Our spirits are very limited by our bodies and minds of flesh. And a brain of flesh cannot hear anything spoken by spirits. It cannot hear God, demons or other human spirits. It can only receive spiritual thoughts and concepts from its own spirit in its own body, through its own soul. So God does not teach a mind of flesh, only a mind of a human spirit. But His teachings for a human spirit affect the flesh, as messages are sent from the spirit to the flesh through the soul. Naturally, the mind and body of flesh are also very weak. So the flesh can be overcome and totally manipulated by spiritual powers, by either God or demons. But the flesh cannot actually see or hear those spirits.
Only through the interface called the soul, can the mind of one's own spirit communicate with one's own mind of flesh, and vice versa. But the tiny mind of one's flesh cannot fathom the mind of its own spirit, even though the mind of one's spirit can see literally everything in one's mind of flesh, and remember all that is in it forever. And this also means that the only way one’s human spirit can communicate with another human spirit is by sending a message through one's own body of flesh to another body of flesh belonging to another spirit. A human spirit can pass a message down to its mind of flesh, through its soul, then out of its physical mouth to another person's ears and mind of flesh. Then that message may pass up through the other person's soul to the other person's spirit.
But the communication between our spirits and God is different. Of course, a mind of flesh cannot hear anything directly from God, since God is a Spirit, and God seldom utters words in an audible voice that can be heard by the ears of flesh. But the Holy Spirit of Jesus personally speaks to our spirits, imparting whole concepts to our spirits in a single moment. There is no language or linear progression of words, but many small to large concepts flowing into the heart whenever the mind of flesh is silenced long enough to let the spirit listen. God teaches His Word to our spirits too. First it must be read with our eyes and minds of flesh, then sent up to the minds of our spirits through our souls. But after it reaches our spirits, the Holy Spirit provides a running commentary, sometimes reminders of what we learned before and sometimes new concepts we never saw before. So it is by His commentaries that we learn the most. Likewise, when God walked in Jesus' flesh among us, He also taught us from His Word, but through His flesh to our flesh, although His commentaries then passed up through our souls to our spirits. But now that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, He teaches us in a better, more direct, personal and efficient way. For, from heaven, Jesus' Spirit is now able to teaches each individual elect spirit all day and every day. Then our spirits can pass some of this information down to our minds of flesh through our souls, so we can apply the truths our spirits learn, through the actions of our bodies in our daily lives, to do His works on earth.
I have heard Christians say the spirit merely consists of emotions and is far less rational than the intellect of the flesh. And part of the reason they say this is because they believe Platonic doctrines, and do not believe that they truly have two minds in them. But, in reality, we all have minds of our spirits which are, in every way, far more powerful than our minds of flesh. The spirit is very limited in its control over the mind of flesh. Nevertheless, the spirit’s mind can absorb anything and all things from the mind of flesh. One’s spirit can see, hear and know literally all that one's mind of flesh sees, hears and knows. A spirit can monitor and feel literally all its flesh feels or experiences, and never forget any of it. And a spirit can translate its own superior spiritual concepts into a fleshy “language” that the mind of flesh can comprehend. It must translate spiritual concepts into figurative concepts relating to physical realities of the earth, since earthly things are the only things the mind of flesh can comprehend. Then the spirit can send each translated concept down to its mind of flesh through the soul. But, at the same time, the body of flesh cannot comprehend the “language” of the spirit, and can only send weak, selfish, irrational messages to the spirit in its own earthly “language.”
Now, as mentioned, human spirits only have a very limited ability to communicate with each other while they exist in bodies of flesh on earth, since each human spirit must communicate through the flesh. And human spirits rely on their bodies and brains of flesh to see and hear whatever is in this material universe, since they cannot directly see or hear material things. So the need for human spirits to communicate with each other through flesh raises many barriers between them. On the other hand, every human spirit's mind has exponentially more power and capacity than its mind of flesh, and can obtain earthly information through its body and mind of flesh, storing it away forever in an unlimited memory that never fades or fails. Therefore, there can be some communication between human spirits and those spirits can develop permanent relationships, enduring after death.
Yet human spirits are not the only spirits that traverse this material space-time continuum. God’s Spirit is everywhere within the material universe, and cannot be absent from anywhere. Then there are the spirits of angels, animals and demons among us. And human spirit can see and hear many of these non-human spirits directly, whenever God permits communication to take place. Angels and demons also have bodies made of a spiritual substance, which can see and hear all that exists in both the material and spiritual creations. For the material space-time continuum is simply a temporary, corrupted, inferior copy of the permanent, pure and solid spiritual space-time continuum of heaven. So, to angels and demons, material existence appears to be thin, vaporous and ghostlike. Angels and demons, with their spiritual bodies, cannot be seen by inferior eyes of flesh. Only after our flesh dies and we receive spiritual bodies, will our bodies be able to see angels and demons. Yet, even while we live on earth, our human spirits can indeed see and hear angels and demons when God allows it.
Meanwhile, angels and demons can see both our human bodies and our human spirits. The point is that a human spirit is made of a different kind of substance that cannot easily interface with material existence. In modern terms, a human spirit is made for a completely different space-time continuum. And God caused the spiritual space-time continuum to be invisible to the lesser, material space-time continuum, since God made material existence specifically for a temporary purpose, to limit and bind human and other earthly spirits in it for a time of education, to make all more fit for heaven.
Bodies of flesh, and the whole material universe, temporarily hold all human spirits within their severe limitations. Every awakened, mature, elect spirit knows and experiences this during life on earth. Every elect spirit realizes that only God, angels, demons and other spirits—the spirits who already have spiritual bodies—are not bound or limited by the shadowy wrap of material existence. Of course, only God and elect angels can freely enter into heaven, however. And elect human spirits can peer into heaven, even reach inside, as through a window. But demons are never allowed in heaven, except temporarily, with God's direct permission. For, as Scriptures tell us (in the original languages), all demonic spirits remain imprisoned by God in the material universe “below” heaven, and must remain there until the judgement day, until they are cast into hell (and Scriptures describe hell as an entirely empty part of the spiritual space-time continuum). So demons, who already have spiritual bodies, can see both material and spiritual things, as many verses in God's Word confirm.
Since God limited our human spirits, by placing them in bodies of flesh, it is impossible for our human spirits to directly communicate with each other. Only God's Spirit or, if God allows it, other non-human spirits (like angels or demons) can communicate directly with our spirits. But other human spirits cannot. Of course, I repeat, another human spirit can indirectly send a message to your spirit. The mind of another human spirit first sends a message to its mind of flesh through its soul.
But that spirit must translate the spiritual message into a figurative, material concept and an earthly language that its mind of flesh can comprehend. Then its flesh uses its mouth to utter the figurative translation to the ears of your body. When that figurative earthly language enters your physical ears, your mind of flesh sends that message up to your spirit through your soul. But now your spirit must attempt to translate that figurative earthly language back into the original spiritual concept that the other spirit was trying to express through its flesh. Thus, there can be some indirect communication between human spirits. But the process is very convoluted, slow and looses much in the translation from the other person's spirit to its flesh, from one body of flesh to the other, and in your attempt to produce a reverse translation from the other person’s earthly language back into a spiritual concept.
So this indirect communication between human spirits is greatly hampered by the flesh. Having to speak through minds and bodies of flesh distorts, slows and weakens communication between human spirits. For our minds of flesh can only think in terms of physical realities. Thus, the spirit's mind must always translate spiritual concepts into physical symbols which loosely represent the spiritual concepts to its mind of flesh. All spiritual concepts must be made into figurative concepts related to the material world, so the mind of flesh can grasp them and express them with an earthly language. A mind of flesh can comprehend a parable involving physical actions in physical places. But it cannot comprehend the spiritual concepts the parable actually represents. The flesh might use figurative terms, like “living waters,” to describe the pure, ever-active Spirit of God flowing, without ceasing, into our hearts. But the mind of flesh cannot really comprehend any of these things at all.
For the most common spiritual realities, some earthly languages develop an ecclesiastical language, expressions representing spiritual concepts, which can be instantly translated by the mind of a spirit into specific spiritual concepts. But those expressions or ecclesiastical terms, do not really mean much of anything to a mind of flesh. Expressions like “God,” “spirit,” “love,” “inner conscience,” “justice” and so on, when heard by people with awakened spirits, each bear a very real and specific meaning which they have all experienced and know, but only in the minds of their spirits. And their minds of flesh simply utter those terms as a translation of spiritual concepts, in a language which all of their particular bodies of flesh learned to utter. But those who have not experienced or known these real spiritual beings, actions or things cannot possibly comprehend anything from what those awakened spirits are saying through their ecclesiastical terms. Some might think their flesh is truly comprehending these ecclesiastical terms, perhaps because they use similar terms for abstract and worldly concepts. But they actually comprehend nothing at all. So these untrained outsiders think those ecclesiastical terms mean something physical and worldly, albeit abstract. This is exactly what happened with the early church fathers. They thought the ecclesiastical language of the Bible was using the same terms as the very popular abstract and worldly Platonic philosophies of their day. So they created a very worldly, fake “church” based on this ignorance and misunderstanding. Still, the very fact that true ecclesiastical expressions exist, and have been truly understood by many people, is real evidence that human beings have real, incorporeal spirits inside them, spirits which are not part of this material space-time continuum. Their testimonies indicate that human beings have spirits.
Still, our need to use our flesh, with a figurative language to facilitate communication between our spirits, is extremely problematic. Spiritual concepts are often almost impossible to adequately translate into a language that can be effectively communicated through bodies of flesh. Then these translations are frequently misunderstood by the time each passes from an originating spirit, through souls and minds of flesh, to the minds of the receiving spirits. The flesh itself can entirely block the communication from another spirit because it does not know the earthly language used by the other spirit who is trying to tell it something. The flesh of the other person may not know the ecclesiastical language used by the other. Biases of the flesh will stop the flesh from hearing anything that another person’s flesh utters, and thus stop spirits from communicating at all. So the flesh produces a very unreliable system of communication between human spirits. And this process of using the flesh is also extremely slow. But consider how fast God can flash whole and incredibly complex concepts into the superior minds of our spirits, in fraction of a second. Each of those concepts may take many thousands of words to describe through a mind and body of flesh, in a highly ambiguous figurative or abstract language. Yet God can teach those concepts to our spirits in a fraction of a second. Thus, who are we going to trust to teach us the deep, spiritual concepts of God? Who are we going to trust to expound upon God’s Word and His law, so we might learn to love in a God-like way? Are we going to trust men or God? Are we going to put our faith in the words of men or the words of God?
On top of all these limitations, consider how God's Word describes every human spirit as a “babe” while living on earth. Even after an adult's elect spirit learns enough from God to become a teacher in the church, that adult's spirit may still be called a “babe” who has just been weaned, and may still need to drink mother's milk, but is also able to eat some solid, pablum-like food (e.g., Heb. 5:11-14). No teacher of God’s Word is actually a mature, adult spirit, nothing like the Spirit of God in Jesus.
We read about how adult men like Solomon and the prophets, even in their old age, would call themselves God’s “children,” since they knew their spiritual wisdom and understanding was very infantile and limited, needing to grow many times its size to become mature. Every awakened elect spirit, and especially the spirits of true teaching elders, all whom we call relatively mature elect spirits, actually know that their spirits are indeed weak, infantile and ignorant, and always will be throughout their lives on earth. Human spirits cannot mature much during their short stay in flesh on earth. The most mature elect human spirit on earth is still a mere infant in comparison to what it will become later on in heaven. On earth, our spirits can only possess a tiny fraction of all the knowledge and wisdom God will grant us later, hardly enough to be worth passing on to others—although, in a real church, with these bits and pieces each individual receives from God, there can be collectively enough of His knowledge and wisdom to help the whole church live happy and fruitful lives. This causes us to depend on God and one another. It binds together our relationships in loving humility.
However, this inhibited communication between our human spirits also means that other human beings cannot possibly provide nearly enough of what we truly need for the well-being and abundant lives of our spirits. We simply cannot rely on other human beings for all the solid, reliable, effective, applicable knowledge and wisdom that our infantile spirits need to learn in order to effectively grow, mature and thrive. Clearly, we must acquire most of our spiritual knowledge and wisdom from a different source, from a spirit who can speak directly to our spirits. So, for all the deeper matters of our hearts, we are forced to go to the Spirit of our omniscient, wise and loving Father of our spirits, and to Jesus, who is one with our Father in heaven. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons God put us in this very limiting, temporary life on earth, in these temporary bodies of flesh. On earth, the most valuable thing we can learn is that we need our Father. More than anything else, life on earth teaches us that we are absolutely nothing, and cannot make any meaningful progress without our beloved Father, that we desperately need the atonement of our relationship with our Father, and that we need to grow in that relationship. And only Jesus, who is God, can ever restore this relationship.
And make no mistake, the Father of our spirits, who is a Spirit, is entirely one with Jesus' Spirit. Also, Jesus is more than willing and well able to speak directly to our human spirits. Our God is not impassive and impersonal like Plato's god. He is not the god whom most churches now worship. But He is the God who created all things, including the one, real church. This living Spirit of the real Jesus continually speaks directly and passionately to each and every elect spirit, although our minds of flesh are usually very slow in becoming aware of this. And our Father can instantaneously place very complex concepts into the minds of our spirits, in ways our minds of flesh are totally incapable of comprehending. He sends flashes of rational understanding and insight into our hearts, concepts which are so deep that our irrational intellects of flesh cannot begin to fathom them. For the mind of flesh is merely a temporary and selfish thing, mostly concerned about its short existence on earth.
So now consider the superior, objective, honest, rational mind of an elect person's spirit, even in its most infantile state. The mind of the spirit can comprehend all things of the material world and all things of the spiritual world, with a memory that does not fade or fail. All concepts of God-like love, real justice, godliness, genuine and immutable truth, and so on, can only be comprehended by the mind of the spirit, and can never be truly understood by any mind of flesh. Only the mind of the spirit can receive these complex concepts from God, and in the blink of an eye. The mind of flesh simply yawns and grudgingly complies to the demands from the mind of the spirit, to administer things like real love and justice, since these concepts are all strictly and solely matters of the spirit in the heart. And the mind of the spirit is eternal, made of a more solid substance that never deteriorates or dies. I once knew an older preacher with advanced dementia, whose mind of flesh could not utter a complete sentence and whose organs were failing. Yet he could pray lucidly, straight from the spirit in his heart. Even the act of comparing the spirit's superior, objective, honest, rational mind to the flesh's inferior, biased, dishonest, irrational, deteriorating, dying mind is something only the mind of an elect spirit can do, since the mind of flesh is incapable of such an exercise. So, with such a vast difference between these two minds, we must conclude that not many of God's inner revelations to the minds of our elect spirits will ever filter down to our vastly inferior minds of flesh. And if some do, that information will be incomplete, received with much resistance, then corrupted by the mind of flesh. Thus, our spirits often know spiritual truths and events for hours, days, years, decades or even our entire lifetimes without our minds of flesh realizing that our spirits truly know such things.
So not even the most mature elect can rely on their minds of flesh. And very many minds of flesh rebelliously and intentionally suppress input from the minds of their spirits. In any case, much of what a spirit knows becomes extremely degraded in quality when it is expressed through the flesh. Or the expression of the spirit's loving knowledge may be blocked entirely by the flesh of some of the elect, especially by the elect trained to live only for their needs and pleasures of the flesh. Yet even the elect with mature spirits must endure their own self-absorbed minds of flesh that naturally, and often successfully, suppress thoughts of their spirits, totally disabling their elect spirits from expressing themselves, even breaking the spirit's communications with God through the sins done by the flesh, causing the spirit to fall into silent despair. Since our minds of flesh are never able to fully see or understand our spirits, but the minds of our spirits can see and understand our flesh, we must let our spirits rule over our lives, “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit” (Rom. 8:4, ESV, note that this verse is obviously speaking about our own flesh and our own spirits, not our flesh and God's Spirit). Our spirits must grow mature to the point where we no longer let our flesh suppress the thoughts and directives of our spirits, that is, the inner consciences from our spirits. Rather, we must let our spirits govern our lives, as our spirits are taught, trained, disciplined and counselled by Jesus.
Many elect are consciously aware of very little that exists in the minds of their spirits, because their religion and/or culture encourages them to live entirely according to thoughts in the minds of their flesh. People prefer physical “sacraments,” or to let their flesh play emotional or intellectual games of religion, rather than let their spirits “wrestle” with God, by praying directly from their spirits and heeding both the teachings and rebukes of their loving Father, though it might pain their rebellious flesh. Nevertheless, God teaches all elect spirits about Himself and about some of His ways, even if their minds of flesh reject this knowledge and remain unaware of it. So, if this knowledge remains unconscious to the flesh, these elect will seldom physically express the kind of love God is teaching and training their hearts to cherish, guard and follow. Instead, they sin through their minds of flesh.
Although all elect have inner consciences, worked by God through the minds of their spirits, to convict them of wrong and right, they often do not know why they inwardly feel an inner desire to abstain from sin or to do what is right, why they feel they should or should not do certain things, while others counsel them to do the opposite. So the elect, in some environments, learn to totally ignore their inner consciences, the very voice of their own spirits who have heard the counsel of their own Father in heaven. But, if the elect want to serve in Christ's real church, which is God's true priesthood now ministering to the earth, their spirits must first learn to rule over their flesh, while their spirits learn to trust and heed the Holy Spirit of Jesus. All the elect will eventually learn this, and will walk according to their spirits when they shall minister to the creatures in heaven, as God's priests, as His church. All will eventually serve God through their spirits, as their spirits heed Jesus. But not all will minister in the true church on earth, since many let their flesh suppress their spirits.
Of course, no one's mind of flesh can ever fully grasp even a fraction of what the mind of one's spirit knows. Still, as an elect one's mind of flesh learns to submit to his or her spirit, as an elect one learns to walk more frequently according to the thoughts of his or her spirit (while his or her spirit submits to the teaching and training of Jesus), his or her flesh becomes more sanctified (i.e., more set apart for God's purposes). Then that one's human spirit is granted more and more knowledge and power from Jesus, making that one's spirit better able to rule over one's own body and mind of flesh, and better able to serve God, because Christ is better able to teach, train, counsel, empower that one's spirit. “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mat. 25:29, ESV). Jesus said this to His elect. So, when we walk according to the spirit, and not according to the flesh, it will result in an ever-increasing blessing that serves God-like love well, making one an effective priest of God. Our minds and bodies of flesh can be sanctified, trained to express God-like love that the minds of our spirits learn from Jesus, although the flesh can never truly comprehend all that our spirits truly know.
However, even when an elect one's flesh learns how to submit to the human spirit within it, and even after one's spirit learns to heed Jesus, many problems still exist with the flesh. For the flesh refuses to submit at all times. The flesh can never willingly submit to the human spirit within it, since the flesh bears no interest in eternal, spiritual matters. The flesh always remains rebellious and tries to usurp the rule of its master, which is the human spirit dwelling within it. Even when we keep the flesh partially gratified with “lawful” things—such as a modest amount of food, moderate clothing and shelter, and a marriage that gratifies lust and assists with physical life—our flesh still rebels and wants more than this. So we often need to deny even the lawful gratification of the flesh temporarily, through acts like fasting, in order to discipline our flesh and rein it in. Too much gratification of the flesh, too much comfort and luxury without troubles of the flesh, causes the flesh to forget the things from God for the spirit. The flesh wants to keep its state of self-gratification, and does not want to do the works of God. So one must limit oneself to a modest life, and even deny some modest pleasures at times, to keep one's spirit alert and awake, to maintain a focus on God and His works of service.
Yet this denial of the flesh, to train the flesh, has only very limited effectiveness. “For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (I Tim. 4:8, ESV). We cannot possibly rely on our own attempts to discipline the flesh. We do so at times. But our main focus is on letting our spirits learn truths and gain power from Jesus through His inward teaching, and doing the works that He calls us to do for the training of our spirits. Thus, the biblical kind of “self-control” is not about causing the mind of flesh to rule the flesh, but about allowing the spirit to rule the flesh by (1) focusing one’s spirit upon the things of Christ; (2) granting the flesh modest and “lawful” gratification; and (3) reining in the flesh through things like fasting, when needed. Our main focus is upon the spirit learning God's ways from Jesus. Then we rein in the flesh and suppress its rebellion against the truth and love we are learning from Jesus. Yes, when we deny the flesh, then return its lawful gratification, the flesh becomes a little more grateful and compliant. However, this is not only temporary, but also a very weak form of control over the flesh. Our flesh never fully submits to the voice of our spirits. To rule over our flesh, to be truly loving, we need more power than our spirits can provide. We need Jesus.
We must remain constantly on guard against our flesh and pray to Jesus often—not because the flesh is inherently evil, but because the flesh is merely weak and self-centred. Flesh can be very good and very useful to us, even though it constantly desires things of the world. Yet flesh remains in need of constant supervision and maintenance. And, when the flesh is correctly and powerfully ruled, there is absolutely nothing bad about the flesh. In fact, the flesh is an amazing, wonderfully good instrument for the human spirit to use. Still, since the flesh is part of the material existence, it desires material things alone, for its survival and pleasure. So the weak, infantile human spirit must remain vigilant.
In particular, we must watch for attempts by the flesh to transform a spiritual life into a physical type of “religion.” When the flesh reads or hears the written words of God, it always seeks its own self- serving, irrational, superstitious interpretations. It always tends to substitute a fleshy forgery for Christ's true fulfilling of the Father's loving law, for that which Jesus grants directly to one's spirit.
Eventually, the flesh can actually silence the spirit altogether and live entirely by a fleshy “religion” it invents. Naturally, the flesh tries to justify this by deceiving itself into thinking it is still serving God. But the flesh has, in reality, set itself up as its own god, judge and lawmaker, as its own master of its own destiny. So its fleshy “religion” actually wars against the real God. Flesh can never be “spiritual” at all. And flesh tries to suppress its own spirit dwelling within it, to utterly silence the inner conscience of its spirit. It wants to replace the inner conscience with an outer conscience created by itself and by the minds of flesh in other men—a conscience created to appease the pride and other desires of the flesh, or to appease those who might withdraw conditional affection or cause other negative consequences for transgressions against the flesh. Thus, an elect one can deteriorate until one’s spirit totally ignores Jesus Himself, until one’s flesh silences the inner conscience built up by Jesus in the spirit. Most religions developed in this way, by minds flesh seeking to live a better and more balanced life while not allowing God to speak directly to the spirit. Only pure, biblical Christianity and Judaism actually strove to let God rule human lives through the spirit in the heart.
So it is critical for every elect child of God to realize that we do not serve God under the old written code, God’s law, interpreted by the mind of flesh, since that becomes nothing but a fleshy “religion.” For instance, God's law commanded all kinds of rituals to remind us about His teachings and His attributes, so our spirits in our hearts might meditate on Him and His ways. But a fleshy religion will only perform these rituals because it believes those physical actions are magic way to manipulate God. And they think tha