Programme: Believers’ Convention Prayer Meeting 2021 (Week Four Day Three)
Date: 7th July, 2021
Powered by: Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Minister: Reverend Kayode Oyegoke
All the promises of God are life; it's from one life to another. The life of Christ is a promise that we ought to inherit until we come to a season where the Father’s name will be declared (Heb. 2:12). Our Lord Jesus must mention us to the Father for the things of everlasting life to be spoken to us. The essence of the mediation of a High Priest is for God to allow the administration of everlasting life to those who have been called to receive it. Everlasting Life is an important learning in the realm of the spirit.
The school of everlasting life will raise men with everlasting minds. This is what God Almighty appreciates and longs for. Those who are spiritually minded have life and peace; while those who are everlasting life minded will have joy forevermore or everlasting joy. “Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:11). When you have been sealed or crowned with life everlasting, death flees away and that gives you the ability to come into gladness and joy. This gladness and joy speak of the highest life called Eternal Life. Jesus’ anointing was beyond Oil of Joy; it was called Oil of Gladness. Jesus was only anointed with the Oil of Gladness after resurrection. The Oil of Gladness is the oil of Eternal Life.
“Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” (Psalm 45:7). Gladness is the very life of God while joy is the life of the Father. Eternal children will be anointed with the oil of gladness while everlasting sons will be anointed with the oil of joy. The demonstration of Jesus' life in Eternal Life will be above other sons. Even when we eventually arrive at Eternal Life, there's no way we can be in the same cadre with our Lord Jesus or Apostle Paul in terms of mastery of Eternal Life. The higher the suffering in the spirit, the higher the glory.
Oil of Gladness is the God kind of oil; it is the raw oil of Elohim. Gladness is a heaved joy. When everlasting life is raised into rest, it becomes Eternal Life. Jesus Christ was anointed with the oil of gladness. “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.” (Psalm 45:8). Ivory in scriptures refers to elevated places in the spirit. An ivory is something that comes from a precious or high horn.
Horn is a priestly stature; it's not ordinary. Horns are powers that make heads their footstools. So, ivory is a very high tower that grows on the head. Ivory palaces are palaces of Eternal Life. Palaces here speak of different strengths of God’s thrones in Eternal Life. God is Eternal Life and this is a flow of a life that exhibits reign. Eternal Life reigns; it doesn't force. Eternal Life towers higher than every other life expression.
Myrrh, aloes and cassias are the things that are in those ivory palaces; and they are bitter substances. When God takes in myrrh, it's gladness to Him. Satan wanted Eternal Life without its bitterness.
The tree of Life is purely a tree in the midst of pleasure (Gen. 2:9). It's a monster of concentrated pleasure - it's a tree of paradise. Paradise is a zone of undisrupted pleasure. When a man is in paradise, such won’t have a sense of stopping the enjoyment of its pleasure. There is no sorrow, thought or fear of tomorrow in paradise. Lucifer had existed in the paradise of God for a long time (Ezek. 28:13).
God wants the way to the Tree of Life to be clear to us. In Genesis 3:24, God drove man out of Eden and placed Cherubims, with a flaming sword, to keep men from locating the way of the tree of life. The Tree of Life has a way called the way of the Tree of Life. None can find the way to the Tree of life. Whoever wants to get to the Tree of Life must get to the east of Eden. While Lucifer was in the Eden of heaven as a son of the morning, he was a tree in the midst of the paradise of angels. He was not the only one in the midst of the paradise; he was among the least Edenic entities. Satan cannot plant himself again in the paradise of angels where he fell from. But after he fell, he could plant himself in the midst of the paradise made for man.
God planted that Tree of life in Eden and gave it to man; the tree was a gift to man. The word Eden means the garden of God. The tithe of earth was Eden where God planted a garden and the Tree of life. However, Satan also planted himself there.
Lucifer was a tree to have been in the midst of Eden. He had a means to the midst of the Eden of earth because He was a midst entity. The angel in the book of Revelation, who walked in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, was also a midst entity (Rev. 2:1). The Eden that Prophet Ezekiel described is the same as that which Paul called the third heaven or paradise (2 Corin. 12:2). It is the paradise of angels. However, there is another that is to come. There are other trees in Eden but there are certain trees that are of the midst. Our God Almighty is the highest midst entity.
Whosoever will be in the midst will have to lose his own life. “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (Rev. 22:1-2). The Tree of Life in the world to come is still situated in the midst. Anything that is a thing of the midst is called Life. The word “life” is not an ordinary word in the realm of the spirit; it is the final definition to title existence. Lucifer, son of the morning, was a tree of the midst. This means that he used to be a kind of tree of life. Michael is also a tree of life and if he turns, he will also become a tree of good and evil. This shows that the tree that stood beside the tree of life on earthly Eden used to be a tree of life in the heavenly Eden.
A tree of life is a tree with all the rewards. All the rewards such as the rod of iron, the hidden manna etc. are complete in a tree of life and those things are life. Our Lord Jesus is the very Tree of life that is better than those of the angels of this present creation. “Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they” (Heb. 1:4). This excellent name can only be given to a man who has the inheritance of everlasting life; it is also called “my new name” (Rev. 3:12). This means that Jesus first inherited everlasting life before he was rewarded with Eternal Life. It is by everlasting life that one’s quality of reward is determined. There is no way God will give Eternal Life to a man when he has not first inherited everlasting life. Everlasting life is the school for Eternal Life.
The first warfare is to inherit Christ in our souls, escape the world and come into everlasting knowledge. The realm of everlasting life is another realm of warfare with men of great stature (Num. 13:32). The land is designed to sprout men of stature and giants, such that we must overcome. Learning and inheriting Christ is a preparation that must be made before the warfare in everlasting season. The time of the Israelites in the wilderness was a season of learning Christ; and this was longer than the season of warfare in the promised land. That which happened in the past is a type of what is happening now in the spirit. Right now, a Church in the spirit has arrived in the promised land.
The wilderness is a training ground for the inheritance called everlasting life. Israel got to a kind of everlasting life; but God’s intention was to take them to a kind of Eternal Life which they came short of. They did not come into reward. There were prototypes of life in the old covenant. God placed a kind of life and death before Israel (Deut. 30:19). The land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was more than a physical land. Land speaks of a realm of inheritance. The land is meant for the practice of life or to reign.
We have been called to overcome one of the angels of the midst (Lucifer) who fell; and this is possible. Lucifer fell with other angels who are not of the midst. However, the works of God, which constitutes God’s everlasting life, is stronger than Satan and his cohorts; and can overcome them. When we overcome them with everlasting life, then we would have the reward. Eternal Life is given to those who have inherited God’s everlasting life, to show that they are better than the angels. God’s everlasting life has a quality of strength that is enough to handle fallen spirits and their reward.
What Satan showed Eve was reward, which was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the paradise. Eve saw the life that the tree had to offer because she comprehended its wisdom (Gen. 3:1-6). She saw that the fruit of the tree would give wisdom, which is life. Anything that can give wisdom can offer life. Life is packaged in wisdom. The excellency of knowledge is that wisdom gives life (Eccl. 7:12). One must have wisdom in order to have life.
Eve did not see the covenant that they must cut to inherit the promise of Satan’s tree; she did not see that they had to hate God. Adam and Eve would need to hate God to have the life Satan possessed. When they ate the fruit, the wrong enlightenment of their eyes of understanding was to start the process of enacting the covenant with Satan. They were supposed to start cutting the (earthly) covenant God had made with them. And by making covenant with Satan, they would develop the capacity to completely hate God like Satan did to angels. However, they did not do that because they did not eat the fruit with the heart of hating God, unlike the angels did. Adam’s disobedience was to take a shortcut to a life he was tempted with.
The law or strength of life is love. However, when Satan was corrupted, lust became the pull of his life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a lower life compared to the Tree of Life. Angels had never seen God’s Tree of Life until God planted it in Eden. The Tree of life is the tree of God's wisdom. The wisdom of God is the life of God. “Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:” (1 Corin. 2:6-7). This hidden wisdom is hidden life. God did not reveal His life to the evil spirits before they fell from heaven; He hid it from the foundation of the world. Had they known that hidden wisdom, they would not have killed Jesus. They probably would have done something else. So the best way known to them was to crucify our Lord Jesus.
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corin. 2:9). Love is the guiding principle of life; whosoever will live must be a lover. God so loved the world that He gave Eternal Life to men (John 3:16). Christ brings us to everlasting life from where we will transit into Eternal Life.