Either you are a ‘child of this world’ or a ‘child of light.’ Few realize most of humanity has been spiritually blinded by their father, the devil, but Christ offers the true light of salvation. The moment we enter this world, we become slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. We are influenced by them, without our knowing. Only Christ, can sever the ties, which these spirits have over us. Join Carl now in the second of a three-part series, of walking in God’s light and putting aside the works of darkness.
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
Now, again, there’s a delineation of the children of God versus the children of the devil. In other parts of Scripture, they’re called the sons of disobedience. So, like I said, not everybody is a child of God. We have to choose to be in God’s kingdom. But notice in that Scripture, whoever does not righteousness is not of God. Friend, we don’t do righteous acts for the sake of our salvation. Our salvation is assured. We do righteous acts because the Father has already justified us, made us right in His sight through His Son. And as a result of that, we do good works to show the fruit of God living within us. Amen? Then it says, neither he that loves not his brother. How can you love a God that you don’t see when you can’t love a brother that you do see? There’s evidence of being a child of God. You’re going to walk in love. You’re going to do good works. That should be our default setting, doing the works of Jesus and loving people. And we can only do it according to God’s standard after we’re born again. Romans 8.14 says, “for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Again, the delineation. Now, this may be difficult for some to fathom who think that we’re all children of God, but it’s the truth nonetheless. We are not all children of God.
Here’s another one, John 8:44, and these are the words of Jesus, “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks, he speaks a lie. He speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.” Now, this is Jesus rebuking the Pharisees, okay, at the time. But notice that he said, you are of your father the devil. That means that if you are not born again and have not received Christ Jesus, and you leave this earth, you will go to hell. That will be your abode, because you’re already separated from God in this lifetime. And when you die, you will be eternally separated from God. Oh, Lord, we don’t want that to be the case. Anybody listening to my voice, receive the Lord today. Confess him as your Lord and Savior. Repent of your sins. Believe upon him, and you shall be saved, you and your household.
We don’t want one person to go to this terrible place of eternal torment. No, no, no. But our general disposition should be one of light. We should be children of light. Let’s look at John 12:36, It says, “While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be the children of light.“ These things Jesus spoke and departed and did hide himself from them. Who’s the them? The disciples, right? He’s saying, I am the light. I’m present at the time, but I’m going to leave. Believe in the light. And if you do believe in the light, you can become children of light. The believing upon him is the entrance into becoming a child of light. And then again, in Luke 16:8, Jesus said, “For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” I was talking about mammon in the context of that scripture. The children of this world are more wise with business dealings than children of light, who may not be trained in those areas.
OK, I’m not saying you can’t be good at business if you’re a believer, but there’s a certain streetwise attitude that comes from the school of hard knocks. How many have graduated from the school of hard knocks? Can I get an amen on that one? All right. But there’s some things we can inherently know because we’re attached to Christ. We don’t have to learn by these very hard mistakes. You know, some people wear that as a badge of honor. You know, I went through the school of hard knocks and I graduated. Ho, ho, ho. Well, that’s great. Good for you. But there’s a bit of an attitude there that sort of embraces, you know, I’m just going to do everything by trial and error and I’ll figure it all out. But it’s a little bit prideful because you can seek out the truth for yourself. You don’t have to learn by all these hard knocks.
That’s generally for someone who is ignorant. OK, maybe that’s a little bit tough, but that’s what I’m saying. OK, children of the world are subject to the influence of this world, the culture or the world system. But we Christians have been redeemed and called out of this world system. And because of that, we are swimming upstream. And if we don’t continue to swim upstream, we’re going to go downstream with the rest of the current. Friend, when you become born again, the good news is you’re in the kingdom. But the bad news is you’re surrounded by a kingdom that is not of your kingdom. You’re in the world, but you’re not of this world because your citizenship is in heaven. And because we’re on Satan’s ground, because he’s the god of this world, little g, you’re going to encounter a little bit of opposition and a little bit of persecution when you speak out for Jesus. Amen. Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 2 says, “And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.”
There’s some interesting points here in this scripture. Notice that the apostle Paul was telling the church at Ephesus that they once walked according to the course of this world. In other words, they used to, but they don’t any longer. And that’s the delineation I’m making. The separation that you need to do away with the crew that you once walked with and the thoughts that you once were accustomed to. And then it says the prince of the power of the air is the one who’s steering this course. It’s interesting today that there’s this whole battle with fake news and what’s real and what’s not. But friend, if you get to the facts, there’s a lot of fake news around. Is it coincidental that the prince of the power of the air, he has the jurisdiction of the airwaves. He has that second heaven within his jurisdiction. And these airwaves and news channels and everything else is pumping through these airwaves that he owns. And God has some great Christian channels as well. But you’ll notice they are an extreme minority. OK, so we shouldn’t trust everything that comes to us through the TV and through even the news, even though they may look so professional when they speak it. Check out the facts for yourself.
You know, some people can just jump on the bandwagon and believe a lie that they heard on the news and then repeat it to everybody. But as Christians, we should be very careful what we say. We don’t want to empower the enemy with our words. We want to speak the truth in life. OK, we want to speak the truth over situations. We don’t want to agree with a lie, especially something that we haven’t even checked up for ourselves. And then we go and repeat it. But notice the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Yep, there it is again. Sons of disobedience. Children of the world. You know, the goats spoken of in the gospel. There is a separation between us and them. And us, we rather, have chosen Jesus. OK? Now, let’s get into this scripture. Romans chapter 7 verses 8 through 10. It’s quite profound, but it’s core orthodoxy for Protestant religion. Now it says, But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.
Now this is Paul speaking, as you know. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment which was to bring life, I found to bring death. Now, in verse 8 he said, For apart from the law, sin is dead. We know that the law was given through Moses. The Mosaic law was given to be a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. 613 commandments from God that certainly couldn’t be obeyed. It was too hard. But God showed a standard that simply couldn’t be met. And that’s why he said, Look, this is my standard. It’s perfection. You can’t meet it. So I’m going to send my son, and then you shall be saved. OK? And if you have him dwelling in yourself, then you will be made righteous by the blood of Christ. That’s the essence of our predicament before the law came and since the law came. We are righteous by being a part of Christ Jesus. Because we can’t obey all the law. But, this is Paul now. He said, I was alive once without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. Friend, he was alive as a child. When he became aware of sin, it revived in his members. And then he died. And the commandment which was to bring life, in fact brought death. In the Jewish tradition, the Bar Mitzvah is the entrance into manhood. Where a child becomes, through adolescence and the ages of 12 to 13, to make his own choices before God.
And he’s responsible to God for his own choices. He’s left childhood behind. And this Jewish celebration is symbolic of this verse I just read. And friend, it’s this time of accountability, better known as the age of accountability, where we are responsible for our sin. But it’s at that point that sin is revived. I will tell you now that based on this scripture, if you’ve ever had a child that’s been lost in his formative years, up to 11 or 12 years of age, and that child died, they are in heaven today with Jesus, friend. That is a fact. It is wrong to believe that if a child has not been water-baptized, they die and go to hell. This is a false teaching. This is evident clearly from this scripture, that Paul was alive once. And then when sin revived, he then died. And friend, like I said before, any child that’s passed away prior to their teenage years is now in the abode of heaven with Jesus Christ. And there are multiple visions and dreams that people have had to corroborate this truth from scripture. We’re not basing truth from dreams and visions, okay? But there are numerous examples of people seeing their children in heaven after they had died, etc. And I believe these to be authentic visions from Christ.
But let’s look at Genesis 8:21. This reinforces when the evil was revived. It says, “And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done.” Friend, beyond our youth, we need to choose to be born again. Up to that time, our imaginations are not evil. Now, I’m not saying that children are born without the sinful condition. Everybody is born into sin. However, that sin is revived in those years, those teenage years, as we enter into manhood. That’s when it’s revived. So we’re all born slaves through Adam, as the scripture attests. And then sin is revived as we enter adulthood.
And then it’s a choice to be in God’s kingdom after that. You know, I remember a story that Brother Hagin told a while back. But it’s quite troubling. But it reveals that this is also true. He said that one night there was a minister. He had to go to a funeral that he was performing off in the eastern part of the United States, I believe. And I want to say that this was California. But it was a mountainous region that he was in. And so he took the kids with him and his wife. He drove there. The wife switched places with him. I want to say this is in the 1950s. So, you know, he could just get on a private plane with propellers and just go off into the sunset. But there were children in the back half asleep. So the lady kissed her husband goodbye. And then he got on the plane. And then it starts to take off. And all of a sudden, this child in the back seat wakes up. And he says, Mommy, Mommy, doesn’t Daddy know that that plane’s going to go into the mountain? And unfortunately, friend, sure enough, just as the child said, that plane went straight into the mountain and killed his father. That child, friend, had a word of knowledge of what was occurring by the Spirit of God because he was connected to God. And this child was about four years of age, I want to say, you know, a young, young child. And, friend, he was connected to God. He wasn’t born again. He’d never heard the gospel, but he was connected.
All right. And we need to listen on the inside to that intuition, that gut instinct, the peace on the inside. That’s what we need to listen to. We should not be over rid by our minds as those parents were. The Spirit of God, I believe, was warning that man not to get in that plane. But he didn’t listen. He let his head override his spirit. And I do not recommend that, friend. We’ve all done it. This, unfortunately, was a tragic real-life example which shows that children can be led by God more than adults sometimes. But, friend, we should always remain childlike and listening to God’s Spirit. Now is the time to train up your spirit and be attentive to God’s Spirit and his still small voice. We’re going to pick up this tomorrow in Part 3. Until tomorrow, good night, God bless, and remember to spread the good news.
https://carljosephministries.com/podcast/the-spirit-of-truth-part-1/
https://biblehelpsinc.org/publication/walking-in-the-light/
Title: From Darkness to Light: Part 2
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