Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Lekki Soul Centre (LSC)
Date: Wednesday, 23rd Feb. 2022
Ministering: Rev. Kayode Oyegoke
A great man is one who can stand in the presence of God and understand the ethics of presence. God will not bring just anyone into His presence, because many are unlearned in the things of His presence. The presence of God keeps life. So, one must be thoroughly trained to find entrance into God's presence. This was displayed in God's dealing with both Moses and Aaron. Aaron was ignorant of the laws of presence, which was why God was intolerant of Aaron, but He received Moses into His presence (Levi. 16:2).
No child of God, at New Birth, was born into God's presence, although everyone has the privilege to be raised into it. A babe in Christ does not have access to the Holy of Holies. In the Old Testament, a priest's child cannot enter into the Holiest of All. Even Aaron, the high priest, enters into the Holy of Holies once a year (Heb. 9:7).
The veil of the temple was torn into two (Matt. 27:51) which signified that the temple was no longer useful for the activities of the Most Holy. It meant that people would no longer require the earthly tabernacle to come to the knowledge of God but can gain access according to the heavenly pattern of the New Testament (Heb. 10:19-22).
Presence is the high place of God where judgment is expressed. God is a giver of judgment. This judgment is the life that God gives. The life that comes after judgment is the life of the Father, everlasting life or the life of the presence.
The presence only admits high petitions such as; petitions to obtain things that are humanly difficult to obtain. No man could have prayed to bring the Holy Ghost down to earth; only the stature of Jesus could (John 14:16). Jesus went up to His Father first before the Comforter could come (John 16:7).
Labour to enter into rest means labour to enter into His presence (Heb. 4:11). The test that God will allow for coming into presence is the test of a person who will pass through the training of relinquishing the world completely without fear. The test of presence is the weaning of a person from the bondage of the fear of death. Actual deliverance is deliverance from the fear of death.
"For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10). This is talking about our Father and Lord Jesus Christ who has an intention to bring many sons unto glory. What is salvation? Salvation means attaining the course of the presence. For a man to say he is saved, it means he is a graduate of the presence. Salvation also means everlasting life.
A glorious man is he who is fearless, who has escaped every fear and does not respond or react to fear. Fear can inform instructions to act in wisdom, but they are not instructions from the Holy Spirit. To be instructed by the commandment of fear leads to death. A lot of wisdom is perpetuated by fear.
A glorious man is he who is free. Becoming glorious is not by decking oneself with the glories of this world that fade away. Adam was better than flowers, trees and precious stones; but now, crude oil is higher than men and nations on earth. Nations can fight nations because of natural resources. Many nations we call great today are not great because they came into that stature by fear.
Hebrews 2:11
"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…"
Sanctification means those who have been taught the person of Christ. Christ is a teaching that sanctifies and cleanses. Sanctification means removing the world from a person. A sanctified person is he who has been taught of Christ. You cannot come to the teaching of Christ as a believer when you get born again. You must know what is called 'milk of the word'.
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…" (Matt. 28:19). The 'Name' refers to the explanation of who the person is. Holy Ghost has a name. The name of the Holy Ghost is taught first, followed by the name of the Son, then the name of the Father.
The name of the Holy Ghost has to do with the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. When Jesus left, he promised that the Holy Ghost would come (John 14:16). After the Holy Ghost came, people became born again, they were saved and filled with the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:4).
"Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom…(Acts 6:3). The fact that seven men were found to be honest and of good report indicates that the apostle's doctrine was capable of doing some work of purification in men who yielded to it. Through the apostles' teachings, these seven men became honest and full of the Holy Ghost.
The character of the Holy Ghost is also wisdom. These men had wisdom: not just the wisdom of scripture but wisdom for interaction, for living with brethren and for purity. When we have the Holy Ghost, He will instruct us on how to go about being wise in situations. To be filled with the Spirit is different from being full of the Spirit. Our Lord Jesus Christ was not filled with the Holy Ghost, he was full of the Holy Ghost (Luke 4:1).
A man full of the Holy Ghost is easily controlled by the spirit. When you are at a low ebb of spirit or little wine, it means that another nature has taken over; but when you feed the pure nature, you arrive at a pure lifestyle which increases the wine. You can be filled but it is at the same wine level. When you are full, the wine nature changes. The component becomes stronger.
When you are full of the Holy Ghost, it will be easier to be full of faith. When you are not full of the Holy Ghost, your reaction to situations will be negative. When we are full of the Holy Ghost, some things will happen to challenge us but they will not cause us to be pessimistic and depressed. No matter how hard Satan fights us, we can turn such a situation around by our attitude and by the spirit. To constantly react positively to situations, we must be full of the Holy Ghost.
The milk of the word can also be called the apostles' doctrine (Acts 2:42). Milk of the word can be handled by an apostolic calling. However, the meat of the word cannot be handled by apostolic calling alone. A teacher can become an apostle and teach the milk of the word, but a teacher cannot become an apostle and drive the meat of the word. He has to firstly become a prophet. This is why the revelation of Christ is also called the revelation of the foundation of apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20). Both are needed to pioneer the doctrine because Christ is a prophetic stature.
Christ is the first major deliverance, and it has to do with the opening of eyes (Acts 26:18). A lot of people have gone to heaven without their eyes being opened. Opening of eyes is having understanding. It is only a meek man that can receive the opening of eyes.
The milk of the word was originally designed to make people meek like Stephen. A meek man is not only filled with the Holy Ghost, but he is also full of the Holy Ghost. Meek people are broken. The only way to know if a man is full of the Holy Ghost is by checking his character. A broken person is one who easily yields to the spirit; a soul that easily does the commandments of the spirit.
There are two levels of milk: the milk for a baby and the milk given to an adult. It is a babe that gets milk from the breasts; a child does not get milk from the breasts. Good milk makes one access meat, then strong meat. (Isaiah 28:9)
Satan has blinded eyes and darkened the mind with sin. A man would do things according to the suggestions of that veil. The veil is also a kind of light called darkness; life is being lived according to the dark understanding. A dark understanding is an understanding that works in a negative dimension and finds expression in the darkness. At this level, sin is more than conduct; it is attached to understanding.
Sin is a lifestyle that Satan sold to the mind. This is what the meat of the word wants to destroy. Taking this sin life from the soul is what is called sanctification. It is done by planting a different understanding, called Christ, into the soul. When Christ is given to a person, it generates a different formula for living in the soul of that person; this is victory over sin.
Immediately a believer attains sanctification and is separated from sins, that believer is no longer under Satan's authority. The next thing is that he moves into another level which is called the entrance into Presence. Presence is first of all an established lifestyle in the Spirit and those who have it are beings of that world.
God expects the believer to have been cleansed, washed, separated or sanctified by Christ and the Holy Ghost before they can arrive at His presence. It is too dangerous to come close to God with those things unchecked. While coming to the presence, the believer must learn how to stand before God. It is not all of the Body that can enjoy sanctification at a time because of the stringent dealings of that course.
"Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business" (Acts 6:3). These are the qualities of someone well-fed in milk. All the brethren in an assembly do not have the same level of sanctification, however, God waits patiently for everyone to reach the fullness of sanctification. The seven selected individuals were the best among the brethren.
What the apostles used as criteria to select the seven were honest reports, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom or full of faith. If a believer is not full of faith, he could be lured into iniquity. Faith makes a man holy. It also makes a man righteous. To be righteous is to maintain the status quo of uprightness.
Hence, it has become clear that a believer cannot enter God's presence without Christ. Christ trains one for presence. If seven persons who were selected in Acts succeeded with milk, then they can now be qualified for meat. For example, Phillip met Paul at the core of epistle life and he had raised daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:8-9). This implies Phillip had linked a fullness. Those who are sanctified are those who will have the strength to unlearn death.
Hebrews 2:12
Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.
Christ would not be singing praise unto God except in the midst of sanctified brethren or the church. Singing of praise and the declaration of God's name go hand in hand. Singing praise unto God comes after Christ has helped the children to cross and learn. After the declaration of the name, He can now render praise to God because the children have become exactly what God desires. This is what God called Christ to do. He was made and raised a High Priest to raise children unto God. This was His joy as He fulfilled God's will.
The declaration of His name is the last name among the number of names for baptism - the name of the Holy Spirit, the name of the Son and the name of the Father (Matt. 28:18). The name of the Father is what Jesus is declaring to the sanctified brethren. Because of that name, they have learned presence.
The greatest awareness God desires for every person is to be knowledgeable about His presence or how to deal with Him. It is only sanctification that can make a believer into who they can call the children of the Highest. The beginning of this sanctification are the Christ teachings which are to make the believer qualified to be children of God. They are called children, because they should be many.
Matthew 5:9
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."
Peace is the end of Christ's godliness. It is these children of God that the Son of God can easily teach. A believer needs some childlikeness to relinquish death. Death means separation; and to relinquish it is to unlearn what sets the individual apart. That distance from Christ to God is death and Satan hides there.
To make a believer a child, the Holy Ghost and Christ train him, and then Christ hands him over to God. The children of God are those who are easy in God's hands and can be trained by Him. In like manner, for a person to be called a child of the Devil, it means the person must be able to allow Satan easily without questioning.
When God's standards are revealed, the child of God can easily respond to them because he indwells presence. A good example is Abraham who was a child at different degrees. Firstly, he drove out Hagar and her child and this was very difficult for him (Gen. 21:8-21). Secondly, he went to sacrifice Isaac as instructed by God (Gen. 22:1-9). If Abraham walked as dictated by the demands of his age, he would have disagreed vehemently with God. A man who is in the presence of God has obtained the greatest opportunity available to anyone on earth.
Vine in scripture is a symbolic tree for men in God's presence. It is the tree of the Father. Jesus said "I am the vine, ye are the branches..."(John 15:5). He also said "I am the true vine, and My Father is the Husbandman." (John 15M1). The branches are the children of God referenced in Isaiah 8:18– "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given Me are for signs and for wonders...". Jesus said "If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." (John 14:23). The phrase "and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him" describes Jesus as the vine grafting His children in Him as a branch (John 15:5).
Not every child of God is already a branch of the vine tree. We move from one tree to another till we graduate into being of the vine tree. The vine tree is a mystery tree of God that God alone watches over (John 15:1). Anyone who has access to the manifestation of our Lord as the vine and is grafted into Him is in presence– the presence of the Father. There is no way we can get the Father to come to us except we are with the vine because the vine is God's husbandry: the work God planted.
A time will come that there will be two kinds of men on earth: men with high life of the presence of God and men with high life of the presence of Satan. Satan has his own vine. His vine is the antichrist: a beast whose horns are as men. The horns are the kings of nations of the earth. A time is coming on earth when God will thrust His sickle (Rev. 14:16) but He wants Satan's life to be fully blown before He does. God does not just come to cut men off or pour wrath, He will give room for repentance. When people bear vine fruit, they have reached a point of no return.
Grapes are traceable to vine (Rev. 14:14-19). They are products of the branches. It is the wisdom of God to take out evil grapes and cast them into the winepress of God's wrath.
The beast and the antichrist were caught alive and cast into the lake of fire; while the remnant were slain with the sword of Jesus and their flesh are to be feasted upon by the fowls of the air (Rev. 19:17-21). The action described here of Jesus using the sword of His mouth to destroy every flesh is the nature of a grape. The flesh of a grape has to be torn for wine to flow out. This event is called the supper of the Lord. God wants to serve bread and wine (flesh and cup). But this time, when the flesh of these men are torn, fowls of the air will feast on them and their blood flow. (Psalm 110:1-7)
The flesh that was previously described as the flesh of kings, captains etc. are actually the flesh of armies. "Armies" here do not refer to soldiers in the flesh, instead those who have been cultured by a life. They are people who have been raised with a belief to make war with the Lamb.
Not every believer is a soldier because naturally, a soldier does fall out of war. Some Christians cannot endure hardship as a good soldier. They cannot go to war even though they are children of God. A believer is only exposed to war when he begins to eat doctrine, grow up and be developed by it. To grow up is the warfare of a believer and growing up here is to be an army. An army are people who have been raised. (Ezek. 37:10)
A vine tree is God's army and not all men can partake of it because one thing that is done to a vine is to tear his flesh to get wine out of him, whether it is a good vine or bad vine. Bad vines will face God's wrath while good vines will come into God's joy. The good vines will celebrate the high life of God called Eternal Life.
God as the Husbandman will wait for the wine cluster from the tree of righteousness which is Jesus. God is waiting for this vine. Scripture says He would be the first partaker of the fruit of Jesus' vine (2 Tim. 2:6). This means that there is something God wants to take from man that He must taste. God must drink and be joyful. He must taste of His life that He has invested in man through Jesus Christ.
Noah began to plant vine after the flood. He planted and tendered vines and they began to grow. As a husbandman, he drank of these vines. He drank the wine until he was drunk and naked. The purpose of his drunkenness was to determine the wicked amongst his children (Gen 9:20-27). Noah, after he gained consciousness, did curse and also bless.
What God is expecting from us should make Him tipsy (moved) to bless us because there are certain things that He cannot just give to us. In His everlasting state, He cannot give us Eternal Life. Eternal life is the gift of God. He can give us everlasting life by teaching. But for Him to give us Eternal Life, we must give Him something.
The wine of the vine makes both God and man merry (Judg. 9:13). Jesus also has what it takes to make God and man merry. Vine can make God's heart move into doing what He would normally need a reason to do. Sometimes God needs strong reasons to do things as Isaac needed venison to bless. The law of giving something to be blessed is not just of man but of God. In the Old testament, burnt offerings were offered for God to bless. God is initiating in us a life of blessing.