God Intended YOU To Be HIGHER Than Angels

Angels have got to move like lightning, and God has to be God. Man was not destined to stay in the shape he was in at that time. He was the only one who was in transition. He was the only one who could switch biological planes. He’s the only one who ever has or ever will or ever could. He lived by his soul. I want you to look at man now, and I want you to see at the center of him his soul. The spirit is accessory, and his body is his container. Makes him visible. Allows him to speak, talk, and fellowship with the animals and with God. This creature is wonderful. He moves over here in fellowship with the visible, moves over here in fellowship with the invisible. What a creature. I know you’re jealous, but in his relationship to God, he faced God and communicated with God with his spirit, and by his implanted spirit, an indwelling human spirit, he was able to see God and speak to God through the spiritual part of his being. But they were separate, and it was, in some way, an objective relationship. They were outside of one another. Whereas the Godhead fellowshipped within himself and could also fellowship with those outside, but there was only divine life. It was confined to the Godhead.

Audience: Do you mean that human life was facing divine life rather than intermingling?

Right. There was no, it was objective. It was still just a what-you-could-see-and-talk-to-one-another relationship. Somehow, there was distance. Whereas within God, there was this relationship between them. As wonderful as it was, I vow it was two creatures, definitely, and they were talking to one another.

Now then, I’m going to tell you a little parable. This is a parable. One day, a tree growing by the ocean looks out into the ocean and says, “I can’t move. I wish I could move like the fish.” And God says, “Alright, tree. I’ll make you a fish.” And so, the tree became a fish and could swim through the ocean. He was so happy he could move around. One day, he saw a bird fly over, and he said, “I’m confined to the depths of the ocean. I cannot get out into the air and space. I wish I could fly like a bird.” So, God says to the fish, “I’ll let you be a bird.” And so, he raises him one life form, and the fish can fly. He becomes a bird, and he flies everywhere.

And he sees the animals, and they’re playing upon the earth, and he sees that they have so much more capacity than he does to discern and understand, and he says, “I wish I were that smart. I wish I could be a dog or a cat.” And so, the Lord makes him one of the animals, and he’s so happy until he meets man. He meets a man, and he sees such a higher intelligence. He sees such an enormous capacity to think, and he sees him even being able to see things he cannot see and understand things he cannot understand, and he longs to be what a man is. And God says, “I will grant you the wish. I’ll let you be a human being.” But the moment he becomes a human being, he realizes there is a greater longing within that being than any other, a greater dissatisfaction than any other creature, because that human being is not what he was intended to be. There is within him an enormous unsatisfied longing, and he looks into the heavens, and he sees the face of God, and he doesn’t even ask because he knows he could never be like that.

And yet that was the very intention of God, to take him by the hand and not raise him up to be equal to the angels, but to raise him above the angels and make him a son of God, sharing the life of God. And until man lays hold of that which he was intended to have, there will be no peace. I’ll go further and say, until man who has that Life in him is told he’s got it and is shown his inheritance, he will continue almost as one who has not got that Life at all. And the purpose of God was to take that which was a little lower than the angels and make him a son of God.

For a time, the Lord Jesus Christ was made a little lower than the angels. He was made a man. But you cannot say that today the Lord Jesus Christ is a little lower than angels, for they fall at His feet and worship Him. Now what did He come to do? Did He come to rectify the fall, or did He come to fulfill his original purpose? He came, didn’t get what He meant to have, and that is to take this transitory creature who never reached His proper destiny and take Him and put Him where He belongs.

Now then, that comes, of course, to the next story. I think we’d better quit. We will come to that next story, and that is what God did. Well, we have to look at the fall, the tragic story of the fall, and then we have to look at what God did do. I’m going to leave you with one simple point. That innocent creature living in the Garden of Eden could see invisible things. He could see the unseen. Don’t forget that. And he belonged to both realms, and he was your granddaddy. He was also in transition and was headed for better places still, and I know that if I were given the choice today to be as Adam in his innocence or to be as I am, I’m sure I’d dumbly, stupidly take Adam in his innocence. But Adam, in his innocence, was still in transition, moving towards something higher and better. God had intended to share the highest form of Life with Adam.

Now then, if he had done it, if there had been no fall, we said that God lives by the life form of divinity. Angels live by angelic life. Man lives by soul power, the unfallen soul power of human life, and that is the center area of his being. But if he had eaten of the tree of life, the soul would have moved over. He would have kept his material visible nature, but the soul would have moved over, and he would have had at the center of his being the same life that God has at the center of his being. He would have had the life of God. He would have had the divine nature at the center of his being.

Now then, if that’s true, when Adam got up in the morning, by what life would he live by? He would live by the life of God. He would live, not by his human life, but he would live by divine life. Now I ask you, fellow believer, when you get up in the morning, what is your destiny? Is your destiny to live by soul life? You are a born-again believer, an evangelical, converted, saved, redeemed soul being. By what life are you to live by when you roll out of bed in the morning? Tell me. By the life of God, by the highest form of Life in the universe. It is by that life you live. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I have come to give you eternal life and give it to you in abundance. I have come that you might live by eternal life, by eternal life. And that’s the heart and core of the gospel.

All we have to do is discover that life is in us and then discover how to live by that life; it will not be by prayer, Bible study, tithing, or speaking in tongues. I’m sorry to disappoint the Bible scholars, the charismatics, and those who are committed to knowing the Bible. I am illiterate. I cannot read or write. I have a right to the life of God within me. I don’t happen to speak in tongues. I have a right to the life of God within me. When I pray, I fall asleep, and furthermore, I find prayer to be the most boring thing in the world outside of watching a washing machine tumble dry. If you’re going to pan off on me present-day prayer, that will be my forever attitude. But if you can show me a fellowship of the Father and the Son and give me a right to that, I might make a little progress as a Christian. A little bit. Just a little. Not a lot, but a little. Praise the Lord.

This is a new ocean, and we must sail upon it. This is a new realm, and we have a right to enter it, and this is his Life, and we have a right to live by that Life. Yes, I’m fallen. Yes, I’ve got problems, and I will keep them till the day I die, but I deserve better than this as a son of God. As a son of God, as one redeemed and elected before the foundation of the ages. I deserve better than “Gene, do this. Gene, don’t do this. Gene, you be a good Christian. Behave yourself. And Gene, read your Bible. I don’t like to read my Bible. Gene, pray. I don’t like to read. I don’t like to pray. Gene, behave. I can’t behave.” To ask me to behave and be good is the same as asking that bird to be a dog. The demands that have been laid upon me are demands for a life form not my own. To show me the life of Jesus Christ and say now go imitate that is to tell a pig to sit down at an eight-course meal and use silverware. You’re making demands of a pig that are not its form of life, and to say be like Jesus is pure, unadulterated foolishness. It’s the wrong form of life. I can’t do it. All I can do is lay hold of a life not my own and learn to let that life live.