Great Doctrines of Salvation

We have taken a turn and we are now, over the next couple of months, we're going to talk about, we thought it was appropriate to talk about identification truths and include them in the great doctrines relating to salvation. And I think this morning I'll start to tell you a story about how I think identification is so important. Fifteen years ago anyway.

I think you probably, do you remember Charlie Hicks? Do you remember Charlie Hicks? Did we see him here when you were here? Charlie Hicks was introduced to me by Ben King. And Ben said one day, I'm going to bring a guy to the Tuesday Bible study who is really struggling with the security of his salvation. I said, how long has he been a believer? He said, I think he's been a believer quite some time. So he brought him the next week, and if you know Charlie at all, Charlie was a tough guy, really tough guy.

And he, that day, I forget what you were studying, but I think we were studying Romans, and we focused primarily on the mechanics of the identification truths. And an hour during the class, he sat there and he listened to the fact that he was included in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and he saw it. And that doctrine alone persuaded him that he was eternally secure in Christ. Because he recognized that one, salvation was not his doing, it was God's doing, and that what God did when he saved him was a lot more than just forgiving his sins. And that if these identification principles were true, then no matter what he did, he couldn't go back and get lost.

So I think that that story illustrates why identification truths are so important to us personally as believers and also should be as As an example, if your friend Kayla comes to Christ, as she learns the doctrines of salvation, at some point she probably needs to be exposed to identification because it will be the thing that settles her down. Because any of you who have been a Christian more than 15 minutes recognizes that your sin nature tries to talk you out of it. Politely said.

We started last week talking about the history of the identification truths especially in the English language and we talked about John Darby and we had gotten to the issue of the Keswick Conventions which came after the Plymouth Brethren movement and grew out of the Plymouth Brethren movement because as we talked about the Plymouth Brethren kind of became very exclusive and they divided into two groups, the open and the closed. The open brethren were a little more liberal in terms of who they would allow in and the exclusive and the close brethren. The close brethren began to die out because they wouldn't let anybody in. You know, you had to be in the inner circle.

So, out of that grew these things called the Keswick Conventions, which were week-long conferences, began in England, found its way to the United States in 1875. But what they did was that they were a week long, all day long, kind of conferences with speakers that taught the identification truths, position and condition and identification. So they were hugely popular and successful. And people could come there and learn about identification, no matter what denomination they came from or what whatever their exposure to Christianity had been, this is what the Keswick was about. And they were really, really good from about 1875 to 1925 in the United States. And they called these things victorious life testimonies.

Now, let me ask you, if you didn't know anything about identification, and we held a Keswick convention at Holly Hills Bible Church and you came not knowing a thing about identification and you sat here for four or five days and you learned and you learned from people that really knew their stuff.

At the end of the conference where would you be? You would have a head jam full of knowledge, right? Would you be a lot more spiritual than you were the week before? Laura's sitting over there going... Erica's going... You would have a lot of information, right? You would have a lot of Bible references. You'd have a notebook. You'd have all the material that they gave you.

The problem is that spiritual growth doesn't happen in a week. It's like when you were first saved. Were every one of you in this room absolutely persuaded about the security of your salvation? Were you sure? You could say, yeah, I was. How about two years later? Were you still sure? Maybe not.

So the Spirit of God worked in you to persuade you that your salvation was absolutely certain. And the Spirit doesn't persuade me about Laura's salvation. He persuades Laura about Laura's salvation. He persuades me about mine. So I'm convinced about me, but I'm not sure about any of the rest of you. Do you see that? You look, act, function, talk like believers, but I'm not absolutely persuaded about you, but I am about me. Just like you're persuaded about you, but you're not so sure about me. Well, I think the same principles hold true when you enter into identification truths.

As an example, they would hold these annual meetings in Indiana and Massachusetts and New York and they established a permanent American Keswick movement in New Jersey. They were really, really effective for like 75 years. The issue was that early on they had the great speakers. because these guys that spoke there really knew their stuff.

But as time went on, and we're probably living in a similar era, how many churches do you know of, Bible studies that you go to, where they teach what we teach at Holly Hills? How many? Not many. Now it makes us sound like we're a cult or something. The point is that we are a Bible-based, Bible-focused, Bible-dependent church and we believe in the exegetical study of the Word of God. We are interested in what the Word of God has to tell us. We are not interested in putting anything in there and then trying to find verses to back up what we say.

I would say as sort of a newcomer that I've, because I've kind of looked around at a lot of different things and a lot of it's pretty consistent. You know, like I've listened to some radio programs and read some stuff. So it seems like there is a lot more consistency than there's inconsistency. Okay, and that's fair. That's fair. And I think that's true when you talk about salvation. But what we're going to talk about over the next four months you probably are not going to hear on the radio.

And identification is one of those things that when you know it and understand it and enter into it, it changes your viewpoint about how you live your Christian life. And it makes for a gracious understanding rather than a legal understanding. I think there are plenty of churches that preach the gospel in terms of salvation, but there aren't many that teach Christian life by grace. They use the word, but they don't explain it. I'm kind of curious about your comment, the consistency. What do you mean by that, that it's a consistent message? and the Bible and beliefs and things like that, they seem pretty consistent. I guess what I'm concerned about as sort of a newcomer is that I would have wanted to see, I mean, better to have inclusion than exclusion.

And when you really get into it though, that's why I say, even on the, as you'll find as you go through this, on the identification, you know, I thought the reason why Mike thought identification was more, you know, one of the most important things, because I beat him up so badly on it.

He was, grace was the most misunderstood thing. I think identification truths are some of the most misunderstood things. Because when you get into the, you know, a lot of churches, And now the old Adamic person can now fulfill the law or be good. And when you get into identification truths, it's completely different. So the things that you hear that are consistent, I think once you go through the identification truths, you'll see that they aren't as consistent.

That can be. Because I don't understand them all. On the surface they look. That's I guess what I'm saying. I think on the surface they look, but when you really start looking at the identification truths, I think you'll find a completely different thing. Mine is, I don't think you can really appreciate or understand grace. unless you understand the identification truths because the old man is always trying to do something and all this and you can't fully appreciate or understand grace until you understand the identification truths. You get bits and pieces. The salvation message I think is there and I think that is one that is a very simple message that there are millions and billions of Christians out there. appreciate all the grace and those things until you really understand these identification truths. So that's why I say the consistency when you really look at it, after identification truths, I'll ask you the same question.

If it sounds consistent. Let me read a paragraph. Steve. I've never had this question come up either. Have you ever noticed any other group or group of people that have had a different language about the same principles, different terminologies. That's a good question. Where they would term the same doctrine but their terminology was different? Yeah. I never have. Yeah, I never have either. I mean... You know, I think some of the brethren were Let me read a paragraph to you that will point out what we're talking about.

Although most of the conference speakers were pastors who had awakened to the identification truths, the American church remained skeptical of deeper life message and considered it extreme, if not actual error. And it is still the case today. The message of the cross is never popular. and the believer must be prepared of the spirit before the identification truths are either desired or understood.

Now, if we were living in a perfect world, perfect spiritual world, should there have been even a need for the Keswick movement? No, because whose job is it to teach these truths? It's the spirit's job. In what environment? in the local church. Every church should teach this. Every single church should teach identification, position and condition, grace. That should be the focus of all they do. Instead what you find are programs, behavior modification.

Where does position and condition come from? Is that in there? Oh man, Holly, you get the star today. comes from the study of Paul's epistles. That's really where it starts because over time you are able to begin to differentiate like what Peter taught and what Paul taught. And a lot of things that Paul taught, if someone doesn't say to you, listen to Paul, this is a position that you have. And position and condition are two methods of understanding the doctrine.

To give you an example, Paul says that if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, everything has become new. Would you consider that your position that you have in Christ today or the way you live your life walking around every day? Do you live every minute of every day as a brand new creature in Christ? Oh, sure you do. So you read that and you say, well, you know, here the Word of God is telling me about a position that I have as a new creature in Christ that can't ever be changed because He's the one that created it.

Now, that's my position. Now my condition may or may not line up with my position. I may be totally, you know, it loosened the corners, because one, either I'm ignorant about my position, or two, I just don't have the strength, which is normal, to live up to my position. It's like when I sit down and do premarital counseling, I will say to people, say to the man, here's your responsibility as a husband.

Ephesians 5 says that you're to love your wife. as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Your job is to present her holy and blameless before Christ in love. Now, if that man understands anything spiritually, it isn't going to be 15 seconds before he's going to say, I have no chance of accomplishing that. Because that kind of love that Christ is to give his life for me, to give his life for the church, And I can say back to him, but you're in Christ, you have his life, that's your position.

And as you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, guess what? That's what you'll do. But your condition must be based on your position. Your position is something to be understood, known and believed. Your condition is a work of the Holy Spirit in you based on the position that you have. system of theology, what are you left with? You're left with, you've got to perform. Here's what you have to do in order to try to achieve a position that God has up here somewhere for you and it's up to you to get there.

Rather than understanding that God has given me a position, placed me in Christ, And the Spirit of God is working in my whole life to get my position, or my condition, to line up with my position. I'm getting to understand that, but I'm wondering where actually those terms came from. Oh, yeah. Well, I think they originally started with the Brethren in 1850, John Darby, when he started to use the terms standing position and state condition. And somewhere along the line, and I'm not sure where, the later guys that understood this, probably like Lewisbury Chaffer, began to use the word position rather than standing. Standing is a great word because that's really what it is.

What is your standing before a holy God? Who are you? What is your position before Him? How's my life going on an everyday basis? What's the state of my circumstances today? Or my condition? So it's almost like terminology. It is. It is. It's not in there anywhere that this is your position. It's more a characterization of what Paul was teaching. So that's just the term that we put on for that. But when you look at what Paul says, and usually he lines it up with facts first, this is what's true about you. But you do see it, and I'll tell you where you do see it. In Galatians 5, Paul says, stand fast in the liberty in which Christ has made you free.

Stan. So Stan. Is there. It seems like those terms can actually kind of be exclusionary for other people. Oh they can be. Oh boy. Yes they can. It's like the term that at one time was, 50 years ago most Christians in the United States would claim to be a dispensationalist. But today that word is a dirty word. It's a cuss word in Christianity. So what do we do? Do we change the word? Yeah, that's what we did here. We changed it from dispensation to stewardship. Because it really means the same thing.

And so, and what you find, Holly, what you are going to find is once you get your arms around identification truths, how do you explain them to somebody? I was just thinking when Erica was talking about her friend who's going to go to Bible study and they're going to teach her salvation truths, and teach her the gospel, how to become saved. But because they're the group called the Navigators, once she is saved, what are they going to teach her? Now that you're a Christian, here's how you're going to act like one. They're not going to teach her her position, they're going to tell her how to act. See that? Well, that's all well and good, but if you don't know identification, who's going to do the acting? Who is the appeal to perform and act and function like a Christian? It's the old man.

Because if you're ignorant of the fact that you were crucified, buried and resurrected with Christ, you're only left with who you think you are. Growing believers for a long time see themselves as saved sinners. They don't recognize that they are these new creatures in Christ. But at some point in their spiritual growth, the Spirit of God will change their viewpoint from being a safe center to being a saint and all that that means. And when the Spirit of God begins to show you that you are a saint, your perspective changes. You begin to relax. You don't have to work so hard. Does that make sense? So from the standpoint, I think most Christians agree and teach on salvation. Most of them do. That's right. That's the part where it's consistent.

It's just after that, as far as growth, where they're different. Because I grew up in a legalistic church, and it was like, these are all the rules, that's all I knew, that's all I lived with until I understood grace. I mean, legalistic people will talk about grace, they don't understand how to live it. They think it's for salvation and that's it. That's right. It's not that those people are not believers, they are. It's just the difference in growth, maybe. Because they aren't walking in grace. And it's based on ignorance. They're trying to do it themselves.

Because what's happened in the church, the American church, even in 1925, when they You know, they were skeptical of this Keswick movement because they were teaching grace and identification, that kind of thing. And they thought maybe it was even error or heresy. And so they shunned it. And the pastors and teachers of the 1925 to, you know, in the 60s, up and through like Lewis Ferry Chaffer and those guys, they were the predominant spiritual voices.

But since that time, They're very few. They're very few. And so most believers today will get the salvation message, but a lot of them don't today. I mean, there's a whole thing now called the free grace movement. They don't even give you the gospel. But they couch it so that it sounds like you're getting saved. Here's what they say.

If you believe in Jesus, you're saved. Is that salvation? Think about what I've just said. If you believe in Jesus, are you saved? Well, that would be like he'd just be a historical person. Sure. I believe in Napoleon. Sure. Because you're missing three parts of it. Death, burial, and resurrection. See? Yeah.

Well, there's a whole movement within the church. There's coming out of the Dutch Reformed Church now is this open theism nonsense. They're teaching their people, which is like Denver Christian High School and all of that reform group, they're teaching open theism. Basically, you know what open theism is? That God doesn't know the future. And so therefore, he knows the past because he was there, but he doesn't know what's going to happen. in the future, and the head of the theology department at Calvin College is the guy who started all of this, and you know how he came up with this? He thought about it for 12 years and couldn't find an answer, so he created a theology around it. That's what he did. Let me get back on track here.

The issue is, as you learn identification truths and you get solid on them, you see the value in them, and you're going to discover That you have to be very careful how you give them to somebody else. Carefully and slowly. And there has to be actually a need. It's like, the same principle holds true with a person who's lost.

You know, you can run up to them and try to shove the gospel down their throat, but if the spirit hasn't got them ready, they're not going to swallow. Same way with identification. You can run up to a believer and try to shove identification down their throat, and if they're not ready, they're not going to So that was the problem with Keswick, two things. One, at the end of the week's conference, they had all this knowledge and they would go back to their churches or their homes or whatever and they would expect super changes in their life and they didn't happen.

Because identification takes time to grow. You have to depend on the Spirit. as we talked about last week, the conference speakers, because it was such a big movement, they became less and less discriminating about who did the teaching. And, you know, in the 1960s and 70s, they had guys like Billy Graham teaching Keswick. And Billy Graham doesn't know anything about identification. He knows about salvation, but he shouldn't, you know.

The big problem is that the growth truths are exclusively to be taught within the local church. Because what is the purpose of the local church? Why do they even exist? Just a place to hang out? Scam a free meal once in a while? To edify believers. And even beyond that, our job is to equip saints for the ministry. That's our job. And so we should be reproducing ourselves all the time. educating each one of us and edifying one another and reproducing ourselves so that either you are equipped to take over a place here or when you go somewhere else. One of the reputations this church has is that's happened over a long time, that people will be here, they will learn, they will go through circumstances, find themselves in another part of the country and in a church, and guess what? They're the informed one. Two good examples.

One, remember Noreen Bruns? Noreen was in this church for, I don't know, 20 years? Came to Bible study faithfully and learned and never taught, never did anything, but she paid attention for 20 years and then she decided to move to Oklahoma City. So she sells her house and she goes down there and she's looking around for a church and a Bible study and after a while she finds herself in a lady's Bible study in her church in Oklahoma City. And I think they're studying the book of Romans and here we go.

And she discovers after about a week or about a month she knows ten times more than anybody else in the study. So guess who starts doing the teaching? She does. And she called me up and she said, I can't believe it. She said, all those years at Holly Hills, I always thought I was the dumbest person in the class. She said, I'm down here, and these ladies are listening to me, and they are loving what I'm telling them. All right, Noreen.

That's really why you moved to Oklahoma City. You thought you were going there to be with your daughter. But that's the same thing with Brian White. By the way, the Whites are coming next month. They'll be here for 10 days. Brian went to North Carolina.

He finds himself in Bible studies and things and he just makes comments and after two or three weeks of comments, they hand him the book and he starts doing the teaching and he understands all of this. So he carefully brings a couple of guys along in a grace and position and that kind of thing. That's how it spreads. That's how it works. So a conference was, I mean it was cool in the sense that it got the message out. It wasn't effective in that there were people left to nurture believers as they grew in these truths. The next change that really came was in the 1960s.

But the victorious life quote conferences began to give way to Literature and people began to write The identification position trues and they began to be published and so guys like even Hopkins Ellie Maxwell F.W. Hugel, Watchman Nee, people like that began to write these books, and Miles Stanford was one of them, about the identification, position, and condition truths.

Just if you've never read these books, most of them are out of print, but you can find them. Even Hopkins wrote The Law of Liberty and the Spiritual Life, if you can get your hands on that, get it. It's called the Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life and it's written by Evan Hopkins. And you can come up after class and I'll give you all this stuff. You know, actually in the green letters I've got Watchman Nees. Sure. That stuff's in there. So it's in there. Yeah.

And Born Crucified by L.E. Maxwell hasn't been republished but if you've never read it I recommend you get your hands on it and read it. And Bone of His Bone was by Hugo and somebody got the rights to that and it's republished and you can actually get it for free. Come see me later and I'll tell you how to do it. I got a bunch of them. And the other one is The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee.

Everybody should have that and read it. So these are key people that wrote these key books. that were distributed to millions of people and kept the understanding going. Along with the fact that the Brethren guys, Darby, Kelly, Coates, J.B. Stoney, they all were tremendous writers. Although it's difficult to find, and there are places to find it, if you can get your hands on anything that those guys wrote, Now understand, they wrote 1850 to 1880 or 1890, somewhere in there, and so you're going to have to kind of get accustomed to the English that they used.

But some of them, like Stoney, has no peer in terms of how he can explain what it is to live The resurrected life. That guy was unbelievable. Darby is great in giving you the mechanics. Kelly was kind of Darby's editor. He's a little bit easier to understand.

Is it possible for somebody, I don't know copyright stuff, but for someone to take that old stuff and put it into current language? You mean to edit it so that it's... I don't think, even when it becomes eminent domain, like most of these brethren guys, you can go on the web and find their stuff and read it and download it. But they won't edit it or change it because I don't think that's proper to do. I mean, they can try.

And you'll find a guy like Miles Stanford who was incredibly well-versed in all the Brethren writers. He did a lot of translating, made it simple to understand. That's what Watchman Nee did too. But I will caution you about Watchman Nee. He wrote a lot of books.

There's only two you should identify with. It's The Normal Christian Life and another one called Sit, Walk, Stand. The rest of them, throw them away. What was that last one? Sit, Walk, Stand. Watchman Nee. The other thing that identification does, and we've talked about this in the Birth Truths, whenever you learn something in the Word of God that's a new truth to you, what does God want you to do about that? No. Believe. Believe it. That's all He wants you to do. So when you come upon these truths of identification, if they're new to you, the only thing you need to do is believe them.

And as the Spirit of God works them into you, you will find that the thing that will hold you up is your faith, your reckoning upon those truths being true. As an example, if I have been crucified, If Romans 6 is true, that my own man was crucified so that the whole body of sin might be put out of business, that I should no longer serve sin. And I get down to 6.11, it says, Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God. So here comes sin, a temptation to sin.

How do I deal with it? Do I just say I'm not going to do it? And when I say that, I am going to do it. How do you deal with sin? You deal with it by believing God. You reckon yourself dead to sin and alive unto God. That's how you deal with it. If on the cross of Christ you were positionally separated from your sin nature, Let's say that happened. But your sin nature didn't die, you just died to it. Okay? So when it raises its ugly head in your mind and says, I want to satisfy this sin, what should your reaction be to it from a biblical standpoint?

I'm dead to you. Our buddy Sharon went home to be with the Lord on Monday. charm has absolutely nothing to do with the earth anymore. How come? Because he's dead. Death means separation. Have I been separated? Did God tell me I was separated from my sin nature? Yeah, he did. How am I to respond to that? By believing him. I guess, alright, let's say it's anger. Okay, perfect. and you lose it before you know it. And then afterwards you say, I'm dead to it, but I just did it. Yeah. Yeah. At that point, when you reckon after the fact, it's too late. Here's the thing. And actually that your question illustrates what we were just talking about.

The Keswick Convention would maybe have taught me that I'm separated from my old man, and one of the properties of my old man is this uncontrollable anger. Boy, I'm telling you, when this trigger goes, I fire off. Yet, at the same time, I learn from this conference that the man who gets angry, I'm not him anymore. Wow, so that's really cool news. But then it isn't long after that that I get angry and fire off.

So I'm left with the dilemma, is God telling me the truth? Or is my experience the truth? Which is, it can't be both. So how long is it going to take the Spirit of God to work into me enough of an understanding of what he says is true so that the next time the trigger comes that I really see that I do not have to respond. That I really am dead to that old man.

That's what takes the time. The truth never goes away. But the working that truth from your position into your condition, that's why identification and spiritual growth takes time. So, persevere. Well, you even get to the point where you can't persevere.

And it's God who says, OK, now it's my turn to show you that what I meant was true. And I've given you my spirit, who is God himself, and he will demonstrate to you that what I've shown you in your mind, in your position, is actually true. And that's why that was the big problem with Keswick. You leave the Keswick conference after a week, and Tuesday you're angry. And you've got to be thinking, oh my goodness, what a lousy Christian I am.

So that's why it takes time. But it's really important to learn the principles of identification and to revisit them often as the Spirit of God works you into them. And that's why I think they're really, really important as part of salvation, the basic doctrines of salvation, because they really are the freedom that is given to us when we were saved. Now, so that's kind of basically the history.

I'm going to read this last paragraph. The Father has shown them in his word, which are the identification truths, that he proposes for them is to be conformed to the image of Christ and that this is a matter of spiritual growth. The how of this growth is not that of struggle, but of counting on their crucifixion with Christ. Beholding in the word the Lord Jesus as their life and walking in dependence upon the Holy Spirit. So that's basically why we're going to study these, because it's one thing to be absolutely certain about the identification truths, or about the birth truths, which we spent eight months going through.

But identification is the thing that will keep you from sin and keep you focused in on Christ. Mike, I have this little quote of Miles Stanford that I have in my Bible and he said about spiritual growth and identification truths, when one begins to realize the complexity of simple spiritual growth, he learns to keep his hands off and his faith on. That's a great quote.

Everybody hear that? Keep your hands off and your faith on. Everybody have a questions lesson too? If you guys have come to Bible study... no. These guys were riding in a train last week. You have this, right? You get one? You're not going to be here? Give it to him. You guys got one of these from last week? Were you on the train with them?

So the first question that I asked was why did God create? Why did he do it? I mean it's obvious to me that he didn't have to. He wanted to reveal his glory, share his glory, and to be glorified. Did you hear that? He wanted to reveal his glory, share his glory, and so he could be glorified.

So, I don't know, maybe I'm the only one that thinks like this. I sit down once in a while and I think, well God, why did you do all this? This doesn't seem to be working out too well. There's a lot of pain and suffering in all of this creation business that you did. What caused you to do it in the beginning? Because when you think in your mind, there was the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were the only beings in existence. And they were totally satisfied with each other. They didn't need to add anything. They're creating a universe they're creating a human being, they're creating angelic beings, that doesn't add anything to them.

Do you agree or not agree? I mean, I know you're really important, but God doesn't have to do this in order to enhance his ego. Because he's perfectly satisfied with who he is now. That's one thing that baffles me about Chris and Dom and some of the songs and stuff that they write. It's like, they make it like God needs us. It's like, He doesn't need us. It's a privilege that He chooses to use us as a... I mean, that's two different perspectives. I still don't understand why they think God needs us. He doesn't need us. He's just allowing us. That's right. So he decides that he's going to create. They determine that they're going to create. And so you have to understand that the right answer, he did it to glorify himself and to manifest his glory. Now that just sounds really egocentric to me, right? How do you make that statement not egocentric? Share it. Huh? What you said, share his glory. Yeah. What is God's glory? Grace. Grace? It's his essential essence.

Now, because we go at God's glory and the earth goes at God's glory from a sinful viewpoint to them and to your old sin nature, it seems so self-centered. But God is so gracious and so loving and so wonderful that he wanted to create creatures who would share in who he is. How cool is that? That's kind of neat. And the only thing, the only way to describe that is that if he could manifest his glory to you, you would reflect it back to him. And so therefore he would demonstrate to the rest of creation his glory, his wonderfulness. I don't know how... I think it reflects to other people. To other people, so that eventually all of his creatures and all of his creation manifest to all of the creatures and all of the creation who he is.

He hasn't talked about having the choice to do it. Yeah, he's not compelled. He's not compelled. There's no, you know, and I think it's important to understand that because he's done all this, he doesn't enhance his character in any way. He doesn't need to do this. But he just wanted to. And I think he wanted to because the very core of God's essence is this thing called love.

And love has to express itself. So you've got to have an object to love. And they're loving each other and giving love, and they're perfectly satisfied. I can see them. we have a meeting and decide about it, but how cool would it be if we could create and have people or have creatures be loved by us and that they would respond. How cool is that? Kind of a good plan.

So, in order for God to initiate a plan like that, he's got to come up with some principles. The first principle is, and that's the second question, what does after his own kind mean? Did God create after his own kind? Father how we thank you for your word, how we thank you for your grace and we are really thankful that you decided to create and manifest your glory to us We thank you. We pray in his precious name. Amen.