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The World to Come. The Restored Church of God presents David C. Pack. Answering life’s
greatest questions straight from the Bible, and announcing the wonderful good news of
the World to Come.
This is Part 2 explaining the mysterious subject of what is the human mind. We have discussed
who made the mind, whether humans are born with immortal souls, and how the truth of
the spirit in man affects the popular teachings about the afterlife.
But there is so much more vital knowledge about the missing dimension of the mind scientists
cannot discover.
We now examine the bigger picture about the spirit in man and God's overall purpose---what
He is doing with mankind. The apostle John wrote, "In the beginning
was the Word" and, "the Word was with God, and the Word was God." If there is One who
was God, but who was also with God, obviously two Beings---two Persons---are being described.
Verse 14 continues, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." The only God-Being who
ever became flesh in order to dwell among men is Jesus Christ. Remember, it says the
Word "was made flesh." Jesus was not flesh until He came to Earth to become the Savior
of mankind. Moses recorded the first 5 books of the Old
Testament in the Hebrew language. Genesis 1:1 states, "In the beginning God..." The
word translated "God" is Elohim. This word is uniplural, like team, group, family or
church. God is one Family---One God---composed of two Beings. No wonder Christ could be God
and be with God at the same time. God added, "Let Us [more than one] make man
in Our image, after Our likeness." There was clearly more than one Person involved in man's
creation. Each animal was also made after "his kind."
Men are not part of the animal kind. They do not carry the likeness of any "beast of
the earth." Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. They are of the God kind.
God did not form beasts to be in His likeness. So says your Bible!
Recall, Genesis 2:7 states, "God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Man is made of physical matter---flesh.
While he is not composed of what God is---spirit---he is formed in God's "image and likeness."
Human beings are able to acquire knowledge. Animals do not have this capability. Recall
that God has programmed into animals, thru instinct, everything they need to function
effectively within their environment. There is no "spirit of animals" giving them mind
power. We saw people receive the human spirit from
conception, allowing the acquisition and retention of knowledge. Again, however, people do not
instinctively know all they must know to operate successfully throughout life. They must acquire
ever more knowledge as they grow older and as more demands come upon them. Animals have
no such need. All available knowledge falls into two categories:
(1) The physical knowledge of how to work with matter and physical things, and (2) the
spiritual knowledge necessary for people to develop personal relationships with both God
and their fellow man. All knowledge is either physical or spiritual.
Physical knowledge is acquired thru the 5 senses---sight, hearing, smell, touch and
taste. People understand they must acquire a certain amount of useful knowledge, and
keep adding to it. The spirit in man makes this possible.
But it is critical to recognize that the human spirit is not the man---it is in the man.
There is a big difference! This spirit does not have mind power of and by itself. Neither
does the brain. The brain hears thru the ears and sees thru the eyes. The human spirit does
not do these things of and by itself. The brain does the thinking---with the spirit
giving it the power of intellect. Remember, the spirit is in the man, giving the 5 physical
senses the ability to work with the brain for analysis and discernment of meaning and
comprehension. The spirit empowers the mind to process information received thru the 5
senses. All knowledge is learned. Tiny babies are
born with none---their minds are like blank sheets of paper waiting to be written on.
They must learn everything. To function as adults requires much physical knowledge.
But herein lies a great problem. The physical knowledge that man has acquired has been insufficient
for him to be able to solve the many awful problems afflicting all the nations of the
world. For instance, he is utterly incapable of learning how to be happy or to bring abundance
and peace to Earth. And no one has discovered how to rid the world of war, poverty or disease.
WHY? Humanity is missing a key component! After God created Adam and Eve, He presented
them with an all-important choice---a critical decision to take one of two paths. Notice:
"The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had
formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to
the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and
the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Genesis 3:1-8 contains the account of Adam
and Eve's fateful decision. They listened to the serpent and chose the wrong tree! This
carried grave implications beyond what most could dream because, by not choosing the tree
of life, Adam and Eve cut themselves off from the Spirit of God. They were left incomplete,
incapable of receiving, understanding or forming spiritual thoughts. They severed themselves
from the vitally important missing dimension to spiritual understanding of God's purpose,
the path to character-building and right solutions to humanity's problems!
Here is what happened next: "The Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of
Us [note the plural again], to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand,
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent
him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So He
drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming
sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
God denied the first couple access to His presence and His Spirit. Never His intention,
it was the result of their choice. God intended from the beginning to give Adam
and Eve His Spirit. It would have joined with the spirit in man to form a newly-begotten
spirit life in each of them---and in all mankind to follow.
God still intends that all human beings ultimately receive the missing dimension of HIS Spirit.
He wants it to eventually enter all minds. Let's learn what role this second spirit plays,
and how it works with the spirit in man. Notice again what the apostle Paul wrote with more
context: "The Spirit [the Holy Spirit] itself bears witness with our spirit [spirit in man],
that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs
with Christ." We see two spirits described here. God's Spirit
works with the human spirit to bring human beings to salvation as "joint-heirs with Christ."
It is this Spirit that Adam was offered and would have received had he eaten of the Tree
of Life! In I Corinthians 2, we read of the spirit
of man and the Spirit of God. It adds, "The natural man receives not the things of the
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned." This is an enormously important verse. It is not possible for human
beings to understand spiritual knowledge---spiritual understanding. Such things can only seem foolish
to a mind that cannot "spiritually discern." No matter how intelligent or talented a person
may be, without the Spirit of God, they are shut off from all spiritual understanding.
Even attempting to tell people they do not have this spiritual component is a useless
exercise, unless God is opening their minds. (Read John 6:44.) It will seem foolish to
them because even this information is spiritually discerned. The more intelligent the person,
the more foolish it will seem to him to be told that his mind is incomplete---that he
is "not all there." We have seen that if Adam had eaten of the
Tree of Life, he would have received God's Spirit. He would have learned the way of love---the
"give" way instead of the way of "get," practiced by this world. The Bible says "love is the
fulfilling of the law," and that "love...is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy [Spirit]."
Romans 8:6 states, "For to be carnally [physically] minded is death; but to be spiritually minded
is life and peace." If Adam had received the Spirit of God, he would have had life inherent
within him. He would have been an "inheritor" with Christ as much as any true Christian
today. He would have also known the way to peace, happiness, abundance and prosperity.
Adam was given more than a brain---he received a mind, containing the human spirit. He had
the power to choose---to decide for himself his own fate. He was not forced to follow,
or be automatically led toward, any prescribed path. He had not been programmed or limited
to instinctive thinking, as were dumb beasts. When Adam rejected the Tree of Life, he rejected
the opportunity to receive God's Spirit. This would have opened his mind to the Plan of
God---to why he had been created. We saw that his decision caused him and his wife to be
cast from the Garden. But, their joint decision carried grave implications for all people
who came ever after---who could not have access to the Tree of Life.
Adam cut off himself and all mankind from access to God. He rejected the opportunity
for eternal life---to "live forever" (Gen. 3:22).
Grasp what this means! Human beings are not finished---they are incomplete! All knowledge
that enters their minds is limited strictly to the physical and material. For his sin
of rejecting God and the Tree of Life, Adam was rejected by God and cast from the Garden,
and humanity was cast out with him! This is absolutely remarkable understanding---unknown
to all but a scattered few on Earth today. And it has not been understood until our time!
God's purpose has never altered. He desires to offer eternal life to all who qualify.
Everyone knows: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
But there is a purpose that God is working out in those He has called. He is fashioning,
molding, and building within them holy, righteous character---His very character. Notice: "Lord,
You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and we all are the work of Your
hand." God is actively working in the hearts and
minds of those few who have His Holy Spirit within them. Human beings are not born with
the character of God. And God cannot instantly infuse them with it by divine fiat. Character
must be developed. The true Christian grows in grace, knowledge and understanding. (Read
II Pet. 3:18.) He endures a lifetime of overcoming because he is in training for a supreme purpose.
(This insightful article "You Can Overcome and Prevent Sin" explains this process.)
Paul understood how God works in Christians. He also recognized that salvation (Rom. 6:23),
and even faith to receive it, are free gifts. They cannot be earned. But this does not mean
God is not working in, and does not require good works in, people, as He reproduces Himself.
Consider: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God
has before ordained that we should walk in them."
Most will not allow God to work with them. They fight His purpose! They think they know
better than the God who made them---and will not be told what to do and will not be clay
in His hands. Isaiah also wrote, "Woe unto him that strives with his Maker!...Shall the
clay say to Him that fashions it, What make You? or Your work, He has no hands?"
Some will permanently reject God, refusing to obey Him. They will trust in their human
minds and reject the missing dimension of God's Spirit, which would have led them to
eternal life. They will choose to remain incomplete---unfinished in purpose and character.
The next verses describe their end: "And you shall tread down the wicked; for they shall
be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, says the Lord of
hosts." The wicked will be destroyed forever. Matthew 10:28 shows the wicked will be gone,
without remembrance. Now this: "So shall all the heathen...be as though they had not been."
Paul wrote of those in whom God is working, "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of his son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."
As explained, God is expanding His Family---adding more children. Jesus was first and all others
must conform to His image---to His character and likeness.
God is making more brethren in a Family where all will have the same character and spirit
composition. Recall that, in the Garden, God and Christ
made man in their image and likeness. This explains why the New Testament talks of being
"conformed to the image of His Son." Old and New Testament scriptures match---they fit
together in revealing God's purpose. God has never worked in animals. They are
lacking in moral and spiritual faculty. They are made for the enjoyment and service of
both mankind and the environment. But they cannot acquire new knowledge and have never
been offered eternal life. They are not part of God's Plan of character-building and of
reproducing Himself. God has never worked in or thru animals toward any spiritual purpose.
He is at work in begotten, Spirit-led human beings.
Human reproduction represents the very same pattern God Himself uses. The human family
is a type of the Family God is building. John said, "Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God," and "That which is born of the flesh IS flesh; and that
which is born of the Spirit IS spirit." Recall that God's Spirit works with our spirit, making
us sons of God. Marriage between men and women pictures the
awesome Marriage of Christ to His bride, which will occur at His Return (read Rev. 19:7-9).
Every person carries staggering potential, with capability far beyond brute beasts, and
exceeds the potential even of angels. Notice: "Being made so much better than the angels,
as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels
said He at any time, You are My Son, this day have I begotten You? And again, I will
be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son?"
All matter is physical. You are made of matter---of the dust of the ground. There is nothing permanent
about your flesh. Without food, water and air, for even a short time, you will die.
Likewise, no person can gain eternal life apart from the Holy Spirit present and working
within him. Without this Spirit helping to change one, to give eternal life, none has
hope! Without contact with God, His Spirit and His purpose, allowing for spiritual comprehension,
all those of Satan's world will live out their physical lives and die, with nothing to follow.
But God is working with a few now! Earlier we quoted Job. He understood that
God's Spirit worked with his spirit to grant him understanding. He was well aware of God's
Plan and purpose at work in his life. He asked, "If a man die, shall he live again? All the
days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. You shall call, and I will
answer You: You will have a desire to the work of Your hands." Job knew the resurrection
awaited him---when he would be "changed." But he had to "wait" in the grave until God
called him. Job possessed the Spirit of God and understood
when and how God would resurrect and change him. He recognized that it would be the very
Spirit of God in humans that would make this change possible. Earlier in Romans 8 it says,
"If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells
in you." Notice this about the coming resurrection,
when all will awaken from sleep with a new spirit body: "As we have borne the image of
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that
flesh and blood cannot inherit [as joint-heirs with Christ] the kingdom of God; neither does
corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump:
for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall
be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put
on immortality." This speaks of a mystery Paul had to explain.
It is certainly a mystery to the world that there is coming this change to spirit composition
at the resurrection of the dead when Christ returns. Most suppose they have an immortal
soul that goes to heaven upon death. Yet, few seem to ask or care about how one could
go from "mortal" to "immortal," at the resurrection, IF he already has an immortal soul! Do you
see the foolish logic of men cut off from God's marvelous Plan, and from the understanding
of plain scriptures in the Bible? Ask yourself: How can people be resurrected
if they are already alive in heaven as immortal souls? Only the dead, like Christ in the tomb,
need to be resurrected. That is the purpose of a resurrection. Do not be fooled by those
who say, "The resurrection only applies to the body, since the soul remained alive after
death"! You have seen this fallacy disproved. Man does not have an immortal soul---he has
a spirit empowering his brain to the status of human mind. Without the Spirit of God,
men are completely unable to understand the most important knowledge.
David understood he would awake. Stephen understood that at death he fell asleep. Job knew that
he would be changed. Paul knew that Christians will be changed---that they will awaken from
sleep---at the time of the resurrection. At this time, all deceased servants of God will
literally awaken from death! God's character will have already been perfected
in those He quickens at the resurrection. At this time, they will no longer be able
to sin: "Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and
he cannot sin, because he is born of God." At His Return, Jesus will bring the individual
rewards of all those sons and daughters thru whom He and the Father have worked. They will
have qualified for great glory: "The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father
with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works." Your works
in this life have a direct bearing on your reward in the next life.
That reward involves rulership. The initial phase of this rulership will last 1,000 years.
Rulers sit on thrones: "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given
unto them…and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the
dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection."
But God's Plan will not end with just those included in the First Resurrection. God intends
to give all human beings an opportunity to receive His Spirit, build His character---to
be finished and come to completion! John described the continuation of God's Plan
to the time when all mankind will receive an opportunity for salvation. It is called
the "Great White Throne Judgment" and is described this way: "I saw a great white throne, and
Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found
no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books
were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And
the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which
were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works."
But those of God's Church---the one Church that Jesus promised to build (Matt. 16:18)---are
being taught and led now in all the truths and ways of God. The ministry of this "little
flock" is now feeding and preparing those who will rule with Christ. Paul wrote the
Ephesians describing the responsibility of Christ's true ministers: "...for the perfecting
of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till
we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."
The human spirit neither changes nor resurrects the person. This comes from God's Spirit first
working in the mind. At the resurrection, the spirit in man will unite with the Holy
Spirit. We will be exactly the same, except made of spirit and therefore will no longer
have human nature or the pulls of the flesh. Think of the human spirit in this way: It
is like a cassette tape of everything we have ever learned or done---and it is the very
mold of the mind for our coming spirit body, containing the memory, character and experiences
of each human being. In a sense, like any cassette, it can be "played back." Yet, it
cannot have or give life, or function by itself, because it must be connected to a physical
brain---or a spirit mind at the resurrection. Like one working with a computer, the spirit
in man works with the brain to form the amazing human mind!
Science will never discover this knowledge. No one understands it. But now you do! What
I have covered in these two broadcasts is carefully explained in this booklet What Science
Will Never Discover About Your Mind. You will want to read it.
Until next time, this is David C. Pack saying, "Goodbye, friends."
This program was made available by Restored Church of God members and donors from around
the globe. Explore our vast library of literature and other World to Come programs which are
all made available free of charge. To learn more, or to find a local congregation, contact
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