MARRIAGE GRACE

The Cosmic Counterattack

 The Grace Support System is operational whether or not the believer sins.  Grace depends upon God - not man.  God's Grace Support System operates for believers when they are in fellowship and when they are not in fellowship.  It also operates for unbelievers.  God's policy of grace extended to the unbeliever is clemency by overlooking his sins and offering him the gospel for salvation.  When the believer sins, he loses fellowship with God; but that does not nullify the operation of the grace of God in his life.  Though sin will qualify him for divine discipline, the Grace Support System is always operational.  However, as a member of the family, a child of God, the believer will be disciplined severely for his wrongdoing. Scourging refers to being whipped with a Roman whip that was designed to take the skin off the back.  Put another way, scourging means to be skinned alive with a whip.  The spiritual way of life includes divine discipline to teach the believer to respect authority.  Just as the parent who loves his children disciplines them, the Lord (who has been given all authority by the Father) disciplines believers who are out of line.  He sees all, knows all, and doesn't miss a thing.  Furthermore, His Justice is fair and impartial.  He handles the discipline Himself and will not tolerate any interference from others.  When a person arrogantly assumes the right to judge another and cuts loose with malicious gossip or judging, the the Lord takes all the discipline away from the accused (whether or not he is guilty) and gives it to the one who judged.  This is a way to get double discipline. When the believer sins, he uses his volition from a position of strength in the Filling of the Spirit to reject the commandment of the Word and chooses to sin.  When he sins, he loses the Filling of the Spirit and enters the Cosmic System where he is subject to the Justice of God.  Even when the believer is in the Cosmic System in a state of sin (under the control of his Old Sin Nature), God is still in control of the situation. No matter what the believer does.  No matter what the sin.  The sins were all paid for on the cross.  Even when the believer goes negative and rejects God.  God will never abandon or reject the believer.  The believer is always a child of God, no matter what he does or says.  God is always under control.  He is under control of the believer even when he is in the Cosmic System.  The Grace Support System is still operational.  Angels are standing ready to effect a rescue mission should that be required to deliver the believer.

There is a big difference, however, between grace support under authority and grace support under justice.  When the believer is under God's authority, he is filled with the Spirit and receives the full support of the Grace Support System.  This is a place of blessing.  However, when the believer rejects the authority of God and enters the Cosmic System, he loses the Filling of the Spirit and faces the Justice of God.  God cannot accept sin and will have no fellowship with it (Habakkuk 1:13).  His absolute Righteousness and perfect Justice demand that sin be judged.  While the sins committed were judged on the cross and will not be judged again, the Old Sin Nature with its human good and evil were rejected at the cross.  These things cause a believer to lose his fellowship with God and succumb to the power of Satan's Cosmic System.  The believer in a state of sin has, in essence, rejected the grace package of God.  He has set himself in opposition to the Plan of God as a rebellious child.

The word, "endure," is in the Greek, uJpomevnw (hupomono, present active indicative), which means to endure our testing and discipline in the sense of abiding under authority.  It means to stick it out through the pressures and problems of this life.  Those who do this will reign with Christ as members of the Royal Family of God in the Millennium.  When the believer sins, he must accept responsibility for his sins, which requires using 1 John 1:9 to acknowledge them to God so that he can be restored to fellowship; and he must endure the discipline that God prescribes.  Otherwise, he cannot advance in the spiritual life.  For those who stick it out daily, there will be eternal rewards.  As Jack Dempsey once gave as the secret of his success, "To get up and fight another round."

"If we reject Him:"  The believer who chooses to sin has rejected the authority of God, and God will have no choice but to place that one under His Justice.  The phrase, "He also will reject us,"  does not mean that God abandons us.  It means that He gives us Justice and cursing.  Even when we sin, we are still God's children, and He will never abandon nor forsake us.  The believer who sins never loses his salvation.  "If we are faithless:"  This includes all ways that we fail to execute the Plan of God.  Even when we fail, God is always faithful.  He never loses control, and He will never deny His promises to us.  He will never abandon nor forsake us.

The believer who relies upon the promises of God can have confidence in his decision to rely upon Bible Doctrine.  The world is full of lies, pressures, and manipulation.  The believer may sometimes feel isolated.  The Cosmic Evangelist is ever prowling for converts and the user lurks to snare, entrap, seduce the believer from the path of right.  When the world pressures the believer to conform, he can confidently resist.  He can stand up boldly to them and reject their lies.  He does not have to be afraid of the cosmic counterattack from people who are in the Cosmic System.  Caving in to fear is a sin.  It is a weakness.  The cosmic counterattack must be met with a Problem Solving Device, Impersonal Love for all Mankind.

Here is an example of how to use the Integrity Envelope in the Space Time Coordinate System to handle the cosmic counterattack.  The perfect relationship is love.  That's is what we all want.  However, an attack that causes fear is not love.  The fear is the believer's reaction to the cosmic counterattack.  The cosmic counterattack was not motivated by fear.  It was motivated to cause fear.  It could have come for a number of reasons, but the underlying motivation for someone who would cause fear is bitterness.  The opposite of love is hate (which is bitterness).  So the counterattack for love, which is the positive Y axis is bitterness, which presses in from the negative Y direction.

The cosmic counterattacks upon love in the Integrity Envelope on the back side (negative Y direction) range from self-righteousness to worry to bitterness.  The top of the back plane border is the edge that must face the attack of Pride (arrogance) from the top plane.  This is the sin of self-righteousness.  The center of the back plane faces the worry-fear counterattack.  And the lower edge of the back plane faces the bitterness counterattack.  However, the believer is commanded to love his neighbor.  Therefore, even in the face of the cosmic counterattack, he must have impersonal love from inside the Integrity Envelope.  When the cosmic counterattack is not recognized and handled with the Problem Solving Device of Impersonal Love, it will overrun the perimeter and lead to sin from the believer's area of weakness.

The believer can also fail by overrunning the boundary of Personal Love in the positive Y direction.  Chasing a paramour or falling for the seduction of the user can lead to this failure.  In the Attraction Phase of Romance, overstepping the boundaries of Personal Love occurs when wrong man or wrong woman is given the personal love which should have been reserved for Right Man - Right Woman only.  The one who falls for the paramour rejects the authority of the head and becomes a tail.  The sins committed are lawlessness and lasciviousness, which result from overstepping the boundaries of love.

FAITH AXIS COUNTERATTACKS

Faith is the basis for spiritual freedom.

The believer's spiritual freedom in Christ comes from being inside the Integrity Envelope on the Faith axis (X axis). The Galatians had become guilty of legalism.  They had believed the false teachers who were not grace-oriented.  Consequently, they were trying to execute the spiritual life by keeping the Mosaic Law.  Paul was explaining to them in Galatians that to reject Bible Doctrine would lead to loss of spiritual freedom and eventuate in slavery to the Cosmic System.  The Galatians had faced a counterattack of their faith from the Judaizers who had convinced them to keep the Law for salvation.  This was an attack upon the grace of God and was specifically an attack of false doctrine.

TIME AXIS COUNTERATTACKS

By believing false doctrine, the Galatians had cut their ties from Christ in the Grace Support System and had entered the sin of self-justification (one of the Arrogance Skills).  They were "seeking to be justified by the law."  Self-justification comes from arrogance.  After a person believes the lie of false doctrine (which is arrogance), the next step is to enter self-justification, to vindicate self, or defend self.  Self-justification is a sin of jealousy.  Jealousy is an attack upon the Time axis.  Ambition (from jealousy) leads to getting ahead of grace, and selfishness (including self-justification), also from jealousy, resists grace and holds back.

Paul points out the result:  "You have drifted off course from grace."  This is in the Greek, ejkpivptw (ekpipto), which is a nautical term for a ship that drifts off course and runs aground.  This phrase is often erroneously translated, "fallen from grace," which is misleading.  The Galatians in apostasy have drifted off course into false doctrine, but they are still under the grace of God.  They haven't fallen from God's grace, they have simply rejected His grace and will suffer the consequences of Justice and cursing until they turn around.

The Integrity Envelope of the believer in the Spiritual Space-Time Coordinate System is just like ship that must navigate the seas.  Since there are no landmarks at sea, coordinates must be known in order to chart the course.  If a person does not chart the course, the ship will drift off course.  Instruments are needed to align with fixed points, e.g. stars; and accurate clocks are needed because the earth is always moving under the stars.  The ship that drifts off course may run aground on rocks and be destroyed.  This happened to Paul; and when he used the analogy of a ship running aground, it was a strong metaphor.

The believer who does not master the orientation of the Integrity Envelope in the Spiritual Space-Time Coordinate System will "drift off course from grace."  That means being sucked into the Cosmic System and becoming a slave to the devil.  Freedom requires proper alignment of all the axes.  This begins with Rebound (1 John 1:9), which is submission to the authority of God.  That lines up the Z axis, which stabilizes the ship.  It may still be pointed in the wrong direction, but at least it is stabilized so that decisions can be made to chart the course.  Rebound does not solve all one's problems.  That is why there are additional Problem Solving Devices.

INTEGRITY ENVELOPE CHECKLIST

After Rebound the other axes must be checked just as one would check the orientation of the ship that had been drifting at sea.  Here is the checklist:
 

INTEGRITY ENVELOPE CHECKLIST
AXIS .
MEANING
COSMIC COUNTERATTACK
Z + Authority Arrogance, Cosmic Babylon, Worldly (arrogant style of life)
. - Hope Loss of confidence, giving up, laziness
X + Faith (Spiritual) Ecumenical Babylon, Apostasy, Worldly (lust of flesh)
. - Faith (Temporal) Immoral, unethical lies from the Establishment, legalism
Y + Love (Personal) Political Babylon, Lawless, Lasciviousness, Worldly (lust of the eye)
. - Love (Impersonal) Worry, fear, self-righteousness, bitterness
Time + Strategy, Tactics  Jealousy ambition, activism, rebellion
. - Strategy, Tactics Jealousy selfish, self-justification, recalcitrant

HOPE AXIS COUNTERATTACKS

The Hope axis is named for the bottom plane, the foundation.  The top side of the Hope axis (Z axis) is the relationship with authority.  The bottom of the Integrity Envelope (negative Z direction) must withstand those attacks which would cause a person to give up his stand under the authority of God, i.e. lose confidence in the Plan of God.
 

Fruit of the Spirit

Another way of describing the production of virtue from the Integrity Envelope is the analogy of the Fruit of the Spirit.  This is the agricultural metaphor.  A tree produces fruit when it reaches maturity.  A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces no fruit or bad fruit.  In Galatians 5:22-23 Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit.  He lists nine types of fruit.  Rather than use the English, the Greek will be used directly.
 
 

FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
Group Greek English
Meaning
LOVE ajgavph agape Divine Love
. carav chara Happiness (+H)
. eijrhvnh eirene Peace and prosperity (TDNT 2-402, 414-415)1
HOPE makroqumiva makrothumia Endurance (patience that endures) (TDNT 4-374)1
. crhstovth" chrestotes Integrity (envelope), graciousness (TDNT 9-489)1
. ajgaqwsuvnh agathosune Divine good (C/Life, Adam - sweat of brow) (TDNT 1-18)1
FAITH pivsti" pistis Faith 
. prau>vth" prautes Humility (TDNT 6-645)1
. ejgkravteia egkrateia Self-control, inner strength (TDNT 2-339)1

The fruit of the Spirit as listed by Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit are listed in three groups of three.  The first group is the Love group:  Love, Happiness, and Peace & Prosperity.  The pattern is a central theme with the next two words defining the extent, such as height and depth.  The height of love is sharing the Happiness of God (+H).  The depth of love is inner peace and prosperity of the Greek, eijrhvnh (eirene) from the Hebrew <wOv (shalom).  The Hope group is:  Hope, Integrity (envelope), and Divine Good.  Whereas, this is, indeed, the endurance group, the word Hope (meaning in the Greek, confident expectation) is used to match 1 Corinthians 13:13.  Both endurance and hope describe the strength of the roots, or foundation, of the Integrity Envelope.  The other members of this group are Integrity (which requires the integrity or capacity for life of the entire Integrity Envelope) and Divine Good such as Adam who represented capacity for life and engaged in production by the sweat of the brow.  The third group is Faith:  Faith, Humility, and Self-Control.  Faith is the fruit of metabolized Bible Doctrine in the soul.  Humility is the requirement for learning, which means submission to the authority of God.  So Humility is the upward aspect of Faith that is directed toward God.  Self-control is depth of Faith, which is directed toward self, i.e. maintaining mental and spiritual stability.

Thus far, nine fruit have been identified. Since nine is the number for the nine plagues of Egypt, a number for cursing, there must be more.  How many?  In Revelation, the Tree of Life in the Eternal State had twelve fruit.

The privilege of eating from the Tree of Life will be a reserved for the winner believer (Revelation 2:7).  Anyone who takes away from the book of Revelation will have his privilege of eating from the Tree of Life revoked (Revelation 22:19).  The Tree of Life is also mentioned in Genesis 2:9, 3:22, 24.  The key to understanding it is: So the Tree of Life has fruit associated with Salvation, living forever.  If we use the fruit of Salvation as the missing fruit group and recognize that the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all had a part in salvation, then there will be twelve fruit.  The Father was the author of the Plan of God for mankind that included salvation.  The Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, performed the work of salvation through His substitutionary spiritual death on behalf of mankind.  The Holy Spirit reveals the way of salvation and performs the work of regeneration at the moment of salvation to take a person out of darkness into light.  From this approach the first three fruit are:
  1. Salvation work of the Father - author of the Plan.
  2. Salvation work of Christ, the Light - Redemption, Reconciliation, Propitiation.
  3. Salvation work of the Holy Spirit - revealer of truth, regenerator, ministry in the priesthood.
Tree of LifeThe fruit listed in the illustration of the Tree of Life are:
  1. Salvation work of the Father
  2. Christ, the Light
  3. Ministry of the Holy Spirit
  4. Love
  5. Happiness (+H)
  6. Peace & Prosperity
  7. Faith
  8. Humility
  9. Self-Control
  10. Hope (endurance)
  11. Integrity Envelope
  12. Good

Stages of the Spiritual Life

The believer grows as a tree - a little every day.  He does not walk out one day and hit maturity.  From the moment of salvation, the beginnings of what he will be at maturity already exist.  Through spiritual childhood these fruit begin to develop a little each day.  There are no great spiritual victories that mean the believer has arrived.  Just because one test is passed, doesn't mean that the spiritual life is finally a success.  The final test will not be passed until the completion of this life whether under dying grace or the sin unto death.

The fruit of the Spirit, then, develop over time.  The beginner must first learn to use the basics of the first three fruit of Salvation associated with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He must begin to learn about his relationship with the Trinity, which includes:

  1. Grace Orientation to the Plan of the Father
  2. Doctrinal Orientation (Daily intake of Bible Doctrine, the Word)
  3. Rebound and the Filling of the Holy Spirit.
If the believer is not positive to the daily intake of Bible Doctrine, he will become entrapped in the Cosmic System in a state of spiritual ignorance and alienation from the Plan of God.  It is as natural for a new believer to love the Father and want to learn about Him as it is for a newborn baby to love its mother.  It is imperative that the Bible instruction be grace oriented, however.  Otherwise, the new believer will never grow spiritually.  The nourishment for the spiritual life is Bible Doctrine.

BEGINNER STAGE

This Beginner Stage of the spiritual life is like the Levitical priest advancing from the Laver (Rebound) through the Door (Grace Orientation) and to the Table of Shewbread (Doctrinal Orientation).  The Beginner must change his lifestyle to match this pattern or there will be no spiritual growth to maturity.  The Beginner who is consistent in following this pattern of life will eventually accumulate enough Bible Doctrine in the soul to make some application.  This may include use of Faith Rest and prayer, and separation from the World.  Testing in the Beginner Stage includes love for the Father, recognition of sin and carnality, and separation from the World.

INTERMEDIATE STAGE

When the Beginner Tests are passed, the believer will be promoted to the Intermediate (or Spiritual Growth) Stage.  The Intermediate Stage is a time of intensified intake of Bible Doctrine and rejection of the World.  This phase is designed to grow in grace.

The Intermediate Stage is characterized by obedience to Bible Doctrine, submission to the authority of the Father, obeying the Holy Spirit, and faith-application.  The believer who sticks it out in this phase will accumulate enough momentum to advance into Spiritual Warfare, which is the third stage.

SPIRITUAL WARFARE STAGE

In Spiritual Warfare, the believer is tested against Satan's demons.  The counterpart to Spiritual Warfare under the Old Covenant to Israel (Law) was conquering in the Promised Land.  In Spiritual Warfare the believer wins back from Satan his inheritance.

SUFFERING STAGE

After Spiritual Warfare, the believer advances into Suffering, which is qualification for the Adult Spiritual Life.  Suffering is a time of Testing, which can only be passed by application of the Problem Solving Devices (especially Personal Love for God and Impersonal Love for all mankind).  The Suffering tests prove that doctrine works for adversity as well as prosperity.  The Suffering tests are designed to burn away the dross.  They are severe.  However, they can be passed with the Problems Solving Devices.

SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD

After Suffering for a little while, the Lord will promote the obedient believer into Spiritual Adulthood.  He will enter this new stage of his spiritual life without anything except his battle scars.  His first tactical objective will be Spiritual Self-Esteem; the second, Spiritual Autonomy; and the third, Spiritual Maturity.

EVIDENCE TESTING

After Spiritual Maturity, another stage of testing may occur.  It is Evidence Testing, in which Satan is allowed to cross examine the mature believer through suffering.  The testimony of the believer will be used in the appeal trial of Satan.  This is what happened to Job.  The Lord Jesus Christ also had to pass Evidence Testing before beginning His earthly ministry (Matthew 4:1-11).  Evidence Testing includes two categories of testing:  (1) Relationship with God, (2) relationship with people.

After Evidence Testing the believer may live in Spiritual Adulthood until his time of departure from this life.  His final test is Dying Grace (7th Stage).  Those who do not advance spiritually and qualify for Dying Grace are doomed to the Sin Unto Death, which is designed to be the greatest misery in this life.

Testing

Testing is a way of life for the believer.  Every new doctrine that is learned  will be tested for the purpose of approval.  Only verified doctrine will be used in the construction of the Edification Complex of the Soul, which is also known as the Integrity Envelope.  The pastor teaches the doctrine and the believer metabolizes it under the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit then administers a verification test of the newly acquired doctrine prior to assimilating it into the Integrity Envelope.

The value of testing is explained in Romans 5:3-5.

The word for suffering, Greek  qli'yi" (thlipsis) is a word for intensive suffering, or stress testing.  Stress testing is a technical term that means testing under maximum pressure.  It has nothing to do with psychological stress, which is caused by failure to apply the Problem Solving Devices to the pressures of life, trying to solve problems with human solutions, and thus inviting stress into the soul where it usually ends up in the subconscious.  The stress testing in view here is testing the roots, or foundation, of the Integrity Envelope.

The believer is told to be happy when he encounters such testing because it will produce endurance. Endurance is the Greek, uJpomonhv (hupomone), which means endurance in the sense of abiding under the authority of the Lord and doctrine under pressure - e.g. staying in the frying pan without jumping into the fire.  The word used here for endurance is almost identical to the word, makrothumia, in Galatians 5:22, which means patience that endures.

The stress test will produce endurance and endurance produces verification, Greek dokimhv (dokime), which means to prove by testing, or verification. The Holy Spirit verifies each new doctrine learned.  The use of the word, verification, here is analogous to the verification testing of software.  Here the testing administered by the Holy Spirit is comprehensive and includes stress testing.

The verification testing produces confidence, Greek ejlpiv" (elpis), which means confident expectation.  It is often translated hope, but the Greek word for hope is much stronger than the English.  The progression of tests then is:  Stress testing (suffering) > endurance > verification > confidence.  The Lord simply starts with the roots, or foundation, in testing.  If the roots and foundation can hold, then the superstructure will hold.  This is a stiff test since it goes directly to the roots.

The NASA STS-85 mission patch is a symbolic illustration of Stress Testing (Thilipsis Testing).  The patch is the symbolic representation of the soul model.  The conscious mind is shown along with the subconscious.  When God takes the lid of the soul off to examine the roots of the Integrity Envelope, the subconscious will break out to fill the void (absence of thought on the top, or cerebral cortex).  In other words, God delivers the Stress Test to the roots.  The result will look like the STS-85 patch.  The subconscious will break out to fill the void.  This is illustrated on the patch by the yellow and red spikes in the left lobe.  Yellow represents Life, while red represents suffering (Stress Testing).  This is a Capacity for Life Stress Test.  Notice that the Shuttle Orbiter with the open payload bay doors in the middle corresponds to the tree with roots shown in the Tree of Life illustration.  The base of the trunk and roots  of the Tree of Life symbolize the Hope group:  Endurance (center), Integrity Envelope (upper), and Good (lower). When we have passed the suffering, stress tests of the roots, we will not be disappointed.  We will have no regrets.  This is like a woman who has just had a baby.  She is always happy about it in spite of the suffering she has been through.  We won't be disappointed because the Holy Spirit will pour out the Love for God in our hearts.  This is our reciprocal Love for God in response to His Love for us (the Love of God).  The Greek in this verse means both the Love for God (which comes from us) and the Love of God (which comes from God).  The Love (agape) is poured into the cup in the soul, which is inside the Integrity Envelope.  The Integrity Envelope had to be tested first (and the Lord chose to test the foundation) and then, after it had been verified, the love of God is poured into the cup in the soul.  This is a divine love that is beyond the imagination.

Blessing or Cursing

The grace of God is operational for believers and for unbelievers alike.  It is operational for good believers and for bad believers; for doctrinal and for apostate believers.  God does not cease His grace policy when the believer goes negative, sins, and enters the Cosmic System.  God never loses control.  Nothing ever surprises Him.  He knew all in eternity past.  He is not a respecter of persons (Romans 2:11), which means that He is impartial and truly objective.  He does not give the believer special consideration over the unbeliever.  He doesn't treat someone who loves Him better than He treats someone who hates Him.  He will bless those who hate him just as He will bless those who love him.

However, there are limits to the types of blessing that He can give.  He cannot share His Righteousness and His personal love with the unbeliever because the unbeliever's soul cannot receive the Righteousness or agape love of God.  There is no way for the unbeliever to experience God apart from observing  His Justice.  Similarly, the sinning believer will taste the Justice of God, but he will not experience the love of God.  However, the grace of God operates whether or not the believer is out of fellowship.  Blessings from the Plan of God may come into the believer's life even though he is out of fellowship and pursuing reversionism.  God's grace Plan is independent of the actions of mankind.

When the believer sins and enters the Cosmic System, he will lose the Filling of the Holy Spirit and he will be subject to the Justice of God.  Although the carnal believer is still under that grace of God, he will be subject to the Justice of God, and the Lord will discipline him as a child.  When the Holy Spirit executes Justice in the Cosmic System, it is divided into three parts, Cosmic, Political, and Ecumenical Babylon. When a believer who is in the divine dynasphere encounters something from the Cosmic System, the Holy Spirit will have first judged that thing.  Nothing comes into the presence of the Holy Spirit without suffering judgment.  Nothing will appear on the Stage of Life without first facing the Justice of the Holy Spirit.  This means that sin and evil will bear the marks of the Justice of God.  It also means that when the believer enters the Cosmic System he will also receive the Justice of God just as other things in the Cosmic System do.  He will receive judgment related to Cosmic, Political, and Ecumenical Babylon.
 
 
 

COSMIC SYSTEM
Ecumenical
Political
 Cosmic

Cosmic, Political, and Ecumenical Babylon are the devil's substitutes for three axes of the Space-Time Coordinate System.  Cosmic Babylon attacks the Hope (Z) axis.  Political Babylon is the devil's substitute for true love from the Love (Y) axis.  And Ecumenical Babylon is the counterattack of the Faith (X) axis.
 

Destiny

Every believe receives an inheritance and a calling at the point of Salvation along with one or more spiritual gifts for spiritual service.  The believer has a new spiritual life that begins at salvation.  His destiny is to fulfill his calling.  The question, "Who am I?", can only be answered by means of spiritual growth.  In due time, the believer who executes the Plan of God will come to a personal sense of destiny.  He will come to understand his purpose and calling in the new spiritual life.  God has a Plan for the life of the believer that includes a destiny of prosperity as only God can give in His matchless grace.

The Golden Lampstand in the Tabernacle symbolizes the Personal Sense of Destiny.  Destiny can only be understood when the believer walks in the light in fellowship with the Father every day.  One of the first experiences of destiny of many people is meeting Right Man or Right Woman.  When the Lord brings the Right Woman to the Right Man, destiny has arrived.  However, it may be a long time before the tests of Attraction and Compatibility are completed and the couple are ready for marriage.

In the Church Age every believer is a priest - male or female.  Everyone, regardless of race, gender, or social status, has equal opportunity to execute the Plan of God.  Everyone who is positive to God's Plan can function under the priesthood to execute the spiritual life and reach destiny.  Destiny is achieved in only one way - by experiential sanctification.  To reach one's destiny, the believer must use the priesthood to execute the spiritual life.  Only consistent daily decisions to metabolize Bible Doctrine will enable a person to receive his inheritance and achieve his destiny.  Those who stay positive will receive blessing beyond the imagination in this life.  Those who reject their calling and destiny will die the sin unto death.

NextNext

References

1.  Gerhard Kittel (ed.).  Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson, S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan), 1964.

AUTHOR  Larry Wood
Revised May 10, 2008