A Spiritual Body (including Prophecies) by GW North

Unto you that of all the time my priest, even my high priest, the chiefest and oldest, came in—he who was as the Ancient of Days among his people came in unto me where I dwelt behind the veil. It was a veil, my beloved. I did not hang up a curtain, for men do not veil their faces with curtains. The veil hid my face. I was veiled, and he came in unto me.

He just brought unto me that which I require for atonement, even a few drops of blood. He lingered not more than a few seconds and was gone, because it was only the blood of atonement. But now my son has come in, and he has stayed with me because his was the blood of reconciliation. That man, my son, stayed with me, and he is with me now, for I have affected reconciliation.

Thou art reconciled unto me, my child, reconciled not in thine own strength, not by thy prayers, not by what thou hast done, for what has nothing that could be accepted here with me. So I send my son, and he came to you; now he has come to me, and he is with me for thee, my child. Thou art reconciled in him to me. He took you on, he took you in, and he brought you unto me. Thou art reconciled, and I will eliminate from thee all thoughts to the contrary.

I will take them away out of thee. I will remove thy fears, I will take away thy trepidation, I will take away thy hesitancy. For in this art, depending on myself, it is a form of pride, my child, and Lucifer was cast out. He is not reconciled; he is out because of his pride. The pride has turned upside down and become fear in thy heart. Now, look not to thyself. Say not, "I am wretched, I am undone, I am wicked, I am weak." Say not these things, for my son said to me that thou art reconciled, and he is my Word.

He was not only my Word to thee, he is thy Word to me. He is the Word, and all mankind has spoken in him because I chose it so. I am God, not thee, and I have done this thing. This is my gift to all mankind, and wilt thou have it? Wilt thou yield and receive it? Wilt thou forsake and give up everything else, and turn away from all other things? For to me they have no existence, they are not, and they have no power.

For I, the Lord thy God, have moved in my own strength and have established that forever for all mankind. Therefore, know that thou art reconciled, and let him who rejects it reject it. Let the unjust be unjust, and let he that's filthy be filthy still. Change not values. I do not change them. I have moved in holiness and purity, and I have called thee to myself. It is thy values, thy standards, thy thoughts, thy life that must change, and that not of thyself.

Come thou then and stand in the glory of thy Lord, for I have made myself known in my son, and he hath made thee known in my presence. And one day thou shalt know as thou art known—that is, as I know thee, thou shalt know thyself. Don’t try to know thyself, do not try to analyze thy own thoughts and motives. Listen to me. I am thy God, and I will tell thee the truth and make of thee an entirely new person.

Choose ye then. Choose this day, choose now, for it is I that speak unto thee.

Dear Father, everything’s life, it is life. Yea, thou hast made me light and hath given me to be the light of men, that men should become men of light and live in the light, walk in the light. Yea, that our conversation should be in heavenly places and our sight be at thy face, so Father, where there is only glory, where everything is gone of God and unto God and for God, and everything else has passed away.

When you go from the definite to the indefinite article—often in your Bible—you get down to reality. See the gift here: it’s salvation. The gift is the Holy Ghost. The gift is eternal life. Gifts without any sort of denominating thing, no sort of definite article. They’re there, but these are the things: prophecies, healings, they’re gifts alright, they’re not the point out of the mind—the gift of God. All the others are included, if you’ve only got sense enough to see. Go in and have them. Well, this is what it says in Romans.

He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? So they're all there. Once you get the gifts right—the basis—go into them, go on. What are you holding back for? They're all included. Praise God, hallelujah! How can you have Jesus, then, without everything that's in him? By sheer unbelief. You've got them. The unbelief, hesitation, holding you back—that's all. They're all there. It's time some of you got it.

I thought about, just about, torn this morning as to what to talk to you about. There's so much that the Lord has been pouring into my heart whilst I've been sitting here, and I think, really, I want to talk to the last thing the brother here was praying. Lord, you've given us a spiritual body, and some of you might have thought, "Well, that's not true, we haven't got our spiritual bodies yet." But you see, there is a spiritual body, and there's a body of the Spirit that should be your body. And when your body becomes a body of the Spirit, it will become a spiritual body before you get your spiritual body. Does that sound like a contradiction? It's as clear as mud to me. Mud is M-U-D. It's very clear, easy to spell, and simple. There's nothing about it at all.

The whole thing the Lord wants us to know is the total victory of Calvary, and the total work of the resurrection, and the great consummating presence of the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah!

Would you have said that Jesus Christ had a spiritual body whilst he was on earth? Same body, when it became a resurrection body out of the tomb? Hallelujah! You see, this is why the only time in the New Testament the word "revival" is used, it's used about Jesus. Revival really only has to do with the Old Testament. They had successive waves of revival because they weren't regenerative. But the Lord Jesus Christ, he had the only thing that was worth reviving.

I told you about this; I won't tell you where to find the verse, just keep reading your Bible. That's how I discovered it, you just keep reading and learning. And it says that the Lord Jesus both died and rose and revived. Amen! That's the only thing ever said about revival in the New Testament. Isn't it wonderful? Why? Because he had... well, that life just revived. All other lives have to die and get born again, you see. That's the simplicity of it. And he revived—all that he was before he went into the tomb was revived. Marvelous, isn't it? And it's such a glorious thing. That life was so perfect that he was revived, and it just flowed on again in that same glorious, unbroken life that he had since he was born.

Yea, and how God managed to compress all that marvelous eternal life into a little baby form that it should grow up to be a man is one of the miracles of the ages—how he did it! But he did. You know, he commenced something absolutely new. Until that time, there had been miraculous births on the earth. Isaac's was a miraculous birth, and John the Baptist's was a miraculous birth. But the Lord Jesus Christ was a new birth. He was absolutely new, and into the earth came the Lord, compressed into that little, tiny frame. And it was all there. Hallelujah!

And he maintained that marvelous life, as God intended he should, to preserve it for us. He laid it down at the cross. He said, "No man taketh my life from me." Do you remember? He said that in John, chapter 10: "No man taketh my life from me." They didn’t take his life on the cross; they sought to destroy it and found him indestructible. He laid his life down.

Only during this week, I’ve been talking—I seem to do this all day long. This time it was in the privacy of my little sort of cage up there where they lock me up (so that Malcolm keeps coming and saying, "You ought to go out, you ought to go out"). But I was talking with someone, and I said this: You see, your real trouble, my dear, is this. Let’s imagine Jesus Christ now—he came to the cross, they nailed him on the cross, he hung on the cross, and it was impossible for him to die. He'd have been hanging...

There, to this day, some say, "Well, it's impossible, you couldn't be." But he would, you know. He was eternal life. You couldn't kill Jesus. He, in the end, gave his life; he yielded it. He would have been hanging there to this moment. You say, "Well, that would have been the miracle of all miracles!" You know, some people are trying to live that life of the miracle of all impossibilities. They're hanging on the cross, but they won't yield up and give in to die. That's the trouble—they won't do it, and it's always terrible, you see. Well, that's right.

And you can have all the sin in the world still hanging on the cross. That's why Jesus hung on it—to bear the sin. Don't you see? It's when you die—that's right. And you don't do that till you give up. See, you've got to stop it. That's right. There's power for you to do it. That's why the Holy Ghost has come. It's totally impossible outside of the Holy Ghost. It's totally impossible outside of the glorious Holy Ghost.

Imagine it—go on, let your imagination go. You've let it go on some wrong, rotten, and filthy things in your time, now let it go on something that's right. Imagine Jesus Christ hanging on the cross to this day, impossible to die, hanging there in the agonies of succeeding centuries and millennia. What do you think of it? That's what you're trying to do—you're trying to accomplish the impossible.

There are some things that God couldn't even do. He couldn't redeem you without giving up his life. Jesus couldn't do it. He couldn't do it—he couldn't save you, he couldn't change you without, on that cross, sovereignly—I note this—this is why he wouldn't take the palliative, this is why he wouldn't take the drug. They tried to drug him on the cross, but he wouldn't take it. Crystal clear, he hung there in all the consciousness of deity, alive and awake, until sin was dealt with. Then, he should yield up his life with the sovereign power of God.

That's why it's the death—there's never been a death like Jesus'. Millions have been—oh, I don't know, I suppose so—crucified under Roman rule, but he sovereignly brought the power of God with the full weight of eternity on it and died. That was that. And when you do that, that will be that.

We like to preach about "this is that"—let's have "and that will be that." That's the end of it. "Oh God, kill me!" "Oh God, do this!" "Oh God, do that!" How many of you have seen this kind of thing? It's not with tears in your heart—"Oh God, I wish I could be!" "Oh Lord..." Well, you'll hang on that cross, and you'll go through a transfixion, and an inward mental crucifixion. And the devil will tell you it's horrible, and you won't believe the truth, because old Adam will try to accomplish his own salvation by hook or by crook, or by nails or by thorns, or by anything—he'll accomplish it himself if he can.

He won't have a gift. He won't. He's too proud. He comes from Lucifer; he won't have it. Well, at least, glory be to God, there are some who come to their senses. They come crystal clear—they don't have the drugs, they don't have the alleviations to their pains, they see the thing clearly. Stop it—the way you've been living. You're wrong. You've always been wrong. You haven't gone under the divine principle of proper life yet. You haven't seen the revelation of the cross.

Their minds were blinded. I said yesterday morning, even to this day, when Paul is read, the veil is upon their minds. For it's Paul that reveals it. We love to think, "Oh well," they say, "When Moses is read, the veil is on their minds." You see, to this day, the veil is on the man. When we come to that place, drop away into the gutter, let your blood run into the ground, let it be stamped on, let anybody who will take advantage of you and your helplessness.

Let the bulls roar, let the unicorns toss them about, let the dogs bark, let the lions crouch, let the gamblers gamble, let the flies come and settle on you, let it run out, finish. Let your bones come out of joint, let everybody see you're finished, actually finished. That's that man finished—hallelujah! That's that woman gone—praise God! Self-justification standing up at the...

Last minute, when you ought to be lying down, has been your trouble. They took Jesus down from the cross and buried him. Pilate wondered if he had been dead a long while, and he inquired, and they said, "You see, he's been dead a long while now." So Pilate handed over the body to these two disciples of Jesus—one, perhaps both of them, quite secret because they were really high-ups: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. They took him, and they just quickly embalmed him and put him in the tomb.

You know that if there had been time, Jesus would have been ruined. It’s so marvelous how God plans. If there had been time, they would have disemboweled him, put spices inside him, and preserved this most wonderful carcass in all history. They would have preserved him—disjointed, ugly, just saved from putrefaction. That's what they would have done. But God, he had the crucifixion arranged just right. They only had time to keep him as he was, saying, "Well, we’ll keep him like this till we can get at him after the feast. Then we’ll really do it."

But the Lord said, "Oh no, we’re not preserving that. That’s dead and finished." Glory be to God, that’s you—rose up lovely! God's delightful, isn’t he? As well as precise and eternal. But beloved, he leaves us no room for self-delusion, none at all. He showed us very clearly. And I taught you like this because I discovered all this about myself. You've got to discover the cross for yourself. You’ve got to discover it to preach, preacher! That’s why you’ve never gotten it over properly—because you haven’t discovered it for yourself.

That’s why Paul said to the Galatians, you remember, in Galatians chapter 3, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you." How did Paul get it over like that? He only did it by words—at least, that’s what they heard. The cross wasn’t preserved; there weren’t chips of it here and a little bit of it somewhere else. They might have even used the same cross for other people to be crucified on after Jesus.

I wonder if they used the same gallows. Back when they used to hang people, they only got a new rope, I believe. Don’t do that now; we’re ruled by psychologists. But the whole thing, beloved, is that Paul set forth this cross. He set forth Jesus Christ and crucified. And why could he do it? Because two verses earlier he tells you, "I was crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. No longer I." See, that’s why he could do it. Nobody else can.

They set forth magical words of precious biblical things that take people so far—willing souls, you see—up to be wooed by the artistry of man. But Paul set forth the cross—there it is. If others bewitched them, he didn’t. And the whole glorious thing is there, and they saw it.

I see, I see. I can remember the times when this blinding thing came on me. Paul—God got hold of Paul and started him right. He gave him a vision of the light that was above the brightness of the noonday sun, blinded him, put him down in the dirt. "Paul, you’ve got to get your eyes open; you’re as blind as a bat." He hadn’t got enough sense because he kept kicking against the pricks.

I’ve seen that. I lived and sometimes dwelt in a bathhouse out in the bush not so long ago. I know what bats can do, you see, when they were dying in the dust, blind. He said, "Before whose eyes..." Oh God, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth. Have you ever seen it? They saw it first in a man. He set it forth from his own inward state.

He didn’t read the closing chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, for they were not written yet. It’s amazing—he set it forth from his own inward experience. Oh God, if every preacher on the earth today had to do that! What if you took our Bibles away, Lord? Would there be any true Calvary anymore? Calvary is a personal experience, not a masterpiece of writing—though it is that. It was God’s personal experience, and it’s got to be yours, man.

Hallelujah! It's got to be yours, woman—not to atone for your sin, not for anything like that. You’ve been relieved of that, amen. But there’s one thing you are not excused from, and that is death. You’ve got to die and rise again. We can’t have revivals of religious people. Christ revived; all that marvelous life revived. You can recall him now by the precious inspiration of the Spirit.

The records of his life are written, from the details of the angel coming to Mary right through those years that God wants you to know about. Some have been obscured because they’re not really vital to you, except summed up in one statement from his Father when he stood in the Jordan. His Father said, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I’m well pleased." He pleased the Father for 30 years—that’s that. You know how perfect and good it was, then hallelujah!

And then he went and lived this life. It’s all there—not just so you can see the miracles, not just so you can rhapsodize about multitudes being fed or Jairus’s daughter being healed, or Peter being saved from sinking in the sea, or Lazarus being raised from the dead. It’s not just there for that. It’s there so that you should see the man who did it. People keep seeing the things he did and preach them up. They need to be spoken, but not without seeing the man.

See this lovely character. See this glorious holiness. See his tenderness. See his majesty. See his humility. See his glory. As John said, this is what John had to say. In the preface to the rest of his gospel, as far as the 14th verse, he says, "And we beheld his glory." We beheld his glory! This is what John saw. John saw the man.

You say, "Well, I thought his gospel was the gospel of the Son of God?" It is, but John saw the man, and he saw God. Matthew saw the man, and he saw the king. Luke saw the man, and he saw the man. Mark saw the man, and he saw this utter slave of humanity and God, this love-man. Oh, hallelujah!

This man who never defected, never deflected, never slipped, never failed. This glorious one, who at the last should have cracked because everybody forsook him and fled, turned around and said to the women who were weeping, "Don’t weep for me." He said, "Weep for yourselves." His compassion was flooding out in the midst of his impending agonies and everything.

Glorious Jesus, I love him. I love him. Just then, as I pointed out the other night, in the resurrection, when they said, "Are you only a stranger that you don’t know these things?"

"What things?" he said, as though he’d never noticed them. You see, we all notice the things because we live in the spectacular. We love the spectacular. We love it. "What things?" he said. Didn’t that reveal, perhaps more than anything else, to him this lovely, lovely Lord? Hallelujah!

Now, this is the life that’s revived for you, my beloved. If you prefer your own way of going on, for that you deserve to be damned. There’s no plea that’s acceptable in heaven for you if you won’t accept the plea that Jesus is making for you.

"So, I’ll get my mother to pray for me, or my father-in-law." Will you? Will you, please? Don’t ask them if you’ve no intention of being what God wants you to be. There’s one plea. If you don’t accept that, there’s no hope for you. But hallelujah, he’s there—that glorious one!

Now, that’s the life. His body, when he lived on earth, was a spiritual body, all right. In other words, he transposed spiritual truth into human, physical, bodily truth. So that when he stood before Pilate or anything else, or just taught, he could say, "I’m the truth. I’m the truth. I am God’s faithfulness to you." You’ve seen the truth at last, amen.

And he’s still the truth, beloved. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of that truth, and he has come to make it clear to every one of us. We can have this life, blessed be God.

Beloved, I want to exhort you—never let go of that. Never accept anything less than that. Never opt for something less.

Never settle for anything lower, even if it’s decorated with powers and wonders. Never have anything less than this, for this is the life. Praise God, and the Holy Ghost has come so that we may have it. John starts off his epistle saying, "Of his fullness have all we received." That’s right—you’ve received of his fullness. It doesn’t matter who you are; you might be the worst character in your village or town, or even the worst person in your home. You might think it’s someone else, but they think it’s you.

Beloved, the whole truth is that you can have the best. You can have such a complete change—God will do this in your life if you let Him. But if you settle for anything lower, it’s no good complaining to the Lord. That’s why I like Oswald Chambers' book My Utmost for His Highest. It could be translated as "His Utmost for My Highest," because that’s what it’s all about—what the Lord has done for me and what He gives to me.

I hope you can see this with all clarity: the blessed Spirit has come to make this available to you. Amen! Do you see that? When your eyes are opened, you can see what it’s all about. Now, you can see beyond heaven itself.

See beyond heaven? That sounds like just preacher’s talk, doesn’t it? But Jesus is raised highest above all heavens—this is what the Scripture says. So, get your eyes off heaven and see right through it. Hallelujah! Just like you can see through the earth (I don’t mean literally), you can see through the world, through sin, and through the devil. You can see through all this and through all heavens—it's Him! Hallelujah! You can see not heaven for me, but the Lord’s glory. Isn’t that right? That’s the literal revelation of Scripture. It’s Him, and the blessed Spirit has come to reproduce Him in you—that’s what He’s come for.

Isn’t it wonderful? We know this, yet as human beings, we’re queer, aren’t we? There’s something reactive, something responsive about us. When we hear that He’s come to reproduce Christ in us, don’t we feel like stretching out our inward arms? We’ve been free enough with our outward ones, hitting this and grabbing that, reaching for things we ought not to have touched. But the Holy Ghost has come to reproduce Christ in us, in this mortal body, so that our body can become a body of the Spirit. In that sense, it becomes a spiritual body.

Now then, beloved, this is wonderful. Let’s read some Scripture. You don’t have to read them if you can remember and quote them right, but they were put on the page because of short memories and to make sure they didn’t fall into mere tradition. Hallelujah!

Let’s look at 1 Corinthians. I think we’ll just take a verse from the chapter on resurrection—1 Corinthians 15, verse 38. It says, “It’s God who gives the body.” I’ve slightly changed the wording, but I haven’t changed the truth. It’s God who giveth the body. He gives the body that pleases Him, and to every seed, its own body.

Who was Jesus? The seed of God. He was the promised seed—promised to Eve in the garden, promised to Abraham by repetition and confirmation, and spoken of by David in the Psalms. Can you remember where David sang about it? Well, let me remind you: Psalm 22. It says, “This seed shall be counted for a generation.” Hallelujah! That seed, in God’s reckoning, was counted for the generation—a new generation, the regeneration! And to the seed, He gave life.

Never settle for anything lower, even if it is decorated with powers and wonders. Never have anything lower than this, for this is the life. Praise God, and the Holy Ghost has come so that we may have it. John starts off his epistle saying, "Of his fullness have all we received." That's right—you’ve received of his fullness. It doesn’t matter who you are. You might be, I don’t know, the worst character in your village or town, or the worst person in your home. You might think it’s someone else, but they think it’s you. You might be the worst person, but, beloved, the whole truth is that you can have the best.

You can have such a complete change. God will do this in your life if you let Him. But if you settle for anything lower, it’s no good complaining to the Lord. That’s why I like old Chambers' book, My Utmost for His Highest. It could be translated as "His Utmost for My Highest." Well, that’s what it’s all about—what the Lord has done for me and what He gives to me.

I can see, and I hope you can see with all clarity, that the blessed Spirit has come to make this available to me. Amen! Do you see that? When your eyes are opened, you can see what it’s all about. Now, you can see beyond heaven itself.

See beyond heaven? That sounds like just preacher’s talk, doesn’t it? But Jesus is raised highest above all heavens. This is what the scripture says. So, get your eyes off heaven and see right through it. Hallelujah! Just like you can see through the earth (not literally, of course), you can see through the world, through sin, and through the devil. You can see through all of this. You see? You see through all heavens—it’s Him! Hallelujah! You can see—not heaven for me, but the Lord’s glory. Is that right?

Now, that’s literally the revelation of the scripture. It’s Him, and the blessed Spirit has come to reproduce Him in you. That’s what He’s come for. Wonderful, isn’t it?

We know when this sort of thing happens. It's queer. We, as human beings, are queer, aren’t we? There’s something reactionary about us, something responsive. You see, as soon as we realize He’s come to reproduce Christ in us, don’t we feel like stretching out our inward arms? We’ve been free enough with our outward ones—hitting this, grabbing that, and reaching into things we shouldn’t have touched. See? The Holy Ghost has come to reproduce Christ in me, in this mortal body, so that my body, being a body of the Spirit, can become a spiritual body—in that sense. I’m putting it in quotes, “in that sense.”

Now then, beloved, oh, this is wonderful! Let’s do some reading. I think that’s where we’ll start—reading the scriptures. You don’t have to read them if you can remember and quote them correctly. They were put on the page because of short memories and to make sure they didn’t fall into mere tradition. Hallelujah!

Let’s look at this first Corinthians letter. I think we’ll take a verse from the chapter on resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15:38. It says, “It’s God who gives the body.” I’ve slightly changed the wording, but I haven’t changed the truth. It’s God who giveth the body. He gives the body that pleases Him, and to every seed, He gives its own body.

Do you see the truth of this? Who was Jesus? The seed of God. He was the promised seed—promised to Eve in the garden, promised to Abraham by repetition and confirmation, and spoken of by David in the Psalms. Can you remember where David sang about it?

Well, let me tell you one: Psalm 22. It says, “This seed shall be counted for a generation.” Hallelujah! See, that seed, in God’s reckoning, was counted for the generation—a new generation, the regeneration! And to the seed, He gave life.

The body—that's right, yes. The seed was conceived in Mary, and He gave it a body. Hallelujah! We called Him Jesus. Hmm, or at least He did, so we do call His name Jesus. This is the seed, the body, the life—it’s all in it. The body had to be. If Jesus Christ hadn’t put His body into it, if His body hadn’t been right, we wouldn’t have been redeemed because the blood came from the body. The power in the blood came from the life, the life came from the seed, and the seed came from God. Hallelujah!

That’s why He said to us, "You neither know me nor my Father." Hallelujah! It’s a tremendous thing. Anyway, God gives to every seed His own body. Then He drops out of the mist that which is the great mystery and spiritual secret we’ve seen in the verse, and He comes into the world that we know so very well: “All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”

There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies. He’s talking about creation, but don’t you see? As we were thinking together yesterday morning, or the last two mornings, the tabernacle was patterned on personality and life. So is all nature—flesh, bodies, celestial bodies. You see it? There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.

Now, in the physical, we’ve all got earthly bodies. So, what we’ve got to do is make our bodies heavenly by making them spiritual through the Holy Ghost. All right, this won’t make you a wonderful star in God’s firmament, circulating all the churches quickly to let them see your brilliance. God has His stars; He holds them in His hands. Consult John in Revelation chapter 1—that’s right. He has His heavenly ministers; they are stars.

Never covet to be one. Never. If God puts you there, He puts the stars in their places. Leave it to Him. Aspire to the highest, but don’t try to be a star. Because, you see, I reckon that if you are trying to be a star, your mind is still mixed up with the films, and you're thinking about glamour, whereas He’s thinking about glory—a totally different thing. Glamour is spit and polish on the surface. I don’t know whether Mr. Cody would like to hear me calling his stuff spit and polish, but that’s what it is. Glory, on the other hand, is nature. It’s innate. It comes from the inside; it’s not put on from without. Hallelujah! Marvelous, isn’t it?

Well, let's get down to this. It says, "There are bodies celestial or heavenly, and bodies terrestrial or earthly. But the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another." That’s right, isn’t it?

I said, "Oh, it’s hot," thinking of the glory of this celestial body up there. It’s a bit hot, but I’m ever so glad that I’m getting used to it. However, I don’t want it on the back of my neck when I’m preaching. And there are glorious bodies on the earth—not glamorous bodies, keep that distinction clear. Glamorous flesh, I understand that. But glorious bodies on the earth—hallelujah!

Do you know what a glorious body on earth is? The Church of Jesus Christ! That’s our glorious body. What’s the Church made up of? Glorious bodies, glorious people. Isn’t that right? Who’s the glorious person? The one who is like Jesus, of course.

Listen, I don’t want to shock you, but Jesus never preached a sermon in His life. I know they say “The Sermon on the Mount,” but it wasn’t that. It was an exposition from the spiritual point of view of the Ten Commandments and the truth contained in them. We know that He was "a teacher come from God," not a preacher—of course, He’s a preacher by our standards, but not by what the earth turns out.

And the whole glorious thing about it is that none of the Apostles preached sermons. You can read it. Paul said he was appointed "an apostle and teacher of the Gentiles." Marvelous, isn’t it? Just drop these little things as we go along. Of course, he preached as well, but we’re following our trail here.

Here’s the trail: He says, "The glory of the terrestrial is another. There’s the glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. One star differs from another star in glory." That’s absolutely true. Old Paul differed from Peter, and John differed from them both—not in their ministry, not in their message, but aren’t they all different? Have you ever read them to get acquainted? Hallelujah! They differed in their glory, and the Lord wants us to see and understand this.

Then, he goes on and says, “So also is The resurrection from the dead—it's sown in corruption. Hallelujah! That’s right, isn’t it? We were thinking last night about people losing loved ones, but let's come into the spiritual. Let's come back to Jesus. It was surely sown. If it had been left in corruption, as anything could have been, it never was. Of course, it was preserved. That’s the wonder of God having these people around with their preserving spices. It never did corrupt. Hallelujah! But they never mummified Him. So, don't you get mummified, will you? And don't get too "daddified," either.

We’ve got to see, beloved, what we're doing here. It was a blessed body. It would have been in corruption, the glory of God. It wasn't. It's raised! And where resurrection is concerned, it's in corruption. Hallelujah! Blessed be the name of the Lord.

It’s sown in weakness. That's right. It’s raised in power—dunamis—that's your word. That’s regeneration by our preaching. Amen! Raised in power. Why do you receive the power to be a witness to Him? That He’s raised from the dead? It’s regeneration. It’s clear as anything—to be a witness to Him raised in the power. Glory be to the name of the Lord!

The Bible only teaches one truth if you look into it properly, and on we go. In this whole glorious truth, it’s sown a natural body; it’s raised a spiritual body. There it is! There is a natural body; there is a spiritual body. And so it is written: "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a life-giving spirit."

Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. We move between the spiritual and the natural in this realm. God takes this whole thing up for us to see it. Amen!

Sown in weakness—when you get so weak that you give up struggling against God. The old man is never stronger than just before he dies. And when you get weak, crucified in weakness—this is what he wrote in the second letter to the Christians. Jesus was crucified through weakness. Hallelujah! Amen!

And when, beloved, you see these great truths, God wants us to understand it. Sown in dishonor, sown in corruption. Praise the name of the Lord!

Let's see this, beloved: corruption, dishonor, weakness. Who's ready to admit it about themselves first before they can come into the spiritual truth? Or who will keep saying, "I'm not so bad, really?" You see, underneath, "I’m not as bad as all that."

But you see, you are as bad as all that—or you were. The Lord cuts it right off, and suddenly Jesus shouted, yielded, and went through with the plan of God for you and me. Finished! It can all finish. It can in you! And because it can, it must in you.

And because it can and must, and you believe it, it shall all be finished in you. You see? And because you accept the promise in faith, then I want to say it is finished. That’s right! Glory! Isn’t this so wonderful?

And all this great trouble that I have in myself, I want to bring to myself, like the great Apostle Paul did. Instead of talking about someone else, when it got to the very nasty things, he talked about himself. He brought it all out from himself—what had happened in him.

He didn’t say, “Now you know, Mrs. So-and-so, she lives in number so, and now we’re going to talk about her this morning.” He didn’t say, “Now you know that man over there, he thinks he’s great, but you know what’s going on inside? I’m letting you into the spiritual secret.” He comes all to himself. Hallelujah!

For men who follow in the steps of Jesus Christ, who was made sin for us, and Paul is prepared to let it all be outworked through the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical experiences through which he went. He lets it all be set forth upon the pages of Scripture, lest we should think hardly of someone else instead of of him.

And there it is. Oh, you know, this is grace! It’s absolute grace.

The blessed Scripture absolutely flows with grace—the way it’s formed, the fact that it’s there, the message it contains, the men who moved in it, responsible for it. It’s all grace, and God wants us to come into this great area of truth where we see this great thing. It can all finish everything—the workings in my very mortal flesh, these obnoxious workings, these things.

Oh, let's go back to Romans 7, shall we? We’d better sort it out there in Paul's grace to us. He says,

“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.”

Amen! But I see another law in my members. I thought you saw in my members; it was against the law of my mind, my mental powers, my willpower. None of them are strong enough to deal with the situation that I find rampant in my members. You've been like that. Hallelujah!

You see, it brings me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. Oh, blessed man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with the mind, I myself serve the law of God; with the flesh, the law of sin.

You know, I'm not very happy with many of these modern paraphrases. I've given my reasons for that quite often, but one thing I am happy about—I think it could be J.B. Phillips. I’ll tell you, I let lots of things run off me. I am selective in the things I retain. I’m not too sure about it; it could be J.B. Phillips. But he has set this in its correct order, as it should be.

In Romans 7, he doesn’t finish up with, “So then, with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.” He finishes up with, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Oh, there is therefore now no condemnation! He transposes those words and puts them in their right position because, in this form, it looks as if, “Oh, well, there you are. That’s the end of it all.” You see, but it isn’t! Glory be to God! He’s a thankful man; he’s a freed man; he’s a released man.

And you see where he’s got to next? In Christ Jesus, he’s got that life. He’s in Romans 8. He’s in there! That’s the revived life; that’s the precise life which the man lived. That’s it, and that’s the wonderful life that is God for you—God, man! Hallelujah! I’m in Christ, and this is the life for my new man—His glorious wonderful life!

Oh, how can you pile up enough superlatives or praises to Jesus? So precious! It’s like that, beloved. I don’t know whether you ever get there. Do you ever get there in your spiritual life, wanting to praise Him and praise Him and praise Him, and you don’t slip into another tongue just to get yourself liberated and free and floating like everybody else, but because you’ve got no words? Your mind has failed to produce His excellent glories. Hallelujah!

Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Isn’t that right? Don’t you ever get there?

Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord! Not just objectively, as someone now high enthroned in glory, but subjectively, you’re in the experience of it all. Oh, Lord, Lord! Sometimes you want to kneel; sometimes you want to fall on the floor; sometimes you want to stand up and praise Him, praise Him, praise Him. And this is what the Lord wants us to be in—okay? That we should have a spiritual body in the sense which Christ, the man, had a body of the Spirit.

And moved in this way, and this thing—whatever you want to call it, sin or anything you might call it—doesn't make any difference, really, except that you’re not, by the use of words, trying to dodge the point.

Oh, and sin is dealt with in your life! Glory! Um, not permanently. In other words, there's no sort of, “It’s dealt with now and forever.” It’s dealt with now and forever at Calvary. Amen! But it's dealt with in your life and will be constantly if you will abide in and walk in the truth.

Yeah, that’s right! For hallelujah, quickening to life means that He’s brought us to a state of cooperativeness. If we're not going to cooperate, we’re not alive; we’re still dead. It depends upon that cooperation. This is the whole point. He brings us into a place of life so that now we love.

If life and love aren’t the same to you, then you haven’t got life. You’re really in love with the Lord, and you cooperate with Him. You go with Him, and you love His company. You talk with Him, and He talks with you. He moves your heart, and on you go with Him! Hallelujah!

And it’s marvelous when you first begin. Have you ever made a real beginning? Can you describe what it was like to me when you first began walking this way? Can you? Oh, it was tremendous, wasn’t it? Do you know what happened to me? Praise God! I decided I was in a new world.

I believe I’ve said this before: if people had said, “Walk along the street behind me,” and said, “Do you know your feet weren’t on the ground?” I wouldn’t have believed them! Oh, hallelujah! I would have believed them in this and that, the other, but as I got on, it became habitual rather than ecstatic.

Yeah, that’s right! That’s what Paul means when he said, “When I became a man, I put away childish things.” You see, people keep trying to depend on the initial ecstasy, and in reaching after that, we’ve produced a false position.

But when you become normal by Jesus Christ's standards, normal—I never heard John record it. I never read it in Matthew. I never read it in Mark: “We went along the road one day and started skipping along the road.” I know, I never heard that! Did you?

So that can’t be the height of spirituality, then, can it? Really! Mind you, you’ve just seen me skip! I can skip like a young roe or a hart on the mountains! That’s fine! We didn’t say it was an old hart or a roe, only a youngster. You notice what it said?

It’s so absolutely glorious, and we move in these great exercises of God. We’ve got to go on with God; we’ve got to see this marvelous naturalness of our walk when this thing called sin is dealt with.

And our laws that are in our members—there are laws in your members! See, there are laws in your members, and they function whether you want them to or whether you don’t. If you didn’t have these laws, you wouldn’t even be here! They have to work, and when they cease to work in your natural body, then you’re going to die. In fact, you’ve already come to death in several things—laws that work in your members.

But what we do not find, or ought not to find, is that these laws that work in your members don’t bring you into captivity to the law of sin at all. Because the law of sin now is not in your members! The law of sin and death is not in your members if you’ve come via Calvary. If you’ve died, you’ve got another law working in your members now.

It’s the law of righteousness and life working in your members. Righteousness is the opposite of sin, and life is the opposite of death! Hallelujah! Proper life! Hallelujah! The real life that God intended man to live—the life that Jesus Christ lived as a man on the earth! The life that Adam originally lived before he started harkening to the voice of the devil relayed to him through the voice of his wife.

He lived this life. He wasn’t in bondage to sin and death. Hallelujah! This was a glorious and marvelous thing, and it’s in your members, isn’t it? Oh, amen! All the natural functions of your members now are not under the control of the law of sin and death.

You know you don’t have to sin because of the natural functions in your body! See, you don’t have to! In that glorious way, be natural, won’t you? Be natural! If you’re not natural, you see, that’s where you go wrong.

Be natural! Some people think the way to be spiritual is not to be natural, and they come right out of their natural selves. You can see them, and they float about like this, and they…

You ever seen them? Oh, I’ve seen them. They’re living in a complete world of fantasy—a complete world of fantasy! It’s not all this business, beloved. Praise God! We all have our lovely times when we worship God and magnify His name, and it’s glorious. If you can’t do it, then you need releasing. You’ve got a law at work in your members that won’t do it. It’s under the domination of your mind.

And you won’t do it. Fears, doubts, inabilities, repressions, inhibitions—all sorts of things. Cultural upbringing, background of denominationalism, or this, that, or the other through the historic denominations. Thank God for that!

Let’s get it wrong, well, I mean thank God that they’re historic. In other words, I don’t mean it quite in the way your mind took it. I mean that they have held the truth in some form or another down through the ages. The way they may have dressed it up, we may object to, but the fact is it’s there.

And you can be held in all these ways, and you should be absolutely free—free to do right, not wrong; free to behave yourself properly, not improperly; free to love; free to be considerate of others. This is the man Jesus, you see. Amen!

Listen, I hope you don’t regard me as a shocking person, but this is true. There’s a quotation in Hebrews 2, and this is what it says: “I, in the midst of the church”—this is speaking of Jesus Christ—“I will sing praises unto thee.” All right? In the midst of the church—this is in resurrection. Now notice where He’s going to sing praises. You never heard that He was walking along the road singing hallelujah. You never read of Jesus singing in the man.

Well, don’t you think He ever sung? I’m only telling you what the Bible says. Not that I’m Bible-bound, but the only place you ever hear of Him singing a hymn was when He was with the embryonic church in the upper room at the Lord’s table. Isn’t that right? But in resurrection, in the church, He sings praises in the midst of the church. Hallelujah!

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t sing hallelujah when you’re washing up tomorrow morning. I’m only wanting to get things in perspective. I want to get them in spiritual perspective. I want to get them in scriptural perspective. Don’t you? I do, personally. This is what I want to do increasingly—not that we should all be liberated to sing in the bathtub if we want. That’s wonderful, and it may be best that you do. Amen!

No, don’t mistake it for the water going down. And even if you’ve got a voice like that, sing! But this is how the Lord Jesus really wants us, beloved: in the midst of the church! Glory be to God! We should all come together and hear Jesus sing.

Yeah, glory in our hearts! You make the melody; I’ll sing! Jesus, you make the melody in your heart; I’ll sing, singing, making melody! Glory be to the name of the Lord! We’re in a glorious new inward spiritual realm, but you and I have got to live in this physical body of ours. There are laws that govern them and work in them, and God wanted them too. It’s the rectification of them by the withdrawal of the dominating sin principle and substituting the principle of righteousness in us. Amen!

And as sure as you go on with the Lord, by these things called laws that you never can put your hand on—God removed the laws you could put your hands on; they were written on tablets of stone. He removed those! They are laws now governing personality and human beings. And they’re there.

They may say, “Well, it’s because this chemical explosion takes place; there’s something to do with the spleen and the adrenaline, and I don’t know what”—all sorts of things like that. You don’t want to worry about that. All the doctors that I know—and I know quite a few, and real doctors at that—I don’t mean I know them from beginners to finishers; they all tell me, “We don’t know anything, really, brother.” That’s what they say to me: “We don’t know!”

It’s actually like you’re putting your hands in their hands. They say that we don’t know anything, really. Glory be to God! You needn’t take too much notice of these people at all—not when it comes to this realm. We’re in the realm of the Spirit, and it’s God’s ability to transmit from the Spirit to the...

Body through the soul—it's what the Holy Ghost has come for. That’s why your body has got to be the temple of the Holy Ghost.

Well, when you look at your body, I don’t know whether you ever do, but if you look inside, you know you haven’t got much empty space in there, have you? Unless it’s nearly lunchtime, you haven’t got much empty space in there. Where would He live if He’s got to live in an empty space? He lives in your body, in your spirit, permeating you—permeating! Glory, isn’t it?

Oh, God was in that body, that man of Nazareth. He wasn’t separate from the body; He was in that body. In fact, that body was the body of God the Son. Isn’t it precious?

What’s your body? Whose body is it? His servants you are, to whom you yield your members to obey. They’re not stern words; they are true words. They’re not issued in any sense of destruction but in the interests of truth. Whoever you yield your members to obey—this is Romans 6, I’m quoting—his servants you are to whom you obey.

Your members—that’s your body. Do I give this member, that member, or any member of my body to serve myself? Then I must—then I’m my own servant. Do I give them over to the devil? Then I am the devil’s servant. Do I give them over to sin? Then I am the slave of sin. Do I give them to you, Lord?

Lord, by the blessed indwelling of the Spirit, by the glory of God’s divine power, is the Spirit taking hold of me? Is He really reforming my whole inward self on the pattern of Jesus Christ? Is He?

Yeah, hallelujah! The glory of an initial experience is wonderful. The glory of the sun, for instance, is marvelous—call that your initial experience. But all of a sudden, you—hallelujah!

But there’s also the glory of the moon, and that shines right through the darkness. You’ve got a glory of the moon that shines all through. Oh, that’s only a reflected glory. Well, of course, that’s right; it’s the sunshine, really, isn’t it? You say it’s moonshine—it’ll kill you! It’s sunshine!

That’s right—it’s sunshine! So the sun shines all night by reflecting its light from the surface of the moon through the darkness. But you know, there are times in my heavenly experience when even this moon doesn’t shine.

Ah, but there are the stars there! The stars shine all night. They shine whether the sun shines or whether the moon shines—they shine! Hallelujah! He made the stars also.

So you get Jesus—the sunshine; all right? The church—the moonshine; and the apostles—the star shine—the ministers. All right?

We’re in the new creation! Amen! God, give us some apostles.

How many do you know that shine like that? And how many?

When Jesus was coming into the earth, tell me, did the sun shine, or the moon shine, or was it star shine? We’ve seen His star in the east. See, and then we watched it, and we saw that it was the day star because we know that the sun is really a star.

So they tell us. I mean, I don’t know; you can please yourself with your belief in the scientists about this or not. I’ve never been there, and one forecast I will make to you...

Thou never launch a spaceship onto the sun. I’ll never land on the sun. They can land on the moon; they might get to some of these other stars and planets, but they'll never reach the sun.

Hallelujah! And we’re told that the Day Star has got to arise in our own hearts. Peter tells us this: the Day Star must rise in your hearts. Hallelujah! With His powerful shining, He’ll do better than X-rays. He’ll irradiate out of you the seeds of your moral cancer. He’ll bombard every diseased cell with the spiritual man, everything—the inward man—everything. Hallelujah! That’s what He’ll do until we’re irradiated with His life and glory.

And that’s why I said that it isn’t spit and polish, shadows and scents on the outside; it’s glory from within. There’s a glory of the sun, there’s a glory of the moon, there’s another glory of the stars, and each star differs from another in glory. Amen!

When you come to the place where you will voluntarily die, if you think Jesus has been hanging you on the cross for the last three days, die. Stop kicking! Weren’t His legs nailed down? Stop fighting! Weren’t His arms pinned out? But stop it! Hallelujah!

Be honest. Tell your husband, tell your wife: it’s been you! Oh Lord! Oh, you know we fight; we do! That’s the desolation of your family and home. Mother and father can’t even live together; we argue, we don’t do it. Say you’re wrong. Die!

All spiritual salvation for you will come flooding in when you start saying, “Hey, it’s my fault! Yeah, I’m sorry! I’ve been a beast.” Weren’t the beasts around the cross? Unicorns, lions, dogs—see, weren’t they all there? Bulls? That’s where they all stayed, but only a lamb on the cross.

Hmm! They never get on. They get far; they bark, they roar, they do all sorts of things. “Oh, lamb! I can make more noise than the lamb!” Listen to me roaring, says the lion. “Yeah, listen to me mooing,” says the male cow. “That’s right, look at me totting,” says the unicorn.

That’s right; Jesus said, “Look at me. Die! Yielding, come on! All you bulls and unicorns and goats or whatever you are, and cats and dogs, stop living a cat-and-dog life! Come and die. Die! Yield up! Oh, finish!”

Oh God! There are some who are naturally weaklings. “Oh God, what’s wrong with me?” You’re out—finished! Self-pity is a map, but it’s one of the worst little worms that was ever bred from the serpent. Do serpents bleed? Worms? Well, they’re like big worms—more vicious! Finished! He said, “Finished!”

Now I’m going to read a psalm. I see why God talked to me about this psalm early this morning. I’ve only just arrived.

Psalm 20: “The Lord hear thee in the day of thy trouble; the name of the God of Jacob set thee on high.” That’s your word, “defend, set thee on high.”

“Send thy help”—you’ve got “thee.” It’s “thy” in the Hebrew—in other words, there’s a help that’s thine, just thine, friend! Oh, we can all have this! Oh, God’s very particular—thy help! Just the thing that you need! You’re such a peculiar person.

And you were fearfully and wonderfully made. David goes on saying that my soul knows right well, talking about himself. Amen!

Send thy help from the sanctuary and support thee out of Zion. Remember all thy gift offerings and turn thy ascending offerings into ashes. My word, hallelujah! See that he stops; he says, “Pause and think of that!” You pause and think of that. Everything to ashes, beloved! Everything to ashes in God! Good lest we should think that ashes are diamonds. Grant thee according to thine own heart, isn’t that lovely? And fulfill all thy counsel. Amen!

We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners. Hallelujah! The Lord fulfill all thy petitions. Now know I that the Lord saveth His anointed. Glory be to the name of the Lord! How tremendous this is! He'll hear him from His holy heaven with the saving strength of His right hand.

Some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we will remember the name of Jehovah our God. They are brought down and fallen, but we are risen and stand up. Save, Lord! That’s your word, “Hosanna! Let the King hear us when we call!” Hallelujah!

You've got to set up your banner, beloved! Glory to God! God finished! Raise the standard! Set up the banner! Amen! It's done; it’s all over! Glory be to the name of the Lord! And that’s what God wants us to set up. It’s finished; that’s God’s standard—finished! He’s the standard. That one—Him! What He accomplished—He’s the standard. You must rally to it; you must come.

That’s what this is all about. All the tribes of Israel had a standard. When the trumpet blew, they had to rally to their own standard. That’s what they had to do; they had a standard! Glory! If you read through the Mosaic prayer and prophecy, you’ll find what the standard was. Each standard was—would you like to do there? I won’t tell you which. I’ll tell you the book: Genesis. That’s as far as I’m going; I’m sorry, Exodus. But before you read Exodus, read the standard in Genesis. In Genesis, there’s one there too. Then move on to Deuteronomy and click these things together and see the way that God has woven His marvelous standards, emblazoned with symbols—things for which they stand.

Hallelujah! We rally here; it’s finished; it’s all over! Lord, I’m dead, I’m dead. I stopped it this morning. It’s all over! Isn’t that marvelous? This is what the Spirit does. Yes, this is what the Spirit does.

Let’s pray; we’ll move in. It’s all over! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if human voices blended with angel voices? Yes, this day and sang over your appearing unto us: “A son is given; unto us a child is born!” Glory to God!

What are we going to call Him? Oh, call Him Wonderful! Oh, Wonderful! Hallelujah! Prince of Peace, Prince of Peace! Hallelujah! Let it steal all over your being; let it flood your everlasting Father.

The Mighty God! It’s going to increase; it’s going to increase. The government will be on His shoulder. That’s right; you won’t be at the mercy of all these laws that work for you. The government will be on your shoulder! Amen! The increase of your kingdom and of peace; there shall be no end. Visualize it—no end! I can’t see the end! Oh, hallelujah! Hallelujah! This is better than launching on the river; it’s going out into the sea! Amen! Hallelujah!

Father, Father! Oh, great is thy faithfulness, Lord! Thank you, Lord, for truth; it sets us free! You said it would! We want to move out of it, Lord. Our longing souls, Lord, stretched to this blessed art thou, O Lord!

Lord, and blessed is thy counsel, and blessed is thy truth, and glorious art thou in thy majesty! Hallelujah! Jesus, Thou art my head! My head is removed; Thou art my head now. Mm-hmm! Thou art my head, my new head, my new husband, my new wonderful God. Jesus! Jesus!

Original audio at https://biblebase.com/download/6607/