Text: Matt. 3
God has a prophetic character that can veil people. It is possible for a prophet to be sent by God to blind people. This is often because of the state of the hearts of those to whom the prophets are sent (Isaiah 6:9-10). Both Jesus and Paul made reference to this scripture (Matt. 13:14-15, Acts 28:26). It is very important that we know how to treat messengers that God sends.
Prophetic characters can be very interesting. For instance, there is such an accurate parallel between the descent of Jonah and his prayer in the belly of the fish with the prayers of Jesus in Hell. The prayer of Jesus prevailed from Hell to the highest height of heaven and, by reason of this, the glory of the Father went to Hell. The day the glory of the Father raised Jesus from the dead, Hell lost its potency and dread. It was not only the body of Jesus that was raised; He was raised in His spirit, soul, and body because death ravaged those compartments. This is according to the prophecy of scriptures that says He was made an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10)
Resurrection produced the Son of God to whom God said, “This day have I begotten thee” (Heb. 1:5). The Lord was not begotten in Heaven; He was begotten in Hell. This is why there is nothing Hell can muster that can be sufficient hindrance to what God is planning. No one goes to the lowest parts of Hell except he has become sin, this means that such a person has completed the course of sin. Every other person who went to Hell went there because they sinned; Jesus went there because He was sin. This is the cup that His soul shrank from in the Garden of Gethsemane. When Satan wants to make men irrecoverable, he does not stop at making them sinners, he makes them sin.
There are three dimensions to the destruction of man; it is stealing, killing, and destruction (John 10:10). The work of the antichrist/beast will be to carry all flesh to its final destination, which is perdition/destruction. It is possible to redeem flesh if the work of the enemy is still at the stage of stealing. The antichrist, whom Satan will use to seal this work would himself have been destroyed. Satan will never give anyone his seat and authority except he has destroyed that man. To destroy a man is to turn him into flesh that can never be recovered. It is possible for a man to be destroyed already while looking very fresh in his body.
Noah is an example of a man who refused to be flesh in a generation when being fleshly/carnal was fashionable. Most believers are completely ignorant of who Satan is, let alone his antics. The only one who can boast of absolute victory over Satan is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is out of that victory that the Lord has won that we have victory over demons. Demons are fallen angelic spirits whose scope of operations is earthly. This is because, originally, they fell from a plane where they attend to natural things. High angels, like cherubim, do not concern themselves about carnal things.
The agenda of the devil is to make flesh survive. It is with this flesh programme that he mars, scuttles, and slows down God’s intention through the ages. The essence of church is to overturn flesh. This is why Jesus said, “I will build My church” (Matt. 16:18). The word “carnal” means to be “flesh”. The only way Satan can capture and imprison the soul is to make it wear the identity of and marry the outward man. God made man such that the spirit needs the soul to function. At the New Birth, the spirit became as windy as Christ but the soul had become heavy with flesh. This state of the soul was not the product of a ten-year work; it took a long while.
Although Adam’s disobedience brought death in the spirit to the world, it was Cain who constructed the bridge from the dead spirit to the soul. He fathered a love for material things which is called lust. Lust is not limited to sins in sexual context; it speaks of every ambition of man to have things that elevate his status among other men. This path opened man to a life that makes him take initiative from his senses. Man was not designed by God to live by anything other than His will. Living by any other thing makes man depreciate and die. Flesh is a complete and tight arrangement of Satan designed to kill men eternally without the men knowing. This is why the Bible calls him the “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). He invented a system within which men can do righteousness and worship God according to his (satan’s) definition.
Much of what we know as worship on earth today was defined by Satan according to the program called flesh. He could do this because he knew what worship was like before he fell from his cherubic height. It will take something of God to become free from the hands of this other god. What Pastors have been given by the Lord is to convert men from being fleshly into being spiritual. Unfortunately today, most ministers are becoming more evil. When ministers of the gospel change by growth, the men under them will change also. What brings conversion to flesh is obedience.
A reason ministers fail at this mission of changing flesh is shame. Every minister must learn to despise the shame. This world was designed by Satan to make men, especially believers, ashamed. It is also designed to make men busy with activities. The Lord Jesus, who is the Head of the church, has an ultimate intention which is to make those He died for arise from the dust. This dust is flesh.
The change that flesh has to undergo is repenting from being flesh for to be made spirit. The kingdom of this world is the world of flesh. The world is both the house of flesh for stealing and killing. This is why that woman on the scarlet beast is arrayed in two garments: purple and scarlet. The purple is for stealing while the scarlet is for killing. These are designed to keep souls till the coming of the antichrist who will come with destruction. Captivity is what best captures the prison that the world is; it is sweet bondage. It is the kind of bondage that offers something which keeps the soul from detaching itself. It was in the season of captivity that God began to raise prophets.
You cannot repent except you are born again. No one without life has the might to repent/turn. The Lord will thoroughly purge His threshing floor to get the wheat into His Kingdom (Matthew 3:12). Purging the floor is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This baptism is beyond that which happened when we spoke in tongues; it is entrance into the life of the Spirit by leading. Threshing of the wheat is beating it till there is a separation of the soul from flesh. Carnality is a coat that Satan has put upon the soul.
Do not pity anyone that the Lord is leading and training. When John said, “repent for the Kingdom is at hand” (Matt. 3:2), he meant they should prepare their hearts so they could be ready to respond to the demands of the Kingdom. Isaiah spoke of the process of the working of the Kingdom to salvage flesh (Luke 3:4-6). The Kingdom of God is salvation. This salvation, which is promised, is not that which an unbeliever can see. This corroborates what Jesus told Nicodemus when He said, “except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom” (John 3:3). This is why when the Kingdom was going to descend in Revelation 21:1-3, it came from heaven. God had to prepare heaven to keep the Kingdom although it is higher than heaven (Psalm 103:19). The advent of the Kingdom is the cessation of flesh. This promise of the Kingdom is much more than what angels have and are. This world is a kingdom, meaning it is the domain of a king. This king is Satan.
Satan lures and makes souls captive by reason of the good things he offers to souls. These things comprise promises for a better future and they birth aspirations that have become transgenerational. God’s desire and ultimate intention is that flesh will see the salvation of God. Much more than ever before, we must desire to key into that which God is up to. This is because we are not only in the last days, we are in the last time.
As against what the Kingdom of this world offers, the kingdom of God delivers that which is incorruptible, undefiled and passeth not away (1 Pet. 1:3-5). The word “last time” is very key. It is a phrase that speaks of the last days of every 2,000 years. Men generated from Adam (Gen. 5:1) while degeneration began from Cain. It is not all men that are Adam. Cain’s children evolved from being a man with an Adamic stature into flesh. There is a promise to being flesh that Satan waves before every soul.
Satan, by flesh, lures men into a zone from where man will never be able to relate with God. Just as he did with the children of Cain, he loves the challenge of turning believers who are journeying to God back into flesh. By reason of the multiplication of carnal men upon the face of the earth, sons of God lost their first estate. He did this so that he would ascend into the air and rule men’s affairs forthwith. Satan brought witchcraft into Africa to fight the prospect of raising sons to God from the planet. Witchcraft is a work of the flesh just as much as fornication is (Gal. 5:19-21); it is not a thing that believers should fear.
The power of Satan is a highly intelligent work that when it strikes a soul, the man involved will not know. In fact, the soul can even come give testimony in church. The way of escape is to make flesh embark on a journey into that which is invisible. Satan preoccupied churches in Africa with demonic activities so they will not rise to become sons. The way out of flesh is entrance into the Kingdom. The first exit out of flesh is faith. Satan launches different kinds of attack at souls who are walking by faith.
The reason Satan author contradictions is to cause a man journeying to God to turn to the flesh. There is no demilitarized zone in the spirit; you are either with God or Satan. Man was not made to live by himself; he is either influenced by God or Satan. The project of God for the soul is to ensure that he does not become flesh. The flood that God brought was to bring about a separation of Noah from men who had become flesh. The Bible says, “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:8).
Noah had obeyed God and fought against being flesh till he found grace before God. After Noah found grace, he began to build an ark of salvation. When a generation of people find grace before God, they begin to receive instructions for the purpose of building salvation. This ark of salvation had three compartments where he placed crawling, flying and standing creatures. This represents the three folds of salvation: 30 fold, 60 fold and 100 fold. After having built by grace, we must obtain mercy.
The ark of Noah was built for the saving of souls, not bodies. It was the same waters that took men away that separated Noah. There will be no salvation of the soul, in these last days, without a deluge of water. This waters, however, will not be those of the former rain; they are waters of the latter rain.