The Whole Family in Heaven and in Earth
By G. T. Haywood
Written February, 1924
In the first chapter of John, we read of the Word, which was in the beginning and then became flesh and dwell amongst us full of grace and truth. That is a wonderful record in itself. The gospel of John, we must remember was written after he had received the revelation of Jesus Christ on the Isle of Patmos. That is why the gospel of John says so much that is deeper than the contents of the other gospels: it deals with the divinity of Christ. The other gospels only deal with the human side of Christ. Matthew begins with Abraham, Luke going back to the Garden of Eden, and Mark starts with the river Jordan. But John goes away back to the beginning. One man says the Word was “a God”, but, not a word is said about Jesus in this first chapter of John, but it is all about God and John. And it says that the Word was in the world, and the world was made by Him. He was the world, and then afterwards came into it.
Some people ask how Jesus could be His own Father, but the main this is to be sure He is your Father. The Spirit Father over the fleshly body as a man he called on the Spirit as on a Father. He just introduced the Fatherhood of God in order to show us what we ought to be. Afterwards, He returned to where HE was before, leaving His life as a record whereby we might follow in His steps, leading us unto God. If you cannot see the Father in Jesus, you never will see Him. You can see Jesus without looking at Him, and tell when He comes into the meeting and when He is not there also. God is not grandfather (humanly speaking), but He is my Father. I am not an adopted son, but I am a true born son. My flesh has been adopted, but my spirit has been born, but they will be “changed”.
Adopted and Born
The “One Spirit” has a three-fold relationship to the human family: Father because He made you, and Son because He comes in and makes you a son after the pattern of Jesus, Holy Spirit, because when He comes in He makes you holy. God is Spirit and if we be sons of God now, this makes our spirits born again, now for that which is born of Spirit. A natural adoption cannot do for you what the present adoption of our bodies will bring on the resurrection morning when we shall take on the “likeliness” of God’s glory. We are still like natural men on the outside, but sons of God inside. Your flesh won’t sin and run off with you as fang as your heart and Spirit are kept in place. A man’s body without Spirit, is dead, so whenever a man’s spirit leaves the body, the body does not sin. WE are born again inwardly. Jesus did not mean that the flesh and to be born again. The flesh has to be changed. Nicodemus thought He meant the flesh had to be born again, but, the spirit is born of the Spirit, and the flesh is to be changed.
After a man has been born of the Spirit, and fails, he is spoken of as losing his inheritance, which is eternal life. See Hebrews 6th chapter. Spiritual death means some thing. Many are caught in a trap and God afterwards has to revive their spirit. To apostatize, means to denounce Christ and His blood, and the whole plan of salvation. Temptations are not sin, but yielding is sin. The devil will fill your mind with all kinds of trashy things, but rebuke it, and do not cherish it. Do not think on it at all. WE have had a false standard of holiness presented to us. Those saints, to whom the Apostle Paul wrote, were filled with the Holy Ghost, and sealed unto the day of redemption, but he warned them to be watchful lest they be lost. The man once born cannot be unborn, but he can certainly die. God help His people to have a backbone to say “No! I will not argue with him. The devil is that kind of a salesman. If he can once get your attention, he has you. I am not living right because the people are watching me nor yet because God is watching me, but simply because I love the Lord who has done much for me.
The Making New Again
The “birth of the Spirit”, means to be born now. Jesus was the first born from the dead. It was necessary for Him to be such that we might not be put to death. He took the “death” and gave us the real life without dying. He died for us, and He suffered the agony, and it was real suffering. It takes the Spirit of God to make a man a Son of God. Did not Adam have the Spirit of God before he transgressed? That is what he lost when he fell, Luke 3:38 declaring that he was the Son of God. You are born of the Spirit when you receive the Holy Ghost, and after that, all you have to do is grow. Titus 3:5 speaks of how God hath saved us, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy; by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. In Adam, we once had the Holy Ghost, but Adam fell and we lost it. The second Adam came to renew it to us. He got the anointing at Jordan, and then put off His fleshly body and gave us a great spiritual body, in which we might have the “renewing of the Holy Ghost.” And the image and likeness are both to be brought forth in Adam, and only we who are in the Body, will bear the likeness of the second Adam. The image refers to character and attributes, but the likeness refers to the glory coming at the first resurrection. Everything outside of Adam’s body, were four-footed beats and creeping things which is the type of things outside of Christ. For the Lord says, “For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” Rev 22:15. You must be inside of the second Adam, to not be an “animal” in your nature. All outside of Christ, have beastly natures, and do not things not lawful to speak of. See Acts 10.
The Mother Church
Out of Adam’s side the Lord God took a rib and then presented her to the man. That man Adam who went into a deep sleep, is the type of the second Adam, who, went to sleep on Calvary. The man referred to in Genesis 1:26 is not our first Adam, but it is “mankind.” To prove it He said, “let THEM have dominion”. It takes a long time to fulfill those six verses from Genesis 1:26 to 31. Adam the first, started off all flesh, for “in Adam, we all die, even the second Adam, in whom this death sentence was executed. Jesus the second Adam, is the one who died the death. But we are made alive in the spiritual Body. We do not live in His flesh, for it profiteth you nothing, and so you must not judge Him after the flesh. He took on flesh for the suffering of death and tasted death for every man. But now after Christ died that put an end to all flesh, as far as service toward God is concerned: therefore we have to be resurrected and come into the spiritual “Christ”. See 1 Cor. 12:12. We are not made alive by His flesh, for that died on the cross and we know Him no more after the flesh. We know Him as the quickening Spirit. This made the Church the “mother of all living”, that is, spiritual living, even “The mother of us all” Mt. Zion is “fruitful and multiplying”.
Ephesians the 5th chapter teaches a lesson of man and wife. The husband and wife are simply types and shadows of Christ and the Church. The real thing is Christ and the Church. Each individual family should be a perfect type of Christ and His Church. The Church has been all mixed up even as our marriages in the world have been all mixed up. But the Holy Ghost will teach you. In you and outside of you! The “man” in Genesis 1:26 refer to all mankind; and the “woman” refers tot spiritual people to come out of mankind. Says Paul, “I have espoused you to one husband, that I any present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ”. 2 Cor. 11:1,3. You see here how he compares the Church to mother Eve. Therefore the Church must be careful about “near scripture”, and not be deceived.
Genesis 1:26 to 31, is not over yet and will not be over until the Millennium closes. God is working now with us, in us, and through us, both to will, and to do. Said He, when here with us in fashion as a man, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I do work.” We are now living in the 6th day of Creation, which Man’s day, and God is working on mankind, perfecting the whole family, both in heaven and on earth.
The sermon “The Whole Family in Heaven and in Earth” by G.T. Haywood was taken from the book The Lost Works of Bishop G.T. Haywood: Unpublished Anthologies from Bishop Haywood’s Early Years, written by J. Laverne Tyson, Volume 1, 1914-1926.
