Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: School of the Spirit (SOS)
Date: Thursday, 17th March 2022
Ministering: Reverend Kayode Oyegoke
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his Eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” (Romans 1:20). This tells us that Eternal power and the Godhead are both invisible things of God. The generation that Paul was referring to knew these two things: the Eternal power and the Godhead. At the same time, this can also be applied to a generation in the future that will learn these things.
The former generation that Paul was referring to could be the generation or season that led to the flood and after the flood. In those days, the men on earth were being taught both Eternal power and Godhead. That was the only education on earth. There was no other civilization on earth except that which Cain initiated.
The season that followed was the season of the raising the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Noah was a fulcrum in between the two seasons. It was during the end of the season of Noah that God brought the flood upon the face of the earth because image was damaged. A generation that will touch the invisible things of God and damage them is a most adulterous generation. God will pour His wrath upon such a generation.
The garden of God in Genesis was God’s image. God’s image should be protected. God’s husbandry or vineyard is His own garden. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.” (John 15:1). The vine tree is the divine man and the divine man is God’s vineyard. The divine nature is the image of God and is the Eternal power of God. When God has planted his garden, He has given us His image. God’s vision for mankind is that man will become His image.
Jesus was the last Adam and He followed the same pattern. Adam was the first (earthly) vine (Gen. 5:1-2). Adams are vine trees and God was their father. The word “father” means a husbandman; that is, the man who takes care of the garden. What God is after when He is making gardens are natures. He is after trees that are meant to bear His image. He will water and grow them until they come into the capacity of His likeness.
God fathered Adam, and it’s a shadow or type of begetting a man in His own likeness and image. Adam and Eve had no natural father or mother but they were already sons of God. They were without father, mother and descent, thus, they could abide as sons of God (Heb. 7:3).
In scriptures, bread is likened to a sword. For example, a vision was told to Gideon about a bread that fell into the camp of the Midianites, which was regarded as “… the sword of Gideon” (Judges 7:13-14). Bread can smite. Bread is a manifestation of a sword. Thus, the breath of God’s mouth is the spirit of his mouth. What God breathed into Adam was a breath that made him a living soul. Thus, the first state of Adam was that he ate bread after which a garden was prepared for him in order to handle trees.
There were many trees in the garden designed to make Adam complete the perfect cycle of his full image strength. Image is not complete when there is no tree by its side. It is necessary to have images both from corn and from standing trees. Bread is for food while trees are for meat. While bread is called meat offering, fruits are not meant for meat offering in scriptures. Fruits are precious gifts.
What killed Adam and Eve was a tree. This tells us about the potency of trees. Something was in the evil tree that killed Adam and Eve. Thankfully, the damage was not irrecoverable. Even though they unlocked the tree, Adam and Eve could not accelerate into the tree because of their spiritual pedigree. They were earthy while the tree was heavenly. Therefore, they could not travel at the same rate with what the evil tree was communicating; which is an imagery that would have absorbed them into the fullness of the evil tree.
The evil tree in the garden of Eden was cherubic and the only tree that could be higher than it was the one next to it, which is the tree of the Creator. Even though Adam and Eve took of the evil tree, they only did it because of some kind of pull and unknown consequences. What pulled them was not the consequences of the tree but the benefit.
Adam did not hate God the way Cain did. If it was Cain who partook of the evil tree, he would have been more dangerous than Adam. The evil tree administers itself to people according to how your response will be. Adam died more than Eve after eating of the tree. This is why women easily yield to God than men. The degree of death in women is less than that of men. A man keeps his life more than a woman. It is unusual to find women who hold on to their lives the way men do.
Men are generally hard when it comes to the things of God and more susceptible to the things of this world such as land, inheritance, money etc. Men do not like to be pastored by their wives. There are two dimensions to pastoring a sheep, going before them and following after the sheep. Wives are pastors like David who pastor their husbands from a followership position. Men should not cut off or break away from the oversight of their wives. Single brothers ought to look out for wives that can pastor them. Instead, they prefer sisters that they can control and subdue.
Spouses should not give up the war until they both conform to the image of the Son. A help meet is a woman who has the capacity, power, willingness, and desire to make sure that she and her husband fulfil the will of God. Some women just want to enjoy the so-called “good life” with their husbands; they already have visions about such for their children. Therefore, they often do not want anything to interfere with such dreams, including the will of God. Such women can craftily work their husbands away from the path of salvation.
A beautiful woman is a woman who loves God to the uttermost. She may not be perfect in everything, but she has the desire to get everything that God wants to give and also influence her husband to get it as well. Such woman will do anything to, alongside her husband, lay hold on everlasting life and ultimately sit on the Throne.
Even with our regenerated spirit and knowledge of God’s will in our soul, we may still choose a wrong life partner. When in doubt, we should ask our brethren to pray for and with us. Sometimes, the eyes of a man needs to be opened to know a lady who will sincerely fight for the prosperity of the will of God with him.
God’s image is the first invisible thing of God, while the last invisible thing of God is His Godhead (Rom. 1:20). The end of Eternal Life is invisibility. God is first Eternal, Immortal and then Invisible (1 Tim. 1:17). God is called the invisible God. There are realms to invisibility. There is a state of Eternal Life which is a deeper invisibility.
For God to make Adam in His own image and after His likeness, He is declaring that this is His garden which He is culturing for Eternal life. There are two dimensions to the garden of God: there is Eden and there is the east of Eden. Scriptures say that God planted a garden eastward in Eden, this means that God planted eternity in Eden (Gen. 2:8). The whole of Eden is everlasting, but God chose the eastern part of the garden for His garden. This means that God chose that point for eternity.
The east is not an ordinary place. The east speaks of an exit out of a place and, in the realm of everlasting, it is a hallowed place. God chose the east for eternity in Eden; He heaved it to Himself as a realm beyond everlasting. The Tree of Life was in the midst of the eastern garden. Satan could also plant his own tree in that garden only because that garden was on earth.
The Tree of Life was in the midst of the garden. That is not its original plane; it is a condescension of the tree. God lowered Himself so that man can have access to Eternal. God wanted to give man the blessing of the right-hand side. God wants to give man eternity.
There is a realm in the garden called the place of Eternal power which is the realm of image. If you are not in the image of God, you will not move to the Eastern Garden of God, which is the place of reward.
Man no longer had strength to keep the garden and was thrusted out of the garden, but the garden followed man outside Eden. The garden was the image of God that He planted in Adam. What God did in Adam was a full work; Adam was not an ordinary man. Thus, we can imagine who our Lord Jesus was in the days of His flesh. The earthy and the heavenly were blended in our Lord Jesus while He was on earth.
God gave the garden to man for him to dress it. However, man fell from this responsibility. Man has not been successful in keeping the garden of God. Under Jesus, a New Testament world or Church is born and to them will God commit His garden.
By not keeping the garden, Adam lost the world of eternity. God drove him out of the eternal realm and out of Eden (Gen 3:23). Thus, he was removed from everything called Eden and was sent to till the ground from whence he was taken.
“So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:24). Flaming sword is the word of the way to that tree because the sword speaks of the word of God. This flaming sword is the manifestation of the hidden manna; that is, the living Eternal Word.
What comes out of Jesus' mouth as a sword is not Eternal but everlasting. Jesus is an Eternal preacher but He can also condescend to speak everlasting life. Before one can get to the Tree of Life, one needs the flaming sword. The way to the Tree of Life is a sword. The sword is a thing of way. Therefore, the sword is a doctrine; that is, a knowledge and a path.
So it has always been a battle of having and keeping God’s image. God sent Adam out of Eden to till the ground from where his outward man was taken. The ground Adam was taken from was not dust. Dust is another kind of expression of the ground. The ground is the word called earth. It is the word by which God created what He called earth. God made that word and gave that seed to Adam. That is the place from whence Adam was taken from. Therefore, directing him to till the ground of the earth was not a curse. God had given him bread and raised him to deal with trees in the garden. Because he fell from that high point, he was sent back to restart by tilling the ground.
The first tiller of the ground is the Father, God
Almighty. He was the One who started planting. He sowed seed and also did the work of tilling by sending mist to rise up and water the whole garden (Gen. 2:5-6). God has that character; it is a character of the beginning. It can only take a beginner to till the earth or to make it conducive for seasons or sowing.
“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.” (Gen. 4:1). After Adam, God gave Cain the seed of the earth. He was supposed to be the builder of image. He had anointing to lay foundations and to build because he had seed, while Abel had anointing to lead. Cain does not only have seed for bread, but also seed for fruit. He harvested fruits from the ground. However, he did not do it excellently. Satan tampered with Cain in the process of time.
The battle against God’s image is to change it. By Genesis 6, what God gave as a gift to mankind was already battered. The only person that preserved the image well was Noah. If you keep God’s image, God will in turn keep you like He kept Noah. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” (Gen. 6:8-9).
Walking with God tells us that Noah preserved image. God helped the sons of Noah not to marry the daughters of men. The contamination was so much that it got Ham. Ham would have been lost and gone with the flood, but God saved Ham because he loved Noah. God gave Ham an opportunity for him to consider and change. But Ham did evil and harmed his generation.
Ham was not harmless; Nimrod came out of Ham. Nimrod was a man who fought God’s image (Gen. 10:8-10). He built up to four kingdoms, not cities, and he must have killed and subdued other men to accomplish this. Kingdom speaks of reign or dominion. This kingdom was where darkened understanding began. He cooperated with the power of Satan and to a high degree, with spiritual wickedness in high places.
Nimrod was a child of Satan; he was a great Cain. Cain departed from the presence of God but Nimrod stood under the presence of God and perpetuated evil. The problem we are currently having on earth is what Nimrod championed. Nimrod was a beast, beyond an antichrist. He was the architect of evil dominion.
Nimrod laid the foundation for present day civilization. Nimrod is the father of trade, the designer of modern-day city. City here speaks of the place that will absorb men and make them forget God. His intention was to design heaven on earth so that men will not look up because of the design of a wrong heaven that will be present on earth.
Nimrod was a door to the advent of a completed program of iniquity that would sweep mankind. However, God saw that man was not ready for that, so He had to stop it in order to give man the opportunity to be built up. God knew that it was a period or season that was the most suitable time for iniquity to move because “… the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” (Gen. 11:1).
“And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.” (Gen. 11:2-3). God kept men in the east but they left there. Instead of naturally existing stones, they made their own stones called bricks. They were making things for themselves and did not want what God would provide.
The man Nimrod hated God. He was a great hunter and he had something in him that could exalt itself against what the presence of God serves. That is why he was able to lead people away from the presence of God. He was building a wrong heaven (Gen. 11:4). This heaven is hell and death. This venture was a battle against the image of God.
We will become a people who will keep the garden of God. We will keep our vine. The image of God in the New Testament is superior and it will judge and crumble images that are not God, the way a potter beats the vessel. To break nations is to break the formation of a wrong image in them, having carried out God’s work.
What Satan did in the beginning was to turn the truth of God’s image into a lie. To turn God’s image into a lie is to refuse what makes God to be known. “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 1:25). A man will not be blessed if he refuses the truth of God. The truth of God makes you a blessing.