Doctrine of Testing Characteristic

July 23, 2010

Doctrine of Characteristic of Testing

Hebrews 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Scripture reading 1 Peter 1:1-9

All pastors know that sooner or later every Christian will face some kind of a crisis.  The fact is that there will be more than one, and each one is designed to give the believer an opportunity to glorify God.  The main issue in every crisis test is this:
Do I believe in God’s Word?
Will I claim God’s Word or will I fall apart?
Will I get upset?
Will I be afraid?
Will I become destabilized in some manner?
Will I live in panic palace?
Will I claim the promises that are pertinent to the situation?

We call these crises’s testing; they are a test of our momentum in our life of faith.  But what we must never forget is that the test of our momentum is precious in the sight of God.

“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:”

The Principle of Momentum Testing.  There are 8 principles of Momentum testing, but today we are only going to look at two.
1.    Momentum testing is designed for two reasons.
a.    To provide the believer with the opportunity to apply doctrine he has learned. You apply different doctrines to different situations, and some doctrines have a quite different application in our unseen worship with God.
b.    To accelerate the believer’s momentum.
2.    No believer attains maturity apart from momentum testing.

Just as there are 8 principles of Momentum testing, there are also 8 categories of tests.  The first three tests are general categories of testing that occur in all stages of spiritual growth.  The remaining 5 are administered after the believer enters spiritual autonomy and advances to the three stages of spiritual maturity.  Because of the importance of this “Characteristic of Faith”, this message will take two weeks.  Today we are going to look at the general momentum test that every believer will experience all his life.  These test are repetitive, and are common to us all.

1.    The Old Sin Nature Test
The old sin nature is the inside source of temptation.  No one ever sins apart from human consent.  Volition is your authority in your soul.  Volition is the guardian of the soul from the temptations thrown up by the old sin nature.  If the volition says yes to the temptation, then the momentum testing old sin nature controls the soul rather than the Holy Spirit.  Gal 5 teaches this inner struggle.  Human volition then is the source of all sin regardless of how the temptation came about. There are two results of sinning, the old sin nature controls the soul and the believer enters the cosmic system.

Therefore, the believer is either spiritual living inside the divine dynasphere, or carnal, living inside the cosmic system.  Most temptations come from within, from the old sin nature, but some come from without, from someone else’s old sin nature.  For the believer living in the divine dynasphere, all suffering is designed for blessing.  Therefore, suffering for blessing becomes momentum test.

Finally, on this first test, there are seven points to remember.
(1)    No believer can sin when he is residing inside the divine dynasphere.
(2)    When human volition decides to sin, the believer ejects from the divine dynasphere, commits the sin and becomes involved in the cosmic system.  Inside the divine dynasphere the believer can resist temptation through the application of doctrine.
(3)    In the cosmic system the believer only has one option, to escape through the use of rebound.
(4)    No believer ever sins apart from the use of his own free will.
(5)    In cosmic one the believer grieves the Holy Spirit; in cosmic two the believer quenches the Holy Spirit.
(6)    Only volition as the guardian of the soul can protect the believer from the pressure of temptation.
(7)    There are two applications of Bible doctrine in this gate: resistance of temptation and recovery from sinfulness. You are either resisting or recovering.

This is the easiest test to pass; yet this is where most believers spend the majority of their lives. The believer uses the recovery drill, confession, to get out of the cosmic system; then he uses the application drill to endure suffering for blessing.

RECOVERY DRILL            APPLICATION DRILL
Issue:            Sin                    Grace function
Category:        Self-induced misery            Suffering for blessing
Status quo:        Arrogance                Humility/Objectivity
Solution:        Confession                3 stages of the faith-rest drill

2.    Cosmic #1 Test.
1 John 2:15 Love not the world (cosmic system), neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

There are 12 entrances or gates into Satan’s world order.  Each entrance produces arrogance or pride in the believer, which prevents him or her from seeing his or her own blindness.

Gate 1 cosmic one:  motivational evil includes all the mental attitude sins.  Arrogance includes pride, jealousy, bitterness, hatred, anger, guilt, revenge, vindictiveness, implacability, self-pity, and operation overthink.
Gate 2, negative volition arrogance, is preoccupation with self, loss of self-values, loss of personality identity, loss of spiritual self-esteem, all lost due to apathy.
Gate 3, authority arrogance, produces unteachable people.
Gate 4, self-righteous arrogance, includes crusader arrogance.
Gate 5, sexual arrogance.
Gate 6, criminal arrogance.
Gate 7, psychopathic arrogance, is usually induced through a life in cosmic one.
Gate 8, the arrogance of unhappiness, is subjective preoccupation with self.
Gate 9, iconoclastic arrogance, is subjective preoccupation with others.
Gate 10, intellectual and emotional arrogance, is also known as rational and irrational arrogance.
Gate 11, achievement arrogance, includes the arrogance of Christian service.
Gate 12, client nation arrogance, includes Christian activism and civil disobedience.

This form of blind arrogance comes from having no doctrine in your soul, so that you have nothing to apply to the problems of life.  Therefore, you have blind arrogance or soul blindness.  Blind souls are always looking for alleviation from their own self-induced misery.  They are pleasure seekers.  They are Believers without Bible doctrine walking in the dark.  Satan himself was blinded by his arrogance.

Arrogance leads to irrationality.  For arrogance destroys personal capabilities and resents those same abilities in others.  What you destroy in your own soul through arrogance, you will be jealous of in others, when you see those sane characteristics in them.  You see yourself and resent the other person.  You become a zero soul (no doctrine), and you convert morality into arrogant self-righteousness.  Arrogant self-righteousness leads to crusader arrogance, because you have to feed your nothing-soul.  Eventually you develop hang-ups.

There are two kinds of hang-ups:
Blind hang-ups, which come from, blind arrogance, the expression of arrogance without personality identity.
Known hang-ups come from self-consciousness related to pride.

Finally, hang-ups are classified as syndromes. Syndromes are the symptoms of arrogant hang-ups.  These are symptoms typical of a condition, the condition being arrogance.

The great enemy of momentum is the various syndromes of arrogance.
(a)    The legalistic syndrome.
(b)    The guilt syndrome.
(c)    The emotional syndrome.
(d)    The fear syndrome.
(e)    The inadequacy syndrome.
(f)    The socialist syndrome.
(g)    The liberalist syndrome.
(h)    Anti-establishment syndrome.
(i) Anti-semitism/prejudice syndrome.

3.    Cosmic #2 Test.
This is Satan’s interlocking system of antagonism toward the Christian way of life and toward our Lord.    The direct attack of cosmic two is to cause believers to become antagonistic to the Word of God, and consequently, toward the plan of God.  While cosmic one produces arrogant preoccupation with self as a distraction to the plan of God, cosmic two involves the means by which one becomes antagonistic toward spiritual things.

There are nine gates.
(1)    The old sin nature gate.
(2)    The negative volition gate now involves an antagonistic negative volition.
(3)    Cosmic degeneration, moral and immoral.
(4)    The anti-establishment gate.
(5)    The demonism gate is where we are influenced by cosmic thinking.
(6)    The gate of cosmic panaceas is about how we are going to change the world by our own effort without the plan of God and without the pivot.
(7)    The religious gate, the Satanic counterfeit.
(8)    The anthropocentric academic speculation gate is about trying to reconcile some academic subject with Bible doctrine, and in so doing compromise the protocol plan of God, your own spiritual life, and the academic subject.
(9)    The gate of concentrated evil.
The cosmic system is the tactical trap for the enslavement of the human race to Satan; it is a factory for the manufacture of losers.

In summary of the last two test, this is the difference between them:
Cosmic One                    Cosmic Two

Grieving the Holy Spirit.        Quenching the Holy Spirit.

Emphasizes self arrogance;         Emphasizes antagonism of the
in contrast to God.            priorities of God; human viewpoint in
contrast to divine viewpoint.

Target: self.                Bible doctrine, Jesus Christ.

Emphasizes Satan’s attitude          Satan’s attitude at the time of
at the time of his fall.             man’s fall.

Satan’s philosophy in the             Satan’s philosophy during human
prehistoric angelic conflict.         history as the extension of
the angelic conflict.

In cosmic one man is inculcated     In cosmic two the believer is inculcated
with the attitude of Satan         with the attitude of Satan as the ruler
before man was created: arrogance.    of this world after the fall of man.

Satan’s attitude as the ruler        Satan’s policy as the ruler of this
of fallen angels.            world.

Man becomes a slave to self.         Man becomes a slave of Satan.

What is the answer to these tests, common to all believers:

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

The Characteristic of Testing II

4.    Disaster Testing.
a.    Before the believer reaches maturity, there are one or two major disasters in the life.  How the believer handles these determines whether he accelerates his spiritual growth or retreats and goes backward.
b.    There are two categories of disaster testing.
(1)    Personal disaster testing is designed as suffering for blessing for acceleration of momentum, or warning of cosmic involvement, in which case divine discipline becomes involved.
(2)    Historical disaster, collective disaster, or national disaster testing is related to the bad decisions of others in which you are involved by association.  For example, a lot of people suffer unfairly when the president decides to go to war.
c.    There are at least six characteristics of disaster testing.
(1)    Pain, e.g., physical or mental pain and anguish.
(2)    Crime, where you are the victim.
(3)    Persecution (not paranoia).
(4)    Privation, meaning hunger, thirst, exposure, fatigue.
(5)    Loss of loved ones, property, success, money, etc.
(6)    Disease and handicaps.
d.    There are four characteristics of national disaster.
(1)    Violence, crime, terrorism, dope, murder.
(2)    Warfare.
(3)    Weather includes heat, cold, storm, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes.
(4)    Cycles of discipline.
e.    Disaster testing always tests our emotions.  In emotionalism you may seek to sue someone who is negligent, which is only revenge, and you become a loser.  You can lose by gaining, and gain by losing.
f.    The only wealth worth having is the wealth that God provides in escrow blessing. In this momentum test, there is always the temptation to take the easy route of money, security, fame, and lose forever the conveyance of escrow blessing.  There is always the disaster that will make you prosperous.  This is a test.  You lose the chance of receiving your escrow blessing.
g.    Historical downtrend is a maximum number of people in a given area living in the cosmic system.
h.    There must be maximum faith, maximum spiritual self-esteem, maximum spiritual maturity if you are going to have your escrow blessing and pass the disaster test.  Illustration:  See the Doctrine of Economic Depression.

5.    People Testing.
a.    People testing comes in two categories.
(1)    In personal love or admiration, the object of your love often controls your life or provides for you unhappiness, unless you have attained spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, or spiritual maturity.  In wanting to please the object of your personal love, you find yourself being a different person and not following your normal function.
(2)    In personal hatred or animosity, the object of your antagonism or irritation often has control of your life or happiness, unless you have advanced to spiritual adulthood.
b.    Under the protocol plan of God, God designed His plan so that your happiness will always reside in you, and you do not depend on people or things for your happiness.  As a function of your royal priesthood it all comes from within.  You are supposed to have personal control of your life, a personal sense of destiny, self-confidence from metabolized doctrine, and therefore, poise and command of self.  Therefore, you bring your happiness to others, but do not lean on others or circumstances for your happiness.
c.    People are easily led away from the plan of God and doctrine by their friendships, love life, and even hatred.
d.    So unless you attain spiritual adulthood, every time you fall in love or acquire a friend, the object controls your life and your happiness.
e.    Without impersonal love from spiritual autonomy, you become a slave to people.  When you fall in love, look how you act, how you change your modus operandi, how you begin to think in different terms relating everything you do to that person.
f.    So when you make a friend or fall in love, when you become jealous, possessive, when you hate anyone who has it over you; you’ve immediately become a slave.  You’ve manufactured for yourself many problems, and they’re not all the fault of the object.
g.    The solution to people testing is found in the combination of personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind.  The function of spiritual autonomy in the use of virtue love.  Spiritual autonomy is the prerequisite for solving all problems of human relationship, i.e., of people testing, also accompanied by system and thought testing.  This combination only exists in the three stages of spiritual adulthood.
h.    Virtue-love as a problem solving device belongs primarily to the spiritual adult.  Without it, you are constantly surrendering the control of your life to others.  When you become jealous, angry, bitter, vindictive, or implacable; when you are dissatisfied, antagonistic toward someone else, friend or stranger, lover or enemy; you surrender the control of your life to that person.  You become a slave to the object of your antagonism or love.  At the same time, you have no control over your life, canceling all the characteristics of spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy.
i.    When someone else has control of your life through hatred or love, you enter into the law of volitional responsibility with its self-induced misery.
j.    Virtue-love as a problem solving device is the secret of your relationship with God, mankind, and in personal love.  There is no built-in virtue in personal love, which only requires that another meet your standards of beauty, attractiveness, and rapport.  Therefore, to make a personal love relationship work, the believer must use a virtue base totally outside himself.  Otherwise, people will make him miserable all his life.
k.    Personal love is only a virtue when directed toward God.  Impersonal love is only a virtue when directed toward all mankind.
l.    This means that through impersonal love, the believer has control of his own life and he maintains control of his own happiness.  Therefore, disappointment, disillusion, frustration, dissatisfaction with others cannot mar his happiness under the principle of misery derived from getting your eyes on people.
r.    When you react to people in some form of antagonism, they immediately have control over your life, so that you resort to either mental or verbal hostility or even violence.  To recover control you must have impersonal love.  Most believers never get this far.
s.    Therefore, you destroy the person who has control over your life, and at the same time you destroy your own happiness when you are frustrated and react from any phase of the arrogance complex.  Response and reaction to people become a distraction to momentum in the plan of God.  Response results in cosmic evangelism, whereas reaction leads to motivational and functional evil.

w.    Since happiness is the monopoly of God and His plan, you cannot depend upon people or circumstances for your happiness.  So if you surrender your happiness to someone else, you will blame that person for everything that goes wrong in your life.  In personal love or hatred, the object controls your life.  When you become upset with someone, you surrender the custody of your happiness to that person.  When you blame them for your unhappiness, which is produced by your own volition, you have intensified the suffering in your life under the law of volitional responsibility.  Grace disappears and you try to mold the life of those around you.  You can no longer deal with your problems from the strength of your own priesthood.
x.    As the believer grows spiritually in the divine dynasphere, he becomes aware of this pattern, rebounds quickly, and any suffering left over he can scoop up for blessing, and he moves on!

cc.    1 Cor 15:33, “Be not deceived, evil companions corrupt good     morals.”  We create evil companions, by being intimate with those who distract us from Bible doctrine, by allowing them to control our life and happiness.  Prov 13:20, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the friends of fools will suffer evil.”  2 Thes 3:14, “If anyone does not obey our doctrine through this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with them.”
dd.    Jer 17:5-8 teaches the importance of personal love for God and spiritual self-esteem in people testing.  “Cursed is the man who puts his trust in mankind; And makes flesh his strength; And whose heart turns away from the Lord.”  Prov 9:7-12 says that in spiritual self-esteem you mind your own business and yet are friendly and intimate with others.  Prov 10:8, 12 says that you are not insulted by being under someone else’s authority;  “virtue-love covers all wrongs” means you protect the privacy of others.  Prov 10:22; 11:13, 17, 22, “A virtuous person keeps a secret; kindness is beneficial to self, while cruelty brings oneself harm.”  Prov 12:1,15; 13:10-11; 15:17, 32; 15:32; 19:3; 21:19.
ee.    So impersonal love does not function effectively until the believer attains spiritual autonomy.  No one really becomes spiritually mature until his relationships are all handled by impersonal love from spiritual autonomy.  The sooner your friends reach spiritual autonomy, the more tranquil your life will be because they will tolerate you as you are.  Impersonal love is the sum total of the believer’s honor, integrity, and objectivity first acquired in attainment of spiritual self-esteem, but becomes strong in spiritual autonomy.
ff.    People testing is a part of cosmic evangelism by those you either love or hate.  Cosmic evangelistic appeal is generally based on some form of arrogance, which may be disguised in the form of flattery, intellectuality or affection or even passion.
gg.    The moral cosmic evangelist is affectionate without being passionate, and with affection lures you into the cosmic system.  The immoral cosmic believer is passionate without being affectionate, and with passion lures you into the cosmic system.  In either case, friendship or sex become more important than Bible doctrine.  Cosmic evangelism never attracts you through capacity for love, or honor or integrity or virtue.  The tool of the cosmic evangelist is always arrogance.