Our tradition presents our physical death, our "going to Heaven," as solving our problems. We think that dying and going to Heaven will automatically remove the works of darkness from us and grant us rewards and status in the Kingdom. This is a false doctrine without scriptural support of any kind.

What we are, we are until we work with the Holy Spirit in the transformation of our personality. Such transformation is the new covenant.

When we die physically we remain unchanged except for the absence of the various frailties of our physical body. The inner spiritual life that motivates us remains unchanged. If we are a self-centered, argumentative person on the earth we probably will be a self-centered, argumentative person in the spirit realm. We will need stronger spirits to bring peace to our situation, as is true while we are on the earth.

The creating of the Kingdom of God is a realistic, sensible, practical program. There are no wands waved at which time we become something we basically are not.

The Kingdom of Heaven is as a grain of mustard seed. No doubt that seed will grow in us forever as we are being created in the image of God. But whether we are alive on the earth now, or deceased and in the spirit realm, or living on the new earth, what we are, we are. We need to understand this because we may be wasting valuable time in the present hour—time given to us so we may be transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus.

The penalty for the sin in Eden was the loss of our physical bodies. It never was God's intention that a person's body be subject to decay. God introduced physical death in the hope that He finally, through Christ, can release the material creation from corruption. God is separating our spiritual nature from our physical body for a season with the end in view of creating in us a righteous spiritual nature. When we have been created in Christ's moral image in our spiritual nature, our body will be returned to us.

We cannot receive back our body until, through the Lord Jesus Christ, we achieve victory over the forces of darkness and death to which mankind is subject. We cannot eat of the tree of life until we overcome the moral behaviors over which the second death has authority. We overcome these sins by choosing to obey God.

As soon as we make a firm commitment to the will of God, the Virtue and power of Christ are applied to us and we are enabled to conquer the behaviors that prevent our immortality.

Only those who by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ overcome the enemies of God's law will attain the resurrection to righteousness, immortality and glory. We do not gain the resurrection to glory by grace, mercy, or any other act of God's compassion. God's compassion serves to forgive our sins and give us the authority and power to attain the resurrection to glory.

To be continued.