Where Does God's Kingdom Dwell?
Speaker: Igor
God "worketh in you both to will and to do" (Phil 2:13): through the word He awakens desires in the spirit that we ourselves cannot explain.
"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil" (Jas 4:7). The enemy's biggest attack is not illness but doubt about the path God leads us on: "we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom" (Acts 14:22), even when it seems everything should be going up. Christ's path also looked unconvincing, and many left Him.
"The just shall live by faith": a daily prayer for daily bread. Like the watchman on the tower (Hab 2:1), step away from everything that distracts and wait for what the Lord will say.
A vegetable garden: you reap what you sow. "Seek ye the LORD while he may be found" (Isa 55:6). "Let us fall now into the hand of the LORD… and let me not fall into the hand of man" (2 Sam 24:14).
Speaker: Mikhail
The Book of Life. Humanity will split into two camps: those not written in the Book of Life will worship the beast, and there will be no hiding (Rev 7:3, 13:8). "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin… bringeth forth death" (Jas 1:15): whoever keeps going back to the mire "like the sow that was washed" has no eternal life.
"They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal 5:24) — "have crucified", not "are crucifying". On the cross Christ left His body and committed His spirit to the Father; we present the body as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1). "Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind… he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin" (1 Pet 4:1–2). Not one wrong desire will remain, and the commandments will become a delight.
"Keeping oneself unspotted from the world" (Jas 1:27) is declared impossible, and that is Satan's success.
"The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20–21). Every person's spirit came from God and returns to Him (Eccl 12:7). Only the spirit knows what is in a person (1 Cor 2:11). God's word revives the spirit, and it "remembers" heavenly things.
"That they all may be one; as thou… art in me, and I in thee" (John 17:21): no one knows how that unity works, and there is no need to "climb in there". Arguments over the Trinity cost much blood: Calvin burned a physician for denying the Trinity.
Friendship with the world is enmity with God (Jas 4:4). The ministration of the Spirit is more glorious than the shining of Moses' face (2 Cor 3).
Perfection is love, the top of the "ladder" of virtues (2 Pet 1:5–7). Human "good qualities" (doesn't offend anyone, polite) are still human custom. The test: what do I actually love, and why do I go out of my mind when I'm insulted?
Christ was not "100% man": He had no human father and no vain way of life passed down from the fathers. The Holy Spirit takes from Christ and shows Him to our spirit, as in a mirror.
Old Testament saints (Abraham, David) were born of the Spirit, but their bodies were not set free, hence their sins (Rom 7:22–24). Freedom is when the spirit leaves the power of the flesh and "bloweth where it listeth" (John 3:8).
"Take heed how ye hear": put God's word above everything and pray for daily bread morning and evening. Then truth will open even from one word of a weak sermon.
"I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat" (Matt 25:35) is first of all a revelation for a specific person's life, not only food and clothing.