Debrecen Messages #8 -Genesis 1–2 and the One New Man: God’s Purpose for a New Humanity

Your spirit and soul are like this. Watch my hands. They don’t just touch like this, let me get out of the way here on the camera, they don’t just touch, they don’t just touch like this, they do this, they interlock like that.

Now, true, you still have a spirit, and you still have a soul, but at least they overlap. And the people who invented the computer gave us a new word, and that word was interface. They interface. They come together, and there’s a place where they are common. Now then, it is so difficult to understand the difference between your soul and your spirit that you’ll spend a lot of your entire Christian life trying to figure out what soul, what spirit.

Unfortunately, your soul is not like Adam’s soul. It’s fallen. And yet you have a beautiful spirit.

This soul that you have cheats. This soul of yours will lie to you. Your soul will get in there and say, I’m spiritual. God told me that I was going to become the man in Revelation who comes out of the East. A man told me recently that your country would be the most Christian country on earth in 10 years. I would like to predict that that’s not true. And that man cannot distinguish, in my judgment, between his soul and his spirit.

In the United States of America, every city I’ve ever been in, someone has walked up to me and said, God has shown me there’s going to be a worldwide revival and it’s going to start in our city. I’ve heard that in Denver, I’ve heard that in Los Angeles, I’ve heard that in Santa Barbara, California. I’ve heard that in Houston. I’ve heard it in Dallas. I’ve heard it in Fort Worth. And I’ve heard it in Little Villages. And I’ve heard it in Albany. And I’ve heard it in Maine. Now, every one of them says there’s going to be a worldwide revival and it’s going to start in my town. Now, somebody is having a problem with their soul and their spirit.

I want to tell you something. Your spirit is like this, your soul is like this, there is a difference, but they are also very similar. Daniel, that’s the worst news you will ever hear. Oh, it’s very difficult, brother, for us to understand the difference between our soul and our spirit, but I can tell you one way you can always tell the difference. You owe me a thousand dollars. You owe me a lot of money.

You will not find this in the Bible. You will not find it in books. I’m going to tell you, there’s one time and place you can say what’s of the soul and what’s of the spirit.

The soul does not want to go to the cross, and the spirit does. The soul does not like to be crucified. The spirit does not mind. The soul does not like to suffer or be inconvenienced or in any way feel any kind of pain whatsoever; the spirit’s perfectly happy to suffer. That’s one thing.

I’ve said all of that to come back and say to you that Adam, when he was created, had a soul that was almost identical in personality to his spirit. And when that spirit from heaven, that breath from heaven, and that dirt of earth joined together, there was formed a soul. A soul that belongs on earth, serves on earth, and tills a garden, works in a garden, works the earth. That soul moves toward the body to help the body serve the earth, and it moves toward the spirit to work with God to carry out God’s purpose.

But that soul of Adam is almost identical to his spirit in personality, in desire, and in disposition. Very similar. Now, Brother Tim, if a soul and a spirit interface, they interlock, they overlap, and they are virtually indistinguishable, how can they be distinguished?

Spirit of God. Only God can separate the two. And he does it with a sword. Now, what in the world is a sword? Well, according to the best Bible Greek scholars, that reference to that sword is to the spirit, not to a Bible, but to his spirit. And I have or had a Greek translation of the New Testament. It did not have a single footnote in it, except on this page, and it said, This refers to the spirit. It is the spirit that divides like a sword.

Now, why would you say sword? Because a knife, because sometimes the only way you can distinguish your soul and the spirit is through the pain that comes from Him. And through the cross. And through the work of the Spirit in your soul and on your soul.