The new man who has been born in us has a world, an environment in which it survives and finds growth, pleasure, and achievement. Prayer and the Presence of God, the Word of God, the body and blood of the Lord, worship, the gifts of the Spirit, fellowship with fervent saints, are all dear to the new man of the heart. He lives in these elements.

The fundamental choice the human soul must make is whether to seek after its survival or to bring itself down to death by taking up its cross and following the Lord Jesus to crucifixion. Our physical body, being married to the soul as it were, always will protest in the strongest terms any move that we make to deny ourselves and give preference to the new man of the heart.

We can see from this that only the most determined individuals will be able, in the present hour, to overcome the demands of the soul and the body and to attend to the proper growth and development of the new creation, the new humanity who has been born in us.

Satan, who understands far better than we that the development of the new creation marks the end of his kingdom, does everything in his power to persuade us to express our soul in our religious practices rather than to attend to the daily seeking of the Lord, to the carrying of our cross and following Him.

Satan will assist us in the enjoyment of our religion. His mortal fear is that we will choose to die and be reborn into the Kingdom of God.

It is the writer's conviction that there is far more darkness than light in the Christian churches of our day because of an ignorance of the true nature of redemption, of the resurrection from the dead, of the Kingdom of God. Organized religion never has been the friend of God, never has understood God or His ways.

It often is true that the Christian churches are a hindrance to our transformation from Adam to Christ. This is because the churches substitute religious practices in place of transformation. The human soul can find delight and satisfy its sensual pleasures in the customs and practices of religion.

As a result, what should be helping us to die and be reborn is in actuality prolonging the survival of Adam.

The Christian churches, in many instances it appears, are enemies of Christ. The churches gratify the aspirations of the human soul while claiming to be the apostles of the Divine redemption. Religious men always will murder Jesus whenever He appears because the soul, having been exalted through the practice of religion, seeks to save itself at the expense of the spiritual creation.

The soul always seeks to worship God "in this mountain" or "at Jerusalem." God seeks those who will worship Him "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:21,23).

Each day of his discipleship the follower of Jesus must deny himself (his soul), take up his cross, and follow the Lord Jesus. As he does this, experiencing the numerous deaths and blessings that make up the process of transformation, the new man of the heart takes possession of the personality.

To be continued.