The Three Types of Men (Including addendum added on June 7, 2022 on Hebrews 5:11-6:20 - Immature Christians)

(When reading this, you should also include: 

Hebrews 5:12-6:20 | Bible Exposition Commentary - Dr. Grant C. Richison - Characteristic of baby Christians is their lack of formation of biblical principles. They do not see the value in what the Word of God can do in their lives. The reason for this is they have not acquired a taste for what the Word can do for them. They do not believe in the operational value or what forming these principles can do for them. They would rather live by their biases about life. This becomes operation bootstraps, a life lived by constricted human viewpoint. Divine viewpoint remains obscure and remote to how they live. There is a biblical belief shut-down. Their belief system is something other than what God has to say; it is what they prefer to believe

Let's get On with It | Heb 5:11 - 6:12 | RayStedman.org - Major Ian Thomas once said to me, "You know, I have discovered an interesting thing about American Christians. They do not usually come to church to learn anything. Whatever they do not yet know themselves they think is heresy. What they want to hear is the same old stuff so they can say, 'Amen, brother, Amen!'" - CL)

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Carnal Christians are the greatest burdens of the church.

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).

"But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man" (1 Cor. 2:15).

"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ" (1 Cor. 3:1).

In this special passage, Paul puts all humankind into three categories. It is by virtue of these categories that every man stands naked before God. It is by virtue of these categories that all men will be judged, whether they be Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. The final judgement that will determine our eternal destiny will not depend on any particular religious organization we have served or on what particular doctrine we have held. No, the final judgement before the great white throne will be based on which of the three categories we are in.

Now, let us look at each of these in sequence: the natural man, the carnal man, and the spiritual man.

The Natural Man

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

The natural man is a man who lives according to nature. He is governed by his intellect and by his natural affections. The natural man has never experienced the rebirth – he is unconverted. The natural man is asleep to spiritual things. He cannot understand spiritual things, and spiritual things are foolishness unto him because he cannot process them in a rational manner. So, the Word of God, the promises of God, the grace of God, and faith in God in its various, marvelous ways can find no existence in his mind. The natural man is one whose perceptions do not extend beyond his reason, experiences, and feelings. Therefore, the natural man lives in a small world. He lives in a world limited by his finite mind and his five senses. The natural man cannot enter the kingdom of God, for flesh and blood does not inherit the kingdom of God. Therefore, Jesus said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see (nor enter) the kingdom of God." Man must be born again (John 3:3, 5, 7).

The Carnal Man

"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ."

We notice immediately that there are two distinct kinds of Christians: the carnal Christian and the spiritual Christian. This is taught throughout the New Testament – in the Gospels, such as the parable of the ten virgins (Matt. 25:1–13) – and in many passages of the Epistles. Both the carnal Christian and the spiritual Christian have been born of the Spirit, yet they are worlds apart. The expression, "carnal Christian," may justly be coined out of 1 Corinthians 3:1 because here Paul addresses the Corinthian Christians as "carnal." He speaks to these Christians, saying, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ."

So, the first thing we learn here is that a carnal Christian is as a babe in Christ. Hence, a carnal Christian is one who has been born of God, but he lives outside the kingdom of God which is "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" (Rom. 14:17). He is one who does not grow, mature, or develop. He is as a babe. He has no accomplishments but that he is born. He cannot walk, he cannot talk, he cannot understand nor follow instructions, he cannot help, he cannot serve, he cannot sacrifice for others, he cannot lift the burdens of others, he cannot fight battles, he cannot clean himself nor feed himself nor pull himself up. A carnal Christian is as a babe – a babe in Christ, however, who is not a fresh babe that brings joy, but a babe that has been a babe too long. And so, a state of babe-hood has turned into a tragedy, into disgrace, into a burden of the church. When you see a baby in diapers and still slobbering at age five, ten or twenty, there is nothing cute about that. We don’t mind if newborn babes are selfish because we know they will grow up to become productive people. But when babes don’t grow up, and continue to be selfish, to continue to act as babes, then there is great concern.

All of us are born again in carnality with selfishness in our spiritual blood. This is why Paul says to the Corinthians, "ye are yet carnal" (3:3). They were born in carnality from their physical mothers (Ps. 51:5). Then, when they were born again, the carnal nature remained within them. Again, this is why Paul said to these Christians, "ye are yet carnal," indicating that carnality is not removed at conversion. It did not bother Paul that they were carnal at the spiritual birth, but it bothered him that they were yet carnal one or two or three years later. And as a proof that they were yet carnal, he shows them the fruits of their carnality by saying, "For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" There is yet a longer list of the fruits of carnality in Galatians 5:19–21: "Now the doings (practices) of the flesh are clear (obvious): they are immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger (ill temper), selfishness, divisions (dissensions), party spirit (factions, sects with peculiar opinions, heresies), envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you beforehand, just as I did previously, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (AMPLIFIED).

Let me ask you now: what is the destiny of carnal Christians? What does it mean when Paul says that "those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God"? Did Paul warn the carnal Christians about this once or more than once? Did he say that he warned these carnal Christians previously or didn’t he? And dear friend, if this is not enough, read Romans 8:6–7: "For to be carnally minded is death...Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

Newborn babes, born of God, can please God. There is great joy in heaven over one sinner that repents (Luke 15:7, 10). But there is no way an old babe of God can please God. There is no way! An old babe born of God is at enmity with God. If this is not what it says in Romans 8:7, then what about verse 8: "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."? Why did Paul have to deal with carnality in Christians? Again, because carnality is not removed at conversion, it must be removed subsequent to conversion in the work of sanctification. Hence, Paul prayed, "For this is the will of God, even your sanctification" (1 Thess. 4:3).

The Corinthian Christians’ lives consisted of spiritual experiences, of the conversion experience and of experiences in the spiritual gifts. The Corinthians were rich in spiritual gifts. Gifts were their life, but they had little else. They were still carnal. They were carnal too long. They did not walk with God. They had plenty of spiritual experiences, but because they lacked the fruits of the Spirit, their gifts brought confusion, division, and strife to the body of Christ. At the root of all division and strife is criticism, fault-finding, analyzation, and complaints. We must be delivered from carnality. Only then will the gifts shine for the glory of God. Carnality fills our prisons, our divorce courts, and it splits our churches.

And how are we delivered from carnality? It is by the cross. Jesus died on his cross to cleanse us from our sins, the sins we have committed. But we have to die on our cross to be saved from the sin nature, from carnality, from the sin principle. This is why our Lord said to his disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily..." (Luke 9:23). Salvation is a crisis experience – we are born again in a moment. But sanctification, the deliverance from the carnal nature, is a process. It is a daily process. It is an hourly process. It is a second-by-second process. It is continuous. It is only as we continually die to the desires of the Self-life – of what the Self wants – can we be followers of Jesus. And if we are not followers of Jesus, we are none of his.

So, there is a natural man, a carnal man, and a spiritual man.

The Spiritual Man

"But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:15–16).

The spiritual man has and is continuing to crucify the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life – the Self-life. Self (carnality) will never take one step after Jesus. But when Self is denied, if we take up the cross, the old, sinful, Adamic nature will be slain out of us by the Word, by the Spirit, by the blood of Jesus, and we shall come to the mind of Christ. Again, this is a process. And then Paul says, referring to the inner circle, "But we have the mind of Christ."

Now, the three most dominant characteristics of the spiritual man are: 1) he has the mind of Christ, 2) he has the fruits of the Spirit, and 3) he is led by the Spirit.

The Mind of Christ. Although the carnal Christian is very much focused on his conversion or experiences in the gift area, the spiritual Christian is focused on Christ himself, on the greatness of Christ, the beauty of Christ, the work of Christ, the mystery of Christ in us, the hope of glory. The spiritual man has been transformed by the renewing of his mind, and he thinks as Christ thinks. He acts and reacts as Christ acts and reacts. He loves and overcomes as Christ loves and overcomes. He will never go anywhere unless he knows Christ goes with him. He will not watch anything unless Christ is with him in the watching. He is abiding in Christ, and Christ is abiding in him. His destiny is with Christ. As Christ overcame, so he overcomes, for only he that overcometh shall receive the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).

The Fruits of the Spirit. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Gal. 5:22 NIV). Again, anyone filled with the Spirit has the fruit of the Spirit. You cannot have the fruit of the Spirit without having been filled with the Spirit. But as we learned earlier, you can have the gifts of the Spirit without being filled with the Spirit. Jesus did not say by their gifts but by their fruits you shall know them (Matt. 7:16). This is not to degrade the gifts. He who degrades the gifts, degrades the Giver of the gifts. The gifts are given for the edifying and ministry of the church. They are very precious, but we must not confuse the gifts of the Spirit with the fruit of the Spirit.

Led by the Spirit. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. 8:14). The spiritual man is led by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will tell him where to go, when to go, what to say, what not to say, and what to do. The Holy Spirit will check him if he is headed in the wrong direction or for the wrong words. Learning to walk by the Spirit, of course, also takes time. We will be learning as we are following Jesus in obedience. Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice...and they follow me" (John 10:27). We cannot follow unless we hear, and we cannot hear unless the Self-life with all its criticism, complaints, and selfish ideas is crucified out of us.

So, my friend, there are three types of men: the natural, the carnal, and the spiritual. Which of these are you, and how will you stand before the Great White Throne?

http://www.wgbd.org/oldcto252.html

Announcement: A Million American Deaths and 400,000 Rumble Views, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review

 

Over the last week or two, my newspapers have been running front-page stories declaring that our country’s Covid fatalities had reached the million mark, and as usual, their facts were wrong.

Anyone who bothers consulting the official CDC website could quickly determine that since Covid reached our shores two years ago, our country has already suffered around 1.3 million “excess deaths,” nearly all of which were either directly or indirectly due to the disease outbreak that began in Wuhan in late 2019. These fatalities total more than twenty times America’s losses in the Vietnam War and triple our World War II deaths, representing by far the largest death toll for any event in our entire national history.

Meanwhile, according to the most recent report of the World Health Organization, excess deaths worldwide over the last couple of years have now nearly reached fifteen million, exceeding the four-year total of the First World War.

During the two decades since the 9/11 Attacks and the Iraq War, I have been scathing in my criticism of our mainstream news media, and the many dozens of articles in my harshly critical American Pravda series on that subject now totals over 400,000 words. But even by the degraded standards I have condemned, the American media coverage of why so many Americans have now died has been astonishing to me.

More than two years ago, Iran’s government and media explicitly denounced America for the Covid outbreak, which they claimed had represented an illegal biowarfare attack against their own country and China, with Iran’s former president even filing a formal complaint with the United Nations. Yet not a single word of those explosive charges was ever reported in our own media, so virtually no Americans ever became aware of them. Although I was closely following the Covid outbreak at the time, I only discovered those public accusations more than a year later.

The reason for such extreme reticence by the American media is hardly mysterious. If the Iranian charges had ever been reported—even if presented as insane or ridiculous—large numbers of Americans might have begun to consider the possibility, and they would have soon discovered that the actual evidence of American governmental guilt was quite strong. So merely a tiny leak in the dam of enforced public ignorance might have quickly become an unstoppable flood.

Indeed, although I had been entirely unaware of those Iranian claims, I quickly came to very similar conclusions, and over the last two years I have published a long series of articles presenting the mountain of supporting evidence, while failing to find even a single strong argument on the other side.

So it appears that the unintended blowback from a failed biowarfare attack, probably carried out by rogue elements of the Trump Administration, has now cost well over a million Americans their lives. Add to that the two years of intermittent lockdowns, the massive economic disruptions, the widespread promotion of controversial new vaccines, and the extremely high inflation produced by many trillions of dollars in desperate governmental spending. If substantial numbers of our citizens began to believe that this unparalleled national disaster had been the consequence of an exceptionally reckless biowarfare attack by members of our own government, I think that our existing political regime would have a very difficult time surviving the recriminations.

Yet to my utter and complete amazement, nearly all our journalists and commentators have spent more than two years averting their eyes from this absolutely obvious factual evidence. The reality of our disaster has been ignored not merely by the notoriously timorous members of the mainstream media but even by almost all the supposedly bold truth-tellers of the alternative media as well.

EPub Format • Mobi/Kindle

However, although there seems to be an extreme reluctance to publicly mention these facts, there does seem to be a considerable fascination in reading them or seeing them discussed.

Just days after my first major Covid origins article was released and began to go viral, our entire website was banned from Facebook and all our pages deranked by Google. Yet despite these crippling blows, my Covid articles have generated more than a half million pageviews since April 2020, while the eBook collecting my articles has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

• Covid/Biowarfare Series
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-December 2021 • 60,000 Words

Even more impressive has been the reaction to several of my video interviews with small podcasters in February of this year. Although the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war later that same month completely swamped all other issues and diverted public interest in an entirely different direction, my video discussions have still accumulated more than 400,000 views on Rumble, far more than I had ever expected.

Presumably at least a few of those readers or viewers have absorbed this important material, but any echoes elsewhere have been as rare as cries of “Long Live Trotsky” in Stalin’s USSR. Apparently the likelihood that elements of the American government killed over a million of our own citizens remains too horrific a possibility to admit. Indeed, one policy analyst I know explicitly told me “Nobody wants to hear that the US did COVID.” So except for the massive loss of human life, the entire situation seems like something out of a Monty Python skit.

However, with the continuing Russia-Ukraine war now fading a little from the headlines, I’m hoping to restart my series of audio or video discussions, and any podcasters interested in interviewing me on their show should email me.

Given the importance of the topic and its near total absence from public discussion, some of my February presentations generated viewership more than 100x greater than the typical interviews in those channels. And if the Trump-hating media ever discovered the issue and suspended their disbelief, the results might easily rival the 26 million Youtube views of John Mearsheimer’s 2016 lecture on the origins of the Ukraine conflict.

Meanwhile, for those who had missed my February Covid presentations, here are three of the interviews, from Kevin Barrett’s Truth Jihad, Geopolitics & Empire, and Red Ice TV:

 Video Link

 Video Link

 Video Link

https://www.unz.com/announcement/a-million-american-deaths-and-400000-rumble-views/

The Great Bifurcation Continues - Vox Popoli

ITEM: Russia is now SWIFT-free.

Russian banking giant Sberbank has been disconnected from the SWIFT global financial messaging system under a new set of sanctions approved by European Union leaders on Monday. “This sanctions package includes other hard-hitting measures: de-Swifting the largest Russian bank Sberbank,” European Council chief Charles Michel announced following the EU summit.

ITEM: The European Union has largely stopped importing Russian oil.

After weeks of deliberation, EU member states have agreed in principle on a sixth round of anti-Russia sanctions, the bloc’s leadership announced after a meeting on Monday. Hungary and Bulgaria will keep buying Russian oil, but most other import routes will be blocked. EU Council President Charles Michel said the watered-down embargo will affect about 75% of Russian oil imports, with the percentage growing to 90% by the end of the year.

ITEM: India has replaced the USA as a primary customer for Russian oil. In 2021, the USA imported 6 million barrels of Russian crude per month.

More than 24 million barrels of Russian crude were supplied this month, up from 7.2 million barrels in April, and from about three million barrels in March. The South Asian nation is set to receive about 28 million barrels in June, data shows. Last year, Russian crude exports to India averaged just 960,000 barrels per month, roughly 25 times less than this month’s total.

ITEM: China has publicly denounced the “rules-based international order” as a “US rules-based international order”.

The “rules-based international order” it touts is actually the “US rules-based international order”, a hegemonic order to dominate the world with the house rules of its clique… The US places its domestic law above international law and international rules and willfully resorts to illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Venezuela, Syria and Iran have been grappling with severe difficulties with a struggling economy and strained medical resources due to prolonged US sanctions. Under such circumstances, the US, rather than halting those sanctions, redoubled them, making things even worse for these countries. The international community sees with increasing clarity that the US only complies with the market competition principle and international trade rules it claims to champion when it suits US interests.

On the basis of these developments, I suspect that we are going to see China voluntarily and preemptively disconnect from the SWIFT and global trade systems later this year. China will likely be followed in this by India and a number of other anti-Clown World nations. This will not only trigger a serious financial crisis, if not a comprehensive banking collapse, but will likely lead to regime changes across Clown World.

DISCUSS ON SG

 https://voxday.net/2022/05/31/the-great-bifurcation-continues/

When The Reaper Calls - Vox Popoli

 The Death Jab is killing a lot more Australians than Covid ever did.

So, the good news is that you’re not necessarily doomed if you were dumb enough to get the Death Jab one or more times. The bad news is that you not only proved that you’re literally gullible enough to kill yourself on the basis of a government agency’s recommendation, but you’re also much more likely to die of “suddenly” or some other cause due to your genetically-altered, vaccine-compromised immune system.

It’s possible for science and the media to hide or otherwise explain away a lot of statistical anomalies, but all-cause mortality isn’t one of them.

DISCUSS ON SG

https://voxday.net/2022/05/31/when-the-reaper-calls/

Australia begins to reap what it has sown. It's grim. - Joel Smalley

All cause mortality goes significantly excess in April 2021 for all age/sex groups bar one...

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Apparently, it’s really difficult for our ONS to produce deaths by date of occurrence by sex and age until 7 months after year end. This means we won’t get any reliable death data for 2021 until July this year.

Fortunately, Australia is a little more timely with their data releases so we can get a little insight from down under.

Looking at both sexes and all ages, it is clear that things have gone really wrong for Australia since the week ending 11th April 2021. Between then and the end of Feb 2022, there have been 16k excess deaths.

There have been less than 4k COVID deaths in that same time with most of those coming since Sept 2021.

So, much like every other country of the world, Australia has had more COVID death since the COVID vaccine was introduced in Feb 2021 and substantially more excess death from other causes.

By the end of the period, more than 90% of the adult population has been jabbed.

What if we break it down by sex and age?

In the over 75s, the pattern is quite consistent, regardless of sex. There was modest excess death during 2020, the year of the plague, followed by significant excess starting exactly on 11th April 2021, just under two months after the mass COVID vaccinations began.

In the 65 to 74 year olds, the men have been dying at a steady excess pace since the start of 2020 with no obvious inflection like the older age groups. The women, on the other hand, were dying at a slightly slower pace but caught up after an inflection on 25th April 2021, two weeks after the older age groups.

Things to start to get interesting in the 45 to 64 year olds. The men have been dying less than expected since the start of 2020 but stop their decline when vaccination starts and rally in early September 2021.

Conversely, the women seemed to have a little spike Feb to May 2020 when COVID was pandemic before also declining in the run up to mass vaccination. But the biggest anomaly is that their death rally starts on 18th April, 1 week after the oldest groups but 1 week before the 65 to 74s and a massive 5 months before the men.

I’m not normally one to speculate, but in the absence of any better quality data from the expert public health authorities, I’m going to have a stab at an explanation - there are substantially more female health care workers, especially in care homes, who would have been “prioritised” over their male peers which is why they die from the jab sooner.

I could be wrong.

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Still on yet another Twitter ban (for showing a statistically significant positive correlation between vax rates and hospitalisations in US counties), so if you could share this there until my return, I’d be very much obliged to you! Thank you.

https://metatron.substack.com/p/australia-begins-to-reap-what-it