Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: School of the Spirit (SOS)
Date: Thursday, 21st April 2022
Minister: Pastor Thompson Ehima
The goal of Satan’s martyrdom and persecution of saints, especially in the early churches, was that Jesus should not be revealed in the flesh because that is an age-long mystery. Satan tried to cloud this mystery with controversies such as bribing soldiers to lie that the disciples of Jesus stole His body. This was all an attempt to shroud the truth of the coming of Jesus in the flesh; because to agree with that is to agree that Eternal Life is feasible in a man (spirit, soul and body).
Satan did not stop at killing Jesus but continued fighting the truth of Jesus’ coming in the flesh. Satan’s greatest fear is the coming of Jesus in the flesh. Although he may dread the lake of fire, his encounter with Jesus in hell was dreadful. He had the first experience with Eternal Life when Jesus went to hell.
In hell, Jesus was raised by Eternal Life; thus, everything about sin and death was destroyed as Jesus’ soul was re-engineered out of sin by Eternal Life. As our sin was laid upon Jesus, His spirit, soul, and body were made sin for our sakes (1 Pet. 2:24, 2 Cor. 5:21). He bore the chastisement that brought us peace, as well as our sicknesses and diseases in His body (Isa. 53:5). He also bore our sicknesses and diseases in His own body.
Satan tried to surround Jesus’ resurrection with controversy because He did not want the truth that Eternal Life is in flesh to spread. However, God reveals this truth adeclares that the Word, Eternal Life, became flesh and dwelt amongst us. The process of making the Word flesh has been Satan's fear. Therefore, Satan also brought sin, transgression, and iniquity into flesh because He does not want Eternal Life to be expressed in flesh.
The flesh does not only refer to the physical body but includes the soul. John 1:14 tells us that Jesus (the Word) was made flesh (past tense); whereas 1 John 4:2 says that Jesus is come in the flesh. The latter speaks of a present continuous process of His coming in the flesh. The enemy does not want Jesus’ coming in the flesh to be a daily experience. John was not referring to a futuristic event; but that Jesus coming in the flesh should be our daily experience. The Godhead desire that, just as the Word was made flesh, Jesus should also come in our flesh.
Jesus Christ comes in the flesh by understanding (1 John 5:20). This understating was not possessed by everyone; it was only common to a category of persons alongside Apostle John. These men do not claim to know that Jesus came in the flesh, that is, when He walked the earth; rather that Jesus came to them in their flesh. Jesus’ coming to them was not in visions, dreams or in trance but a perpetual experience. Likewise, for us also, Jesus coming in our flesh should be a perpetual experience.
Flesh is a screen for expression. God uses flesh to show or reveal. That is why He gave the agelong prophecy that He shall pour out His spirit upon flesh (Joel 2:28). While man’s spirit is invisible, his flesh is a place of expressing the spirit (Joel 2:28). Even though a measure of this expression was seen on the day of Pentecost, the manifestation of the Holy Ghost is much deeper. There is something about the ministry of the Holy Ghost with respect to Eternal Life. Eternal Life must be revealed in the flesh and the Holy Ghost has a key role to play in making this a reality. Therefore, just as we have understood Him as the seven Spirits of the Lord who taught us the things of Christ, we must also understand Him to teach us the things of Eternal Life.
The flesh ought to be a screen for the spirit, or for spiritual things (Joel 2:28). The coming of Jesus in the flesh should not be concluded as a future experience because the scripture does not say that ‘He shall come’, but that 'He is come'. Jesus has already been coming to us in various measures. Similarly, the prince of this world also comes (John 14:30).
The coming of Jesus is the coming of the Prince of Life (Acts 3:15). He is regarded as the everlasting father, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Peace is the abiding life in Christ. The prince of this world also comes by understanding because our warfare is a warfare of understanding (2Cor. 10:4). The world has things that he wants to drop in souls and he comes to check if there is anything within us, upon which he can further put something of his.
There is something that we should have which will cause Jesus to come (John 14:21). Jesus said, “… Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). The reason the world sees Him no more is that the world judges by senses only and can only relate with His outward. The world only relates with vanity.
The key to seeing Jesus is living (John 14:19). If we do not live, we will not see Him. Christ is the beginning of the coming of Jesus to man. Galatians 2:20 describes Christ's life, which is the faith of the Son of God, as a coming of Jesus in the flesh. This coming is to raise us and make us live. You cannot see Him until you live. He has written out the program to make the soul live so that you can see His coming. This program is the faith of Jesus Christ. Therefore, being diligent with the program of faith is very important.
Faith is designed to bring Jesus in the flesh of every believer. Paul was saying in Galatians 2:20, " I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Also, Hebrews 11:3 says that ‘by faith we understand…’. Thus, the coming of faith is the delivery of understanding to a man. Understanding is a durable substance.
When faith comes, Jesus is come (Rom 10:17; Heb 11:1). However, when He comes by faith, we cannot see Him yet because we have not learned to live enough. We need to live well to see the manner of person that is coming to us. There was a particular faith that Jesus authored and finished and when that faith comes to a man, the One who authored it has also come to him (Heb. 12:2).
We need to live till we can live in His sight, which is, to appear before His glorious presence. Trials are placed around faith to press out the things that are inside so that the new things that God is bringing may appear (1 Pet. 1:7). This appearance is His continuous coming.
God is an ever-present help (Psalm 46:1). This manifestation of help is to those who are journeying, not just to everyone. Jesus Christ has entered into a domain of Eternal Life in God. That domain of life is high. The real experience of our walk with Jesus is that He is ever there and that is through understanding. The Lord seeks to raise our consciousness inwardly to be aware of His manifestations. We are sometimes given a foretaste of resurrection so that They might become more tangible to us.
To see is to understand. The inward man sees by understanding and comprehending. There are degrees of seeing which are: understanding, looking into, and holding. Just as man uses objects that are tangible to hold intangible things, our mind is what we use to hold Christ. However, this requires a lot of conversions and high pressure.
Jesus promised not to leave us comfortless, but to come to us (John 14:18). We are comforted with knowledge, understanding and revelations (Col. 2:2). Coming into full understanding is coming into comfort. “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. [19] Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.” (John 14:18-19). The program of living is for us to come alive and be awakened.
The realm wherein the Lord is going to come is not the realm of man, that is, where man is. Men are in the world; a realm that Satan designed. God originally created the earth to be ruled by His own world and there He put the living soul which He made. The living soul is a world that can also be called the air (Eph. 2:2). That is where the Lord is going to come down to when He returns (1Thess. 4:17).
The living soul is a spiritual realm that cannot be particularly touched by physical hands, even though Adam and Eve were visible. The living soul realm is a real world. We lost the senses of the living soul. Satan beat our senses down to be carnally minded, confined to his own world. Carnal-mindedness opens a man up to this world making him unable to comprehend anything that his five senses cannot hold.
The soul has the capacity to see, handle, commune, and transact but Satan is developing the mind into carnal mindedness. Carnal-mindedness speaks of something that the soul is minding. When a man is only carnal, Satan cannot yet give him the world until he has become carnally minded. Although carnality is designed by Satan, it is lower in comparison to carnal-mindedness.
This is why we have to be spiritually minded by being equipped, assembled and arranged inwardly. Components will be installed into our minds and consciences by knowledge, understanding and obedience in order to bring us to a place where we are spiritually minded and can judge all things. To judge all things is to judge the things of the Father and of God (1 Cor 2:15). God would not bring any soul that lacks the appropriate arrangements and equipment of judgement to come into the fellowship of the Father and God.
The soul has to be spiritually minded, thus equipped by life and peace to be able to judge all things. There are those who are friends of the world and this is enmity against God (Jam. 4:4). Carnally mindedness is to be a friend of the world. It takes carnal mindedness to transact with the world. Satan trains a carnal mind with things that are in the world including lusts of the flesh, eyes and pride of life. On the other hand, God trains a soul with life and peace to be spiritually minded; which can be further broken down into faith, hope and charity.
Our lack of judgement is what makes us unable to discern or receive the coming of everlasting life, likewise our inability to refuse when the world comes. Unlike many of us, Jesus was able to detect when the prince of this world came to Him (John 14:30). This was not an encounter with a man but with a world of thoughts. There are three levels of wisdom that Satan possesses, namely the wisdom of men, the wisdom of this world, and the wisdom of the princes of this world (1 Cor. 2:5-7).
Your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men because the wisdom of men is the alternative to the power of God, which Christ is (1Cor. 2:5; 1Cor. 1:24). Wisdom is life. Paul began to speak of a higher wisdom to those that are perfected in Christ, that is, men who have attained charity which is the bond of perfectness (Col. 3:14). The perfect are Christs who have attained charity. The wisdom that he was speaking to them that are perfect is parallel to the wisdom of this world (1Cor. 2:6).
There is the wisdom of men and the wisdom of this world (1Cor. 2:5-7). The answer to the wisdom of men is the gospel of Christ. After men have graduated through levels of the wisdom of men, Satan gives them the wisdom of this world. There is also the wisdom of princes of this world (1 Cor. 2:6). That wisdom of princes is a wisdom that is used to rule. The Prince of Tyre was regarded as wiser than Daniel because He was operating under the King of Tyre which was Lucifer (Eze. 28:12).
We cannot see Jesus until we live. This living is to be able to relate with the coming of Jesus in the flesh. We cannot directly relate with this; hence, we are started on the premise of the coming of the faith by the gospel of Jesus Christ. When a soul obeys faith, Christ is come to that soul and, by obedience to the faith, the soul lives (Romans 1:5). It is only the living that can see. Adam was a living soul; that was the reason why he was able to operate the world that was given to him.
There is a dimension or measure of life one needs to have to relate with everlasting life and eternal life. We cannot relate with everlasting life directly; we need Christ life. Similarly, to relate with eternal life, one must have done everlasting life well. The promise is a world. Eternal Life is the world to come; it is a person of Jesus. We cannot come into His world if we are not living. Adam is a living soul that can live in the world of the living.
When the women came to the tomb looking for Jesus, the angel told them they cannot be seeking the living among the dead, and they proclaimed to them that He is risen (Matt. 28:6). The living have their own world which is different from the world of the dead. Christ is a realm of life, the Father is a domain of life and so also is Eternal life.
There are certain oppositions against the Lord Jesus that do not want His things to come to the Church. They are His enemies who do not want the manifestation of His life in the flesh and would not mind if we only mentally assent to the things we are hearing. Two major oppositions that we are faced with are the lie and the antichrist. The lie of the antichrist is a wisdom called the wisdom of this world (1Cor. 2:6). This wisdom comes to nought.
The wisdom of this world cannot be used by everyone. It is possible for a man to grow from using the wisdom of men, through using the wisdom of the world to the point of using the wisdom of the princes of this world. These are the stages of fleshly wisdom. The King of Tyre was using the wisdom of the prince of Tyre.
The wisdom that the serpent offered Eve was the wisdom of a god. Satan himself is the god of this world and that wisdom was what he offered Eve. The wisdom of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a high wisdom and no man can interact with it except he is a living soul. Only a man of everlasting capacity can take of that tree. There are temptations that are peculiar to everlasting sons. The wisdom of that tree is the temptation that he offers to sons.
This is the kind of temptation that the enemy brought to Jesus at the second temptation (Matt. 4:5-7). The second temptation was an attempt to make Jesus despise authority by making Him act out of order and not wait on God to send angelic ministrations. Angels are dignitaries; they are honourable beings. Being a Son of God does not permit Him to treat them with disdain. They must be discerned and judged properly. The tempter wanted Jesus to despise authority, but Jesus excelled, and we see that He returned in the power of the Spirit and the angels ministered to Him (Luke 4:14; Matt. 4:11).
The wisdom of men is called sin and death (1 Cor. 2:5). We will need to learn Christ to be made free from sin and death. When you submit to the righteousness of faith in the gospel of Christ, you receive freedom from the wisdom of men (Rom. 1:16). Afterwards, you still need to escape the wisdom of this world. This world has its own wisdom which is the beginning of corrupted wicked wisdom. The prince of this world only comes to a man when he is about to cross over. The soul of such a man must have completed the course of the wisdom of men. It is after this completion that Satan can launch such a soul to the next allocation which is the wisdom of this world.
A man in everlasting life is a branch of the vine who is about to inherit divine nature. There are three dimensions in the realm of everlasting. The perfect man, who is Christ, is the man that can be engrafted into the vine. Christ must bring forth fruits that the Father might come to prune and purge so that He can bear more fruits that He might abide (John 15:2,5,8). A Christ may not abide if He does not bear more fruits (John 15:6).
There is a warfare to bear more fruits that He might abide (John 10:10). It is at this junction that the prince of this world comes. His warfare is so that Christ should not bring more fruits so that He would not abide. Hence Hebrews 10:36, For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. At Jordan, Jesus was a beloved Son. He had everlasting life, but He needed to abide by bringing forth so much fruit because that is the criteria for entering Eternal Life. Without much more fruit, we cannot enter Eternal Life. Once we are grafted into the vine, God would keep inspecting the branch to ensure that He is bearing fruits accordingly, so that He can have Eternal life. The Son must excel in abiding just as there are angels who also abide.
In the season of everlasting life, Satan releases the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the prince of the power of the air. Satan's warfare is to fight our abiding; therefore he comes with the wiles of the wicked. We are instructed to put on the whole armour of God that we may be able to stand or abide (Eph. 6:11). The armour of God is to enable the soul to bring forth more fruits. The branch must bear fruits.
We can be sure that the wisdom of this world and its princes are two warfares that Satan brings. He entices us with them because we are susceptible to them. It is good to know that Christ is a new man and can be tempted. The adversary that churns out the temptation is higher than the realm of Christ and, for that reason, can tempt Christ. What makes Christ vulnerable is that he still possesses the substances of a man. Our journey is to cross the realm and threshold of ‘man’.
As Balaam said, God is neither a man nor the son of man (Num. 23:19); everyone who exists on the face of the earth is a man, while the Sons of Men are prophets. God is not a man to lie. As long as one is still a man, he/she would still lie when given the commensurate pressure.
The world of men is not just terrestrial. In the present heaven, there were found men who lied and turned from the estate God gave them. The world of men can be subject to variation, whether earthly or heaven of the present. However, God does not have that characteristic (James 1:17). It is only those who have divine nature that cannot turn.
The divine nature is the nature that alters everything called man. Therefore, the ability to repent, lie or vary needs to be judged in a Christ, for him to be able to come into the realm of everlastingness, where a man can neither turn nor lie. God brought the Son from the realm of divinity (a realm where there is no variableness nor shadow of turning) to the realm of man (where they can turn and repent), so that He can gradually convert us from within, showing us the way into the realm of God.
Satan knows God's agenda and he fights it. He knows that Jesus' intent is to alter man and the things that make man vulnerable to him. When a soul obeys the faith of Jesus in all its levels, the law of conversion is at work (Gal 2:20). Satan fights because he knows that the alteration of man changes man from being a liar and that is the end of his reign.
Satan lies and that is why the antichrist was commissioned (1 John 2:18). Satan wants men to deny Christ because anyone that denies Christ has denied the Father and the Son also (1John 2:22). Satan wants man to remain flesh, carrying his laws. He does not want man to exchange the wisdom of men for that of Christ. He does not want the wisdom of Christ and the Father to be manifest in flesh. He does not want the conversation of the son of God in the flesh. He does not want faith to be written in the tables of man's heart. Instead, he wants his own laws, the wisdom of men and ultimately, the wisdom of this world, to remain on the fleshy tables of the heart and run men.
The reality that God wants to bring us is to quicken us. The intention of God is explicit in John 5:21, “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will”. God also wants the Son to quicken just Like He also raised Him from the dead. Satan wants men to abide in the realm of carnality. He wants man to be flesh, so that the substances of men would still hold them down even when they want to become spiritual.
God wants to redeem man from the things of men so that he can partake of things that pertain to God (Rev. 14:14). The enemy is after ensuring that man does not inherit what Jesus has inherited. Jesus inherited many crowns including the crowns of righteousness, peace and life. He also has the incorruptible crown, which is the crown of glory, and as a great shepherd, He wants to shepherd many souls.
It takes the wisdom of the princes of this world to be able to make a lie. This wisdom is higher than the wisdom of man. This is the same wisdom that Satan sold to Cain and Nimrod, who were kings or princes. They communed with the wisdom of princes. The arrangement of this world and the system of this world is beyond physical; it is in the spirit. The arrangement of the world is in the mind and Satan reinvents and refines it. This is why the Lord also comes to bless us. He would not leave us but would keep coming to us to upgrade us in wisdom when we use previous allocations well.
Christ teaches us to be foolish in the things of this world. Satan wants man to trade with his wisdom primarily. Satan considers some men dull, even though they are using his wisdom because they are not profiting with it well. He wants men to use his wisdom to buy worship, allegiances, and power. Satan's agenda is to brighten many men. He savours the things of men and has exalted many places that have been obscure before. Satan comes with the wisdom of this world and offers it to men.
The contradictions that Jesus withstood are those of spirits and not men (Heb. 12:2-3). These spirits are sinners that come to tempt sons. Sinners entice men (Prov. 1:10). The sinners that Jesus warred with on the cross were not men because He prayed the Father to forgive men because they do not know what they were doing (Luke 23:34).
While He was in the process of being raised as an Eternal Son, Jesus had to endure the contradiction of sinners against himself. Likewise, we also must endure such contradictions when we arrive at those stages. God cannot tempt any man but man can be tempted (Jam. 1:13-17). Every man, whether of the realm of the earth or heaven, can be tempted. In order to not be tempted, flesh must partake in divine nature. For flesh to partake of what only divinity has, Jesus must come to the flesh; thus, the wisdoms of this world and of the princes of this world would no longer have power over him.
The wisdom of this world and its princes would wrestle down any man who has not received the writings of the divine nature on the fleshy tables of his heart. The temptation of sons is from the enticement of sinners. Satan sinned from the beginning and all that fell with him are sinners.
In the book of Proverbs, wisdom spoke in the streets, which is commensurate to the speaking of Christ (Prov. 1:20). Wisdom moved from speaking in the streets to the housetop and then to the tower which speaks of the manifold wisdom of God. Wisdom does not speak on the same plane. Wisdom has calibrations including Christ as wisdom, the hidden wisdom, and the manifold wisdom of God. The high tower speaks of the wisdom of the right hand. The wisdom that would pull down principalities and powers is the manifold wisdom (Eph. 3:10).
What Satan packages as the world is a very high wisdom which has the power to pull and draw. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust (James 1:14). This lust is not the calibrations of the lust of the eyes, lusts of the flesh and pride of life. Rather, this lust speaks of something more personalised to the soul. Lust is the world which sinners (evil spirits) bring around a son to afflict his atmosphere and put confusion in his soul. Such evil spirits seek to vex the souls of sons.
Satan has high things and strongholds which are his thoughts (2Cor. 10:4-5). Thoughts are things that the soul can hold or handle, and they come as imaginations. He told Eve to imagine that she would be a god and that she will not die. Thus, he led her into another world. Satan only stayed in the realm of her thoughts from which he spoke against God and painted another world to her.
There are high things that are against the knowledge of God. Satan continued to come to the sons of men in Genesis and worked on their imagination, thereby enticing them till they saw the daughters of men as fair (Gen 6:1-2). They saw a kind of inheritance in the daughters of men who had capacities and abilities that the sons of men did not find in their own sisters. A son needs judgement to be able to know that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is of a greater price (1Pet. 3:4).
Satan has sent forth into the world liars and antichrists to make sure that men deny the things of Christ and God Himself. The Father and the Son are everlasting life. Satan wants Christ to be denied access into the flesh and men be denied access into the things of God. He wants to make man deny Christ. Any soul that denies Christ has denied the Father and the son.
Satan put a kind of wisdom in the world that ensures that when a soul is exercised by that wisdom, he would not know God (1Cor. 1:21). Wisdom is a work that Satan would do in a man that would make him deny God and incapable of knowing God. The wisdoms of this world and of the princes of this world are to make man not to know God. This wisdom was responsible for men to be unthankful, and dislike to retain God in their knowledge (Rom. 1:21-22).
The flesh was designed to be a screen to show God. Satan hijacked flesh that was supposed to mirror God and made flesh to house and reflect his own things. That way, any soul that does not know God knows something else. When a man fellowships with the world, he would not know God, and a man that does not know God is a beast. “Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.” (Psalm 49:20). God does not want any man to perish or degenerate into the estate of a beast (John 3:16).
Summary
1. The process of making the Word flesh has been Satan's fear. Therefore, Satan also brought sin, transgression and iniquity into flesh because He does not want Eternal Life to be expressed in flesh.
2. The coming of Jesus in the flesh should not be concluded as a future experience because the scripture does not say that ‘He shall come’, but that 'He is come'
3. The key to seeing Jesus is living (John 14:19). If we do not live, we will not see Him. Christ is the beginning of the coming of Jesus to man.
4. There was a particular faith that Jesus authored and finished and when that faith comes to a man, the One who authored it has also come to him (Heb. 12:2).
5. Faith is designed to bring Jesus in the flesh of every believer. When faith comes, Jesus is come (Rom 10:17; Heb 11:1). However, when He comes by faith, we cannot see Him
6. Jesus promised not to leave us comfortless, but to come to us (John 14:18). We are comforted with knowledge, understanding and revelations (Col. 2:2). Coming into full understanding is coming into comfort.
7. God would not bring any soul that lacks the appropriate arrangements and equipment of judgement to come into the fellowship of the Father and God.
8. The wisdom of men is called sin and death (1 Cor. 2:5). We will need to learn Christ to be made free from sin and death.
9. When we learn righteousness that is in Christ, we still need to escape the wisdom of this world, which is the beginning of corrupted wicked wisdom
10. What makes Christ vulnerable is because he still possesses the substances of a man. Our journey is to cross the realm and threshold of ‘man’.
11. Wisdom does not speak on the same plane. The wisdom of God has calibrations including Christ as wisdom, the hidden wisdom and the manifold wisdom of God.
12. The wisdom that would pull down principalities and powers is the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10).