Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: School of the Spirit (SOS)
Date: Thursday, 3rd November 2022
Our Lord Jesus had attained everlasting life while He was on earth; He finished the works that the Father gave Him. John 17 was a prayer of our Lord Jesus for children who will pass from death into everlasting life, having loved the brethren. Death here is one that a believer who is not fully Christ in his soul carries (1 John 3:14). When a man finishes the curriculum of Christ, he will pass from death into life everlasting. Christ is life and as we obey Christ, we are passing death.
Every doctrine in God is for dealing with the issue of death in men. The doctrine or the life in Christ is for the healing of sin and death (Romans 8:2). The Bible referred to this “sin and death” as “small death or as death of the sea”. Small death is an earthly life of sin, which is an opposite of Christ's life while great death is a heavenly life of sin. “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” (Rev. 20:12).
The death that Satan has or that he brought to earth is called first death. However, in first death, there is small death and great death. Death came into the world by sin (Romans 5:12). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is first death, and the fullness of this death is called hell and death (or great death). Great death is not necessarily the departure of the spirit from the physical body. In God’s sight, a man who has great death is he who has a great name with the devil. So there is a small name and there is a great name in Satan.
The Tower of Babel was a great name; it was a great death. It was championed by someone who carried great death in his soul. Great death is a principle or doctrine of darkness that can cause someone to be completely numb to God and unresponsive to Him. Before Jesus came to earth, there were men who died greatly in scriptures.
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 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.” (Genesis 11:1-2). The discovery of Shinar was by death. Death was the compass to get to Shinar. Death is an explorer and a leader, and it has foresight. When death has become great in a soul, it can be a projector of life. When death is great, it can do great things.
“And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:3-4). Instead of stones, they made their own stones. Bricks were substitutes for stones. They built their own stone called brick. God does not use brick for building, He uses stone. When Solomon was constructing the temple, it is possible Israel would have made bricks. This is because of the building ingenuity that is an inheritance in them. They were in slavery for the sake of building. God knew that they would want to build their goodly houses in the promised land (Deut. 8:12). So God instructed Solomon not to use any other thing in the building of the temple but stones.
Stones were used in God's construction sight. This tells us that stones signify materials of the Kingdom or revelations. Stones mean God’s order of gift or an offering coming from God. However, the men of Nimrod looked for the city themselves, so they had to look for the stones themselves. They were building without God and that is why God came down to stop what they were doing.
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4). If the city should reach unto heaven, it means that this city is a construction of blood – a city of blood. A man’s vision of heaven gave birth to the city. The purpose behind the building of the city is for heaven. They want the top of the building to reach heaven; so the vision or destiny of the city is heaven. It was a city constructed for heaven.
There are two things to be identified here: construction and name. The city was being built to attain a heavenly name. “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (Genesis 11:6). The name made the people to be one. The people were becoming one with the city they were building. They did not start off by building the city; something must have induced building. There was a tutelage of the name of the city. There was a campaign done in the presence of God. The presence or faces of Yahweh is where the knowledge of God is being communicated. This was how men in the past knew the invisible things of God. The presence of God taught them the invisible things of God by the things that are seen (Romans 1:20).
What made the people one is the name; the name created an imagination in their minds. This means that the preacher of the name did a great job in making an image of the city in the minds of the people. Nimrod preached his vision to souls. So the teaching of image is the building of a stature in the mind. Also, the Lord is preaching the image of God to us by the gospel of everlasting life. It is shining in hearts as light.
Though Nimrod’s preaching created the work of imagination in the minds of the people, the people must do the work that has been painted in their hearts for them to inherit the imagination. To become the city, they have to get it done by the interpretation of the blueprint. The imagination is a blueprint. This means that the stature of the city was printed in the minds of the people and what was remaining was for them to build it.
“And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.” (Genesis 11:5-8). Even though they had imagined the city, the Lord could still scatter them abroad. God did not allow them to do the work.
We can see an interpretation of this through another negative work in Revelation 13. The antichrist or the beast has a prophet who came to preach a message so that those who wondered at the beast can do works that will make them eternally bound to that beast. Even after the prophet had done the miracles, it is possible nothing may happen if those who wondered after the beast refuse to go on to carry out works (Rev. 13:13-14).
A preaching can bring an imagination to a man’s mind, but he is yet to engrave it. Engraving an image is building it. Image is a flat print on a paper; it’s not yet a three-dimensional (3D) thing. Something that’s 3D can be held or touched. To make a thing 3D, you need to build.
“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.” (Genesis 10:8). Nimrod began to be a mighty one in the earth. Something was making Nimrod mighty in the earth. He had the might of earth, and he was doing that to move heaven-ward. Sin is a life that men practise on earth that makes them mighty in their souls. Such is a soul that is prospering in sin. Nimrod became mighty, mighty in sin and death (or in earth) and later on, he moved from this to become a mighty hunter before the faces of the Lord.
“And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” (Genesis 10:10). Nimrod did a lot in Shinar – he built a kingdom. Those cities were kingdoms. Nimrod was a king; he had a kingly sinful might. The life he promoted had a sin cloud. Nimrod fought the presence of God and went beyond it. At this season, he knew how to raise a building to heaven, which means that he had something more than sin and death.
There are garments of iniquity or of hell and death. One of the great garments of iniquity is the scarlet colour that the antichrist wore; that is the colour of the soul’s skin. There is also the crimson-coloured garment (Isaiah 1:18).
“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.” (Revelation 17:3). Nimrod had not gotten this scarlet-coloured garment, but he had the crimson-coloured garment of iniquity. It’s from glory to glory; it is crimson to scarlet or scarlet to crimson. The scarlet-coloured beast was not an ordinary beast. The beast got the garment from war; he warred with God, overcame, and was glorified by Satan. The greatness that the beast had is the colour of his skin. Another word for this garment is dyes. These men were being dyed by Satan; he had entered into their gene.
Nimrod was wearing the colour of great sin or name. This is what he must have used to preach the campaign of a city that will reach towards heaven. Nimrod must have had a glory on earth, which is the glory of a flower, particularly a glory of the rose flower that comes from thorns. Thorns and thistle speak of cares of this world, and anything that is of thorns is near to curse (Heb. 6:7-8); even though the rose flower is attractive, and we use it to communicate love in a positive way. Love is choky and bloody by nature.
Scarlet is the life of a glory, and crimson is also a life of glory (Isaiah 1:18). The glory that Nimrod was showing was coming from thorns. It is a lying glory but those who were hearing him could not see through what he was saying. Nimrod’s campaign must have been that man can be better than the limitation in Ararat. So he took the people of the earth on a journey, and their language was one. Nimrod’s kingdom began in Babel but he did not stop there. Nimrod built four kingdoms in Shinar.
Nimrod had an intention of building a great or heavenly life on earth. Sin has its small life and its great life. He wanted to make a name that will get to heaven. However, this heaven is not God’s heaven. There is a woman in scriptures called “Queen of heaven” (Jer. 44:18). It was a particular idol in those times. She is a supplier of heaven to kings or men who want heaven from her.
Another person who was red or had red dye in his gene was Esau, but that redness was of God. It means that Esau carried heavenly blessing. Esau was meant for something heavenly, but he was profane and that is why God hated him. Esau was dressed with heaven, this means that he had the spiritual blessings. What God blessed Abraham with is not earthly; it was heavenly and it should have come upon the lineage of Esau after Isaac. Infact, Isaac wanted to let the blessing rest on Esau.
“And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.” (Gen. 25:25). The name “Esau” is one that is like the name “Adam” and it is because of the blessing. Jacob was not red at all. Esau was red in his body but pale in his soul. Esau was a fornicator and a profane fellow. When you are fornicator, you may be profane later. A fornicator ends up being profane (Heb. 12:16). Esau was a fornicator; he was playing with the daughters of Hittites and that got his father angry. Esau enjoyed sinning. Before he married, he went to those daughters of Pharaoh and must have slept with them. Fornication weakened Esau from inheriting the blessing. A fornicator will not inherit the Kingdom of God (Eph. 5:5). Fornication will reduce a man to a morsel of bread. We must be careful because anybody can fornicate. We should hold our body not to fornicate.
Fornication is a gain currently; men do not see it as sin anymore. Young people teach each other even in schools. Fornication is extremely dangerous because it can wipe out a whole generation. Scriptures said we should not eat from the same pot with someone who believes in fornication (1 Corinth. 5:11). By taking food from the same pot with such a fellow, the spirit of fornication can be transferred to you.
So first death is heavenly. This is because the one who first committed the death did it in all of heaven. So death was great from the beginning. Death was great from Genesis. A minister who is not exposed to the true light of the scriptures can use the story of Nimrod for motivational teaching. Death was great in Genesis 4, and it had overtaken the earth by chapter 6. Those who had this great life of sin died except for one (Noah). God had to move with speed to preserve the life in Noah. Then after God drowned that first world in water, another age started by Noah and his sons. After the flood, death was limited but it began to rise again and caught up with Nimrod. It took about four to five generations for Noah’s lineage to reach someone who can perpetuate it. There was something about Cush and Ham.
“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.” (Gen. 10:9). Nimrod began with being a mighty hunter in the earth, then he graduated into being a mighty hunter before the faces of Yahweh. He graduated into the heavenly things of Satan who communicated the crimson reasoning of sin to him. Nimrod was being dyed by Satan and this qualified him to wear a red or glorious garment on earth. Without this glory, Nimrod would not have been able to move all men of the earth to do one course. He must have been saying something highly alluring that could easily move mankind’s minds from God.
If Nimrod was not mighty, he would not think about kingdom or preach about dominion. Nimrod wanted to bring men into kingship. Nimrod was preaching a kingdom or a dominion that was opposite the presence of God. This was the havoc he wrought. Nimrod built four kingdoms: Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh (Gen. 10:10). Babel was not finished when God scattered it. The whole earth was engaged in building the tower, but God broke that strength. This means that the interpretation of the building was not finished, so people left with half the project. The work they wanted to build to heaven was killed. It means they did not finish sin; they could not bring sin to reach its fullness. They went half-baked and after some time, those who went away from that area forgot iniquity.
However, Satan was not resting. He began to build again. Satan raised Egypt and it became a centre of civilisation. Egypt was powerful. Babel could not do what Nimrod wanted it to achieve. Other kingdoms like Erech were not the answer to Nimrod’s quest. They were not cities reaching to heaven; they were the might of sin and death.
Egypt excavated death; they built tombs. They were handling graveyard knowledge. However, Egypt was still better than Babylon in terms of how easy it was for God to intervene and save his people from her. God had to scatter the language of Babylon. God could lead His son (Israel) to Egypt and redeem him (Hosea 11:1). God took Israel and Joseph to Egypt. On the other hand, scarcely could God save those who were lost in exile in Babylon. Israel lost their song and lost their ways in Babylon. Infact, the lineage of the priest was almost gone so much that they had to depend on Levites. Many priests had married strangers. This shows us how dangerous Babel was.
Satan has been warring to raise sin into the status quo of heaven. Satan wants to teach men the crimson and scarlet life of sin. The mystery of iniquity is working but God is also warring. Iniquity is almost taking over but it won’t have the last laugh.
Jesus did not come in the first days (or in the beginning of days in Genesis). Rather, Jesus came when iniquity was about to be born. Iniquity thrived through kingdoms. That Babylonish empire whose most glorious head was Nebuchadnezzar was different from Babel. The Babylonish Kingdom turned into Persia and Mede. Then it turned to Greece, and to the Roman Empire. All of these dominions were all installed to propagate iniquity. So Satan creates dominion for the purpose of sin. Infact, they were kingdoms of sin.
So we should not seek the greatness of sin. God wants us to reject the sinful heaven of Satan. There is a righteous heaven of God and there is also a heaven of iniquity. The name that Nimrod was building was the heaven of iniquity. Nimrod wanted heaven on earth; he was gunning for a perverted heavenly glory. It was an exaltation on earth and those who come into that name will come into an exalted status. He wanted to distribute this name to all men, but they must first be involved in building to attain the name.
Nimrod was not just leading the people to raise blocks and bricks; they were building a civilization to reach a destiny of glory. So, it is possible that they were not just aiming for the city to attain a natural height or for the city to reach the sky. Rather, their aim was what the city would represent; it was meant for an interpretation of a kind of life. It was to expose mankind to a wrong heavenly life other than God’s. Satan made sure man fell of the glory of God and wanted to trap man in another glory. Satan wanted to raise man into a glory realm that is not of God.
In the book of Revelation, men wondered at the glory of the beast (Rev. 13:3). The glory of the beast pulled them. The beast was not a creature like a leopard. John saw and x-rayed the inner nature of a man. John saw what the beast looked like on the inside. The beast had a fine baby face but that is a baby-faced assassin who will teach men how to die to God.
In any dimension, death simply means greatness. What Adam saw in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was greatness (Gen. 3:6-7). Our quest to be great or to be somebody on earth is a hunger and thirst for death. The things that people passionately pray for are mostly death provisions. Satan entices us bit by bit with gifts. This is why our denial of worldly lusts and ungodliness is a denial of a dimension of Satan’s greatness (Titus 2:11). Denying something greater is denying death in its fullness.
“And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.” (Rev. 20:13). The dead were in the sea and also in hell and death. One death is small, the other is great. The greater death is deeper than the small death. So sea speaks of small death while death and hell is a great death.
“These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” (Rev. 11:6-7). This bottomless pit is in doctrine, and this means that a man can abide in the pit by the things he does. A man can abide on earth by the things he does. A man can also abide in the heavens by how he lives.
One thing about the book of Revelation is that it reveals dwelling places. There are those who dwell in heaven and those who dwell on earth. This beast was not dwelling on earth, he was in the bottomless pit. By lifestyle, the beast moved from the sea to the bottomless pit. The beast was not a sea level creature anymore, he went deep by what he did and what he has become. This bottomless pit lesson is a heaven of Satan, it is Satan’s secret that he communicated to the beast.
Satan was sent to depth when he sinned; he was cast down to hell. Another word for bottomless pit is hell. Isaiah prophesied and referred to bottomless pit as hell (Isa. 14:16). Hell is a pit that is bottomless. However, hell is not even in the deepest part of the pit, just as the heaven is not the highest point of the height. So, Jesus could be made higher than heaven. The heights and depths were created by God. Jesus went higher than where Satan was before he fell. This is why Jesus is able to handle a heavenly problem that Satan brought.
Jesus atoned on earth, went into heaven and purged heavenly things (Heb. 9:23). Jesus purged the earth with water and purged heaven with blood. This is why heavenly beings wear scarlet. They are wearing works of glory. Glory cannot be separated from blood. When glory is put around, blood will follow. The high priest takes the blood into the Most Holy Place. It is in the shekinah that blood is poured. It is in glory that blood is sprinkled. This is because sin was also glorious. Sin is not just water, sin is blood. This means that sin is life.
Glory is life. So the life of God’s glory is the Father. The Father is the glory. Another word for glory is good. The person that is good is God the Father. It is only the Father that is good. While Jesus was on earth, He made it clear that He was not yet as good as He should be (Mark 10:18).
God gave good works to Jesus which He finished. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” (John 17:4). Jesus had finished the work here. This means that Jesus had built the image that The Father gave Him to do. Jesus built the Father, and the Father is glory. This Father is life. The reason Jesus came is for the Father, He did not come for Himself. Satan cannot beat God in any way. Jesus knew His Father; He knew that the Father loves His work. Whosoever likes or loves the Father will do what He wants. The Father wants His work, and this work is Himself. The Father is the image of God. He is the one warning Israel on the mountain, not to make any graven image.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” (Exodus 20:3-5). Whosoever has an imagination will make a graven image, the same way that the men in Genesis 11 had an imagination but they could not successfully implement or build the image. To “have” is to “imagine” a thing. We should not be like Rachel who hid her idol. Ephraim learnt this from her; he became joined to his idol (Hosea 4:17). An idol is something a man does not want to leave and that does not want to leave him.
We should thank God for the word of righteousness because most of the things being preached about in churches are idols. Many believers daily pour oil on their idols. To pour oil on an idol signifies a commitment of love. Idol gives men their essence; this is why it is difficult to yank an idol from a person.
We begin by serving idols and end up worshipping or bowing down to them. Serving an idol is the gradual building of an image. The commandment not to make a graven image is love – it is the love of God. This is how a man shows that he loves God. It is a commandment that teaches hate for iniquity and love for God. What took men away from Presence is an idol. Nimrod fought Presence because of his idol; the idol was the name he wanted to become.
“I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.” (3 John 1:9). The idol of Diotrephes is preeminence. It means that there is an idol in the spirit called ‘preeminence’. Diotrephes believed in this idol and later became a lover of it. Preeminence is a perverted heavenly name. Whosoever loves preeminence will seek for a wrong dominion; this love can be as tiny as a sycamore, but it can grow.
A woman should not compete with her husband in terms of financial capacity. God wants us to be humble enough to receive from one another. We should hate iniquity. Oath means hate or detest. If you loathe something, you hate it. When a man eats oath, he is eating hate for iniquity. Jesus oathed or loathed iniquity. First death is what Satan brought, while second death is lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). Second death is God’s death engineering and Satan is afraid of it.
Blessings!
Summary
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Our Lord Jesus had attained everlasting life while He was on earth; He finished the works that the Father gave Him. John 17 was a prayer of our Lord Jesus for children who will pass from death into everlasting life, having loved the brethren (1 John 3:14).
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When a man finishes the curriculum of Christ, he will pass from death into life everlasting. Christ is life and as we obey Christ, we are passing death. Every doctrine in God is for dealing with the issue of death in men. The doctrine or the life in Christ is for the healing of sin and death (Romans 8:2).
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The Bible referred to this “sin and death” as “small death or as the death of the sea”. Small death is an earthly life of sin, which is an opposite of Christ's life while great death is a heavenly life of sin.
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The death that Satan has or that he brought to earth is called first death. However, in first death, there is small death and great death. Death came into the world by sin (Romans 5:12). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is first death, and the fullness of this death is called hell and death (or great death).
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Great death is not necessarily the departure of the spirit out of the physical body. In God’s sight, a man who has great death is he who has a great name with the devil. So there is a small name and there is a great name in Satan.
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The Tower of Babel was a great name; it was a great death. It was championed by someone who carried great death in his soul. Great death is a principle or doctrine of darkness that can cause someone to be completely numb to God and unresponsive to Him.