(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in a very important Bible study series about the subject “God is Love”. If you have not read from the beginning, it is highly recommended that you begin the study with “Part 1”. This lesson will continue the series, building upon our subject LOVE. But it will not repeat the same exact points in the previous lesson. It is possible to read this lesson and gain new understanding from it, as a stand-alone subject; if you do not have the time to read from the beginning. Today’s lesson is long and could be split into 6 sections of reading, if that will help you.

LOVE is one of the most imperative subjects found in the entire Bible. It could possibly be stated that it is “THE MOST IMPORTANT” subject. God tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:13 that “Faith”, “Hope” and “Love” will abide (remain) forever, but the greatest of these three, is “Love”.  This lesson series is built upon God’s foundational truth from 1 John 4:8 where He declares “God is love” which can be mathematically stated as “GOD = LOVE”. This means these two subjects are precisely indistinguishable, equivalent and interchangeable.  

Based upon these truths we can conclude LOVE is essential to know because LOVE is God. As a reminder to those that may desire to read this lesson independently of “Part 1”, every time the word “LOVE” is typed in uppercase in this lesson, we can replace it with “GOD” and it does not change the designed meaning. This would be true for the opposite. Every time we find “GOD” in this lesson in all uppercase letters, we can legally replace it with LOVE. That will be the standard for this Bible lesson series.  But I would also remind everyone that this is true for the name of God in the Bible also. Replacing the name of God for “Love” would be a legal reading.

Let us get started, if everyone is ready to learn what I believe the Spirit of the Living God wants to say to us today.  Please pause, pray and ask the Holy Spirit to give you an open, receptive and understanding heart. Also ask the Spirit of God to illuminate your mind providing you the spiritual eyesight to comprehend and receive everything that He desires to speak and reveal to us.

#1 – INTRODUCTION TO GOD’S “KNOWING LOVE” PLAN

Too often we want to limit God’s loving plan of salvation to be a simple recipe, combining God’s ingredients of 1) His death on the cross, 2) His burial in the grave for 3 days and 3) His resurrection from the dead. 1,2, & 3 sounds very simple. But, are these the entire works of divine human salvation? These three significant parts of God’s plan of salvation took place in less than 4 days.  But we are about to find out that this was not everything that occurred to save us. We will definitely be learning and hopefully begin to know that these few days of Jesus being manifested on the earth to die, required a much longer process of time even going back before Adam was created and sinned.

Act 15:18  Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. 

Notice what God says here in the book of Acts.  God has revealed a truth that nothing He has accomplished on the earth occurred based upon an instant idea at the moment in our time. God is informing us that what He has done, was already determined and preplanned from before the beginning of our natural world. This truth further implies that His works to save us were very extensive and potentially a series of steps or phases placed together in a series.

One initial point of this lesson, is that the potential accumulated steps of God’s plan to save humanity, was designed by Him, before time existed for us. He did this, to save us from us not knowing Him! We will find when we study the Bible, that God is omniscient. Meaning God knows the end, from the beginning (Isa 46:10). We understand from this, that God already determined the solution for all sin, before sin existed.

We can see in John 1:18 that God declares “No man has ever seen Him at any time”. Colossians 1:15 and 1 Timothy 1:17 declare the fact that God is invisible to humans. Therefore, whatever it is that has never been seen by a human, is challenging to be thought of in the correct and proper way that they truly are. Is God kind, good and loving; or is God mean, evil and hateful? Down through human history people have concluded, that their perceived reality of the truth, can be or fall in either view. However, what people forget is that there could be another spiritual being that also exists, and is an enemy to God. In this light we must understand that this potential enemy is also an unseen spiritual being.  I am speaking of Satan (originally Lucifer). He was a created perfect, but fell and took 1/3 of the angels (Rev 12:4) with him to fight against God. Now he is deceiving all of the people in the world (Rev 12:9) into believing, it is God that is doing to them all of evil and hurt that is occurring in the world.

We are about to learn how the Plan of God to save humans, was a designed process of phases, where one event and step led to the next. We will also learn that each step reveals God’s desires to reveal Himself as LOVE in greater, and increasing measures. Some of the key points of the plan of LOVE to save humanity to look for in this lesson will be:

1. A provision and an offer to humanity for an easy path out of being eternally separated from Him.
2. The divine desire to reveal His true nature to His creation.
3. The divine desire to come closer to His human creation and to development a personal relationship with each of them.
4. The divine desire for His creation to know Him as being absolutely good and loving.
5. To establish and follow every necessary legality for each phase of the plan of salvation to prevent Satan from accusing Him of being unjust.
6. To communicate to humans clearly through the entire process, their need for a final completed phase of salvation, because of all of the inadequacies found within the previous phases.

This is just some of what God had planned from the very beginning, before Adam and his wife were even placed in the Garden of Eden, where his sin was first dealt with personally by God.

Rev 13:8  And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 

What we discover in the Bible, is that Jesus had already died for every human sin, even before the creation of our world (Rev 13:8). We know this because Jesus is referred to as the “Lamb” in this verse. A lamb was only necessary to be the substitutionary victim sacrifice, to provide life for someone else. We learned this in the first lesson in the account of Passover in Exodus 12. Therefore, if Jesus was called the “Lamb” before the world existed, God had already planned His death.

If we read Revelation 17:8 God reveals there is a book of life with names written in it. In this verse God says these names were also recorded from the foundation of the world. This would indicate that God made a plan that already included the known end, and He did this before He ever fashioned our natural environment. Wow! This teaches us that this plan was well thought-out and prearranged before human sin, and was put into action immediately after Adam’s sin. We should learn soon, that this plan does not conclude until end of the book of Revelation. What is awesome to know is that the first 3 chapters of the Bible, and the last 3 chapters are bookends with everything else in between being a description of God’s working plan about Jesus. Therefore, we can conclude that God’s plan of salvation lasts 7000 years of accumulated human history.

Therefore, we should discover that God’s plan of human salvation is currently in progress. This would make it to be progressive in nature. It had to be comprehensively thought-through even before the effects of human sin needed a solution. “Progressive” is not a bad word. It has only been perverted by the devil to make people that are not like God try to appear as gods. The word “progressive” simply describes something or someone that is “moving forward”, “onward advancing” as in a “motion that brings growth, improvements, new advances, new developments that will help improve the lives of those participating”.  

Gal 2:20  I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 

This is an amazing verse, but we will only focus on the last part of the statement. God claims that we should live our lives by the faith of the Son of God. God then says “He loved us and gave Himself for us”.  Please notice the key word “for” at the end of Galatians 2:20. The preposition G5228 translated as “for” in this verse is a word representing “substitution”. We just saw this subject being referred to as the “Lamb”. Therefore, we are progressing in the flow of the subject of God’s plan of salvation.

This word “for” was defined by Strong to be “for the sake of” or “instead of” or “in the place of”. Thayer says this word can also mean “in behalf of” someone else. “Behalf” simply means one person represents another or is a proxy for the other. 

Therefore, “Jesus giving Himself for us” indicates that what He has accomplished, performed or experienced was something that was given to us or exchanged for us, in our place. Therefore, since He accomplished it, humans would potentially not have to repeat it, experience it or go through it personally. For example, we should all know, that because Jesus spiritually died after His death on the cross (Mat 27:46) and went to hell (Mat 12:40), we are not required to pay for what was already accomplished and paid for, “in” and “by” Him.

It is like if someone said, “I’ll make dinner ‘for’ you on Friday night at my house, see you there”. Clearly the person that is receiving the dinner invitation does not have to labor to make this dinner. No, “for” indicates the recipient is the one that comes to freely enjoy the food without extending any cost or the labor that was completed by the preparer and provider. No, the recipient only needs to believe (have faith in) that this cook is their friend and will be honest and trustworthy to do what they said. Then the receiver needs to act on that faith by going to their friend’s house, enter their door, sit down at the table and eat the already prepared food.

That is the basic conceptual idea behind God’s plan of revealing Himself to be LOVE in planned stages. God desired to help us, to “know to trust” Him and His “faithfulness”, so that we all could be saved. Notice how in the example that both the provider of the meal and the recipient of the meal had a progressive set of steps that were needed to work in cooperation together. When these two are working in unison at the appointed time to accomplish the free gift transfer there is not much anyone else can do to stop it from happening. This description sounds a lot like the “Passover” in Egypt experience, doesn’t it? This information was covered previously in “Part 1”.

However, a good dinner with tasty food is not an instantaneous outcome. Instant TV dinners, canned food or even drive through fast food hamburgers, or pizza delivery can never be as good as the home cooked meal. Some dinners made from scratch for family and friends, take all day or more to prepare. So, it is with God’s plan of salvation for every human. What we will find when we read and study the Bible closely, is that God’s love strategy for salvation was an extremely analyzed work and a specific strategic solution set into motion long before humans were created, sinned and needed a savior.

God already had all of His menus pre-planned. He already had all of the available ingredients prearranged in creation that were necessary for this dinner.  God began to prepare His dinner while He spoke the each day of creation. Then, immediately after Adam sinned, He continued to declare the outcome.. He already had written in His book of life, the personal names of every human, to be sent the invitations to His dinner. God sent out His invitations to everyone to come to His Salvation Wedding Dinner (Mat 22:2-14, Rev 19:9). But not everyone responded kingly to His kind invite to come and know LOVE (Matthew 22:1-14). Many names of people that did not want to know Him, had to be blotted out of the Lam’s book of life (Rev 3:5).

Immediately after God confronted the sin of Adam in the garden of Eden, He continues, the preplanned solution, by speaking more words prophetically. God decreed the future solution, for His finale outcomes to each participant in the rebellion. No one but God understood fully what was going to happen next, and no one had a clue when anything was going to actually occur in what order.

This is why Satan had to kill Abel using Cain (Genesis 4:8, 1 John 3:8).  Abel could have been the prophesied one. This is why Satan tried to pervert the human blood line, by having fallen angels take the daughters of men as wives in Genesis 6:1-4. This is why male children of Israel, were thrown into the Nile at the time of Moses’ birth (Exodus 1:22). This is why Satan had Herod kill all the children living in Bethlehem in the time that Jesus was born (Matthew 2:13). This is also why Satan is killing as many children as possible using abortion today. There are just too many examples, found in the Bible of Satan’s attempts to stop the plan of God from happening, to mention them all. But they begin in Genesis 3 and go all the way to Revelation 20:10.

God’s LOVE plan of salvation would patiently unfold and grow out of the direct “seeds” planted by the spoken words of God in creation and the Garden of Eden. At every opportunity Satan attempted to stop it from taking place. Like natural seeds have natural enemies, God’s spiritual seeds also have spiritual enemies. Each planned step could also take time to develop and grow to produce the desired outcome. Observable results could be very far out from the initial seed planting. Please let us get out of the “microwave” and “instant fast-food, drive through”, “instant delivery” type of thinking and let us begin to see things as God has created them.

After God’s prophetical decrees in Genesis 1, 2 and 3, His designed future determined outcomes were planted and started to grow. Now the Holy Spirit began to work to accomplish the divinely spoken Word plan of LOVE. We can see that we are being introduced to a potentially new way to view God’s plan of salvation. This design of LOVE, was well planned and provided for. God actually places it into full motion during the 6 days of creation, before man existed. God’s description of His world creation process in Genesis 1 and 2, provides a nice overview of things that would occur during the plan of Salvation. The plan was immediately activated after sin entered into the world. Every step was a phased in method growing over time. Our Creator God then patiently and carefully, implemented the plan over the movement and process of time, and this is still, taking place today (James 5:7).

Some of the planned “knowing LOVE” steps took place in the first 2000 years of human history. Other plan of “knowing LOVE” steps were initiated and took place in the next 2000 years of human history. Every pre-planned step of LOVE prior to the final completion showed and taught us, increasing signs for the greater need of an enhanced next phase of the divine solution. Then comes Jesus.

The next phase of God’s “Knowing HIM” plan of salvation, was found at the beginning of approximately 4000 years of human history. This corresponded to the “Day 4” of creation. This phase was initiated with the physical appearance of God in the flesh. He was called the “Sun of Righteousness, rising with healing in His wings”, in Malachi 4:2. This part of the plan only lasted 33 ½ years.  This was one of the shortest phases of the plan of God for human salvation, but by far it had the greatest positive impact.

Next God initiates what many call the church age of His divine Grace (Romans 5:20). The church is prophesied to live and reign on the earth for 2000 years (Hosea 6:2, Luke 10:35).  Then, we will be taken out of the world (1 Thessalonians 4:7), victorious over Satan (Luke 10:19, Romans 16:20, 1 Corinthians 15:57, 2 Corinthians 2:14). But the final “completeness” of the divine LOVE plan for human salvation, will not be fully observed, until the completion of the final 1000 years of human history. We call this soon coming period of time, the millennium. This is when God makes a new heaven and new earth (Rev 21:1), completely void of “sin” and “rebellion” (Rev 21:27).

Therefore, the finale of the planned divine LOVE solution, has not been totally fulfilled. We do not read about the elimination of all “evil”, and “hate” until the end of the book of Revelation. We also do not read about the full manifestation of completed fruitfulness until the very last chapter of Revelation. God’s first command to humans was for them to be “fruitful”, as in become “full of fruit” (Gen 1:22). While many Christians today have great “fruitfulness”, I do believe spiritual “fruit” capacity has a lot of room to grow, to be at its most full ability. I believe that this full fruit production, in full bursting capacity is finally fulfilled in Revelation 22:2. God’s desired beginning in Genesis, will be His purposed and prophesied ending, revealed in Revelation 22. Only then will it be a time that Satan, sin, curses, hate and death have been completely eliminated from the face of the planet and a new world (Hebrews 6:5), new heaven and new earth will be manifested fully.

Just like a cook’s meal takes a well-thought-out menu with planning, preparation, recipes and ingredients, and time to produce the final outcome to enjoy, so it is with God’s invitation and plan of salvation for humanity.  Next, let us go over a quick understanding of this lesson’s approach to describe the “Knowing LOVE” plan to save humans.

#2 – GOD’S PROGRESSIVE LOVE PLAN
THIS LESSON’S APPROACH TO DESCRIBE IT

We will be learning about “God is LOVE” today, by learning about His divine “Knowing LOVE” project for: 1) human salvation and 2) intimate relationship. This only means that God wanted us to know Him as LOVE, and He will work this plan slowly over the course of time using multiple progressive steps to reveal His love. I believe God could have possibly planned it this way, because humans could have been overwhelmed with too much information about Him all at once. We could find that this is possibly what caused Jesus to be killed by humans. It could be that because Jesus revealed too much of the true nature of God as being loving, compassionate, and kind, that this information, did not fit the picture of what they believed their Messiah should look and act like.

Please understand, that I do not want to lower God’s plan of salvation to be like an inferior type of human software project, dinner menu, or farming system. No, God is still LOVE, and He is the Creator of everything amazing that we can see all around us in this mind-blowing vast universe. He is the most intelligent and powerful Spirit being ever. What people call a “genius” on the earth, is like a two-year-old compared to God’s abilities. Lucifer made this mistake and he is soon going to regret it for an eternity.

I am attempting to teach this complex, and extensive divine “Knowing LOVE” plan of God, using simplified and hopefully familiar terminology that many people can understand. I will base this approach, upon our end time knowledge of technology. We will be utilizing advanced electronics and software engineering concepts, that are hopefully understood by a lot of people today. For example, if anyone owns a smart phone, a tablet or a computer, they should understand the concepts of how software versions are planned, developed and phased into implementation, over the course of time. Many times, smart phone creators implement new designed phones every year. Also, during the course of the year new software versions can continually be downloaded to run on every phone. These new versions constantly introduce designed improvements to help make the device more powerful, secure, useful, productive, feature rich and user friendly.

Now, just go on your smart phone and look for a selection called something like “Settings”. Select the “Settings” choice that looks like “About Phone”, and then select a choice like “Software Information”. Selecting this option usually gives you a list of software designed components and their version numbers. It should inform you of things like your UI version is 2.5.  It may tell you that your “Baseband version” is like G984993. It may tell you that your “Kernel Version” is like 4.14.117945”, etc. All of this information is simply revealing to us that what we have on our phone today, is potentially not what we may have had yesterday, or what we are able to receive tomorrow. In other words, this is what I believe is a simplified example of what God has done with His salvation plans. without giving us any direct version numbers other than Him saying, “this is the first of something or this is the last of something, this is the new something, this is a better something, or this is the second, etc.”.

From observing and studying God’s ways in His Holy Bible we, can learn how God implemented things in a phased in approach. This type of approach, might be compared to be like a modern-day technology hardware and software development project with multiple new releases. Or we could say to be more Biblical, God’s ways were like planting “seeds”. In Genesis 8:22 God declares as long as the earth remains there will be seed, time and harvest. This simply teaches us that developing and cultivating life, represents a process of steps. It also implies that everything that begins small, with God from a “seed”, can and will grow larger and stronger over the process of time. The end goal of every seed is to produce something potentially multiplied and very good for those that participate in it. I pray in today’s modern times that people still understand basic divinely created “farming concepts”.

Farming is not an instant result methodology. Sure, humans go to the grocery store today buy everything instantly. But this final transaction of receiving took a lot of time and work before, to make it available. Farming is an organized designed set of progressive steps. One of the greatest parts of successful farming is the God created dimension of time.  But within the needed time period between beginning to plant and eating the fruit, is a long series of progressive dependent steps. One step being completed is the requirement for the next step to be initiated and implemented, with potential time in between.

This will be my approach at describing God’s plan of “Knowing LOVE” today. I will be presenting the lesson in separate phases that I will be calling a step, phase or release. Here are the basic steps that will be covered:

1. Knowing LOVE 1.0 – God’s Desire to be Known by Humans
2. Knowing LOVE 2.0 – God’s Plan and Two Purposes for Using Blood
3. Knowing LOVE 3.0 – God’s Desire to Live with Humans
4. Knowing LOVE 4.0 – The Improved Knowing God in the Flesh Application
5. Knowing LOVE 5.0 – The Vastly Improved Knowing God in the Spirit Application
6. Knowing LOVE 6.0 – The Fruitful Grand Finale of Knowing LOVE

We have been going through a quick introduction to the concept of progressive steps and phases. Let us spend our time now to get a big picture overview of the problem that God was faced with and the progressive plan of God implemented to solve it. So let us get started with learning God’s “Knowing LOVE” plan.

#3 – KNOWING LOVE 1.0
GOD’S DESIRE TO BE KNOWN BY HUMANS

What was God’s problem to solve on the earth, after Adam’s creation?  We should all know that it was “sin” and Satan. We know God is Holy (Lev 19:2). We read later in the Bible, that a Holy God could not always be in the presence with an unholy and unrighteous sinner, without a provision to make them clean again, at least temporarily. This is first indicated in Genesis 3 after Adam sinned. Most teachers believe that God shed the blood of innocent animals in the garden of Eden to clothe Adam and Eve after sin (Genesis 3:21). If this is what occurred, then the blood of that animal would have certainly been shed. While this is not clearly stated, it is possible, since the son of Adam named “Abel” also offered God sacrifices of blood, from innocent animals in Genesis 4:4. Where did Abel learn to do this?  And why is he called “righteous” in Hebrews 11:4?

God indicates to us that before sin was on the earth, the voice of God could simply come down and walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the garden “one on one”. We learn this by reading Genesis 3 after Adam sinned, and he heard God’s voice was walking nearby, and he and Eve went and hid from God (Gen 3:8). It is very obvious, that Adam knew exactly what this sound of God was, and who it was that was walking in the garden to talk to them. This implies greatly, that there were a lot of previous meetings that had taken place, between God and His creation.

This hints to us that direct human relationship was God’s desired goal and it certainly demonstrates His initial LOVE for His creation. It further indicates that God wanted for His creation to “Know Him” as LOVE, because of His personal involvement with them. God appears to extend some specific effort, to come to them personally without sending a messenger angel, or other possible ways to communicate. This appears to teach us that God, desired a personal relationship with them. We can further conclude that God loved them, because everything God created was “very good” (Gen 1:31). Humans could easily observe His LOVE for them, being seen in His handy work, given to them (Romans 1:20). However, until Adam and Eve had their own children, they may not have appreciated this as much as they should have.

I have called this, God’s first or initial release or the phase 1.0 plan of “Knowing LOVE”. I believe this first phase of Knowing GOD, only lasted a few years. We are not told exactly how long it took Satan, to inspire them to sin and rebel against God. But after sin’s appearance upon the earth, God indicates that He required some significant changes by Him covering them with “skins” in order for Him to continue a fellowship with humans. Uh oh! This teaches something new was coming next. Let us explore Phase 2.0 of God’s divine “Knowing LOVE” plan.

#4 – KNOWING LOVE 2.0
GOD’S PLAN AND TWO PURPOSES FOR BLOOD

For the next approximate 2500 years of human history, from Adam until Moses, sin and death continued to reign in the world (Romans 5:14). We know the first death after sin was “Abel” being murdered by his brother. This initial death must have opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, and caused much sorrow. But God displays love and mercy even during this time. God appears to use the pattern of bloody animal sacrifices, to temporarily make humans clean enough, for Him to come down temporarily from heaven to still visit with them provisionally. I’ll call this the next step, phase or release 2.0 in the multi-phased plan of human salvation. We can also call this phase “Knowing LOVE 2.0”.

I believe this next phase of the plan of salvation was a significant enhancement helping us, to come to know Him as LOVE even more than Adam in the beginning. Without this revealed feature in God’s relationship plan with humans, we were under the control and influence of predominantly Satan. Hebrews 2:14 informs us that it was Satan that held the “power” of death during this time of human history. This meant dealing with sin, Satan and death, had to be a significant part of the plan to restore humans, back into us being able to know God. Satan became the literal “god” of this world in Genesis 3 and this is stated clearly in 2 Corinthians 4.4. Satan’s plan against God caused Adam and his wife to know two new concepts called “evil” (Genesis 3:22) and “death” when they had previously only known God’s “very good” and “life” (Genesis 1:31). Adam had no idea what he had gotten himself and us into, by his sin.

I view this new phase 2.0 of God’s pre-planned LOVE agenda to be like the release of a smart phone operating system, containing enhanced security features. You see, security enhancements on a smart phone are normally designed to keep our enemies out of our phone. Satan represents the ultimate enemy hacker of the entire human race (Jn 10:10). By God instigating blood substitutionary payments for sin, He placed severe limitations upon Satan’s abilities to willfully hurt humans.  God accomplished this by temporarily removing the immediate death sentence from the consequences for sin through inferior blood sacrifices. This too is a pattern we found in lesson 1 about “Passover”.

In this phase of the release of the divine plan “Knowing LOVE”, God introduced a new use to humans for innocent animal blood. This innocent animal blood would limit what was legal for the devil to do to us. This blood offering system enhancement was provided for us proactively, because God loved us.  By Him doing this, we could all see a side of “LOVE” that had never been necessary for us to know before sin. Therefore, by realizing what God had done for us, the human factor of “Knowing TRUE LOVE”, could potentially increase significantly.

This improved new feature of “Knowing LOVE” simultaneously provided us two complementary views of God = Love. First, humans gained the ability to learn to appreciate God’s power of protection from our enemy Satan. This gift was given to us by God through the principle of substitutionary blood/life exchanges. Because an innocent animal’s life could be substituted and their blood used as payment, our blood and lives were not immediately required for payment for our sins. This meant this inferior blood of this animal offered humans temporary grace through temporary atonement. 

Also, humans should have begun to realize that we needed this blood to regain our temporary access “for” our continued fellowship with God. However, these temporary protection and connection benefits paid “for” with inferior animal blood, should have also begun to teach humans that we needed a greater future solution for these new problems. Humans should have seen the need for the total removal of the consequences of our sin, and the permanent removal of this new unknown enemy and our added need for the ability to fully regain total access to knowing our creator God.

Think about your smart phone again. Most good phones have strong security built within them. One feature of the phone is the ability to set a security code, pass code or even a human biometric like a fingerprint or facial recognition. This feature was like God’s blood sacrifice system. By entering the correct code, the clean blood of an innocent animal, we could keep out, all the others that wanted to look inside our phone, to steal our personal information. But also, by entering this blood code, we gained access to the feature that allowed us to speak with the manufacturer (also known as our Creator). Wow, that is pretty amazing.

This pattern of new animal blood sacrifice in Genesis should have been viewed as an indicator, for a needed new future blood requirement and provision for permanent salvation, relationship and permanent safety. But this limited version of God’s plan still should have brought thankfulness to the human heart, for the features that were freely given to us in this release. We can observe from Adam to Moses where people were still able to walk with God long before the mention of any LAW that implements a more formal substitutionary blood sacrifice system. All of these examples of “Knowing LOVE” before Moses’ Law were humans interacting with God after sin was found present on the earth.

For example, we first saw God walking with the first man Adam in Genesis 3 without sin, in God’s “Knowing LOVE 1.0” release. We should also notice in Genesis 3 that the “serpent” enemy just freely showed up in the garden uninvited.  Obviously, this teaches us that there was no God security system to prevent this from happening. However, God did give man dominion over the planet (Genesis 1:26) and He commanded him to guard it (Genesis 2:15). So, it appears that God left the human’s security to the humans alone. This implies that Adam had this authority to choose this and do it. I believe this is why this version of “knowing GOD” failed fast. Man needed to call on his relationship with his creator before he made a decision to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Yet, we can find in Genesis 4 where God was still interacting with Adam’s children Cain and Abel, even after sin entered into the world. Here in this description, God was taking notice of their peace offerings. God clearly says Abel’s blood sacrifice was more pleasing, because he offered God his first and best animals (Genesis 4:4).  This caused Cain to become jealous, and he followed Satan’s plan to murder his brother (1 John 3:12). What we learn from this is that Satan has initiated a new strategy of attack against God’s plan of human salvation.

The next time someone is said to walk with God is Enoch in Genesis 5. This man walked with God so closely that God just took him off the planet in a rapture like experience. While there is no mention of direct sacrifices with Enoch, he is mentioned in Hebrews 11:5 as being a man that pleased God, and this certainly implies that blood was involved somewhere. We can also find Enoch in Jude 1:14 being described as potentially the first human “prophet” of God. Enoch appears to have had either a dream or a vision of Jesus returning to the earth with all of His saints. Wow, I do not believe that this man could have experienced God at this level of intimacy, without a lot of blood being in his life.

The next time we see someone walking with God is Noah. We should all know that God used this righteous man to save the planet from being totally void of humans. It is also clearly stated in Genesis 8:20 that Noah built an altar unto the LORD and offered clean animals as sacrifices. Again, this indicates to us, like Abel’s offering, the kind of sacrifice offered to God greatly mattered. Where did Noah get this type of wisdom? How did he know what a clean animal was and was not without the LAW? It had to have been passed down from Adam or directly from God, or from someone like Enoch, his great-grand-father.

Sometime in the course of early human history after Noah and before Abraham, we find “Job” being mentioned by God in heaven. God speaking to Satan called Job a perfect and upright man. We can clearly read how Job offered animal blood sacrifices of burnt offerings to God without any LAW requiring him to do so. God also reveals in Job 1:5 that Job performed these sacrifices in order to “sanctify” his children. This Hebrew word simply means to “make clean”. Again, WOW. How did Job know how to do this, and why did he think that this blood was even necessary without knowing something about the Holy God? Job must have known, that he personally needed, protection from the consequences of sin. It would appear that humans had figured out a lot more than we are told directly in the Bible about how to know God.

All of this is teaching us that God desired to have a relationship with His creation and He and we, both needed “blood” to gain this temporary access. This blood would also increase our level of protection. Satan in the book of Job complained to God about His “hedge of protection” that was placed around Job. It appears that “blood” definitely caused this hedge to be in place. But later we know from Job 3:25 that Job claimed it was the things that he feared, that came upon him. This teaches us that it is more than just “blood” and the quality of the offering, that is required to activate it and make it effective in our lives. It appears to indicate that it is also our “faith” in the blood that causes it to work, but that is a different lesson.

All of this appears to be God’s phase 2.0 approach at having a divine “LOVE” connection with His creation. This part of the Plan of God for humans to Know the true LOVE, must be considered to be a greatly inferior shadowed type of the coming planned steps of God in the future. There are many other examples of God’s EARLY LOVE types in Genesis that you can go find and read about.  But we will end this section with a quick review of the lesson 1 information found in Exodus concerning the first “Passover”.

We should now realize that God used a similar display of “Knowing LOVE 2.0” during the initial “Passover”, when the nation of Israel was being held captive in Egypt. Please understand that Israel was still being held as captive slaves in Egypt, when this plan of deliverance was given by God. Therefore, there was no law yet provided to Moses. This simply means God was still working with His phase 2.0 of “Knowing LOVE” plan, before Mt Sinai and His Law entered the earth.

Here in this Exodus example, we can clearly read about God’s direct mention of His early protection plan. God told the people of Israel to obtain a lamb and keep it in their house for 4 days. We talked about what the four days could represent in “Part 1” of the series. Also remember God specifically states that this lamb had to be perfect in outward appearance without any flaws. This is now the third mention that I know of, that stipulates the sacrifice type and quality mattered greatly to God.

Then the head of the house was supposed to take the innocent lamb victim and kill it. Then they were to place its’ blood on the doorposts of the house. God would then come near to the family and pass over them (Exo 12:13), not allowing death to enter their door because of the observed blood substitution. This clearly represented substitution protection to the family.

God was teaching humans several important concepts that existed in their world and their need for a relationship with Him. First, humans had an enemy that they needed protection from. We know this because Job the oldest book in the Bible was the first mention of Satan by name and it strongly describes what was taking place with Satan gaining legal access to temporarily destroy even God’s good man. Next, God wanted people to understand that they could depend upon Him for conditional protection from this enemy.

One of the major parts of the conditions for safety and protection from the enemy was blood, and the quality of their offerings was also critical. What we learn from this is that God is teaching us all, that only His “quality of sacrifice standard” could work permanently. We will learn soon that it was only the life and blood of Jesus that met God’s high standard. Let us stop and review a list of blessings and limitations of this phase of the “Knowing LOVE” plan:

Benefits:

1. Temporary blood sacrifices of innocent animals gave the Holy God the opportunity to come down to earth to visit and/or walk with His creation after sin.
2. God could temporarily protect humans from Satanic destruction, if they met and satisfied the requirements for innocent blood substitution.

Limitations:

1. God still lived in Heaven far apart from His creation.
2. Up to this point the majority of humans had never witnessed or met with their creator. 
3. Sin separation from God, made knowing and experiencing God very challenging and only a few people in the O.T. are listed to have achieved a type of inferior but close relationship with God.
4. There was no knowledge of sin because of the absence of law, but death was still dominating every human because of Adam’s sin.
5. Humans learned the hard way that the quality of their offerings and their faith to God mattered tremendously.
6. This level of protection from the enemy’s attacks were very inadequate and many suffered because of it.

All of this in Phase 2.0 of “Knowing LOVE” was some initial types and shadows of divine LOVE protection plan that was going to increase in future steps of revealed LOVE. Let us move to God’s phase 3.0 of His plan for “Knowing LOVE” next.

#5 – KNOWING LOVE 3.0
GOD’S DESIRE TO DWELL WITH HUMANS

Next God introduces a significantly improved approach to His plan of salvation. God demonstrates how He wanted to reveal more of His love to humanity in this release. In this phase, God desired an increased level of consistent closeness to His people. I call this “Knowing LOVE 3.0”. In this part of the plan of God, the people had a slightly increased opportunity to know and experience Him personally. It represents a significant enhancement, but definitely not the final desired outcome of God’s love project.

Psa 103:7  He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. 

In this phase of God’s release plan of “Knowing LOVE”, we can read here in Psalm 103, how God turned up the level of knowing Him significantly, for every human that was participating. Notice that this verse says “God made known His ways to Moses”. This indicates this phase of the plan greatly improved the level of knowing God, to at least one man named Moses. But notice that the general population of Israel could also be witnesses to God’s awesome works personally. This number in the nation of Israel, could have been from 1 to 3 million people. There appears to be a great quantity of new people, that are being introduced to “LOVE”.

Compare this to previous releases of someone “Knowing LOVE”.  Adam and Eve were just two people.  Enoch was only one man that was taken up by God. Noah, his wife, and his three sons and their wives were the only 8 people saved in the ark. Job and his wife were the only two that got to receive God’s blessings of restored protection and provision. Abraham had only his wife and his nephew and his wife that left to find the promise of God. It just seems like in Phase 2.0 God had severe limitation to the number of people that He could reveal Himself to.

But now in Phase 3.0, Moses learned personally about God’s ways, and the up to 3 million people of the nation of Israel could witness His miraculous works, to personally save them and provide for them in the wilderness. This sounds like a lot of new release features that were going out to a lot of new users. Let us look at one more verse about what God thought of this phase of His plan:

Hosea 6:6  For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. 

Wow, this verse described the heart of God and His motivation for this phase of the “Knowing LOVE 3.0” plan.  As we can see, this verse clearly states that all of the temporary sacrifices and burnt offerings that were implemented in this phase, were not what God really wanted. God plainly reveals His heart’s desire was for His selected people to grow in the “knowledge” of God. This would confirm to us that this was God’s heart and plan for the entire project and not just this single phase.

We should be able to see how this phase 3.0 of the “Knowing LOVE” Plan of Salvation, is like a new software release version containing things that had not previously been known or experienced by humans. However, while God’s new progressive step 3.0 phase of “Knowing LOVE” was meaningfully enhanced, it is still considered an inferior shadowed type of complete salvation and it continued to contain limitations (Hebrews 10:1).

This new phase 3.0 step of God’s plan was 1) providing humans with new opportunities to know about God, and 2) introduced additional opportunities to desire more of what could be possible in the future coming next phase of God’s plan. Every phase of God’s plan of Salvation had these qualities so far. There were always new and better features in each release. But with the new “good”, there also came a revived troublesome longing, of the need for coming improvements, and enhancements found within the next phase.

Have you ever desired and looked forward to the next release of a smart phone? There is so much advertised hype in the phone world to cause this “got to have it” feeling of desire.  A new phone design with new improved features often causes people to wait days, or for many hours in line to be the first person to get one. There is such an intense level of desired excitement for certain brands of phones with specific features that people literally go crazy to try to get one, no matter what the cost may be. But, God’s “Knowing LOVE” new releases were so much greater than having the latest smart phone, that it does not compare. Nevertheless, people have set their desires so low and are missing the incredible blessings of “Knowing the One that Created everything, including smart phones”.

We are now being exposed to the next new and enhanced presentation of a new version of divine “Knowing LOVE”.  God’s desire was then and still is now for a closer relationship with humans. God wanted more than just coming down from heaven and walking and talking with them occasionally. Sound familiar? God wants more of us every day, rather than just how some people only think of God one time on Sunday at church. We are about to find how God’s 3.0 next pre-planned step of “Knowing LOVE” was designed, to actually live with His creation personally on the natural planet earth, in the physical realm:

Exo 25:8  And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. 

There were amazing enhanced features added in God’s phased release 3.0 plan of “Knowing LOVE”. This release of God’s LOVE plan changes things up dramatically. Instead of God just coming down to the earth occasionally to visit humans, God desired to end the long-distance relationship, to make it a closer friendly relationship between Him and His creation. God desired to live together on the natural earth for His people and Him to be nearer to each other. God said this part of His plan would require a “sanctuary”.  This is just another name for a “tabernacle” or “temple”. And it was initiated by God with a portable temporary “tent” designed system, that was made from a heavenly design, that was given to Moses directly from God on Mount Sinai.

This concept of God being near and with His children was described by Jesus when He was here in the flesh.  Jesus declares this was God’s desire to be very close to His children in Matthew 23:37 when He says:

Mat 23:37  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 

Jesus is figuratively speaking of God to be like a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings. This was done by a hen, to give the children comfort, covering and safety from any predator type of bird. This is clearly speaking of natural people on the earth as being under the wings of the “Most High” God. We can learn about this, by reading what God wrote and implied to us in Psalm 91. In Psalm 91:1 God says “He that dwells in the secret place (hidden under my wing) of the ‘Most High’, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty”. Then in verse 4 God gets more direct with the connection to Jesus’ words in Matthew:

Psa 91:4  He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. 

This verse contains a very similar pattern to the words spoken by Jesus in Matthew. These words represent the heart of LOVE desiring to be very close as a covering to His children. This is God’s desire to hide them from their enemies. This was God offering them a greater level of loving protection. This is clearly what God has desired from the beginning. But because of sin and Satan, God had a challenge in keeping humans ‘holy’ enough to be that near to Him and Him not kill them because of His great Holiness.

We will also find that God’s desire was to dwell with His creation as their covenant Husband (Jer 31:32), and for them to live with Him as His faithful wife. God’s plan was for an increased presence of covenant relationship, utilizing an amended temporary solution for the next approximate 1500 years. This designed improvement of “Knowing LOVE” was for Him to come down from heaven to be present and as close as He could to them without defiling Himself and harming them.

God needed an increased covering from their human sin, until the time He could implement His future far better solution through Jesus. For the temporary system, God implemented a structure based upon law, containing ordinances and promises. He put these into place with a temporary high priest interacting with a temporary blood offering substitution system, and bringing this blood into the presence of God.

The high priest would offer sacrifices of blood for himself, and he would act as a “bridge” type of representative of the people to God. This temporary high priest, would go between the one-sided cliff of sinful covenant people, and the other side of the sin gulf, containing the cliff of God’s infinite Holy presence. This high priest system was required to offer the blood of inferior, temporary, and unblemished animals for his own personal sins. This blood came from the outside of the inward Holy places, and then the blood was brought into the innermost Holy level alone. The high priest, would then apply the blood to the “ark of the covenant” (aka the mercy seat), where the Spirit of God abided temporarily in this phase.

The high priest after cleansing himself, would then do it again for the corporate sins of the entire nation. This high priest would perform this annually on the day of atonement, to make himself and the nation temporarily clean and sanctified enough for God’s glory to continue to live among, and near them without killing anyone. These separate sacrifices would allow the high priest and the nation to live another year in temporary “peace”, until more sacrifices for their new sins were required. Much of these sacrificial instructions were given to them in detail by Moses in the book of Leviticus.  We will not go through this for the sake of time.

However, we will mention Leviticus 10:1-2. In these verses, were two sons of Aaron, the first temporary high priest. These are two priests that do not follow the commandments of God accurately and they offered to God “strange fire”. This indicates it was not what God instructed for them to offer Him. It represented potentially an inferior quality offering. The consequence for this act of disobedience and rebellion, was their immediate deaths. Leviticus 10:2 clearly states that fire came out of the LORD and devoured them.

Please just understand that in this lesser Old Covenant system that I am calling “Knowing LOVE 3.0”, God utilized law. The Law was put into place to, 1) Give humans the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20), and 2) to act as a school master to prove to us, that no human could be perfect enough to meet God’s standards (Gal 3:24). We also know from reading the promises of blessing in Deuteronomy 28, for people that kept the law by obeying it, these commandments would protect the people from the curses of disobedience. Finally, if we read in Joshua 1:8, we will find that meditating on God’s law, both day and night to see to do it, would cause great success and prosperity to come upon them that would obey God. Therefore, we can see that there were conditional provisions for obeying or disobeying God’s Laws.  One side of the coin was great blessings and the flip side was tremendous consequences.

Here we can see that sin, still had major costs, in this phase of the plan of GOD.  If the blood offerings were not properly followed, and sin was not at least at a minimum covered, many bad things happened.  

In this temporary Law system, God created a tabernacle tent arrangement containing an 1) outer fenced courtyard area, that contained a brazen altar to sacrifice animal burnt offerings. This area also had the washbowl to allow the priest to get his external body clean. Next came an 2) inward tent Holy location that contained a lampstand, a place for the shewbread, and a place for incense.  All of these tabernacle outer items could be accessed by the priestly order almost daily for their outward temple duties.

But one location named 3) the Holy of Holies had a separating veil for safety and protection, and only one representative man was made clean enough by blood offerings to actually enter into this Most Holy center place. This man was the selected mediator “from” the covenant people that was selected “for” the covenant people to represent them before God. This temporary high priest was a pattern for the coming permanent High Priest named Jesus (Hebrews 4:14). This Holy of Holies place was the one inner room where the Spirit of God chose to reside on the earth, to be as close as He could to His covenant people that He LOVED, without hurting them. But if any sin entered into His Holy of Holies presence without following the laws of sacrifice, that human life was ended immediately, as we just read.

God introduces in Release 3.0 of “Knowing LOVE” what we could call “God’s manifested presence on the earth” feature, but it still had severe limitations. It was still inferior to God being with Adam in the beginning Garden of Eden before sin, in the “Knowing God 1.0” phase.

Sin in the nation of Israel remained a constant separating power, that kept God from His covenant bride. In this Old Covenant Law system there were layers of divine pre-planned separators implemented by God’s design using walls, partitions, a veil, rules, processes, procedures, laws, offerings, sacrifices, and a lot of innocent blood, etc. All of these new features, patterns and promises in 3.0 were designed by God, to leave an empty desire for God’s people to want to know Him more, and to hopefully help them to desire to invite Him to come closer. Let us review some of the list of benefits and limitations of this release:

Benefits:

1. No longer did God need to come down from Heaven to visit with any of His covenant humans occasionally.
2. God lived in the physical center of the covenant people that He was married to.
3. The people could personally witness the glory of God and His wonderous and loving works much closer, than when they were in the wilderness with Moses up on Mount Sinai alone.
4. One man had the right, when all of the requirements were satisfied correctly, to go into the most Holy presence of their Covenant God.

Limitations:

1. The people had the requirement for a “high priest” mediator type of bridge, between them and God.
2. The people required animal blood sacrifices continually to appease the consequences of their sin for a Holy God.
3. The people had a long list of commandments and laws that had to be obeyed, to meet the conditions for the continued blessings and protection of God.
4. Disobedience opened the door for their enemy to come in and bring curses upon the people.

There were still so many limitations of full access in phase 3.0. So many restrictions and requirements to follow. It seemed like this phase of the LOVE plan was only designed to cause humans to work and learn that they needed something new, that was not yet available. Let us move to the next phased release, and learn what new features God had planned to release on the world for us to personally know Him more.

#6 – KNOWING LOVE 4.0
THE IMPROVED KNOWING GOD IN THE FLESH APPLICATION

The next planned phase of the “Knowing LOVE” app, represented a radical and totally unexpected event in human history. Most humans lacked any understanding of how this type of work of God could be possible. There were some people that suspected it could be, and saw glimpses of it, but only a very few that had any belief it would take place. Some of the people that believed in this phase were the limited Old Testament prophets including John the Baptist, Joseph and the mother of Jesus named Mary. God spoke to a few wise men that came following a star to give Jesus gifts. Angels appears to a few shepherds and made an announcement. But almost no one else knew who Jesus really was. I am not that convinced that even Satan or his angels fully understood who Jesus was either, at least at first.

But God was adding some major new features for “Knowing LOVE”. God desired to assist humans to move from “knowing less to knowing more about His LOVE”. God also wanted people to move from “a distant occasional relationship with LOVE, to Him becoming a closer personal relationship type of knowing LOVE firsthand”. This phase of the plan came much closer to solving these issues, than any of the previous phases. 

In this phase of the plan of “Knowing LOVE”, Jesus who was the creator God (John 1:3, Eph 3:9, Col 1:16) manifested as a “human” (Rom 8:3), “neighbor” (Mk 6:3) and “resident” (Jn 1:14), of the nation of Israel. Jesus Christ the man, was the physically reachable and touchable (Mat 14:36, Mk 5:30) version of LOVE. This part of the plan of salvation, I will call “Knowing LOVE 4.0”. This phase occurred nearly 4000 years after the original sin of Adam. This phase was an ever-improving new prophesied strategy of God (Gen 1:16). God implemented this phase for several good reasons. But one benefit was that, it had practically eliminated the sin separation force, that kept humans from touching their Holy God physically. It was also designed to remove the divine Holy defilement problem with the Holy God being in close proximity to sinful humans. God did all of this by entering into a physical body, so that He could have an intimate direct presence with all of His people.

This phase of the plan of God, was one of the greatest blessings that the natural people of Israel had ever imagined could have happened. Yet it would cause a vast majority of them to stumble because it did not contain the features that they thought they wanted. Uh, oh?

Isa 8:14  And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 

Have you ever gone to the smart phone store and bought a newer version and thought, what happened? This model is just not as good as the last version, that I thought was so great. I know, I have. Many years ago, I had a great phone with a lot of great features that I really liked. It is like my previous phone let me change the battery and put in a new one, and this new version removed this feature.  Then there was a phone that did not allow me to increase the memory by adding a SD card.  It seemed like this new phone that I bought suddenly took away features that I really liked and they vanished. We can all too often gain too much familiarity with the old features, that we miss the new features. This can cause us not to be so fully appreciative of the new features, that were added for us, providing us things we never had before. That is exactly what this version of the plan of God did to many of the Jewish people.

For example, the leaders in the temple set up exchange stations for commercial transactions for the people to purchase the “Law” required temple offerings. The people of Israel could simply bring some money and buy a lamb, dove or whatever offering type they needed instead of bringing their own from home. Think about what was happening in this O.T. system of offerings. People were abusing the system and ultimately disobeying the intent of the Knowing LOVE system. Many people got too accustomed to this abuse, and when Jesus came, he drove out these money changers from the temple, and they wanted to kill Him (Mk 11:18). Let us get back, to our prophetical verse of Jesus.

Notice in Isaiah 8:14 what God prophesied about Jesus. We should immediately notice that Jesus was prophesied to be a “sanctuary”. This is the same as a temple containing an outer court, an inner holy court area, and an inner interior Holy of Holies, where the Spirit of God lived.  God was literally informing people of something absolutely vital to understand and we will talk more about this soon. But notice the rest of the verse claims that Jesus will also be a “stumbling stone” and “rock of offence” to the people of Israel. Wow, this is exactly what we can find in the Gospels. These descriptions describe people that did not like the new release of their LOVE smart app. God is saying to us, that this walking and talking sanctuary will be mostly hated by these people.

As a major portion of this phase of God’s “Knowing LOVE” plan, God made a willful decision to make a personal appearance on the earth. He did this by manifesting in the physical form of a mortal human male named Jesus. While most Israelites were expecting a physical Messiah, this model of Messiah found in Jesus, did not match their expectations. That was one of their major problems. A lot in the nation of Israel were looking for a strong and conquering type of Son of David to be their Messiah. But when Jesus appeared as a lowly, meek and mild man (Mat 11:29) they became easily offended. However, notice this verse:

Mat 1:23  Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 

Clearly Jesus was called by this name to reveal exactly who He was. This human natural birth was the fulfillment of a prophecy from hundreds of years earlier from Isaiah 7:14. As is restated in Matthew 1:23. This name “Emmanuel” literally means “God with us”. Therefore, we learn that Jesus was the manifested presence of God on the physical earth in a completely legal and safe form. In this form, God could be much more than just near to humans like He was in tabernacle in the wilderness.  This appearance of God could even eat with people and He could touch humans physically. All of this, without the consequences of death for being in His presence or corruption to divine Holiness. Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?

Col 1:15  Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 

We can confirm in Colossians 1:15 that Jesus is literally declared to be the “image of the invisible God”. This Greek word G1504 translated as “image” simply means that when people saw Jesus, they were witnessing the divine character, morals, attitudes, emotions, words, ways and actions of their LOVE God. No one had ever seen or known this God in this close way. Perhaps Moses came the nearest to this experience.  But yet Moses was never allowed to see the face of God while speaking with Moses. 

Jesus in the flesh had become a living human containing the hidden, and invisible Spirit of God. It was almost like Jesus came to show everyone the True nature of God as being loving. This comparison is similar to the wizard in the Wizard of Oz movie. The wizard would normally hide behind a curtain to keep his true self from being made known to people that visited him. This is similar to the character of God. We are told that God hides himself from us in Isaiah 45:15. But in the movie, the curtains were drawn back, so that the people seeking him could finally see him. In this movie, one man controlled the big scary image of what everyone wanted to believe that the wizard was. But when the curtain was removed, this type of wizard was not at all what anyone expected. This is very similar to the reaction that Jesus received when claiming to be the “Son of God” (Lk 22:70) and the great “I am” (Jn 8:58).

Why was this new and different revelation of God, so troubling to the people of Israel? It is probably because they had all read and heard the stories of experiencing God in His rescue of the nation from Egypt. Remember in this experience the people had just witnessed the Red Sea parted and they walked through on dry ground. These parted waters soon closed after they had crossed totally destroying the pursuing Egyptian army. They had been led by a pillar of fire at night and very large cloud by day.  They had seen 3000 people swallowed up by the earth after Moses came down from meeting with God on Mount Sinai.  They had witnessed so many awesome manifestations of God, but none were exactly like this humble carpenter man from Nazareth.

Now, during Jesus’ manifested times on the earth for 33 ½ years, instead of God speaking through other normal sinful humans, like prophets, priests or kings, God could speak directly and personally to anyone in His physical presence. Jesus verified this in John 14:9 when He told Phillip, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father, why are you asking me to show you the Father?” This was such an awesome approach at revealing LOVE to the nation of Israel. Jesus showed the people such an extreme picture of a loving, kind and compassionate God. He did this by healing so many sick people (Mat 12:15), raising dead people back to life (Lk 8:54-55) and casting out devils (Mat 8:16) to name only a few. All of these examples of LOVE were God personally protecting His people from their unseen enemies.  Wow!

Jesus as a physical manifestation of God in the form of one man had a lot of human limitations. He could only be in one place at one time with only the few people that were there at that location. For example, Jesus was in His house in Mark 2:1-12. His house was already full of people and no one else could get in to be near to Him. We are told that a small group of 4 men brought a lame man to Jesus to get healed and they found no way into the house. They decided to climb on the roof and make a hole in it, to lower the lame man down to see Jesus.  Because of their faith and hard work this man was healed.  But this clearly demonstrates a major limitation that Jesus faced with people reaching out to know Him and experience His LOVE, mercy and compassion.

Jesus plainly had to travel by foot (Jn 1:36), donkey (Jn 12:14) or boat (Mt 14:13) extensively to try to see the people that He could be led to see. Jesus had normal human things to do like He needed to eat (Mat 9:10, Mat 26:26), sleep (Mk 4:34) and go to the bathroom (Mt 15:17). Jesus often stood in a boat and taught people on the shore to allow more people to hear Him (Lk 5:3). There was just one limitation after the other recorded in the Gospels. Also, God desired to reach out and save every person from every nation in the world, but physical Jesus was literally only sent by God to minister to the nation of Israel (Mat 15:24).

We can clearly see where the “Knowing LOVE” plan version 4.0 was better than anything previously. This release had awesome improvements and features.  But simultaneously it had severe constraints. Fortunately for God and humans, this release for “Knowing LOVE” only lasted for 33 ½ years. This was one of the shortest durations of time in the entire plan of God for salvation. The only other short duration in the plan, was phase 1.0 in the time of the first Adam (Romans 5:14). But these few years of God physically living with humans for us to “Know Him” would bring about the most radical next phase changes in His LOVE plan in the entire human history. No human, angel or devil had ever witnessed or imagined what was coming next in God’s agenda.

Let us talk briefly about what made Jesus (Knowing LOVE 4.0 – God in the flesh), legal to be manifested here on the earth without having people dropping dead all around Him when He touched them! Have you ever thought of this? Everywhere in the O.T. when a human came into the presence of their Holy God without the necessary blood sacrifices, death resulted quickly like Passover in Egypt. The Egyptians clearly regretted not listening to Moses and just letting these people leave their nation. Also in 2 Samuel 6:7 there was a man named Uzzah that was killed by the LORD for touching the ark while it was being moved. God clearly warns Aaron the High Priest in Leviticus 16:2, to not enter into the Holy of Holies at all times or he would die.

So, what gave Jesus who was the most High and Holy God living inside flesh, the right to be here on the earth walking and talking with people, without any consequences? Also why did the devils on the earth constantly question Jesus’ right to be there casting them out (Luke 4:34). If demons knew Jesus was the Holy One of God and wondered how He could manifest here on this sin filled earth and still be legal, I think we should find the answer. What is the answer? We briefly mentioned the correct answer at the beginning of this section.  Now we are about to see it being stated by Jesus next.

Joh 2:19  Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 

While Jesus was here on the earth in the flesh, He claimed to be the manifested temple (temporary tent tabernacle and sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit. He told the Jews “Destroy this temple, and in 3 days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). We are told in John 2:21 that the Jews thought He was speaking of their physical stone temple building, but Jesus was speaking of His body instead. This is a clear example of a major misunderstanding from two radically different perceptions of word definitions and viewpoints.

Wow, we have just learned that the physical body of Jesus was the improved fulfillment of the superior type of temporary temple of God found in the Old Covenant Phase 3.0 plan of God. What we are finding is that God took an inferior pattern from a previous release and enhanced it with awesome newly designed divine workings. Acts 7:48 teaches us that God’s ultimate plan was to not dwell in temples that were made with human hands. This simply tells us that it was God’s plan to live in human bodies that He designed and created making it all legal for God to manifest in a man’s body named Jesus.

Reading in John 1:14 Jesus is described as God coming into our physical world. Jesus came into our world, so that GOD could “dwell” among us. This is exactly what God said He desired to do in Exodus with the freed people of Israel. This Greek word G4637 translated as “dwell” actually means “to tent camp”. In other words, this is the same description as God “tabernacling” with His people in the O.T. except with Him being in a far greater living form of the old temporary tent. This redesigned old temple pattern, allowed God much greater and closer contact with sinful people than had ever taken place before.

Instead of God only allowing one high priest into the Holy of Holies to represent every human on the outside, Jesus could walk up to anyone and talk to them (even the worst sinner), without any consequences for Himself or for them. This was all possible and legal because Jesus was a fully self-contained temple for God. Every component and design of the O.T. temple had a parallel to the greater temple in found the body of Jesus.

Jesus asked the Pharisees a very tough question one day in Matthew 22. Jesus said to them, “What do you think of Messiah? Whose son, is he?”  They all answered to Him, “He is David’s son”. Now Jesus brings out the really tough question next. Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1 to them and says “If David by the Spirit, calls him LORD, how can he be his son?” Not one of them knew the answer to this riddle. If we can understand this mystery, it will help us to know, how the Holy God in Jesus was legal to be found on the earth, without any sinful contact consequences.

This answer is probably known by many Christians.  Jesus had two parents, one was His Father GOD and the other was His mother, Mary. God the Father, was completely Divine and Holy, and His mother was completely human. Mary’s genealogy was provided to us by Luke in chapter 3 of his Gospel. This information shows how Jesus descended from Mary, David, Judah, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Noah, Methuselah, Seth, Adam and God, to name just some of the key participants. This information shows how the man named Jesus came to be both human and divine in unison.

The temple body of Jesus, contained the complete high priest mediator system created by God in Leviticus. He could work outwardly to interact with the sinful people, and inwardly to speak to the Spirit of the Holy God. Physical Jesus was the “bridge” representative between the Spirit of God and the external humans. The physical body of Jesus, also internally possessed the ultimate, precious, substitutionary blood payment offering that was needed to sanctify and forgive them. This is why Jesus could legally forgive human sins while manifested in the flesh, prior to shedding His blood on the cross. We can see this demonstrated by Jesus in Matthew 9:2. This was when Jesus saw a lame man that was let down on ropes, and said to Him, “Son be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you”.

When the Pharisees questioned Jesus about His ability and authority to forgive human sin on the earth, Jesus said to them “Why do you think this evil in your hearts?”  These men of the Law were being inspired by Satan to question Jesus’ right to be there. The Pharisees obviously did not know who Jesus was, being God incarnate. But the evil spirits working in these religious people knew. Jesus answered their question in Matthew 9:6 and told them “That you might know the Son of Man, has authority on earth to forgive sin, (Jesus turned to the lame man) and said; Arise, take up your bed and walk”. Wow, can you see how the Hight Priest Jesus, just used the power of His internal blood and decreed a message from the Holy Spirit’s mercy seat inside of Him, and said ‘you are forgiven’?

Between the external sinful lame man, and His internal Father’s Holy Spirit there was a human High Priest mediator, named Jesus of Nazareth. This was just a vastly improved, totally ingenious, new and different concept while being practically the same as the Old Covenant priest and temple system.  Jesus was God on the earth living with His people in human form utilizing a far superior way to dwell with His people that had never occurred in this way before. This was totally awesome.

We can now see God’s direct connection to the temporary inferior Jewish temple and tabernacle that was given to them by God through Moses. This Old Covenant design, was by far an inferior type pointing us to the greater new manifestation of God in the body of Jesus. We should be able to understand that the temporary dwelling of God in the wilderness, was a prophetical type of the coming Jesus in the flesh. But this manifestation of human Jesus, was also a temporary tent dwelling of God with His people. However, Jesus offered humans a closer one on one relationship with God, without a sinful human priest, that was designed to be a bridged gap remover, between God and sinful humans. God, Himself became the needed human gap provider. But Jesus was really much more than all of this. All of these laws were designed by God to give Jesus legal access into the world without killing sinners that came near Him or their sins corrupting Him.

You see the body of Jesus like the temporary Mosaic tabernacle, contained a coat of external skin that kept people on the outside from defiling the presence of the Holy God on the inside. In the design given to Moses from God on mount Sinai (Exo 26), He was instructed to make 4 layers of coverings for the tabernacle as protection for the internal ark. The inner layer was hand crafted beauty and the outer layer was the least beautiful covering.  The outer layer represented a human skin covering. The inner layer represented the Heavenly Perfection and Holiness of God. One of the center layers was made of ram skins dyed red. It is interesting that a Ram is a symbol of God the Father, and a Ram was used as the substitutionary sacrifice when Abraham was offering Isaac (Gen 22:13). All of this corresponded to the body layers of a human, with God on the inside of them.

We can see that Jesus had the Holy Spirit on the inside of His body. We also know that Jesus internal Spirit, was clothed with an outer organ of external human skin.  It was this skin, that kept humans that came near Him, from being killed by the awesome presence of God on the inside. What made all of this possible? It was the living blood of GOD/LOVE. The external layer of human skin covered the flesh and bone layers of Jesus, and all of this covered, the most center internal Holy of Holies, that contained the Spirit of God. But flowing between the external skin, and the internal Spirit, was the living blood of the Holy God. This blood was NOT inferior animal blood. This blood was the “precious” Holy blood of God Himself (1 Pet 1:19).

The fact that this was God’s blood and not just the blood of a natural bull, goat or lamb, made this offering “infinitely” greater. This blood was powerful enough to accomplish things no created animal blood could ever do for us.  As we all have seen in past releases, God values the quality of the gift being sacrificed to Him, and this Jesus divine blood gift offering, was the ultimate presentation that could only be offered by God Himself. Thus, God in the flesh of Jesus was a complete self-contained safe environment for walking and talking with sinful humans.

What we find in the Bible is that Jesus is stated to be our High Priest (Heb 3:1). We also find that His Body was the manifested Tabernacle of the Most Holy God (Jn 2:19). We further discover that His flesh body was consider to be the veil that was torn, to later give us all permanent direct access to the Holy Spirit of God (Heb 10:20). We also can see how Jesus was our substitutionary sacrifice, and His blood was soon going to become the permanent payment for human redemption (1 Cor 5:7).

Jesus was a walking, talking and living tent tabernacle for God. He was designed to be a safe method of face-to-face relationship with His creation. This was very similar to when God could walk and talk with the first Adam in the garden. But this manifestation took into consideration and solved the sin separation problem. This made this release of LOVE significantly greater than any other phase of the plan, after sin entered the earth. But, a lot of people and devils, did not like this type of God manifestation, and they killed Him. This too was a part of the plan for Jesus to become God’s bleeding sacrifice. This pouring out of His blood was one of Satan’s greatest mistakes (1 Cor 2:8).

Jesus in His mortal flesh, had totally eliminated the barrier of sin separation between God and humans, when walking the face of the earth as a living natural man. Jesus could have lived on the earth indefinitely in this manifestation. Jesus was designed by God to be a manifested self-contained temple unit with a built in Prophet, King and High Priest. However, Jesus purposefully came to die, and He only tabernacled with humans for 33 and ½ years. During this time, He did not kill one sinner. Everyone that personally saw Him was totally safe.

Benefits:

1. This was the closest to God any sinful human could be to Him so far.
2. God manifested as a man named Jesus could demonstrate the character, nature, compassion and love of God like no other phase of God’s plan so far.
3. The people in the world could personally witness the wonderous, miraculous and loving works of God face to face.
4. There was never any risk of any human dropping dead, because their sin in the presence of the Holy God in Jesus.
5. There was never any need for a blood sacrifice of an animal to talk with God face to face in Jesus.
6. There was no need for any human temporary bridge to act as a “go between”, for us to desire to speak with God personally. God in Jesus, directly became our “High Priest”.

Limitations:

1. God stripped Himself of His deity powers to die for us on the cross. It would have been impossible to kill an omnipotent God manifested in the world. This is why God had to anoint Jesus with the Holy Spirit to do miracles (Acts 10:38).
2. God in Jesus had human physical limitations of being in one place at one time with only the people that could get near enough to be with Him.
3. All human sin and its consequences had not been dealt with in this manifestation of God on the earth with His people.

All of these new features, seemed so great in God’s much-improved version of the divine “Knowing LOVE” application. No one had ever imagined this was even possible, except for God Himself. Surely there would be millions of people standing in line to get to experience this new version of face-to-face LOVE. But what made people reject this version of God’s LOVE? The main answer was it was not what they expected, and this version still did not have what God had promised that was coming next.

#7 – KNOWING LOVE 5.0
THE VASTLY IMPROVED KNOWING GOD APPLICATION IN THE SPIRIT

2Co 5:16 Consequently, from now on we estimate and regard no one from a [purely] human point of view [in terms of natural standards of value]. [No] even though we once did estimate Christ from a human viewpoint and as a man, yet now [we have such knowledge of Him that] we know Him no longer [in terms of the flesh]. (AMP)

God reveals to Paul, in the second letter to the Corinthians, that a change to “knowing LOVE”, had taken place. In the previous release, Jesus Christ made the TRUE living God physically apparent to people. Paul claims that we got to “know” Him in His flesh. But Paul, then claims this is not how we “know” Him anymore.  What changed? In this next phase of the “Knowing LOVE” plan of God, God is now able to come to every human on the face of the earth with His Holy Spirit, and speak to, walk with, and live in us all, Spirit to spirit.

There were only about 120 people gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem 50 days after Jesus was raised from the dead. Only these people wanted to possess and experience the next most awesome version 5.0, of His “Knowing LOVE” plan. In the mind of some people this may have been a great disappointment. But God knew and saw things differently. God knows this is how someone begins to plant seeds in a garden. God understood how things were created, and He knew that almost everything that becomes large, must begin with a small seed and grow. If you recall, Jesus claimed to be the single seed in John 12:24, that will produce more fruit containing more seeds. In this verse, Jesus speaking of Himself said, “unless a grain of wheat dies and fall into the ground, it remains alone, but it if dies, it bears much fruit”.

God planted a new single seed, named Jesus as a new sinless garden. Jesus was also the gardener of this garden. The first Adam, had it this way also, but he allowed sin to corrupt it. The first garden of this world, was in the first Adam, and sin caused this one to be cursed to produce thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:18).  But Jesus came to the earth as the new guaranteed “living Spirit”, to produce the insured fruit of God (Romans 7:4). Where the first Adam failed, the Last Adam succeeded (2 Corinthians 15:45).  Therefore, Jesus had to die, and this seed was buried in the ground for 3 days, and then arose to begin to bring forth new spiritual fruit bearers called the church (John 15:5). 

This church began small, but would grow significantly over time and this is what God knew would happen. For example, let’s do some math. We already know in Acts 2, the people that had a “I’ve got to know Him” heart to receive the next greater experience of His LOVE, began with 120. But in the world in the year 2021, there were around 2.5 billion professing Christians in number, and growing. Of this number there are almost 300 million professing to be Pentecostals, exactly like the early upper room church.

That is one of the factors of this phase of God’s plan of salvation, that Satan completely did not expect. He could not have imagined that he would have been far better off, only dealing with one living God temple in Jerusalem and Israel. Rather than now, with him trying to deal with more than 2.5 billion living, and moving God temples all over the globe. Let us now get introduced to some more of the details to God’s greatly enhanced release of “Knowing LOVE”. This phase of the divine plan is what is now available to receive freely by faith and participate in, and I have called this phase 5.0 for the sake of reference.

Hopefully everyone is fully excited and engaged with learning about God’s work of designing and implementing a divine plan for humans to know Him as LOVE.  God performed this work using phases and releases each coming from the awesome intelligent Designer, Creator and Giver of everything Good and Perfect (James 1:17). This was phase 5.0 of God’s plan. This phase contains such new radical improvements and enhancements, and these were so far above any of the previous phases that came before. I am very shocked today, when I do not see very many people that have a desire to rush out to experience this level of knowing His LOVE release personally.

This part of the divine plan, offered the most intimate and personal, fellowship and relationship between GOD and humans so far. This part of God’s plan made available things that could only be imagined by a few in humanity. In the past, only a select few humans could encounter God at a much lower level of knowing Him. It had taken over 4000 years to release this much higher level of His plan, but the effects of it will last for eternity to those that receive it. This phase of His plan involved Him being not only near every human in covenant with Him, but He actually planned to live “in” (John 14:17), every human in covenant with Him at the same exact time. This removed every separation and limitation that was previously found in every other phase of His plan.

This plan was only able to be made available for release, because in phase 4.0 Jesus came to not only make God known, but also to come here to die, be buried for 3 days, and then rise from the dead to implement the next phase of the plan. You see where humans throughout history had failed to meet the terms of God’s covenants, Jesus fulfilled the requirements, and now we can get into Him (John 14:20) as imperfect humans and obtain His same benefits for free.

Because Jesus died and offered His personal life blood as a permanent ransom sacrifice price, He could rise from the dead, to take back to heaven His blood, to place it on the true eternal altar, to pay for sins once and for all (Hebrews 9:12). This offering made eternal peace between God and humans (Colossians 1:20) and it gave His Father the legal right to send the Holy Spirit back to the earth in Jesus’ name (John 14:26) to be distributed to all of us.

Jesus declared in John 16:7 that this next phase 5.0 of the plan of “Knowing LOVE” would occur, when the Holy Spirit would come to live “in” potentially ALL humans. Jesus said this was so much better (significantly enhanced) then Him just physically living with a few people in the flesh in phase 4.0. Wow, this was a mind-blowing concept. What a radical transformation upward in powerful features. This was a divine revolutionary change, that could be made available to any human on the planet, being Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female (Galatians 3:28).

This radical unexpected change would be implemented using a new spiritual birth, that had never occurred before (John 3:3). This birth would change the spirit of the unclean physical natural human with sin limitations, into a brand-new, spiritually clean, new creation human (2 Corinthians 5:17).  God also said in 1 Corinthians 6:17, that when this occurred, our new clean, sinless spirit would be joined with Christ to be One Spirit with Him. Wow, all of this is occurring while humans were still living on the current earth, in the physical natural realm, where Satan is still a god (2 Corinthians 4:4).

It is essential to understand that this phase 5.0 part of God’s plan, was not possible until Jesus died, and after He shed His blood outwardly upon the cross, for the permanent one time, sacrifice payment for cleansing the entire whole world, from our sins. It was this superior Lamb offering in step 4.0, that allowed the implementation of this step 5.0 of God’s knowing LOVE plan. His personal blood sacrifice would permit the Holy Spirit to come, and legally live on the inside of thousands, millions and even billions of forgiven sinners without killing anyone. Jesus claimed that the internal presence of the Holy Spirit was far better for each born-again person because He would be our ever-present personal helper (John 14:16), guide (John 16:13) and teacher (John 14:26).

This phase of God’s plan of Grace, increased the human ability to experience a level of God’s heavenly power, presence, light, one-on-one fellowship and love influence, that had never been possible, after sin, and Satan had entered the world. Now any person, could hear directly from the Spirit of Truth, without any filters of earthly bridges like priests, scribes, preachers and teachers or the distractions from an external seen enemy, trying to deceive them. The people that were living in a dark hateful world, could allow the God of TRUTH, LIGHT and LOVE to become their internal counselor.  This was God’s awesome step in the “Revealing and Knowing LOVE” plan for human salvation. It is currently still available to anyone. No one but God could have imagined how great this part of the plan was going to be. This was actually prophesied in the Book of Jeremiah:

Jer 31:31  Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 

Jer 31:33  But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

Jer 31:34  And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. 

Wow these are some radically spoken words, that were hard to understand for the Old Covenant people of Israel.  God is clearly speaking of a need for a NEW and different Covenant. One that had never before occurred. This covenant would not be like it was in the wilderness with Moses, where only one man could hear from God and be in His Holy presence. This New Covenant speaks of a people living in a significantly higher condition where everyone “knows” God personally, and this would only be possible, if the Spirit of God comes to dwell on the inside of every human’s body. This is the exact promise that Jesus gave to us in the Gospels while personally visiting His people in the flesh.

This is also exactly why, when the Roman soldier pierced the side of Jesus, and blood and water flowed out of His body, the veil in the Jewish physical temple was also ripped into two pieces from top to bottom. The ripped veil, represented the removal of the hidden place of limitation, where only one representative could come near to God’s presence.  But by ripping open the veil, God was saying “I have opened the door for all to access me” and “anyone can now come in to know me personally”.  We also discover the body of Jesus was the fulfillment of this Old Covenant natural woven “veil” within the natural tabernacle in Hebrews 10:

Heb 10:19  Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 

Heb 10:20  By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 

Heb 10:21  And having an high priest over the house of God; 

Christians now have complete confidence, because of the blood of Jesus to enter the ripped and torn flesh opening made by Jesus’ body (our door). After Jesus had risen from the dead Jesus looked at Thomas and told him to put his fist in His side, proving this door to the Spirit of God on the inside of Him had been permanently opened to allow anyone to still come into God’s presence by faith.  Because of the shed blood of Christ, and this new flesh opening, any forgiven and saved human can come into the Holy presence of God without fear of being struck down dead (Hebrews 10:19). Jesus has become our permanent High Priest over the “House of LOVE”.  WOW! Thank you, Jesus!

Joh 14:20  At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

Think about what Ephesians 2:6 says and then notice what Jesus in John 14:20 says.  In Ephesians 2:6, God claims that people that have come “in Christ Jesus” are also sitting in heaven in Him, in a place of authority right NOW!  Wow! Wrap your mind around that truth. While I am typing this lesson to give to you, I am sitting in heaven in the body of Christ Jesus.  What does that mean?  It means more than you can imagine right now. It means first that you have two addresses, one in the physical and the other one in the much greater heavenly Spiritual dimension. Because we are “In Christ”, who is seated at the “Right Hand of Majesty”, we can be in the same presence completely safe from being struck down dead because of our current human imperfections.  God through Jesus, created a permanent safe environment.  He lives in us on the earth today, to help us become like Him, and we live in Him in heaven, to gain safe access to pray and fellowship with the most Holy God Almighty. Please tell me you are seeing the power of this release of “Knowing LOVE”.

Humans today can enter into Jesus to become a born-again new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and this makes us a part of a New Covenant family of Faith and Love. While we are still in our mortal bodies on the earth, we also become the combined temple of the Holy Spirit as stated in 1 Corinthians 6:19. Paul writes that our natural bodies are also like God’s temporary tent tabernacle (2 Corinthians 5:1). This combined mass of people body tents, were like the one tabernacle that He lived in alone in the Old Covenant. However, because we (the Church), were taken out of His side on the cross to be His covenant bride we are one Body with Him and His bride combined. This is exactly the repeated pattern that occurred in Adam in Genesis 2. God removed a natural woman, taken from the body of the first Adam, and God removed a spiritual woman taken from the body of the Last Adam. Now the church is One flesh and One Spirit corporately with Him (Ephesians 5:31-32).

Do you see the parallels, to God’s temporary tent tabernacle dwelling in the wilderness with the nation of Israel, to the church? We can read in Exodus that God instructed the external tabernacle skin to be made from “badger” skins. It took a lot of animals to make this unified covering. So it is with the Body of Christ now (1 Corinthians 12:27). We are all many members of One Body.

But God and Christians have it so much better than the children of Israel did living in the wilderness. Christians do not have God just being near us, with us being on the outside, we all have become His personal tabernacle, and He now lives on the inside of ALL of us that believe. Wow, wow, wow and wow!

Benefits:

1. Total elimination of us speaking to anyone else except directly to God.
2. God is available to everyone 24x7x365.
3. This is God’s ultimate closeness to humans, and this permitted everyone on the planet, to be in His presence simultaneously.
4. Every human can personally speak with God intimately and personally, all at the same time.
5. There are no limitations of physical distance.
6. There are no limitations of physical location.
7. There is no limitation of physical space or size of the meeting place.
8. There are no limitations of time, dates, days, months or years to meet with God.
9. There was never any risk of any human dropping dead because their sin was in this close presence of the Holy God in our body.
10. All human sin had been fully paid for once and for all time.
11. The same power of God that raised Jesus from dead, was now resident inside of everyone of God’s believing people.
12. God could use any believer in Jesus to do the work of Jesus anywhere on the earth.
13. Every believer could be in the natural realm and the Holy spiritual realm of existence at the same time.

Limitations:

1. Humans still have a physical body subject to death.
2. Humans still have a spiritual enemy trying to gain access into their mind to deceive them.

While this release of God’s “Knowing LOVE” version 5.0 plan is totally awesome, this is not the end of the plan of salvation either.

#8 – KNOWING LOVE 6.0
GOD’S FRUITFUL GRAND FINALE

Our God has certainly exhibited great power, wisdom, and skill to get us to this point of human salvation. But God still has to deal with the exclusion of all enemies, the removal of all curses, and the elimination of the threat of death. We could call these solutions to these problems, release 6.0 of “Knowing God”. We are not able to cover this phase in depth today. However, we can get a quick and basic overview. Let us begin with a verse in 2nd Peter:

2 Peter 3:13  But having faith in his word, we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth, which will be the resting-place of righteousness. (BBE)

For this verse, I selected a Bible translation, that I do not normally use. I believe it says what God, desired to say in the English language, more clearly. Here, Peter by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is writing about a future time, that Christians are patiently waiting for. One of the main problems that all humans have today, is the fact that Satan, death and evil, still are legally present. Peter wrote about a future time where “righteousness” would rule to give people a type of “rest” from evil. This will certainly occur to the fullest measure, during the 1000-year reign of Jesus upon the earth. We call this period of time, the Millennium. There will be no presence or influence of evil spirits during time period (Revelation 20:2). However, Satan will be released from the pit, to tempt all of the people that were born during this time period (Revelation 20:7-8).

Notice in 2 Peter 3:13 that God declares, His people are waiting for a new heaven, and new earth to come. This represents one of the promises of salvation, that are yet to be fulfilled. There is coming a time in the future when the heavens and the earth are destroyed by “fire” (2 Peter 3:10). In this verse, God not only declares the earth to “pass away” by the melting of the elements, God also says, all of the works in it the earth, will be consumed in the same way.  This implies the evil works of Satan to corrupt our human world, have been completely removed.  But what else, has not happened yet?

There are a lot of things that Christians are still waiting for God to complete. One of the first, is found in Romans 16:20. In this verse of prophecy, God says “He will bruise Satan, under our feet shortly”. Since, it has been nearly 2000 years later after this verse was written, and this has not happened, I am expecting it to occur, very soon. This fulfillment, would cause the church, to go out of this world victorious over their enemy Satan, before the tribulation.

There is also this death problem, caused by sin. People, still die every day. After death, unsaved people, have no further hope (Ephesians 2:12). Christians, still die every day. Christians, when they die, depart and go to be with the LORD (2 Corinthians 5:8). But currently there is the issue of leaving our physical bodies here on the earth. To solve this, God promises Christians, a coming “resurrection from the dead” (Romans 6:5).  This is not a spiritual resurrection, but rather a physical body redemption (Romans 8:23). We, who have entered into the door of Jesus Christ, we are all going to get a new resurrected body that will never die (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). This will be the final fulfillment of the Old Covenant type of the permanent dwelling temple of God, that Solomon built for Him in Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 6:10). This is just more prophetic typology of templates, and patterns, revealing God’s phased in plan for His final spiritual union with humans in the here and now, and in the soon manifesting eternity to come.

We need to understand that there have been placed curses upon our world because of human sin. Some try to claim that Galatians 3;13 teaches Christians, that Christ has redeemed us from all curses. However, this verse only states, that we are redeemed from the curses of the Law. Before there was Law in Genesis 3, God places curses, on the ground (the earth), Adam the man and Eve the woman. It appears from studying the Bible, that these curses have not been removed, until Revelation 22:3. This appears to be one of the last corrections caused from the sin fall. This happens, after the new heaven and the new earth occurs.

Rev 21:1  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And the sea no longer is.

Rev 21:3  And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 

We can see how God says it will be at the end of our world. Here we can begin to understand, what Peter wrote of about the rest in righteousness. For during this time in Revelation 21, there will be the full elimination of all unrighteousness, with God’ re-creation of a new heaven and a new earth. Now Satan, sin, sickness, evil and everything not good has been eliminated from human interaction. This, was how God desired it to be with His relationship to humans in the Garden of Eden. Let us back up two more chapters, to see what happened before this anticipated new heaven and new earth:

Rev 19:7  Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 

Notice that God back in Revelation 19:7, informs us that the Lamb’s (Jesus’) bride (the church) has made herself ready. This is a truly revealing statement. It shows a people, that are loving God, with their obedience in return for the Lamb’s love for saving them. It shows a people that are excited to be with Him, forever. This was the heart of God at the beginning, and it is the ending that He planned, and planted, to obtain through, His spoken Word.

If we read in 1 Corinthians 13:8, we find one of the most amazing statements about LOVE ever found. God says here “LOVE NEVER FAILS”. By our beginning mathematical statement, we know “GOD NEVER FAILS”. This simply teaches us, that God will never be defeated by hate or evil. It also says, His faithfulness to His people will always, keep and protect us from these enemies if we abide “in Him”. This revelation of LOVE, which is divinely given to us, should draw us closer to Him. If we choose to continue to walk and remain in this LOVE, we will also never fail. Amen.

#9 – CONCLUSION

This has been a very rapid, but long overview of the plan of God to dwell in and with His creation and for them to KNOW HIM and HIS LOVE. This process of humans “Knowing LOVE” came about through a slow phased-in process, with multiple steps, that reveal it was not a “one and done work of God”. God’s plan for humans to “Know Him”, was rather a well thought out, perfectly designed, and powerfully implemented work that would be completed using a progressive set of multiple steps of ever-increasing developments. With each phase, containing new and improved features. These steps would consistently open the eyes of those that desired to know Him. And they would display His LOVE in radical surprising, new ways to those that were looking for them. Each of these steps, were built upon a foundation of the previous phase, to help us to understand things that were freely available to us from God in growing levels of features.  Each revealed detail of God’s plan of LOVE, was designed to help us to know Him better, and personally as LOVE.

Act 12:24  But the word of God grew and multiplied. 

Act 19:20  So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. 

Notice what these two verses teach us about the early church in the book of Acts. The early church started in Acts 2 with only 120 people in an upper room. The Holy Spirit was initially poured out from heaven on just these few people. This was God’s amazing promise being fulfilled, declaring all people could personally know Him as LOVE. I called this phase of God’s progressive plan “Knowing LOVE 5.0”. Our Creator God moved through the past 6000 years of our human history making improvement after improvement allowing people to fellowship with Him in deeper ways. God went from Him knowing one man named Adam and his wife, and this one man and his wife knowing Him, to now being able to live inside of over 7 billion people at the exact same time, and for all of us to “Know Him”.

This awesome work of God for human salvation, was a designed process of steps. This plan for people to know Him as LOVE, was conceived before it was ever needed. All of the ingredients of this plan were pre-built into the design of creation, and could be accessed and released by God whenever His proper time occurred. This plan went through every transition necessary to legally give God full access to the entire natural human realm, that was ruled initially, completely by Satan. God did this to provide humans salvation from this enemy Satan. God did all of this in such a massive unexpected way that Satan could do nothing to stop it. And of course, we still know that “LOVE (our GOD) NEVER FAILS”.

Thank you for reading and studying the Bible at Agapegeek.com.  Please take the time to like and share this Bible lesson with anyone you know. Our heart is to reach the lost world and to help teach the body of Christ, His awesome word. We love you all and will be praying for each of you as the LORD leads.  We appreciate your prayers in return as the LORD leads you. Possibly in the next lesson, we will discuss this subject again revealing some new information about “GOD IS LOVE”, that some may have never seen before, God willing.

God Bless you. If you would like to continue reading in this Bible study series, you may go to “Part 3” next.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!