THE HEAVENLY VISION Week 4 Day 2 The Vision of the Self Morning Nourishment Matt. 16:23 ... Get behind Me, Satan!...for you are not setting your mind on the things of God... Gen. 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other animal of the field that Jehovah God had made. And he said to the woman, Did God really say, You shall not eat of any tree of the garden? Gen. 3:4 And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die! The self is the embodiment of Satan. As Christ is the embodiment of God, so the self is the embodiment of Satan. This is indicated by the fact that the Lord Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan!” The Lord was speaking to Peter, yet He called Peter Satan because Satan was embodied in Peter. Where was Satan embodied? Satan was embodied in Peter’s soul by occupying his mind. The mind is the leading part of the soul and the representative of the soul. To take over a person’s mind is to take over the entire person. The body became the flesh because something of Satan—sin—was injected into it....The soul became the self when something of Satan was added to the soul. The thing that was added to the soul was the thought, or the mind, of Satan. Therefore, the self is the soul plus the satanic mind, the mind of Satan. When the mind, the thought, of Satan was injected into the human soul, the human soul was corrupted and became the self [cf. Gen. 3:1-6]. (The Heavenly Vision, pp. 40-41) Today’s Reading In the soul there is the self, in the self there is the mind, and in the mind there is the opinion. Just as sin is something of Satan in the body, the self is something of Satan in the soul expressed mostly through the opinions. If we learn this lesson, whenever we come together, we will be afraid to have opinions. This is not only so in the church life but even in the family life. There is trouble today in families simply because the husband has the husband’s opinion, the wife has the wife’s opinion, and within both of the opinions there is Satan. The result is sometimes separation, then divorce. If all the wives would learn the lesson to depend on God and give up their own opinion, do you think there would be divorce? How nice it would be if all the husbands also would give up their opinion and depend on God. The trouble is simply due to the fact that each one expresses an opinion, everyone is independent of the Lord, and everyone is full of the self, opinion, and reasoning. If we learn the lesson in our family life of being dependent on God, when anything happens, the husbands, wives, and all the members will not express an opinion. Rather, they will say, “Let us go to God. Let us seek the Lord’s mind.” In this case, there will be no trouble. This is the right way. If we learn this lesson in the family, when we come to the church life, we will act in the same way. We will say, “Brothers, let us go to the Lord. Let us pray and wait on Him.” We will all be subdued by the Lord and dependent on the Lord. We must not say, “I feel,” “I think,” or “In my opinion.” This is the self. In Matthew 16...Peter had been under the revelation of the heavenly Father (vv. 16-17), but just a short time later he was utilized by Satan. In one moment he spoke something from the heavenly Father, and a moment later he spoke something from Satan. Now we can see the meaning of the self. Self is the very essence of Satan in the soul, making the soul independent of God to express its self-opinion and self-will. This is the best definition of the self. Whenever we are independent of God and have an opinion or will, we have the self with Satan, who is in the self. If we realize this meaning, and we apply it to our daily life, we will see that day by day this is the problem with every one of us. Why are children disobedient to their parents? It is simply because their soul, their mind, their will, is independent from the parents. They have their own opinion, and they even have their own will. That is the self, and Satan is in the self. (Basic Principles of the Experience of Life, pp. 116-118) Further Reading: Basic Principles of the Experience of Life, chs. 11-12 Enlightenment and inspiration:
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 13:24:05 +0000
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