So, what follows in this series of verses is just as certain! ‘Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come.’ (2 Corinthians 1: 18-22) The King James version chooses the word earnest instead of deposit, which eventually means the same, for the Oxford dictionary says that earnest, means: Money paid as an instalment. – To confirm a contract. – It is a token of what is to come, now all this is what the Gift of the Holy Spirit guaranties to every believer.

Paul says also the following; ‘Now it is God who has made us for this purpose and has given us the Spirit (meaning the Holy Spirit) as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.’ (Corinthians 5: 5) now, while, as a born again Christian, you are here on earth longing to go to heaven to put on the new body, your heavenly dwelling; God has given you the Holy-Spirit as a token, a guaranty that the rest is secure, guaranteed to happen! A last reference to this glorious hope to come: ‘In Him (Jesus-Christ) we (All Christians) were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, (meaning that the first Christians were Jews) might be for the praise of His glory. And you also (Gentile Christians) were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of His glory.’ (Ephesians 1: 11-14) In Christ there are no Jews and Gentiles, but all are sons of God by faith in Him.

I have really insisted on this point for it is of great importance to all Christians that desire to live their lives according to the pattern which does include the Full Gospel according to the will of God, this puts the baptism in the Holy Spirit right in the centre of the Christians experience and underlines, that one cannot live fully the Christians experience without the fire of the Holy Spirit in his belly! So, to speak! I say belly, because somewhere, inside there, I feel the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit has been promised to every believer in Christ, because we are all called to live and to work and witness for Christ! As He wills it!

Now, I must return to my main subject! At one point, as recorded in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus preached a sermon that I cannot detail here. But the whole spiritual meaning of it is so much outside worldly thinking, that many of Christ’s disciples could not stomach it, it is written: ‘On hearing it, many of His disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it...From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him? (John 6: 60-66) At this Jesus turned to his (other) disciples and asked them: ‘You do not want to leave too; Jesus asked the Twelve? Now we realise that at this point true faith triumphs; all that call themselves Christians do not necessarily follow Jesus Christ they are not His followers, let alone disciples! They are what many called ‘Cultural Christians’, just a name but no new life pulsating deep inside the soul that has its source in God!

I have concluded that true sinners are easier to convert into a saint, by the power of the Gospel, than do-gooders, or just plain church goers, they have lived their lives according to a certain kind of code, and they find it impossible to let it go! And yet some have made it, God has triumphed! All Christ’s disciples, Christians are sinners saved, ‘converted’ by the power of God. They are washed in the Blood of Christ, they are sanctified, they are justified. They are safe and they are saved from all condemnation. This is what people in general poopoo it, and reject as fables, without a single reason for it, except that they heard some clever men say that the people of old did not know what we know today, what does the world actually know. Education is good, I still learn much even now, and love it! But it can shut the mind to believe the unseeable and everything that is real about God and His way of salvation!