CIRCULAR LETTER April 1995

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." (Heb. 13:8)

CIRCULAR LETTER April 1995

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I greet you most cordially in the precious name of the Lord with the words from Ephesians 1:3-5:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."

Even before God created the first human beings at the beginning of time, according to Genesis 1, in His image in the spiritual body, and according to Genesis 2, from earth into a body of flesh, He had already predestined us by grace to be His sons and daughters. By virtue of the fully accomplished redemption, we were then placed into our eternal destination and are only waiting for the transformation of our bodies. God has made the intentions of His will known to all the world and appointed His own as rightful heirs (Romans 8:17).

Adam was initially created in the image of God in a spiritual body. But in this first state, he had no connection with natural creation. Later, the Lord formed a body of earth for him and set him into a body of flesh. Now, as part of the earthly creation, man was no longer part of the spiritual realm.

The Lord Himself then came out of the spiritual body, in which He was in the Old Testament, into a body of flesh and suffered here in His human body on behalf of mankind and died for us. In Him we have the Redemption, the complete forgiveness of all sins and transgressions according to the riches of His grace. After His Resurrection, the Lord appeared in a transfigured body in which the spiritual and fleshly realms were united. He is risen indeed, revealed Himself to His disciples for forty days, and ate and drank with them. He came and stood in their midst, even though the windows and doors were closed, and said, "Peace be unto you." When doubts arose in their hearts, He said: "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." (Luke 24:39). After the transformation, we will have the same resurrection body, in which both realms, the natural and the supernatural, are united.

In the time of Noah, the LORD God said, "My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh…" [Genesis 6:3] The Spirit of God has been humbled in the children of God, who are a part of the fallen creation. In the supernaturally begotten fleshly body of our Redeemer, the Spirit of God found rest, came upon Him, and dwelt in Him. This is the testimony of God: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." In the beloved and God-pleasing Son, begotten by the Spirit, all true sons and daughters of God, who were also begotten and born again by the Spirit of God, have become the temple of the Holy Spirit, in whom God is well pleased.

God's plan of salvation proceeds as He has ordained it in eternity. This expresses God's eternal purpose which approaches fulfillment towards the end of time. The realization began with the self-manifestation of the Father in the Son and ends with the revelation of the sons of God. Everything happens at the right time: "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."

First of all, God had to have a human body on earth, begotten by Him through the Spirit, in which the spirit, namely the whole fullness of the Godhead, could indeed dwell. By virtue of the accomplished redemption, all those who have been pardoned by God, born again as sons and daughters, receive the same Holy Spirit while they are still in their bodies of flesh. "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts…" (Galatians 4:4-7).

It was God's will to have sons and daughters after the example of His only begotten Son, who would then live forever in perfect harmony and fellowship with Him. In the earthly creation, Satan has succeeded in bringing the first human beings and all after them, through carnal begetting, under his influence. Like Adam and Eve, all human beings have a natural disposition to sin because they are part of the fallen creation. Satan himself has rebelled against God and has thus fallen out of the divine order. Then he also tore mankind out of it. Fellowship with God can only exist in creation with Him as Creator and with Him as Redeemer with the redeemed. The true believers carry in their hearts the certainty of being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ in the consummation, in the Rapture, through the transformation of the body into the image of Jesus Christ.