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    247
    The Resurrection of Christ

    The 3 April 2000 General Conference Commemorative Sermon

    Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I welcome you back to this General Conference of the New Covenant Church of God on this most special of days, the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Yah'shua haMashiach (Jesus Christ) which took place 2003 years ago on this very date according to the fixed Gregorian calendar.

    Now this resurrection of which I speak is something rather special. It was not, as some are now teaching - but which occultists have been teaching since the days of the Gnostics - simply a resurrection of the "spirit". Neither was it a resussitation of a dead body, a transfiguration, nor a translation. It was the bringing to life again of a dead body to an immortal and incorruptible condition accompanied by an instantaneous combination of a resurrected spirit body to form what Paul calls a "spiritual body" or a complete resurrected body or soul.

    One of the most recent revelations to the Holy Order received this year which has been released to the public, is from the Fourth Book of Abraham, and gives us some fresh insights into the resurrection. You will recall that one of the purposes of the Holy Order is to instruct those committed to Christ in the deeper, meatier doctrines of the Kingdom so that we might better understand the cardinal doctrines of our Christian faith, foremost of which is indeed the resurrection of the Son of God.

    To begin with, time is described as a type of prison in which we must of necessity age and eventually die. We have been especially designed - perhaps "adapted" would be a better word - to reside in this fourth dimension called time. Abram says:

      "The Most High hath no beginning nor ending, but always was, and is, and shall be. Therefore He hath no beginning in the eternities. But the Most High hath a beginning in time, for He is the creator of time through the Messiah. He entereth not time but is above it. Nevertheless, His angels enter time to converse with men and His ambassadors. But the angels are not of time and cannot remain here, but must return unto their own sphere. Were they to remain in it they would be imprisoned by it, never to leave again" (4 Abraham 9:22-28).

    In these few verses we are introduced to a radically new concept, namely, that time is a kind of death. In fact, time is death, which is why our Heavenly Father Yahweh cannot enter into it directly. Furthermore, were He to do so, He would become a finite being, having a beginning and therefore an ending. Similarly, angels are not able to remain here for more than a very short period of time for they would otherwise become trapped by death.

    The account continues:

      "But the Messiah shall enter time in its meridian, and shall be imprisoned by it in order to restore the world into the heavenlies. And He shall break the bands of time, restoring it unto the Most High at the end of the dispensation. In the meridian of time He shall break the bands and return unto the Most High, but he shall return again to complete His work" (vv.29-31).

    Time and death are here to be viewed as synonyms. Death is, as we know, simply a "matter of time", and quite literally so. As those of us who are getting older know, time seems to pass quicker and quicker like an accellerating aircraft dropping out of the sky and hurtling to the ground. We reach a point where we simply burn time out and cease to exist on this physical plane.

    The Mission of Christ is to quite simply break into our time-death dimension and start the processes of restoring it to its timeless heavenly dimension. And it occurs in three phases. The first was the creation of time itself caused by the rebellion in Eden. The second was the work of the Cross by which Christ provided an escape route for those who would take hold of His resurrection power through faith and obedience. And the third and final phase, which has yet to come, will be the time when the whole physical universe is drawn into the resurrection power at the end of the Millennium and at which point time and death itself become expended. Not everyone has been content with this scenario. The devil and his angels are trapped in time as spirit beings. They were cast down to this earth dimension and inhabit its invisible counterpart. One of Satan's greatest aims is to be free of the limitations of being simply a spirit-being and to acquire the attributes of physicality. To do this he won over a class of angels called the "Watchers" who possessed the physical qualities he needed so much and ordered them down to the earth where they mingled with the daughters of Adam to form a corrupt race of giants called the Nephilim. Their hybrid progeny were not humans and therefore were not inhabited by the spirits of pre-incarnate men and women - rather, they became the abode of unincarnate evil spirits or demons. Satan believed that he could create a race of immortal beings inhabited by his evil spirits but did not understand the source of eternal life. The account continues:

      "The Watchers were angels who kept not their first estate, being angels of the Most High set apart to watch over mankind until the coming of Messiah, but they lusted after women, being jealous of our {Holy} Order, for they wished to know our mystery before their time" (vv.33-34).

    It has been supposed by orthodox Christianity that the angels are single and unmarried and were created that way. However, were they created asexual they would not have been able to procreate with women. We learn from the story of the Watchers two important things: (a) First, angels are PHYSICAL; and (2) they have PROCREATIVE ABILITIES. They are not, as we have been led to suppose, sexless spirits. Angels are, in fact, just like us only possessing greater authority and power for the present. The eternal destinty of faithful angels is exactly the same as faithful mankind - there will be a time when we are indistinguishable. So why are the angels heavenly servants and while we are down here in this mortal world?

    That mystery has been revealed to us. In the pre-mortal worlds we were given a choice: to run the gammut of mortality and possibly lose our salvation, or have a guaranteed salvation with few risks and inherit a lesser reward. For we are told that resurrected humans will one day judge angels, and whilst we are a little lower than them right now, we will be above them in the eternities.

    You can see from this how a group of angels became jealous of mankind and sought to reverse the honours whilst retaining the minimum risks. Inspite of being possessors of great supernatural power, inspite of being guaranteed eternal salvation if they kept their first estate as single beings, they desired the blessings of marriage before their time. They saw the happiness of the marriage state and wanted it there and then. But to get it required that they rebell and challenge the authority of Yahweh. It meant changing sides and joining Lucifer's rebellion. They made alot of mistakes, just as Lucifer did, and one of them is recorded for us:

      "Therefore they (the Watchers) entered time and became imprisoned by it, SUPPOSING THEY COULD DEPART AT WILL. Therefore they became mortal like men in the flesh, and died like flesh" (vv.35-36).

    Although they were supernatural beings with great knowledge and powers, they were neither omnipotent nor omniscient as God is. But they believed they were! Thus coming down into this time-zone gave them a big shock. Suddenly, they discovered they were not so supernatural any longer. They became like us, subject to physical weakness and, ultimately, death. The accouht continues:

      "Not being born like unto natural man, they had no veil of forgetfulness, and therefore they possessed great power even unto prolonging their lives above that of mortals, which time they used to work great corruption in the earthly order, defiling all living things" (v.37).

    The Watchers began a battle against time. When the awful truth of ageing dawned on them, they knew that they would perish like men. Their only hope of cheating the judgment of Yahweh was somehow to prolong their own lives indefinitely. The plan they arrived at was to create a kind of cloning system whereby they could reproduce physical bodies not just for unembodied fallen spirits or devils but for themselves - they devised a system of REINCARNATION. By this way they hoped to cheat death and judgment. And it worked. The whole planet was filled with these hybrid creatures - incarnate devils - with true human beings rapidly becoming the minority species. The spirits in the pre-existence awaiting incarnation were simply not being born because there were fewer and fewer true humans.

    I will spare you the details of what else the Watchers and their children got up to because it is simply too blood-chilling. Finally, Yahweh intervened, gathered the only eight pure souls left on the earth, and plunged the world in a flood. The demonic Watcher scheme came to an end and millions of demonic beings became unincarnated again - disembodied spirits. The original Watchers, we are told in the New Testament, imprisoned to await their final, awful judgment.

    So this begs another question: how did immortal angels become mortal? I think you will find the answer given in our text interesting:

      "Angels are only immortal in the PRESENCE OF GOD THE MOST HIGH, for HE ALONE IS IMMORTAL" (v.39.).

    Please grab hold of that - GOD ALONE IS IMMORTAL. There is, therefore, strictly speaking no such thing as an immortal angel or an immortal human being! If we were we would be able to exist independently of God, which we cannot. Abram continues:

      "All life cometh from Yahweh-Elohim. At His command life beginneth, and at His command it endeth. But the Watchers knew this not, and supposed that they were gods, having eternal life. Therefore when they grew old and weak they became angry, and their hearts became the more corrupt, for they were filled with all manner of evil inclinations. Therefore they attempted to STEAL LIFE that they might prolong their own, like unto those (angels) who fell from the beginning. And though the Watchers and their posterity were destroyed from off the face of the earth in the days of father Noah, many escaped to another world, even a desert world, cold and without life, which is known by us as the red world, for it is a world of sin and separation" (v.40-45).

    From this passage we learn that whilst most of the Watchers and their nephilim descendants were killed in the Great Flood, some escaped from this planet to another one - a cold, desert-like planet, presumably using the advanced technology which their great knowledge enabled them to create. I will leave to you guess just what sort of technology they created.

      "They shall return again to walk their evilness towards the end times, even they that escaped, to be destroyed off the face of the earth for ever" (v.46).

    I am sure you will by now have recognised a hint at the UFO phenomenon, a subject too large to get into here today and you may also have concluded that the planet Mars somehow figures in this too. More importantly for us to realise is that the Flood did not wipe out all the nephilim race, that some ecaped, and have continued to propagate hybrid physical-type bodies and reincarnate. Indeed, they are fighting a losing battle as the bodies they create become less and less viable over time - that is the reason there have been so many UFO abductions in our time - they are still making a hybrid race. Abraham concludes:

      "The Watchers attempted to imitate our Holy Order, but built it upon principles of false light. Though such may succeed for a short time, the end of it is destruction, because it cannot be sustained without the spilling of blood and sexual perversion. Therefore the spirits of the destroyed Watchers are confined in the dark realms of the heavenlies, prisoners awaiting their final judgment from the Most High. And we know not what He shall do unto them at the last day" (vv.48-51).

    Please understand from this that nobody is immortal as we have been taught by the orthodox Churches who borrowed their ideas from the pagan Platonists. Neither are we to understand that we are just physical matter plus impersonal breath of God as taught by the Seventh Day Adventists, Armstrongites, Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others. We do indeed have spirits as the orthodox churches have taught but they are not unconditionally immortal - rather, they may be said to be CONDITIONALLY MORTAL. The further we are from the Throne of God the more mortal we become - indeed, time and death claim us. That is why humans live such a short period of time - before the Flood and the evil of the Watchers, we lived for centuries. Today 70 is about the average life-span.

    Now where does Christ's resurrection come into all of this? Well, as I said in the beginning, this earth realm is a kind of prison - there's no escaping from it! I want you to imagine, if you will, a large onion with many different layers. In the centre is the physical earth. Within the earth are invisible layers which one might call Spirit Prison or "hell", and above the earth are various degrees of Paradise or "heaven". All of these spheres - the physical, the heavenly, and prison, are temporary. They are ALL a part of the time-prison. We can't get out of them. Yahweh and His faithful angels live in a different universe where there is no time, sin or death. Our own sphere will eventually pass away - the New Testament says that at the end of the Millennium there will be a "new earth and a new heaven" - the old will pass away. And the reason it will pass away is because it will all be destroyed. The earth will be utterly transformed into a resurrected planet inhabited by resurrected people - there will be a New Heaven also - in fact, the earth will be taken out of the time/death realm and enter Yahweh's. And what of hell and spirit prison? They, according to the Book of Revelation, will be destroyed.

    This will all be accomplished by the resurrection power of Yah'shua (Jesus) and if we wish to belong to that perfect, timeless, sinless and immortal world, we must turn to Him. Outside of him are Lucifer, his spirit-angels (demons), the Watchers, the Nephilim and the disembodied spirits of men and women who preferred darkness to light. Those who do not turn to Christ will, by default, find themselves in the company of the Prince of Darkness and his allies.

    A word, in conclusion, about hell. Hell is the place of ultimate time. There one second is like a thousand years to us on earth. It will seem to those who are in it during the Millennium, and the period immediately after it, as though it is eternal. But hell will come to an end. There is no such thing as eternal hell. The Scriptures teach that in the end all will be saved but that those who trusted in the Messiah will get the greatest rewards. There will, one day, be a complete and perfect redemption of everyone and everything. Whether that extends to Satan and his angels I do not at present know but I do know that the human race will all be saved...eventually. One day everyknee will bow, and every tongue confess, that Yah'shua (Jesus) is Lord. How it will be accomplished I do not know, only that ultilmately the whole of Creation will be at rest. There will be no more punishment, no more torment. Hell will no longer be. Whether certain classes of angels will become extinct at the end I do not know - quite possibly.

    We are, in the end, dependent on God's presence to live for ever; and in order to get into that presence, we have to get out of this dimension of time, whether physical or spiritual - and to do that we need the resurrection power of Christ. It is entirely our choice whether we break out of these sphere by trusting in the Lord and the saving power of the Cross or whether we choose to ignore our salvation and condemn ourself to what will appear to be an endless prison - a hell of torment caused by guilt for sin, absence of loved ones (for you suffer alone in hell, isolated from others), until we have paid the last farthing for all our wrong-doings.

    May we freely avail ourselves of the resurrection power of Christ, know His peace, be filled with His love, and live a life of honour and virtue. In Christ there is no longer any condemnation but genuine freedom. May that freedom be yours, brethren and sisters, is my heart-felt prayer. Amen.

    This page was created on 3 April 2000
    Last updated on 3 April 2000

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