Ghosts should not be feared but evil spirits mus be! Now, consider the second part on the subject of spirits and ghosts:
Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth. (Rev 2:16)… “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (Rev 3:16)
Mankind was made in the Image of God, and when God was made Flesh, he was made into the image of man for both Jesus and Adam are in the Image of God: “(The Son) in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” (Col 1:14-15).
Hopefully, by now, the reader is either enlightened or confused. The assumption for now is enlightenment. You know what you look like, and if you have been reborn a Christian, the Spirit of God in you would look like you but be as Jesus. You are the Temple of God and Jesus resides in your soul.
But how can that be? When Jesus died, He gave up the Ghost. Jesus just would not die, so the centurion helped him. He pierced Jesus in the side with a lance, and out of His belly flowed Living Water and blood. Mankind received both the Spirit of God on the earth as well as the DNA of Jesus. When that happened, look at the follow-up:
46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit:” and having said thus, He gave up the ghost. 47 Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, “Certainly this was a righteous man.” (Luke 23:46-47)
The “Ghost of Jesus” was spilt into the world for the preservation of the human species. Luke and the others wrote that Jesus “gave up the Ghost.” There were witnesses when the vessel of Jesus was filled with the Spirit, in “bodily shape” and there were witnesses that Jesus gave up that same Spirit, with His shape.
Death transformed Jesus. The Spirit with which God endowed in Jesus to make Him peculiarly God, with death, was transformed into the Holy Ghost, to wit:
38 He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:38-39).
The “living water” is pneuma in the Greek therein. Jesus was “glorified” after His death. The Holy Spirit of God (Pneuma) experienced death inside the Vessel of Jesus. Once that Pneuma was breathed out as Living Water, then the substance changed. No longer was that Spirit in the Image of the Invisible God but in the Image of God in the Flesh.
A ghost is a “spirit of a dead man” (Merriam- Webster Dictionary). The Holy Ghost of Jesus is the Spirit of the dead Jesus.
Now read about Abraham when he “gave up the ghost”:
7 And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years. 8 Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. (Gen 25:7-8)
The previous commentary was about the Holy Ghost. Essentially, the Holy Ghost is the Holy Spirit of God who has experienced humanity. With Jesus, when he was baptized, only He received the Holy Ghost and it remained on Him, according to John’s baptism of Jesus: “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost” (John 1:33).
The Holy Spirit (pneuma; wind) came down on Jesus with the motion of a dove, but in “bodily shape”. The Holy Spirit of God was without form much as the earth in the beginning. [i] As the Spirit of God entered Jesus, it took on His form. Perhaps, that occurs in those born again as well.
Throughout His ministry, Jesus was filled with the Holy Ghost; not a “ghost” yet bet the embodied Spirit of God. When Jesus died, He gave up the Ghost. Death changed the embodied Spirit to a disembodied Spirit. It seems that Abraham had the same experience!
When Lot was delivered from Sodom’s destruction, it was by two angles leading him out. He said to one of them, “Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight” (Gen 19:19). Lot asked the angel to behold something… see what just happened? Because he had served the Lord and trusted in Him, Lot found grace. And it was witnessed by his “Lord”, the angel. That angel had beheld the Holy Spirit entering unto Lot, taking on Lot’s bodily shape.
Just as Eve was from Adam, Lot was from Abraham. Not only was the Promise for Abraham’s seed but Haran’s as well. Abraham’s brother, Haran, worshipped God just as Abraham, and he too left his father’s idols. The Covenant with Abraham covered Lot as well. That is grace. Lot had not deserved the Covenant but was still covered because of the faith of Abraham.
Abraham found grace a little differently than Lot. His grace was found when He substituted the Image of the One True God for all the images of the idols of his father. “And he (Abram) believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen 15:6). That belief was so strong that it was counted to him as faith. “Belief” then has intensity. Great faith resulted from Abraham finding grace.
Where was grace found by Abraham? “After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision” (Gen 15:1). “The Word of the Lord” is whom? The Word is Jesus! [ii]
What were “these things” for which Abraham saw Jesus as the Word of the Lord? Abraham had told the king of Sodom, “I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth” (Gen 14:22). When did he do that? Melchizidek had served Abram bread and wine. [iii] Abram had found grace when the Priest, Melchizedek served him. Melchizedek was priest of salem (Peace), not Jebus (later named Jerusalem). Jesus, in glorious Flesh had served Abram. There, Abram found grace because he found Jesus!
When Abram found grace, he was born again; God changed his name from Abram to Abraham to better fit the new person. That new person had the Holy Spirit of God in Abraham’s bodily shape. At the age of 175 years, Abraham gave up the Ghost that was in him. The Spirit of God had resided in Abraham all that time because of Abraham’s great faith.
When Abram found grace, he found the Spirit of God. Just as with Jesus, because Abram was “baptized” in blood, (circumcision), the blood remained on him as the Spirit of God — the Spirit who upon entering Abram took on the shape of the new person, Abraham. He did not even get near the water, but only the “blood” and “body” of Jesus that Melchizedek presented to him. Still, to this day, it is not by water but by the blood and body of Jesus. The body is 80% water. It was by the blood and water of Jesus that is efficacious to be born again.
When Abraham “gave up the Ghost” that loss was his gain. [iv] His flesh went back to the dust from which it came, but the Ghost of Abraham went somewhere.
Years later, Lazarus died and where did he go upon death? To his gain, “And it came to pass, that the beggar (Lazarus) died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom” (Luke 16:22). The Ghost of Abraham has gone to Paradise in the heaven and was separated by a chasm from the rich man who was in Hell. With that said, care must be taken about where in Heaven of which Christians pray!
When Abraham was on his deathbed, The Will of Abraham, states that his grandson, Israel, sat against him on his deathbed. Israel, upon Abraham’s decease, felt safe in Abraham’s bosom just as Lazarus was saved unto the same.
Where did the Holy Ghost that looked like Abraham go? “It” went to Paradise in the Third Heaven. Just as Abraham is in comfort there in the Bosom of Jesus, Lazarus is in the comfort of Abraham.
Why is that? Abraham only saw Jesus in Melchizedek. Paul wrote of the importance
of that:
1 For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; 2 To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; 3 Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually. (Heb 7:1-3)
In studying the Old Testament, I concluded that Melchizedek was not King of Jerusalem, but King of Peace. Well, Jesus is Peace on Earth, Good Will toward men. [v] Melchizedek, just as hypothesized, is Jesus in glorified Flesh before He was born in human flesh. He is the “Alpha” and “Omega”(LORD GOD) “having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.”
Paul was even clear about Salem; that he was “King of Salem, which is, King of Peace.” Abraham found grace when he saw Jesus. “Seeing” Jesus as God is the Way to eternal life. The Greeks, during the time of Jesus, said, “Sir, we would see Jesus” [vi] Why, to see Jesus? To find grace for the reward of eternal life. Abraham tithed to the “Face of God”. He only needed to see Jesus! But he understood that he was looking at the Face of God!
Melchizedek “comforted” Abram with bread and wine, and when his Ghost left him, Melchizedek would be there to Comfort Abraham in His Bosom. The Ghost of Abraham has a bosom just as the person, Abraham. The Ghost of Christians is Christ in them. The shape of men is the shape of the Temples of God. When alive, Christians should look like the Temple they are: “What?” Marvel not! “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Cor 6:19).
The temple in Lazarus was comforted in the Temple of Abraham. Abraham was the true Temple, not Solomon’s! Why did God not need a house? Because God was building for Himself a House with Abraham and his seed. Paul knew scripture well:
19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; 20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; 21 In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. (Ephes 2:19-21)
Of course, the “prophets” of old, were the base of the foundation of the
Invisible Temple. Adam was the first, and Noah the second “prophet”, followed
by Abraham as the third. Why study Adam, Noah, and Abraham? Because God was
building a “Spiritual House” for Himself with them as
the lively stones” [vii]
Abraham was laying the foundation of the Church way back then: “Fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.” When Abraham gave up the Ghost, that was building a Spiritual House in Paradise. Just as God said, “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
Abraham was preparing a place for his seed! Melchizedek was “christening” the House for us, a mansion in His House.
One last comment: Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom in heavenly Paradise,
just as Adam was in the LORD GOD’s Bosom in the Garden Paradise. Adam shared
the Spirit of God and Eve was in his bosom. It turned out that Lot was in Abraham's bosom in the world just as Lazarus was in heaven. Could it be that the land of Canaan was Paradise on Earth?
Well, Lazarus was the same way; Abraham shared his spiritual bosom with Lazarus to comfort him. In like manner, when Jesus gave up His Ghost, blood and water sprinkled the earth, and all the world can be comforted in Jesus’s Bosom just as when Melchizedek comforted (Christ-ened) Abraham with His Body and Blood.
(picture credit: reddit.com; "The Invisible Church in Italy")
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