Word given by brother Pedro Dong, transmitted by Instituto Vida para Todos directly from São Paulo, Brazil, on 19/03/2023. Text not revised by the author.
1. We are overjoyed that the Lord has restored the church life. We are like those who dream. This week, we are receiving several brothers from region 2 of Brazil who make up the churches of 4 states: Pará, Amapá, Maranhão and Piauí. We are also receiving the brothers from the state of Tocantins, located in region 3. The brothers from Foz do Iguaçu and Southern Cone are also with us. I would especially like to mention the brothers of Africa. It is impressive, with just three months of operation of the GPC in Congo, we already have 2,600 books sown in that country. As a result of Colportage, they have already set aside $5,000 for book printing. The brothers from Kenya have also been with us for some time and the Lord will bless that country. Ugandan brothers are also with us. Brother Willian has a school with 460 students and we want to take the opportunity to prepare this school and make several of these students GPCers, as well as colporteurs for this work in Uganda.
2. The Lord is doing great things in our midst, for He wants to come back. Not that we are the best, maybe we are the worst. We are the workers of the last hour. When David fled from Saul, he took refuge in the cave of Adullam and those who formed his army were in distress, they were in debt and bitter in spirit. By the standard of God’s servants in other times, we may not qualify. However, He needs workers to bring this age to an end. The Lord then went to seek the lame, the blind and the paralyzed at the crossroads. Thank God! God has made us useful in His hands.
3. We have a very dedicated group for the improvement of colporting, the brothers of the PAC (Advanced Colporting Outpost). They are working hard and the Lord has given them grace to work in rest. They are happy and glad, for they labor in God’s rest. The leading brothers of the churches have helped us to show that what we preserve, our natural ability, what we know how to do and manage, can become our crutches and buoys.
Col 3:1-4
4. Who believes that they have already been risen with Christ? Therefore, it no longer makes sense to look for things here on earth. If we have already risen, let us seek things from above. Don’t put your mind on things here on earth anymore, like supporting the family, earning money, legitimate things that can enslave us. We have already died to the things of the earth and to the flesh. We no longer need to live in sin or as a slave to sin, for our flesh has been crucified with Christ and our life is hidden in God. The experience of the coworker brothers when they pass through the PAC is that everything they do on automatic, in the earthly sphere, when subjected to pressure from the street, does not work, needing to appeal to things from above. At that moment, what works is the prophetic word, what the Lord gave us at the moment. Even our prayer often doesn’t work on the street. You don’t have to invent anything, but use the Word that you have immersed. Be simple.
5. A colporteur came to a man, “May I pray for you?” Yes, pray for my wife. We quickly identify that there is a problem between the couple and can be led to pray in the traditional way: “Lord, bless this couple. If they are in trouble, heal and cure.” No, the colporteur used the Word he had immersed in: “Lord, take away and pull down all this man’s strongholds and break down all his resistances.” The man said: “It was what I needed”. We need to live in the realm of faith. Our day to day, even if you are not a colporteur, can be lived in the sphere of faith. What is the secret? Loving the prophetic word and believing that this word is from God and meets our need today. Therefore, I immerse myself and exercise my spirit with the word. This Word moves my mind and it is renewed, it opens the door for the Word to enter my soul and my life begins to change. Now my being is governed by the Spirit, by the Word. At that moment, I am placed under pressure from the street. “But I’m not a colporteur.” In your office there may also be pressure from the street. The Lord says: “pray for your colleague”. Then you pray what you have immersed in the Word. Maybe you think he won’t understand, but he’ll tell you it was exactly what he needed. People will say: “Why do you care about me?”; “No one had cared about my son, but you did”; “You have the love of God”. This is the fabric of love being woven by God. This is building up the church.
2 Co 10
6. Building up in the past was understood so theoretically by us: serving together, denying our soul-life, and learning to build up together. Today it is more practical: prophetic word, immersion in the word and pressure to practice the Word. At that moment the experience of love arises. The brothers who are perfected in the PAC, invariably tell me that there is an inexplicable love for the brothers who perfected it. If you live like this, you will love your wife and husband more, solving problems in the family. God’s love solves everything. That’s what the church needs. This model can be passed on to the entire church. So, indeed, let us be built up in love and hasten the Lord’s return. May the Lord count on you? Don’t let the fire of the spirit go out within you. Let’s dive into the Word on a day to day basis and be obedient. Thus, we will be immersed in love. When our obedience is complete, the Lord will be ready to punish all disobedience, that is, He will be able to return and we will enter the millennial kingdom to rule with Christ for a thousand years. I get motivated by it. This hope is the perseverance of my hope.
MESSAGE 17
Jn 1:1-2, 14, 18 KJU
7. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He, the Word, was in the beginning with God.” This verse shows evidence that this principle refers to eternity past before creation came into being. There was God the Father, and the Word was in the beginning with God. This shows that Christ was the only begotten Son of the Father. In eternity past, who was the Son? The word. Since in eternity past He still had no humanity, had not become a man, He was the only begotten Son of God. One day the Word became flesh and became the likeness of sin. The Word came full of grace and truth. All saw His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, which was from eternity past. Christ is the Word because He was prepared to be the communication center between heaven and earth. God wanted to create the earth, but before creating it, He prepared His Own Son to be the Word. The word is for communication. Christ is the Word.
Jn 1:51
8. This Word became the Son of Man. He was the only begotten Son, but He became flesh and became the Son of Man. Why? Because God wants to communicate with man, for the heavens to communicate with the earth. Where the Son of Man is, there heaven is open. Angels of God ascended and descended. Here it does not say that they went down and up, but that they went up and down, that is, the starting point from earth to heaven is the Son of Man. This actually concerns Jacob’s dream.
Gen 28:11-18
9. Jacob fled from his brother Esau who wanted to kill him. Jacob took a stone as a pillow and dreamed: “And behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, the top of which reached to heaven, and angels were ascending and descending on that ladder.” Who is this ladder? Christ, the Son of Man who is the Word. Jacob said: “The Lord is in this place and I didn’t know it”. What place? The place where he took the stone. Where did this revelation come from that that place is the house of God? The house today is the church. Where is the ladder? It is in the house of God. When God appeared to him, what did he do? That stone he used as a pillow was set up as a pillar and on it Jacob poured oil. The oil is the representation of the Spirit of God. Here it typifies the building up of the church. That place was the house of God, the gate of heaven. You are in the house of God.
10. When you go out into the street to preach the gospel, you are not going out alone, but on behalf of the church. When you say “May I pray for you?”, you are connecting that person to heaven, because the church is the door of heaven and the one who connects people to heaven is Christ. Christ is the connector, the ladder, the communication center between earth and heaven. It is not your ability to speak the message that connects people to heaven, but Christ. Use the Word of Christ. What the Lord spoke to you, use to connect people. For this, He needed to be made flesh.
Jn 1:14 and Gen 3
11. The serpent, with his cunning, corrupted the woman’s mind and made her doubt the Word of God. Through this hesitation of mind, he was able to lure it to an alternative that would replace God, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By it, man no longer needs God to live and, thus, disconnected from God-Him, the only Truth of the universe. Thus, in this way, man is connected with nothingness, emptiness, falsehood and lies. God had to send His own Son to become a man, flesh. Flesh is not a positive term. Man, after the fall, became carnal. Jesus needed to become flesh.
Heb 2:14-15
12. The man God desires Christ to save is the man made up of flesh and blood. Satan dominates man by the fear of death. Men build idols out of fear of death. In Taiwan, on the curvy roads where cars crash, you can see money bought in pagan temples to offer to demons and idols. “I’m going to buy for my safety throwing this money in the places where I need to avoid accidents”. Jesus came to take us out of this bondage by becoming flesh. All flesh is sinful. How could Jesus come to earth to save man from sin by taking flesh? How can it?
Rm 8:3
13. There is nothing left to do for the flesh. He took on the likeness of sinful flesh. Jesus needed to become flesh to save us, but He was not born of the will of the flesh, of a father and a mother. It came from the conception of the Spirit in Mary. He became the likeness of sinful flesh, He had the appearance, but in Him there was no sin. When this likeness of the flesh went to the cross, God saw that the flesh had gone to the cross and thus condemned God, in the flesh, the sin.
Php 2:5-8; Heb 1:3
14. Jesus Christ is God and the Word. He is the Word that was in the beginning with God. In the complete Jewish Bible translation: “Christ, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be maintained by force, that is, He did not withstand the abasement of being a man. He did not seek to keep Himself by force like God, but emptied Himself.” This form of God is not the ‘shape’, the appearance, but the image of the invisible God. Christ is the radiance of glory and God is glory itself. What is Sunshine? The sun’s rays, heat and light. God is the sun and man cannot get close to the sun, but Christ brought God to us, for He is the radiance of glory. Christ is also the exact expression of His being. God has His substance and Christ brought the stamp, the substance of God to engrave God Himself within us. God abides in our hearts, dwelling in our hearts through the Word. He was in the form of God, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave. The worst criminals in the Roman Empire were sentenced to death on a wooden stake by the side of the road. People saw that suffering as an example for not engaging in crime. Jesus was crucified like a criminal. He became obedient to death. The end of God’s work is our obedience. We are immersing ourselves in the Word so that we may finally be obedient.
Heb 5:7-9
15. Faith is to bring man to obedience. God’s ultimate goal is for us to walk the same path as Jesus here on earth. Being God, as a man, he needed to learn the main lesson: the obedience of death. It is not easy for man to obey. In the garden of Gethsemane, He prayed to the Father and was extremely distressed: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. But not as I want, but as you want”. He was pushed to the human limit and surrendered to the Father through obedience. What Christ wants to do with the church is to lead us to obedience, the end result of church building and the fabric of love.
Heb 2:5
16. “What is man that You are mindful of him? Or the son of man, that you visit him?”. Do you know what man this is? You and me. In chapter 1 of Hebrews it shows that it was not angels, for they are ministers appointed to serve those who will inherit salvation, but us who are being prepared to reign in the world to come. This privilege is not of angels, but of men. Man cannot yet subdue things, for he has not yet learned obedience. What are we doing here through the prophetic word and immersion? Learning obedience. What does the Lord want from you? Go to the street? Obedience. Contact that person? Obedience. Take care of that person? Obedience. Immersion to cure marriage problem? Obedience. When the building comes to an end, obedience will come and the Lord will be able to return, for He wants to prepare man to govern the world to come. Who will take us there? He who has already been crowned in the resurrection. Christ is our captain of salvation. He walked the path of obedience, and through immersion in the prophetic word, we walk the same path of obedience.
Php 2:8-11; Ac 2:22-24, 36; Heb 5:5-6, 10
17. He was made both Lord and Christ. When He learned obedience to the extreme, God exalted Him and made Him Lord and Christ. Christ did not remain in death, for God raised him up. Christ was glorified by God. Christ did not glorify Himself. When was Christ glorified? When did God the Father glorify Him? At the resurrection, the moment God said, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” At that time, Christ was begotten as the firstborn Son of God. In eternity past He is the only begotten Son of God, but in the resurrection He was glorified and became the first begotten Son of God. He was appointed high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Heb 8:1-2; 9:24; 4:14-16
18. Where is Christ? In the heavens. He is at the right hand of the Majesty’s throne. He is the high priest after the order of Melchizedek. The true tabernacle is in heaven. Where is Christ? At the right hand of God. He is serving for us as a high priest. He is ministering to God in the heavenly temple. What a grace and gift from God! We have a high priest who looks after our interests in heaven. He was also a man and knows our weaknesses. He can sympathize with our weaknesses and infirmities. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace in heaven. How can we get to heaven? Through our spirit, our faith, the ladder that can take us to heaven.
Rev 4:2; 22:1; Rm 8:34
19. John was taken into a spiritual realm. He no longer lived for the things of the earth. Raise your head, don’t look at the floor. Take the ladder and go to heaven. The throne is in heaven, from which flows the river of the water of life. Christ is risen and is at the right hand of God. Who can condemn us if Christ died for us? Someone may accuse us before God that we are sinners, but Christ died for us. You can say to the accuser, “Yes, I am a sinner and a failure, but that sinner is dead with Christ.” Who rose and died for us was Christ who is at the right hand of God interceding for us.
Col 3:1
20. Were you resurrected? Transported to where? To heaven, where there is the reality of the Christian life. Don’t stay here on earth things, let’s go to heaven. How can we go to heaven? God has given us a gift, faith. Through faith, through the exercise of faith, we are transported to heaven, for in Him we have the ladder. We use faith to gain access to things from heaven. In faith is Christ the connector. With the exercise of faith, we don’t live for the things that are seen, abilities, but to access things from heaven. He is seated at the right hand of God, in the highest place in the universe. He was lifted up above all principality, power, dominion, might, and every name that can be named. Let’s live in this sphere. Sometimes, doing colporting work, we are overwhelmed by the coldness of people. When you are affected, you are discouraged. God wants to take you into the realm of faith where all things are subdued and under His feet. Don’t be afraid, you have ultimate authority. You are above all power and authority. Let’s live in this sphere!.
Col 3:2-3; Rm 6
21. Don’t set your mind on the flesh, on the visible things, but on the heavenly reality. You are already dead to the world. Your flesh was crucified with passions and lusts. We are no longer of this world, for we have already died to it. We must live where Christ lives. If we live in the resurrection, up in heaven, then our life is hidden with Christ in God. This life we live today is the life we live in the resurrection. We have been united with Christ in resurrection so that we may walk in newness of life. When we are caught up in the resurrection, our lives are lived in heaven. That life is hidden in Christ. People here on earth cannot see it. No one can see the reality of your life.
22. You go to the streets, pray for people, save people, take people away from their meaningless life, love the brethren and build the church. This life is the labor of love, sacrifice and surrender. The suffering of a mother to raise a child, only she knows. Not only during the nine months of pregnancy, but after birth, she spends sleepless nights changing diapers, breastfeeding. She has no right to be sick. After becomes a child, a teenager, there are other types of suffering. Therefore, the salvation of teenagers is the teenagers home. Our teenagers are happy and living in another sphere. In adulthood, the mother still worries about her child. This sacrifice no one understands. This illustration shows evidence of the love that God has put in our hearts to go out into the streets and save people. This requires a labor of love, sacrifice, delivery, tribulations and suffering. No one knows these things, but the Lord knows, for this life is hidden in Christ.
This resurrection life, in the sphere above, men of the world do not understand. Sometimes, colporteurs testify of people who reject prayer and send the colporteur to study, work, go to the ‘club’. People don’t understand, because our life is hidden in God. At the coming of Christ, the story of love being woven will be exposed and people will understand. You don’t need to cry or vindicate something, for the Lord understands us. Our life is hidden in heaven and when Christ appears, we will appear with Him in glory. Paul wanted to show the Colossians that we already died with Christ and rose with Him. The solution to man’s problems is not on earth, in gnosticism, in asceticism, in repressing the flesh to overcome sensuality. The philosophy of the Gnostics and ascetics in seeking holiness is nothing but the wisdom of man, but the gospel that Paul preached was the Word of the cross, foolishness to those who are lost. Paul preached the Word out of the box, madness for men, Greeks and Jews looking for signs.
1 Co 1:17-25; Jn 3:5-6, 8; Rm 8:14; Rm 10:8-9
23. What we do is the foolishness of preaching and faith. Just believe the Word. Our solution is the cross. Don’t serve God with your wisdom, use the madness of the Word. Get out of the box. Jesus said to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it wants, you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going”. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. If we still live by our logical mind, we are not children of God, we are not walking according to the Spirit. If we do this madness that Paul preached, the madness of the cross, and follow the Spirit, we are last-hour workers. The reconnection of man takes place in the spiritual and heavenly sphere. We are born of the Spirit and enter the sphere of God. The word of faith we preach is confessing with your mouth and believing with your heart that God raised Him from the dead. The Christian life is a life of faith, lived in the spiritual and heavenly sphere. Never again must we live in the earthly realm, but in the heavenly realm. Every man who is born of the Spirit no longer lives by the rules of man, of the earth, but by the Spirit.
24. The key to living in spiritual reality is our mind. If we live in our minds, leaning on the flesh, we will live the same life that leans on the flesh. At best, we incline our minds to religious things and think we have produced something for God. Our mind, turned to religious things, does not generate anything for God. How to put the mind in the Spirit? Thank God! He has given us the prophetic word. We believe in it and immerse ourselves to incline the mind to the spirit in order to gain life and peace. This mind opens the door to spiritual things for the soul. So let’s start living in the reality from above.
Col 3:4; Eph 3:19
25. By the flowing river of grace, Christ is filling us with all the truth and reality of God. He is filling every void in our being with the very reality of God, Christ Himself, even the fullness of Him. What is happening through immersion and obedience to the Word? We are being filled, every void of our being, with Christ unto the fullness of God. Christ Himself is our life as a subjective experience. When Christ appears, those who seek things from above today, do not put their minds on earth, actively participate in building the network of love that is the building of the church, will be manifested together with Him. When Christ appears, all of God’s work will be manifested, and you who have participated in God’s work will be manifested with Christ in glory. That’s why it’s worth not living like all men numb by the things of the earth. Let’s seek things from above, let’s live immersing ourselves in the Word, practicing the Word and building a network of love. No one knows what is happening, as it is happening in the heavens, but we do. We are building something in heaven, and when Christ arrives on earth, He will arrive in His glory and we will be glorified with Him.
1 Co 13:8-13
26. All we’re doing here is a love story. Love is the only item that never ends. If there is prophecy, it will end one day. Today, we are still on earth and the things that happen in our lives are in heaven. Therefore, we know in part and we prophesy in part. We are not yet in heaven, but we live in heaven, for the reality of our life is in heaven. However, God has not yet taken us to glory. We are still in the imperfect earth, but we have already built what is perfect. This word mirror, in some versions, is translated as window. We still see the things of God through a window, the window of faith, through which we see and access the things of God. On that day we shall see face to face.
1 Jn 3:1-2
27. The world does not know us, for our life is hidden with Christ. The world didn’t know Him, but we know Him. Apparently, we are one more being humiliated by them, but one day they will see what we are building in the celestial sphere, the story of love, the will of God being done. When Christ appears, what we are will also be made manifest, everything we have done in Christ will be made manifest, our life that is hidden in Christ will be made manifest. We will be manifested together with Him in glory. It’s worth living this life of sacrifices, surrender, suffering, but doing God’s will.
Jesus is the Lord!