We have many man-made doctrines which tell us what man thinks the Word of God says concerning what is happening, but what does God say is happening? The Holy Spirit has been poured out in this day so that we can hear from God and not have to listen to the same old teaching we had before we received the Holy Spirit. Many people are once again turning back to the old system of religion in order to understand God's Word. If these groups did not lead you into the Holy Spirit but left you with such a hunger that you not only desired something more, but had to go elsewhere to find it, how is it possible they can now help you with their worthless doctrines? No, brothers and sisters, I cannot see anywhere in God's Word that shows God desiring to lead His people back into bondage. Think of the trouble these denominations are going to have with all these Jonahs in their ships (organizations). To go back only means defeat, and who wants defeated people on their side?

This is no great loss to those of us who desire to go on into the deeper things of God; but for those who are turning back, it is the greatest loss of all. You will never be happy in the old order after having tasted of the good things of God through the Holy Spirit. After having felt the exciting moving of God's Holy Spirit, the form of man and the religious services he conducts will not fill the hunger of the Spirit inside you. The Jesus whom you've come to love will not move in the dead order of formal religion. Oh, you may feel for a time that you can have more rest by joining the enemy's camp instead of continuing on in the battle; however, I remind you that it is hard for those whom you have left to receive you again with the same confidence that they once showed toward you. When the Galatian believers turned back to the old order of their day, Paul called them foolish. Galatians 3:1.

I am glad that there are believers today that desire the good things of the kingdom of God. They no longer look back to the earthly realm, but they have set their affection on things above. Colossians 3:2. I know that it was not meant for some to go on but their coming out was to bring others out who will go on. It is to those who are going on that we have set forth our writing pen to stand with and encourage. It is to these that we direct the teaching which will make us all stronger and more able to stand in this day in which we are living.

So what is God doing today?  He is speaking to the true worshipers to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The truth of God's Word is what makes us free. Oh, I know that it will make you mad before it makes you glad, but it is most needful for us to truly understand the Word of God the way in which Jesus intended.

The words of the writer of the book of Hebrews burn within the heart of every true believer. "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God" (Hebrews 6:1). Why stay at the beginning of things when there is so much more for those who will move with the Spirit? Religious teaching puts everything off to the future, except for those things which they have put in the past. The truth is Jesus called Himself the "I AM" to those who see Him, not through the eyes of religious training, but by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who reveals the true nature of Jesus to us. "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual:" (I Corinthians 2:12-13).

The word "perfection" used in Hebrews 6:1 is taken from the Greek word "teleiotes" which means completeness. We should not stop with just the basic truths, but we should go on to receive the fulness of the revelation of God's eternal Word. It is so very easy to stop with something that you already know, but it is much harder to go on to something which is much better. Mature growth will change many of the basic beliefs one had when he or she was yet a babe in Christ. The more mature your understanding is of God and His Word, the more of the true meaning you will have of the basic beliefs.

It is not so much that the truths change, but it is that you gain a fuller understanding of what they really mean. When a child looks at life, he sees it through the eyes of a child. An example: a young child may get the idea that when you need money, you just go to the bank and get it while an adult knows you must first have money in the bank before you can draw money out of the bank. It is for this reason that a child cannot cash a check at the bank without having an adult do it for him or her. It is much the same in the kingdom of God. A child sees faith as only a means of getting his or her needs met, but a mature son of God sees that the will of the Father must first be done, and then his or her needs can be met. The mature sons put the good of the kingdom of God first.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH
It is God's will that His people grow to a deeper and fuller understanding of Him. The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1:17, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him." It is the "revealing" of Jesus that reveals the true nature of the Father to us. In the Old Testament, or should I say, under the old covenant, it was not possible for the people to understand God, nor for God to understand the people. The entrance of Jesus into the world made it possible for God and man to come together.

I have heard believers say that it is hard for them to understand the Old Testament and why God did the things He did. Well, under the Old Testament it was just as hard for God to understand man and the things he did. The mediator had to come and bring in a better testament (covenant). That mediator is none other than our Lord Jesus. Hebrews 8:6.

The Son of God did will to leave the throne in glory and come down to earth in order that He might change the separation between God and man. A great change began to take place the day that little child was born in Bethlehem. The glory of the temple in Jerusalem was replaced by the temple which was from above. No longer did God dwell among His people in the types and shadows of the Old Testament temple, but now He was dwelling in the temple which was the very image of Himself. Jesus called His body the temple, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body" (John 2:19-21). Little did the Jews know that the temple in which they so gloried had been replaced by a better temple. Some forty years after Jesus spoke this, in AD 70, the temple in which they gloried was destroyed by the Roman army. Today, where the temple stood, there is not one stone left standing upon another; but the temple which Jesus spoke of, which was destroyed by the hardness of the hearts of the Jews, rose again on the third day.

The glory of the Father dwelt in the Son. "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). Jesus was revealing to His disciples the true dwelling place of the Father. He was no longer in the temple where He had once been, but He was among them, and dwelling in Jesus' body. The very works which were seen by them were not the works of Jesus, but the works of the Father. How hard this saying must have been for them to understand.

Jesus tells them about another temple that He and His Father will dwell in, "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23). Paul writes in Colossians 1:27, "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." He also writes to the Corinthians, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Corinthians 3:16).

The dwelling place of the Father today is within the Spirit-filled believer. There needs to be this continual reminder within us that we are not our own. We are now the temple of the living God—the place where He lives, if you please.

Herein lies the mystery of God; just as we are the temple of God, He also is our temple. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). "And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it" (Revelation 21:22).

The new covenant has built, for the Spirit-filled believer, a dwelling place with the Father, and it has, at the same time, made it possible for the Father to dwell in the Spirit-filled believer. This is a realm of glory which could only be brought about through Jesus.

Today we are faced with the need to go on in God. The body of Christ has waited when it should have been rising. They have waited for some magical day when all at once everything will change and they will be what the Father desires for them to be. This may be their desire, but it is not what the Father desires. He wants growth to take place in our lives daily, and He wants us to grow more like Him each day. If we will let the Holy Spirit do its work, we will be more like Jesus each day. But there is still something greater to consider, and that is His place with us—the indwelling Christ within. His growth is complete with the Father. He and the Father are one. This makes Jesus the Father. He lives in us as Spirit-filled believers. This also gives us an added power which is ours only through Him.

Paul writes, "...Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Instead of only thinking about what we can reach in Christ, we must keep in mind what He is in us. There is a spiritual growth going on inside that reveals the nature of Jesus to us. At the same time that nature, which we are learning about, is active in us. To say there is no manifestation of the Son of God in believers today would be the same as saying that Christ is not come in the flesh today. And this would be the spirit of anti-christ which the early apostles cried out against. "And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world" (I John 4:3). Notice that John does not use the term "did come," but rather, "is come." This was not referring to Jesus before the cross, but after the cross. He was referring to Jesus who was in the present, manifesting Himself through their lives. The writer of Hebrews so boldly declares, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" (Hebrews 2:3-4). Praise God! It was not done by them, but by the Father according to His own will. The supernatural is not our place with the Father, but His place with us.

We did not have any right to the things of God according to the natural. It was not until Jesus that the way was made for man to fellowship with God. That fellowship was only made for one man, and that man was the man Christ Jesus. Jesus, as the son of man under the soulish realm, defeated the devil and conquered sin. As through the disobedience of Adam, sin entered the world, even so, through the obedience of Jesus, sin was done away with. It was because of sin that the soul man died under the law having never attained life. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order..." (I Corinthians 15:22-23). Our rights as Spirit-filled believers in Jesus are because He has made us joint-heirs with Him. We have received our inheritance through Jesus. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together" (Romans 8:16-17).

"Upholding the Christian faith!"