Training – Volume 3 – The Mysteries of Creation and the Destiny of Mankind

Volume 3 Sample Chapter

© Copyright Scott Flanagan

INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING THE MYSTERIES OF CREATION AND MAN’S DESTINY

CHAPTER 1 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
FIVE MYSTERIES OF CREATION
-The Mystery of Our Origins
-The Mystery of Creation and the Mystery of the Angels
-The Mystery of the Ages
-The Mystery of Gender
-Adam’s Failure
-Restoring Relationships
-Gender and God
BECOMING ONE WITH GOD, MANKIND AND CREATION
-The Light of God
-The Transformative Power of White Light
-The Path to Transfiguration
THE MYSTERY OF MANKIND’S DESTINY
-An Overview of the Book
-The Destiny of Man
-The Mystery of the Two Trees
-The Mystery of the Trinity
-Dominion Lost
-Moses’ Invitation
-Moses’ Reluctance
-Our Invitation
-Exercising the Freedom to Be Wrong in Transitions

CHAPTER 1

UNPACKING THE MYSTERIES OF CREATION
AND MAN’S DESTINY

In this third volume of our pathway to sonship training, we turn to some deeper questions. We will explore a number of mysteries that have puzzled mankind for millennia – questions like who are we? How were we created and what is the purpose of our life? More specifically we will explore seven mysteries. The answers we provide to the first five of these mysteries in the first eight chapters of this book, will lay a foundation that will help us answer a second set of questions in the rest of the book. This second set of questions focuses on how we can best pursue the pathway to sonship and achieve the goal of becoming one with God. In the final chapter we will tentatively look at the ultimate destiny of man and explore the mystery of the two trees and the mystery of the Trinity.

We know that the whole purpose of God’s seven step plan of redemption is to reconcile us to our Father. The church has not really understood what that entails. God is looking for relationship with mankind that goes far beyond simply being reconciled to Him and worshiping Him. Jesus articulated the goal for us in His prayer to our Father at the Last Supper. His prayer for all those that will come to believe in Him is “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:21 NKJV). Jesus speaks of a future day in which everyone will understand that “Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I (Jesus) am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:19-20 NKJV). What does it mean to be one with God? What does it mean for Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit to be in us and for us to be in Them? How can we best pursue that goal? This chapter presents an overview of this book that will outline the questions we will be exploring.

FIVE MYSTERIES OF CREATION

We will begin by outlining the five mysteries of creation that we will be presenting in the first eight chapters. Paul speaks repeatedly about “the mystery hidden for ages in God” (Eph 3:9 NRSV), “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints” (Col 1:26 NKJV). In the transitions from each age to the next, God has been revealing to mankind new sets of mysteries. In the transition from the Age of the Law to the Church Age, God revealed that He was three rather than one. He also revealed that His son, Jesus, came into the world to redeem mankind through His atoning sacrifice. Those truths had been hidden by God in the Feasts of God and the Tabernacle of Moses, but no one had seen them. Those mysteries represented such a radical departure from what the Jews had believed that most of them have rejected Jesus’ message to this day. It has only been recently, during the transition from the Church Age to the Kingdom Age, that Father has revealed a second purpose of Jesus’ first coming. The second purpose was to model for mankind the pathway to oneness with God.

In each transition to the next age, those that are most grounded in the belief system of the previous age have the greatest difficulty in accepting the new set of mysteries that God is revealing. The first five mysteries that we will present in the first half of this book are radical departures from what has been taught and believed in the Church Age. If these ideas are new to you, you may have difficulty receiving them. If you can accept them, I believe they will help you to pursue the pathway to sonship more effectively. I want you to understand, however, that it is not necessary for you to accept my understanding of these mysteries. I am teaching them to help you make sense of the human condition and God’s plan for us. If you find them stumbling blocks rather than aids, put them on the shelf until you feel more grounded in Kingdom Age principles. Then you can take another look at them. For now, you can ignore these teaching and still move ahead on the pathway to sonship. The goal is becoming one with God and so the information in the second half of the book is more important.

In all of this, I am taking the same position as Justin Abraham. As he says, “What I am writing is what I believe today. It may not be what I believe tomorrow because the mind of God is beyond human comprehension.” There is so much that we do not know and is still to be revealed. It is unlikely that any of us will get everything right before we attain oneness with God. So, accept what makes sense to you and put on the shelf to consider at a later time the things that do not make sense to you. The pathway to sonship is not about what we believe. Having correct doctrine will not get you there. The pathway to sonship is about who we are becoming. The really important questions are not about doctrine but are about how to best pursue becoming one with God.

In the process of pursuing oneness with God, it is useful to try on new ideas, as long as they do not conflict with biblical principles. The stumbling block that many people encounter here is that they assume that what they have been taught and have believed during the Church Age is the whole truth that is contained in the Bible. The only cure for that is pursuing a deeper relationship with the Lord. It is only by revelation that we will uncover and fully understand the deeper truths that are hidden in the holy Scriptures. We will have to entertain many new kinds of ideas which initially will challenge some of our long-held beliefs and throw us off balance. The Church Age will finally end, and the Kingdom Age will fully begin when Jesus returns. Throughout this transition to the Kingdom Age, while elements of both ages are in operation, the Lord will continue to unveil new mysteries to the body of Christ. When He comes, He will establish a new covenant and that will become the new orthodoxy.

The Mystery of Our Origins – In Chapter 2 of the Volume 1 Text,¹ we introduced the concept of our preexistence as spirit beings in the heart of God. Most Christians believe that our lives began at the point of conception in our mother’s womb or at our birth. In Chapter 2 of this book, we will more thoroughly explore the biblical and experiential evidence that supports this idea of our preexistence. As we explore this concept, we will see that the evidence is quite convincing. This is one of the first things that was revealed to the forerunners when they gained open access to Heaven. They seem to universally hold to that understanding. They not only teach that we lived for eons past in our Father, but that we were told why we were being sent to the earth and what the circumstances of our lives here would be. We were instructed in what we were supposed to accomplish in life, our assignment and destiny. In addition, we were given a choice. Knowing something about what our life would be like, we still chose to come.

Of course, we do not remember any of that because we passed through a veil of forgetfulness before we were born into this world. Embracing this mystery, however, turns out to be helpful for at least three reasons. First, it gives us great encouragement that the goal of coming to perfection and becoming one with God in this life is not as impossible as it sounds. Our spirits lived in perfection and unity with God in eternity past. We are not trying to reach for the impossible, we are only trying to recover what we lost with the fall. It also seems unlikely that we would have agreed to come, if we believed there was a good chance we would not make it all the way back to union with God. So, we must have been given some convincing guarantees.

Secondly, this understanding sheds new light on the purpose of life on the earth. It is not about gaining wealth, power, fame, or any of the things our fallen world has to offer us. The purpose of life is to be born into the world knowing nothing about our origins or God and find our way back to Him. It is about becoming like our Father who is love. It is about learning to love and becoming love. That is the whole purpose of our life in a fallen world.

The third thing this understanding does for us is that it clarifies our identity. We are not worthless, dirty, illegitimate, hopeless, incompetent, unloved or any of the things the enemy tries to convince us of. We are royalty. We are children of the King. Jesus has come to save us and restore us to our rightful position in God. His atoning sacrifice has “made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth.” (Rev 5:10 NKJV). We have a good Father, and He has given us many guarantees that we will enjoy a wonderful, inexpressible destiny in Him. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:4 NKJV).

In Chapter 2, we also introduce the important concept of first love. First love is the intense all-consuming passion that we experience when we first fall in love. It is the emotion we feel when we fall in love with someone of the opposite sex that we want to spend our whole life with. It is also what we feel when we first fall in love with God. In our fallen world, our issues and imperfections have a way of eroding the intensity of our initial elation and passion over time. That was not the way it was supposed to be. We were created to live forever in a state of first love with God and with our spouse. That is what God longs for and what we must recover, if we are to become one with Him. This is the charge that Jesus levels against the church in Ephesus in the book of Revelation.

The Mystery of Creation and the Mystery of the Angels – These two mysteries are revealed by putting together the separate revelations of Ian Clayton and Christopher Carter. Ian Clayton teaches us the mystery of creation. He teaches that Genesis 2 is not a retelling of the Genesis 1 story. They are two completely different creation stories. Genesis 1 is the story of the first creation sons of God and Genesis 2 is the story of the second creation sons of God. He demonstrates that by showing how totally different these two accounts are. What is created and the order in which they are created in these two accounts of creation are entirely different. We, humanity, are the second creation sons of God. The most important distinctions between the first and second creation sons are found in the very different ways in which they were created and the very different destinies God has ordained for them.

Christopher Carter adds to that an understanding of the mystery of the angels. He demonstrates that what was created in Genesis 1 was the creation of the material universe and the angels. As Chris was shown, the angels are creation. The angels are the galaxies, constellations, stars and planets, the air, earth, wind, fire, mountains, oceans, rivers, waterfalls, trees, plants, etc. After the Lord spoke all the different aspects of creation into existence, Father inspirited them with a mind, will and personality. He gave them an identity so that He could have a relationship with them. Everything God creates is alive and relational. He does not create any inanimate objects. This is exactly what we discovered in Heaven. In Heaven everything is alive including things we view as lifeless, things like rocks, chairs and swords. The angels were created millions of years before mankind was birthed from the dust of the earth in Genesis 2. Moreover, because of the fall of Lucifer and one-third of the angels, the relationship between the angels and humanity has not been what God desires it to be. Chapters 3 and 4 tell the two different creation stories and Chapters 6 and 7 explain the rocky history between mankind and the angels.

Despite the major differences between mankind and the angels, we have a lot to learn from them, especially in examining the different choices the loyal and rebellious angels made and the consequences of each set of those choices. Another major distinction between us and the angels is in the different motivations behind the fall of the angels and the fall of man. They have little in common. Lucifer and the angels rebelled in full knowledge of what they were doing. They wanted to usurp Father’s power and rule in His stead. They fully understood who God was and all He had done for them, yet they sought to defeat and replace Him. That is why there is no path through which they can be redeemed. The fallen angels are destined for eternal destruction. In contrast, Eve was deceived. She disobeyed her parents as children often do without understanding the consequences of her choice. She was not trying to rebel and separate herself from God. Moreover, Father wanted her to make that choice because mankind had to be tested. The fall of man was all part of His master plan.

The reason Father separated these two different creation stories was so that we would clearly understand that our story is very different from the angels’ story. We are not in any way part of the creation of nature. Our origin and the way we were created is completely different from theirs. We are not a product of nature and we did not evolve from the lower animals. Nature is not our mother and we are not to worship nature. Rather our origin was in Father and, like our Father, we are destined to rule over nature and the angels. Also like our Father, that rulership is to be based on love and service rather than exploitation. All of nature is alive. All of creation is inspirited with living beings. We are meant to be in relationship with these beings.

The Mystery of the Ages – Many students of the Bible have noticed that, according to Bible genealogies, the time between the fall of Adam and Eve and the calling of Abraham was about 2000 years. They have also noticed that from Abraham to Jesus was about 2000 years and from Jesus to today is about 2000 years. Is that just a coincidence or does it hold some deeper meaning? Throughout the Bible we see many references to ages. Bildad cautions Job to “inquire, please, of the former age, and consider the things discovered by their fathers” (Job 8:8 NKJV). Both Jesus and His disciples speak of “the end of this age” (Matt 13:40; Matt 24:3). Both Jesus and Paul talk about “the ages,” “this age” and “the age to come” (Matt 12:32; Eph 1:21). Paul speaks of “the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God” (Eph 3:9 NKJV), “the darkness of this age” (Eph 6:12 NKJV) and “the powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:5-6 NKJV). Additionally, Paul writes:

However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (2 Cor 2:6-8 NKJV).²

Finally, Jesus told us: The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection (Luke 20:34-36 NKJV)

Here Jesus is speaking of those who have come to perfection and are alive on the earth or are resurrected from the dead at the last trump. At that point, they will receive their new creation bodies. We call that Step 6 on the pathway to sonship. Shortly thereafter, they will be raptured into Heaven to attend the wedding supper of the Lamb. We call that Step 7 on the pathway to sonship. Directly following that glorious event, they will return with Christ to rule with Him during His Millennial Reign at the beginning of the Kingdom Age. As Jesus says, they have become immortal and cannot die anymore.³

So then, what are these ages they are referring to? The ancients knew that the twelve constellations in the sky that define our year also identify a series of 2000-year ages. Christopher Carter was taught in Heaven that these constellations were placed in the sky by the Lord, to announce at the beginning, the six 2000-year ages of man on the earth.⁴ These six ages constitute God’s entire plan for transitioning us from spirit beings living inside Father to human beings living outside of Him in perfection. After the first two ages, Father orchestrated the fall of Adam and Eve so we could be tested. As pictured in the constellations, the final four ages define God’s entire plan of redemption to return us to a relationship of oneness with Him. The cosmic clock not only tells us when Adam and Eve fell, but also when Adam was created and when Eve was separated from him 2000 years later.

This cosmic clock does not tell us the exact year when one age ends and another begins. Rather it identifies a number of decades during which a transition is underway. During transitions, God’s covenant arrangement with man for the old age is still in effect while the covenant for the new age is being birthed. Both stay in effect until the old covenant is closed off by a dramatic event. For these four ages, these dramatic events are the fall of man, God’s covenant with Abraham, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D. and the return of Christ in the decades ahead.

The cosmic clock tells us that we are presently in a transition. By studying past transitions, it is clear that they are periods of great instability and usher in dramatic changes. This is what we should expect, because these are the times when God introduces many new changes in His relationship with mankind. Moreover, because this last transition represents the culmination of His plan, it is likely to be the most tumultuous of all. We will introduce God’s cosmic clock in Chapter 5.

The Mystery of Gender –Gender is a mystery. Why gender? We do not think of gender as a mystery because gender is all we know. Everything in our world is defined by gender, including animals, birds, and fish. Nevertheless, it was not always so. Remember that Adam was created male and female. As we will see, he lived in Heaven and on the earth for hundreds of years in a state similar to the angels, being both male and female. He had the full left-brain capacities of men and the right brain capacities of women. Men’s brains are wired to focus on explanations and understanding. They are more logical, analytic and linear in their thinking. Women’s brains are wired to focus more on emotions and relationships. They are more intuitive, creative and visual. Before Eve was taken out of him, Adam’s brain included both sets of mental processes and ways of seeing and relating to the world. He had both the male dominant focus on tasks and the female dominant focus on relationships. He was fully complete in himself.

Why did God do a new thing and divide us in half so that we are incomplete without a mate of the opposite sex? As we will see, He did that so we could learn to love in a fallen world. There is a mystery in God’s words to us in Genesis. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24 NKJV). So far mankind has failed to do this. In our fallen state, we have not been able to become one with our spouses. But actually, our problem predates the fall. There were two 2000-year ages before the fall. During the first age, there was only Adam and he combined both male and female qualities. During that age, he was taught by Father and learned to live in Heaven and on earth at the same time and repopulate the earth with plants and animals with Father by speaking them into existence. Adam was doing on a small scale what Jesus did when He spoke the entire universe into existence. At the beginning of the second 2000-year age, Father took Eve out of Adam, and Adam loved her. She was more than “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23 NKJV). In a very real sense, she completed him. They were drawn together as lovers are. She was the better half that made him better.

Adam’s Failure – Something, however, had changed. Adam was different. He did not think and act like he had before, because one side of his being was largely missing. He thought differently and he did things differently. And he began to think that only the way he did things was the right way. Here is where the problem arose. Just like us, Adam was born into this world with no knowledge of his preexistence. From the beginning, he was taught by Father and he learned everything from Him. Eve arrived on the scene in the same state. Only this time it was Adam’s responsibility to teach her what Father had taught him. Adam tried, but Eve was different than he was. She saw things differently and had different priorities. So, when Adam tried to teach her things, she would not do them exactly like Adam did and he found that frustrating.

Adam’s solution was to impose his will and create separate domains for Eve and himself to operate in. As we will see, the choices both Adam and Eve made before the fall are what caused the fall. They were still very much in love, but their choices created distance between each other and distance between them and God.Adam and Eve established a pattern for male and female relationships which has persisted to our day. Men have difficulty understanding and therefore valuing what women bring to the table. They throw up their hands and say, “I don’t understand her. I am right and I am making the rules.” That was Adam’s solution, but it was not God’s solution. God’s solution is modeled for us in the Trinity – three working in complete unity, three beings functioning with the force of one life. God wants husbands and wives and their families to operate in the same way.

Restoring Relationships – The secret for doing that has escaped mankind all these years. For this to happen, the first step had to be the liberation of women from the domination of men, just as our spirit has to be liberated from the domination of our soul. That story has been unfolding throughout the ages of human civilization. As women’s roles and women’s rights have expanded, human society has become more civilized. That battle has not been fully won, but it is a good thing that sexual harassment and sexual inequality in the workplace are no longer socially acceptable.

From the place of growing equality and growing recognition of their separate but equally valuable giftings, men and women must now learn how to work together harmoniously in the workplace and how to become one in marriage. This “one” is not to be a homogeneous one, where the differences between men and women disappear. That solution denies who men and women were created to be – separate and different in function but equal in value. Adam’s solution was separate domains. Because men made the rules, that also became mankind’s solution. Through most of human history, woman’s domain was in the home and child rearing and the man’s domain was in the world and doing the “important stuff.” In Chapter 6, we explain how industrialization made that division even stronger by taking men out of the home. Men’s roles are viewed as more important in our fallen world because they focus on survival tasks – creating things, building wealth, and providing security and protection. None of those things are problems in need of solutions in Heaven. Women’s roles focus on love, nurture and relationships. Heaven is all about love, nurture and relationships. Which roles do you think are more highly valued in Heaven’s eyes? “The last will be first, and the first last” (Matt 20:16 NKJV).

Separating men and women into different domains of responsibility is a false division that God never intended. Men and women are to function equally in both the home and workplace domains because they bring different qualities and attributes to bear that are needed. The task for men and women, husbands and wives, is to learn to function as one in both domains. That is the mystery of the Trinity and that is the future for mankind. The Trinity also points to a change in the style of leadership, from a single leader at the top to a bench of three. A bench of three is God’s form of government and it was also the traditional form of government in synagogues in Jesus’ day. In today’s world, this should be two men and a woman or two women and a man.

Gender and God – We explore the above kinds of gender issues in Chapter14. In Chapter 8, we look at a much more basic gender question. Is God defined by gender the way we are? That does not seem likely. God is all in all. He includes everything. Therefore, He has to be both male and female. How could God create Eve in His image if He is not as much female as He is male? Why then do we have this exclusively male image of God? The Church has defined Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit in solely male terms. In Chapter 8, we look into Church history to identify the reasons for this exclusively male image of God. We will also identify the major problem this all-male image of God creates especially for men. God is seeking a passionate, all-consuming relationship with us. Viewing God as only male creates obstacles for men to embrace God at the level of intimacy He desires. I will present a simple solution to this problem in Chapter 8 and explain how that solution has played out in my life in the subsequent chapters.

BECOMING ONE WITH GOD, MANKIND AND CREATION

At the last supper, Jesus prayed that we (humanity) “all may be one . . . one in Us” (John 17:21 NKJV). The solution to all of the problems besetting mankind and creation is to become one with God. The goal is to become one in being with God and one in purpose, living in complete harmony with all of mankind and with nature. Becoming one with mankind and nature can never happen until we first become one with God. When all of mankind become one with God, then we will be completely aligned with God’s purposes and that will automatically bring us into perfect agreement with all of mankind and nature.

That is the goal, but how is that going to happen? A rare few came to understand this mystery during the Age of the Law. It was not until the Church Age that Jesus clearly articulated this goal as the main objective for mankind. That led more people to begin to pursue it, but only a very few found the way. Now God is calling everyone to pursue the pathway to sonship which will take us all to oneness with God. How do we most effectively pursue that goal?

God created the material universe. It began when He said, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3 NKJV), and the light of God exploded into a new dimension of existence at the Big Bang. “God is light” (1 John 1:5 NKJV) and everything was made in perfection from that light. It was sin and separation that produced darkness. When satan and one-third of the angels fell and they were cast out of Heaven and down to the earth, our universe was filled with darkness. Much later, Father created and commissioned Adam to restore the earth to perfection with Him. Four thousand years after Adam was created,⁵ Eve chose to turn to the darkness as the source that would fulfill her desires. She was deceived and did not realize that her choice enabled satan to once again rule over the earth. When Adam chose to follow her, they were both cast out of Heaven into the darkness of our fallen world where satan holds sway. Jesus called the devil “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30 NKJV) and Paul called him “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2 NKJV).

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil poses a choice, the choice between good and evil. This is a choice between two very opposite realities. The one we choose to perfectly align ourselves with will become our reality. The more we align with the light, the more we are filled with that light. The more we entertain and focus on the things of the world, the flesh and the devil, the more we are filled with darkness. Jesus said:

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

(Matt 6:22-23 NKJV)

When we are completely filled with the light of God, that light will not only transform us and make us like God, but it will begin to flow out of us and transform the atmosphere and people around us.

The Light of God – The Bible says that “God is light” ((1 John 1:5), “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and “God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). Like the burning bush encounter Moses had, God’s fire does not destroy everything in its path as physical fires do (Ex 3). God’s fire destroys what is unlike Him and leaves intact all the good things He planted in us. God created us in perfection and sowed good seeds in us. However, as the parable of the wheat and the tares tells us,“while men slept, his (God’s) enemy came and sowed tares” within them (Matt 13:25 NKJV).

The challenge in life is to get on the right path, the one that leads to life rather than destruction. There is a contest in each person’s life over whether they will cultivate the wheat until it grows and chokes out the tares or whether they will cultivate the tares until they grow up and choke out the wheat. If we fill ourselves with the pleasures and priorities of the world, the flesh and the devil, they will choke out the good seed God planted in us. If we fill ourselves with God and His Kingdom, that will displace the tares. The issue is what are we aligned with. Jesus said to the Pharisees, “you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you” (John 8:37 NKJV). He said of Himself, “The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30 NKJV). The issue is how much of God’s influences versus how much of the enemy’s influences are we attached to and responding to. Paul Keith Davis gave us the picture of the eighteen thrones of our soul or seats of authority within us.⁶ In a revelatory experience, he was shown that in all of us, some of these thrones are occupied by an angel of the Lord and some of them are occupied by a demonic being. What this picture is showing us is that we all have wounded areas in our lives where the enemy has created strongholds that enable him to subtly shape our behavior. Often this is not obvious, because some of the enemy’s strongholds are hidden in defense mechanisms we adopted as children. That is why Paul says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23 NIV). John echo’s, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8 NKJV).

In our modern world, one of the first to understand and demonstrate the principle of the transforming power of the light of God was Agnes Sandford. In the 1930s and 40s, she pioneered a new approach to healing our bodies, which culminated in her publication of The Healing Light in 1947. In the 1950s and 60s she pioneered the healing of our souls and is credited with being the founder of the inner healing movement.⁷ The power of God that heals our bodies is the same power that heals our souls. It is the light of God. Agnes Sanford wrote:

The infinite and eternal life of God cannot help us unless we are prepared to receive that life within ourselves. Only the amount of God we can get in us will work for us. “The Kingdom of God is within you,” said Jesus (Luke 17:21 NKJV). And it is the Indwelling Light, the secret place of the Consciousness of the Most High that is the Kingdom of Heaven in its present manifestation on the earth. Learning to live in the Kingdom of Heaven is learning to turn on the light of God within.⁸

How do we get enough of the light of God within us so that He becomes an Indwelling Light that keeps us in divine health and perfect peace? In the Age of the Law, the Spirit of God would fall on people and temporarily change them. For example, we read, “When they (Saul and his servant) came to the hill there, behold, a group of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him mightily, so that he prophesied among them” (1 Sam 10:10 NASU). For the spirit of the Lord to permanently change us, it has to come from within.

We must cultivate the Spirit of the Lord within us so that it can grow up and occupy more and more territory in our souls. Agnes gives us the key. We must cultivate “the secret place of the consciousness of the Most High.” We must keep our mind focused on God and the things of God. We must learn to stay connected with Him throughout our day and live in His tangible glory. As we do that, His glory grows within us until it bubbles up on the inside and ultimately flows out of us to heal and transform others. Jesus wrote, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38 KJV). What is this river? It is the river of life that flows from Father. What is flowing in the river is the essence of God. He is life, light, love and fire and so is the river. So, as Ezekiel discovered when he was taken to it, “where the river flows everything will live” (Ezek 47:9 NIV). The closer we get to the source of that river the greater its power to change us.

The Transformative Power of White Light – One of the most common aspects of near-death experiences (NDEs) is that they see a bright light. Those that get close to the source of the light and step into it describe seeing a being in the center of that light from which this brightness is coming. John Burke studied over 1000 NDE experiences and wrote a book explaining the common aspects of their experiences. One of the most common experiences is seeing a bright light that draws them to it. He writes, “Reading through hundreds and hundreds of NDE stories, I’m awestruck by how everyone who experiences this Being of Light describes a love that would run towards them, embrace them, value them, no matter what – and simply wants them home.” Here is a sampling of some of the experiences of NDErs:

“A radiant, beautiful light came from Him . . . Just pure love.”

Gary

“It was a brightness I didn’t just see but felt.”

Crystal

“I saw a bright light . . . It was of a kind I’d never seen before and differs from any other kind such as sunlight. It was white and extremely bright, and yet you could easily look at it.”⁹

Steve

God is white light. One of the things we are learning from NDErs is that those that get close enough to this white light are racially transformed by it.¹⁰ We will discuss how this happens in depth in the Volume 4 End Times book.¹¹ Here we are only introducing the concept to help our readers understand how it will be possible for almost everyone to be saved before Christ returns. The Bible tells us that in the end some will be lost. They will share the fate of the devil and his angels and be cast into the lake of fire and cease to exist. Their numbers, however, will be far fewer that we have ever imagined. God’s white light is His trump card. Nothing can stand against that white light.

The closer we get to this white light, the more we are transformed by it. Ian Clayton has said that we are to become white light. Nancy Coen has had a number of experiences in which she was shown what will happen to those around us after we are transfigured. She was given experiences on the earth in which people deeply involved in the occult were radically saved when they encountered this while light. In the spirit, you can look at it, but in the natural, it is blinding. That was Paul’s experience when he encountered that light on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians. That was also the experience of the high satanic priestess in Nancy Coen’s encounter in the satanic bar.¹²

NDErs only experience brief encounters with Jesus and the white light that flows out of Him. Yet many of them are radically saved. The same is true of those occult leaders on the earth who Nancy Coen saw totally transformed. I do not believe that any of the forerunners in our day have been transfigured yet. They have not even received Step 4 Baptism of Union. If they had, they would be doing the works Jesus did following his baptism in the Jordan River, healing everyone they prayed for. So Nancy was not transfigured, but the Lord used her to show all of us what we will be doing after we are transfigured. Imagine what the transformative power of that white light would be if one engaged it for long periods of time. Heaven is the place where we are fully engaged with Jesus much of the time. Envision how that will transform us. A number of forerunners who have engaged Heaven report having seen large groups of people from a distance and these particular groups all appeared as beings of white light. They had a definite human form, but they seemed to be translucent with no discernable internal organs and light shown out of them. We can understand how that could happen in Heaven, especially if they live and work in close proximity to Jesus. How is that going to happen on the earth?

The unfinished assignment that the mature sons of God inherited from Adam and Eve is to bring Heaven to earth. Jesus gave us that same assignment in the Lord’s Prayer. He told us to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10 NKJV). What must happen is to get everyone alive saved who can be saved before Jesus returns. That is almost everyone. The Bible tells us that Jesus “must remain out of sight in heaven until everything is restored to order again just the way God, through the preaching of his holy prophets of old, said it would be” (Acts 3:21 Message). Everything must be restored in regard to mankind’s relationship with God to the way things were before Adam and Eve fell. Before the fall, they were in fellowship with the Lord, but they had not come to perfection.

Virtually everyone must be saved and restored to fellowship with God. Moreover, the Lord is calling out a large remnant to accomplish that goal with Him. It was mankind’s choices that broke fellowship with God. That is why men and women are called to work with God to change people’s choices and restore that fellowship. God will accomplish the final work of saving nearly all the people that are alive on the earth through the transfigured sons of God. They will do that in the last of the last days, the final 3½ years of the Church Age. That is the final requirement that is keeping Jesus in Heaven. Once that is accomplished, He will return to open His Millennial Reign with the host of Heaven and those that have received their new creation bodies.

The Path to Transfiguration – This explains how almost everyone can be saved. However, that requires that a large company of transfigured sons emerge first. How does that happen? Our Volume 1 Text, The Pathway to Sonship outlines the path we must pursue to take us from salvation to transfiguration though a series of five baptisms.¹³ The first two, salvation through water Baptism and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, we can choose to receive. The last three, the Baptism of Fire, the Baptism of Union and the Baptism of Glory (transfiguration), we cannot make happen. We have to be chosen. This is the part of the process that we have not understood until now. What must we do to qualify to receive each of these last three baptism and how will they take place?

The Lord wants everyone to make it all the way to transfiguration in this life and beyond that to the last two baptisms. The sixth baptism will provide us with new creation bodies, like Jesus’ body after His resurrection. The seventh and last baptism will consummate our oneness with God. That will happen to all of mankind that choose to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior by the end of Christ’s Millennial Reign. That is over 1000 years in the future. The Lord needs a large remnant to get there before He returns. That is only a few decades into the future. How can we experience all the necessary transformation within us to enable that to happen in such a short time?

The revelation of the power of the white light of God to transform us is telling us that our transformation is a product of coming closer and closer to the Lord. It is a function of our closeness to God. The closer we are to Father, Jesus and/or Holy Spirit and the light that flows out of Them, the more we are changed. God is the one who transforms. The closer we get to Him, the more His transforming power works in us.

The Lord has shown me that there are five levels of intimacy, five levels of closeness to the Lord. These parallel the five steps from salvation to transfiguration. The good thing about the five levels of intimacy is that we can pursue them and attain them before we receive the parallel baptism it is associated with. Attaining each level of intimacy requires pressing in for more of God in us. That requires that we practice certain spiritual disciplines. However, every time we take a step closer to God, He takes a step closer to us. God may not respond to our requests to receive the next baptisms because we are not ready for it. He will always respond to our expressions of love for Him.

The five levels of intimacy that we introduce in Chapter 10 and following, do two important things for us. First, they enable us to taste of the new capacities we will walk in after we receive the corresponding baptism before we get there. The difference is that after we receive that baptism, we will be able to walk continuously in those new capacities. The corresponding level of intimacy only enables us to taste of those abilities from time to time. The other thing each of those three higher levels of intimacy do for us is they position us to receive the next baptism. They define the level of spiritual maturity and oneness with God that is necessary to be entrusted with receiving the new powers associated with the parallel baptism. Each of the three higher levels of intimacy are the prerequisites for attaining the parallel baptism. This is the way to most effectively pursue the path that leads to becoming like God, to becoming white light. We do it by pursuing the path that takes us closer and closer to the heart of God. This book will teach you what that process is like and how to accomplish it.

THE MYSTERY OF MANKIND’S DESTINY

An Overview of the Book – This book is divided into four parts and an epilogue. In Part I, four mysteries of creation are introduced. The first is the ministry of our preexistence in the heart of God and the importance of reestablishing a first love relationship with Him. The second explains that Genesis 1 and 2 are two different creation stories and only the second is the story of mankind. The third mystery is that the Genesis 1 first creation sons of God are the angels. The fourth mystery is the cosmic clock which anchors mankind’s 12,000 years sojourn on the earth in real time.

Part II examines the history of the relationship between mankind and the angels. That relationship is informed by the understanding that the angels are nature, all of creation. The two chapters in Part II, focus on the scientific and philosophic revolutions in the 17^th and 18^th centuries and how those revolutions set the stage for the final battles between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness in the last days. We will also see how the choices the holy angels and the fallen angels made, long before Adam and Eve were created on the earth, model for us the choice we must make and the consequences of the angels’ two respective choices.

Part III centers on the issue of restoring our relationship with God. The Church is only beginning to recognize that the goal is not simply reconciliation with God but becoming one with Him. That is a much higher mountain to climb and necessitates an enormous amount of transformation in us. It requires that we come to perfection and restore a first love relationship with God. This is way beyond what is accomplished through the salvation experience. The problem is that a remnant must achieve those goals before Christ can return and establish His Millennial Reign. Moreover, through their restoration, the rest of humanity will realize those same goals by the end of the Millennium.

The second half of the book turns from the task of revealing the foundational ministries which define the human condition to exploring how the goal of coming to perfection and oneness with God can be achieved in this life. This understanding comes from experiential knowledge gained through pursuing the five levels of intimacy with God. The first of the four chapters in this section set the stage by explaining both why God created gender and how that exacerbates the difficulty of restoring a first love relationship with Him, especially for men. The remaining three chapters in this section discuss a solution that has worked for me and explains the experiential path to oneness with God outlined by the five levels of intimacy.

Part IV broadens the task to include not only becoming one with God, but also one with creation and with mankind beginning with our spouse. The three chapters in the section focus in succession on how we do that with God, nature and our spouse. We will not fully understand these processes until we experience them, but these discussions get us further down the road.

Our Volume 1 Text is organized around the seven steps from salvation to oneness with God. We broke them down into the first five and the final two. The first five are the most important for us to understand, because each of those steps are associated with a set of tasks that we have to accomplish before we can move on to the next step. In contrast, in the case of the last two steps, we have no responsibility for doing anything. Rather they just picture for us what God is going to do to bring us into our ultimate destiny.

In the case of the seven mysteries that are the focus of this book, the first five, presented in Chapters 2-8 are foundational. They help us understand the reality of our existence. Knowing those things at the beginning of our journey back to oneness with God will help us to be successful. They help us to understand who we are in the context of our mission as we pursue the pathway to sonship. The last two mysteries are presented in the final chapter – the mystery of the two trees and the mystery of the Trinity. They picture the ultimate destiny that the Lord has reserved for us – “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4 NKJV). They are beyond our capacity to fully understand at this stage of our spiritual growth, but they point us towards our glorious future.

The Destiny of Man – In recent years a divisive debate has arisen within the Kingdom stream over the question of what “the restoration of all things” means (Acts 3:21 NKJV). The debate has focused on the question of who can be saved.¹⁴ The restoration project Father has in mind is much broader and all encompassing. The Lord wants to take us back to oneness with Him by restoring first our spirits, then our souls, and finally our bodies. This plan of redemption was laid out for us in the Feasts of God and the Tabernacle of Moses and then modeled for us in more detail through the life and ministry of Jesus.¹⁵ Pursuing this process is the purpose of this training. The mysteries laid out in the first eight chapters of this book are basic to helping us understand the Lord’s plan of redemption. The remaining chapters endeavor to teach us how to pursue the goals of bringing our soul and ultimately our bodies to perfection and immortality.

In the last chapter, we begin to explore where this will take us. We look at how we were divided in three ways for the purpose of facilitating our transition from our first estate as spirit beings in the heart of God to beings of spirit, soul and body on earth. First, our spirit being was divided by gender sometime shortly before we were born into the earth. Second, it was divided between soul and spirit the moment we were conceived in our mother’s womb. Finally, we will learn that our soul has also been divided. There is a trinity within our soul that has been divided by our fallen condition. Does the restoration of all things include bringing those divisions back to oneness? In the last chapter we explore these three divisions and what their restoration might look like. In that endeavor, we will focus on two final mysteries – the mystery of the two trees and the mystery of the Trinity.

The Mystery of the Two Trees – In Genesis, we read that God planted a garden for Adam eastward in Eden. Eden is the garden of God in Heaven (Ezek 28:11). The Lord also planted two trees in the midst of that garden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen 2:9). What do these two trees represent and what is their purpose? These two trees appear to be very different, one leading to eternal life and the other to separation and death. Why was it necessary to include the second tree? What role does it play? Moreover, by the time we get to the book of Revelation, it appears that these two trees have become one tree.

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month” (Rev. 22:1-2 NKJV).

Here the Apostle John is seeing the river of life that proceeds from the throne of God. As it flows, he describes it as a “street.” Then he tells us that the Tree of Life is in the middle of this street and on both sides of it. This is a picture of one huge tree which is rooted on both sides of the river and spans all the way across the river. This indeed is the picture which Joseph Sturgeon, John Graham and other forerunners have experientially witnessed. What is the significance of two trees becoming one? We explore that question in the final chapter.

The Mystery of the Trinity – Richard Rohr, one of America’s foremost contemporary theologians writes that as a boy he was told that the Trinity was a foundational doctrine of our entire Christian belief system, but that we should not try to understand it. Karl Rather has written, “Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’ We must be willing to admit that should the doctrine of the trinity have been dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”¹⁶ Rohr writes, “If the Trinity is supposed to describe the very heart of the nature of God, and yet it has almost no practical or pastoral implications in our lives . . .if it’s even possible that we could drop it tomorrow and it would be a forgettable, throwaway doctrine . . . then either it can’t be true or we don’t understand it.”¹⁷

One of the things we set out to do in the last chapter is to explore the nature of the Trinity and its implications for our future destiny. In the beginning, God said “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen 1:26 NKJV). So this is not Father speaking or Jesus speaking, this is the Trinity speaking. This may be one reason why the Bible reports that the voice of Jesus and the voice of Father are like “the sound of many waters” (Rev 1:15; 14:2; Eze 1:24; 43:2). A number of people who have had heavenly encounters also report that Jesus’ voice sounded to them like many waters. Perhaps, on occasion the Godhead speaks in unison. The point I am making here is that Father God did not create us in His image. The Trinity created us in Their image. This understanding gives a new meaning to the goal, the final end we are moving towards. In the last chapter we explore what that might mean.

Gender helps us understand the mysteries of the Trinity. God would not allow Adam to remain one complete being including both male and female attributes because one cannot love and be loved. In the same way, God could not be one because one cannot give and receive love. As the song goes, “One is the loneliest number.”¹⁸ The Trinity is the model for husbands, wives and families. Husbands, wives and their children must learn to become one and function as one. This cannot be done through control. It must be done through love.

If God divided us by gender so that we can experience love in a fallen world, why did He initially create Adam as male and female, like the angels? If it was always His intention to divide us by gender, why did He not divide Adam by gender before He created him on the earth? The rest of us were divided in our first estate, before we were re-created on the earth. Why did He not do the same for Adam? And why, as we show in Chapter 5, did He raise and train Adam for 2000 years before taking Eve out of him? It seems clear that He wanted us to understand the nature of our origin. If we began as beings combining both male and female attributes, what will we look like at the end of this long journey. As Ian Clayton teaches us, the end will always equal the beginning. What are the implications of this for our final estate and how does the Trinity help us to understand that?

Dominion Lost – Adam and Eve were given dominion over the earth. We do not have dominion. Moreover, Adam and Eve’s dominion was not based on technology. Technology did not exist and as we will see in Chapter 13, technology will not exist in the future because it will not be needed. Adam and Eve’s dominion was based on their relationship with God and their relationship with creation. Before the fall, Adam learned to co-create with Father, by speaking things into existence. Neville Johnson called the dominion Adam and Eve walked in the first dominion. That implies that we are destined to walk in a second dominion. Remember our elder brother, Jesus, spoke all of creation into existence, everything except us. Father made us.

He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him

(Col 1:15-16 NKJV)

The Pathway to Sonship, then is also the path that will bring us to that exalted second dominion in which we will create the things around us in union with God.

Moses’ Invitation – As the Lord recently explained to Justin Abraham, Father offered Moses the invitation to return to the power Adam operated in before the fall.¹⁹ He told Moses to speak to the rock in Num 20:7-8.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water”

From Justin’s explanation of this incident, it is not clear why Moses refused to obey this command. Was it because he had never done it that way before? Was he only comfortable doing it the way it had worked before – hitting the rock with his staff? Did he believe that the power was in the staff? The people had risen up against Moses and Aaron and might have stoned them to death if he had failed to bring water out of the rock. He might have felt that it was too risky to try something new and took the safer path to quiet their opposition.

Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank.

(Num 20:10-11 NKJV)

Moses’ Reluctance – Justin seems to mix some of that explanation in, but he also suggests a new and very different explanation, which puts the incident in an entirely different light. Moses’ reluctance to obey God’s command might have been because he saw that it would put him in the position of doing what gods do. He may not have felt worthy of that office or, perhaps more correctly, he saw that it would have elevated him to the station of a god in the midst of the people. Unambiguously, the power would no longer have been seen as being in his staff, but rather it would be seen as being in him. He did not want the people to worship him. In his day, people did worship men as gods. The desire to be worshipped as God in the place of God was the sin of Lucifer and the first creation sons of God who left their first estate (Gen 6). It was too much for that day and Moses saw it.

Perhaps Moses was right. It was not time for man to assume that role. Moses was nearly ready to take that step. But even he disqualified himself through pride. “Must we (Moses and Aaron) bring water for you out of this rock?” It was only later, in retrospect, probably in the words of Joshua or someone else who copied the Pentateuch, that what became Moses’ most distinguishing trait through many trials was inserted in the Bible parenthetically. Since it is believed that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, most Bible translations put this sentence in parentheses. “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth)” (Num 12:3 NIV). Even if Moses had been qualified, if God had given Moses that power in his day, he would have become a singular god among men. Men would have worshiped him. It was not appropriate for Moses’ day, but it is the role God wants us to assume in our day. The timing was wrong, but God arranged it as a preview of the role we are to play. Why then did God seem to condemn Moses for his disobedience?

Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them”

(Num 20:12 NKJV)

God’s complaint against Moses was more about his hollowing and honoring himself rather than God in the eyes of the people. It was not his choice to hit the rock rather than speak to it that disqualified him from taking the people in. Moses was the intermediary between God and man. It was never intended for Moses to take the people in. That was decided when the people chose to make Moses their intermediary rather than have a direct face-to-face relationship with God.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

(Ex 20:18-19 NIV)

The wilderness experience was to prepare the Israelites to go into their Promised Land. When that preparation was complete, Joshua took the people in and helped to settle them in the inheritance God had promised them. Joshua never ruled over the people like Moses did. They were supposed to practice what they had learned and be ruled over by God.

Our Invitation – Our wilderness experience is to prepare us to go into our Promised Land, the Kingdom of God, in this life. We cannot go in until we are ready to have a face-to-face relationship with God and no longer depend on intermediaries to engage God for us. We would argue that Moses’ encounter with the rock was arranged both as a preview of the role God wants us to play and as a message and warning for us. The message to us is that we cannot cross the Jordan in this life and go into our Promised Land, the realms of heaven, unless we are prepared to learn how to play the role God invited Moses to play. Jesus modeled that role for us. He did not pray for healing. He commanded healing. He turned water into wine. He commanded the wind and the waves to be still. He walked on water. He multiplied food. He walked through those that were trying to throw Him over a cliff (Lk 4:28-30). In short, He walked in dominion. We are supposed to do the same in our day.

In this transitional generation, our Father wants to raise up so many sons of God, who are operating in the role He offered Moses, that no one can confuse them with God. There is one God, but we are destined to become gods walking in the power of God. We can only do that when we become one with Him, so that it is He that is acting through us. He gives the command, and we speak the desires of His heart into being. That is what Jesus did. When it is done that way, there is no elevation of “self.” God gets all the glory, and we remain His humble servants. Like the twenty-four elders, we fall on our faces and cast our crowns before Him. “The twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne” (Rev 4:10 NKJV). And then Father will lift us up, put our crowns back on our heads and bless us as highly loved and prized sons.

Exercising the Freedom to Be Wrong in Transitions – I have introduced you to many new ideas and concepts in this brief introduction. If these are all completely new to you, you will undoubtedly have difficulty assimilating them into your current belief system. If we are going to move into the new things that the Lord is offering us in this last transitional generation, we have to be prepared to entertain new ideas. We must get beyond a Church Age mentality. During the Church Age, most people have believed and acted as if believers cannot stay in community with anyone who does not hold the same views as they do. That is a product of the religious spirit. That mindset has only produced thousands of divergent denominations, all at odds with each other over one point or another. Many of these historical differences in today’s light are looking trivial and meaningless. Faith is not about hammering out the principles of what we believe. The basic principles that we all agree on are clearly set out in the Bible. Our faith is about relationship. It is about love, becoming like God and becoming one with Him.

We should look on the emergence of new ideas and divergent viewpoints as a positive sign that we are indeed entering the Kingdom Age. Once again, as it has happened in each previous transition, some old understandings are beginning to be eclipsed by a new understanding of a much better covenant between God and man that is now being offered to us. In the interim, the meaning of what that will look like is unfolding. We presently do not have enough pieces of the puzzle to work it all out. Moreover, different people are being given different pieces of this puzzle. When we try to draw conclusions from only the few revelations and data points we are being given, we are going to make mistakes. We must be free to make mistakes or we will never find the truth. Different interpretations of the future we are all headed for need to be aired in the marketplace of ideas. It is through debate and argumentation that the problems with certain positions and conclusions come to light. We clarify our own thinking by entertaining each other’s divergent views.

As more new voices emerge with new revelations, new pieces of the puzzle come to light and the picture of man’s destiny begins to fill in. As that happens, more aspects of our understanding become grounded in our belief systems as fundamental truths. So we are moving forward toward a more comprehensive paradigm of the Kingdom Age covenantal relationship between God and man. However, we will never understand it all, because just when we think we are on the brink of having the complete picture, someone will come forward with a new set of revelations. Then we realize that we have been focusing on only a small section of the puzzle. We understand that section, but now we suddenly see that the puzzle is much bigger than we thought. We step back and see a wider view, which now includes new areas that we were previously unaware of. Once again, we are faced with new mysteries and questions in search of new understandings.

This is how knowledge grows in transitions, when piece by piece new revelations that have been hidden from mankind begin to come forward and challenge old assumptions. The good news is that God does not want us to miss out on the new things He is offering us. He will package and repackage what He wants us to know in different revelations given to different people until a large remnant finally gets it and leads the way into the Kingdom Age. We can progress most rapidly toward the new understanding the Lord wants us to have, if we create communities that are open to new ideas and give us the freedom to be wrong from time to time and make mistakes.

We applaud Justin Abraham for championing the right we all have to disagree and remain friends. We can be friends with those we sometimes disagree with if we can trust their hearts. We share something much greater than our theological differences. We are sharing the journey to perfection, transfiguration and oneness with God which is so much more important than the niceties of our arguments. We also share the understanding that Father is directing everything and it is all well under His control. Our little disagreements will have no effect on the timing and realization of His plans and purposes. We must learn to try on new ideas to see which ones fit and which ones do not. We should not try on the enemy’s New Age ideas, because they are perversions of God’s truth. They represent a mixture of truth and falsehood and it is impossible to separate the two from each other. At the same time, we should not be so quick to dismiss new ideas as demonic just because they conflict with what we have always believed. Discernment and humility are essential requirements in a transition. Understanding it all is not possible because new revelations are emerging faster than we can assimilate them. We are going to get things wrong here and there, but it does not matter as long as we hold to the plumb line – love. The goal is not to know it all. No one ever will. The goal is to become love. We should always hold before us the simple plumb line Father gave Mike Parsons. If it is love, it is of God. If it is not love, it is not of God.

This book represents what we believe today. It may not be exactly what we believe tomorrow because too much is still unknown. You would not be on the pathway to sonship if you were not willing to entertain new ideas. In the years ahead, do not expect agreement on everything. You are not saved by what you believe. You are saved by your relationship with the One who saves us all. Jesus did not say, depart from me because you did not affirm all of my laws and principles. He said depart for me because I never knew you. “Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’” (Matt 7:23 NRSV). He never knew them because they never developed a personal relationship with Him. If we do not have a relationship with the Lord, our religion is all show and pretense. Without relationship, our religious beliefs have no power to change us. Relationship is what will bring us to the goal of transfiguration and oneness with God, not creeds or doctrines. As Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30 NIV).

1 The Volume 1 Text is Scott Flanagan and John Graham, The Pathway to Sonship: From Salvation to Transfiguration, The Kingdom Academy, 2019.
2 The rulers of this age that Paul is referring to are Lucifer and his angels. Jesus refers to him as “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30 NKJV). The Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod and Pilate are only examples of the kinds of human agents the devil works through. They were deceived and that is why Jesus could say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34 NIV).
3 This is explained in Chapter 11 of the Volume 1 Text, “The Final Two Steps: Re-Creation and Consummation,” in Flanagan and Graham, The Pathway to Sonship, The Kingdom Academy, 2019.
4 Christopher Paul Carter, Cosmic Shift: A New Season of Faith, The Fig and the Vine Publishing, 2015.
5 Chapter 5 explains how the cosmic clock enables us to date the time between Adam’s creation and the fall of man.
6 Paul Keith Davis, Thrones of Our Soul, Creation House Press, 2003.
7 See, Agnes Sanford, The Healing Gifts of the Spirit. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1966
8 Agnes Sanford, The Healing Light, pp. 8-9, Macalester Park Publishing Co., 1947
9 John Burke, Imagine Heaven: Near Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You,” pp. 74, 78-79, 149, Baker Books, 2015.
10 Not all NDEs can be accepted at face value. There is a New Age variant that we should avoid. Some people who are far from God have a new death experience, but it is choreographed by the enemy, not by God. Even if they encounter the true light, their reactions to it can be very different. Some find it very uncomfortable and try to escape from it. Others experience the peace and love that radiates from that light, but they end up trying to replicate the experience rather than seeking the One who was the source of the experience. That leads them deeper into New Age practices and takes them further from God. The sign of a true experience of encountering the Lord is found in the fruit of the experience. Those whose lives are totally transformed by the experience such that they devote the rest of their lives to pursuing God, they are the ones who truly met God in their experience. Their stories are the ones we can learn from.

11 The title of this book is The Triumph of Mercy Over Judgement: The Book of Revelation and the Seven Thunders forthcoming in 2022.
12 Nancy Coen has told this story on several her YouTube videos including Limitless.
13 Volume 1 Text – Scott Flanagan and John Graham, The Pathway to Sonship: From Salvation to Transfiguration, The Kingdom Academy, 2019.
14 Elsewhere we have made our position clear on this matter. Neither satan, the fallen angels or the demons can be saved. All of humanity can potentially be saved, but each person has to choose Christ. The Bible tells us that not all will, and some will be lost, but that number will be far smaller than the Church has imagined.
15 This is all explained in the Volume 1 Text, The Pathway to Sonship.
16 Karl Rather, The Trinity, Crossroads Publishing Co., 1999, pp. 10-11.
17 Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, Whitaker House, 2016, p 30.
18 “One” is a 1969 song made popular by Three Dog Night.
19 See Justin Abraham, The Restoration of All Things Intensive Set from the June 4-8 2019 conference hosted by Freedom Apostolic Ministries, Barnstable, UK, available at www.freedomarc.org.