Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, “It is finished:” and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. (John 19:29-30)
Here’s a serious question! What is Finished? When Jesus hung upon the cross, right before He prayed, bowed His head, and died, He uttered these solemn words, “It Is Finished.” These were His last words to planet earth and all that dwell therein. Yet the death of Christ upon the Cross was just the beginning of the divine surgery of the Operation of God. (Colossians 2:12) When you find out what He finished for real, you are going to jump and shout with joy. Jesus came from Heaven to earth to finish what God started. What was Jesus talking about? Before you continue reading, ask yourself that question and see what your mind comes up with. What did Jesus mean when He said, “It is finished?” We talk about it in our books, Secret of Eternity, and Secret of Redemption.
Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as He said, “As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest:” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. (Hebrews 4:1-4)
What Jesus finished in the flesh was already finished in the Spirit because God always finishes what He begins. Jesus was dying as our innocent Lamb of God upon the cross to reverse the curse and accomplish eternal redemption for us from Satan’s powers of death. God wasn’t caught by surprise! He knew what would happen between the first man Adam and Satan in the Garden of Eden and how it would affect the whole human race. He also knew what He would do to rectify the situation by sending His only Son to earth to accomplish His true purpose for creation of enlarging His heavenly family. Here are five hints towards the answer to my question, what did Jesus mean when He said, “It is finished.” In our book, Secret of Redemption, I call them the Seven Gifts of Grace. I list five of the seven here on this blog. What is Grace? It is the supernatural goodness and favor of God towards every creature, which we don’t deserve and cannot earn. The five gifts of God’s Grace listed in this blog are the clues to what Jesus finished for all eternity. They belong to every human being on earth, but only believers will be able to activate these gifts when faith activates within their hearts. Have you received them by Faith? When Grace calls and Faith answers, the love of God is born.
1. The Promise
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel. (Genesis 3:15)
This passage of scripture is the greatest sermon ever preached with God Himself as the preacher to all creation. It is God’s first promise in the Bible upon which all of God’s promises in the Bible are founded. God had set the boundaries for Adam and Eve with the Two Spiritual Trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden, to keep creation in perfect harmony with God. Yet they disobeyed God! They submitted unto Satan and their act of rebellion against God brought the whole creation under the curse of death. A merciful God was quick to respond to Adam’s fall in (Genesis 3:15) by making “the promise.” In Adam was the whole human race and what happened to Adam happened to us all. You were there in the Garden of Eden in Adam’s loins. You were also there in the heart of God. Satan had come along and lied to Adam and Eve, the ones that God had given dominion over the whole earth. In doing so Satan engineered a coup against God. Adam’s obedience to Satan was an act of high treason against God. Not only did Adam disobey God but he gave the dominion over the planet and the human race unto Satan. Through their rebellion against God and obedience to Satan, their spiritual nature changed to become like the one that they obeyed and the whole human race in Adam’s loins became sinners under the dominion of Satan’s kingdom of darkness. (Luke 4:6) The Bible says that Satan became “the god of this world.” (2 Corinthians 4:4) The Apostle Paul called Satan, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.” Jesus called Satan the prince of this world. (John 14:30) This was the first and original spiritual coup, bringing the human race into the bondage of Satan, the new spiritual Pharaoh. Death has reigned over all the earth and mankind ever since. Death was never a part of God’s original plan. Death is an enemy of God and man. God promised our first parents and us in them, that He was going to send someone from Heaven to crush the head of the serpent (Satan’s power of death) over man and fix our death problem. (Genesis 3:15)
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Romans 5:12)
Can you see the puzzle? This passage of scripture says. “sin entered and death passed.” How is that possible, by one man? By one–death passed–upon all men. That includes you and me. How is that possible? Well, the whole human race was in one man, in Adam’s loins, including you and me so whatever happened to him was passed down to us through his bloodline. You probably know what it is like when you are using a computer and you click on something and a virus enters into your operating system and messes up your whole computer. That is exactly what happened in the Garden Eden. God told him, “the day you eat of the Good and Evil Tree of disobedience, you will surely die. The moment Adam disobeyed God, he died. You might think, if Adam lived over 900 years, how can I say that he died the day he ate of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? He separated from God, his eyes were opened unto the spiritual nature of sin, and he died spiritually. You see, death isn’t just the physical body dying. Death is a plural process. The Hebrews words for surely die are, mut, mut, which means, “in dying you shall die,” or “you shall die, die.” We die physically because we are born of Adam spiritually dead (separated from God). When Adam ate in disobedience, his spiritual nature became that of a natural man with the rebellious tendencies of his new spiritual father, Satan. (John 8:44) Adam’ was born of Satan’s nature of spiritual death the moment He died we all died spiritually. That also includes you and me. How is that possible? When Adam died spiritually, every human within his loins died spiritually. That includes you and me. In Adam we are all born spiritually dead and because we are spiritually dead, we physically die. Adam’s spiritual nature of disobedience separated him and us from God, which is spiritual death. Yes, Adam died the day he ate spiritually. The same became true for all of Adam’s offspring within his loins including you and me. What happened in the first man entered into the whole world and affected every soul born of Adam. In Adam all die. but in Christ all will be made alive.
For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21-22)
From that day on Satan’s powers of death began its work of manifesting spiritual, physical and eternal death in every human born of Adam. Everything that happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden happened to every soul in Adam’s loins, including you and me. As the result, in Adam all die. With Adam as our progenitor, death passed upon all men, which became our spiritual inheritance (separation from God) and our natural inheritance (separation from the body). Every human being has a problem that is impossible to solve, which requires a supernatural solution that only God can provide. It’s the death problem! If God doesn’t fix our death problem, we will remain eternally dead. That is a losing proposition for God and us. God immediately promised them and us that He would provide another Son that would come through virgin birth to reverse the curse for us so we can live and not die (come back into fellowship with God again). Where the first Son of God Adam failed, The Second man from Heaven, the only begotten Son Jesus, did not fail. (1 Corinthians 15:45-47) God said to Satan, “I’m going to send a savior through the seed of the woman (virgin womb) from Heaven. You will bruise His heel, but He will crush your head (take back the dominion from Satan). After all, what kind of God would He be, if He couldn’t or wouldn’t crush the head of the serpent for us and destroy Satan’s powers of dominion over us and death in us? (Genesis 3:15) Through the second man from Heaven, we pass from death to life and are made alive unto God again.
Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
Then God demonstrated how His provision would work by killing an innocent creature that had never sinned, that would serve as their substitute in death. (Genesis 3:21) In their disobedience unto God, their fellowship with Him was broken and their crown of glory was gone. (Hebrews 2:7, Psalms 8:5) They felt naked without the glory of God that once clothed them and they felt an urgent need to work out a way to cover their shame themselves. (Hebrews 4:13) Their glory of walking in God’s presence turned into fear, shame, guilt and blame when they sinned against the goodness of God. We are their descendants, and we are all just like them. They rejected God’s truth and believed Satan’s lie and as a result, all of Adam’s progeny are born without any right standing with God into this natural world that is under the dominion of Satan’s lies. (Romans 1:25) Satan is now the god of this world, (2 Corinthians 4:4) the prince of this world (John 14:30) and the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:2) Jesus told some of the Jewish leaders that Satan is the father of lies, but when He told them that the devil was their father and that God was His father, they were furious and tried to kill Him. Jesus told them the Truth, but they couldn’t see it. Now we live in a world that is under the great lie that life can be lived without God, and all will be well, but the Truth is that God is God and there is no other. When eternity begins, Satan’s historical timeclock of dominion over the human family will come to an end. In the meantime, multitudes are entering into eternity separated from God forever because they haven’t heard and believed the good news of the power of God that is available to them through Jesus Christ.
To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. (Acts 26:18)
If you can understand the first truths of the Bible, your eyes will open to see spiritual things, and you will know the Truth and Jesus said the Truth will make you free from the lies of the devil, the ways of death and the traditions of men that are in control of the world today. (John 8:32) Without knowing this first Truth about the nature of death, it is impossible to fully understand the true spiritual nature of eternal life in the Bible. Your spirit is going to exist forever because you were created in the image and likeness of God. You are a spirit being, but where you spend eternity depends upon whether you are spiritually dead or alive. (John 8:44) Which one are you, dead or alive?
Death works in three stages.
1. Spiritual death is separation from God.
2. Physical death is separation from the body, caused by spiritual death.
3. Eternal death is separation from God forever.
We don’t want that and neither does God. Death was never a part of God’s original plan. Death is an enemy of God and man. Paul said, “we now wrestle against principalities and powers, rulers of the darkness of this world.” (Ephesians 6:12) In their disobedience unto God, Adam and Eve jumped on Satan’s bandwagon and gave him their vote and they took us with them. Adam gave Satan their God-given dominion, and they became Satan’s family, the slaves of Satan’s self-program called SIN. We are all born with it and a world system is required to keep it under control. Adam gave Satan his vote and jumped on Satan’s band-wagon, leaving God on the outside looking in. God watched Satan walk away with His human family by Adam’s permission. Death has had the dominion over man ever since. Their human tendencies of rebellion (Satan’s be your own god, self-program) have been passed down to all human beings through the bloodline of our fathers ever since. (John 8:44) They realized their mistake. Their knew their spiritual state and standing with God had changed and they tried to cover it up. At first, they tried to work out a solution by doing good works. They sewed fig leaves together to make aprons to cover their sense of shame and nakedness before God. This is the root of all religion. Doing good works may hide evil but that is not the way to remove evil. We have designed a multitude of religions and philosophies that make sense to our natural minds and make us feel better, but we all stand naked and guilty before God. We all feel condemned before God and there isn’t anything we can do in our own strength to restore us back to the glory of innocence that they walked in before God. (Romans 5:6)
Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
After God committed to them and us His promise, God killed innocent animals in front of them and covered them with the bloody animal’s skins to demonstrate how His promise would happen. (Hebrews 9:22-28) One of the first things you need to learn in order to understand the Bible is that God doesn’t just do things. In everything God does He teaches something. God is the great revelator. In the Old Testament, God always speaks His promise first, then He demonstrates it. In the New Testament God does what He promised and then He reveals it. God is the creator who loves to reveal Himself to the creature for the fulfillment of His divine love. God uses natural things to reveal spiritual things, visible things to reveal invisible things and earthly things to reveal heavenly things. God killed these innocent animals as their substitute. Adam and Eve watched them die in their place to take their punishment, but they also saw God teaching them by promise, how He would send His innocent Son from Heaven to be our redeemer so they and all of us their children could have eternal life. God was basically telling them, “You can’t cover your nakedness in my sight because you can’t earn my favor and you don’t deserve my favor, I must cover you with the innocence of one who has my favor that will come from Heaven and die for you.” Can you imagine the horror they must have felt watching for the first time, innocent creatures losing their lives as the consequences of their sin? God was telling them that “something must die that you might live.” This principle of “something must die that you might live,” is demonstrated by God all throughout the Old Testament in many ways, pointing us to Jesus. It is part of the foundation of the knowledge of Truth in the Bible. Each time in the Old Testament, when you see something die that someone else might live, God is showing you an example of His promise, pointing to Jesus who died for us that we might live. We talk about this in great detail in our book, “Secret of Redemption.” Jesus came from Heaven to earth to become a ransom for us (John 3:13, 6:38, 6:51) to die for us and bring us back unto God so we might live forever by Him. (Mark 10:45) That was God’s original plan. God wasn’t caught by surprise with Adam and Eve’s disobedience. God knew what they would do before creation, and He knew what He would do in response. God would love His creature with divine love through the Son that He would send from Heaven. This is the core message of the Bible and God methodically presents our state, our standing and His solution for our death problem in each historical event of the Old Testament so we will get it. Religion tells man what he must to for God, but the Bible tells man what God has done for Him. God is love and He has loved us with an everlasting love through His only Son. (1 John 4:8)
He that commits sin is of the devil; for the devil sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:5-8)
When Adam and Eve saw innocent animals die in their place as the result of their sin against God, I would suppose it was a shock and horror to them. God was demonstrating unto them what death was, how awful death is and how He would reverse the curse of death for us. Through the one that would come from Heaven by virgin birth to be their substitute in death, He would reverse the curse so we might be given the gift of eternal life by His Spirit. (2 Peter 1:3-4) God would make us right with Him again through the hideous death of the promised one that would come and die upon the cross for us and give us His Spirit. After they watched the animals become their substitutes and die in their place, God took the bloody skins of those innocent animals and covered Adam and Eve. God was demonstrating to them that just as He killed those innocent animals and covered them of their sense of nakedness in God’s presence with their innocent bloody skins, one day He would do the same for all of us. Through the shed blood of His only Son our penalty would be paid and His righteous standing with God would be given unto us through the power of faith. That day came in the fullness of time when God historically smote His only Son on the cross for us so we might be able to receive His divine nature and live again forever. (Isaiah 53:4-5, 2 Peter 1:4) Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s original promise (Genesis 3:15) to destroy death’s power for us so we can live in God’s presence again. He is the redeemer that God promised to send to destroy Satan’s powers of death over us. Jesus came to crush Satan’s dominion over us, redeem us back unto God, give us His divine nature and cover us with His own righteousness before God. We receive God’s gift of eternal life when we believe in Christ. Let’s look a little more closely at God’s promise to them and us in (Genesis 3:15) to see how the scriptures work.
But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:4-6)
Here is what God really said in (Genesis 3:15). God said “I.” That means God will do it. Death is an impossible problem that man cannot solve, which requires a supernatural solution only God can provide. Religion teaches what man must do for God, but the Bible teaches what God has done for man. In the day of death, the works of religion will not save you. Only God can save you. Death is an enemy of God and man, and God has saved us from our enemies. Jesus Christ has conquered death for us. (Psalm 44:7) God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. (Ezekiel 18:23) Eternal life is the gift of God and God only has pleasure when His life conquers death through the Spirit of Christ in us. That is the power of the Grace of God. (Jeremiah 32:27) What is impossible for man is possible with God. (Matthew 19:26) The Bible reveals God’s way of saving you from Satan’s powers of death. (Isaiah.7:14) The Bible is the book that God wrote to historically demonstrate and document the Operation of God that would fulfill His promise for us. (Colossians 2:12) The whole Old Testament documents the historical demonstrations of God teaching us how He would fulfill His promise to man through the one that He would send from Heaven. The events of the Old Testament are His demonstrations that generate mental pictures in our souls of how God will fulfill His promise to mankind. The doctrines of the New Testament are His spiritual words of explanations that generate revelations in our hearts of how God has fulfilled all of His Old Testament promises through Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, faith looks forward to the one that God promised would come. In the New Testament faith looks backwards to see Jesus as the one that God promised to send. The Old Testament and the New Testament are the two spiritual eyes of the Bible. He came from Heaven through virgin birth saying, “All the scriptures are about me and all the scriptures must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44)
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. I receive not honor from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuses you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. for had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? (John 5:39-47)
Moses told his people about the messiah that would come. Jesus told them that He was the one that Moses was talking about, and that all the promises of the Old Testament were about Him. They thought that Jesus was a lunatic, but they knew that no man could do the miracles that He did unless God was with Him. (John 3:2) Jesus knew exactly what He was doing, and He told them in real time. God was telling us about Jesus all through the Old Testament. God’s Old Testament pictures are worth thousands of New Testament words. God said, “I will Put.” That means His promise will be fulfilled by the Son that will come from Heaven. God sent His only Son from Heaven to earth to fulfill His promise. (Hebrews 10:7) Adam’s very own life came from God and man’s victory over death must also come from God through His only Son. Overcoming death requires supernatural power from God which religion doesn’t have. God has historically demonstrated His power through the resurrection of Jesus for us. Just as natural life was the gift of God to man, even so spiritual life is the gift of God to man. “He came to this world through the virgin womb, and He left this world with an empty tomb.” The Theme of the Bible is that the goodness of God has reached out of Heaven to save us from gloom.” (John 3:15-16) When we hear the words of God and believe in the Operation of God, He quickens us by His Spirit. Through the words of God, we receive the thoughts of God that merges the Spirit of God into our spirits to give us a new spirit. When faith comes into our hearts and we believe in Jesus, God literally imparts the divine nature of Christ unto us, and God sees us righteous in His sight. (Colossians 2:12) There you have it! the punishment for sin is paid and the divine nature has been given and God’s gift of eternal life belongs to us all. The moment we come back to God in faith, the Spirit of Christ merges with our spirits and we are born again of His Spirit into the heavenly family and the Kingdom of God. This, no mere religion can do. Jesus said we must be born again just like we were born into this world, or we can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He then said, if we can’t believe when He uses natural things as examples, like natural birth to represent spiritual birth, how will we believe Him when He tells us of spiritual things? (John 3:9-13)
God said, “I will Put Enmity.” The Hebrew word for enmity means; “a violent hatred and hostile takeover against the evil one, by the one that will come from Heaven.” The Garden of Eden was an earthly picture of Heaven to the natural man and God destined for man to put on immortality and become fit for Heaven through eating of the Tree of Life. But man, never ate of the Tree of Life. Man joined Satan’s self-program, the scheme of a spiritual rebel and the holy war between Satan and God began. Man must now be made fit for Heaven through the one that came from Heaven to destroy him that has the power of death, that is the devil. (Hebrews 2:14) Jesus did that as our redeemer by becoming our substitute so He could cover us with His righteous standing before God. In obedience unto God, Jesus was willing to die as our Lamb of God for us that we might live. Jesus lived a perfect life fulfilling the law of God for us. Then He died on the cross to take our death penalty for us and to cover us with His righteousness before God. The Bible says anyone who believes what God says He has done, shall receive the divine nature of Christ, be saved from the powers of death, and become an heir of God. We are receiving by faith the adoption of Sons into His heavenly family. (Ephesians 1:5, Galatians 4:4-5, Romans 5:9-10, 10:13) God has kept His promise. Jesus has fulfilled God’s promise. He has accomplished God’s justice towards sin and purchased God’s mercy towards us. Have you received God’s gift of Eternal Life that He has provided for you by His Grace? (Romans10:10)
God said, “I will Put Enmity between you and her, between your seed and her seed.” The enmity (hostility) will be between Satan and the woman, between Satan’s seed and the woman’s seed. How is this possible. The woman has no seed. Only the man carries the seed. All things are possible with God. It means that this one that will come from Heaven to stand up against Satan’s powers of death over mankind, will come by virgin birth. He would not be in the bloodline of Adam, but His blood would be created by God in the womb of a virgin (her seed). The male carries the seed. The female receives the seed. Every human that has ever been born into planet earth is of the seed of Adam, except the one that was born of the virgin. That is Jesus Christ. He is the seed of the woman. The life of sinful flesh is in our blood, but the life of God is in the blood of Christ. Many people think it is too hard for God to create a man from a woman’s body without the help of a man, but in the beginning, God created man out of the ground and then He created a woman from the man’s body, without Adam’s help. Religion needs your help, but God doesn’t.
Finally, God said to Satan, “You will bruise His heel, but He will crush your head.” The only way to destroy the danger of a snake is to cut off its head. Adam was the head of the human race until he delegated his God-given dominion to the devil through his rebellion against God and obedience to Satan. Then Satan became the head of the human race and mankind has been suffering the bondage of the spiritual pharaoh and his powers of death ever since. God was telling them, and Satan, that He is going to send His Son from Heaven and that He would destroy the devil’s powers of death and take back the dominion over the universe for the glory of God. (1 John 3:8, Hebrews 2:14-15) Satan would hurt Jesus, but Jesus would take complete control of the universe, put all men in position to receive God’s divine favor and land Satan where he belongs, in hell forever. Jesus has taken back the dominion from Satan that was given to him by Adam. Death has no more dominion over Jesus or over believers in Him. (Matthew 28:18) As believers, He trains us by His Spirit how to share in His dominion and walk in His authority over all evil. (Luke 10:19) Men write mythical stories and produce mythical movies which promote spiritual thoughts, but this historical event of the redemption of the universe and the human race, will be the finest story ever told, now and forever.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16-17)
Faith is trusting and believing in God’s goodness to forgive us and cover our sins through the shed blood of Jesus and He also gives us the divine nature of His Son to make us fit for eternity in Heaven. When we believe the truth in our hearts, God’s Spirit merges with our hearts to quicken our spirits and we are born again of God. You must be born again, or you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. (John 3:3, 7) God has sent His only Son from Heaven. Jesus has undone for us everything that Adam did for us in the Garden of Eden. Jesus has loved us and has finished the work of redemption that God sent Him to do for us. Jesus walked in God’s divine favor every moment of His life and He fulfilled the Law of god on our behalf. God isn’t holding one sin against us except our rejection of His wonderful gift of eternal life through Christ in us. Through our faith in His death and resurrection, God crowns us with His divine favor. Can you believe this?
But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. (Galatians 4:4-5)
God isn’t interested in condemning anyone. God has redeemed us from Satan’s powers of death through Jesus Christ. God created us for His heavenly family. God is only interested in saving us and bringing us to Heaven. By the Grace of God, the promise of God for us all is finished, and it is activated in our hearts the moment we believe in Jesus. By God’s Grace, through our faith, we are saved forever. (Ephesians.2:8-9) That is how God’s provisions of Grace are activated in our hearts, by Faith. Your good works won’t get you into Heaven, but your receiving God’s gift of Christ will give you an inheritance in Heaven. (1 Peter 1:4) Believing in Christ changes your spiritual nature and qualifies you into Heaven. God made His promise to us all, and God kept His promise through Jesus Christ to us all. The first provision of God’s grace, “The Promise of God,” is finished. Do you understand what God’s promise was and how it affected you? Can you say, “It is finished” for you?
2. The Law
All through the Old Testament, God left a trail of blood that demonstrates His revelation of Redemption. After God performed His miracle of Redemption for Israel through the Passover Lamb, then God mightily orchestrated Israel’s miracle of Salvation from Pharaoh’s dominion through the crossing of the Red Sea. These events further demonstrate the miracles of redemption and salvation that God has prepared for all believers through Jesus Christ. After Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt by the direction of God, he received from God the Law upon Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments that God gave Moses ultimately became 613 commands called the Mosaic Covenant of the Law, or the Law of God, given to the Jews. (John 4:22) God gave the law to establish the code of the perfect character of Love that is required for man to walk in fellowship with a holy God, but it was impossible for man to perfectly keep the law. Also the Law of God couldn’t empower the human in his soul to keep the Law. All the Law could do was show man his sins, imperfections, his guilt under the Law and His need for redemption. God then established the culture of the tabernacle, the sacrifices, and the priesthood to demonstrate to natural man the way we come to God by faith in the shed blood of an innocent substitute (that covers sin). This demonstration of the sacrifices pointed us to Jesus who would come from Heaven to be our redeemer and accomplish redemption for us upon the Cross. The tabernacle system points everyone to the perfect man that would come from Heaven to earth and die in our place to redeem and save all that believe in Him. The Law of God shows man how to obey God and live eternal life in fellowship with Him, and it shows man that his nature of the flesh is programmed to disobey God like our father Adam did. Therefore, the law shows us our state of spiritual death, our standing of condemnation before God and our need for a redeemer that would come and be our savior. (1 Corinthians 15:21) The savior God promised to send must be a Son who comes to fulfill the Law of God for us and remove our sins and eternal punishment from us. Jesus’ whole life was our example of the life that fulfilled the divine Law of God’s love. Jesus was the perfect man who lived a perfect life for us. It is mentioned three times in the Bible where God spoke from Heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, so listen to Him. (Matthew 3:17, 17:5, Mark 1:11) Jesus’ perfect life of obedience unto God qualified Him to become the last Adam in whom the whole race can dwell, (1 Corinthians 15:45) the savior of the world that could become our substitute in death, (1 John 4:14) and the second man that can give us His divine nature of eternal life. (1 Corinthians 15:45-47) In Christ the Law is finished and His divine nature is given. As we walk in fellowship with God in our lives, we grow up into Him in all things and are filled with all of His fulness. (Ephesians 4:15)
3. The Sacrifices
All the sacrifices point us to the Savior who would give His life a ransom for us so we might live. God demonstrated how He would remove our sins and our sin nature from us through the Tabernacle, the priesthood, the sacrifices. God showed all Israel, something must die that they might live. This principle of substitution runs throughout the whole Bible pointing us to Jesus who would come from Heaven and fulfill God’s promise to us. God set up the Levitical priesthood to demonstrate how their sins were transferred to innocent animals, which would take their death penalty for them. In this way they were able to understand how the promised redeemer would come and be their perfect substitute in death. He would become the Lamb of God that would take our death nature and our death penalty, to save us from the powers of spiritual death and bring us back into spiritual life.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11)
The historical events of the Old Testament events were God’s divine pictures and examples that demonstrate to us how God would destroy Satan’s powers of death for us. God emphasizes throughout the Old Testament that “something must die that we might live.” The penalty of sin is death and only through the shedding of blood is the death penalty paid to forgive us of sin. God wasn’t wanting our death, but God wanted to show us that every sin carries with it the death penalty. When the blood is shed that is the end of that life and the penalty for the sinner is paid. Again, death was not a part of God’s original plan. Death is an enemy of God and man. Therefore, God gave us the Law to create a legal system that enforced the tabernacle/priesthood system that provided a substitutionary death in our stead. The Law of God also teaches us what sin is and motivates us not to sin, but the Law doesn’t give us His divine nature. The killing of animals doesn’t give us the divine nature, but they point to the one that would come from Heaven and put on flesh and show us the divine nature. The Bible says over forty times, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” God was saying, the death nature is in our blood.” The Law decreed that blood had to be shed for the sins of the guilty. So rather than the shedding of blood of sinners, God provided animal substitutes by which something would die that they might live. God was pointing believers to Jesus, who would willingly come from Heaven to become our substitute in death and give us His divine nature of life.
Wherefore when He came into the world, He said “Sacrifice and offering you wouldn not, but a body you have prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do your will, O God. Above when He said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin you would not, neither had pleasure therein, which are offered by the law; then I said, Lo, I come to do your will, O God. He took away the first, that He may establish the second. (Hebrews 10:6-9),
In this passage of scripture we see the Son of God coming from Heaven to earth saying, “You weren’t happy my Father, with offerings and sacrifices so you prepared a body for me and now I’m coming to do your will O God. Finally, in the fullness of time, God prepared a physical body in the womb of a virgin and Jesus came from Heaven to earth and lived the perfect life, fulfilling the Law of God for us. (Luke 2:14-16) Then as the perfect innocent Lamb of God, Jesus died our death for us that we might live forever. In this one perfect life and sacrifice of God’s only Son, God finished the Old Covenant law with it sacrifices. The Law was dependent upon the blood of many sacrifices, but the sacrifice of Jesus, the true Lamb of God, brought in the New Covenant which depends upon the living blood of Christ. The Old Covenant Law was weak through the flesh, but the New Covenant is manifested by the power of God through Christ in us. The Ceremonial Law of God in the Old Testament with its sacrifices, is finished. It has been fulfilled for us by Jesus Christ. As believers in Christ, we are made partakers of His divine nature and the moral Law of God is fulfilled in us through the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ who indwells us. (Romans 8:2) Now, when we sin, we have an advocate with the Father and the blood of Christ is available to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When you understand this, the spirit of religion looks silly.
4. The Priesthood
But now hath He obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also He is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. (Hebrews 8:6-13)
We must all meet with God. The Garden was the original meeting place between God and man. When Adam and Eve sinned, God put them outside the Garden of Eden, God then set angels with flaming swords to bar their return into the Garden. Their fellowship with God was lost. This is another picture of God. In the Old Testament, This was God’s picture to us of our trip to Hell when we die. We cannot go to Heaven in our sin nature. God set up the Tabernacle called the meeting place. The Levitical priesthood, and the sacrifices teach and demonstrate to man how we must meet with God. The veil in the tabernacle had the angels upon the veil of the most holy place and the angels were figured in gold with their wings over the mercy seat. The sacrifices taught how Jesus would come and as our sacrifice He would fulfill God’s plan of redemption for us. God abode with Israel in the Tabernacle and He provided the priesthood and sacrifices to minister on behalf of the people so they could live before God and not die. The priesthood teaches us how Jesus currently conducts His ministry from Heaven for us. Aaron and his sons, who were the priests of God, are pictures and patterns of the present day ministry of Jesus Christ for us. It is better than the Levitical priesthood because the blood of bulls and goats only sanctified to the purifying of flesh, but the perfect life giving blood of Jesus cleanses our conscience and gives us a new heart before God. The blood of animals only provided forgiveness of sins, but the blood of animals couldn’t change our spiritual nature. What they do is point us to the one that would come from Heaven and die for us that we might live by Him. Now, when we sin and we come to God and confess our sin, the living blood of Jesus removes our sins from us and imparts to us His divine nature. When God passes over you and looks into your heart, does He see the blood of Jesus who is His Lamb of God?
For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: (Ephesians 2:14-16)
The Bible calls it the Operation of God and what a surgery it was. You can read all about it in our book “Secret of Redemption.” When Jesus died on the cross, an earthquake took place that destroyed much of the temple and the veil inside the temple that separated man from God was rent in two from top to bottom, which only God could do. This demonstrated that the separation between God and man is finished. It also signified that the priesthood is now in Heaven, and we can now come to God through Jesus Christ who is alive forevermore. This signified that the blood of Jesus was satisfactory, that God moved out of the temple and the sacrifices are no longer necessary because God’s perfect Lamb of God had been sacrificed for us. Now our bodies are the temples of God and He meets with us in the holy place of our hearts by His Spirit. Jesus is alive forever and His sacrificial death for us on the cross ushered in His eternal priesthood and present day ministry for us. Jesus is now our high priest who is in Heaven and His ministry is that of interceding for all believers. God no longer dwells in tents and temples made with human hands and now the way into the presence of God is open again unto us all. God now dwells in the hearts of all true believers through Christ in us. Come to God by faith in the blood of Jesus and God will receive you into His presence. He will also walk with you for the rest of your natural life.
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them. And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews10:16-17)
The Bible calls those who walk with God and are going to Heaven, believers for a reason. Through Christ in us, we have become clean before God again and He gladly invites us back into the presence of God to live again. The Tabernacle, the sacrifices and the priesthood all point us to Jesus who has crushed the head of the serpent for us. Through the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, Satan has no more powers of death over us. (Hebrews 2:14) Through the living blood of Christ in us we can walk in fellowship with God again. In Jesus there is no sin and as we believe in Him, we learn to live by Him, He comes and lives inside us and brings us God’s presence within. One day we will drop our natural bodies, which are of this earth, and we will enter into Heaven where our eternal High Priest lives forever.
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. (Hebrews 4:14-16) For He testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 7:17)
The Bible says the priesthood of Christ is a better and eternal priesthood, patterned after Melchizedek which bears no record of a beginning or an end. He points us unto Christ. Jesus is our high priest forever. He brings God to us, and He brings us unto God. Is Jesus your high priest that brings you to God? Are you washed in the water of God’s word (Ephesians 5:26) and is your heart clean through the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus? (Hebrews 10:22-24) If so, the Levitical priesthood is finished for you and the present day, moment by moment, eternal ministry of Jesus Christ for you has begun. The Blessings of Abraham now belong to us. The present day ministry of Jesus Christ is now in effect as Jesus brings us unto God and makes us right with God. When we sin, and we will because we are still in the flesh, but as we grow up spiritually, His blood covers our sins in God’s sight so we can continue our lives in fellowship with God. (1 John 1:9) The tabernacle system is finished. His tabernacle now is the human heart.
5. The Operation of God
Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. (Colossians 2:12)
The Bible calls what happened from the cross to the throne, the Operation of God. It is everything that happened to Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to His sitting down on the throne of God in Heaven for us. In our books “Secret of Eternity, Secret of the Bible, Secret of Redemption and Secret of Salvation,” we teach about what happened from the cross to the throne and how it affected us. Jesus lived a perfect life for us. Jesus shed His sinless blood and died our death on the cross for us. Jesus went to Hell for us, and Jesus rose again for us. Jesus now sits on the throne of God in Heaven interceding for us. He has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts by faith who now guides us into all truth and teaches us how He died for us so we might live by Him. (John 16:13, 14:26) Have you received His Spirit? (Acts 19:2)
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)
There you have it, five of God’s gifts of grace. God fulfilled His operation for you so you could become the victors over every enemy of God, including death itself. The Bible says, “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1Corinthians 15:26) The whole Operation of God was for me and you. God performed His operation, and the Bible tells us how we activate His supernatural surgery. This passage of scripture says we must look at the cross the same way that they looked at the brass serpent on the pole. Brass is symbolic of judgment. The serpent is symbolic of Satan. The serpent upon the pole represents the historical event of the powers of death being destroyed for us upon the cross and our victory over Satan being accomplished in us. Those that beheld the brass serpent upon the pole lived. The word “behold” in the Hebrew is a word of continuous action. Those that beheld the brass serpent upon the pole lived. Those that refused to behold the brass serpent upon the pole died. God is teaching us that when we look at the cross and behold what God wants us to see, we also will not perish, but we will live forever. Remember, Jesus said, “Just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so must He be lifted up that we might not perish but have eternal life.” When we look at the cross, we see something that is impossible, but Jesus said, “All things are possible with God.”
It was God [personally present] in Christ, reconciling and restoring the world to favor with Himself, not counting up and holding against [men] their trespasses [but cancelling them], and committing to us the message of reconciliation (of the restoration to favor). (2 Corinthians 5:19 AMP)
The bronze serpent upon the pole represents the judgment that had to be dispensed upon that serpent nature that had been uploaded into Adam and was passed unto all of us his progeny when he ate of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. The eternal judgment that Adam earned for us all was only satisfied when it fell upon Jesus on the cross. The serpent upon the pole was a only a shadow (demonstration) of the real historical event that would happen in the fullness of time when the perfect man Jesus died as our substitute upon the cursed tree of the cross and became the Tree of Life for us. What is it we are supposed to see as we look at the Cross? Here is a clue! (Galatians 2:20) The way you look at the cross makes the impossible possible. The way you look at the cross determines your eternal destiny. In the Old Testament it says that they beheld the bronze serpent.
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. (Numbers 21:9)
That word doesn’t mean that they were just to see something, but to continuously look at it until they saw what God wanted them to see. God is demonstrating to us that our look at the cross determines whether we will live or die (go to Heaven or not), so it is most important that you settle the matter because God wants you in Heaven. If you look at the cross the right way, you will see (Galatians 2:20) fulfilled. If you behold the cross properly, with the right attitude, what you see up there that God reveals unto you will get into you and make you alive forever. Who you see up there on the cross will determine who you see living inside you. Can you see God performing supernatural surgery on you while Jesus was upon the cross? Exactly! That’s the only way you can see Christ inside you now. God doesn’t just want you to come to Heaven. God wants to walk in fellowship with you while you are on earth just like He did with our father Abraham. God wants to bless you and empower you with His inheritance all your life because He loves you. He does that through His only Son in you. He is the heavenly Father. The Bible wants to show us how we enter into His victory over the serpent for us by faith. The Operation of God is finished, but your activation of His redemption and appropriation of His salvation by faith has just begun. God is wanting to show you how His supernatural surgery of the circumcision of the heart can become fulfilled in you.
But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:13-14)
As our substitute Jesus took the death penalty that belonged to us so we might live. The Bible says, “When we were justified (declared righteous), then and only then, God raised Jesus from the dead for us. Jesus was our innocent sacrificial lamb, stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted for us. (Isaiah 53) He has taken our sins and our death penalty for us, and God transfers the righteousness of Jesus’ divine nature to our account when we believe. That is the gift of God. By the Grace of God, through the work of Jesus upon the cross, the surgical Operation of God is Finished. God has prepared something better and more magnificent for us. Have you received the gift of God that He has put in your account? Have you received the Operation of God? Is the Law finished for you? Is Satan’s dominion over you finished?
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matthew 12:40)
This subject of the Operation of God should be taught in every church and Bible School. Everything God has done for us by His grace, He has finished as our redemption. God’s provision of deliverance from the sin nature and our righteous favor with Him and our fitness for Heaven through Christ in us, is eternal and it belongs unto us as our salvation. The bottom line is this; God doesn’t just do things. God does everything for His purpose. God never does anything without accomplishing His purpose. Even though it took God thousands of years to complete His operation, time is obviously no obstacle for God and His program is eternal. God gave up His only Son for us by sending Him from Heaven to earth to become our substitute and take our place under God’s judgment so we can inherit Heaven through faith in Him. Believing in Jesus supernaturally changes our spiritual nature and supernaturally makes us fit for Heaven, which no mere religion can do. Jesus is alive and He sits upon the throne of God interceding for you. God has provided you with an eternal inheritance which is preserved for you in Heaven but begins while you are on earth. (1 Peter 1:4) Come to God in prayer with all your heart and claim your inheritance. Jesus paid the greatest price for you and His inheritance of right standing with God now belongs to you. The Operation of God is finished. Is it finished in you?
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: (1 Corinthians 2:7)
In our books, Secret of the Bible, Secret of Eternity, and Secret of Redemption, and Secret of Salvation, we teach about the Operation of God and how it affected every soul, born and unborn, that has ever lived and ever will live. It’s a thriller and it’s a mind blower. It is not of this world. It is beyond your imagination, and it truly is the Operation of God. (Colossians 2:12) God’s divine surgery makes all religion look silly and foolish. Only God has the power to save you from death and give you His spiritual nature that makes you fit for eternal life in Heaven. It is the hidden wisdom revealed to those whose hearts are right. (1 Corinthians 2:7-9)
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30)
It took thousands of years in time for God to fulfill His promise, accomplish His covenant and reveal His Operation, which is eternal. By God’s Grace, the Operation of God is fulfilled and finished, but have you received the heavenly gift. Have you heard about the Operation of God? It is Truth for Eternity. God’s Operation was a complete success. It becomes activated in your heart the moment you believe. God even gives us a witness in our hearts that it is finished for us. Don’t Leave Earth without it. If you do you will wish you were never born.
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Books by Steven and Bonnie Moore
You Can Be A Son, Secret of Eternity
The Operation of God, Secret of Redemption
Death and Life, Secret of the Bible
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