Worshippers in the Order of Everlasting Life
The purpose of worship is salvation (John 4:19-24). As such, any form of worship which does not result in salvation is not of the New Testament. God is bringing a revival to the entire church for the redefinition of worship. The heartbeat of the Father is worship (John 4:23-24).
Early evangelists called evangelism the supreme task and took preaching the gospel as very essential. This was based on Jesus’ commandment in Matthew 24:14. However, the gospel referred to in that scripture is not the entire gospel, but an extract. Anyone who has heard that gospel has not really heard the entire gospel, for it takes time for the gospel to be preached. The true gospel is the movement of God’s throne to the earth; the actual broadcast of the gospel comes from the throne of God.
God’s intention is not solely on people getting born again, much more, He desires worshippers. Only a fraction of people who get born again end up becoming worshippers. It takes some time to become worshippers of the Father (John 4:23) because it takes some time to learn the Father. The essence of the church is to teach men the protocol of worship.
Worship is a commitment to a thought and giving oneself wholly to serving it. One could go to church and yet, not offer true worship. We come to church to service ourselves for our course, which is worshipping and aligning under the thoughts of God.
Israel did go to Jerusalem yearly, however they were serving another thought. Although they went to the city of peace, they had not known the way of peace – their thoughts were not configured after peace. To worship is to hearken to the thoughts which God aligns in the spirit, which constitute truth. The herald of truth is a call to worship. As such, when one is not responding to truth, such is not worshipping.
To worship the Father is a high call. Therefore, one cannot worship the Father when he is newly born again or just filled with the Holy Ghost. Jesus is the only man that has lived on the earth and has given perfect worship to the Father; He was committed to this course on earth – the course of truth. Souls cannot ascend up to heaven when truth is not made known. Truth is our anchor which enters into the veil wherein our High Priest has entered. Worship is high!
The kingdom of Satan has done well in worship; Satan has raised high worshippers in his kingdom. He may not have a lot of everlasting worshippers but he has a number of men who have entered into a high level of commitment to him. This does not refer to the commitment of some men to local gods, for such commitment cannot be referred to as commitment to Satan.
Those images of local gods emanate from substances called lies; Satan uses them as a pedestal for a higher worship unto himself. One not bowing down to a physical image (idol) does not imply that such a one does not worship Satan. Some men worship an invisible image; this is not just an idea, it is a god which attracts men to worship it. Satan has taken worship to a zenith in his kingdom having done well in taking men unto himself; he is able to do so because he is a spirit (Psalm 104:4) and understands what worship is. As such, even after his fall, he demanded worship.
The worship of physical images is still ongoing. Those who do not worship images sometimes persecute those who do. However the real god ruling nations is not a physical image, but the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). As men became educated, they saw the worshipping of physical idols as low. Those who departed from God did not worship physical idols, rather, these men were their own idols.
Cain departed from the presence of God (Genesis 4:16) because of his ambitions; he agreed to the truths of Satan, which is actually a lie. He inaugurated a worship by submitting himself to Satan’s thoughts and went away to explore his vocational worship ideas and built cities. No one engages in worship for nothing, but always sees a gain in it. Cain gained what Satan promised him, but much more, he received the wages of sin which is death (Romans 6:23).
Cain was ambitious about having a name for himself. The name of his son, Enoch, was not just an ordinary name, but an expression of his achievement on earth (Genesis 4:17). He was praising his strength through his firstborn. Cain received a thought from the devil and became committed to it. Commitment to sin takes a lifetime; actual commitment to sin is what one does with his life. Whatever is outside God’s jurisdiction is not righteousness, it is sin.
Cain submitted himself to sin after God had warned him (Genesis 4:7). All the children of Cain were committed to sin and hated God because they refused to call upon his name. To call upon the name of God (Genesis 4:26) is to align one’s soul to God’s order; it is to use one’s life to interpret the will of God on earth. Thus, instead of calling upon the name of the Lord, Cain called upon himself, which was evidenced in the name he gave to his son.
There are men who have determined what their children will be and will be totally committed to that cause. Many men who might be termed good by human definitions may not be so in the sight of God. One who God judges as righteous is he who will allow Him to do what He wills. As parents, we may carry passions which influence and shape the lives of our children. Adam and Eve allowed God to shape the vocational occupation of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:2).
It is important that parents expose their children to God and allow them receive directions for their life from Him, by themselves. However, this does not rule out the need for guidance by the parents along the way. As believers, it is important that we scrutinise our passions and check its origin because our passion can be our secret idol. Some passions are inordinate while some may be clean. It is therefore necessary to check our desires for our childre in order to ensure that they are not borne out of inordinate passions.
The reason for the Season of Spirit is to enrol saints into the school of worship. If worship rests on truth (John 4:23), then the core of worship is doctrine. When the pillar of truth is raised among the saints, the portal of worship is unlocked. Worship is not really about songs, except the singer has truth inside him. To engage in true worship, the minstrel must be full of doctrine. Songs are not just the putting together of words in the Bible, for every song should be a key to understanding. One who is not blessed with understanding would sing blindly. It is possible to sing with understanding and also to sing without understanding.
True worshippers are in themselves true – they are in the truth (John 4:23). One must be in the truth to be true. Christ is ‘truth’, but is not ‘true’. However, the Father is true while God is true only (John 17:3).
“That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ…”(Colossians 2:2). Mysteries are secrets and secrets are doctrine. Mysteries start with Christ; there is no mystery in the milk of the word. There is the mystery of Christ, which is truth, the mystery of the Father, which is true, and the mystery of God, which is “true only”.
There is also the truth of God.Some men changed the truth of God into a lie (Romans 1:25). There was no idolatry in existence until some men changed the truth of God, and served the creature more than the Creator. The Creator is blessed forever, that is, He has everlasting blessing – He is the everlasting God. To change the truth of God is to tamper with the image of God.
The incorruptible God is the everlasting God, not the eternal God. Man was framed to be like the image of God (Genesis 1:27), however, his physical form was not the image of God. Image means truth. Truth is who God is which no one else is. This image is that which man ought to worship. However, this image was changed and the standard of what man was to serve was reduced. The projection was reduced to corruptible man, to birds, four-footed beasts and creeping things (Romans 1:23).
For example, the image of the king Cobra is the image of Pharaoh. To have the image of the king Cobra is to be serpentine in nature, poisonous and having no mercy. Pharaoh was able to kill the firstborn of Israel due to this nature. One cannot sit on the throne of Pharaoh without having attained this image. Image is higher than miracles; Pharaoh persisted even when his magicians had been won over by the miracles Moses performed.
God wrought several signs in Egypt, darkness, fire, hailstone, etc., yet the image in Pharoah did not break (Exodus 7-11). Images can only be withstood by mighty acts. The killing of all the first borns of Egypt broke the image of Pharaoh, but only for a while (Exodus 12) until Pharaoh himself and his entire army were crumbled in the Red Sea (Exodus 14). This particular Pharaoh was a 4th generation king and his strength had been perfected – the evil image was well installed in him. He had been fully raised and only one with the stature of Moses could bring him down. Hence, God had to bury him (the image inclusive) in the sea.
A lie is to bring another image which is not the original. We should check our hearts and question ourselves to know who we are truly serving. Some of us do not want to serve the devil, but at the same time, we do not want to serve God. To make up one’s mind not to be God’s servant is to resign from worship. The projection of worship is to attain what God has set as a standard.
God is our Father and He desires us to know Him; He wants us to come up to His standard. A natural father has ambitions for his children, with good intentions. However, man has limitations and is sometimes wrong. God is the only true Father who has a right to choose for a man; He only holds the sole right to tell a soul what the soul should be. While it is man who gave birth to the body, God gave birth to the soul and the spirit. Hence, He knows what the soul was designed for. God may have blessed a man with many abilities, yet He may not want him to use any of them to become something. God can put things in a soul, but they may not be His ultimate purpose for it. This is not to say a God given potentials are useless.
Another word for image is glory. If one can capture God’s image, such a person has held His glory. The glory of God is the image of God and God’s expectation for man is for him to become His image. Sin disqualified man from the glory of God and made him committed to other images. Glory starts from image. Sin made our fathers committed to an inferior image. These images were not speaking of physical status, but the glory of the earth. To form an image is to make a name – it is to become something. The images listed in Romans 1:23 signify different glories of the earth, with creeping things being the least and man being the greatest.
“And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. [4] And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:3-4).These men had blocks and bricks to build; they did not use stones which God made because stones would not have worked for what they wanted – a city. The essence of the city they wanted to build was to earn themselves a name.
Image making is a fatherhood achievement. Having an image makes a man feel complete. Previously, men celebrate this status at old age, but Satan has now reduced the age range and men have begun having such achievements at thirty years – Satan gave men speed in making achievements. Although, when they make such achievements, they are still left unfulfilled. There is nothing wrong with making achievements, but a believer should not be joined to idols.
Image making is something a man cannot resist on his own, rather, it is something one will see and be committed to. This is why some men to whom the image of the invisible God was revealed despised it and changed it into something else that suited their desires. They did this because they must have been seeing something. The preacher of the kingdom of the earth must have preached to them into thinking that there was something glorious about those images.
In the various image making processes in Romans 1:23, the ‘man’ phase of the process is that which makes a man full of himself while the ‘bird’ phase speaks of liberty. The ‘four-footed beast’ phase speaks of taking charge of the earth while the ‘creeping things’ phase has to do with dwelling and making abode in what one has done. All the images speak of making a name. The image of the city that was built in Genesis 11 was that of a man who can reach the heavens.
“And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Hebrews 2:14-15).‘Fear of death’ has to do with loving something and being afraid of not achieving it, which creates a fear in one about it. The gospel preached by Nimrod was to reach heavens as a man.
Image is the glory. When preaching the image, men are being taught glory – the giving of the essence of what they can become. Only image can pull a soul away. However, there is a better image in the hand of the Great Shepherd, the High Priest, who is the custodian of good things to come. The essence of the good things is to craft the image of god in man.
Corruption is in image; it is in what we look like (Romans 1:23). Drive and ambition are forces of corruption. The preaching of corruption is the preaching of ambition, which is something men can easily buy into. The children of Israel had been delivered from Pharaoh, but they were not yet free from what was in them – they needed the wilderness to deal with what was in them. What was in them was stronger than the bondage of Pharaoh in Egypt.
Being a true worshipper is a realm of disengagement and engagement. True worshippers are strong people who will refuse the making of an evil image and allow their idols to be broken. A true worshipper is one who has learnt Christ and is about to learn (worship) the Father. It is such men the Father seeks; He can discern them because He is able to perceive their hearts.
God tests a true worshipper with the first doctrine – truth. Christ is the truth but He is not true. To say something is not true does not mean that it is false. ‘True’ is a lesser truth which is without God; it does not contain the materials or substances of God required to bring one to God. Truth which is true is the mystery of the Father.
The only true God cannot be learnt by creatures, so He had to condescend to become the everlasting God. He is called ‘El-Shaddai’ which means, the multi-breasted One, having good and perfect gifts (James 1:17). The Father of lights is a dimension of God showing Himself as the everlasting God. The everlasting God is the truth of God; He is the One who is to be worshipped first and the One who seeks for true worshippers. True worshippers are men who can keep the truth of God and later become true; they worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).
Truth is knowledge. Therefore, one cannot come to the truth without knowledge. There is the spirit of truth, as worship is in spirit and in truth. There is the spirit of the Father which only truth can make one see and there is also the truth of the Father which only the Spirit can help one see. When the Spirit shines truth, He enables you to know what to do with truth. To know what to do with truth is to submit to the Spirit of truth (John 16|:13).
Truth is who the Father is, what He carries, what He has, what He desires and what He wants to give. Truth is also what the Father expects us to have and do. There is the Spirit of the Father which makes one become what the Father wants one to become. The Father desires man to arrive at His truth because of His love.
God wants man to be as saved as He is. Jews are worshippers of the true God, whom salvation belongs to (John 4:22). As a man worships God, he is being saved. God has put Himself down as an object of worship – man should observe and imitate Him until he becomes like Him. As a man continues obeying God, the darkness Satan put in him will fall off. The things Satan has put in man cannot fall until he beholds the image of God. As a man keeps beholding the image of God, he is being changed into the same image, and other contrary images give way.
In essence, what God actually desires is not the worship of our lips, as some men can worship with their lips but their hearts are far from Him (Matthew 15:8). When a man beholds God’s image, he begins to understand incorruptibility. One cannot become an image without having an understanding of the substances that make up the image. An image is the manifestation of a content; an image has things.
An image is a spirit containing many things. Therefore, it needs a container to express these things. Image is God’s DNA. Glory is the name/expression of God’s image. Other names are righteousness, spirit and judgement. Thus, the ministration of the Spirit is the same as the ministration of righteousness and these constitute the image we are to become. Worship is a time of aligning ones’s feet in obedience, taking steps as directed by God. The Spirit gives the guidance of obeying truth. As one obeys truth, the image of God is being formed and such a person is being changed from glory to glory.
We are coming into the hour when sin is getting weaker and righteousness is becoming stronger. Visions and understandings will increase with a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God being a Spirit (John 4:24) does not only mean that He cannot be seen with the physical eyes because angels are also the same. There are different classes of spirits. For example, there are things Cherubs can do which other angels cannot because Cherubs carry the substance of spirits which dwells in the everlasting dimension. They are in the realm of divine service, hence, they have a word which was steadfast (Hebrews 2:2).
Satan disobeyed God and received a just recompense of reward for it (Hebrews 2:2). Yet, what he became makes him such that the things he speaks are also steadfast and can last for ages. As a result, steadfast words are needed to shake wrong heavens and dominions which are inverted (Hebrews 12:26). Satan is a fallen heaven; all the things in him are corrupted heavenly substances. Therefore, it would take the ministrations of the High Priest to remove them.
When angels speak, they speak their image, which is their word. God is giving us words today and they will become our words and our lives. God is communicating to us how to inherit everything that frames Him up. This is what image making is about. Everlasting life is about seeing the Son and changing from glory to glory. The essence of worship is glory. No one bows for nothing, but for glory.
Earthly glory can make a man bow. Nations of the earth are chasing after creatures because they are seeking glory, but God is far more glorious and He has designed the path to gaining Him in the scriptures. However, His design is not appealing to the wise, so that hearts will be meek in coming to Him.
The purpose of worship is to end in service to God. If anyone denies God of this expectation, such will not be free from the hold of Satan. The truth of God is the image of God, which is the Son of God. The image of God is the Father. The Father was building Himself in the Son when He was on earth (John 14:7-10).
The gospel is what God did to Jesus and in Jesus; God constructed His image in Jesus. Jesus, as the Word in heaven had the image but He came as a man and took lessons of doctrine, which are laws of the Father until He came to a point where He was qualified to have the image of God constructed in Him. He finished the programme of Christ and then the Father began to download Himself in Him.
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).The phrase, “as of the only begotten Son”, suggests that the glory which Jesus had on earth was the glory of everlasting life and not Eternal Life. Men who beheld this glory could not define it. It was after He left the earth that He gave them an illumination of who He was and who He is.
Jesus came to show us who the true worshipper is. The everlasting gospel does not need many lands to transmit it. Jesus knew the work He had done would spread by itself. No one can limit God’s image/nature, nor can anyone kill what God carries. Rather Satan’s things are obsolete; his message has passed away already. Iniquity is judged and the true light is shining (1 John 2:8). Satan tried to bury the true light after the first century, but it is being raised again and will shine a thousand-fold.
“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:32). Jesus wants to be lifted up. To lift Jesus high is to preach Him in His true essence and this is making the Father known. Jesus is the house of the Father. When the Son is being ministered, the Father is being ministered. Jesus is the exact image of His Person (Hebrews 1:3); He makes the person of the Father known.
Your person is what you carry. Not a single iota of what God carries will pass away (Matthew 5:18). The wisdom of the word cannot be erased. Whatever the word says is so. This means it is written. God’s word is being written on our hearts. When the word becomes “Amen”, it means it would not pass away.
When we partake of the Lord’s table and drink of the cup, we are drinking into His image – we are partaking of His blessing. To carry what is true is to carry the glory of the uncreated in your vessel. The glory which shall be revealed in us is incorruptible (Romans 8:22). We would be delivered from the bondage of corruption when we receive the image of God. The image of God cannot be in a vessel and the vessel remains the same. A body carrying God’s image is one awaiting immortality. Hence, we ought to make haste and run the race set before us (Hebrews 12:1). The essence of making haste is to have our building completed.
We have found grace in God’s sight because we are seeing (understanding) what God is saying. Noah found grace in God’s sight (Genesis 6:8) and so was shown the image of God’s salvation – the ark (Genesis 8:6). When God is in love with one and such a person has found grace, He will show the person what to build. A builder is a worshipper; we are building the invisible which will yet appear, as the glory which is the image of God will be revealed in us.
This is not only the season of building but also one of manifestation. Manifestation is the revelation of glory. As such, we all should be engaged in building. It takes only true worshippers to adhere to the principles of building. True worshippers are particular regarding instructions of building in order not to give God a substandard building. True worshippers will stay true to the cause of God’s building until the image of God is formed in them. True worshippers will give their all to God. As such, we are to give our hearts and our souls completely to be built by Him.
