Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Lekki Soul Center (LSC)
Date: Wednesday, 9th Feb. 2022
Ministering: Pastor Tope Falaye
When Adam sinned, he died (Rom. 5:12). Adam’s disobedience allowed sin and death to have their way in man. Juxtaposing Romans 5:12 with Genesis 2:15-17 -- where God told Adam that in the day he eats of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he will die -- Adam and his wife ate of the fruit and died in their spirits. They did not just die, but something entered their spirits and also their thinking. They died in their spirits, and their eyes of understanding were opened to another reality (Gen. 3:7).
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had more things than sin and death. The full potential of the tree is that it can make a man a god through certain things that he would know. (Gen. 3:1-5). There is spiritual geography. Beings in the Most Holy Place also have the capacity for things of the Most Holy place. Their height in the spirit tells the kind of blessing they can bring to you or the kind of curse that one of them that fell from that estate (Lucifer) can bring. The realm of the Most Holy place is the realm of things that are very close to God. Things of the Most Holy Place are calibrated as things of God that are everlasting.
“God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods.” (Ps. 82:1). Here, “gods” are the angels of the highest echelon. If one of them fell, came to the earth and planted a tree from his nature, he would plant things that are of the strength of his height, wisdom, sense and capacity. But yet we know, anything that can go to the Most Holy Place has the other courts in it. The high priest that enters into the Most Holy Place must pass through the Holy Place and the Outer Court. So, every high priest is actually a full tabernacle standing.
When Lucifer fell, what fell was a tabernacle. So, a full-blown tabernacle went bad. But the law of the tabernacle is that one does not just arrive at the Most Holy Place; he must journey. So, when Adam took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what Adam fetched immediately was not the full strength of that tree, but sin and death.
Things of the Most Holy Place are ‘the good’ (Isa. 7:15). Scripture calls Jesus Christ the High Priest of good things to come. (Psa. 118:1) The realm of high goodness is the Most Holy Place. It was a being from that realm (Lucifer) that fell, came to earth, and planted things of his nature in the garden. According to the law of receiving, you cannot just take of the peak of this being at once. Even though he is fallen and twisted, that process of journeying to receive things still exists in him.
Knowing good and evil will make you a god, but first, your eyes will be open. The tree was first of all good for food, pleasant to the eyes and then a tree to be desired to make one wise (Gen. 3:5-6). “Pleasant to the eyes” is faith. What is pleasant to the eyes is what opens the eyes. What makes a person know good and evil is wisdom to make one wise. What Adam first took from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil is the thing that is pleasant to the eyes, then things to be desired to make one wise. The first allocation of the tree is to illuminate the eyes; the second allocation is to make one wise (be a god). This tree has dual capacity; it can kill twice.
God spoke about the full capacity of the tree, what the tree could do at its height – death (Gen. 2:17). God did not talk about the initial things the tree can do because Adam, with his stature, knew that. God told Adam that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could kill at the god level, yet the tree has the potential to kill at an initial level first.
The serpent explained and the woman saw that this tree was good for food and pleasant to the eyes. In the epistles, something that is pleasant refers to faith. Faith pleases God (Matt. 3:17, Heb. 11:6). So, in the wisdom of scriptures, faith is another word for pleasure. The woman saw that this tree was pleasant to the eyes. When faith comes to the soul, it will generate excitement which can also be referred to as pleasure, though it might not have yet been obeyed.
The woman, Eve, saw a negative faith in that tree. What was pleasant was darkness from God’s point of view and light from Satan’s point of view. Jesus said, “the light that is in you is dark…” (Matt. 6:23). Darkness is a pleasant light. When Adam and his wife ate the fruit of this tree, everything that is of the tree entered into them in seed form. The seed of a whole negative tabernacle was swallowed. Adam and his wife ate a negative seed which has in it the Outer Court, Holy Place and Most Holy Place. Satan killed their spirits with the light of life that is negative – with the first light of the tree. The tree has two lights.
Many people say that God should have just given us Eternal Life in our spirits. Eternal Life is who God is, His very life. Some people argue that we have Eternal Life in our spirits when we are born again. But if that is true, it means that a believer should not go to hell no matter what.
“It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife… to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (1 Cor. 5:1-5). If Paul said, “that the spirit may be saved…”, then it means the spirit was not yet saved at New Birth. This is because there is a difference between giving life to the spirit and saving the spirit. In the same vein, there is a difference between giving life to a soul and saving it (1 Peter 1:9). When we get to the end of faith, we will meet salvation. We can never get to salvation except we get to the end of faith. There is the beginning of faith, and there is the end of faith. The whole faith curriculum is called the commandment of faith.
The faith commandment has a beginning which is faith, a midpoint hope and an end charity (1 Cor. 13:13; 1 Tim.1:5). When we got born again, it is the life that is in “faith, hope and charity” that was given to our spirits. This brother in 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 took his father’s wife, and Paul said to help him -- he only had life in his spirit; if they let him continue at that pace he would die in his spirit. Some believers argue against it, but if we check the reason why people argue against it, it is to gratify the lust of the flesh. They call it eternal security but there is no eternal security until you enter eternal things.
We did not believe in Jesus, the Son of God, to be born again. Who we believed in is in the Lord Jesus. It is not the same. We did not have the capacity to believe in Jesus, the Son of God at New Birth. Who we can believe in is the Lord Jesus, i.e., Jesus as a Man (Rom. 10:8-10). The Lord Jesus is Him as a Man. When we got born again, we believed in Him, that He is Lord, that God raised Him from the dead. The person that was raised from the dead was Christ. Although They raised more than Christ, who we can relate with at that estate is Christ.
Paul argued in 1 Cor. 5:1-5 that this brother, who was not ashamed of sleeping with his father’s wife and bragged about it, should be handed to the devil so Satan can destroy his flesh -- that is to kill him physically -- so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord. The reason why Satan would want us to have false security is that he wants to kill. It is Satan that puts certain doctrines in people’s mouths. Sometimes, these people mean well; but ignorance is at play. Satan capitalizes on the ignorance of people to do damage.
“Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called…” (Jude 1:1). The people Jude is writing to are a sanctified company, or people who have used the things that are pleasant to the eyes; whose eyes of understanding have been enlightened; and have used faith. He is writing for them to come into a greater allocation. What Christ should do to a soul that has used faith, hope and charity is to make him godly; but these people walk in ungodly lusts (Jude 1:18). The people here are more soulish and not spiritual. They do not have the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ because they did not use the commandments of faith to possess and inherit the nature of Christ.
“But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your Most Holy place faith, praying in the Holy Ghost…” (Jude 1:20) When a person gets to the peak of sanctification, the borderline of crossing from the Holy Place into the Most Holy Place, it affects your prayer life. You discover that there is something about your tongue. Your prayers are not just normal prayers. When you open your mouth to pray, it becomes a time of edification— meaning understanding begins to spring from you. God wants to alter your senses because you have known things of Christ before— things of holiness and faith.
So, the Spirit of God begins to engineer another work of the Most Holy Place from within you. When you begin to pray, you begin to find words and understanding that come to build you up. You find out that words and understanding easily come. When you get to that borderline, you discover that things begin to make sense in your understanding. At this point, you are around that zone and what they are tampering with is your senses. They want to give you the Most Holy Place sense, which comes in the place of prayer.
Mercy brings everlasting life unto Eternal Life (Jude 1:21). What happens to the soul determines where the soul dwells, even though he is in the body. The soul can be on earth, by minding earthly things (Phil. 3:19); he can be in heaven, and he can be in hell. Things of sin and death make us hellish as it qualifies us for hell. At the New Birth, by believing in Jesus, our spirit was removed from hell and was born again. If a believer never grows spiritually — he does not take milk or meat, and he lives a careful life, he will go to heaven because of what Jesus did. But a believer who lives carelessly, either by holding doctrine and dropping it or by using certain works of the flesh like in 1 Corinthians 5, can kill his spirit.
The spirit does not have Eternal Life. What the spirit has is life. For someone who is born again, Christ-life is there in his spirit. If he takes hellish things into his soul too much, he can kill his spirit; the Spirit of God will leave him. According to Ephesians, we were sealed (Eph. 1:13). If we were sealed with Eternal Life, we would not need protection. The Holy Spirit is an entity of Eternal Life, the third Eternal Life Being. He is sealing our spirit so that things will not access it (Ps. 51:11).
Paul is telling the Ephesian church that they do not have to wait till they get to heaven for their spirits to be saved (Eph. 1:13-14). This means that the salvation the soul would learn after it has learnt Christ can happen to the spirit in the days of the flesh, but it would begin with the soul after it has learnt Christ. The soul needs to first believe in Jesus Christ as an unbeliever for the spirit to be born again and receive life.
We do not have Eternal Life in our spirit yet, but we will have it by passing through the corridor of doctrine. The Lord also wants participation. He has done everything— life and everlasting life, but we need to participate by obedience. If not, we did not need to believe to be born again. Some people have gone to hell because they did not believe. The Lord expects us to believe for those of us who are born again. Our conversation is in believing. We believe to do and believe to become. For now, we do not have Eternal Life in our spirits. This argument was put forth for those who argue about already having Eternal Life.
We have not known all of Eternal Life. To get it takes process. When our Lord rose from the dead, everything had been done in Him: Christ, everlasting life, Eternal Life. But what we could pick at New Birth was Christ.
“That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ…” (Col. 2:2). This verse shows that there are mysteries. Some translations will put that as ‘the Mystery of God’ or ‘the Mystery of Jesus Christ’, but that is interpretation and not translation. King James Version of the Bible gives accurate wisdom. When we interpret scriptures, we should depend on the Spirit of God.
There are three mysteries. Paul called it God, Father and Christ (Col. 2:2). Human logic tells us that they are not on the same plane. Paul is teaching on how to arrive in the Most Holy Place, describing it from the highest point to the lowest point. God and Father are natures of the Godhead in the Most Holy Place. Christ is the nature of the new man that God brought forth which dwells in the Holy Place and the Outer Court. So, the tabernacle has come into the picture. Jesus was Father in the days of His flesh.
“…Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father…” (John 14:5-9). Though it is clear that there is a Father in Heaven, Jesus could confidently testify that the disciples had seen the Father as long as they had seen Him. This was because the life of the Father, which is everlasting, was in Him.
Everlasting life came into Jesus in its first form as a seed, the same way it will come into every one of us. Then, that seed became a full-blown life. Then, the entity of the Father also lived in Him. His behaviour, gestures, restraints, love, words, and rebukes were all of the Father. He had already attained the Fatherhood stature in His soul before He went to the cross. He was a Man (Adam) in His Spirit, He attained Christ in His soul; then He learnt the nature of the Father in His soul.
While He was on earth, He was already the Father and the Christ (Matt. 16:16, Isa. 9:6). When He was crucified on the cross, the Bible does not say, “ye were quickened together with the Father” (Eph. 2:5). The Bible specifically said “Christ” because that is the point we can come in. We believe in Jesus Christ: the work God did in a Man.
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Rom. 10:9). God raised Jesus as Father and Christ. But the aspect of Him that was raised us with is Christ. Our spirit is a new nature, which is Christ. Having been raised in our spirit, we were called to come and first learn the doctrine of Christ (the doctrine of life). The doctrine of Christ is constituted in faith, hope and charity; which when our soul learns and obeys, puts Christ-life in our souls. It is our soul that has been called to come and learn. Our spirit does not necessarily learn because the spirit is light.
‘Light my candle’ is different from ‘Enlighten my darkness’ (Ps. 18:28). Enlightenment refers to teachings but to light is to turn something on (Prov. 20:27). It is that spirit that Satan killed. At the New Birth, the Holy Ghost gave us light, not Adamic light (the one we had before Adam died), but Christ’s light. He gave it to our spirit. So, the spirit is light and life. All lights are life. Everlasting life lands on us first as a light that should enlighten us. When we use that light, it becomes our life. Also, Eternal Life is life to God. But when He wants to give us Eternal Life, it will come to us as light (John 1:4).
It is through the giving of light and illumination, that we become aware of judgements, doctrines and wisdom. As we become aware and do them, they become life in us. The spirit does not learn. At the New Birth, the call is to come and learn Christ. At new birth, our spirit is Christ. Another description for our spirit which is Christ is a spirit that is sanctified.
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thess. 5:23). Paul’s prayer was a prayer for total sanctification. Some aspects of us have been sanctified, but not every part of us has been sanctified. Our Lord Jesus Christ does not need preservation because He is the essence of preservation. The people being referred to in the scripture above had been sanctified in their spirit but not in their souls. What makes the whole sanctification is when the soul is as sanctified as the spirit is. Another reason for sanctification is so that blame will not come on us as clearly stated in the above scripture. This is why it is erroneous to say that we already have Eternal Life.
“For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ…” (Eph. 4:12). Another way to describe our spirit is to call it a saint because it is a full-blown Christ. For example, the epistles were written to the saints. The five-fold ministry was given for the perfecting of the saints because the saints are not yet perfect. Jesus is the head of the body. The spirit of every saint is ‘body’ to Christ. Then our soul is called to inherit what our spirit inherited at the New Birth by learning, knowledge and walking in the light.
Where faith unites is charity (Eph. 4:13; Ps. 133:1). Until we get to charity, faith has not been united. ‘Till we all come…’ (Eph. 4:13) implies that we are on a journey. This negates this popular claim that we have attained perfection. Where faith unites is a place of perfection. It is brethren that dwell together in unity. In the doctrine of Christ, the place we unite is at the point of charity. Charity is not only what we do – doing is important – but much more; it is a path. It is a way that leads to a place.
“But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31). The more excellent way is charity. Since it is a way, it is also a path. Seeing charity as things we do is good, but is not wholesome. What we do is also a way to enter into the next allocation. Charity is never easy on the flesh. Charity is the love of the brethren (1 Pet. 1:22). Charity is the point of doing the things we have heard. Prior to charity, the teachings would come, after which they have to be done. From 1 Corinthians 13, it is clear that charity involves doing. The challenge in doing charity is brethren. Any person who will get to charity must have loved all the saints (Eph. 1:15).
Coming to charity does not mean one should drop the lessons learned from loving all saints. One must partake of the realm of loving all the saints and the realm of loving the brethren fervently. The reason the Lord ensures that we do all the realms of love is so that they become an inheritance unto us. By this, the contents become part of our genes, such that we would not need instructions to do according to them. When those things become our inheritance, we cannot be separated from them.
The Lord gives the oil when He sees unity (Ps. 133:1-2). When brethren dwell together in unity, they form a frame that is good enough to enter into the Most Holy Place. It is Aaron that enters in the Most Holy Place. When brethren dwell together in unity, what the Lord sees is Aaron. Our Lord Jesus is the Aaron. A company that dwells together makes Him see a people that look like Him.
(Lev. 16:12-14) In the day of atonement, the high priest first stands in the Holy Place. All year round, he had been doing ministry in the Holy Place. However, when sin is about to be dealt with, his first place of atoning is the Holy Place, after which he goes further into the Holiest of All. According to Psalm 133, the high priest is equivalent to all the brethren, if they were stacked together. To have this structure, there must be order.
God is looking for a formation of Holy Place brethren, well-aligned. One of the warfares in the Holy Place is against alignment because alignment is principally the work of love. For instance, choosing to submit to spiritual authority is love. The beginning of charity is a lot of love and power. It does not make sense to a natural man because it is spiritual (1 Cor. 2:14). It also cannot make sense to a carnal man.
Charity commandment requires that we say our brethren are better than us. It is warfare to acknowledge that someone else is better. Saying this is one of the ways to cast down imaginations (2 Cor. 10:5) because in a man’s imagination, he is the best. This high thought is the way men have been framed, and it is a work of darkness. For a believer to place his brethren higher than himself, he is suffering long and not seeking his own. Through this, he is breaking down things until the mind agrees. An individual’s mind is not the person; it is a tool of the spirit. It is meant to be brought under by doctrine, and then by faith, as one does the doctrine.
We all have to arrive at the unity of the faith. A believer could help his brother arrive. How? One could be strong in one aspect of charity where his brother is weak, and by demonstrating charity to that weak brother, he is helped. His brother could be strong in another regard and reciprocates. Therefore, we all need to do charity. There is a charity that is outward, and there is another that is inward, how we see ourselves. Charity is meant to bring us to the place wherein we can truly honour ourselves and not pay lip service.
The context of Psalms 133 is to admit a people. A church could be admitted by the Lord and another is left behind. In a church with perfect alignment, they could form an Aaron, and the oil will come on the pastor of that assembly, and they would enter. For example, while all Israelites go into the tabernacle once a year, Moses always goes in: he is a being of the ‘in’. Thus, Moses is equivalent to Israel. This is why God could tell Moses that He will destroy the Israelites and raise a nation out of him. (Exo. 32:10). This implied Moses was carrying a nation within himself. However, this would not favour God’s people. God can raise a minister who has a call for a generation, but He is waiting for that generation to live in unity. It is good and pleasant in the eyes of the One behind the veil for a people to dwell together in unity.
There is an oil that the high priest needs to be anointed with. No high priest should go into the Holy Place without being anointed. There are anti-charity spirits: rulers of the darkness of this world. They make you see what your brother did not do well and hype it. The Lord expects that the charity company will be fervent. Being aligned is one way of showing fervent charity, and it has many sides to it, one of which is alignment under authority. There are things we do not have right or authority to teach even if we know them by reason of proximity. When we say such things, we are breaking charity alignment.
An attitude of insubordination in the Most Holy Place could bring about death to a believer or a monstrous formation. There are measurements and expectations of the Lord which He will not shift on, in love and mercy, until the people are fully aligned. A well-aligned or fervent charity church, who obeys the commandments of charity towards the brethren, is a perfect church or a more excellent church.
If charity is the more excellent way, hope is the excellent way and faith is the way. The three of them are ways. Ways imply a manner of life. It means a manner of life that believers ought to come into, in order to gain entrance into God’s life. It is a love community that will enter the Most Holy Place. It is such a community deeply entrenched in love that can enter everlasting life. This is not just normal love, but love for the brethren.
An individual could think his lack of alignment would prevent the church from entering, and stays unchanging. But that individual could be left behind while others are taken (Matt. 24:40-42). The five foolish and five wise virgins are typical examples (Matt. 25). When the Lord came, He took those who were wise while those that were not aligned were left behind. The truth is that these unwise virgins will know that the Lord came, but they would not be able to cross. For this not to happen to a believer, we should do our best to love.
Entrance is granted by the doing of commandment. We should love brethren to our hurt. We have been told that it does not have to be comfortable. We should not be concerned that others are looking at us. This commandment of love is for a formation required of us in the spirit. We need to be perfect to find entrance into everlasting life (Matt. 5:48). At the veil, when the high priest wants to enter into the Most Holy Place, he is perfect by charity standard. By the time he crosses over and is through with the ritual, what he brings is blessings (Num. 6:26). The one that God tells to be perfect in Matthew 5:48 is the perfect man of charity. Such is a man who has the capacity to love his brethren.
Both natures are in the Lord Jesus. Paul was a perfect man in Christ. He was also perfect as the heavenly Father is, in his soul, by the things of everlasting life that he learnt and professed. The Lord began telling us through His servant, Rev. (Mrs.) Helen Oyegoke, that there is a higher standard of not just loving the brethren, but loving our enemies (Matt. 5:44). It is good to note that the enemies we are to love here are not Satan or wicked spirits. Jesus said one among the twelve disciples which He chose was a devil. Every man has the tendency to be a devil because the seed that entered man from the beginning has not been killed.
When we learnt Christ, God erased, detonated and undid the negative faith aspect of the seed of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil-- the one that is pleasant to the eyes (Gen. 3:6). But when we are entering the Most Holy Place, we must do it with reverence because any person can still turn in the Most Holy Place.
In the book of Corinthians Paul called the man that slept with his father’s wife ‘that wicked person’ (1 Cor. 5:13). He was called so because that behaviour was like unto Lucifer, the wicked one, who desired the throne of God. Every wife is the throne to the husband. Paul saw this and judged him. It is not just that he slept with his father’s wife; it is the tendency that can also take his father’s throne. Taking the honour that belongs to our parents in the Lord is an abomination. We must acknowledge our fathers when we represent them in public. It is not weakness or foolishness. Every man has such tendencies, so we need to trust God for fear.