Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
www.egfm.org
Programme: Lekki Soul Center (LSC)
Date: Wednesday, 16th March 2022
Ministering: Reverend Kayode Oyegoke
“For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins…” (Heb. 5:1). High priestly personalities are taken from among some kinds of men. To make a high priest, one has to be two kinds of beings; king of righteousness and king of peace (Heb. 7:1-2). That is the order of making the person of a high priest. The whole book of Hebrews is not about making Levites or Priests but high priests. As of this time, there was only one high priest but the intent of God has always been to have more than one high priest.
In bringing many sons unto glory (Heb. 2:10), there are many proofs in several other verses of the scriptures that talks about God's intent for man. Calling what you do to earn a living on earth as your purpose is an abuse of the essence of man. No matter the position man attains on earth, it is still lower than what the first Adam was. Nothing on earth can be given to man to equate what or who Adam was at the beginning. No soul should see anything here (on earth) as life.
It is possible that one makes himself available to be used by God without being called by Him. Satan was asked to be a covering but he went ahead to do other things, becoming a fugitive. Right now, what Satan is doing is lower to what he was created for; becoming a god of this world as opposed a handler of stones.
The kingdom that Satan is in charge of is the one on earth, not in heaven. Even though Satan is ruling the earth, he is still dissatisfied because the earth means nothing to him. His earnest desire is still the heavens (Isaiah 14:3). Immediately Satan fell and left, heaven was rearranged and they never needed him or missed him. We must not make a mistake to think we are indispensable or irreplaceable no matter how important we think we are. Satan did not know that God had a plan for him. He did not know that another order and another priesthood superior to the angelic was imminent. His fall from heaven triggered this order.
Lucifer used to be a Bishop of souls. Satan can tempt us from our bishopric because he once lost his. We bless God for raising us a Bishop of a better order than the angelic. God ordained Jesus to undo what Satan did. Satan scatters souls as he tried to scatter heaven. The purpose of scattering souls is so that God will not be able to govern such souls. It is the honor of the shepherd to keep souls and align them in the order of God's desire.
Satan's problem is no longer about angels. Rather, it is now about man. This is why Satan hates that man ascend into the heavens. He could handle heaven back then because they were angels but right now, there is a High priest who is made so much better than the angels (Heb. 1:4). This is why he is fighting us on earth. We must all fight to resist the thought of the adversary; what Satan has raised as a standard of life (it is a shackle, a bondage to keep us earth-bound).
God is so kind that even when we cry for vanity, he still pities us but this is not His best for us. We must race out of earthly thoughts. While Satan came after man, he did not know that there was a design that man would arise to destroy and bruise his head. Immediately Jesus sat on the throne, the economy of heaven. Even the Father who was was always in the front row took the back seat to allow the Son of God begin to handle all things.
Jesus is the reigning Prince of the universe. Jesus destroyed Satan and sat on the throne. Yet, Satan is still ambitious about the throne. God never called the angels his 'sons' (Heb. 1:5). God never begat angels and never promised them the throne.
Melchizedek was a king of righteousness and of peace (Heb. 7:2). The name, Melchizedek was not just a nominal name, it was a name that was borne out of spiritual walk. It is a name he gained by obedience. The title is an eternal one that cannot change. Melchizedek did righteousness and peace and was crowned for it. God's intent was for him to come into being a priest of the Most High God. Despite these attainments, God still needed to take him out from among men and rid him of everything 'man' (Heb. 5:1).
God cannot take us from among men if we do not have enough strength to respond to His pull. We must allow God. A mere man cannot be taken from among men and be a high priest because of the discipline of such a pedestal.
The people who can be trained this way are those who will allow God. Just as an untrained person cannot suddenly become a soldier on earth, this is the same way we cannot attain certain places in God without training. We need spiritual expertise to be trained as a high priest. The Holy Ghost is the one who can train us this way.
Evil spirits also train men to become evil. There is no manual or book from which one can learn wickedness. However, Satan has several scriptures that he has scattered everywhere, and these scripts are easily accessible. With these scripts, evil spirits teach men how to be evil. Evil spirits will raise a man, train him and send him forth to a people in order to train them in the same manner of evil.
One cannot be a high priest without being a king of righteousness and then, a king of peace (Heb. 7:2). There are two levels of kingship. The king of faith is the king of righteousness. The gospel is the revelation of God’s righteousness from faith to faith (Rom. 1:17). This means that righteousness is the doing of faith.
When one hears righteousness, he is hearing faith. When faith comes by hearing, it is righteousness that one is actually hearing. Summarily, faith is that which is right. Once a person begins to hear the word of righteousness, faith is set in motion. When he does faith up to a certain degree, he will get a crown of faith.
In the hierarchy of sin, ‘sin unto death’ is the first sin (Rom. 6:16). There is what is known as ‘Sin and Death’. Faith has the ability to eradicate sin and death. Righteousness helps one not to yield to the sin that leads to death. A man who is dead by sin can be known by his carnal-mindedness (Rom. 8:6). A person that has died in his soul is carnally-minded. Such a person would have yielded to a law that is the opposite of faith.
Sin is a lifestyle that is not ordained by God. Sin is unbelief. Unbelief is confidence or belief in a wrong order of life. The doctrine of Christ is the denial of the life called ‘unbelief’ which everyone had before getting born again. The day a person gets born again is not the day that the life of unbelief gets extinguished.
There is a need to be made ready for the denial of the life of unbelief. When one is not ready to deny unbelief, God will not bring light. Therefore, there is a need to be taught how to deny the life of unbelief. Unbelief is what informs ungodliness and worldly lusts (Tit. 2:12).
When Satan took charge of this world, he designed life differently from God’s original ordination. Satan’s definition of life was what man believed to be the right definition of life. In the beginning, man had no faith in this present life. Satan had to work to make it man’s life. Christianity is more than not doing bad things. One may not do morally wrong things, but still, be an I believer.
If a man that has seen light still finds it difficult to deny the life of unbelief, it means such a man trusts the life of unbelief more than the life of light (Jn. 3:19). Unbelief is faith in vanity as life. Obedience to God means denying vanity as life and agreeing with God’s interpretation of life. It was Satan that designed life to be vain. To flesh, vain life is the real life (Psa. 94:11).
A king of righteousness is a man who has mastered the life that God has ordained as right. It is possible to be a Christian and not be a king of righteousness. A person can hide under the cloak of religion; accepted by men as a man of God, but the person has never pleased God all his life. God’s standard is not within the perimeters of men. God’s standard has to be revealed. It has to be lifted up for men to see.
God authored and patented a lifestyle, and He called it our faith (Heb 12:2). One who lives this life becomes righteous. This faith life is a cleansing reagent; it makes one pure. A person cannot be purified by prayers. Blindness is at work in many people, and it has to be removed before they can agree for the faith life to be their life. It is clear that it is impossible to deny Satan’s life without the opening of eyes. There cannot be the New Testament without the eyes being opened (Acts 26:18).
The New Testament is the life that God kept in the blood of Jesus. This life is preached as the order of pleasing God, without which God will not accept anyone. When one does this life up to a level, they can be said to have life. It is not the day a person starts obeying the life that he has the life as a possession. Such a person is meant to do the faith life and deny the life of unbelief to some extent before he can become righteous. When a person becomes righteous, he has denied sin and has become a king of righteousness.
After dealing with sin, the next level is death. Every man on earth was dead. If we were not dead, we would not have been ignorant of the life that is in God. We were dead, and that is why we were carnal (Col. 2:13). A man becomes carnally-minded if he moves from sin to death. That is why it is called ‘the law of sin and death’. Righteousness is life. The day a person becomes righteous is the day he enters the kingdom, and becomes a king of righteousness. This is the day such a person is made free from sin, but not from death. There is a need to go further.
Death is that which can make a man recoil back to the former life. Death refers to the peace which the world gives. It is higher than sin. The life of righteousness also ends in peace (Rom. 8:6). When one has attained peace in the spirit, it means such a person is free from death. Death is the strength of sin. It was the beast that sent sin to bring people to death.
Peace is a conviction of one’s stand concerning a matter. The peace of this world is death. Satan also created his own peace; a peace that makes a man feel at home with his state, where his conscience is not responsive because all the senses of the wrong righteousness have been cemented in him. The teaching of the wrong righteousness has seared the conscience of such a man (1 Tim. 4:2). He can no longer ask himself if there is another life. When a person attains peace, he no longer feels hungry at that level. All he wants to do is go deeper.
Peace is very strong and that is why the world also gives it. Satan gives peace to create that barrier where one would not be able to cross over (into life). People can be healed from that peace. It is in trying to heal them that different forms of souls can be identified. While some people will yield faster, some others are slower while some other persons will not want to have more of God. They prefer to go only so far with God and then handle the rest of their lives themselves.
Christ simply means the blessing that will deliver one from sin and death. Sin and death are the dimensions of life that Satan has designed for people to be trapped in this world. When man fell and life continued, God began to train men by giving them substances that will take them away from this world. Despite having received these two crowns - Righteousness and Peace, there are still some forms of the nature of man in people. So, what God wants to take out is that nature.
"…And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth..." (Rev. 14:1-4). No man that could learn this song. As long as there is a thing that makes one a man, that person cannot learn the song. For those who could, it was because they were redeemed from among men, meaning they took the nature of man out of them. There is therefore something about 'man' that God wants to take from us.
The required redemption will not take place when an individual is unable to give up that nature of man. This is why the manner to that redemption is to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. Therefore, there is a point at which a man can discover the Lamb and follow Him. A man must be taught to be without a father or a mother (Heb. 7:3).
In addition, the individual's connection to past generations must also be severed as was exemplified in Melchizedek who was a man without descent (Heb. 7:3). The aforementioned characteristics tell one who a man is. Every man must be completely dissociated from these attributes of men as Satan has tampered with them. As Satan had stored his last arsenal in one's origin or the source of man's birth, a man must be redeemed from these.
There are a lot of misconceptions around the person of Melchizedek. Some say he was neither born of a man nor woman because the scripture said he was without a father, mother or descent. However, the state of “being without” is a name. It is a form of obedience.
To be taught to be without a father, one must be a King of Peace. This teaching is what is given to a peacemaker because if one is not a peacemaker, there will be a conflict with the teaching of being without. This should not be misconstrued as physically disowning one's father or mother because trying to do that is falsehood. Instead, this teaching speaks of things to deny or let go of and these things are within an individual. They are natures of sin that Satan has sown as seed in the individual.
There is a sin that is at par with paternity and maternity. This sin aligns with descent. So, one has to have insight against this sin. An example of this nature of sin can be found in a leader who steals a nation's wealth. Although he will die, he still chooses to store up the nation’s wealth for himself and children. This nature comes from sin. What a man should leave for his children is light, not gold.
What God wants to take out of a man is the fatherhood, motherhood and descent that is not of God. There is a paternity Satan designed that follows this lineage. Because of Satan's high priestly nature, he did not just make man fall in Eden, he also did things that will make it difficult for a returning man to undo those inherent natures that hinder our connection to God. He did this because he is aware man will need to do certain things to restore his connection with God.
The Son of God that Melchizedek was made like unto does not have these stained natures in him. He cannot be traced to the genealogy of the fall or the weakness of his birth. God has weaned and saved him completely from them. This is why he is a high priest.
There is what Satan puts in people which is what we inherited. On the second side, there is what God's creation made and they are not perfect. God did not put anything wrong in Adam. God made Adam to a state where he could climb, but first, he had to make a choice. This is because God will not make a robot that already has the tree of life. It would not bring pleasure to God because man did not voluntarily choose it.
The ultimate pleasure to God is the choice-making attribute of man. God blessed man with His will to choose Him or to choose the other. He left him a free moral agent, not weak. He gave him strength. Nevertheless, Adam ended up choosing death because the tempter was against him. In like manner, Jesus also chose. Jesus refused evil. He did not have evil in Himself, although He was not perfect while He was on earth.
This imperfection was because He came into flesh and could be tempted. For the Bible to have recorded Jesus being tempted, it means He could have been pulled. This does not however mean He had sin. Jesus knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). God's definition of perfection is the inability to be pulled at all to any other. So, for Jesus, He made a decision not to sin.
This tells us that believers can also choose this terrain and end the reign of Satan in their lives. Therefore, what was in Adam was a reflection of the fact that Adam was not perfect. The Tree of Life could not be handed to someone who had not made his choice. A believer must be willing to eat the fruit of the land. It is in the decision to make this choice of eating the fruit that the blessing rests and this is pleasurable to God. God wants a believer's willingness (Phil. 2:13).
It will take men of the Sanctuary to be made high priests, as they are higher forms of men compared to ordinary men. They are lively stones but are still men. It is from children of the Sanctuary that God can pick high priests. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil…" (Heb. 2:14)
These children are not babies. They are the children that God the Father gave to Jesus. The Father gave Jesus children that are spiritually-minded. God loves man's choice. He wants man's willingness to partake of the Tree of Life (Phi. 2:13). It is from higher men (lively stones/children of the Sanctuary) that God can pick high priests from.
Jesus was once tempted and He is able to succor men that are tempted– because what is still making them men is in their blood and in their flesh. The properties of flesh and blood are obtained from three places: father, mother and descent. So, a child of God in the Sanctuary to be transitioned into a high priest still has a hindrance, which is his flesh and blood. "Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." (Heb. 2:17)
The sins that God wants to make reconciliation for are deposited in the flesh and blood. The nature of these sins are beyond works of the flesh like fornication, adultery etc. They are sins also called life that are programmed in descent– this life is more than the life the children of the sanctuary have denied. It is the original life of man. This life cannot be washed away by the water of the word, but by the sprinkling of the blood. It has to be blood dealing with blood. Jesus brought another blood -- the blood of God that can deal with the blood in men.
Jesus partook of the blood of Mary, who had a father, mother and descent. To be made a man, He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh– He could be tempted. He was conditioned to be a flesh because He came through the womb of a woman. But He grew up unwearing the blood of men. The blood that brought Jesus to the world was man's kind, so He could want what a man wants.
There is something that makes a man want, it is the problem of man. Redemption is dying to all a man wants. Satan studied man and gave him a definition of what a man is and called it man's life. But the real man is an image, with residue in his flesh. The men in the Sanctuary, even though they were stones, were flesh and blood; but God wants to cut their connection to flesh and blood. It will take the training of the Holiest to severe this connection, else these men would not have the mind of a priest when they stand before God, that is, they will not be thinking the way God wants them to think. In other words, they will not be able to enter into the presence of God.
There is no entrance into presence and standing in presence with a wrong mind or posture. So, one has to be redeemed from it before he can stand as a priest before God. The priestly teaching starts gradually and is of two kinds; there is a living priest and an abiding priest. A man must have done all the denial required of him to be an abiding priest.
God has given man an allocation for redemption from among men: father, mother and descent (1 Jn. 3:1) because they are sins. They are not what men call sins like works of the flesh, they are cherubic – dark in nature. They are the sins Apostle John referred to in 1 Jn. 1:8 that "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
Sins and iniquities are the two things they will purge the children of God in the sanctuary from (Heb. 10:17). The sins of the children of God in the sanctuary are divided into two: sins and iniquities– hell and death, falsehood and lies. The refuge of falsehood and lies has made men make agreement with hell (Is. 28:15). The reason for sins in men is because of the seeking of refuge. The word "refuge" here means a hiding place. All men are looking for is a shield, a fortress, and that's the purpose of iniquity.
Cain ran from God because he never saw a fortress and refuge with God. He ran from God and went to build a house of refuge (a city)- Gen. 4:16-17. But that refuge is a lie. The refuge built by men is a lie because it is done by flesh and blood. The big men on earth that are being looked up to are building refuges – cities of lies. But there is a place a man will do iniquity to that he will be so dead and won't want God.
"Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. [19] Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus…" (Heb. 10:18-19). The purpose of coming into the Holiest is to partake of the remission of sins. When this remission has taken place in man for his sins and iniquities, a time will come he will not need to offer for sins– there won't be any sin to be remitted. The end of remission of sins is when everlasting life has been fully acquired.
A man must have the light of the Holiest to say he is a partaker of the Holiest. The reason for boldness in the Holiest is to remit our sins (Heb. 10:19). Remission is to delete the anomaly that is stopping man from becoming a high priest. Jesus is the Highest of high priests, a Champion among high priests, not priests. God is interested in high priests, if not the New Testament can be termed as weak. The purpose of the New Testament is to raise men highly– men who can respond to God to a very high degree; and if Jesus was unable to do this, then His death was in vain.
No one can make reconciliation for iniquity if he is not aiming for the position of a high priest. A man has to be high in life for him to be free because sin came from a holy hill, a mountain– a place where high laws were involved in creating sin.
"That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us…" (Heb. 6:18). To flee for refuge is to go after the Holiest. It is possible to access the Holiest of all. The Holiest of all is where a man would meet the High Priest who would teach him to be holy– to be free from sins and iniquity.
This is why high priests are not taken from among ordinary men. Men who would become high priests are taken from among stones– men who have come into the sanctuary; but before God, they still need to be cleansed because they still have some properties of men in them. These are not those who are learning Christ. Those who are learning Christ are "flesh" but they are "men".
Real men are found in the sanctuary. However, they still need to be redeemed. Redemption of man here is bringing man into the Holiest– what makes one a man would be removed. The man would no longer be traced to father, mother or descent. One who has gone through this redemption can now be called a son of God. This redemption can be done because of one man–Jesus. So, a priest of God is higher than a king of righteousness and a king of peace (Heb. 7:1-2).