The Christian people, in many instances, are waiting for the Lord to return from Heaven so they may enter the "Kingdom of God," which they have made synonymous with Paradise. In the meantime, many of them are slaying their own resurrection by living in the flesh.

We are to be entering the Kingdom of God today, through much tribulation, so when Jesus returns it will be manifest that we indeed have entered the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God eternally is in us.

The Kingdom of God is in us if Christ is being formed in us. It is the Kingdom that will be caught up to meet the Lord in the clouds, that is, the kings and priests, the nobility, of the Kingdom. It is not the flesh and blood people who have made a profession of Christ who will be caught up to meet the Lord in the clouds, but the rulership of the Kingdom.

It is the new creation created in the victorious saints that will be caught up in the first resurrection. This is why the Apostle John, when he beheld in vision the first resurrection from the dead, declared: "I saw thrones (Revelation 20:4)."

It is the Kingdom that is the "oil" in Jesus' parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1-13).

To "eat of the tree of life" is to gain resurrection life in the body; for that is what was lost by Adam and Eve when they were driven from the garden of Eden.

The way of the tree of life is guarded by mighty cherubim and by a flaming sword that turns every way. In order to eat of the tree of life we are required to overcome Satan, the world, our lusts and self-will, and sometimes the churches. The sword turns "every way." No person who has sin in his personality ever will be able to pass the cherubim and the flaming sword, ever will gain eternal life in his body.

. . . To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7)

Eating of the tree of life is associated with entering through the gates into the new Jerusalem.

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. (Revelation 22:14)

To overcome is to gain the strength to do what Christ has said.

We gain acceptance in the sight of God by receiving the atonement Christ has made on the cross of Calvary. God forgives our sins and casts the memory of them behind His back.

We enter the Kingdom of God, into the new Jerusalem, by conquering through the grace of Christ the sin that comes against us constantly.

We cannot enter the city of God while we are unclean and practicing abominations.

And there shall in no wise enter it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Revelation 21:27)

To be continued.