26.1 Put on Incorruption
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Almost 40 years ago, I heard for the first time the idea of “not dying” through Sam Fife proclaiming behind the pulpit, “I’m not going to die.” You can be sure that was quite a zinger to a 20-year-old boy.
Yet here are Paul’s words. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53). Simple details found inside of Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Though he would not have worded it that way, Sam Fife was actually presenting to that fellowship the reality of speaking Christ our life, something immediately thrown out as false after he was killed in a plane crash.
My Day of Reckoning
I think though, that it is far better to die IN FAITH, not having received the promises, than to live one’s life in stated unbelief.
And so I have put the concept of our victory over death, how we mortal humans defeat that great giant death, out in front of my readers for several years now, with the vague promise of spelling it out someday. Well someday has become Today, a reality I knew must come once I started on this setting forth of the Kingdom of God. I have not thought much at all about this lesson, the BIG one, in which I must deliver the goods. Now, suddenly, to my total amazement, defeating death has become the simplest thing there is. What an easy task!!!
One Thing Defeats Death
You see, death is the biggest AIN’T that ain’t. One thing only defeats death – LIFE!!! And this is the testimony: that God has given us eonian life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life… (1 John 5:12). And now I know what life is.
But let me back up just a bit. I received an email a couple of days ago from a reader who has been one who has encouraged me to believe that God is, in fact, speaking to His people through my words, something I could not believe without such encouragement.
Coming Soon
This sister was commenting on Session 8: Resurrection Life. She put into words something I also know, that Life is something more than just living, even inside the present goodness of knowing our full union with Christ. Life is substance IN appearance. Something I said in that session, something I say only because I know it must be true, had spoken to her of that life which she has always sought, a life that is deeper and greater than all the anointing inside our present experience.
We speak Christ as our substance now, so that we might KNOW that Christ is true. And yet – there is an experience of LIFE coming very soon, life that we have never known.
Wait for the Promise
And being assembled together with them, Jesus commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father… – Then they returned to Jerusalem… and when they had entered, they went up into the upper room. – These all continued with one accord in prayer… – When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place (Acts 1:4, 12, 14, & 2:1).
I want you to see these words in their context: When the Day of Pentecost had fully come. Now, I want to alter those words slightly. When the First Day of Tabernacles had fully come. We wait with all confidence and expectation on this Promise.
All Promise Fulfilled
There will be significant differences between the two Days, of course, both outwardly and inwardly, but the Day of Tabernacles is as REAL and as SURE as the Day of Pentecost, and that Tabernacles DAY is upon us. The first Day of Tabernacles is the key to all the Promise of God fulfilled, and we wait in earnest FAITH upon that Day, just as those 120 did 2000 years ago. And what is that first Day all about? – LIFE, incorruptible life.
I now know what that means, that model of the nine points of our victory has opened so much to us. You see, these three “Victory” sessions are the rows across, the defeat of all our enemies, but it is the columns down wherein lies the power, that is the Feast of Tabernacles.
Countering Three Levels of Death
Let’s put in front of us the row of Victory over death, you see, God’s pattern of life follows the coming of death upon Adam. First was the death of Adam’s spirit, now the “old man,” the moment his teeth pierced the fruit. Second was the death coming upon Adam’s soul, the spinning of a false story, dead in trespasses and sins, and third was the death of his physical body inside the 1000-year Day in which he was created.
Thus we see that the incorruptible life of God comes upon our spirits in fullness on the First Day of Tabernacles, yet we continue to walk, as Jesus did, in bodies subject to death. Then we teach the Church to sing the Song of the Lamb, as we have done, replacing our false self-story with Jesus’ own soul.
Something Else
And finally, on the final Day of the Feast, our physical bodies are swallowed up by life, and we will surpass our 1,000th birthday alive upon this earth.
HOWEVER – all this is from our point of view. It’s not really what is actually happening. Something else entirely is taking place, something so profound, something so incredible, something so “blasphemous,” that we hardly even dare to look at it.
But first, let me establish a dividing line we must see, the line between this age and the next. NO one, in heaven or earth, is living in the next age. Christians in heaven ARE “dead,” according to the testimony of the Bible regarding this age.
Defining “Dead”
And the dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thessalonians 4:16). – (you have come) to the spirits of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12:23). – I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain… And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long…” (Revelation 6:9-10)? All three are speaking of Christians in heaven right now, in this present age. They are dead.
“Dead” means a human without a physical body. Thus we see that we must determine whether some statement in Revelation is referring to the next age (only a few are), or to this age. The dividing line is the resurrection of our physical bodies.
Four Statements of God
With that in mind, let me put four Bible statements in front of you. Consider this progression carefully. A body You have prepared for Me (Hebrews 10:5). – in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22). – Again He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! … “Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live (Ezekiel 37:4-5). – And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7).
What are you saying, Mr. Yordy, sir? Then you shall know that I am the Lord (Ezekiel 37:6). – for all shall know Me (Hebrews 8:11).
That Father Might Be KNOWN
This whole thing, EVERYTHING that exists in heaven and earth is all about ONE thing – God, unseen and unknown, desires to be touched and known. And for that, God needs a Body, an outward appearance that no one will worship as an “idol,” but through which all creation can see and know the Father Himself.
Now, a human without a body is dead. God is not dead without a body, of course, yet our Father has set this stark contrast before us to let us know just how much having a Body means to Him. In Whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
God’s Three’s
So, what is the Feast of Tabernacles really all about? Even though Tabernacles is the final Feast of the Lord, yet it’s three parts correspond entirely with God’s three’s, spirit, soul, and body. And now, we are no longer talking about us as individual believers, but about the entire Body of Christ.
In our experience of Passover, the Spirit of God entered into union with our human spirits, recreated and brand new, with the old spirit having been put to death – and we were born again, that is, conceived of God. In our experience of Pentecost, the Spirit of God flooded into our souls and we learned to speak Christ as our only self-story.
LIFE!
And in our final experience of Tabernacles, our physical bodies are swallowed up by life.
What on earth are we saying? On the First Day of Tabernacles God Himself, the Father, enters into His Body, His Temple, by the Spirit and as incorruptible LIFE. Through the in-between days, dwelling in booths, the entire Church of Christ learns the Song of the Lamb, putting the soul of Jesus upon her own self-story, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, as Father Himself fills the soul of His Body.
And on the Final Day of the Feast, Father Himself stands forth in His creation, now seen and known by all. – LIFE!
Incorruptible Life
I don’t think we have any socks left on our feet or hats on our heads, for they have all been blown away. God manifest in the flesh.
I intend to look more closely at the First Day of Tabernacles out from the model of the nine points of our Victory in the next session, the POWER of that Day. Here, I want to come back to the first part of our victory over death: For this corruptible must put on incorruption. When we say “incorruption,” we mean incorruptible life. There is only One who is incorruptible; Christ Jesus was fully corruptible, tempted in all points just as we are tempted and subject to death.
One Body Together
Incorruptible LIFE is Father, that is Almighty God.
We say by faith and not by sight, “I am filled with all the fullness of God,” and our words are true, for God speaks the truth. Yet when we say “God filling His temple with all of His fullness,” we are not speaking of ourselves as individuals, but of all of God’s elect as one Body together, the Body of Christ. You see, we are now speaking of sight, God becoming known.
Yet there is no experience of the Corporate Body that does not first apply to each member in that Body. The progression of Christ as Word to Christ as us to Christ as Spirit to Christ as Body is a continuous progression, all four in fullness always, yet dynamically connecting as an electrical circuit.
Confidence and Expectation
What God filling His house means, as He did on October 15, 972 BC (2 Chronicles 7:1-2), is that God becomes all our connections together, connections that are LIFE and LOVE. But what it means for us individually is that Confidence and the Expectation of God becomes ALL that we are.
Life means, first, no death. Death, at all points in our Victory over death, factors exactly zero. Life is Victory; Victory is Life. That is, Father Himself.
Yet here remains the word to each one of us personally. And My Father will love you, and We will come to you and make Our home with you (John 14:23 – modified).
We Know Only Father
Then we see that confident expectation of God IS no consciousness of sins and vice versa. We do not know the evil one or his image; we do not know the world-beast and its false claims of “right”; and we do not know death, though we walk in bodies still mortal, as Jesus did. We know only Father and we see only His Church, and we see her successful and victorious in all the Word God speaks, right here upon this earth, with the breezes of heaven blowing in her hair.
In Lesson 8.3 Walking in Life Together, I quoted from a text regarding the formation of a child in its mother’s womb. We saw in that picture an understanding of great importance.
Millions More
We saw that the heart was beating from Day 12 on, even before there was blood, even before the parts of a human were all there, extending its electrical field out over all. And then we saw, that, even after all the organs of the body were in place, and a living human was clearly visible, still, hundreds of millions of cells were being added in every part every moment for days and weeks and months.
God’s full Body will be complete on the First Day as His elect, but not yet ready to stand visibly upon the earth. God’s Body is of such nature that it grows continuously, that millions upon millions of members can find their place in that Body as they also enter Tabernacles and learn to sing the Song of the Lamb.
The Beating Heart
But the key to everything is the beating Heart extending it’s covering over the whole body. And that is the topic for the next session. God has no false husband for His Church, no leaders who will take her anywhere, for Jesus is her Husband and He lives in, as, and through every little member. But God does have a beating Heart for His Body, a calling in Him to which He is drawing a loser here and a has-been there and someone who is of no account from somewhere else.
I look at those who read my letters, what a group we are, incapable of accomplishing anything, unnoticed by anyone, anyone that is, except our Father.