Word given by brother Pedro Dong, transmitted by Instituto Vida para Todos directly from São Paulo, Brazil, on 03/26/2023. Text not revised by the author.
1. We are very happy for all that the Lord is doing in our time. We have heard good news happening among our children, pre-teens, teens, and youth. They are expanding the ranks of the army of holy youth. As I said yesterday on the PAC and Producing Overcomers live, I believe that God had promised His Son to give Him the nations for His possession if He asked, in Psalm 2. He chose Christ as King over the nations. Long ago God had created one of the chief of angels and given him perfection in creation, both in wisdom and in beauty. This angel was proud and thought he was so perfect that God would need him to be the link between the creator and all creation, yet in Psalm 2, God did not choose him to be this link.
Ps 2:2, 3, 6-9; 110.3 (KJU)
2. Lucifer then, because he was not chosen to be that link, rebelled against God, and wanted to establish his throne to be equal to Him. God then casted him to the ground, out of His presence. Lucifer formed a kingdom called the Kingdom of Darkness, mentioned in Colossians as the Empire of Darkness, and disconnected the man in the garden, through the serpent, with his cunning, putting doubt on the word of God. By accepting the serpent’s offer, man disconnected from God, who is the only truth and reality of this universe. And by disconnecting man from the very truth, reality, from God Himself, man fell into a total void and into the devil’s kingdom of lies and began to live under the kingdom of darkness. And so, all sorts of sin and death entered man and also passed to all men and all sinned. This is the sad story of humanity brought about by Lucifer’s rebellion.
3. God chose His Son, Christ, to be the connecting center of His work. Since then, Satan has raised a rebellion on earth, in man’s rule, against heaven. Since Nimrod, when he began to reign over the earth, through Babel, since then all the kingdoms of this world have been under the rule of Satan. The world lies in the evil one, and the prince of this world is Satan himself. He leads this world and keeps it under his bondage, under sin and every man is sick. He lives in the midst of darkness.
4. But thank God, He chose Christ as King over His Mount Zion. The Son of God begotten in the resurrection is Christ. He was the only begotten and became the firstborn in the resurrection, was glorified, enthroned and raised to the right hand of the Father. According to Hebrews 6, Christ was appointed a high priest, after the Order of Melchizedek, who is now serving in heaven. And from now on, our entire story takes place in the heavens. God needed to hand over the usurped kingdoms of the earth to His Son. To fulfill the promise of Psalms 2, in Psalms 110, God is summoning those who fight for Zion, the day of the convocation is the day of Dawn, the Dawn of the first rays of the Sun, announcing that God is coming. When the Dawn arrives, only the experts notice. And the Lord has announced the arrival of the Dawn through the Prophetic Word. God gave an army of holy youth to His Son. God promised, the Son asked, and God then, today in the final age, is making young people, teenagers, pre-teens and children fall, like drops of dew in the bosom of the Dawn. It is not human work, the dew is not made by any man, only God can send it. With the arrival of the Dawn, the promised army began to form.
5. Things are happening beyond our control. Teenagers who until the other day were sullen, lived anxiously, blaming their parents, and came to the meeting because of their parents’ obligation, or for an exchange of favors, the Lord performed a miracle in their lives. They discovered the miracle of practicing immersion and loving the prophetic word. From so much immersion, these teenagers began to be transformed, they became unrecognizable. They are now a column in God’s army.
6. The leading brothers of the churches need to be sensitive to what the spirit is doing, to be channels to promote. The Lord has used small sticks, for the logs to catch fire! In this year, this will be the work of Spirit. Let’s change our way of living the church life. Our life must be about loving the Word, immersing and obeying this Word, being simple and obedient we will reach many people for the Lord!
Is 42:1-5, 7-15
7. This portion shows what has been happening among us. When Jesus first came to do the work of redemption, to bring us back from eternal perdition and back to God, He came in one way. In what way did He came? God makes a point of showing Satan that Christ is His chosen one. The gospel is not only for the Jews, but also for us Gentiles! God sent His chosen One to promulgate the truth. At his first coming He did not cry out or shout. He came mute, silent, suffered all sorts of injuries and sufferings before his shearers. He found here on earth broken men, infirm and sick. It was difficult work, in enemy territory. What are sea lands? It’s the nations, the Gentiles, it’s us.
8. God formed the heavens for the earth, and the earth to work out His will. The earth serves to produce for God. There are aware people on earth who have the breath of life, the neshama that God breathed into man’s nostrils when He created him. It is these people who will bring forth in the earth, not living by the things of the earth, but by this breath of life. Whoever walks on earth must live by the Spirit, not by things that are seen. This is how we will be productive. What teenagers have been doing is discovering this productive path. Will we adults be too late to practice this path too?
9. Our mission is to bring the blind out of darkness. Christ has already come, already accomplished eternal redemption, generated His church, and cannot wait any longer. We have arrived at the dawning moment; we are in the final age. Let’s end this age by doing His will. Let’s say: “here is a group of people who want to produce His will!”. The New Man that was created, we were living in an old way, living the Old Man life. Brethren, let’s change!
10. Now the Lord wants a new song, the battle cries, a new kind of praise! The Lord wants all continents to live in this reality. Mainly in the desert, in South America. Let’s announce the glory of the Lord. At the second coming, He will come to take possession of His Kingdom. He has the army of holy youth. He will go out like a mighty man and wake up like a man of war and cry out! He will no longer be silent! He will utter a strong battle cry and show strength against his enemies.
11. The Lord was silent for a long time, but at the time of the birth of the Man-Child, the cries cannot be contained. God will no longer hold back, the church will cry out along with Him, and in the midst of these cries the Man-Child will be born, the overcomers! God will remove all obstacles for the church to move forward. We have been led down a path that no one has known. Today we have the freedom to go out into the street and do colporting, like a flat path that was previously not allowed, was a rough path. The Lord will not forsake us!
CI 3.1, 5
12. Everything that has been reported so far concerns those who seek things from above. We do not, like the natural man, offer resistance to the Word. Christ is in control of everything and we are here on earth to produce for Christ! How do we set our minds on things above today? Before there was the concept that we needed to live a holy life, today teenagers have found a way, immersion! This way we can think about things from above, without making an effort all day long. If we are all the time immersed in this word, we will be with the mind in the spirit, and during the day the Lord keeps us in this sphere.
13. In verse 5, Paul wants to show us how terrible it is for us to persist in the religious way. If we continue to be dominated by earthly nature, we will continue in this vicious cycle. The first level of terrible things is gross: fornication, impurity, lustful passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. If we insist on using the religious way and trying to get rid of the earthly nature, we will not succeed. These things keep pulling us down, like the law of gravity. How not to fall into this earthly nature? The solution to this is the cross. Christ has already crucified the world.
Gal 6.14; Mt 6.24; 1 Co 6:18-20; Rom 6.3-5
14. We are not the ones who manage to overcome sin, prostitution, impurity, evil desire, avarice (covetousness), the latter is the bait that Satan casts for man to fall into sin. How to overcome these things? Christ crucified the world, the cosmos, earthly things. Cosmos is comfort, pleasures, everything is crucified. When we live this reality that is in the Word, we will be free from this world. In the Word is the reality of delivering us from earthly nature. The great void of disconnection makes man run after what the world offers. Satan uses man’s need to generate greed for money, culture, entertainment, etc. In the end, man who runs after these things is not satisfied. King Solomon shows us this, he sought wisdom, knowledge, he sought pleasures, joys, women and in the end, he concluded that everything is vanity. This shows Satan’s lie. Man is fated to live by this nature.
15. The Lord showed us about greed in Matthew. Either we serve God or we serve riches. When we love riches, we are worshiping an idol. Sexual immorality is a sin against one’s own body. Don’t let Satan destroy your body, let’s guard against these things. Avarice and covetousness are baits to attract the heart of man, we easily fall for this bait, which gives birth to sin and breeds death. Covetousness is the burning desire to possess or get something, as Cain coveted to be accepted by God as his brother, so he had envy, hatred and resulted in murder. Avarice is paying any price to get what you want. That’s why idols appeared, for man to obtain what he wanted to gain.
16. Our Old Man has already been crucified with Christ and therefore we live in newness of life. But in practice, what brings us into this sphere of resurrection? The immersion! Immersing in the Word, loving the prophetic word, we are led to live in the heavenly sphere.
Cl 3.6, 8-9; Eph 4.22-24
17. Before the conversion we lived in these things, we couldn’t free ourselves. The Lord delivers us from immorality and covetousness through immersion. But the Lord also wants to free us from the second, more subtle level of sins: anger, indignation (hatred), malice (malice), backbiting (speaking badly of one another), obscene language (indecent words), lies. This second level of the old man’s conduct is subtle and spoils the relationship between men. It makes man selfish and makes man the center of everything where everything has to be for his own benefit. God wants to intertwine us with one another, while Satan fights against this desire of God. God’s solution was not to get the Old Man back, but to make the Old Man die, get out of the way, remove. It is not perfecting in the flesh. It is not promoting behavior change.
18. Today, already stripped of the Old Man, who died already, let us live in resurrection! Let’s live in newness of life, renewing our mind, exercising the spirit through immersion in the Word! The mind subject to the spirit, in the part of conscience, is renewed and opens the door for the Lord to work in us! Today we have changed address, we are no longer in the Old Man, but in the New Man. Our course does not come from self-help teaching, but from the nature of the New Man, which is righteousness and holiness.
CI 3.10-11; Ef 2.15-16
19. Is Christ not the image of the invisible God? How do we understand? Thanks to Hebrews. The image of God is the brightness of his glory. Christ brings all the benefits of the Sun to us. He brings God and is the exact expression of His being. When we feel Christ, we have the essence of God stamped on us. We gain not just a little knowledge of the Word, but the essence of God stamped in our hearts. The New Man is created after the image of the One who created him.
20. The New Man is not just a new Christian, but the church. We came out of individualism and were baptized into one Body when we believed in Jesus. The New Man is this body of Christ, a corporate man. Our life only works in this collective. Even for colporting we need the collective. How did Christ get this New Man into the collective? The cross destroyed the enmity of the peoples of the earth and made us a New Man. New in Greek is neos. Neos is new age, recent. The New Man is Kainos in nature, quality and form. We are New Man in both ways.
21. In the New Man there is no place for man in his natural state: the Greek with his wisdom, the Jew with his signs. In the New Man, there is neither Greek nor Jew. There is no circumcision of the Jewish religion. This has to do with our difference in creed and religious practices. Barbarian and Scythian refer to ethnic divisions. Slaves and free the difference of alcohol. And even in the church life we have these things, all of which lead to divisions. But thank God in the New Man we don’t have that anymore! All differences are nullified and replaced by Christ through a metabolic transformation! In the New Man Christ is all in all!
22. God desires to dispense, through the river of grace, Christ Himself to us and fill every void, formed due to the fall of the Old Man. God wants to fill these empty spaces with Christ! And as a result, we will be Christ! With Christ being all in all, we will be filled up to the fullness of God. In this way His Kingdom will be established here on earth.