Spirit of God—Power of God #2

Fred R. Coulter—January 10, 2009

  - PDF | Audio | [Up]

Let's understand that all power emanates from God Who is Holy and all powerful. There are varying degrees and kinds of power, and in order for there to be life, there has to be power from God. Let's see the power that Jesus has.

There are two words in the Greek that have been translated in the King James as power—One is 'exousia' that means authority. That is, you have God's authority to do thus and such.

Matthew 28:18: "And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority… [the King James has translated power, which is incorrect] …in heaven and on earth has been given to Me'"—so that you can exercise power. Unless you have authority to do something, you can't exercise power.

Let's use an example: Though you may like to arrest someone because you see them doing something, you have not been given authority to exercise that power. So, you must first have authority, then you exercise power.

Hebrews 1:1: "God, Who spoke to the fathers at different times in the past and in many ways by the prophets, has spoken to us in these last days by His Son, Whom He has appointed heir of all things…" (vs 1-2)—each and everything, or you can say, if you want to use another word, the universe, which that includes everything within the universe.

"…by Whom also He made the ages" (v 2). There's another thing that I have translated, which is into the ages of ages, which is in the Greek: 'eis aion ton aionon,' which I translated, into the ages of eternity. David Sealoff to task for that, but let me ask:

• Are we in the age of man right now? Yes!
• Who created man? Jesus!
• Is this age part of eternity? Yes!

There are ages within eternity, timeframes!

• Was there the age of the angels? Yes, until Lucifer rebelled!
• Will there be the age of the Kingdom of God? Yes!
• Will God also unfold His plan for the rest of eternity? Yes!

That, I feel, is a correct translation, into the ages of eternity, because it's going to continue on and on and on—regardless of the various subdivisions of God's plan—within the framework of eternity.

Verse 3: "Who, being the brightness of His glory and the exact image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His own power…" This word comes from the Greek 'dunamis' that means power, from which we have the English word dynamite. We'll talk about power and how that comes.

"…when He had by Himself purged our sins…" (v 3). Let's just summarize this for just a bit. We'll go back and see how God made man because God is intimately involved with mankind. This is His creation that He is working with now. He's doing it in a particular way. He's not calling all men now, because all men don't want to. So, He's calling those who will, and those who love God.

Since God created all human beings, we'll see that He is still creating human beings in the womb. That's why women hold a very special place in God's plan, because they are the custodians of future life. If all women understood that when they start reaching womanhood, then there would be, I am sure, far less promiscuity and there would be virtually no abortions. God is working directly with the 'spirit of man,' beginning with the time of conception, to form that new human life. Everything that has power within our bodies, has got to come from the spirit of man, "…by the word of His own power." Therefore, He alone is God:

• since He created us
• since He sentenced Adam and Eve and their descendants to have 'the law of sin and death' in them because Adam and Eve sinned
• since He made them, He alone can redeem them

Nothing less than Jesus Christ, Who was God coming in the flesh and offering His body as a sacrifice, can pay for the sins of all mankind. An animal can't because an animal is a lesser being. Another human being can't because another human being, IF a human being could be perfect—given 'the law of sin and death' within them they can't—could only redeem one other human being. That would be called life-for-life ransom. But the Creator of allhuman beings had to come so He could die and do it on His own, but yet have the power of God with Him to accomplish that.

Furthermore, one other thing, which is hard for some people to grasp: Though Jesus was sinless and never sinned, in order to overcome human nature, He had to take human nature upon Himself, which included the law of death. He was subject to death. He died. In order to overcome sin, how could He overcome sin without having also taken the part of human nature that is the law of sin within His members and yet not sin? That's how He can overcome sin. Otherwise, Jesus just could have gone through life:

• without any temptation
• without any difficulties
• without any sorrow
• He would have come to the end
• He would have been crucified
• His experience as a human being would have been very limited

There are some theologians who will take us to task over that. When you come to a verse like that in Heb. 1, there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.

Romans 8:1: "Consequently, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus…" That means:

• you've repented
• you've been baptized
• you've received the Holy Spirit of God
• you're yielded to God
• you're walking in His way
• you're repenting of your sins as they come along

Because of God's grace, you can do that.

"…who are not walking according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit; because the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has delivered me from the law of sin and death" (vs 1-2).

How does that do that? The "…law of the 'Spirit of Life…" is the working of the Holy Spirit in your mind, the uniting of God's Holy Spirit with your spirit in your mind! That delivers you from sin. How does it do it? The Holy Spirit leads you and you become conscious of sinful thoughts! Whereas, before being converted, sinful thoughts were very natural. As we said before, the average person lies three times in ten minutes.

What happens with the Holy Spirit of God? You become conscious of sin within! That's where God's Spirit wants you to be: conscious of it so you can repent of it so that He can clean, mold and develop your mind spiritually! Every sin and evil deed that you've ever done or thought of has been recorded in your brain. You need to have it spiritually cleansed with the 'washing of the water by the Word.' When that's happening, there's no condemnation.

• Christ is there
• Christ will forgive
• He will lead you to repentance

If you go astray too far, He'll eventually make things in such a way in your life, whatever circumstances may be, that you will desire to come back, like the prodigal son. There's no condemnation!

Verse 3: "For what was impossible for the law to do…" Just understand this very simply. No law anywhere has the power to make you do something! The law only has the power to tell you what to do. You shall not:

• commit adultery
• murder
• bear false witness
• steal

The law cannot make you quit adultery. You have to choose not to do it. So, the law is weak inasmuch as it cannot make you do something. The law is good because it gives you direction.

"…in that it was weak through the flesh, God, having sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh…" (v 3). The Greek means "…in the likeness…" of sin and of flesh! How can He be made "…in the likeness of sin…" without having the law of sin and death within His own fleshly members, while He was a human being, to completely overcome it? This means, "…in the likeness…"—'homoiomati'—in the exact sameness!

"…and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (v 3). His flesh; His own flesh; He "…condemned sin in the flesh…" because He had to carry the law of sin an death within Him. Maybe that will help you understand the greatness of what Jesus did, more than anything else. That's why you can go to Him as High Priest and you can confess your sins to Him. He knows it.

Hebrews 4:12: "For the Word of God… [that can be just the words that you're reading] …is living and powerful…" Jesus said, 'The words that I speak to you, they are Spirit and they are Life.

Also, the Word of God printed, that we read, "…is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword…" (v 12). When you sin and you're reading the Word of God, and you read that you have done wrong, it convicts you. There is a spiritual interaction between:

• what the words convey
• your mind
• the spirit of man that is in you
• God's Spirit working with you to lead you to repentance

"…piercing even to the dividing asunder of both soul and spirit, and of both the joints and the marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart" (v 12).

How much wiggle room does that give you? All human beings like a little fudge factor! All human beings like a little wiggle room. That's not how it's intended to work.

Verse 13: "And there is not a created thing that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and laid bare before the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account." Laid bare reminds me of the sacrifice in Gen. 15 where you had:

• the goat
• the ram
• the heifer
• the two turtledoves

Abraham had to take those three animals and split them down the middle and lay each part over next to each other so there was a path for God to walk through. That's what reminds me of laid bare. You're just cut down the middle, sliced open and you can see everything. God does not do this to make us fearful. God does this so that we can love Him and repent.

Verse 14: "Having, therefore, a great High Priest, Who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, we should hold fast the confession of our faith. For we do not have a high priest who cannot empathize with our weaknesses, but One Who was tempted in all things according to the likeness of our own temptations; yet, He was without sin" (vs 14-15).

I do not believe that He could have been tempted if He did not have 'the law of sin and death' in Him. How could you tempt Him? You couldn't!

Therefore, here's the sum result of it. Not to sit there and think, 'Oh, no, all hope is lost.' NO! All hope is there and what He's relating to you is that human beings, yes indeed, cut off from God, are in a hopeless situation. There is no escape, but God has rescued you from that and He has given you an opportunity through Him. That's what He's talking about, here.

Verse 16: "Therefore, we should come with boldness to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Think about that. The One Who was Creator of all mankind came down and did this for us to complete His creation. That's something! Keep that in mind when you come before God.

What does it mean to walk in the flesh? You're just concerned about:

• carnal, physical things
• you don't care anything about spiritual things
• you don't care anything about God
• you're interested in everything that the world is in

To walk according to the Spirit begins by:

• wondering about God
• where is God
• seeking God
• beginning to apply yourself to find out about the Truth of God

That's the beginning of walking in the Spirit. When you come to repentance and you're baptized and receive the Holy Spirit, then God's Spirit leads you to help you overcome and to give you the mind of Christ.

When it says that 'He Himself purged our sins,' let's see what He did.

Hebrews 1:3: "…when He had by Himself purged our sins sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high"—that is God the Father.

Now let's go back to the beginning—Gen. 1—and everything that God made:

• He made the earth
• He spoke and it came into being
• He spoke and there was light
• He spoke and the land came forth
• He spoke and the waters were filled with the fish
• He spoke and commanded and the animals were created

Man was different! He didn't go up to a clump of earth and say, 'Dust, become a man.' He didn't treat us like that. We're intimately from creation involved in God's plan, whether we know it or not. Here's what He did:

Genesis 1:26: "And God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of heaven and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that crawls upon the earth.' And God created man in His own image…" (vs 26-27)—for what purpose? To become like Him! That's the rest of the story of the Bible.

"…in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female" (v 27).

We will see the intimate relationship that God has with man and still does in a little different way, but people don't realize it. This is a detailed description of what God related in Gen. 1:

Genesis 2:7: "Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground…" Formed him, made him, shaped him; intimately involved with him. We are made in His image. Jesus told Thomas, 'If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father.' Isn't that something!

I also believe that God made the various monkeys, chimpanzees and apes nearly like man to prove a point: They do not have the spirit of man, they do not have the ability of man and God made them limited so that man would understand that he is special and man has mistaken that to say, 'Oh, we evolved.' Not so!

The Spirit in Man:

The special handiwork of God, of forming. What did He do to create Eve? He said, 'All right, Adam. I'm going to put you to sleep and I'm going to do a little handiwork.' He took out a rib and formed a woman. We know that he understood what was going on because, what did he say after God brought the woman to him? God must have told him what he was going to do.

Verse 23: "And Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.'" So, God formed both man and woman for His purpose. Man and woman in marriage also participate in the creation of God by bringing forth children.

Let's talk a little bit about children, how they are made and how we are formed, and so forth. I really like to read Elihu's response to Job. That's really quite eloquent, but we won't get into all of that. After he saw that they didn't answer and his wrath was kindled:

Job 32:6: "And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said, 'I am young, and you are very old; therefore I was afraid, and dared not show you my opinion. I said, "The aged should speak, and the multitude of years should teach wisdom." But there is a spirit in man…'" (v 6-8). That spirit is what:

• gives him life
• gives him intellect
• empowers the brain to work

"'…and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding'" (v 8).

Job 33:4: "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." You need the spirit of man, which comes from God, and at the moment of conception, that's when the spirit of man begins to work. It sets in the pattern that God established now, to create a brand new life. If the spirit of man leaves, he is dead. Today, they can measure that. When they say they're brain dead, there's no activity at all.

James 2:26: "For as the body without the spirit is dead, in the same way also, faith without works is dead." It is the spirit that gives life, as Jesus said. This spirit of man is in and connected to our brain. You can't see it because it's spirit, but let's see what it does.

1-Corinthians 2:6: "Now we speak wisdom among the spiritually mature; however, it is not the wisdom of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing. Rather, we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom that God foreordained before the ages unto our glory which not one of the rulers of this world has known (for if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory); but according as it is written, 'The eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.' But God has revealed them to us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things—eventhe deep things of God…. [the Holy Spirit of God in this particular case] …For who among men understands the things of man except by the spirit of man which is in him?" (vs 6-11).

God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life and probably breathed in the spirit of man at the same time and formed him with His own hands. The same way with Eve, breathed into her the spirit of life. Whenever there is a newly conceived child, the Spirit of God automatically gives the spirit of man at that time and sets in motion all of the things that automatically take place to create the new life within the mother. He does that with the instructions of what we would call genes and chromosomes. You have the spirit of man, which then empowers the body, right from the very start. The things of God, God reveals by His Spirit to us.

The Human Brain:

Let's talk a little bit about us as human beings. God has given us the fantastic thing of what we call the human brain. It is the most marvelous creation, in the flesh, of anything that God has created. Our brains were designed to learn continuously through our whole lives. How you think, how you speak, everything is impressed upon your brain and is made to record, and everything that you do is recorded in your brain. That's why you've heard of you have to 'unlearn' something.

It doesn't stay there as perpetual memory all the time, because you can flush out some of those memories. That's why don't think upon things that you don't like or don't want, flush it out of your system. That's also part of cleansing your brain. You have a part in it by denying those thoughts and asking God to help you overcome those thoughts. Nevertheless, you can remember, sights, sounds, and smells even back to when you were a child.

The brain is empowered by the spirit of man and it gives the power to the brain. The brain then is able to be activated through the nervous system, through the hormones and through the whole structure of the body so that now you have power in your body through these other subsidiary things that are part of the body:

• you have breathing
• you have blood
• you have digestion
• you have the lymph system, which is more elaborate than the blood system

The lymph system is most important in cleansing out toxins and keeping your body pure:

• you have sight
• you have touch
• you have feel
• you have automatic things that you do

I can talk and move my fingers and I don't have to direct my brain and say, 'Move finger one, move my thumb, move my index finger and all that.' It does it automatically. You train the brain to do things and many of them are just automatic. This is how man is special to God, because He made us. He gave us the spirit of man so that when we receive the Spirit of God, that unites with the spirit of man, we become the begotten children of God. That's quite an operation!

All of this is without seeing one bit of evidence, except:

• you can take the pulse
• you can measure the temperature
• you can take brain waves

But you can't really see the spirit. You can see the result of the power that it puts into the body. This is why, with the Holy Spirit of God and growing and overcoming, that God is intimately also involved with that; because we receive power from God the Father begetting us in our mind, so that we can be recreated spiritually in the very image of God. Then at the resurrection, we now have a spirit body and a spirit mind. That's quite a thing! All of that is accomplished by the power of God.

The Angelic Realm:

Let's talk about angels and a little bit about demons, Revelation 5:11: "And I saw and I heard the voices of many angels around the throne, and the voices of the living creatures and the elders, and thousands of thousands."

How many angels are there? I don't know! We're told in another place that whenever one sinner repents, the angels of God rejoice and He also said, 'Don't despise one of these little ones because God's angel is watching over them.'

Verse 12: "Saying with a loud voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain to receive power…'" That doesn't say 'spirit,' because He is a spirit Being. Now He receives power to do things and authority to do things.

"'…and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory and blessing'" (v 12). We have the throne of God. Here we have all of the angels who were not there when John first saw the throne of God, now they're all around there and they're all singing and praising God. The angels have their work to do to help men.

We're going to see that there is a spiritual angelic realm that assists God in carrying out His will among men.

2-Kings 6:15: "And the servant of the man of God arose early and went out. And, behold, an army surrounded the city, and horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, 'Alas, my master! What shall we do?'…. [he's talking to Elisha, the prophet] …And he answered, 'Do not fear, for those with us are more than those with them'… [he saw Elisha and himself] …And Elisha prayed and said, 'I pray You, LORD, open his eyes so that he may see.' And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (vs 15-17).

There's a whole angelic army on the side of Elisha to fight the Syrians. That's how the Syrians were defeated. A mountain full of horses and chariots, there are some angelic beings that are like horses. What do we have with the four cherubim? One is like a man, one is like an eagle, one is like a lion and the fourth one is like an ox! Don't ask me to explain those; I can't! It just describes to us some of the angelic things that are there.

Angels can also appear as men because Paul wrote in Hebrews that to be careful entertaining strangers because you may 'entertain angels unaware.' I don't know if I've done that or not, but I can tell you that there've been times I know that there's been an angel that has rescued me and saved me from things, even clear back when I was a kid. There's the whole angelic realm that is out there.

Let's look at the situation concerning demons because there's the angelic realm of demons. We find in Rev. 12 where Satan and his angels fought against Michael and his angels. There are spirit battles that take place. Let's see how that works. The demons can do no more than God will allow. They must have permission! God does not want us to be afraid of demons at all because He has given us power—'dunamis'—over all the demons.

Job 1:6: "Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD. And Satan also came among them. And the LORD said to Satan, 'From where do you come?' Then Satan answered the LORD and said, 'From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it'" (vs 6-7).

Satan is a spirit being and can manifest himself in a certain form, but fallen angels cannot manifest themselves in the form of men. They are called apparitions.

Here Satan is going to and fro. What is he doing? Walking up and down in the earth looking for anyone he can devour, that is to spiritually cause a lot of problems for them! Satan has certain powers:

• he got permission from God to do certain things
• he was able to call down fire from heaven.
• he was able to rouse up the Sebians to come and take off Job's children, kidnap them, take the cattle and everything.
• he was able to afflict Job with boils from his head to his toe,

But Satan couldn't take Job's life! We also know that Satan, the devil, is the father of liars.

(go to the next track)

This is why we are not to be afraid of any of the demonic powers. Jesus is sending 70 out to do some things:

Luke 10:16: "The one who hears you hears Me; and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and the one who rejects Me rejects Him Who sent Me."

I've heard preachers use this in several ways. 'If you reject what I tell you, then you're rejecting Christ and rejecting God the Father.' Only if he is telling you the Truth of God, not as a prerogative of leverage of authority over people to put them in fear.

Verse 17: "Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us through Your name.'" Sometimes you may encounter a demonic experience. What do you do? You do the same thing as Jesus! You rebuke it in the name of Jesus Christ and tell it, 'Be gone and don't come back!'

We've had instances where we've cast demons out of people and cast them out of homes. There are such things as haunted houses. They mustobey. They have no alternative. If you are weak and say, 'Would you please go. I hope you go.' It isn't going to happen! You use all the authority of the name of Jesus Christ and you tell them, 'Be gone! Get out!' So, the 70 were delighted that that happened.

Verse 18: "And He said to them, 'I was watching when Satan fell from heaven like lightning…. [when he fell in the rebellion] …Behold, I give you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall injure you in any way'" (vs 18-19). We don't have to worry about the demons.

We're going to see that as we get into the events at the end-time, there're going to be a lot of demons loosed out that are still held in the abyss that are not out on the earth right now.

Verse 20: "Yet, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." That's something! Think about that! God takes note and writes it down in the Book of Life., That's why:

• we are not to be fearful
• we are to be inspired
• we are to know that God's calling is special

and not to be held up as something to other people in the world; 'I belong to God. Who do you belong to?' NO! You don't do that! You show that you do by your love and by your fruits and what you do. Every single one that God has called is important to God.

• Why call someone if you aren't important to God?
• Why apply the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to you, to make it available to you, unless God loves you and wants you to repent and to accept His gracious goodness towards you?

That's something! That's why I gave the sermon series Why God Hates Religion. Religion is to bind people to a certain set of standards that different people have conceived stealing a lot from God to make it look authentic, and then exercising authority over people that God never intended them to exercise over people.

Luke 8:27: "And when He went out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had been possessed by demons for a long time; and he was not wearing any clothes, and did not dwell in a house, but in the tombs. Now when he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down in front of Him, and said with a loud voice, 'What do You have to do with me, Jesus, Son of God the Most High? I beseech You, do not torment me.' For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For many times it had seized him, and each time he was restrained, being bound with chains and fetters; but after breaking the bonds, he was driven by the demon into the desert. And Jesus asked it, saying, 'What is your name?' And it said, 'Legion,' because many demons had entered into him. Then it begged Him that He would not command them to go away into the abyss" (vs 27-31).

The Abyss:

The abyss is the prison or the holding tank, as it were, for demon spirits. They asked to go into the swine. So, Jesus said, 'Go!' They went into the swine, and as soon as they entered the swine they ran down the steep right into the Sea of Galilee and died. Let's see something concerning the abyss. It's called the bottomless pit in the King James.

• Where is the abyss? I don't know! The Bible doesn't tell us!
• Is the abyss like the Bermuda Triangle? No!

I think the Bermuda Triangle is a strong magnetic field at that particular place in the Atlantic and likewise clear over in the far western Pacific, you have a Devil's Triangle over there, which is almost directly opposite. It doesn't tell us where the abyss is. It doesn't look like it's in the ocean.

Rev. 8 begins with God's involvement with the seven angels and the plagues of the seven trumpets that the angels have.

Revelation 9:1: "And the fifth angel sounded his trumpet; and I saw a star… [that's probably an angel in this particular case] …that had fallen from heaven to the earth, and there was given to him the key to the bottomless abyss. And he opened the bottomless abyss; and there went up smoke from the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the pit. Then locusts came onto the earth from the smoke; and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was said to them that they should not damage the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only the men who did not have the seal of God in their foreheads. And it was given to them that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man" (vs 1-5).

Verse 11: "And they have over them a king, the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but the name he has in Greek is Apollyon." Those are names of Satan. There are demons which are not roaming the earth right now. When this takes place 'all hell is going to break loose.' That's true! All hell is going to break loose!

Revelation 20:1: "Then I saw an angel descending from heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain in his hand. And he took hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. Then he cast him into the abyss, and locked him up, and sealed the abyss over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were fulfilled; and after that it is ordained that he be loosed for a short time" (vs 1-3).

There's one other place that we can look at, Revelation 9:13: "And the sixth angel sounded his trumpet; and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God; and it said to the sixth angel, who had the trumpet, 'Loose the four angels who are bound in the great river Euphrates'" (vs 13-14). Apparently, somewhere along the Euphrates there are four demons that are confined to that place.

Verse 15: "Then the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were loosed, so that they might kill a third of men." That is, open the way for the armies to come in to kill a third of men. That's something! There's the demonic world.

Spiritual Things:

• there are spirit beings
• there is God the Father and Jesus Christ
• we are going to become Their sons and daughters through the operation of conversion and the resurrection
• there are angelic beings in addition to the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders
• there are in heaven things that have been created out of spirit much like we have physical things that are created out of the dust of the earth

The Physical:

• we have matter—liquid, gas, solid
• we have power, likened to energy
  • electronics
  • magnetics
  • chemical

God accomplishes the things that He does by His power and there are different aspects of God's Spirit that are not necessarily God's Holy Spirit.

Questions on a variety of subjects:

• the spirit of man; when life becomes life

Where it says that the 'life is in the blood' that is not talking about the spirit of man but rather it is talking about the physical, chemical life that the blood brings. The physical, chemical life is what the Bible calls the soul; 'the soul that sins, it can die' (Ezek. 18).

The spirit of man would have to be given right at conception. There is a book that says that at the instant of conception there is a miraculous thing that takes place. The sperm penetrates the egg and the egg immediately, miraculously puts up a shield so no more sperm can penetrate it. That's a miracle in itself. When that happens there is purported to be an instantaneous 480,000-volt of electricity. I would have to say that what they measure a volt of electricity has got to be the spirit of man to begin the creation of that new human life!

The Jews say that since 'the life is in the blood' and there's no blood for fifteen days, it's okay to abort for the first two weeks. That sounds like a typical, Jewish legal argument around the fact of life. You are who you are at the time of conception! From there on, the Spirit of God—which is manifested not as the Spirit of God but the spirit of man that God has given—directs all the DNA and RNA to create the new human being.

This is just as much a modern description of life as we could describe today, Psalm 139:14: "I will praise You, for I am awesomely and wonderfully made; Your works are marvelous and my soul knows it very well. My substance was not hidden from You when I was made in secret…" (vs 14-15).

The very first conception and then the subsequent division of cells, even today in scientific knowledge is called 'substance.' That was David's 'substance' to begin making him as a person.

"…and intricately formed in the lowest parts of the earth…." (v 15). That is symbolic for the womb. David says here very clearly that he was made in secret, God did it, and intricately formed me, that is, You, God—being the subject—intricately formed me:

Verse 16: "Your eyes did see my substance, yet, being unformed…" Whatever David was at that point it was the one to become David, yet to be formed through the process of growth.

"…and in Your book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet, there were none of them" (v 16).

What do they have today in their scientific investigation of human genes? There's a book called Genome by Matt Ridley. I forget where it's from, but someone sent a DVD to me called The Ghost in Your Genes by Horizon, a BBC Documentary {youtube.com}. They thought when they had numbered and named all the genes that they had it down pat, but there's so many intricate variations within the genes coming from:

• grandmother
• grandfather
• grandfather, once removed, twice removed
• grandmother three time removed

—that affect the current person. I thought that was really interesting. It's called The Ghost in Your Genes So, it's still David.

Verse 17: "How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!" God had to think out, plan out and make all of this possible. I tell you what, when you look at a new born baby, and especially a mother after she's carried it, that has got to be a tremendous, awesome, experience to understand that here is a new life created. It's God's purpose to have many, many human beings, though He's not calling them all right now, from the point of view that there is the second resurrection. Take a pen and make a little point on your paper and that's the size of what you were when you were created. Isn't that something?

Here's one that science doesn't even know, yet, with all that they're supposed to know. Jesus said that you put a seed in the ground, you water it, you watch it day and night and it grows, but you don't know how it grows. They have yet to figure out why, when you put a seed in the ground and give it water and there is enough nutrients in the ground, that it will start to grow. They've even taken wheat out of the pyramids in Egypt, which was 2, 3 or 4-thousand years old, plant the wheat and it grows. We can use that as a parallel. It doesn't matter when the human beings lived, if they died, God can resurrect them. He knows all about them and He'll take care of the matter.

Ecclesiastes 11:5: "As you do not know what is the way of the spirit…" That is how God's Spirit works or even how the spirit in man works, any spirit of all. You don't know the way that any spirit works at all—do we?

"…or how the bones grow in the pregnant woman's womb; even so you do not know the works of God Who makes all" (v 5). There's just a lot of thing we don't know.

Ecclesiastes 3:19[transcriber's correction]: "For that which happens to the sons of men also happens to beasts—even one thing happens to them…." Remember the DVD In the Womb? Now they show animals in the womb. They've shown twins in the womb. I don't know if they've shown triplets. Now they show dogs in the womb, cats in the womb, elephants in the womb. God made the same process for them to be created. There has to be a spirit of life for animals, who have brains. It talks here, a little bit about the spirit of the beast.

"…As the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they all have one breath; so that a man has no advantage over a beast; for all is vanity" (vs 19). That is without God you have no advantage above a beast!

Verse 20: "All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all return to dust again. Who knows the spirit of man whether it goes upward…" (vs 20-21). You can't tell, it goes back to God. It must go upward, but you can't tell.

"…and the spirit of the beast whether it goes downward to the earth?" (v 21). At least they understood there was a spirit of animals. Can't tell you any more than that. Don't ask me about it, I can't tell you.

I think a dog is a good example. A dog is a wonderful pet, but it is a dog it is not a human being. If you watch Caesar Malan on Dog Whisperer, he tells you, 'Don't treat dogs like human beings because you ruin them. They have to be a 'pack leader,' because dogs were made that way.' I've noticed that those people who treat their dogs like human beings have trouble controlling them because a dog doesn't know what to do when treated like a human being, because it's not a human being. It just barks, wags its tail, pants its tongue and that's a dog. One thing about a dog:

• a dog is very loyal
• a dog is very loving
• a dog will be very beneficial to the mental health of people who are depressed

They use this for prisoners and the mentally ill, and it helps them a lot. One thing they've found out about some of the prisoners, they put them on some of these work farms where they have to work with horses and cattle. The prisoners find out: Hey, you got to control them. That teaches them, 'I got to control me.' There's something about it there.

• Life is in the blood, that's what the Bible tells us

If you cut off blood to you hand, it's going to die. If blood stops flowing in your body, you're dead. You may not be brain dead at that particular point, but that's soon to follow. You can be brain dead and the rest of you will die. However, they can keep a brain dead person on artificial respiration to keep:

• the heart going
• the lungs going
• the blood flowing

They do this long enough so that they can get the organs and transplant them. The life in the blood is what the Bible talks about as the soul, the living being. That would have to be the soul, because the spirit of man gives the life and the power to the brain. The brain activates all the rest of the body and everything in the body when it's given breath.

When a person is brain dead that is probably an indication that the spirit is gone. There's nothing 'upstairs,' no activity, because the spirit of man empowers the brain. So, if the brain is dead, the person is dead. I think that's a general test that they use now—brain dead and you're officially dead.

If they keep the body alive temporarily through artificial means, though they're brain dead, does that mean you are alive? It means that the brain is dead, but the body is artificially kept alive. It's artificially keeping alive. That doesn't mean really alive. It's just the rest of your body is able to sustain itself for a while if they can keep up the breath, the temperature and the blood.

• What about death and near death experiences?

Let's call them near death experiences. You see lights and things like this. They claim they've seen lights. That happens when you're knocked unconscious, too. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're visiting the heavenly realm; it just means that when you're close to death your brain does funny things, because it's not functioning properly. People can recover from that because the spirit hasn't left them entirely. We have the instance where the spirit came back into someone who died. So, if the spirit has not left them, I think they can be revived.

I got sick on a plane after I ate a tuna sandwich that I shouldn't have eaten. It was at five in the morning when I got the tuna sandwich. I look at the tuna and the guy stirred it up and I said, 'Oh, no! It was out there overnight. It may have been there the day before. Then he got some of the mayonnaise and stirred it up and I said, 'Ohhh!' I ate it because I was hungry and when I got on the plane I had an upset stomach. I was leaning back in the seat and all of a sudden I saw a pink background with yellow things going every which way. I thought, oh no, what did I eat? Needless to say, I made the trek back to the little place on the plane a little later. I was close to vomiting, but didn't vomit. I tell you, stay away from two or three day-old looking tuna fish when you see it.

You can have different things like this happen to you under unusual circumstances. That doesn't mean that you have visited heaven. That doesn't mean any of those things. I am sure that there are demons that come along and try and convince people that, yes, they went into heaven and they saw their relatives and they saw all this other thing. Since no one is in heaven and when the dead die, they know nothing, these near death experiences can create some of those phenomenon, but you cannot rely upon that as proof of anything, because it'll be different from person to person.

• faith as the grain of a mustard seed

This is the case, not the mustard seed in this particular case, but the cursing of the fig tree and its shriveling up. They were coming back into the temple area.

Mark 11:21: "Then Peter remembered and said to Him, 'Look, Master! The fig tree that You cursed has dried up.' And Jesus answered and said to them, 'Have faith from God'" (vs 21-22). This is interesting in the Greek: Have God's faith, which really means the faith that comes from God, which has to be through His Spirit.

Whenever we ask anything, there are also other conditions to go with it. Is it His will? Is it something that really needs to be done? Nevertheless, He says:

Verse 23: "For truly I say to you, whoever shall say to this mountain, 'Be taken away and be cast into the sea,' and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he said will take place, he shall have whatever he shall say." That shows that our request to God can be virtually unlimited but it has to be within the realm of His will. There's one thing harder to move than a mountain—changing the human mind is harder than moving a mountain.

If it would serve the purpose of God to do so, it will happen. Also, in praying, for example: If you're caught in a situation that there are some people who are actually turning against you in such a way that they are your enemy, you don't know what to do and you ask God to take care of them, my experience has been that somewhere down the road, God takes care of them. We don't have to execute vengeance. We don't have to get mad or angry about it. We can just say, 'God, they're in you hands. You do with them according to your will. You promised you would fight our battles for us. What can we do to stand up against them?' Then God lets them fall into their own trap. It may take a little process of time before it happens, but I've seen it over and over again through the years.

• God being omnipresent, present everywhere

God is in one place where His throne is. His power is everywhere, but not God. God is omniscient, meaning He knows everything. He can find out about us at any time through His Spirit because He's a heart-knowing God. He doesn't pry into everybody's private life just because He has the power, because He wants us to choose! Isn't that something? God has all that power and uses it only when necessary. God is omniscient, knowing everything, but He is not omnipresent, being everywhere. We saw how He knows, through His Spirit, through His angels, etc.

• going through mountains

I don't know that the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal applies, even though they went through mountains, although the Suez Canal was through the desert. It's a mountain of earth. I don't know how much they prayed to do it. It seems as though they used steam shovels and dynamite, but they did it. I don't think it applies in that particular case that we're talking about here. Nevertheless, they did build the canal and they did go through mountains.

• What happens if someone has a child born with a cleft lip/palate, deaf or other deformities?

Let me try and answer the question this way: Obviously, in the point of being deaf those that we're discussing here did not recover their hearing or didn't have hearing at all. In reference to a cleft palate, let me just mention that several years ago, they were noticing frogs in Minnesota that were born deformed. At first they thought it was because of some chemicals that men were putting in there. Perhaps, maybe even estrogen coming out of the sewer and getting into the water. What the found was, it was a parasite. It was not a chemical.

In Southeast Asia, they have a large percentage of children, more than other places, that have cleft palates. I just wonder if that is not a parasitical deformity, more than anything else. I have to salute the American doctors that volunteer and go down there and have the cleft palate surgery program. They go down there gratis and do 100s of these babies and straighten out their nose, their palates, and their lips and fix them up. I think that's a wonderful thing that they do.

I would have to say that on some of these other things, lots of times when we think God ought to do something and He doesn't do something, like heal someone's children who are deaf, we don't know the personal lives of the individuals involved. We don't want to say, 'Oh, they had deaf children because they were sinning.' We don't know if they were or not. We can't make that judgment!

We may have a situation where that there are even some children born who are neither male nor female. Some of them have part of both. Again, I think that may be more due to a parasitical situation of parasites than necessarily bad behavior or sin. Those things we can't answer right off and say 'yea or nay' why did God do this? Lots of times we have to accept what is, from the point of view that God wants to see, do we love that person in spite of it. Lots of time some of those children or people who have those kind of handicaps turn out to be very inspiring, because they overcome a great deal and really show what human beings can do. Likewise, with helping and assisting them.

Many of the things that we have today along those lines we can attribute to many different things other than saying that it's sin to the third and fourth generation. Who sinned? What was the sin? Why did this person come from this line over here and they had all kinds of sins and nothing happened to their children? But it happened to these children over here? We can't make any of those judgments! The only thing we can do is just say that what we have, we have. We deal with what we have and ask God to help us and do the best that we can with it.

That doesn't necessarily mean a condemnation from God. Sometimes some of those things are so that God will see how we respond to it:

• Are we going to respond as the Nazis and exterminate them all?

or

• Are we going to respond with compassion and kindness and help them?

Just like children with autism. You have those even now. There's even a television program that has an autistic child as an actor for whatever the television show is. I don't know what it is, but I've seen things and he's doing just fine. A lot of it, too, is:

• Are we going to accept them?
• Are we going to love them?
• Are we going to help them?

We have to put all of that in the mix, too.

One other factor needs to be brought out. All these physical difficulties or deformities that happen, God is eventually going to take care of it! Just like He said of the eunuch, 'Don't worry. I'll give you a better name than many children.' Jesus said that there are eunuchs born that way, made of men—that is actually castration—then there are eunuchs for the Kingdom of God's sake, that is those who don't marry so that they can do all the extra traveling and things like that and serving God that way.

All Scripture from the Holy Bible In Its Original Order, A Faithful Version by Fred R. Coulter

Scriptural References:

• Matthew 28:18
• Hebrews 1:1-3
• Romans 8:1-3
• Hebrews 4:12-16
• Hebrews 1:3
• Genesis 1:26-27
• Genesis 2:7, 23
• Job 32:6-8
• Job 33:4
• James 2:26
• 1-Corinthinas 2:6-11
• Revelation 5:11-12
• 2-Kings 6:15-17
• Job 1:6-7
• Luke 10:16-20
• Luke 8:27-31
• Revelation 9:1-5, 11
• Revelation 20:1-3
• Revelation 9:13-15
• Psalm 139:14-17
• Ecclesiastes 11:5
• Ecclesiastes 3:19-21
• Mark 11:21-23

Scriptures referenced, not quoted:

• Genesis 15
• Revelation 12
• Ezekiel 18

Also referenced:

• Book: Genome by Matt Ridley
• Sermon Series: Why God Hates Religion
• DVD—BBC Documentary: The Ghost in Your Genes { youtube.com} by Horizon

FRC:nfs
Transcribed:01-12-16
Proofed: bo—1/15/16