OF MAN

When I look at mankind I see the creativity of God, tampered with man’s desiderative acquiescence so hideous you wonder whether this was what our perfect God, once upon six thousand years ago, did mess His holy hands to bring into existence.

                                                    Our Sinless Pristine Parents

In perfection God Almighty, the Creator, made Adam, even after His own likeness. An ugly, aberrant display of volitive exercise Adam embarked on, on that fateful day, in the most comfortable earthly environment. Christ, in His preincarnate manifestation, had fellowshipped with the sinless pristine couple. He had made a physical connectivity with them, in worship. They knew the LORD their God. He had told them the truth they needed, to be at rest. The Woman was always ready to listen carefully to her husband, to whom she was in total subjection, who in turn showered her with the love of their Creator.

Lucifer saw that if the Woman could be won over, she would switch the object of her headship from her husband to him, a shenanigan calculation, the resultant of which is aimed at making him, Lucifer, the lord of the earth. He knew that his physical angelic appearance in the Garden would raise a giveaway, eyebrow questions. The Devil did not want to run a fruitless campaign of calumny! He conscripted the serpent (in which he hid) in his conspiracy, making Lucifer the author of diabolical masquerades. Lucifer, as an intelligent being, knew how foolhardy it would be if he had gone to the male Adam with his, “Had God said…” knowing fully well that Adam, to whom is committed the oracle of God, would have questioned an interrogative utterance from a base animal (even from a higher angelic being) in a world where he is the dominant lord, with the mandate of Genesis 1:28, “…and God said…subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” It was Adam the male, Lucifer knew, that God expressly mandated in Genesis 2:15, “to dress it and to keep it.” The Hebrew word for ‘dress’ is ‛abad (aw-bad): ‘labour, work’; and that of ‘keep’ is shamar (shaw-mar): ‘to hedge about (as with thorns), that is, guard; generally to protect, attend to.’ Thus Adam is the oracle of God in Eden, God’s house.

Woman, ishshah (ish-shaw), in Hebrew means ‘wife’ (a protector of iysh -husband). Another reason for choosing the woman is to weaken the support he had always enjoyed from his wife. Her support is a witness to the credibility of the oracle and of its testimony. Losing her will strip Adam of the support that enforces, spiritually, his subjugating dominance: for two is the number of witness and of testimony. How I wish Christian wives will stand up to protect the utterances of their own husbands, submitting to them to build strongholds of Christian homes. She was convinced that a better way of life, than what Adam’s leadership provided could be her’s! In Satanic ideology she was tutored, and became its first human graduate. To manoeuvre the woman into lording it over her husband was the stratagem: the accomplishment of which will be achieved immediately the woman made the man to do her evil will. Now a pawn in Lucifer’s hands, she was speaking under the spell of another oracle, as Satan’s priestess, as she approached her husband.

I am trying to intimate you with the division that was caused by this evil incursion. Once the woman withdraws her support, the number of the testimony is impaired. The man, by virtue of headship, is the priest in their home; and the minute the woman entered into the cultic priesthood of religion, she acquired the new status of the priestess of Satan, to speak words, different from that of the One who had walked, every evening, into the Garden to receive their obeisant welcome, to express the oracular afflatus of the Most High. The spirit of diabolism never stops inflicting families with divisive thoughts which steeps a woman in, “Why can’t I be the boss at home?” The slightest shift from God’s word lands you on Satan’s laps, do not doubt it! She could not even wait till the cool of the evening, to show her prized acquisition to the One who strode in majestically: she was under her new master’s magical power.

To the one the oracle of God made a subject of submission she walked, with a mission of subjugation. Adam, should you not have waited to exhibit before Him, who must come, the offending fruit of evil? Adam looked at circumstances minus the oracle he must protect. Why, Adam, must you die with a one who had no regard for what you stood for? She had parted ways with your God so, you are, as a matter of gospel fact, no longer responsible for her. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” [1Timothy 2:14]. The word ‘deceive is apataō (ap-at-ah’-o): ‘cheat, beguile, delude.’ In Genesis 3:13 we have the Woman’s confession of, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” ‘Beguiled’ here in Hebrew is nasha’ (naw-shaw’): ‘to lead astray, that is, (mentally) to delude, or (morally) to seduce.’ The woman was absolutely deceived such that even if God had approached her at the time of plucking the fruit she could have angrily, in total disobedience, believing the devil’s lie that God did not want the right thing for them, gone ahead to help herself to become wiser than her husband! Wrong knowledge from the enemy has robbed mankind of all virtues that God put into the making of His prized creation. Adam no doubt, in my mind, thought, “She is dead, let me die with her.” He was probably thinking of the sweet, sexual relationship he had always enjoyed, not desiring to let go of that coition. Petty things has the Devil used to derail man!

The proclivity that attended Adam’s acquiescence to the offer of his wife has proved its inimicality in the malleability of the men’s folk. Many are the unsuspecting males, slaughtered on the altar of inappropriate show of love, leaving the man disappointed, as the woman steps into victory that leaves horrid taste in her mouth. No joy! The women have, hanging on them, labels of suspicious scrutiny (seen as daughters of Eve), as if both genders spring forth not from Mother Eve! It was no victory for the Woman. It was a loss to Adam and to mankind; hence, we see Satan in a despicable dance of inglorious victory before the LORD. Man had changed, no longer his holy and innocently created old self!

“Let us create man in our likeness and in our image,” tells me that God had a recovery plan for the foreknown eventual fall of man. “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman,” Genesis 2:21-22. Rib taking is definitely a bloody business. The innocent blood in Christ’s hands (as He held the rib of Adam) signifies acceptance of the sacrifice. Wow! This is what took care of Adam’s sin. Do you remember that Adam has a priesthood office? He was, before marriage, an immaculate being. Christ, as our celestial priest, made sacrificial contact with a pure soul, whose immaculate blood went into the creation of his own woman, so, is it incorrect when the Bible speaks of, “…slain from the foundation of the world;” Matthew 25:34; Hebrews 4:3 and Revelation 13:8? O the depth of the wisdom of God! What if God had no plan B for man’s survival? I thank God so much for what He had purposed for me.

Pre-incarnate Christ in fellowship with Adam & Woman

There is no doubt in my mind, going by biblical documentation, that the Woman felt cheated and ill-catered for. To her, the Creator was too frugal with the truth, thereby robbing them of a much better status in life: the Creator, therefore, stood guilty as charged, as far as she was concerned. Making herself available as a vessel, Satan dumped his ill-conceived philosophies into her, by which she began to manifest evil traces of: self-centredness (which was responsible for wanting to eat the fruit first, before the husband); stubbornness (this made her tow the line of militancy); faithlessness (or else she would not see the tree as good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise) leading to disobedience for she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat!

The man, did he display a virtue of tolerance when he agreed to sin? Was he trying to be empathetic with his wife’s plight? There, certainly, is nothing the matter with the feeling and show of empathy but in this Eden scenario every word spoken, thought, intention and action must be to the glory of Him who came every cool of the evening. Adam was there to protect the Garden from any unscriptural occurrence and not to defend a wrong doing or be its accomplice. Did he want to salvage what was left of a dead wife? Adam is not the Saviour neither had he completed his probational period (of, maybe, 1,000 years), hence, he delved into an unauthorized office. I expected him to have summoned the serpent for interrogation then banned it from God’s house and by the usual time of the cool of evening he would have had a most commendable assessment from Him, with Whom we have to do, the One who had encouraged him to continue to dress and keep it. Adam wanted to save the situational predicament her wife had got herself into. Adam, you delved into a matter you knew absolutely nothing about! We do not manage a taboo, we keep a good distant away from what is nothing but a snare. Have many Christians not dabbled into unauthorized ecumenical offices and taught what they have no knowledge about: Satanic entrapment. Adam was punished for his stupid venture. I agree with Rev. Chris Okotie that when Satan makes you do something, it is really not about that thing, but that he is actually taking you somewhere else. Rev. Chris Okotie, you are absolutely correct, because Lucifer made them to eat the fruit not just to defy God but actually to make them lose the privilege of living in God’s house of Eden! Much more importantly was his desire to steal the Adamic blessing of Genesis 1:28 which culminates in his most sought after deification! Adam, you just handed everything to a sadistic devil. Does the child of Adam, even after six millenniums, not continue to serve satanic interests actively? Anytime one throws caution to the wind, like Adam, he is, in the true analysis, circumventing the virtue of patience. When, in Matthew 18:26, the debtor servant pled, “Lord, have patience with me,” he used the same word Paul taught to be one of the fruits (longsuffering) in Galatians 5:22, of the Holy Spirit, which is an attribute of God Himself; “And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,” Exodus 34:6.

The two words: ‘patience’ {makrothumeō (mak-roth-oo-meh-o): to be long spirited, that is, (objectively) forbearing or (subjectively) patient} and ‘longsuffering’ {makrothumia (mak-roth-oo-mee’-ah) Thayer Definition: ‘longanimity, that is, (objectively) forbearance or (subjectively) fortitude’} come from makrothumōs (mak-roth-oo-moce’) ‘with long (enduring) temper, that is, leniently.’ ‘Longsuffering,’ of Exodus is, from two words:‘arek (aw-rake’) long (pinions); patient, slow to anger’ and ‘aph (af): ‘the nose or nostril; hence the face, and occasionally a person; also (from the rapid breathing in passion) ire.’ Adam did not exhibit the longsuffering attribute found in the LORD, his God. Adam was rash.

God, Adam and wife after the fall.

When I look at man I shake my head in total disbelief in what has become of the once upon a time sinless creature of Eden. I see not a fornicator, but a vicious rapist. I do not see a teaser, but a pathological liar. I see an unassuaged Shylock, not a businessman. I see a potential murderer; an armed robber, an illicit drug baron, a sadist and a shameless prostitute whose heart is hardened. I see sheep-clothed wolves in the Lord’s vineyard. Do I see well intentioned and guileless people again, are they not hypocrites who exist in their stead? God placed the spirit of second chance in you, have you made good use of it? Animal sacrifices suffice no more. It is by the new and living way of the blood of the One who made contact with the ‘dead’ Adam. The word ‘sleep’ in Genesis 2:21 is tardemah (tar-day-maw) [From radam (raw-dam’) ‘to stun, that is, stupefy (with sleep or death ]: a lethargy or (by implication) trance.’ This tardemah is the type of death the scripture says of Old Testament saints, because they shall rise again. Unregenerated souls are dead. Only Jesus can bring them back to life eternal. In making contact with the dead Adam He set a precedence for my own and your own salvific contact. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!

This Is The ONE

The one which is and which was, and which is to come is the Almighty. The epithetical ‘is’ cannot be seen as a subtle upshot of the state of His being: as of one whose evolution emanated from creationism. He ‘is’ because He also ‘was’. He who inhabits eternity past is He who reassuringly manifests in this now of our existence. For our sake He parts the eternal realm to room us in the time tenancy of creationism. The gregariousness of His socializing trait moved Him to create the first intelligent, celestial beings.

None was there in the eternal past, hence none can share in His Deity. He, Jehovah Elohim, alone was there before any that strode out of creationism. And there He was, enjoying every bit of the serenity of the pervading quietude of a timeless eon called eternity past which created intelligent ones knew not because they had not been brought into physical existence of reality: in His unfathomable mind we existed though, yet to be incubated. Filling the unimaginable expanse of the universe to the brim and excessively spilling over and beyond it, He was: for He is mind boggling too big, too high, too deep and too expanse to be measured. Everything that is, was or will come into being had taken its seminal in the One who was when there was nothing in existence.

If He had to create, His creative ability must, as a matter of fact, endow the object of creation with intelligence, who should boast of free will. The endowment with free will engenders an adjudicative probation to ensure that all goes well in creationism. He must adjudicate on the intent and action of the being to ensure congruent spiritual cohesiveness. In His heavenly abode He created the angelic ones with hierarchical responsibilities. On earth, millennia before the activities of Genesis chapter one verse three, beings had been called to existence to inhabit the earth (Jeremiah 4:25) having their own positional status of responsibilities (before they became demons), Ephesians 6:12.

At the birthing of the third successive being, two are the sustaining elements of life that went into his existence. Two lives plus number three points to grace, the scriptural enumeration of which is five. This creature has the endowment of two so that at the failure of an instance there is a second chance. The erudite Rev. Chris Okotie said that even if you reject God a million times the next one-million-first time is still your second chance, as far as God is concerned. Grace gave Adam, from God, a second chance; for this reason did God, personally, clothe the Adamic race to usher man into the realm of the second chance. The Great Planner had foreknown the dangerous portent of a free will in the hands of a fallen creature hence, two lives of soul and spirit were put into man such that at the time of Adam’s disobedience in the Garden, when he got lost or, properly, died to sin, his spirit entered into alienation from his Maker but his soulish realm, in which he hung for life sustenance, enabled him to have the second chance to make salvific contact with God. If the one who was, must be of any aid to the spiritually impaired then He must of necessity gain entrance into the present ‘is’ of our era. He ‘is’ to justify the established claim of the verity of His eternal essence. He ‘is’ to receive worship who alone inhabits the past eternal era when there was absolutely none, wherefore, we can conveniently say that none saw the eternity past. If nothing saw eternity past save Himself then He alone should receive worship, for being the One who had brought everything into the state of being. It is simply because He ‘was’ that I happen to be; and we are, just because He who was ‘is’ in the now of our time. The ‘is’, carefully understood, is the same as ‘I am’ which is an Old Testament scripting found in Isaiah 44:6 & 48:12, attributed to Jehovah God, God the Father.

The Lord which is, was and is to come, Almighty! Rev. 1:8

 

The most enigmatic One is Him under discussion. The rhema ‘which’ in the Greek is: ‘ho he to’ (ho-hay-to) meaning the definite article ‘the’; and the word ‘is’ as it emerges from the holy writ in Revelation 1:4, originating from the tongue of Greece is originally from two words: ‘on ousa on’ ( own-oo-sah-own) or simply, ‘on’ (own) which means ‘being,’ is a present participle of eime (ei-mee) meaning ‘I exist’ (properly of eternity). ‘Was’ is ‘en’ (ayn): ’I (thou, etc.) was (wast or were) [imperfect of eime]’, while ‘come’ is erchomai (er’-khom-ai):’to come or go’. The entire epithet in Greek is: ho on kai ho en kai ho erchomenos (hoh’ own’ kai’ hoh’ ayn` kai’ hoh’ er-khom’-en-os) ‘the one being and the one that was and the one coming, i.e. the Eternal, as a divine epithet of Christ.’ He ‘is’ to justify creation, to adjudicate on earthly concerns and to hold sway governmentally. He ‘is’ to quicken the unfortunate mortality engendered by the sins of disobedience, which albeit should annihilate. To rejuvenate the dilapidated man, He ‘is’, by making man’s affair His own palaver. He ‘is’ to save!

The Hebrew rendition of Shaddai is what the English Bible, in the first chapter of Revelation of the eighth verse, scripts as Almighty which has the meaning of: ‘almighty, most powerful; Shaddai, the Almighty (of God).’ The Greek renders the same word as: pantokratōr (pan-tok-rat’-ore): ‘the all ruling, that is, God (as absolute and universal sovereign).’ The Jamieson, Fausset & Brown Commentary exegetes Revelation 1:8 thus: “Almighty—Hebrew, “Shaddai,” and “Jehovah Sabaoth,” that is, “of hosts”; commanding all the hosts or powers in heaven and earth, so able to overcome all His Church’s foes. It occurs often in Revelation, but nowhere else in the New Testament save 2Corinthians 6:18, a quotation from Isaiah.” If you check Isaiah 9:6, the word ‘mighty’ is gibbor (ghib-bore) with the meaning of: ‘powerful; by implication warrior, tyrant.’

Only the Eternal One can generate salvific stance away from eternity. It is for my eternal sake that He which ‘was’ is. He ‘is’ to doctor my foot steps to righteousness. Seeing that some of us will definitely choose Him, He stepped into the ‘is’ of time: if not, Lucifer will destroy everything. And what is it that has evidenced Lucifer’s incapability is the documented account of the encounter with Satan in Luke chapter 2, when the Lord of glory was made to dwell like Adam all over again; but instead of the Garden of Eden it was a dreadful wilderness of abject destitution. Shame on you Lucifer, you cannot take care of a simple garden! He had to ‘come’ to exterminate the wicked dominant state of the tyrannical influence of Satanism. He ‘is’ to enable man to utilize the length of the extended rope of repentance without which Ezekiel 18:4 would be executed on the souls of all. He ‘is’ to redeem the lost time. He had to show up to perfect creationism, especially as it concerns the Adamic race. For eternity is a continuum, He ‘is’ to cause a sandwiching in it for our emergence.

The Warrior King of Revelation 6:2

He ‘is’ to protect His divine interest. The unaligned is doomed when He does the ‘come’. The indomitability of His power when He ‘comes’ is absolutely unconquerable, establishing the veracious magistrature of the millennium. He ‘comes’ not to stage a putsch but to remove evil from the terra firma; the ownership of which is indubitably His: to remove the tares of Matthew 13:25, smiting them to the dust and discarding Lucifer into the longest, hellish incarceration. This ‘come’ is a rewarding relief to those of us who have spiritual alignment with Him who comes. A government none had ever acquired no matter how it is dreamt of, is over which, He sets to rule. For one hundred times ten length of years He rules Majestically, ending untold sufferings embedded in angst. It is an enthronement of the most powerful, seated magistracy. The best, occupying the most important position, is the One sitting in counsel to display the rarest combination of an unfathomable integrity and a utopian-like wisdom. Politics will no longer be played under the hand. Businesses are run with the utmost integrity, where every word is a trustworthy bond. Prostitution, fornication, thuggery and illicitness of drug trade will be so alien on earth where they used to thrive so prosperously. Wickedness just cannot cross the minds of billions of the global subjects of Him who has ‘come’. Utopian? No! A reality: because the Way, the Truth and the Eternal Life is on the throne, ruling in and over righteousness. Hallelujah! Who is this?! This is Jehovah Jesus!! Amen!!!

Get born again. To be born again do Romans 10:9 – 10 by saying this simple prayer: Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now, in the name of Jesus. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe in my heart that Jesus died for my sins and I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and I receive Him as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen.

ARE WE ALL GOD’S CHILDREN?

Adam, our pristine father and his wife, the female Adam are God’s children simply because they were created directly by the LORD God, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:” Genesis 1:26, bearing the witness to God’s anthropomorphism. “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” (Genesis 5:2). In Genesis 2:7,”And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul;” the word ‘formed’ yatsar (yaw-tsar), in Hebrew, is a porter’s term, meaning: ‘to mould or squeeze into shape.’ God, definitely, did make physical contact with red clay concerning man in creationism and that is a mind boggling wonder! HIS breath inside man established his sinless nature at creation. Genesis 2:22, “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” The word ‘made’ is quite different from the earlier ones and it is banah (baw-naw): ‘to build.’ Why build the woman? Of course it is for the obvious reason that she represents the Church, God’s bride. This established creative fact led Luke to script the words of chapter 3 verse 38, “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.” This makes the creation of the first human couple the same as the angels, who were created individually (not one angel gave birth to another). Something did change mankind.

When they sinned the filiation man had with the Divinity was impaired. Could this filial relationship be removed? Certainly; “And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant;” (Genesis 17:14). Centuries earlier on, God pointed out, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him;” in Genesis 4:7. At the Eden fall man lost his spiritual propinquity with his Creator. God’s grace was first brought into operation when He killed two animals in lieu of the offending couple. So He advised Cain when He told him, “sin lieth at the door’. ’Sin’ is chaṭṭa’ah (khat-taw-aw): ‘sin offering.’ ‘Lieth’ is rabats (raw-bats): ‘to crouch (on all four legs folded, like a recumbent animal)’ indicating that an animal was required for the sacrifice of sin offering. Cain’s rejection turned him into the first antichrist (a child of perdition and not of God)! The covenant God had with Abraham enabled man’s sonship with God all over again.

The filial covenant was with Israel, established with the blood of sheep. God said, “Let’s make it a classified relationship. Cut the foreskin of every male, by which the stock of Abraham alone is involved.” God did not adopt Israel to promote classism but rather to have for Himself a remnant to take care of His earthly intentions. Exodus 4:22-23 “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me:” “And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:7). Deuteronomy 4:1, “Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.” Deuteronomy 29:13, “That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Isaiah 50:1, “Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.” The children of Israel needed to keep God’s covenant by keeping away from sin or make sacrifices for atonement. That which kept their filiation intact died and another must be produced. Their sonship was of the old order. Many people will always say, “We are all children of God.” Are all children of God? No! To be God’s child you must have entered into a covenant with HIM.

Galatians 4:6, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Romans 8:15, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” These ones are Christians.

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” Romans 8:14. Who are these ‘many led’? You will find them in the Book of Romans, in the opening verses of the first chapter, “To all that be in Rome,” is the first clause of the 7th verse and if you should pull it out regarding it as the children of God, you will be quite incorrect. “…called to be saints: Grace to you and peace….” The ‘called saints’ are the children of the Most High God. The adjective ‘called’ is kletos (klay-tos): Thayer Definition: ‘invited (by God in the proclamation of the Gospel) to obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom through Christ.’ Strong’s Definition: ‘invited, that is, appointed, or (specifically) a saint.’ The adjective ‘saint’ is hagios (hag’-ee-os) Thayer Definition: ‘most holy thing.’ Origin: from hagos (an awful thing). Strong’s Definition: From hagos (an awful thing) ‘sacred (physically pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially consecrated).’ A saint, in this context is a born again Christian. How you become a Christian is found in Jude 1:1, “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.” Having seen those who will accept the truth of the gospel of Jesus, in the eternity past, God sanctified (hagiazō (hag-ee-ad’-zo) ‘to make holy, that is, (ceremonially) purify or consecrate; (mentally) to venerate’) them.’ The next thing, God did was what a sane economist will do: ‘preserve’ tēreō (tay-reh’-o) Strong’s Definition: {From teros (a watch)} meaning ‘to guard (from loss or injury, properly by keeping the eye upon;’ and thus differing from phulassō (foo-las’-so), which is properly to prevent escaping; and from koustōdia (koos-to-dee’-ah) ‘custody, which implies a fortress.’ God, then, put His prized ‘holy veneration’ in a freezer pending the day the preserved will be ‘called’: klētos (klay-tos). Be wise: get born again; the Bible exegeses that, ‘as many as are led….’

None, through parturiency, is born again. Regeneration is a conscious effort on the part of an individual. You have to come to a realization of your spiritual deficiency, needing Jesus – the Author and Finisher of our faith. Confession of the Lordship of Jesus on your life is what actually saves one, and by the divine provocation of the Holy Spirit one is seen and audibly heard crying, ‘Abba Father’! Before the regenerative occurrence you are not God’s child as it is stipulated in 1Peter 2:10, “Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” The people Apostle Peter is referring to are ones to whom this general epistle is actually meant: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.” (1Peter 1:2).

Colossians 3:9-10, “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:” and verse 11, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” As you can see, so clearly, the child of God is no longer of the old testamental order. The sacrifices and the beasts are mere shadows of prefiguration of the expected Christ. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:” John1:11-12. Commentary on John 1:11-12 by Jamieson, Fausset and Brown runs thus: “his own—”His own” (property or possession), for the word is in the neuter gender. It means His own land, city, temple, Messianic rights and possessions. and his own—“His own (people)”; for now the word is masculine. It means the Jews, as the “peculiar people.” Both they and their land, with all that this included, were “HIS OWN,” not so much as part of “the world which was made by Him,” but as “THE HEIR” of the inheritance (Lu 20:14; see also on Mt 22:1). received him not—nationally, as God’s chosen witnesses. But as many—individuals, of the “disobedient and gainsaying people.” gave he power—The word signifies both authority and ability, and both are certainly meant here. to become—Mark these words: Jesus is the Son of God; He is never said to have become such. the sons—or more simply, “sons of God,” in name and in nature. believe on his name—a phrase never used in Scripture of any mere creature, to express the credit given to human testimony, even of prophets or apostles, inasmuch it carries with it the idea of trust proper only towards GOD. In this sense of supreme faith, as due to Him who “gives those that believe in Himself power to become sons of God,” it is manifestly used here.”

Why would Pastor James, in his general epistle to Israelites (James 1:17-18) remind them in chapter one verse seventeen, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights,” and in the eighteenth verse, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures”? It is because the new birth is midwifed by the Holy Spirit to ‘whosoever believeth.’ It was first for the physical Israel and now the sole preserve of the spiritual Israel – Christians. Amen! Romans 8:17, “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” There must of necessity be a Christ connectivity before being called God’s child. Our filial relationship with God is truly eternal because the Father in question is eternal thus a serious affair. So, I ask, are all really children of God? Selah!