turn back even after following Christ, because there are remains of their things in the soul. When we are being rid of flesh, conversations of powers and principalities are being taken out. However, there are conversations of higher spirits – rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness; these are aimed at preventing men from ascending above the earth by their properties present in men.
A natural man, if left alone, can end up in the lake of fire. To tilt such from the path of destruction, the power of the gospel is needed. We were all dead, and that death is once. This is the first requirement and we have met it. We have all fulfilled the appointment to die once; we fulfilled it by birth (Heb. 9:27). The next appointment is the second death. Christ came to deal with the effects of the first death and to ensure we do not go into the second death. It is those who will look for Him that He will appear to, a second time, without sin unto salvation (Heb. 9:28).
"For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, [12] Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." (Heb. 2:11-12). We cannot come to become this Church until we hear His name. There must be a declaration of the name. These brethren are those that are qualified for entrance into the realm of the living God, which is called everlasting life. The first declaration is to make them hope for the glory of the incorruptible, or salvation; because previously, their hope was Christ and not yet salvation. There is a moment of our walk towards the veil where we need another hope to signal to us and give us the strength to go through the process of waiting and crossing the veil. It is a moment of great assault against the soul. This was where the Hebrew church was. Their meal had to be changed to enduring substances or strong meat, because they needed stamina.
Prior to this point, the Hebrew saints handled the wiles of sin. Then, they were moved to a realm were they were faced with the wiles of the devil (Eph. 6:11). Those are things pertaining to evil, aimed at disqualifying one from entrance. If we are hit by anything in the devil’s arsenal, we would lose the strength to advance. The Hebrew church had begun to eat strong meat. Paul talked about the fact that many of them had believed to a point where they had to fight for entrance.
“But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions;” (Heb. 10:32). We need to fight for entrance. We need to be made warriors who would be determined to enter the Kingdom (Matt. 11:12). No one will enter the Kingdom without fighting through. This cannot be achieved by normal christian activities. In fact, one of the signs that we are approaching the Kingdom is that evil spirits would rise against us in unprecedented manners. We are moving to a place where we have to be entire and all-rounded (Jam. 1:4).
"But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; [33] Partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. [34] For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance." (Heb. 10:32-34). These saints already knew that they have something in heaven to live for. They could count the assaults of the enemy against them irrelevant. They were not weary of the process because they were hoping for entrance. There is a possibility that many of them were already within the veil because Paul charged them not to depart from the living God. The living God is on the other side of the veil, while this side of the veil is the new way; hence the name: new and living way (Heb. 10:20). The veil is a way that Jesus consecrated by His flesh. Without that way, no one would know the way through. The essence of being born of the Spirit is to know the way.
A man has to be strong to withstand the assaults of the enemy in thoughts. "(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) [5] Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;" (2 Cor. 10:4-5). These evil spirits confront our reasonings. They confront what we have learned in Christ to make us think that those ways are not true. They bombard our reasoning. There are times when the battles we face were activities around us; but this kind of warfare takes place in the mind, one cannot walk away from it. Tribulations occur when nations wage assaults against our minds, because we are becoming a holy nation.
We know we are making progress in this journey through the kind of spirits that visit us. After the experience at Jordan, the Bible says Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted of the devil (Matt. 4:1). This shows that there are points in our lives that God would not hinder these spirits. At certain points, we can pray that we are not led into temptation; but when it comes to the issue of dominion and kingdoms, we will be led into those temptations. We are going to be representing a Kingdom, therefore we should know other kingdoms and we must have gathered enough strength to withstand them. We would not be kept from some temptations forever. A time will come when the door opens for us to meet the conversations of those spirits. That day, we would have to make a choice to either accept the biddings of those spirits or reject them.
Satan came tempting Jesus with the kingdoms and glories of this world (Matt. 4:8). These were not lusts in Jesus, but evil thoughts brought by spirits. They are ideologies of the present evil world. They make us see advantages and opportunities that are hard to resist. When we learn Christ, our eyes would be opened and we would see both good and evil. When Satan came to meet Jesus, Jesus knew who it was because He had handled dominions, powers, principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places. We also have to grow up to be able to discern them, as some evil spirits have the ability to mask and manifest like ministers of light (2 Cor. 11:14). Strong meat provides us with the capacity to discern spirit.
We need strong meat as we approach the veil. We need meats of enduring substances for our faiths to change. The faith spoken of in Hebrews 11 is the faith of enduring substances. It makes us able to depend on enduring meat. Until we go into salvation, we are not saved. These are hard sayings. When we move towards the veil, we will hear many hard sayings and we must be able to bear them (2 Pet. 3:16). Without that, we cannot take the enduring word of God, which prepares us for the work of the quickening word of God that is able to search through the crevices of our hearts and souls, and discern the thoughts and intents of our hearts (Heb. 4:12).
Listen to Audio Here: Understanding the Essence of the Learning of Christ
Blessings!