Coming Out of Darkness Part 13 by Gary Sigler

Facebook Note on Saturday, 02 April 2011 at 16:24
The Transforming River

The book of Genesis, chapter two, talks about a river flowing in three directions and becoming four
heads. The name of the first is Pison, which means "freely
flowing". The second is Gihon, which means "bursting
forth". The third is Hiddekel, which means "rapid". The
fourth is Euphrates, which means "that which makes fruitful".
In that land of flowing rivers there are also precious stones. Precious stones
are transformed stones. In the book of Revelation, we again see a flowing river
and precious stones. Stones are made precious by the flowing of the river. This
picture shows us that God’s will in Genesis is to produce precious stones for His
building, which is seen completed in Revelation. Between Genesis and Revelation
there is a long process to produce the City of God.

The key to spiritual understanding of the Bible is to discover that it is a Book describing and
unfolding to you your own inner being. When you first receive God, you begin to
experience from the depths of your being something that is moving and flowing.
This moving and flowing is the Spirit of God, represented by the flowing river
in the Word. Deep within your being there is something "freely
flowing", something "bursting forth", something that is
"rapid", and something that will "make you fruitful". Jesus
said it this way:
"He that believes in Me, out of his innermost
being shall flow rivers of living water!" (John 7:38).

We need to be challenged in our walk with God -- not for condemnation, but to gain proper light and
understanding. We need to experience what we say we believe.
Where is the
flowing of the living water that we say is within us? I used to go to God
and ask Him, "Where is the abundant life and the living water that You
said we were to have?" I knew it was there, because I did experience it
from time to time. I knew the problem had to be with me, not with God. There
were times when I would be greatly filled with the Spirit of God, but it would
not last. God does this so that we will continue to seek Him for His fullness.
I wanted to stay in that river, but I didn’t know how. The more time we give to
God to seek Him, the more we come into His flowing. Whenever you begin to sense
even a little of His flowing within you, there is a transforming that takes
place. The more the river flows over the stone of the natural man, the more you
are transformed into a precious stone. A great many Christians have tried to
die to the flesh and to be obedient to the Spirit, but it is impossible for the
natural, carnal self-life to be like God. If you will learn instead to turn to
the Spirit of God within, and begin to experience the presence of God within
you, the river of His Spirit will begin to flow, and the river will transform
you. It is impossible to enter into the presence of God and not have something
of His essence flow into your soul.

The New Jerusalem, the City of God, is made of gold, silver and precious stones. Gold represents God’s
divine nature, silver represents redemption. Precious stones are made precious
only by transformation.

Religion has taught us that the New Jerusalem is a golden city, and that it is up in a place called
heaven. It has golden streets, gates of pearl, and a river flowing out of the
throne with a Tree of Life on both sides and in the middle. Someday this city
is supposed to fall out of the sky, and we will all go into it and live happily
ever after. I wish it were that simple.

We must begin to pray for God’s people to have a spiritual understanding of His word. The entire book
of Revelation is revealing to us our own inner life. You must realize that
you can begin to experience this City of God now.
You do not have to wait until
you die to enter the New Jerusalem. Today! -- right now -- you can experience
the flowing of the Spirit of God within you. This flowing will transform you
into a precious stone, to be built up with the saints in your locality, until together
you become a local expression of the City of God. This is God’s plan for His
Church. We are to be a visible expression of the invisible God

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5).

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the
same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).

"But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up
Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that
dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live
after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye
through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Rom. 8:11-13).

I will never forget the time when the Spirit of God began to speak the above verses to me. That is when
I began to change. I knew them and believed them and hoped for them. When the
Spirit began to speak them to me, I began to seek God for the flowing of the
river to transform me. The entrance of the Word brings light. In our natural
state we are in darkness, in fact we are the darkness. "the people that sat in darkness saw great light" (Mat. 4:16). If you are in darkness, how can you see? You don’t bind the darkness, you just turn on
the light.

The book of Revelation says that the New Jerusalem has streets of gold. Gold typifies divinity,
streets represent the walk. Those who are experiencing the New Jerusalem are
walking in the divine nature and character of God. In the New Jerusalem there
is a river flowing from the throne. Where is the throne of God today? It is
within you. Paul told the Ephesians that
"He hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."
here is a realm, a consciousness in God, where we can experience these
things. Many talk today about the believer's authority, but that authority
comes only from the throne. If the Spirit of God does not have authority in
your life, then you cannot exercise God’s authority. If you are under the
Spirit’s authority, then you will have authority.

The Crossing of the Jordan

In the Old Testament, when Israel was about to cross the Jordan, it was told them in Joshua 3:3,
"And they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the
LORD your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove
from your place, and go after it."

When you see the ark begin to move, that’s when you cross the Jordan. When you experience within your consciousness the Spirit of God beginning to rise, and when you begin to
experience the tables of stone (the ten commandments) to be the regulating
life-law within you, then you begin to cross the Jordan. The Ten Commandments
were never meant to be a set of rules and regulations that you try to keep in
an outward way with your fallen humanity.

When you experience the resurrection power and
Spirit of God coming alive within you, you will naturally express what was
written on those tables of stone. It is effortless. No more trying to be that
good Christian, but from your innermost being flows the Spirit of God to
fulfill all the righteous requirements of the Law. Don’t try so hard to be
holy. All you need is one glimpse of the Ark, just a little taste of Jesus
Christ in you, and all of a sudden you begin to live the life that you thought
you had to die to receive. We used to think that death solved our problems, but
not so. The hope of the Gospel is not merely to get saved and then someday to
die and go to heaven. The hope of the gospel is "Jesus Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

Don’t Be Devil Conscious

Another part of the darkness in these days is to be devil-conscious. One of the biggest-selling
categories in Christian books today is writings on the Cults. Christians today
are reading hundreds of books on Satanism and witchcraft. They read biographies
of the experiences of people who have been in Satanism, with all the gory
details about what Satan can do to you. The reading of all these books is
causing such a consciousness of Satan and demonic activity that it is actually
helping that activity. (Incidentally, one of the lowest-selling categories in
Christian books is prayer.) Christians are spending millions of dollars to
learn about witchcraft and demons, and how to deal with them. They think they need
to learn about these things so they won’t be trapped by Satan, but that in
itself can be an entrapment.

When Christians are so consumed with learning about demons and Satanic activity, it makes a statement that Christians are living in fear. They think they have to learn about Satan
to fight him. Do you really think that learning about all the details of what
Satan can do to you will help empower you to fight the hosts of darkness?
It will not!
However, if you learn to live in the presence of God, where you
can say, "It is no longer I that live but Christ that lives within me" (Gal. 2:20), Satan has no power over you. If Satan comes to me and the Spirit of God rises up within me, what can he do to me? I can study all
about demons and how to deal with them. I can study deliverance, but is it
really going to help me fight the darkness? There is only one area of true
deliverance that will have lasting effect. It is this:
"Let God arise and His enemies be scattered!" psalm 68:1
If God never arises within your being, your enemies will never be scattered, no
matter how much you study and learn.
The Word says that we have been delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom
of God.

You can spend your whole life fighting the devil (as I did for many

years), sometimes winning and sometimes losing, but never realizing that in

actuality he has no power over you.

If we have truly been taken out
of the power of darkness and placed into the Kingdom of God as the Word says,
then we need to experience it. The Word of God is not a theory, but a fact. If
you have been taken out of the power of darkness and transferred into the
Kingdom of God, then Satan has no power over you. You may say, "But look
at the multitude of Christians who pray every day, yet the enemy is destroying
their finances, and they are eaten up with sickness and disease. How can you
say the devil has no power over them?" It is because of the darkness.
Again I must repeat:
"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord,
that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their
mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God
through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their
heart" (Eph. 4:17-18).

Most Christians believe more in the power of the devil than in the power of God. By confessing and believing in the power of evil to prevail over you, you give it the power to do
so. Whatever you believe in will work for you. You believe in your heart that
the devil has power over you, you then confess it with your mouth, and it
becomes yours by experience. It can be very difficult to believe God when your
experience is totally different. However, if you will look away from your wrong
experiences and begin to believe God, your experience will then line up with
the Word. You can spend your whole life fighting the devil (as I did for many
years), sometimes winning and sometimes losing, but never realizing that in
actuality he has no power over you.
To be continued.

Coming Out of Darkness Part 7 by Gary Sigler

Transformation, Not Condemnation I believe with all my heart that the Church today needs a word to make us realize that God is God!. We have not realized in the Church the depths of what Jesus said from the cross: "Father, forgive them; they don't know what they are doing." Many of God's people suffer continually under condemnation for things in their lives over which they can't seem to reach victory. These things have to be transformed by the infiltration of the Spirit of God into our soul-life. We all have God in us, but what we need is for Him to grow in us and to transform us into His image and likeness. We need never be condemned for the condition of our natural life; we just need to keep hungering after God and seeking Him until He comes fully alive within us. This will take care of our faults. We also need to realize that this is a process that takes time as Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith, works in us to bring us fully into His plan and purpose. Religion, by contrast, tells us that when we come to God, we know what we should do, that we must do only those things we know we should do, and that this then allows God to be able to bless us so that we can grow spiritually. But oh, I am telling you, we are so ignorant, because we do not understand that today, as surely as God is upon the throne, He is saying, "Not guilty." You are not guilty. God would never bring you before Himself and remind you of your sin. I am sure you are familiar with verses that say such things as, "As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed the transgressions of My people. Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more" (Psalm 103:12; Hebrews 8:12). Thank God that His people are beginning to get the message that they are not guilty! You are not guilty. You do not need condemnation; you need transformation. Let’s look again at Ephesians 4:17-18. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." I can assure you that we all fall somewhat into this category. If the Church were not blinded and alienated from the life of God, there is no way that the Church which we see with our physical eyes could be in its present condition. It is in that condition because for two thousand years the results of the work God accomplished at the cross have not been understood! I have made the statement that there are men and women all over the earth today who are about to be loosed upon the Church. For the most part, they are men and women who have been totally outside of the system of today's so-called Christianity and are therefore unknown to many of God’s people. But, thank God, the Church is beginning to open to them. If we are honest, we have to look at the situation today and say of the two thousand years of Gospel preaching, "What has it produced? Not a whole lot!" Yes, people are saved and people are blessed, but God's full purpose has never been fulfilled by the institutional church. God’s purpose is to fill the Church with Himself and to build us up together into a habitation of God. "In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" Ephesians 2:21-2. One of the saints whom God has raised up to reveal His purpose for the Church is J. Preston Eby. He is one of those lights shining in the darkness. I feel that every one of God's seekers needs to hear what this man is saying to the Church. The following is an excerpt from one of his recent monthly newsletters. Jesus came into the world in the time of the Roman Empire. He was crucified on a Roman cross, pierced with a Roman spear, and sealed in His sepulcher under a Roman seal. But praise God! He burst the bands of death, shattered the seal of mighty Rome, and arose the conquering Christ. And not only that, He ascended victor over all the powers of darkness. Having brought to naught the prince of this world, having brought in eternal redemption for a lost world and redeemed all back unto Himself, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High and poured out on the first few citizens of his Kingdom the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Kingdom of God was birthed and gathered from Jew and Gentile alike a vast multitude into its bosom. What a flood of light and glory and power fell upon the world in the ministry of the humble followers of the Lamb! And oh what glorious days those were. How God blessed His Gospel. Mighty signs and wonders were performed as God confirmed His word with signs following. The word of God, anointed by the Holy Spirit, swept the world like a prairie fire. It encircled the mountains and crossed the oceans. It made kings to tremble and tyrants to fear. It was said of those early Christians that they had turned the world upside-down. So powerful was their message and spirit, in spite of persecution, in spite of untold thousands of saints impaled upon crosses, burned at the stake, and fed to hungry lions to the thunderous applause of wild spectators, the word grew and multiplied. For God dwelt mightily in the midst of His people. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord covered the earth as the waters cover the sea. Paganism fell. The mighty Roman Empire shut up its idol temples, sheathed its persecuting sword, and sat down as disciples at the feet of Christ and His apostles. Oh, but there was another spirit at work also. A spirit and system set in among the saints of the Lord, and the manna of yesterday began to breed worms and stink. Refusing to follow on to know the Lord, they began instituting rules and regulations, laying down laws and formulating creeds, observing days and ordaining sacraments and ordinances, elevating human government, becoming disciples of Paul, of Apollos, of Cephas and many others. Before too many years had passed, men began to set themselves up as bishops and lords over God's heritage in place of the leadership of the Spirit. Instead of conquering by the power of the Spirit and truth, men began to substitute their ideas and their methods. Soon the glory and the power, the presence and the word of God in the morning-time Church began to be eclipsed, and the power of carnal-minded men gradually took the place of the awesome presence of God. Consequently, man's carnal understanding was put upon the Scriptures, and as the Spirit of Christ fled from their midst, men established a vast and elaborate system of substitutes to take His place. The festivals of the Church were created along the lines of pagan celebrations. Costly and ornate edifices were constructed for worship. The services became ceremonialized and elaborate. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. The Church, with its array of godly-bedecked clergy and its imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that belonged to the heathen system that it had once supplanted. Christianity was now a pageant, a ritualism, a vain philosophy, a superstition, a social club, indeed an antichrist, a pot full of manna infested with the worms of carnality and death. The Gospel preached by the nominal Church will never get the job done. It will never bring the Kingdom of God in power to deliver mankind from sin and death and restore all things to God. The Church world is using worldly means and soulish methods to promote its programs today. It is conformed into the world's way of doing things. This is true not only of the historic denominations, but also of the Pentecostals, the Charismatics, and, alas, some groups who profess to be deeper life, Kingdom, or sonship people. Churches compete against one another, who can have the most in Sunday School, who can build the biggest building, who can win the most souls, which evangelist can draw the largest crowds, each one pointing to the success of their ministry, glorying in the size of their outreach or work, stressing how much could be accomplished with more money, and, to hear them tell it, just about the whole world is being brought to the feet of Jesus through their efforts. The Church world today is totally conformed to the world's way of doing things. Because of that, it is really no better off than the world it is trying so desperately to save. Because the average Christian today has been brought up with a certain "other" than Christ, he is totally unable to think except in terms of established orders, sects, denominations, credentials, creeds, assemblies, Church ceremonies, Church buildings, doctrines, meetings, communions, baptisms, programs, campaigns, crusades, choirs, pastors, rituals, ceremonies, vestments, offerings, conferences, Board meetings, committees, elections, Sunday schools, theological seminaries, fellowship halls, stained glass windows, platforms, special members, numbers and a thousand other things. Take all these things away from them and they would be spiritually destitute, totally incapable of doing the work of the Lord. But after they have spent a whole lifetime of this feverish Church activity, how many people are there who have ever taken the time to wait on God long enough to hear Him speak and divulge His will to their seeking hearts? I declare to you of a truth that any man or woman who will take the time to seek God and God alone, hungering and thirsting after God's mind and God's will, that man will find himself drifting away from all the aforementioned things and from them on to the mind of Christ. And lest any think that we are being brash or heretical to even suggest a departure from those things listed above, I invite you to carefully examine that list to determine which one of them Jesus Christ had used or even needed in His wonderful sonship ministry. It is astonishing to realize that Jesus knew absolutely nothing of any of it, yet He more effectively ministered the life of God, the power of God, the glory of God and the Kingdom of God than any man who has graced this planet. And, I do not hesitate to add, strip all of these away from a son of God, and what he will have left is Christ, only Christ. I tell you, God has men and women all over the earth with the message for the Church. Will you open to them? Because they are not religious, they will not condemn you, but they will minister life to you and cause you to grow up into Him. I am thankful that many of God's people are willing to listen to a message that will set them free, because to be set free, it takes the Spirit and the light and the word of God to break loose our mindset from religious tradition. And I know that every one of us likes to think that we are not religious.

Almost every pastor I know who has a church says, "My church is not religious." Yet in every church I enter, almost without exception, I hear the sounds of bondage and religion.

To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness 5 by Gary Sigler

Facebook on Friday, 25 March 2011 at 15:03 It was not a surprise to God, that His creation was going to be lowered into the physical realm. Every man that was born after Adam was separated in his consciousness and his awareness from that life that was in his spirit, and every man was then left with nothing but the discernment to choose between good and evil. Man was cut off in his spirit rom the knowledge and the life of God, and because of it he had nothing left but the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore some men would become very good, and other men would be very evil. The people of the world as a whole, looking only through eyes of good and evil, would see that there was a group of good people and there was a group of evil people, and they would imagine that all the evil people needed God, but all the good people were pretty much OK. But listen! In God’s eyes, every man that is born, is born in death. He is alienated and separated in his mind from the life of God that is in his spirit. He is left only with knowledge of good and evil. John 1:9 says that Jesus was "the true light that lights every man that comes into the world." Proverbs calls the spirit of man, “the candle or light of the Lord." So every man that comes into this world has a spirit, has hidden deeply in his being that candle, that spirit from the Lord which needs to be ignited. We can go to men, and we can tell them about the Gospel; we can convert them, we can even get them to believe intellectually that Jesus is the Son of God. But then we begin to teach them how to live according to the Bible, to choose the good over the evil, and we have done the same thing that Adam did in the very beginning. Even within ourselves we try to choose the good over the evil, rather than learning how to contact and live by that Holy Spirit of God that is within us. Can’t we all see that? That is what is happening! We do not have, especially in the Church in America, many godly people who are manifesting the life and the character of God to a lost and dying world. We have many good people. And most of them think that because they are good, they are OK, and they are always trying to convince the one who is evil to change his ways so that God can help him—not realizing that good and evil are the same tree. We need the light of God to see this! Whether you are very good, or whether you are very evil, it is the same source of life that is cut off from the life of God. Look again at Ephesians 4:17-18. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you walk not as other gentiles walk, in the vanity of t heir minds, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." This is the situation today. We have people all over the earth who have been regenerated by the Spirit of the Living God, who have never learned other than to discern the difference between good and evil. Let’s go back and take another look at Calvary. God realized that because of Adam, the whole human race would be raised with a concept of knowing only the good over the evil. And He knew that it was absolutely hopeless. Paul told the Ephesians that before Christ, they were alienated. They were not members of the same family. But through the cross, God put into one both Jew and Gentile. Now one has to understand the mindset in those days, which was that the Jew was very "godly," and the gentile was the "ungodly." So Paul says that God by one offering put both the Jew and the Gentile into one body, thus bringing peace. The scripture says Jesus was "the Lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world." The question we have to ask —and this is a hard one to fight, this religious concept—is this: Is the magnitude of Calvary’s victory limited only to those who are able to choose the good over the evil? I questioned God about this for years, before I came into the understanding that I am sharing with you. I used to question God, because I was so full of the lust of the flesh, as a young person, and even as a Christian! I loved God. I used to cry at night over my condition. But I wanted the things of the world. I wanted everything that you are not supposed to want. And I went through hell on earth as a man living to the full extent the experience of Romans,chapter 7. And the only reason we go through that is because of having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God that is in us because of the blindness that is on our hearts. We have to realize the magnitude of Calvary’s victory. The Emancipation Proclamation from the cross of Calvary was that you are not guilty. You are living your life by the knowledge of good and evil if you are not one who has the ability and who has learned how to exercise your spiritual being so that you can live by God’s life. It makes no difference how good you are, or how evil you are, your life source is still coming from the wrong place. In God’s eyes, there is no difference. In the man or woman who is not living by the life of God, there is no difference between the good and the evil. It is all from the wrong tree. And all we have had for two thousand years, in Christianity, is religious teachings, trying to teach us how to be godly, trying to teach us and warn us to choose the good over the evil. We need to read again Romans 5:12-21. You see, God understands our condition; we don’t. Because of our religious traditions, we think that we deserve all the guilt, we deserve all the shame. But I didn’t ask to be born having all the lust and wanting all the wrong things. I didn’t ask for it; that was Adam’s gift to me. And so because Adam made a mistake, religion tells me that I came into this world constituted and filled with the character and the nature that loves to sin, or maybe I’m fortunate and I have been born with a character which is good. But religion will tell me that because I inherited a life that loves to sin, and loves to do all the things that I’m not supposed to do, I somewhere have to find within myself the power to put that down and to choose to live right, so that God can bless me and I can someday die and go to heaven. Yet the very first thing that was said of Jesus by John was, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" I can testify that if you cannot overcome sin no matter how hard you try, if you will continue to seek after God, He will eventually grow within you, and you will overcome! The Christian life is not a matter of will power, but a matter of the Spirit of God flooding every area of your being, and that takes time. We are as "newborn babes" and it takes some of us many years to be transformed. Church isn’t a happy place today. Why? Because we are under so much guilt and condemnation. When we get together, there are times when we break through and we touch the Spirit of God, and there is some rejoicing, but it is so limited! It’s so limited, because when you have the slightest—and I mean the slightest—bit of guilt in your consciousness, it separates you, and you can’t break through to the Spirit of God. The very first thing John said was, "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!" Did He do that? If you are religious, you will say He did, but you won’t believe it, because your religious concept says, "Yes, He took away the sin of the world, but only for those who say, ‘Jesus I receive You,’ or only for those who learn to live and choose the good over the evil." Calvary is only beneficial to those who learn to make the right choices, that is what religion teaches us! And so we have multitudes of people all over the world who genuinely have been regenerated by the Spirit of God, but they never have been taught how to live by that life of God that is in them. All they are ever taught is how to choose the good over the evil. And when you do that, it alienates you from the life of God in you, and you become like an unbeliever, having your eyes blinded. You see, an unbeliever has no consciousness, no awareness at all that they have the Spirit of God in them. But if you have been regenerated, you do have that consciousness. At times you will experience the flowing of God, but because of your concepts, when you sin it will cause a blockage, for guilt cannot enter into the presence of God! The only people who enter into the presence of God and live there are people who know how not to be guilty. As long as you are in the flesh, I can guarantee you every day of your life you are going to err and miss God. Since 1969 I have avidly, every day of my life, sought after and hungered after God. In 1969, when I had the experience of being caught up into the heavenly realms and of experiencing God flooding me, I became extremely hungry for God. And I have spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours on my face and in the Word of God, hungering and seeking after God. I have been one of the most hungry-after-God people, yet I still make mistakes every day. It is because I have not learned how to live fully by the life of God within me. And, in fact, it is not even a matter of learning. It is a matter of God’s life growing, it is a matter of the Spirit of God maturing within me. It is a matter of my seeking, every day of my life, not after something which is in a distant heaven, but that which is within—learning how to contact the reality of the Spirit, the energizing, quickening spirit of God, so that every day I can enter into His presence, and I can feast upon the spiritual manna. From that experience, I am energized and quickened and enabled a little more to walk in the life of God. But when I begin in my consciousness to choose the good over the evil, I am separated in my consciousness from God, alienated from that life. And I am left as Adam was again, to struggle around in darkness trying to choose the good over the evil, trying to whip my flesh into line. Jesus did say, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." But that has been so misunderstood in the Church, because there is no way that Adam, your carnal man, can put himself to death. It cannot be done! That is why the Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 8 that if you through the spirit put to death the deeds of the lesh, you will live. The Christian life is totally a life of learning how, through the spirit to live godly. You will never do it in your own strength. You will not live long enough to learn how to live godly. All you will be is condemned because you can’t make it. The flesh cannot live godly. God’s concept of death is having the consciousness of being separated from Him. You simply need to behold the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world! You have absolutely no problem with God except in your religious mind. God’s people have a hard time believing the goodness and the loveliness of God, because we feel that we have to be justified in His sight by what we do, rather than by what He has done. Yet I can go to anyone on the street, I can go to a prostitute in the gutter, and I can say to her, "Lady, you have absolutely no problems with God, absolutely none." And I can guarantee you that when I begin to speak this way, the words that flow out of me will begin to generate in her. I will say to her, "Little lady, there will come a day in your life when you will fully reveal and manifest to the world the glory of God." There will come that day! Another verse we need to look at says that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. What is God’s concept of death? It is living not by His life, but by a life of good and evil. God’s concept of death is having the consciousness of being separated from Him. If you are separated from God, then you are in death; so for the last enemy, death, to be destroyed would mean that there would not be anything, anywhere, in any place that was not reconciled to Him—for if there were any place, anywhere in the universe, that was not reconciled to God, then it would be in death. To be continued

Coming Out of Darkness Part 1 By Gary Sigler

Coming Out of Darkness Part 1 By Gary Sigler Gary can be found on Facebook and on the link down this page

God Will Perfect His Will In Your Life

"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye

henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having

the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the

ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph.

4:17-18).

I believe that we are beginning to enter into an exciting time in our Christian experience, but right now there is so much darkness prevailing over our minds that it is very, very difficult to see what God is revealing to the Church. Some of what I am about to share with you may therefore seem to be contrary to the Word of God, but it only seems Contrary. I believe God has us now in a position where we are so fed up with what we know has not worked for us, that maybe we are ready to receive some truth and some understanding which goes beyond what we have perceived in the past.

When Paul wrote this passage in Ephesians 4:17-18, he had already given the Ephesians an almost entire view of God’s plan, His will, and His purposes for them, and that is why he used the word "therefore." "Because of all of this that I have shown you, therefore don’t be like the gentiles. Don’t be like the unbelievers." And most of us do not realize that we can be a believer for many years, and still in our mind and in our understanding be like an unbeliever! We can know everything there is to know, we think, about the Word of God. We have walked and sought after God for

years, and because of that we do not realize that we are in this condition of being like a gentile, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God that is in us.

What does Paul mean by being "alienated from the life of God"? We need to have an understanding that there are only two sources of life in the universe. You receive your life source from Adam, which is separated from the life of God, or from Christ who is one with God. Most Christians still are receiving their life source unknowingly from the natural or carnal man. They have never learned how to contact and live by the Spirit of Christ within them. Being "alienated from the life" simply means that I do not have an understanding that my Father and I are One. I have been alienated; my mind is darkened to the understanding that God and man are One. Having their understanding darkened, being alienated . . . there is still much teaching prevailing in the Church today about "the great falling away". I hear it on TV; I hear it wherever I go. I hear about the "great falling away" and "the man of sin who is soon to be revealed." That teaching is part of the darkness, because there is no possible way that the Church of the Living God could be in any more darkness than it has been in for the last two thousand years—it is impossible. The "falling away" that the Apostle talked about began even in Paul’s lifetime, but it took root in the second century and has gone deeper and deeper into darkness for the last two thousand years.

One of the first rays of light that God used to recover His Church back to its original design, intent and purpose after the dark ages of Catholic rule was a man named Martin Luther. That is when the recovery began to take place to bring the Church out of darkness, and most of us do not realize how dark the Church was in those days. At that time, what was known as the Church was persecuting and killing everyone who was a genuine Christian. They forbid the reading of scriptures except by the priests who they said only the priest could properly understand the scriptures to tell you what to do.

In the beginning this was not so. If you go back to chapter 1 of Ephesians and read up to this point of the Word in chapter 4, "Therefore," you will see that Paul had revealed to them first of all that they were chosen in God. We still do not realize that we are chosen in God. The religious Gospel has made that not God’s choice, but man’s choice, because the religious Gospel says, "You were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, because He knew there would come a day when you would choose Him; therefore, because He foreknew that you were going to do that, He chose you." Well then, whose choice is it?

If God chose you before the foundation of the world, that you should be holy and without blame before Him in love, that will happen! Oh, we must get the Church to see this! It is going to happen. You are going to come to a point in your experience where you will fully reveal and manifest to the world the glory of God. It is guaranteed, because

God chose it to be so.

The reason that most do not experience it is because of the darkness, the alienation from the life of God that is in us because of the blindness of the heart. We are all in darkness to an extent. We have been taught ignorance in the Church for two thousand years. The Gospel that Paul preached when he was alive has been almost totally

annihilated from the Christian’s mind, and we have been taught things exactly opposite from what he taught and believed. We have been in so much darkness. We are one with God. In the very essence of our being is the God of the Universe, but yet in our minds we are alienated from that life that is in us, because of the blindness that is on our eyes and on our heart.

The good news is that we are in the dawning of a new day. God is beginning to lift the veil and to bring His Church out of darkness. And that is the thing that is upon my heart more than anything else. When I thought about this this morning, I just had to weep in intercession, because the blindness is so heavy over the people of God. How we need intercessors, because some of the things we have to share in these days are going to seem contrary to the Word.

But believe me, it is only seemingly, because every question that you might have regarding what I have to share with you can be answered, even though these are not simple questions which can be answered in a quickly. Sometimes a

question will take a message to answer. However if you stay with me in these messages that are coming forth, most of your questions will be answered.

Understanding God’s Omnipresence

God has a plan for us. If only we would understand some of the theological expressions that the Church has, doctrines like omnipresence and omnipotence and omniscience. Do you know what "omnipresence" means? I am sure you do, but let us look at it. Omnipresence means that God is everywhere and there is nowhere that God is not. That is literally what the word means. If God is truly omnipresent, there is no space in the universe where God is not, because His presence is all-pervading. Now if that is true, what about that man on his death-bed who has never acknowledged Christ? If God is not in that man who is not acknowledging Him, then God is not omnipresent—there is at least one place in this universe where He is not, and that is in that man. The Church needs to examine some of the things they themselves have taught in the past. What that man needs is not someone trying to convince him that he needs God; he needs someone with the authority and the power of the spoken Word to speak to the seed of God that is in that man to cause it to rise up! You can pray to God for a hundred years for something, and you may never see it happen; but you can learn to speak the Word and see it happen in a few seconds!

Jesus said it: If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed—not if you fast for a hundred years, if you pray for twenty years, if you read ten chapters of the Bible a day—but if you have the faith of a grain of mustard seed, you can say to that mountain, "Be removed!" And yet we pray to Him continuously, "O God, do this, and O God, do that!" Because of the blindness that is on our hearts, we are alienated from the life of God that is in us, and we are all the time praying to Him to do something. But He said to the very first disciples He had, "All authority and power is given unto Me; go ye therefore and make disciples." You don’t have to try to get people saved; you don’t have to try to get God into someone; you need to speak to the core of their being, and you will stir the Spirit of the Living God that is dormant in most of creation.

Experiencing Heavenly Places

Paul said that we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. He said you have been seated with Christ in heavenly places. Why do we not experience that? Do you think if I was experiencing all of the blessings of God, if I experienced being seated in heavenly places with Christ, that I could be in the condition I am in today? Why don’t we experience that? It is because of the blindness. We have become alienated from the life of God that is within us. We don’t even know where "heavenly places" are. We think there is a planet up there somewhere where our spirit might be connected somehow. But do you know what heavenly places are? Heavenly places means a conscious awareness of that reality of being one with God.

There are three levels of consciousness: one is body-conscious, one is soul-conscious, and one is spirit-conscious. Many people are merely body-conscious; many people are just soul-conscious; and a few of us are beginning to become spirit-conscious. That means that when our mind is unveiled, and when our eyes become unveiled to the reality of the revelation that Paul gave to the Church in its very beginning, we will walk in a conscious awareness of everything that the Word of God speaks of. And we won’t have to try to do it, either. But for that to happen we have to begin to have our concepts changed, because the God that has been presented to us in Christianity has been presented in a way that has given us a false concept of Him. And that is nothing new, because Jesus had to fight that same battle when He was here. He said, "It has been written in your very own law, but I say to you . . ." Some may say, "Brother, I go by the Word; if the Word says it, that’s it. And the law says ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ so if you kill someone, I am going to kill you." Jesus said, "It has been written. It is in your very own Word." There is something wrong with some of the concepts that we pick up from the scriptures. He said, "It has been

written, but I say to you, love your enemies; do good to them who despitefully use you." Our concepts have to be changed.

To be continued