The Secret GEOGRAPHY of the Christian Life

Could we look at it this way? At one time, Adam’s soul had been in control, with a spirit close behind, and his body totally in submission. With the fall, the soul drops to second place. Are you following me? The spirit drops to third place, and the flesh comes to first place. So that now it is the flesh that is driving, the soul that is following hard after, and the spirit is being dragged around in a coffin of death: the body.

Well, that’s where man is now. That’s where he is stuck. Boy, oh boy. I still feel sorry for that man. I’ll tell you one thing. I bet you that Cain, eventually, in his old age, and probably Seth, became real evangelists about not disobeying God when they saw this ongoing problem taking control of their whole being.

Well, man’s now in a big mess. He’s got two problems. One, he is very fallen. And the other one is that he is so far away from his original purpose. He was incomplete before he fell. Now he’s not only incomplete, but he’s fallen away from where he was. He’s going to need a great salvation. He is really going to need a great salvation.

What does he need? He needs the resurrection of his spirit. He needs the forgiveness of his sins and the restoration of his soul. And who knows what he needs in his body? Well, he needs forgiveness. God alone knows what it takes to move that. Do you know if he had all that where he’d be? He’d be right back up to zero. He’d be all the way back up to zero, and that’s all he would be. He still would not be completed. Brother Tom, that’s why the gospel of salvation is so inadequate, and we made it the center of our faith. I’m always stunned at the capacity of the evangelist to say, “And why did God create man? Why, He created him that He might save him from his sins.” That’s really not very accurate, is it? They once existed without sin. That cannot be why God created him. Maybe that’s why the Lord came to earth to save him, but that is inadequate because that still just puts him back where he was at zero. No, the eternal purpose of God is not to save us from our sins. There’s something higher He was after: an eternal purpose. Wilbert, did you follow that? That is important for you as a young Christian to understand.

Well, let’s skip the whole sorry state of the Old Testament. If this Old Testament can serve us anything, it can give us a textbook into the insight of human nature. Now, praise the Lord. Let’s not go immediately to the cross and look at man’s redemption. Let’s not do that. I think we would make a critical error. Let’s see what took place.

I think when we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, we get so clear on what the Gospel is. Now, I want to get excited again. We are about to see the Lord Jesus Christ incarnated. That means He is going to make His appearance on the earth, but He is the eternal Son now in a woman’s womb, about to go through the door. The door is the womb of Mary. He is about to make His longest visitation. We never know where that door is. He is coming from unseen realms into seen realms.

He has eternally fellowshipped with His Father; some mystery that none of us will ever know. He is still one with His Father, and yet He is the Son element of the Godhead, now in a body, an embryonic body growing inside that woman’s womb. And there comes out of her womb a species utterly foreign to this planet. This species has never been on this planet before. You’ve got to get clear. This is a foreign visitation. This is strictly outer space stuff. This is not God, for God is spirit. This is not man because man’s spirit is dead. You say, “But He was man.” Yes. And He was God. Yes. But God was not man, and man was not God. Is that not true? Here’s somebody who is both. Therefore, He is neither. Well, I don’t know if He was neither or not; maybe He was both. He was totally one and totally the other. I can only tell you this: that which came out of Mary’s womb was a unique new biological entity that does not fit on this chart. He does not fit.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the New Testament never speaks of the new man. That’s not in the Greek. It speaks of a new humanity. That’s the actual word. A new humanity, an old humanity. I am not doing violence to scripture when I say here was a new species. Yes, utterly man, with the Life of God, but not on that biological chart up until that moment. There’s something strange going on here because I’ll tell you, creation is over, and when God says creation is over, creation is over, and yet here is something new in creation. Therefore, we can only assume one thing. He is not created. He is before creation. But it is the first time that He has ever appeared literally with His own earthbound body on this earth.

Now, are you following me? We have a new biological entity here. As He grew in Galilee, there in Nazareth, He became aware that He was not normal, not like those little boys, those little girls. His mama knows it, and she helps Him through probably some real difficulties. He’s growing, and He’s growing. He begins to hear voices. Do you know that He began to hear voices? Your Lord heard voices, and they weren’t out there; they were in here. Something was going on, and He heard voices, and pretty soon that voice got very clear, and He could hear that voice, and He could listen to that voice.

Now I’m conjecturing here, but I’m sure, I’m absolutely certain. He would begin to have flashbacks and go along, and He would say, ” Those lilies are so beautiful. I created those real lilies. I remember that; this little kid made them. He gets a little older, and more and more, He fellowships with what is going on internally. This is not Adam, folks. He is not seeing God out there. He is sensing God within and remembering past things. One day, He’s hearing about Moses, and he flashes back to the day He parted the Red Sea, and He remembers that He told Moses who He is and that He has been forever.

I think as He grows, He really, literally, becomes “I am.” I don’t question that, at least in His spirit, the Lord could move from one end of eternity to the other. If you don’t understand what I mean, I’m telling you that I believe my God can traverse time and space; even now, my Lord can visit the Red Sea. I believe that. I may not be right, but I believe it because He said, “I am, I am here in Egypt. I am here in Ur of Chaldees. I am here in Jerusalem. I am here in Galilee. I am, I am there. I am there. I am at the cross. I am present at Gene’s salvation. I am there at the close of the age. I am there after the ages are closed. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am.

And one day, He looks at someone and says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He is constantly there. He was beginning. He is end. This does away with predestination. When one can travel from one end of the sphere of time to the other, it’s not predestined; it’s just the way it is, folks. It’s just the way it is. I don’t want to get off on that. I want you to see Him growing up. I want you to know that every parable He told probably came to Him in moments of insight when He recalled, and when you go back and read the parables, you try to figure out what it was the Lord saw. The Lord inspired David to write Psalm 23, but I am certain that David is not the first person to ever experience Psalm 23. I am absolutely certain that Psalm 23 was experienced somewhere by Jesus Christ, by Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God, long before David was born or long after.