The Love of God (Part 1) – Why Christ Is Seeking a Bride

Okay, God stood there in His aloneness. I want to come back to that. Brothers, can you, for a moment, feel in God what must have been within Him, driving Him? As God considered what it would take to have what He wanted…it was not an easy thing. For God is singular by nature. Fallen man later conceived of many, many, many gods, but here is only one God. In fact, there will never be but one God. And yet…He wants a counterpart. That too is a paradox. To have an “Isha”…a “Thea.” Do you know that the word “Theo” means God? It is a masculine term. The word “Ish” is the word for man. The word “Isha” isn’t feminine; it’s “out of man.” Out of man. Theo is always masculine, but I’ve invented a term tonight: Thea.

It was not as though God, who was spirit and one and who was all, could easily have a counterpart. If you are “All,” there is not room for another. God had to do an incredible thing, and one day the Lord’s going to sit down and explain this to me. But in His consideration, I know there are two or three things He realized. For there to be a counterpart to God, His nature would have to be altered. He would have to become…He would have to change from that which is limitless to that which is limitable. From that which is unlimited to that which is limited…in order to be divisible. But in some way, in some way, He would have to have that which was visible, with limits to it. If it’s unlimited, it’s not visible, but limited. But more than that, somewhere embedded in all of this is the fall.

Something I cannot comprehend, but God knew if He was to have a counterpart who truly was his counterpart, it would have to be an incredible attention-getting to His being and nature. An unfathomable, “fathoming” nature…of His nature. Well, Gene, be careful. The brothers and sisters are going to think you’re just way out of left field. Someone was going to have to see Him and understand Him in His length and breadth and entirety. He would have to be known, felt, experienced…in His totality.

Okay, God began to create, and He divided creation into two parts. The upper and the lower. The unseen and the seen. First, I want you to know that the unseen is very vast, but if it ends over there and ends over there, if the heavens, the third heaven, the third heaven, the heavens, if they have an end, and I don’t know if they do, if the heavens have an end, I want you to know that in the heavens is God. God is over there, and God is over there, and He’s all the way in between. He fills the heavens entirely. Do you want to know what’s in heaven? God. Which part of heaven is He located in? All of it. And it’s an invisible kingdom. It’s an invisible place. You can’t see it. If you stood in the middle of it, you wouldn’t see it.

There’s only one thing today, 1973, that is visible in the kingdom of heaven. Praise the Lord. Don’t say it. There is one thing now visible in the heavens. God covered it all. The only other being in the heavens, living being, was what? There are two beings in the heavens. Okay, where are the angels in the heavens? Luke 1:19. What fills the heavens, brothers? Where are the angels? Yes, that’s where they are. And the angel answered and said to Him, I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God. If God is there and there and there, and the angels are also there, where can they go and not be where God is? They are in Him, but they are separate from Him. They walk around in Him. They are always in His presence. Can you fathom that? The angels walk around in God’s presence. That’s all that’s there: God and angels, and they stand in His glory wherever they stand.

So now there are two living creatures: God and angels. God is one. There are many angels, but they are neuter. Is God neuter? No. He is male. The angels are neuter. They were neuter then; they are neuter now; they will be forever neuter. They have no gender. Then God began creating. He created the “seeable” things. They are also part of the heavens. There’s the unseen part of heaven where the angels are, and there’s the “seen” part of the heavens. “Seen” creation is also the heavens. They are only…they are everything that is not earth. If it’s not earth, it’s heaven. It’s either seen heaven or unseen heaven.

Brothers and sisters, now God comes to create Earth. This is a special place, and He begins creating it. On the first day, there’s nothing living. On the second day, there’s nothing living. On the third day, something living appears, and it can show you two things. One, it is alive. Two, it is alive… and it reproduces. Now that’s incredible. For nothing else in the universe could reproduce. God could not reproduce. Angels could not reproduce, but here were living things that could reproduce. Now I’ve said this to you many times. Earth and all that’s on it, everything on this earth, in some way reflects the nature of God. But Gene, God is single. Well, praise the Lord. He’s not going to be single forever. It can reflect His nature…even though that nature has not yet arrived.

Alright, after the little vegetables that showed life but were not life, there came the fish, who also showed God’s life but were not God’s life. Now there is an incredible thing. Everything in the sea had its counterpart. In Genesis 1, almost a cry, and the earth brought forth vegetables, plants yielding seeds after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind. God saw it, and He said, “That’s good.” You can almost feel God’s anxiety and eagerness as He says it again. This is verse 21. And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moved with which the water swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind, and God said, “This is good.” God had had an idea, and it turned out to be a good idea. Everything had its seed in it, and everything could reproduce after its kind, and all of it was a picture of God’s desire.

Well, brothers and sisters, then he made the creeping things, and I’ll read that too. The beasts of the field after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And then God said: Let us make a creature that looks like me. He now comes to create the third-highest form in the universe. It is not God; it is not angels, but it is one captive to earth’s soil.

I want to stress this again. Red dirt; man, thought out. But he is lying there lifeless. He is, if you please, something like mud. I would like for you to watch God. It is as though he picked up a mirror; He took out of Himself anger and put it in. Took out of Himself hate and put it in. He took out of Himself jealousy and put it in him. He took out of Himself joy and the image of that part into this creature. He took out of Himself peace and put the “type” of peace into that creature. This thing was a reflection of the very God. Here, if you will follow me in a deep way: here is what is meant by the term Son of God.

If God takes His jealousy, and His anger, and His hate and His joy and His peace and His love out of Himself…turn it around…if God ever gave birth to all that is within Him, that which would be born would be called what? What was Adam? Have you ever read the Luke account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ? It starts with. Mary, and works back through David and Abraham and Noah, and finally to whom? It says, and Seth, who was the son of Adam, and Adam…who was a son of God. If everything that that creature is is an embodiment of another; if that creature ever gave birth; if that creature ever took all of its essence and put it in another, it would be a son of that one—a son of God.

You don’t understand what I’m saying. I haven’t made it yet. I’ve done this so many times, but tonight it’s more important than ever. You remember Barnabas was always going around encouraging people. If encouragement were a God, and all that encouragement – this God encouragement – could do was encourage, and that was it. And encouragement across the whole human race was nothing but the God encouragement in them. You see? No. If that God-named encouragement ever gave birth to a son, it was Barnabas. Barnabas was just the reincarnation of encouragement. He just went around encouraging people.