Hi Mike,

I have a question for you but first I want to tell you about our spiritual journey that has led us to you. I’m sure it will sound familiar to you. I want to keep this email as short as I can but it will not be easy.
After 28 years in the Catholic church we were baptized into the Worldwide Church in 1966. We left the WCG in 1978. For the next 20- some years we had no affiliation with any church. During that period universal salvation made sense to me, but I knew of no one that taught it. Then around 2002 a friend of mine gave me some literature and audio tapes with which I was impressed.
After about three years of these teachings, I began to wonder about the “Lake of Fire” and the teaching that the lake was a future literal event. That made no sense to me, and I began a research on it. I became convinced that the “Lake of Fire” was spiritual, and I emailed my thoughts to the author of the literature I had read. He replied with a blistering response which surprised and shocked me. During this time my friend was holding bible meetings each month at a local restaurant with about a dozen people. A lady from the meeting had attended a Concordant bible study in Kentucky and gave me from a universal reconciliation site.
I consumed all of those writings with great excitement. After breaking off from our local concordant meetings, I started having meetings in my home. We had 8 to 12 people attending each month.
About 1-1/2 years ago I was having a problem with the teaching on the web site I mentioned that God does not make us sin, especially the scriptures that “All is of God”, God knows the end from the beginning and several others. I wrote a private email and I quoted to him where it was claimed that God does not make us sin and on another report which said all of our sins are pre- determined. I said that “sounds” like a contradiction. Here’s a portion of the response:

“I am not sure why people try to find contradictions and loopholes in MY writings.
My writings are really not “my” writings. I teach what I learned from the Scriptures. I didn’t learn these things on my own, neither do I make them up. God is the Creator of all. He knows all.

I was very disappointed in the response. I was NOT trying to find contradictions in his writings. I truly wanted to know the truth of the matter so I would have the ability to explain it to someone else if that need ever arose.
Around this time I was introduced to your web site. I did a short review of it but nothing clicked at the time. Then this past mid- December I went back into your web site to see what your opinion was on whether or not God “makes” us sin and was pleased to see your explanation that indeed “All is of God.”
I have to date listened to 20 of your audio tapes and read several articles. Two weeks ago we held a bible study in my home with 6 in attendance. We watched your video “Purpose of the Eons – Let us Make Man.” Also I passed out 8 reports you have written. (Some in attendance do not have a computer to access your web site). This brings me to the question that follows.
I listened to your audio “How Do We Compare Spiritual With Spiritual?” about a month ago. In it you said that if anyone can understand a spiritual concept without a physical example they were to email you and explain how that could be done. You said it is impossible to do so. One needs a physical example. I was 100% in agreement with you.
Then I listened to “How The Holy Spirit Teaches Comparing Spiritual With Spiritual” Part 1 and 2 and others and got the sense you might no longer believe you need a physical example to understand a spiritual meaning. I hope I’m wrong on my interpretation. I was also having a problem understanding your teaching of how the Holy Spirit teaches comparing spiritual with spiritual. I decided to do some research on the internet on 1Co 2:13.
Most of what is written in the document I found is summarized under the paragraph “Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible” where it states: “…. should be rendered to spiritual men, and not be referred to spiritual things. The passage therefore should be thus translated: Explaining spiritual things to spiritual persons.”
It’s obvious to me that scripture is FULL of physical examples that have spiritual meaning. For example you have said that the oil that was poured over Aaron’s head flowed down over his beard and then over his body. You said the oil (physical) was symbolic of God’s Holy Spirit. (Spiritual). Another time you said the stingers (physical) on the scorpions mentioned in Revelation is symbolic of Babylon’s false teachings (Spiritual). Every time I listen to one of your audios I hear you often mention something physical that has a spiritual meaning.
Another example of where the physical is used to explain a hidden spiritual concept is the parables. The parables are physical examples (the sower of seed, the birds eat the seed, some fell on rocky places, the sun scorched the seed, etc.) whose spiritual meaning is the Kingdom of God. But to understand the spiritual, God must open the minds of spiritual men to understand the spiritual.
So the purpose of my email to you is this. Do you still believe you need a physical example that represents a spiritual concept? It seems to me we do since scripture is physical words that have spiritual meanings.
Sorry I made this email so long, but it was the best I could do. I hope you have time to answer, but if not I’ll understand.
Thank you and God bless you and your work,

G____

Hi G____,

Thank you for sharing your story with me. Our journeys have very much in common.
The only differences being that I started out a Pentecostal and you a Catholic. But I did go from my Pentecostal church into the WWCG from 63 to 73. I left the WWCG when I began to see the doctrine of universal salvation. It took me two whole years with no Bible software back then for me to understand the word ‘aion’. I wanted to believe that God would save all men, but I could not simply dismiss all those ‘forever and ever’, ‘eternity’, and ‘everlasting’ scriptures with which I had grown up.
But I did not go directly into the Concordant Conferences from WCG. Instead I spent about 25 years or so working 16 hours a day and never darkening the door of any church.
I had been reading much of A. E. Knoch’s material during that time, and it all led me to buy into his doctrine. But it amounts to nothing less than turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and that was exactly what I did for several disastrous years of my life.

Jdg 1:4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

That certainly does “deny Christ”, and worse that that, it blasphemes His name. But God was merciful and saw fit to crush me rather than leave me physically prospering in Babylon. I finally came to see that ‘grace’ has a verb function as well as being a noun.

Tit 2:11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
Tit 2:12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

I was shocked to learn that the word translated ‘teaching’ is not ‘didasko’, which means ‘to teach’, but is ‘paideuo’ which means ‘to chasten’. Being at the time in the process of being crushed to powder and chastened of my own iniquities, I was able to look behind me and see the voice that was speaking to me in such clear ‘language’.

Jer 2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
Rev 1:10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
Rev 1:12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;

No one understands the mysteries hidden in words which “compare spiritual things with spiritual” as well as the person who has just lived those words in his life and is now able to “turn” and “see the voice… behind” himself.
So about 1993 or 1994 I began to come out of the vomit I had returned to and to see that Mr. Knoch’s ‘there is no law, period’ doctrine was dead wrong, and that “the law of Christ” was very much in force.

Gal 6:2 Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

I was still attending Concordant Conferences, but I was not long for that fellowship. One of the last things I learned before leaving that fellowship was that the lake of fire is not literal, but was actually the word of God within the mouths of His elect. I do not mean that they taught me that, but that I came to see that before I left their fellowship. It made for some heated discussions.
I had already written the papers on Strong Delusion, Rightly Dividing, and The Law of Moses Versus The Law of The Spirit. At the insistence of my son, I had started my web page in 1997 with those three papers.
Now to answer your question, Yes, I still believe we must have physical things to speak of spiritual things.

Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the [ physical] things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Having said that, I must say that I do not agree with Clarke’s Commentary which you mention here.

“… should be rendered to spiritual men, and not be referred to spiritual things. The passage therefore should be thus translated: Explaining spiritual things to spiritual persons.”

The word ‘persons’ is nowhere to be found in the Greek and neither is the word ‘explaining’. ‘Comparing’ is a good translation, and ‘spiritual with spiritual’ is also a very good translation. The word ‘things’ is not in the Greek in this verse.
Let me demonstrate how we must “compare spiritual with spiritual” while using words whose primary meaning is physical.
If I tell you that Christ is “the lamb of God”, you know that I am not speaking of a physical ‘lamb’, but a spiritual ‘lamb’, typified by a word which, in physical terms, has nothing to do with Christ.
Now who am I talking about when I speak of Christ Himself? Again I must speak of a physical man who was a type of “the new man… the last Adam”. Again, when I use the name ‘Adam’, I simply must use the name of a physical man who physically existed, and yet I am not referring to a physical man at all because:

2Co 5:15 And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.
2Co 5:16 Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

So there it is, if you are given to receive it. “All things are become new” means that you no longer know any man after the flesh, not even Christ, who though he was flesh, He was, as such, nothing more than a type of “the last Adam… the new man”.

1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Eph 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

To the spiritually minded our “old man” is just as much a spiritual statement as is our “new man”. The first is the son of his spiritual father the devil, and the last is the son of His spiritual Father, God.
So I hope all of this has served to demonstrate that I have not contradicted myself at all by saying that “the holy spirit teaches comparing spiritual with spiritual”, and at the same time saying we will not understand spiritual matters while thinking that Christ is a physical lamb or a physical man; or that physical Jerusalem has anything at all in common with spiritual “Jerusalem above which is the mother of us all”. We must “compare spiritual types with spiritual realities by using words which also happen to describe physical things.
Your brother in Christ,
Mike