It is not that your gifts and ministries are to become inaccessible. Your service must remain fruitful for those people for whom it has been designated. Jesus' ministry brings salvation to all people to whom He has been sent by the Father.

It is you yourself, the way you do things, that may be incomprehensible—therefore suspect—to your brothers.

You may walk alone some of the time. Yet you are not alone. You are sharing the sufferings of Him who rose early to be with His Father, who listened always to the voice of the Spirit rather than to the world, Satan, His own desires for pleasure or comfort, or the self-seeking elders of the Jews.

Jesus, like Paul, was free from all men. Suffering and rejection accomplish that for us.

If we would obtain resurrection life we must learn what it means to share in the sufferings of Christ. The cross and the crown always go together. There is a daily crucifixion of our self-life, and sometimes physical suffering and mental and emotional distress, as we follow Christ to the place of victory.

In the fourth chapter of II Corinthians, Paul describes the continual crucifixion and resurrection of the disciple:

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. (II Corinthians 4:8-11)

The above passage is a description of the manner in which resurrection life is created and developed in us while we yet are in a mortal body. It is to the process of continual dying and continual living brought to the full that Paul is referring when he teaches concerning knowing the fellowship of His sufferings and attaining the resurrection from among the dead.

When resurrection life has been developed in us, and we have learned to live in it, move in it, obey it, rest in it, be empowered and guided by it, then—and only then—will we be ready to be clothed with our "house which is from heaven." Isn't this what Philippians 3:9-11 is declaring?

The fullness of the "Tabernacles experience" includes the eternal indwelling of the Godhead in us, we having been clothed with a righteous, powerful "house" possessing incredible abilities and energies.

The indwelling of the Godhead, the spiritual renewal of our mortal body, the clothing with our house from Heaven, and the ascent to the throne in the air, constitute the first resurrection.

Movement to and from Heaven, from the material realm to the spirit realm and back again, is no more essential to the first resurrection than driving across town is essential to owning an automobile or flying to Alaska is necessary for owning an airplane.

Movement into the air is associated with the first resurrection from the dead only because the Body is being joined to the Head, and because the vacated spiritual thrones located in the air are to be occupied by Christ and His saints. Otherwise ascension has nothing to do with resurrection.

To be continued.