The Seed Of Life

---

I want to read from the book of Ezekiel in the thirty-second chapter. The prophecies of Ezekiel along with all the other prophets, as a rule, always have to do with Israel and their enemies. Israel is a type of the spiritual Jew and the church, and the enemies of Israel are a type of the demon opposition that we face today as people war against us, and these evil powers work through the weakness of the flesh to cause us problems. Let’s start reading in the thirty-first chapter.

Ezekiel 31:1-18: “And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the third month, in the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to his multitude" Whom art thou like in thy greatness? Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature" and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were not like his branches" nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him. Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD" Because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height" I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen" he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him: upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land" and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him. Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches: To the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs, neither their trees stand up in their height, all that drink water: for they are all delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit. Thus saith the Lord GOD" In the day when he went down to the grave I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed: and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him. I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth. They also went down into hell with him unto them that be slain with the sword" and they that were his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen. To whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? yet shalt thou be brought down with the trees of Eden unto the nether parts of the earth: thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised with them that be slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord GOD.”

Now, if you’ll notice the way this speaks, He uses the terms, “Son of man.” That is to say, God speaks to the prophet saying, “Son of man, cast her down,” but when we think of the Son of Man, we know that the prophets were typical of the Son of Man, Jesus. The prophets had power, and they, being God among the people, He was fore-saying by a prophetical type, “Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, Thou who art all power, cast her down in Thy day.” If you will also notice, the Lord speaks just like He has already done this. He tells us about how He cast her down. He talks about all of the mourning and what took place at that moment and in that hour. So then, He speaks as though it was already done, which is true. That is, what God is showing us is not what He is doing, for He hath already done it" therefore, He is just revealing to us what He has already done in His foreknowledge.

Let’s look at it like this. When you go see a movie, you see what they are doing in that movie, but long before you saw that movie, they had already completed it. That is, the people were doing all these things and then the film recorded it and came over to show it to us. They bring the film to us to show what’s already been done, and all we’re looking at is what is recorded. It’s a playback of that which has already been done.

That’s the way that God works. This is so beautiful if a person can come to understand what God has done. God has already filmed the thing as we say, and all of these things took place in the foreknowledge of God. Jesus was with God in the foreknowledge. I was with God in the foreknowledge. Everything took place in the foreknowledge of God, and He recorded it in the mind of Lucifer, and then when He did that, the mind of Lucifer became the film which is a type of that which happened. God used that mind from the fall in the garden and the tree of knowledge to transfer what He had done over to His creature" therefore, in using this, He has something that mediates between man and God. The Bible says that there is one mediator, even Christ Jesus, but notice that God used Jesus according to the image of sin. Jesus came forth and was made in the image of sin because there was no way that God could transfer that life which was in the foreknowledge to the spiritual creature that He had made, that is, this man as we would say, there was no way God could get it to me except that He comes by way of the veil. I hope you understand what I’m saying.

When we examine this and look at it, we are made to realize that God has done a marvelous thing. Life comes from within. It comes from the blood genetics. It goes through the proper passages when God multiplies and replenishes the earth. God has to take the inner most seed of the blood cell of life, and He has to find a fertile field. If we go to sow a field, we take a grain of corn and drop it into the ground. Now, we’re not interested in the field or the ground. That’s just life passing through the veil. What we’re interested in is the grain of corn that we put in there. We want the corn. We dropped the corn in there so the corn would multiply, and when the corn comes forth, we’d have more corn. That’s all we’re wanting. So then, God is not interested in the veil. He’s not interested in the things of this world. That’s why He said if you are carnal minded, then are you of Lucifer and of the veil. If you are carnally minded and you belong to these things, then are you partakers of that which is of Lucifer, for he is the prince of this world. You’re not eternal. You’re not a god. You are not the seed of life. You’re only a veil that the seed of life is passing through.

When we see this, we understand what God means when He says to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life. The mind of Christ is that seed of life that passes through that veil. It was with God before the world ever was, then it fell into the veil and passed through it, and then came up on the other side as the beginning of the creation of God, Jesus Christ. It came forth from the womb of Mary or out of the veil of humanity as a natural man, to show what God spiritually did as the seed of life went through. That is, the spiritual seed of life went through the transitional changes from glory to glory as it passed through the womb of the veil. That is to say, Paul made the statement, “I travail until Christ be formed within you.” When we see this, it’s such a wonderful thing. If we can understand this, it is to our benefit and it is so thrilling. Let’s just examine it for a few minutes as we talk about it, and just see if this is right and if this is what God has done.

Life passes through the veil, but it has to come from the inner most being. It has to come from the blood because life is in the blood, and the blood cell has to pass through the body into the field. Life comes from God and then it goes through Lucifer. It goes through the serpent. It goes through the veil, and then as it comes through the veil, it falls into the fertile field that God has prepared for the seed of life, and then when it does, we understand that we have become the carrier of life, travailing until Christ be formed within you. Now, He uses this in types and shadows, but if you can understand and enlarge upon it in God, then you can see that this life had to pass through the veil, and there was only one way that it could get to that fertile field" it had to pass through those two stones that God gave on Mount Sinai. If you plant a seed out here in the field, it’s going to fall and come forth from among the stones. It does that in the natural, it does that in the physical and it that does in the spiritual. That’s why Jesus is referred to as the little stone that was hewn out of the mountain" the one that came rolling down through Babylon, tearing down the kingdoms of this world.

Have you ever noticed at Calvary when the veil was rent, referring back to the fertile field and to that where the Bible said that every first born that openeth the matrix shall be called holy unto God, what’s the first thing you see? The rocks were rent in twain. When you look at Mount Sinai, you see the stones broken. In the Old Testament, it speaks of that individual whose stones are broken, and that he could not come into the congregation of God. In other words, God spoke against it because it has to be life. It has to be that which produces life" whereas, the Bible uses the terms, “This heart of stone.” I will take out of you the heart of stone and place within you the fleshly heart of life. I will write My laws upon the table of your heart. Paul said that the love of God constrains me and causes me to walk in the ways of God. Look at the tomb" the first thing they had to do was roll the stone away. Take the time when Jacob went down there and met Rachel at the well, the first thing he had to do before he could water the animals, the stone had to be rolled away from the mouth of the well.

So then, we see a great thing in what God is trying to tell us. As life comes down from God in the foreknowledge, which is the angelic realm (the third heaven), then it has to come down to us who are in the first heaven, but it first has to pass through the veil which is in the second heaven. That’s why Jesus was lifted up. He said, “If I be lifted up, I’ll draw all men unto Me.” As He was lifted up, it was to signify the head that is upon the shoulders, and that He was in a higher place than that which was in the first level. The body and the shoulders being down here as we say, in this world, but He was lifted up to the second level. Now, being lifted up to the second level, that’s where the conflict was. That’s where the cross was. The cross represented something. Why did God use a tree to begin with? He used it for this reason" where did the trouble start from? It started from the tree of knowledge. Why did God say, “Cursed is every man that hangeth upon a tree?” Because the tree was what caused the problem. In the Old Testament, if the ass was stubborn, God would have his neck broken because he was not a burden bearer, and He makes us to be the burden bearer. We’re suppose to be like the ass, in being a burden bearer. We’re suppose to carry the burden of the Lord until God breaks the yoke off of us. When the yoke is gone, then we are no longer a burden bearer.

God said, “Cursed is everyone that hangeth upon a tree.” Using Calvary as a cross, He hung Jesus upon a tree. He lifted the curse that came from eating of the tree of knowledge. So then, there is the tree of life and there is the tree of knowledge. One of those trees goes up and reaches up into heaven. That is part of the cross. That was Jesus going from the earth to the Heavenly Father. The other one is the tree of knowledge which is in the second heaven, and it crosses this tree of life. Everything that Lucifer does in his intellectual reasoning, the trees of Lucifer or the sons of Satan (in that Jesus referred to people as trees), they cross every thing that’s upright. That’s why God lets people build houses out of stone and out of trees and out of all kind of things, to show us a type or shadow of this house that we’re building for God. Even Solomon’s house was a type of it. For the Bible says, “As it is written, I will return in the last days, saith God, and build up the fallen down house of David.” Solomon, being the son of David, was called the house of David and there was to be a light in the house of David. So then, in this day, we’re building a house. The Apostle Paul, as a wise master builder, used the revelation as a blueprint, even as Moses, who received those things on the mountain and did it all according to the pattern. Paul spoke of taking lively stones, and gathering them from the ends of the earth and cutting and shaping them and putting them together and laying them upon the twelve foundations of the Apostolic Church. For Jesus laid these foundations and then went away, and said that other foundations can no man lay. Take heed how you build on these foundations. We’re laying stones upon these foundations, and sure enough, when we see the city of New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation, which city you are, the building of God as Paul said, we see that all of those stones are laid upon the twelve foundations, and within the twelve foundations, we find the names of the twelve Apostles.

I said all of that to say this: that life must pass through the veil. Now, we are not trying to get saved, and we’re not trying to get eternal life. We’re not trying to hold on until we find favor with God and then He is going to give us eternal life. We’re not trying to do that. If we’re trying to do that, then are we carnal and that is positive proof that we don’t believe that we’re what He says we are. If we’re trying to do that, then that means that we have been intellectually indoctrinated to some religious doctrine where people believe you have to do that to get to heaven. It means that we are not programmed in the Word of God and our faith and mind is not given to the conviction of God’s Word. So then, we will be lost and turned into hell.

In the chapter that we just read, God shows the overthrowing of Lucifer. He tells how that things turned dark in the heavens. He says the stars went out. The light went out and there was no sunlight. Everything turned dark. That is to say, once Lucifer went out of heaven, there was no more need for the sun to shine on the earth. Because as long as the sun shines on the earth, it is the first heaven, but when Lucifer goes out of the second heaven and into the first heaven, then God from up in the third heaven does away with the gospel light. It doesn’t shine anymore. That is to say, when the natural light shining on the natural earth goes out, it indicates that God’s natural people have been raptured out of the earth, and God’s image is gone. The reason for letting that light shine in the earth was so that God could give light to His people because Jesus went away saying that He was the light of the world, lighting the little candles that you might be the light of the world. When the light withdraws, that means that the world is in total darkness. Do you understand what I’m saying? There is no need for the stars and the moon and the sun to shine anymore, because this world will no longer be heaven. It will be the bottomless pit of infinity. It will be gross darkness. Lucifer will be cast out with his people and God’s people will be taken out. Lucifer will come down to his people to dwell with them, and God’s people will go up to dwell with Him. Therefore, there will be no more light in this world and everything will turn dark. For God to do that spiritually, then that means there has to be a natural thing take place also. There has to be a natural type of it because what it has to do with spiritually is that Lucifer can no longer reflect the light into the earth. The sunlight will not give its light into the earth anymore.

Look at Jesus as He hung at Calvary. God hung Him there and made Him Lucifer in His sight. He made Him sin. The great light had been shining down from heaven, and when God smote that body of Jesus, everything turned dark because the reflector of God was gone. Jesus said that he beheld Lucifer cast out. With God rejecting the Son of God, then it was the casting out of Lucifer. It was the casting out of blood life, the red dragon and the generation of vipers. He that knew no sin was made sin to show the fall of Lucifer, in that He was God. As He went out, then everything turned dark. We say, God turned His back on Him, so there was no more light. That is, when the reflector went out, that was all of it. Lucifer went out. When the moon turns to blood, which was Jesus at Calvary, that means its the end of it. It falls from its lofty state. It will not reflect light into the earth anymore, and all of the earth will go into total darkness.

In seeing the beauty of what God is doing, we see that as long as you are in this earth, you are a reflector. You relate to the people. You are a natural person. Jesus came to be a near kinsman. That is, He must be related to God in His Spirit, the great light. As that great light shines from within that made Moses’ face, Jesus’ face, and Stephen’s face to shine, as that light comes from heaven, it is reflected by the soul on the inside to this physical man. That’s what happens to us in a one, two, three in our body, soul and spirit, if you just take the physical realm. But if you take the whole thing as an oversight all together, it is coming down from God to your inner man, and it is given to the natural man around you, which is a sinner, by means of your physical being. So then, as long as you are in that middle realm, then you are reflecting from God to the world, so are ye the light of the earth. The light that is inside of the lamp is shining through the little outer globe, and demons do not like that light so they smut the globe up and try to put it out. The reason for this is that people will smut your life up and make it look bad or they will try to pull your mind into what they are doing. They want to smut that globe up because that light blinds them. They are creatures of darkness. They can’t see in the light, so they want darkness for the simple reason that their deeds are evil. This is the condemnation that has come into the world upon mankind, that the light has come and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. So then, they always want to put out the light.

They will do anything to get ball games in the church, parties in the church, education in the church, and get the carnal mind into the church because Lucifer is the prince of this world. He’s got this world and the Bible says that this world is in gross darkness. That is to say, knowledge is increasing in the last days and it makes it even the more dark. Lucifer is the ruler of the darkness, therefore he is the prince of this world because this world is in darkness. God cast him out of light. He’s not in the world of light anymore and he rules in darkness. So, every person that is educated by the tree of knowledge is in darkness. To be carnally minded is darkness. That is, to be car minded, land minded, clothes minded, fleshly minded, food minded, and pleasure minded, then you are in darkness. All that is darkness, for Satan is the prince of that. Somebody would say, “Well, Brother Pike, do you mean that I’ve got to just give up the entire world to belong to God?” You’ve got to do it! You say, “But how can I do that?” Just accept the fact that you died to it over there when Jesus hung at Calvary. Paul said, “I am dead to the world and the world is dead to me by the body of Jesus Christ.” I left it, and at death they buried my body in a watery grave and my spirit went back to God who gave it. Now, I am they that dwell in heaven. I don’t walk in the outer man. I am the inner man that dwells in heaven. This is what Nicodemus didn’t understand when Jesus was talking to him.

When we rend this veil and go beyond the veil of our intellectual darkness, then we see the beauty of the revelation of Jesus Christ, which is the unveiled, the revealed and the innermost. We must rend this veil that fell over Calvary. When Jesus died, why did the veil fall over Calvary? Why did the darkness come when Jesus died? Because He was the light of the world, and when the reflector was killed, that outer part of Him, then the inner Christ could not penetrate anymore and give them light, so it went out. He resurrected again for our justification to show that we were children of light. He was delivered for my offenses and God smote Him. I esteemed Him smitten of God for my sake, bruised for my iniquities and the chastisement of my peace was laid upon His back. That’s why I have this great peace.

So then, we see this cross between heaven and earth and we see the thing that God is doing. He is showing us by a symbol, that while one people is going up this way, another power that inhabits that second heaven is going in a horizontal direction and is fighting against them. The answer came down from God to Daniel, and the angels intercepted it because Lucifer is in that second heaven up there. God won’t let him into the third heaven, so he’s in the second heaven, but that puts him in power because man is in the first heaven. That is, man who is not born again, he’s in the first heaven. Lucifer is in the second heaven, so he controls man and rules over him and keeps the church in bondage because he has taken the children of God into captivity, and he is blackmailing God, as we say. So, God can’t do for us the things He wants to do because everything He goes to do for us, Satan blackmails in the sense that he says, “I’ll hurt these children if you don’t bless my evil workers out here. If you don’t let me go on with my pot and all this kind of stuff and give me grace, I’ll kill them and you can’t get to them.” So, because of our immaturity and misunderstanding, and because we are born in the shape of sin and iniquity, God would have to do us the same way he did Jesus, except for the fact that He accepted Jesus in our behalf, and then gave us time to get programmed and get understanding and faith by the tutoring of the Word, to where we could come to the place to believe that Jesus came in our behalf. Then, if we come to that place and believe that Jesus was in our behalf, then He doesn’t have to do us like Jesus anymore, and He can fellowship us through Jesus because we’re dead. That iniquity part is dead and it’s not living anymore, and the spirit went back to God who gave it" therefore, God being a Spirit, He can fellowship our spirit and the outer man is dead. While we are alive in this world, in the sense that there are people looking on the outward appearance, then that means that we are the moon realm which is in-between, and the light is coming down to the people through us. But the very day our outer man changes, that is, when this God light on the inside consumes our outer man, the perverted image of the bastard child that God has rejected and killed through Jesus Christ, then that old man will fade away into nothing and we will find ourselves standing there as the glorious resurrected Christ that came out of the grave. When we do that, then that means that everybody else is in darkness because that innermost light comes out of that veil and it can’t shine to them anymore. It’s with God, and heaven sets in and that means that light can’t go to them anymore because the children of God are the light of this world. They are the salt of the earth. If they go out, then like Sodom and Gomorra, the meat spoils. So the fire, the consuming, and the consummation all happens when the children of God go out.

So then, when we look at these things, we see that life is passing through the veil. I say again, we’re not interested in the veil, for what do you want with the shuck? What good is it? Somebody said, “Well, the farmer kept the shuck.” Why did they keep it when they shucked the corn down? They kept it for one reason, and that was to feed it to the beasts because it belongs to them. Should I fill my belly with the husk that He made for the beast? Isn’t ball games the husk? Aren’t the things of this world the husk? If they are the types and shadows, and if the revelational life of that which is the grain is wrapped up tightly within the shuck, then what do I want with the shuck? Now, I understand that I must have the shuck to produce the grain, but what do I want with this old perverted image, even these old grave clothes that they wrap us up in? What do I want with that? I don’t need that. I want to do like the butterfly. God said, “Thy worm Jacob, I will help thee,” and we are in a worm condition. We are in the stages of the worm. Why are we a worm? Because Lucifer is the serpent. He’s called the big worm, and we’re in the worm condition because that’s what Lucifer was. God let life fall into the worm, and when it did, it started a transitional change. Life is in that shuck and in that stalk. Life went into the fertile field, and it’s coming up through the stalk. That life, which was the Son of God, fell from the Garden and went into the worm, and who was the worm? Adam was the worm. God made him out of the dust and he was a dust worm, an earthworm. In the sense of my first birth, I am an earthy dust worm, but I’m really not a dust worm, and if you are a child of God, then you’re not an earthworm either. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Now, what was that life that came to Adam? It was Jesus Christ the Son of God. What happened to that life? That life fell into the veil. That is, when God moved the Shekinah glory or the covering from Adam, then that great overshadowing of God was gone. The Spirit of God overshadowed Mary and life came forth. It was divine conception! Have you ever heard the sermon that we preached on the covering of His glory? You cover with a covering but not of Me. If it’s not God’s covering, where is His covering? It pulled away in the Garden. It was the Shekinah that covered Adam’s being. So, the Shekinah at that time covered a natural being, for Adam was made out of the dust, but when it withdrew, there came forth another covering. What kind of covering was it? It wasn’t a covering of light. It was a covering of Satan’s spirit. It was a covering of darkness. It became life within the veil. Life is caught within the mind of Lucifer, who is an angelic being that was in heaven and that got into the Garden" whereas, life at one time was in the radius of the mind of Christ. After that life fell into the veil, what was it? It was a worm, because it came from the dust. It was an earth worm. When the Shekinah lifted from Adam, then that part which related to God was gone, so there was nothing left but that part which related to the earth" therefore, he was the worm and life could only be produced by the worm after that. There was no way that life could come except that it passed through the worm. Now, if that be true, then Lucifer is that worm and that serpent that the Bible speaks of, even Lucifer the evil one. God let life fall into that, and it had to pass through the serpent to get to the church. There was no other way.

That’s why God uses man as a type of God, and yet He also uses him as a type of Lucifer in his perverted stage of the worm. If life comes down through Satan who is the worm, and it comes down through the generation of vipers as John called it, how could it produce life? There is no way to produce life except through inspiration, whether it be a physical human inspiration or a natural inspiration of the sun and the rain on the seed in the fertile field, or whether it be spiritual inspiration in the relation to God. It has to be inspiration. We’re changed from glory to glory by the inspiration. The inspiration is what drains the life out of the physical being. It’s that which causes the little blood pulp, that blood cell to be filled with life and the quickening. That’s what energizes and quickens the blood cell. It is the inspiration of the human senses that is gendered by the passions.

So then, God did this as a holy, godly, pure thing, but it has become degraded and it’s only degraded when a person thinks of it as being degraded. It’s no more than me going out here and plowing a field. It’s not degraded because I produce a stalk of corn in the field. God makes things holy, virtuous and clean. When Mary produced Jesus, that was holy and clean. The Bible uses the terms like this, that Jesus was not born of the will of man. That is, He wasn’t born of the inspiration of the passions of the body, but He was born of the inspiration of God. Mary was overshadowed, and the spiritual quickening that you feel in your blood genetics and your body is what brought forth the blood seed unto life. The same Spirit that brought forth inspiration, to the extent that a cell came forth and produced life and royal blood through Jesus Christ, was the same spiritual inspiration that was back there in the garden when He picked up a handful of dust and made it into life.

I say again, I am not a worm, though I am in the image of the worm. The Bible said that as you’ve born the image of the earthy, the earthworm, so shall you bear the image of the heavenly, the butterfly. That is, the resurrected Christ and I bear the image of the first man Adam, Jesus, who was made sin and went to Calvary. I died from that by the mercies of God through Jesus Christ, and I am now alive as the resurrected Christ, and my innermost is married to another. My life, my soul, they’re not married to the image of the outer. That is, I am not married to Lucifer anymore who was my master through the weakness of my flesh. He is cast out and gone, and Paul said that we’re married to another, even the Christ that lives in the new body. He is my husband. I’m resurrected from the dead. That is why the Bible uses the terms that a woman is married to her husband so long as he lives. How else could it be? If Lucifer lives in your body and you are alive in the body, isn’t he your master as long as you are alive in the flesh? “How then can I be free from my husband,” a woman would say? He’s got to die! For if this outer man perish, yet the inner man is renewed day by day. If this outer man dies, then Lucifer has no control over my soul anymore. Isn’t that right?

So then, if my soul is transferred to that new body and if I am changing generations by the washing of the water of the Word as I pass through the Spirit over to a new body, then I’ve got a new life. For when you are born again you get a new body, and I got a new life that brings forth a new body. In this new body there lives a new master. I have a new husband even Jesus Christ. So, I’m dead to the old and alive to the new.

When we think about this, we realize that we’re not trying to get saved. We’ve always been the sons of God. When was there a day when I wasn’t the son of God? There never has been such a day. Somebody would say, “But God said in the Bible that this day have I begotten Myself a Son.” Yes, that’s what the Scripture says, so you can say it. They would say, “Brother Pike, that’s when Jesus came into the world.” It is true that is when He came into the world. When I was born, that’s when I came into the world, but that was not my beginning. Neither was that the beginning of Jesus, for the Bible said that Jesus was back there before the foundation of the world. Jesus even prayed, “Father, restore unto Me the joys I had with Thee before the foundation of the world.” Then the question is asked, “Where were you when the sons of God leaped for joy, before God ever formed the earth?” Where were you? The foreknowledge of God made me a son of God. I was a son of God from the beginning. I’ve never been anything else but a son of God. Now, beloved, are ye the sons of God, not the day after tomorrow, or if I hold on. Somebody says, “Well, Brother Pike, it’s like this. I know that I’m a son of God, but if I don’t hold on, then I won’t be a son of God anymore. So, if I hold on and make it to the end, I’ll be a son of God.” Now, you know that doesn’t make any sense. How could you be like that? You know, you’re holding a little baby in your arms and you say, “I’m holding my little baby, but if this little baby gets out of my arms, it isn’t my little baby anymore unless I can pick it up again.” That doesn’t make any sense either. That little baby is your child even if you drop him and he dies and is put in the grave. So then, we are sons of God! I have always been a son of God. Before the world ever was, I was a son of God.

When we say, “In the beginning” we’re not saying in the beginning of God or in the beginning God was or is. We’re not saying that. We’re saying in the beginning of the creation of God. In the beginning means the starting place of the origin of the creation, not in the beginning of God because God doesn’t have any beginning and He doesn’t have any end. God was there at the very moment that we call the beginning. He was there to begin you and me. You and I had a beginning in the natural, for God began us. We are begotten in the sense of the beginning, but when we are born of Christ we don’t have a beginning because God didn’t have a beginning. If I am a part of Adam, I have a beginning because Adam had a beginning" therefore, Adam must have an ending and he found his ending at Calvary. But if I’m born of Jesus Christ and if God doesn’t have a beginning, then I don’t have a beginning. My outer man has a beginning" therefore, he must have an end and that end was at Calvary. Everyone that does not have their end at Calvary, they have it in the Lake of Fire. But Jesus passed through the Lake of Fire and came back up to show that it had no power over me as a son of God. He was delivered for my offenses and raised again for my justification, but those that do not belong to Calvary and did not have their end at Calvary, they will not be buried because they are not dead to the flesh. But we’re buried in the water, and that ended at Calvary in Jesus name. Those that won’t come that route are still alive in the flesh, even though they’re dead while they live because Calvary ended the flesh. They’re back there before Calvary, and yet, they’re alive in the flesh in the sense that God’s grace is allowing that to continue on, and they’re having these strong delusions, seeing lying vanities and things that they think that are when they are not at all.

That is why the Lord spoke through Paul concerning calling those things that are not as though they are, and calling those things that are as they are not. Jonah said that the belly of the whale is a lying vanity. Why did he say that? Because God’s foreknowledge saw him over there in Nineveh. God said to go to Nineveh and that settled it. The Word of God said in essence, “You’re in Nineveh, Jonah.” So, when Jonah got straightened out over that situation when he found himself in the belly of the whale, he decided to use that other part of him. One part of him took him into trouble and caused him to go down into the deep. That’s death to the old man, the sign of Jesus in the heart of the earth, doing it for you and me, but that other part of Jonah said that I’m not going to stay down here. I’m in Nineveh. All this is lying vanities. All of a sudden, there he was standing in Nineveh preaching.

Now, I shouldn’t believe what I see. If I believe what I see, then I’m full of lies because I’m full of darkness. I know scientists say there is twenty-two conductive nerves from my eye to my brain, but these things are always telling me a bunch of lies. They continually tell me lies. All my eyes ever do is lie to me. The lies that come to me through my eyes, that’s human senses and they are nerves. Just like my nerve passion in the rest of my body, my five human senses, all they do is lie to me. I go over here and I put my hand on the wall, and immediately a lie comes and says I can’t pass through here. Jesus walks right through it because He doesn’t believe in lies, but because I believe the lie, I stand there and can’t get through the wall. Solomon said that all is vanity and vexation of my spirit because my spirit wants to get free from this prison. All is vanity! What kind of vanity? The writer said it was lying vanities. That’s all it is. It’s only a type and a shadow, and it’s lying to me. It’s just that film that you stick a match to and woosh! It’s gone! There is nothing to that film.

Now, I’m looking at the film and I see all these things displayed. It’s shown to me, but there is nothing to it. What is the film all about? The film is this, when Jesus and I were over there in the beginning with God, they took a movie of us and brought it down here to show to these people on earth. That’s all it is. I’m down here looking after the movie, and I’m the one it belongs to. When we get through showing it, we’re going to burn the thing up and do away with it, and we’re going to move the squatters off of the land because we don’t need the movies. The Hollywood that was over there, we’ll have it over here. The reality is here. If you’ve got John Wayne standing around, you don’t need a movie of John Wayne. Who wants to see a movie when you’ve got John Wayne? That’s the way I understand it. All of it is lying vanities. I can call anything I want to a lying vanity. If sickness comes on me, it’s a lying vanity because in Christ there is no sickness. Sickness is back before Calvary. If heartaches and sorrows come, I can go ahead and go through with the grief and I will feel it because my body reflects it, but my inner man who is the real me, it doesn’t feel it. It isn’t there. There is no sickness to my inner me because he never gets sick. That old fellow who’s a trouble maker on the outside groans and moans, but so does an old tree when it dries up and the wind blows through it. So then, my inner me never gets sick or wearied. I’m never troubled. That fellow who’s always troubled is the old trouble maker. That’s the outer man who’s always down there in the place he has no business being. You know, he goes to the barrooms and he goes to this and to that. He’s drunk off of the cares of life, such as the football games. He’s just an old trouble maker. If you’ll let him stay dead over there, he’ll be all right, but if you dig him up, he’ll stink. You’ve become a grave robber.

Now, I’m not a worm. That man’s dead, buried and gone. When I say the outer me, I’m speaking of that person that I used to be, because that me isn’t around anymore, in that he isn’t anymore in the sight of God. He put him out into the darkness at Calvary. That’s what the Jews had to do with. When the Jews went out of God’s presence, that was the worm dying. The head was gone! With life coming through the serpent, that’s where circumcision comes in. That’s why the Bible speaks of the removing of the veil. That is to say, Jesus was the head of the serpent. Jesus really wasn’t the head of the serpent, for He was God, but being made in our outer image, the form of the worm so that He could relate to the earthy, then He was the serpent in the sight of God. So, God bruised his head, and circumcision took place. He took the veil of the flesh off of the inner Christ, put it behind us at Calvary and the head was revealed to produce life. Then came forth the wonderful life of God. The law which is the shadows is folded up and laid away.

David said, speaking of looking down from heaven, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of this death.” That is, everything is lying vanities. Everything is types and shadows. God’s looking down at me from the hilltops of heaven, and I’m walking through this valley. The shadows of the evil one are over me, even Lucifer, the floating clouds of darkness between me and the light. “I walk through this valley,” David says, “but I’m not worried about it, for Thou art with me.” I’m walking through this valley and I’ve got Christ on the inside of me. David said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow, I don’t fear any evil.” Though evil is all around me, and I feel it oppressing my human senses as it tries to draw the life and the virtue out of me, but I don’t fear any evil because He is with me. David said, “Thou art with me, and Thou preparest a table before me.” That is, a feast of charity, and He does that in the presence of my enemies, even those that hate me and find fault with me. Yea, though I walk through the valley of these shadows of death, for I know that’s what caused death. I know that fell on me after the garden experience, and I know it continues until I come over to the millennium and come out of it in the great light of God. I know that.

It’s like when we were over in the Carolinas. We went through the valley of the shadows, and then went out to the mountain top and the sun shined down on us. “I know this,” David said, “but the Holy Ghost, the Spirit, Thy rod and staff, they comfort me.” That is, the rod of Your Word and the staff of Your Holy Spirit. So, He’s my comforter. The staff that the shepherd uses in case that little lamb falls and lands on a ledge, He just reaches down there and curls it around his neck and picks him up and brings him back up with the flock. He starts running off somewhere, and the shepherd just reaches out there and gets a hold of him and turns him around. See? Thy rod and Thy staff comforts me and they won’t let me go in the wrong direction and fall into the ravines.

Now, I walk through the valley of the shadow and a table is prepared before me, but I’m not afraid of the evil, Although I was under bondage all of my life to the fear of death as Paul said. But when Christ came and made me to know that I have passed from death unto life, I don’t fear death anymore. Jesus said, “Fear not, for I am with you even until the end of the world. Lo, I am with you always, and I’ll never leave you nor forsake you.” So, David said, “I walk through this valley of the shadow of death, and I won’t fear any evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff comforts me, and Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” He said, “Goodness and mercy is with me.” The blessing of the Lord is always upon the house of the righteous. David said that goodness and mercy shall follow him all the days of his life, even here and in the world to come. He said, “Surely I’ll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

What is the house of the Lord? In My Father’s house are many mansions, if it had not been so I would have told you. Peter said that if you have born the image of the earthly, there’s another tabernacle, a house eternal in the heavens not made with hands, even the body of the Lord Jesus Christ whose image you are. I’m in His temple, the tabernacle in heaven. Somebody said, “Your body is His temple!” That’s true, but not this wretched thing, and yet it is, in that we were made by God but without the infiltration. The Bible said not to let evil thoughts dwell in our minds. Charity thinks no evil. Don’t give way to the passions of the body, but mortify the deeds of the flesh.

So then, I say again, life is in the worm. I will help thee, thou worm Jacob. I’m going through the transitional changes. My body relates to the serpent, and so did Jesus’ body. I relate to Jesus in the sins, and I relate to Jesus in life and resurrection. My inner is Christ in the resurrection, and my outer is Jesus in death. So then, I am delivered all the day long, counted as sheep for the slaughter. In this, my inner man through the resurrection, is more than a conqueror over the body of sin and Lucifer, who lives in my flesh. My inner Christ is delivering my outer man to the cross to kill him. Everyday I do this. There is a cross affair. My spirit crosses my body, and I’m killing out my body. Life on the inside is breaking forth from the shell. The veil is being rent and the grain that went into the ground, which was the life of knowledge, has at last passed through the veil. It’s coming out of the rent veil as the shuck opens up and here we are on this side of Calvary, and what is it? It’s not the shuck. Let the pigs have that, for it was made for the pigs. I’m not a pig, I’m a son of God. Why should I then, as the prodigal said, fill my belly with the husk that the pigs eat? Let the pigs eat it. We are that life, the grain that comes forth. Jesus is bread of life to us. We have meat to eat that they know not of.

Now, I know that I have to do what I can to keep this man alive on the outside, you know, to remain in this world as a human being, but it’s like this" if you have a bunch of pigs, you have to feed them. You have to keep them alive, but I’ve got a better way. I buried that fellow and got rid of him so that he wouldn’t be on me all the time in the sense that I have to feed him and have him on my meal ticket. I got rid of him. He wasn’t anything but a parasite. He didn’t want to do anything anyway. He doesn’t want to work. He’s a dope addict. He’s drunk off of the cares of the world. He wants to wander up and down the streets. You know, he’s in prison one day and out the next. He causes me to have to pay a big fine for him all the time, so I got rid of him. I put him in the grave and buried him. Do you understand what I’m saying?

The outer person is the trouble maker, and Lucifer is in that outer person. That is the one that causes the problems. The people of this world are the ones that are in the prison and they just don’t realize it. So, the outer person must be killed and done away with. He’s a trouble maker and he creates problems. He’ll cause you to get in a spiritual prison and get chastised, and you won’t be delivered from the tormentors until you pay the uttermost farthing. You have to put him behind you and walk over him. Put Lucifer under your feet! Calvary is behind you now and the shadows are gone. They are not in front of you anymore.

The law of the shadow that was shining behind you, giving strength to that shadow in front of you is gone. It was keeping you in darkness to where you couldn’t see the light, but it’s gone now. High noon has come and the shadows have passed over. Satan is behind you now, so keep him behind you. That’s why the Bible said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” He’s in the darkness, but I’m looking at the light. I’m walking in the light as He is in the light. That’s why we have fellowship one with another. I know that I’ve passed from the body unto the spirit (death unto life), because I love the brethren. I want to be with the brethren. I don’t want to be with the world. I don’t get any good out of going up and down the road riding, and in the little ten cents stores with their tinkle, jingle and music. That’s a bunch of junk to me. If I did that, then I wouldn’t be passed from death unto life. If just eating, drinking, getting money, marrying, frolicking and passions is life to me, then I wouldn’t be alive in God. Loving the brethren pulls me away from that. I want to talk to them and be with them. How many of you understand what I’m saying? So then, it is a true fact that we have passed from death unto life.

Now, Peter walked on the water. Why did God choose Peter to begin with? Because of the potentiality! Somebody says, “It was to give him that great faith that could raise the dead.” No, that wasn’t the reason. He chose Peter because he had that great faith. Courage shows faith in the natural. Peter had that courage to stand on the bow of that boat and face the waves and say, “Come on, fellows, we’ve got to make a living. We’ve got to go fishing.

I’ve been out there on the Sea of Galilee and preached on it. They say it’s the most treacherous sea in the world. In that cove of mountains, the hot and cold air sweeps down through there and mixes, and it causes a great turbulence in just a few minutes. God looked at Peter and saw that faith. He saw Peter’s bravery and strength. He looked at David and saw that courage when he faced the lion and the bear. It was faith! So, God just pulled David over there and developed that potentiality.

Look at it like this. We make a car out of metal. Now, if we have our metal, we’ve already got our car. People just can’t see it, but you that know how to make a car, you know what the mold is going to do. Your plans and all of this that’s already programmed in your minds, that is the blueprints. The car is already there and you see it, but it’s got to go through the stages of developing and conforming before those around can see it. The Wright Brothers had an airplane long before they ever invented it, but the skeptics didn’t believe it. So, they said, “We’ll show you that we’ve got one,” and so there it was and they looked at it. It’s the same way with us. As I’ve said before, you are potentially a millionaire, a doctor or whatever, but you’ve got to prove it. Whatever you want to prove to the people, you prove it.

Let’s examine it like this. That worm is potentially a butterfly. He’s already a butterfly. He’s not straining every muscle to be a butterfly. He’s content to be a worm but the thing is, that inner part is not content to be a worm. It’s moving! It’s alive on the inside. My natural man is content to be down here and eat, drink and be merry, but my inner man is saying, No! That’s a bunch of foolishness. Leave that to the children of the world. I’m a man and I’m putting away childish things. I want to set down in the council. I want to go up with the Ancient of Days. I want to set up there with those folks that know something. I’m tired of all of this kid’s stuff. I’m tired of playing. You know the old saying that the difference between the men and the boys is the size of their toys. I’m just saying this" the worm is potentially a butterfly. So, all that he is doing is passing through his transitional stages to reveal his potentiality, and as quick as he does the old cocoon is broken. It goes through the stages of the metamorphosis, the old cocoon is broken and out comes the beautiful butterfly. Somebody said, “Well, he’s no longer a worm.” But if you’ll pull his wings off and look at him, what have you got? It’s just the raptured church. That’s all. It’s a beautiful thing! Jesus came out of the grave, and they said It is a spirit. Jesus said, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see Me have.” If it hadn’t been the same Jesus, it wouldn’t have been a true resurrection. Isn’t that right?

So then, we see this wonderful thing that God has done. Life is passing through the veil. Why is God letting us know all of these things? Because we are the generation that is supposed to know it. If we know it and then believe it, then what does that mean? It means it’s all over. You say, “What do you mean, Brother Pike, it’s all over?” It means we made it! Somebody said, “Do you mean we held on?” No, I mean we were already “on” to start with. In the foreknowledge of God, we were the butterfly. We just passed through the stages of the cocoon and the veil, and now we’re over here so that everybody can see our beauty. The manifestation of the sons of God! Somebody said, “But the thing is, Brother Pike, I’m trying to get to heaven.” No, you’ll never get up there. God said, “Though thou makest thy nest among the stars, Lucifer, from here I’ll cast you out. Though you climb up to heaven, I’ll cast you down to hell. Somebody said, “Now, what do you mean, Brother Pike?” I’m just telling you what God said. Somebody said, “Do you mean that I’m not supposed to try to get to heaven?” If you’re already in heaven, why are you supposed to try to get to heaven? If you sit down in a man’s car and say, “Open the door and let me in,” that man will think you’re crazy. He’ll think you’ve lost your mind. So, if I’m already in heaven, then what am I doing saying, “I’ve got to get there. I almost missed it. I’ve got to hold on. I don’t know whether I’ll ever make it or not. Woe is me.” Why do I want to do that? I’m already in heaven. The writer said, “Rejoice, ye that dwell in heaven!”

Now, if we dwell in heaven, then what is all the fuss about? What’s all the turmoil about? What’s all the worry about? What’s all the frustration about? Why the confusion? How could I be anywhere else but in heaven? If I was with God before the foundation of the world, where was that? That was heaven! Just because I am passing through a tunnel, does that mean I’ve left the world? There is light on this side of the tunnel and light on the other side, and I’m just passing through. I’m still in the same world. Now, if there’s nothing but eternity to eternity, where does this little old tunnel of time come from? That’s where the confusion is, because there never was anything like that until the worm had to pass through the mountain. So, he bored through the mountain so he could get through. You don’t find a bird flying through the tunnel. He lives up here above the mountain. The worm did that. That is the fall from the garden. That’s where the trouble started. Life went into the tunnel. That little old thing we call a span of time started over there with those shadows, and that’s what caused the divisional thing. But there is no division in God. It was one eternal day from everlasting to everlasting. Before the tunnel was, “I Am,” He said. The angel in Revelation 10 set one foot on the land and one foot on the sea and threw the clock into the ocean. Somebody says, “Why?” He did that to get us away from that foolishness and those kind of things. Children of God don’t need to be mixed up with foolishness. Sons of God don’t need to be in a hog pen. That prodigal said, “I am out here in the hog pen, and I am squandering my goods away. This is foolishness,” he said. So, he got up and went to his father’s house. Then the father put on him a beautiful robe and a ring on his finger, and he left the hogs behind.

Now, let’s look at it like this: if that is true, then am I struggling to get to heaven? In all these years, have sons of God been struggling to get to heaven? No! All it has been is a development. Can you understand what I’m saying? Am I waiting on God or is God waiting on me? I’m not waiting on God, but God is waiting on me. Can Jesus do any more than what He has done? He said it was finished. If He comes down here, what more can He do? The only thing that He can do if He came down here is to tell me what He’s already done. He can’t come down here and tell me what He’s going to do, because He said, “I’ve finished it.” Now, if it’s finished in my behalf and to my benefit, why should I look for something that God’s going to do? Why not accept the fact in what He has done to my benefit and pleasure and rejoice in it? Why not get rid of this foolishness of the lying vanities and get it out of my system? I need to get the old filthy infiltration of hallucinations out of me. I don’t want to see hallucinations. I want reality! Do you understand what I’m saying?

So then, I am passing through the dark tunnel of the veil. I’m going over here with God as we say, but Calvary did away with the veil. Look at it like this" I am under tutors until the time appointed of the Father. When is the time appointed of the Father? Whenever I learn my lesson and can believe what He says, and whenever I grow up to maturity and develop into what He gave me. He isn’t waiting to give me something, because He gave all things to me in Calvary. I am complete in Him by Calvary. God’s just waiting on me to develop and enjoy it so He can say, “Now, this is My son, and from now on He will be telling you what to do. I am resting now and My son will take care of it.” That’s what the millennium is for. Jesus will reign for a thousand years for the Father rested from His work. If that were true, then God is just waiting for the day of the Bar Mitzvah. That is to say He is waiting for me to mature and age and to understand. It has been that way from the foundation of the world. Ever since God brought this thing called salvation from Calvary, He has been waiting on you and me to mature. All of those people that died trying to get to heaven, they didn’t understand. That’s all it was, but we are over here and we understand. Why do we understand? Because in not understanding, it made them unable to enjoy heaven. That is what kept them out of the joys of heaven. God let that immaturity be there to finish multiplying and replenishing the earth. It took that transitional change of the church ages and the messengers to indoctrinate us to these wonderful turn of events and to tell us all about God, that we might see God proportionally speaking from glory to glory and change us into gods. In this, we become God. Did we actually change into God or were we always God? We were always God. I really hope you can understand what I’m saying.

When a man brings forth a little child, his wife (flesh) became one with him. So what did they do? They produced themselves. The man reproduced himself. When you throw a seed into the ground out there, what are you reproducing? You are reproducing your own thoughts because your thoughts wanted to put a grain of corn into the ground, so you’re reproducing your own desire and satisfaction. If man reproduces his own image, then it is a man. So then, if I’m born of God, then God reproduced His Own image. The woman and the man are one. They are just reproducing their own image. God said, “Come and let us.” Who was He talking to? He was talking to His wife! Come and let us produce ourselves a son. Let us make him in our own image. How could He say our own image? He wasn’t talking, you know, about three Gods. He was simply talking about His companion. I can’t do it without my companion. He said it to you and I, “You are My bride. Come and let us produce ourselves a son, and He will be in our own image.” Won’t that be wonderful? That’s what marriage is all about. It’s just a type of what God has done.

Somebody said, “God never married. Jesus never married.” Well, that’s what it’s all about. You married just to show a type of Him and His great wife in marriage. So then, what I’m saying is this" the potentiality of the worm is the butterfly. It’s always been a butterfly. It’s just passing through the tunnel. This little old nothing of transition of time had to be that way. The shadows must be cast upon us, that God might through the weakness of the shadow reveal the potentialities of God. That is to say, it was for the purpose of putting us in a state of need as a child, so He could be a Father to us and reveal His great potentiality, His great power and benefits. It was for the purpose that God might be made known unto us that we might be recipients of His attributes. In doing this, what are we doing? We are recognizing our Father. Somebody said, “Every time I get a vision, a revelation, I change.” That is true. Somebody said, “It’s changing me into God.” No, every time I see a little peak of God, there’s something in me that wants to be like that. What is it in me that wants to be like that? It’s Him! The child has his dad’s life, and every time he sees his dad, he wants to be just like him. Somebody said, “That little child is changing right into his dad.” You don’t believe that do you? That little child is his dad. Potentially speaking, He is his daddy. Give him a few more years and you can see that he’s daddy. After awhile, he will be the same image and have his own family.

So then, we’ve always been sons of God. We have always been God. He is just revealing it a little bit at a time to us to show us as a child, being His creation and His little one, just how strong and how great He is. If God would have just taken us and put us out there and said, “There you are, you’re multimillionaires. All of you are just what I am.” Then we might could have looked around and said, “Now, wait a minute! I don’t know whether I’m junior or you’re junior.” Isn’t that right? If you’re just exactly what God is or you were just exactly what God was, you could easily look at God and say, “Well, I don’t know about this thing.”

It’s like a man one time, God sent me to him and told me what to tell him. He was a very religious businessman. I said, “Thus saith the Lord,” and I told him what the Lord told me to say. It shook him for a minute and then he looked at me and said, “Well, I don’t know about that. Maybe God sent me to tell you.” He said, “How do you know?” I said, “When it comes to pass you’ll know.” It came to pass! Later, I met him and he said, “I know now, Brother Pike.”

Now, here is the thing, we have always been alive. We’ve always been Christians. We’ve always been a god. We’ve always been eternal. Jesus said, “Ye are gods.” John said, “Beloved, you’re already the sons of God.” All we’re doing is coming out of the tunnel now. The light is beginning to break through and we’re beginning to realize who we are and what we are. We are sons of God! We are heirs and joint heirs with our big brother Jesus, who is the first born among the brethren. Everything is ours and everybody in this world is a squatter. We’ve always been sons of God, and as this great light begins to withdraw, the pigs begin to grunt and suddenly realize that they never were sons of God. They’ve always been pigs. That’s why they wallowed in the trough. Somebody say hallelujah! They are going to recognize who they are too. When this overshadowing of mercy and grace that was over Adam and made Eden look like a beautiful paradise, when this wonderful mind begins to lift, they’re going to look around just like Adam did and say, “My! This is a pigpen full of briars. I’ve been having some hallucinations. What is this?” Then the reality is going to strike that they are children of darkness. They are going to realize that they are pigs, that you washed them from their wallowing in the mire and now they go back to it. You cleaned them up and made them pretty. You put a collar around their neck but they go back to licking their vomit because they are dogs. They are beasts, but folks, you and I are not beasts. Do you understand what I’m saying? We are children of God.

What are we doing over here with this kind of understanding? It is because we made it into heaven. At last, we heard the tutoring down through the years and the Bar Mitzvah has come. We have recognized it! It’s time to take over our Father’s business. It is the saints rising and taking the world. The Kingdom of God has been here all the time. It started over here with Calvary and it’s come down through the transitional changes of time. We’ve been changed and translated into the marvelous Kingdom of God. I’m not waiting for the Kingdom of God to come. I’m not waiting to be translated into the Kingdom of God because it has already come. The law and the prophets were until John, and we are preaching this Kingdom message throughout the world so that the end (the shadows) can flee away. I’m not waiting to get into it, for God has already translated me into the Kingdom of God. I’m not waiting to go to heaven, for I’m not of this world. God has chosen me out of this world, and I am hid with Jesus Christ in God, Whom the heavens have received until the restoring of these things. That is, when the original image comes back with the garden.

It’s like a film, but here I am in the reality. I’m not waiting for heaven. If I’m already a son of God, and I was in heaven to begin with, then why is it that I’m not in heaven right now? Where is heaven? Is heaven up there somewhere beyond the galaxies? Are they going to find heaven and the origin of mankind out there? You know it’s not out there. Then, where is heaven? It’s where all the concern and attraction is. It’s where all of the activity is. Where is that? It’s on earth! God made the earth to be inhabited. Where is heaven? It’s this earth! Somebody said, “You’re crazy, Brother Pike. Are you talking about heaven being over here at Bethlehem?” I’m talking about heaven being everywhere. Heaven is His throne and earth is His footstool. Would I sit down at my house and my footstool be out there in my barn? My footstool would be where I was sitting. Where would that be? That would be heaven. So then, earth is heaven. What is the difference then? The difference is, there are three dimensional steps of heaven. The footstool is where my feet are, where the souls are. The souls of my feet, the preparation of the gospel. That’s why He uses the type like that. That’s where the washing of the feet is. The walking across the dessert. You know, you come across the hot desert. Abraham said to get the water and wash the feet. So then, what are the second stages? If the footstool is the first stages (first heaven), then these people of the world are God’s footstool. It’s a religious thing. Where is the second heaven? It’s the chair He’s sitting in. That’s His comforts and convenience. That’s His throne part. He sits there. That’s why Lucifer is in the second heaven" because he got past the footstool. Then we say, “Where is the third heaven? That’s the man sitting in the chair. That’s the life in the heart. That’s the whole thing. That’s the one that enjoys the chair and the footstool. That’s the one that enjoys the eating and the drinking. That’s why the Bible said that the Kingdom of God is within you. This is life and life is God. Life is the Kingdom of God. Wherever life is, it’s heaven because life is everything. Life is heaven. Without life there is nothing. So then, people are in the first heaven, and the earth is heaven. It’s just the footstool.

Now, are we trying to get to heaven? Somebody said, “I’m waiting for that rapture.” Why are you waiting for the rapture? I’ve been changing all the time from the condition of the worm to the butterfly. I’ve been getting rid of the cocoon, going through the stages of metamorphosis. I’ve just been trying to get out of the tunnel of the darkness, out from under the shadows so the light can hit me. Here is what I’m saying: I’m already eternal. I’ve already passed from death unto life. I’m already in heaven. I’m already translated into the Kingdom of God. What am I doing then? I’m just praying, “Father, Thy will be done down here as it is up there.” Let’s get the footstool in harmony with the rest of it" that’s all. Somebody is trying to steal your footstool. Thy will be done on earth as in heaven. I’m just massaging His feet" that’s all. So then, here we are in heaven. Somebody said, “Is this heaven, the way I feel?” No, I’m not talking about the way you feel. I’m talking about the way I feel, because you’re not in heaven. You’ve got to be in heaven to have this feeling. Now, you say, “Brother Pike, do you mean to tell me this is heaven?” Wasn’t that the garden before the briars came in? Somebody would say, “But Brother Pike, now wait a minute. Do you mean the briars came into the garden?” No, Adam dwelt in the garden and the briars were outside the garden. Didn’t Jesus destroy the garden? My innermost me lives in the garden. All those briars were outside. If I stay out of the field, I don’t get into problems. Jesus came down into the field. That’s why they stuck the thorns in His head. He did that looking for me and you. He was looking for His wife down through the brambles. It’s like one time my son got lost when he was a little boy. We went all through the darkness and all down through the woods looking for him. We ran into the holes, the ditches and into brambles that cut us, because we were looking for our son in the dark.

Look at it like this: am I in heaven? Most assuredly I am. Jesus said, “The Son of Man who was in heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.” In the body He was in the earth, and in the Spirit He was in heaven. Now, where is heaven? It’s right here. It’s not back there. It’s not over yonder. It’s not yesterday nor is it tomorrow. If you’ll try to understand, you’ll know what I’m saying. If heaven is tomorrow, where is tomorrow? Now, if you can find tomorrow and show it to me, and if you’ll prove to me there is a tomorrow, then I’ll accept the fact that heaven isn’t here. I challenge anybody in the world to find tomorrow. There is no tomorrow! I challenge anybody in the world to find yesterday. If you can show me yesterday, then I’ll admit that I’m all mixed up. Somebody says, “Heaven is up.” If you can prove that to me, I’ll change my preaching. If you can prove to me that’s up or you can prove to me that’s down, I’ll change my preaching. How do you know what up is? How do you know what down is? If this is up, why is it when we get up so high, that up has suddenly become down? And if this is down, why is it when we get so far down that we find ourselves looking up? Do you understand what I’m saying? Where is the bottom? Where are the ends to this thing? Who is it that can set the standards of sanity? Somebody would say, “Well, he’s insane and she’s not insane.” They said, “Paul, you’re insane.” So, they set the standards. How did they set the standards? By their own polluted way of thinking.

It’s just like the psychiatrist of today. They say, “He doesn’t believe in baseball and he doesn’t believe in this and I do believe in it, so he’s insane.” Yet, on the other hand I can say,” You don’t believe in it and I do, so you’re insane. I mean, who sets the standards? Somebody sees one man with a long slender nose and another woman with long hair and says, “She’s beautiful and he’s handsome.” Who set that standard? Why, an elephant with his snout could be just as handsome as they are. That’s just his opinion of it. An elephant wouldn’t look at you twice, as far as being handsome, but that male elephant will get over there near that female elephant and just rub his trunk all over her. She’s beautiful to him. Your wife doesn’t look like anything to him.

So then, what I am saying is this" who has the right, in their little old finite way of thinking, to set standards in this world? God is the one who made a black man and a white man and a yellow man and a red man. God made an eagle and a cormorant and a snake and a bird and an elephant and a giraffe. It is God who sets the standards of beauty. God says, “That beautiful long-neck giraffe, He pleases me well. That big old fat gaudy whale just flopping in the water" he’s so beautiful.” Now, that’s the way I see it. Humanity is beautiful to me. Whales are beautiful to me. Birds are beautiful to me. Even the old hippopotamus is beautiful to me. There’s something fascinating about him. That’s the God part on the inside of me that relates to it.

I’m saying this, brethren" where is heaven? There’s no tomorrow, no yesterday, no up, no down, and there’s no over here and over there. Then what is this thing all about? God said, “I am” and that settles it. There’s but one thing, and that’s the I am. I am what I am by the grace of God. There’s but one day and just because the sun slips over the hill and makes a circle around the earth and comes back up, it’s still the same day. It hasn’t anything to do with it. If you want to talk about day and night, you don’t have to talk about that, just talk about the sun. Somebody said, “Well, Brother Pike, it’s a day. Don’t you understand? It’s a yesterday and a today.” All right, so I get on a plane and I follow the sun all around the earth. What happened to yesterday and tomorrow? See it never was there to start with. That was all in your mind, even lying vanities. That’s what I’m talking about. So then, where is heaven? It’s one seven years of bad government away. When the tribulation period sets in, it’s going to reveal the old shadow of the evil government that you’ve got today. It’s going to make the thing manifest when it heads up in that old horny looking thing called the Antichrist, and when seven years passes over, as it says, the tree of life will grow again. When it passes over, the Jews are coming back into power. That Adam is going to come back in.

Now, let me ask you a question. Is the millennium heaven? You know the millennium is heaven. What heaven is it? The second heaven! It is that which is clean and restored that goes back to the garden. You say, “Well then, we’re part of the millennium.” No, before the tribulation period, we change into a celestial body. We ride over the millennium and go into the celestial, in that great eternal city. The only thing is, we have access to the millennium just like we’re heavenly right now. We’re celestial right now, and we’re just waiting on the change so everybody can see that we got rid of the cocoon. We’re already in heaven right now and we’re still enjoying this earth. Jesus was in heaven, but He enjoyed this earth. That means that heaven is right here on this earth. It’s the millennium. It’s just getting the briars away. When the briars or shadows are gone, it’s heaven. The people in first heaven are out there because they don’t see the briars. They’ve got the dentist to pop a shot in there to stop the pain. They’ve got somebody to curl the hair and perfume their body. They’ve got all the conveniences and money. They don’t have too many interruptions" only a few to keep it from being the third heaven.

Now, heaven is just like it’s always been when God created the garden. This is heaven! So then, why are we waiting for the rapture? Where is the rapture going to take us to? You say, “Well, it’s going to take us to heaven”. I say again, if you’re in the car, why do you keep saying, “Open the door?” Jesus said, “I am the door, and you go in and out through Me.” We have access to heaven and earth. So then, it is heaven. That means, brethren, that the millennium is heaven, and this earth is heaven. It’s always been heaven. This little old interruption of foolishness and confusion called “time,” God’s going to get that thing out of the way and wind it up, and then He’s going to take this dark veil of intellectual reasoning away, which is time, and you’re going to find yourself where you’ve always been, as sons of God in heaven, and you’re going to be right there in the middle of the millennium. When God gets through with the millennium, He’s going to go through the second stages of moving that away, in that the bright light will transformate that whole thing. When the great light of the Ancient of Days comes, it will just go into nothing. That is to say, He won’t just destroy it, He’ll swallow it up and it will translate. First, He has to restore and get the briars away to show us that it is the garden and that it is heaven, and then He transfigures the thing. He translates it just like He did your innermost man, and then here comes New Jerusalem to set down on the new earth. So where is heaven? It’s the earth! Why am I trying to get up there to New Jerusalem? I’m not trying to get up there to New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is suppose to come down here. Somebody said, “Come down here to us?” It’s coming down here to us in the sense of our outer being relating to earth, but it isn’t coming to me because I’m already up there with it. I am part of the New Jerusalem. I’ll be one of those that’s coming down here to them. Do you understand what I’m saying? So then, that settles it. We made it! Somebody say hallelujah! We made it! Welcome to heaven. Then what was the whole thing for? It was God putting us through school and college so we could take care of what He had. It was to reveal His greatness and wealth to us. It’s like a millionaire sending his son out so that he won’t be a spend thrift. So that we won’t be like James and John, wanting to call fire down on somebody. Learning the infirmities of the weak, so that we can take care of the dogs, cats and pigs and not be kicking them around and killing them all the time.

So then, brethren, we made it. That’s why God has let us know these things, because that was the rapture. Although there are no such terms as rapture in the Bible, it was a change from glory to glory until we came into the fullness of Jesus Christ. Enoch was translated by faith. That is, believing in what he heard, and believing in the knowledge that God spoke through human instrumentality and revealed to him. It was faith by the hearing of the Word. That’s how Paul went up to the third heaven. He knew that and that’s why he said, “Brethren, I’ve got a mystery. You’re not going to all sleep. This thing is different from what you think.” He said, “I can’t tell you about it now because it’s out of season, but it will come.” So then, that’s the way it is. We made it, and since we made it, then we need to enjoy it and start telling everybody else that we can about it. Let’s say it like this" while they still have time to listen in that the change of the body hasn’t happened yet, lets tell them about it.

This isn’t meant to be comical, but let’s say we are here waiting for the rapture. Brother Pike snaps his finger - Ed. Too late! It’s over. When I snapped my finger it happened. Somebody said, “You’re foolish.” The foolish and abase things of the world to confound you smart folks. So, it happened. You say, “Brother Pike, what do you mean?” I mean it happened in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. Now, what could you do? What chance did you have? Who was it that was waiting to go? How did you know when to get ready? What happened to you when it snapped? Nothing! It just revealed what you’ve already been, what you’ve always been.

So then, they’re waiting for the dead to get up out of the ground, but blessed and holy is he that’s not dead, because he had part in the first resurrection. We passed from death unto life. Let’s rejoice forevermore. Ye that dwell in heaven rejoice! Let’s start rejoicing. Doesn’t that make you feel good? It’s real. The Lord let us know this because the end of the days of the Gentiles is here and the thing is all over. Time has passed away at Calvary and it is no more for you and I. That was the end of it. Peter said that was the end of the world. We went into heaven. So then, that ended it. Now, let’s just enjoy life. Let’s love the Lord and go on cleaning this mess up and get the streets clean for the King. The King is coming on His white horse, so let’s clean up the streets and get the garbage out and let’s get the perfume of the Holy Ghost all over this place. Let His will be done down here in this first heaven as it is in the third one because Satan has got everything smelling. Let’s get it out. Get the infiltration out and put on your Sunday go-to-meeting garments as we say. Put on your beautiful garment because the King is coming. You’ve heard that song, “The King Is Coming.” Let’s be out there so we can meet Him at His coming. Praise God! That’s what we want to do. Let’s wash the smut off of the globes, light the lamp, and make sure the oil is in there because all of these creatures of darkness are around here. This world is full of darkness. Let’s get the darkness out so that the light can shine down here in our world and we can enjoy our heaven.

You know, folks, if this isn’t heaven, then what is God doing down here? He dwells in heaven, and yet the Bible says that if two or three of us come together in His name, there He is in the midst of us. It doesn’t say that He will come and be in the midst of us, but there I am in the midst of you. When they talked about Him on the way to Emmaus, He appeared in their midst. If this isn’t heaven, what are angels doing coming down here? Why did they come and talk to Abraham? Why did they come down to Sodom and Gomorra and those different places? Why did they come down there? Angels don’t live in the earth, they dwell in heaven. Somebody said, “Well, they just run down here to look things over.” If that were true, what does the Bible mean when it says that angels encamp around them that love the Lord? They don’t run down here, they camp down here. Do you know why they are down here? It is because you’re up there. There’s no difference in being up there and down here because where is up there and where is down here? It is heaven, that’s all. It’s just God. It’s what He has done. Why not enjoy it and forget about the lying vanities and this intellectual program that the devil has given us through the indoctrination of the tree of knowledge. Stop leaning to your own thinking. When you stop leaning to that up and down mind, you won’t be up and down. You’re up and down because you think up and down. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. You’re over here and over there because you think over here and there. Isn’t that right? You’re in and out because you think in and out. Where is in and where is out? It’s just one thing, and that is a state of mind. That’s all it is. There isn’t any more difference between you and the man that’s in the padded cell" he’s in one state of mind and you’re in another. He damaged his brain somehow through a physical injury or a disease, and it caused his thinking to be different. That’s all the devil did. He threw a shadow over the brain. Sometimes a little baby is born and they say that it’s born with a veil over it. “It’s got a meaning,” somebody says. That’s just a natural veil to show the type. That’s why Isaac took that veil off of Rebecca. So then, God took the veil off of me. Why did He take the veil off of me? It was because I married Him. I went into the mother’s chambers and it’s sweet to Him. I’m away from that old burning desert and I’m home at last.

So then, it’s a state of mind. It’s mind over matter. It’s God’s mind. When you get God’s mind and let it take control of your form of matter, that will be the end of it. It will be the end, but as long as you have Lucifer, his mind will be over the matter in this world. That means it’s going to be subjected to vanities, problems, raging waves, and storms, but when God puts him down to the bottom of the pit where he belongs, then the Bible says that all things will be at peace. That inner peace will be outer. Everything will be at peace.

By spiritual translation in our inner being, we have been translated into the Kingdom of God. If we can come through this gradual progressive change of transitional changes from glory to glory or from faith to faith, by the renewing of our mind from the tree of knowledge (Lucifer), to the tree of life, Christ, (all of this being during the time of our tutoring) then at our Bar Mitzvah, we can expect that instantaneous transfiguration of our body. This translation of spirit into the Kingdom of God has brought about, through transformation, a changing of my thinking from earthly thinking to heavenly thinking, and with this, I can expect the transfiguration of my body. As Jesus stood on the mountain, the same thing happened to Him. He appeared in glory.

I can expect that same transfiguration to happen to me. Then where will I be? I will be where I’ve always been. Jesus said, “Nicodemus, I am in heaven.” What is heaven? Glory! When He transfigured before Peter and the others, where were they? They were on the earth. Where was Jesus? He was in glory. Where was glory? It was on the earth. Jesus was standing on the mountain. So, they had changed just like that. Isn’t that right? The change of the atomic particles, mind over matter and the inner life revealed itself into these outer vessels. Heavenly treasure right now in these earthen vessels. The potentials of life all a sudden revealed, and we become that beautiful butterfly.

So then, it is a state of mind. If you don’t have the mind of Christ in you, then let this mind be in you. If you don’t have that mind, you can’t make the change. What is that mind? It is a world, it’s a sovereignty, it’s a kingdom, and it’s a treasure. What is it? It’s Christ in you, the hope of that glory. That’s why He appeared in glory. Your inner man is already in glory, and it’s to be revealed through these earthen vessels that the world might see what you’ve always been. So then, where is glory? It was right there before Peter, James and John.

I tell you these things because I love you. Jesus said, “Many things I have to say unto you,” but He said at that time they were hard of hearing. What we call the rapture, the translation, or the quickening, it is taking place. It has taken place and we’re just waiting for a one, two, three dimensional change, and the last stages is that of putting off the cocoon so that you won’t be sleeping. You have to go into your cocoon stages of sleeping to go through the metamorphosis, but behold, I show you a mystery" you don’t need to go through the stages of metamorphosis so far as sleep. The night is far spent and it’s over, past and gone. Joshua said let that sun stand still. This is the day that the Lord has made. We’re going to rejoice and be glad in it. It’s been ever since Calvary. We’ve ceased from our own works of ambitions, of getting worldly gain and education, and of having a career — that’s over. We’ve entered into His rest. His works were finished in our behalf from the foundation of the world by foreknowledge, and it was manifested at Calvary. It’s all finished and I’m His Son. I came out of that womb through the blood that was spilled at Calvary, and through the water that comes at the birth when I was buried in it, I came out of the whorish womb of the world, and by the quickening of the spirit, in that you received the Holy Ghost after you were baptized - water, blood and spirit. So then, who am I today? I’m bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. I’m a son of God. It’s not me living but Him. When did it happen? When the veil was rent and the matrix opened at Calvary, I came forth. It’s just through the swaddling and the tutoring of the church age messenger over here, to the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which is my wonderful world of the mind of God, so that the scales can drop off of my eyes. They have already dropped off and it’s over.

So, you are they that dwell in heaven. You’re not waiting to be raptured and translated into heaven. You’re not waiting to get into the kingdom. You’ve just been going through your tutoring to let you know who you are and that you already live in that great mansion, that it was already yours. Everything has always been yours, but your little child doesn’t know whether he lives in a barn or a mansion. His little mind is immature. You just keep telling him the difference between a barn and a mansion as he matures. After awhile, he realizes that he’s a millionaire’s son. He’s not a pauper’s son. He doesn’t live in a barn. It’s from the manger to the cross, the cross being the door. Jesus said, “I’m the door.” The cross is that realm of Satan, that second heaven. Now, we go right through into the third heaven. It is just like Jacob’s ladder, with angels descending on the Son of Man, even on you and I. His body, His bone and His flesh. We’re His sons. God has raptured us up into His arms. He’s going to reveal His masterpiece to the world in a little while. He’s going to slip the grave clothes off and let them see.

Enoch believed God and translated. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. He thinks himself into trouble or out of trouble. He thinks himself to be whatever. So, say what you will. Think it in your heart and don’t doubt, but decree it in your heart and it’ll come to pass. Ask what you will. It’s yours anyway. Do what you will with it. Say it, so shall it be. Why can I say it and it’ll be that way? Because it all belongs to me anyway. It’s lawful for me to do what I will with that which belongs to me, the Bible said. “All things are yours,” He said. Say what you will, just don’t doubt it. God says that’s the way you command Me concerning the works of My hands. You’re My son. Just say it! You’re a prince, even the Prince of Life, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. Say it, it’ll happen. If there is any interruption in your kingdom, any deformities, any problems, correct it. Don’t let it be there.

By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.

Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.

Holiness Unto The Lord