Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: School of the Spirit
Date: Thursday 28th October 2021
Ministering: Rev. Kayode Oyegoke
“Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Corinthians 4:1-4). The ministration of the light of the glorious gospel is the same as the ministration of the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:8. The Christ here is He who is the image of God or the Son of God. Whosoever is lost cannot have access to this light. The lost here does not refer only to unbelievers but believers who have not yet embraced or engaged the doctrine of Christ.
The reason why a believer will be counted among the lost is because of blindness. As long as a man is oblivious of the spot where God can find him, he is blind. The foundation for the glorious gospel is the doctrine of Christ. A believer cannot be well positioned for the glorious gospel if he is ignorant of the light of Christ. A believer who is ignorant of the light of Christ is one who is blinded, because such a one does not know who Christ is or lacks the formation of Christ in his soul. The formation of Christ in a man is the help to finding the glorious gospel of Christ.
The glorious gospel is not the teaching of Christ, but the inheritance that a Christ should come into. The glorious gospel is what God has given or prepared for every Christ. Many people (including believers) are still lost to the glorious gospel of Christ. One must journey to some place in the spirit to get this gospel.
“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6). There is something God is doing to the apostles’ heart by shining unto it -- it’s to place an image on the heart. God is trying to press His image in our heart -- the image of God is the Son of God. The glorious gospel is the gospel of the image of God. It’s not every heart that is qualified to receive the light of the image of God.
“Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” (2 Cor. 3:2-3). The writing of epistles is not the writing of mere words but the making of images in the heart. God is drawing when He is writing. God can portray a statement through an image. A good artist is one who can talk with his image or drawings. When God is writing, He is making an image.
It’s not all tables or hearts that God can write His image upon, it must be fleshy or spiritual hearts and not carnal hearts. There is no man who got born again with a fleshy heart; one needs to go for it by submitting to a process that will convert the stony heart to being flesh. Christ is the flesh of God. For God to get the heart of flesh, He needs to give the substances of Christ to that heart.
God will not write on any table or heart that is not Christ. So the purpose of the doctrine of Christ is to finally give a man the flesh that God can write upon. The heart of flesh is one that is alive to God, that can only yield to God but dead to the devil. It’s a heart of flesh to God but stone to Satan. Similarly, we can have a heart that is stony to God but fleshy to Satan. Some people are so sensitive to the things of this world but they immediately become cold and stiff at the things of God. Such people have Satan’s flesh. God will have to do a lot to cultivate His flesh within us, to produce the table that is worthy of God’s laws.
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” (Ezek. 36:26). The reason for the washing of water by the word is to create a new man in the soul. You have changed a man when you change his heart. The heart becomes new by obeying the doctrine of Christ from faith to hope. A believer who has attained hope has attained purity. A pure man is one who is full of the hope of inheriting Christ. However, God wants to give more than a pure heart and He does this by giving the new spirit to that heart.
One needs a new heart to have a new spirit. However, a new spirit is higher than a new heart. New spirit is a spirit in Christ among other spirits that are in Him. New spirit is the greatest law in Christ. “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:” (1 Timothy 1:5). The pure heart is the first contact to charity. The pure heart started from faith until hope. A good conscience isn’t a law but an attitude that faith develops. But faith unfeigned is the first law to arrive at pure heart. Then the end of this commandment is charity. The heart for the practice of charity is a pure heart. A man cannot practice charity if his heart is not pure.
God is always looking for hearts because He also has a heart. God is always looking for hearts that can do everlasting works. “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” (Ezek. 36:27). “My spirit” here speaks of everlasting laws. A man who has everlasting laws will be able to walk with God, and such will develop or harvest a God-sense thereby. One of the beauties of walking in God’s statutes is that you will harvest how God thinks or His judgment.
The thoughts of God are high but a man who walks in His statutes will get to a point where he will begin to think in an everlasting pattern. Such a one needs to then do or obey the demands of those judgments. Without doing them, you cannot dwell in the everlasting land. “And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” (Ezek. 36:28).
“I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you.” (Ezekiel 36:29). This corn is manna, which will be given after a man has been saved. This cleansing is different from that in verse 25; this is a salvation from all uncleanness and it is irreversible.
“And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.” (Ezek. 36:30). The meals of reward are the corn and the Tree of Life. These two things are the meals in reward. The first meal is the corn, or the hidden manna. There is a difference between manna and the Tree of Life. The corn is not a fruit that you eat without the seeds, like mango. The corn is such that you eat the seed.
The hidden manna and the Tree of Life are the two immortalities. One is the seed, the other is flesh. The Tree of Life is multi-cotyledon. It’s a seed with different trees just like the Holyghost that has seven Spirits inside Him. It’s a terrible tree. Hidden manna is an immortal substance, so also is the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is manifest, while the manna is hidden.
If Adam had acquired enough stature to partake of the Tree of Life, it could have given him a higher sight or thought pattern. You do not eat the Tree of Life and you will be dull. The Tree impacts life into you. When you eat of the Tree of Life, you will see. There are things to see in the realm of God when we eat of the Tree of Life; they are things that men cannot see. God is preparing us for eternal sight, the eyes of reward. There is a way the Rewarder thinks; there is a way the rewarded would see. The sight of the Only Begotten Son will be born in us.
Revelation 22 is a clear picture of reward. “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:” (Rev. 22:3). The Throne of God cannot be in the city if the city has not been caught up to God. When the Throne of God is in the city, it means that the city has inherited the Throne. The Throne of God should be in you. Just the way a man will inherit God, he should inherit the Throne.
In the world to come, we will vividly see a community of saints in whom the throne of God has been expressed. However, there is going to be an invisible operation of the Throne on earth. God has found a people who will bring the Throne down by their worship and service to Him. The end of our worship is the Throne of God. We should serve God until we sit on the Throne.
“And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.” (Rev. 22:4). This name is not an everlasting name but an eternal name, which is called “my new name” (Rev. 3:12). God has two names; He is the everlasting and Eternal God. Contained in the name of the Eternal God is the least name to the greatest name.
“Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:” (Eph. 1:21). Every name here speaks of Cherubims and Seraphims, but Jesus has the highest name even in the world to come. This name that is above every name is a name of reward and there are portions of that name that will be given to people. That name has not yet been given. This name has names embedded in it and the one who bears the highest form of it is our Lord Jesus.
“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:” (Philipp. 2:9). We can never have the same name with our Lord Jesus because He bears the exact name that God bears. Though, there are other inheritances in that eternal name, there is one that makes you the sole inheritor or owner of Eternal Life. There is no other name that creatures will pray in but the name of our Lord Jesus. Every knee shall bow, not just at the word “Jesus” but to His person. We should all follow our Lord Jesus because He is the one that every name bows to. We cannot have that portion of Eternal name that will make lesser creatures to do things in our name. One of the character or identity of Jesus’ reward is what makes us pray in His name. The Father will only accept us into His Throne because of our Lord Jesus, and nobody has that kind of name that He bears.
It’s good that these things are thoroughly taught because of evil spirits. A time will come when we grow and increase, and Satan will come to lie to us that since we now have a name, we don’t need to pray in Jesus’ name anymore. That is a lie, and we must never take such a thought.
We must understand that we won’t get to a point where angels will worship us. Angels can serve us but not a service that has the content of worship in it. Angels can minister to us, but they won’t worship us. Worship is submissive to a particular image in the heart and that’s the image that our Lord Jesus carries. There are only two beings that angels think of: He who sits on the Throne and His Lamb (Rev. 5:13). That’s the name to worship. One of the powers of that name is that it calls for worship.
“And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.” (Rev. 5:13). We can see here that every creature only worshipped God and the Lamb. Even though the Lamb is our brother, there is a way He is constructed that makes Him different from us. The reward on our Lord Jesus is full. We will receive a fullness of reward but it is going to be a different fullness.
There is a kind of reward that God cannot just give to anybody. The reward on Christ would not have been given to Adam because the person that came to earth had the name before he condescended into flesh. Logos who became Jesus was not a creature, He is a Creator. Our Lord Jesus is only teaching us how to come to God. Jesus is a different species who came into earth, rose up and went back to where He came from. We were not there before creation, so our Lord Jesus came to raise us up.
There are names of reward that can be given to us but there is one name that Jesus has that no one knows or can bear. It’s only Jesus’ name that all creatures should pay obeisance to. Jesus is the one that should be worshipped because He is a God. We would be made a 'God' that would never be worshipped. Angels will not worship us; they were made to worship God and the Lamb because They are the rewarders. The reward is with Them and They give it.
A time came when Lucifer saw himself as a 'God' and said that God is not making the seat of the Throne available to any other. Satan felt that God wanted to be the only champion. Selfishness and ambitions can dull a man’s mind, such that he will no longer be reasoning well. Worship from angels only belongs to the first begotten. Angels will minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation, but they won’t worship them. We can delegate assignments and angels will carry it out, and this is not even a thing we would do by pride. The manchild who was caught up to the Throne of God is not the first begotten but sons who Jesus raised. You cannot get to the Throne except you are caught up to God. You must get to God first, then the Throne.
“And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.” (Rev. 22:4). The hidden manna, Tree of Life etc are in this face. Everything about reward will be communicated from this face. This face moved heaven and earth away, and it can communicate the things of God. This face is the face of reward, not an everlasting face. So, it means there is an attention we will pay to face when we have finished everlasting works. It’s only an overcomer that can relate with this face. These servants are the one who will be caught up to God, then they will see God’s face.
The season of giving reward is quicker because there is no devil that will tempt one in that season. Satan fights works but he cannot fight reward. The dragon did not see when God was about to reward the man child. But the dragon saw and warred with the remnant of the seed who was still keeping the commandments of everlasting life (Rev. 12:17).
A man can overcome the dragon with everlasting life, after which he will receive the reward. However, such a man will yet serve God after receiving the reward. We will overcome Satan and then worship God. This worship is seeing God’s face. There is a light of God that communicates reward. This is the face and ministry of God for reward. We are going above the curriculum by mercy.
The reward is not just something that happens instantaneously, because nothing comes from God except by understanding. Scriptures said, He will give us an understanding and how to use things of reward (1 John 5:20). There is yet a season of growth in reward, it is a growth without hindrance or the temptation of the enemy. This growth is without a challenge and that is why the season of reward is quick.