The Godhead and the Great Miracle
of the Spiritual Rebirth
By John Wilfred Johnson
Click to go to our Home PageDear Reader, What you are about to study is what the
Lord has shown me to be a major part of the pinnacle of truth as it has been
developed so far in regard to the Godhead and the miracle of Spiritual
rebirth. Since Ellen White said that this subject will be unfolding for
eternity, we have cause to believe that God will show His people more on this
all important fundamental of His Being and His Kingdom. The man through whom this truth was given
to us by God, John Wilfred Johnson, lived from 1915-1995. He served as first
Elder to the Canadian Union College church in Alberta, Canada, and he served
as a professor at that college for some years. I personally attended some of
Mr. Johnson’s cottage meetings in 1976, and I have never met a more complete
example of a godly man. Mr. Johnson taught what he said he was shown in
visions. I believe that a prayerful and studious study of his materials will
reveal that his revelations could come only from on high. The full works of Mr. Johnson have been
made available through John Wells, who had written transcripts made of the
audio tape/letters Mr. Johnson recorded in his lifetime. Mr. Wells may not
live that much longer so it would be wise to get these materials as soon as
possible. I believe he furnishes them for free as a missionary project. Mr.
Johnson’s works are available from: SIGNET SEAL PUBLISHERS Box 5117, Lacombe, AB Canada T4L 1W7 The Great Miracle of The Spiritual Rebirth (All
emphases are as in the book from which this study is taken) And
now let us meditate for a few minutes on the great miracle of the spiritual
rebirth. We have long believed that in order to see the kingdom of God we
must be born again. The first time we were born of physical parents. Now, we
must be born of God – born of the Spirit. But
the Scripture also says that God is a Spirit and that God is love. Therefore,
God is the Spirit of love; and to be born of God means to be born of the
Spirit of love. This brings us right back to the question of receiving a new
heart as per the promise of the new covenant, for the heart is the seat of
the emotions; and the most powerful of all emotions – the one which is the
essence of God’s character – is the emotion of love. This
love of God is however, a special kind of love. It is not selfish love; it is
not puppy love; it is not sensual love. Rather, it is pure, self-denying love
– love which reaches out to others and sacrifices self. Self-sacrificing love
is the great principle of life in earth and heaven according to the statement
in Desire of Ages [cf. DA 20]. Thus
to be born again of the self-denying love of the Spirit of God, means to
receive the gift of the principle of a new life – or should I say, a new life
principle –namely, the eternal life principle of which we have spoken
somewhat previously. This
ties in with the symbol of the “fruit of the tree of life.” The eating of the
fruit of this tree brings with it the power of eternal fixation – the
principle of eternal life. But we are informed that this new birth is brought
through the agency of the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. We have already
expressed that the gift of the Holy Ghost to man is an outcome of the
everlasting covenant between Christ and His Father, entered into before the
Son of God gave up His life in the courts of the heavenly sanctuary, many
years before His first advent. And
before Jesus ascended into the courts of heaven after His resurrection, He
promised His disciples that He would pray the Father to send this Comforter,
even the Holy Ghost, to give them power. Power for what? – why power to
become the sons of God, for “as many as received Him, to them gave He power
to become the sons of God,” (John 1:12). That is, He gave them power to
become born again into the family of God. But
the Scripture says that he that is born of God cannot sin because he is born
of God. This would seem quite obvious in the light of what we have discussed;
for to be born of God means to be born of self-denying love, and when this
love becomes the supreme motive in a man’s life, he cannot bring himself to
transgress the law of God and heap further suffering on the beloved Son of
God. The
emotion of love is the most powerful motivating force in the universe. A man
will do something for one he truly loves which he would not think of doing
for anyone else. In the final analysis, it is the emotion of self-denying love
which is the primary fruit of the indwelling Spirit of God, that empowers the
man to implement his decision to cease from sin; and it is the eternal life
principle which empowers a man to expel the nature of sin from his life – to
cleanse his body temple, or sanctuary. It
should be obvious that the agency of the rebirth is the Holy Ghost. This
leads us once more to the consideration of the communion of the body and
blood of Christ as portrayed in the communion service. At the last supper
Jesus delivered to His disciples an emblem of the great Sacrifice which He
had made in the courts of heaven, and which He was again making now as He
faced the cross. For while Jesus on earth had the privilege of regaining His
former heritage and reserving it for Himself alone (He could have given up
lost man at any time and returned to His Father), He now manifested the
greatest demonstration of His self-denying character of love by laying down
this privilege and making it available to all who should believe in Him as the
Son of God and the Saviour of sinners. And
He made it plain to His disciples that He himself would not again partake of
it until He partook of it anew with them in the kingdom. And as He cried out
on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,”? He experienced
the everlasting death of the sinner – a separation from the gift of the
eternal power and the eternal life of the Holy Ghost. His eternal Spirit
returned to God who had given it at His baptism. [Luk 23:46
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.] Jesus – The Link Between the Eternal
Christ of the Past and the New Christ of the Future When
Jesus emerged from the tomb, His memory – that is, His past life – did not
reach beyond the cradle. No longer did He share in the eternal heritage of
His former life, for He had died the eternal [second] death of the sinner
from which there was no hope of a resurrection. Henceforth, He was the One
who was alive and was dead, and behold He is alive forevermore (cf. Re. 1:18)
as the First-born of the new race, who gave His eternal spiritual body and
blood to be eaten and absorbed, through the communion of the Holy Ghost, by
His new body temple of saints. [DA 25: “In taking our nature, ‘The Saviour
has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be
broken.”] Only
through them would He ever again partake of this eternal heritage, for it is
through the body structure and the circulation of the blood stream that the
head of the body receives its life. Jesus is the Head of the new body temple
of saints, and He has exposed Himself to a bodily communion with those
saints, and functions through them to receive the knowledge of all former
things, as any person receives his knowledge through the five senses of his
physical body; and to execute His counsels through their body temples, as any
person operates through the muscles of his own body. This
experience of the communion with His saints is related to the marriage of the
Lamb which occurs before Jesus leaves the sanctuary. He receives His
inheritance, but He receives it through His saints, for His inheritance is in
His saints. The literal man Jesus was the link between the eternal Christ of
the past and the new Christ of the future; for the former Christ died in the
heavenly sanctuary to be regenerated by the gift of the Holy Ghost in the man
Jesus. But on the cross, that Christ died the second death – from
which there is no hope of a resurrection. [cf. EW 218.6]. The
resurrected Jesus is the Wonderful Counsellor, the Prince of Peace, the
Mighty God, and the Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6), and His saints are His
new spiritual body temple through whom He functions. [cf. 7 BC 931, Col. 2.1:
“The Jewish tabernacle . . . is Christ’s body, and from north, south, east,
and west He gathers those who will help to compose it. . . . A holy tabernacle
is built up of those who receive Christ as a personal Saviour.”] The great
former Christ of the pre-advent days
is gone as a unit. He is now absorbed in the communion of the saints, and it
requires 144,000 human body temples to make up the new structure of the great
spiritual body of Christ. Christ was alive, He died, and behold He is alive
forevermore in His saints. [cf. Rev. 1:18]. And Jesus is
the Head of that body, and in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. But when He speaks through His new body temple, His voice, which is
the voice of God, will speak “like many waters” -- for waters are people.
[cf. ST 03-28-00]. Christ’s Immense Sacrifice – Gateway
to Profound Mystery But
we have again slipped ahead of our story. This experience on the cross was a
revelation to our dull senses of the pain which entered the heart of God at
the inception of sin. [cf. Ed. 263]. It was also a revelation of the real
death which Christ, the former Archangel and Son of God, had experienced in
the courts of the heavenly sanctuary. The
Millerites of the pre-1844 movement made the error
of considering this earth, the earthly experience rather, as the only and
complete experience of the death of Christ; and thus [concluded] that this
earth was the sanctuary where the Lamb was slain. But this earthly
demonstration, while it embodies all that has been taught concerning it over
the years, is yet but the symbol or gateway to a far deeper and more profound
experience with occurred in the tabernacle of heaven. I
cannot, in this brief preview, portray the enormity of this great mystery –
my speech is here inadequate! God has permitted me to catch a little glimpse
of the tremendous sacrifice of Christ; and if this glimpse should ever expand
into a brilliant image, I shall not be negligent in offering to share it with
you. The Eternal Life of Christ (His Blood)
Was Shed for His Saints But
to get back to our main theme again – the new or everlasting covenant
provided for the delivery of the heritage of the great spiritual body and
blood of the Son of God to the saints, through the Holy Ghost. And this new
testament was in the blood of that former eternal body, for Jesus said “This
. . . is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” [Luke 22:20].
The covenant was ratified by the shedding of that blood. The very life of
Christ was in that blood, for the Scripture says that the blood is the life
of the body. And the new testament in that blood was the promise of the
eternal life of Christ to His saints. But
we have also known that the fruit of the tree of life is another symbol for
the eternal life principle; and the eating of the fruit of the tree of life
is but another way of expressing the communion of the body and blood of
Christ. When Adam sinned he became separated from the attachment to this
spiritual body, and he began to die. Not until man is restored to this
eternal body and blood will he again receive the heritage of eternal life;
and this he receives when he becomes born again of the Spirit of god’s love,
for this love is the principle of everlasting life; for he that is
born again hath everlasting life. In
the past few minutes we have covered quickly a generous number of ideas, and
these ideas are subject to a large number of inter-relationships. And when
these inter-relationships are seen in their true light, then an integrated
concept will emerge, revealing a profound image of the great Christ, the
eternal Son of God. His
enormous sacrifice will be seen in a new light; the gift of eternal life will
be more highly appreciated; the awfulness of sin will be more thoroughly
impressed and despised; and the love of God will be far more brilliantly
displayed. Again
I am forced to confess that a superficial acquaintance with the relationships
here implied so inadequately, will not yield a clear-cut and plausible
picture. A more thorough and painstaking treatment would be required to bring
into sharp focus the impressive panorama which they actually reveal. But I
will pause now, that we may each have an opportunity to meditate upon these
most solemn and profound truths. . . . Anyone
who reviews carefully the material which is recorded on these tapes, will
come up with questions, for there are a number of new problems which have
arisen and which remain unsolved. Certainly one of these questions would be
regarding the eternal death of Christ: How Could the Eternal Christ Die When
He Had Eternal Life? For
instance, we may logically ask how could the eternal Son of God die when He
was endowed with eternal life? The
answer must lie in His autonomous power over all things; for if He had life
in Himself, and at the same time had all power, it would conceivably be
possible for Him to separate Himself from His eternal life – to lay it down.
This is precisely what the Scripture teaches wherein it quotes Jesus as
saying: “I have power to lay it down, and power to take it again.” [John
10:18]. It
was in the courts of the heavenly sanctuary that He first relinquished His
eternal life and lapsed into a sleep from which there would have been no
resurrection, except through the action of God the Father in fulfilling His
part of the everlasting covenant; to deliver by the Holy Ghost that eternal
heritage of Christ, namely, the great spiritual body and blood of the eternal
One; and to deliver it to the family of mankind. [DA 22.9 & 23]. It
was in fulfillment of this covenant that the entire plan of salvation, as
evidenced in the New Testament, evolved, including the miraculous birth of
the boy Jesus. Even as sinners who die the everlasting death are raised from
the first death of sleep to experience later, a second death from which there
can be no hope of a resurrection – even so, Christ was raised from His first
sleep into the boy Jesus, only to experience His second death on the cross of
Calvary. But the resurrection of Christ into the man Jesus, which occurred at
the anointing of the Holy Ghost (as was verified by the voice from heaven),
was not a full and complete restoration of the enormous structure of the
former Christ; for it is impossible to embody into one human being the
vastness of that incomprehensible spiritual body of Christ. We
learn from the testimony of the Spirit of Prophecy that in the early morning
hours of His prayer and devotions Jesus received His strength and His
instructions for the day’s tasks. [DA 208]. He was not at any one moment
endowed with the fullness of all power and all knowledge – no single human
body could contain this. Note
by Ron: Further on, on page 285 of Volume One, Mr. Johnson states a more
complete listing of the limitations of Christ in His humanity, to wit: “One
is, that Jesus went in the early hours of the morning to commune with His
Father and to receive instructions for the work of the day. [cf. DA 208].
Another is, that the miracles which He performed, were performed by God
through the agency of the angels. [cf. DA 208]. Another is, that He said of
Himself He could do nothing, that it was “the Father who did the works.” This
would indicate that Jesus made a supreme sacrifice when He came to this world
by taking upon Himself human nature – that He did not have the completeness
and fullness of His former body and blood, which contained the fullness of
His life and His power. He did not have a complete eternal memory when He was
in human form. [Recall that Jesus said that only the Father knew the day and
hour of Christ’s coming—Ron] He did not have complete and eternal power,
[but] only as He received it through the co-operation of His angels and His
Father. In
this state of humiliation He proved Himself worthy and honourable. He
demonstrated the character of God and His own character which was identical
to it. He verified His selfless love in going straight to the cross. No one
observing this great demonstration could possibly say that this character is
unworthy to be the governor of the Universe. This
is just a brief analysis. It would be understood far better if we took time
to analyze it is more detail.” End note. Divinity
flashed through humanity but did not completely engulf it. [read ST
04-18-92]. Nevertheless, Jesus had access to the potential powers of that
former body; but He exercised it only through the ministry and obedience of
the angels. At no time did He use His eternal prerogative for
self-gratification. Even
His miracles were performed by the ministry and obedience of the angels [cf.
2 SOP 67]; and it was an angel who ministered to Him in the hour of His
temptation in the wilderness. If he had needed protection, or rather if He
had chosen to solicit protection against the soldiers in the garden of
Gethsemane, He could have received it in the form of twelve legions of angels
from His Father [cf. DA 143.2]. He said nothing about having power in Himself
to save Himself from these enemies. There may be a little difficulty here in
reconciling these thoughts, but they must be reconciled. The Limitations of Jesus in His Human
Tabernacle It
should seem clear that Jesus, as the resurrected Christ, was subject to certain limitations
because of His having accepted a human tabernacle in which to life; and as we
have already pointed out Jesus will not attain the fullness of His structure
in the new body temple of Christ until He becomes married to the 144,000
saints; for the new body temple must be built up first. [cf. GC 120.5] . .
“rising slowly through the ‘centuries,’ and AA last chapter “. . . but the
structure is not yet complete.” AA 599.2]. Note
by Ron: Christ’s omnipresence was obviously cumbered by His humanity: “Cumbered
with humanity Christ could not be in every place personally, therefore it was
altogether for their advantage that He should leave them to go to His Father
and send the Holy Spirit to be His successor on earth. The Holy Spirit is
Himself divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. He
would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit.” E.G.
White, (Manuscript Releases Volume 14 (No’s 1081-1135) MR No.1084. End note. The Marriage of the Lamb to His
144,000 Saints It must be
raised to become an habitation of God through the eternal Spirit; and this
body temple of saints must be endowed with the communion of the body and
blood of the former heritage of Christ, which body was broken and divided for
them to eat, and which blood was shed for them to drink. [John 6:53-58]. And
then they must be married to Jesus, as the bride adorned in white linen to
the Bridegroom. [Rev. 19:7-9]. Out of this union will emerge the fullness of
the structure of the eternal Christ – the Son of God! The original
temple of God, in His Son Christ, had to be destroyed because of the eternal
record of sin transferred to it by the eternal blood – that is, by virtue of
the fact that this body had direct sensory experience with all events
transpiring in the universe, and also that its record of these events was
everlasting and permanent. Hence, this record could only be destroyed by the
death of the One who had that record in His own spiritual body. [Note by
Ron: This gives new meaning to the saying of Christ that He will remember our
sins no more! – Beautiful! Wonderful! End note]. The
principle of eternal life was then applied to human temples, to regenerate in
them only that which is righteous and true; and the first of these human
temples to experience this was Jesus, the First-begotten. Thus through the
death and regeneration is sin destroyed, and righteousness preserved. I say again,
the original body and blood of Christ was relinquished by Him, and He died.
In the human body of Jesus the principle of death, manifested through the
ability to forget or erase the patterns of past sinfulness in His mental
make-up, enabled Him by rejection of these patterns to destroy sin in the
flesh. And then by His access to the principle of eternal life, delivered
through the Holy Ghost, He could regenerate His righteous choices and cause
them to become eternally fixed into His new nature. Thus He bore the sins of
the world in His own body, and destroyed sins in the flesh through death, and
at the same time proved that His character – the sum total of His choice
habits – was righteous. In this
process, the restoration of the memory of His former Self was adequate to
identify Him. But in His daily routine work He was not constantly and
unavoidably conscious of all His eternally past experiences in heaven, any
more than we are, at any one moment, conscious of all our past experiences.
The great former Christ as a singular unit of eternal memory had passed out of
existence. He had died an eternal death! Note by Ron:
It was DIVINITY ONLY who was the Testator – the Son of God, who agreed to the
prescribed limit of the Testator’s Covenant—DEATH OF THE TESTATOR. Therefore,
it was thus imperative that He must die to His DIVINE ONLY former life. In
relinquishing His Holy Ghost Spirit and commending it to His Father just
before His death on the cross, Christ died the second death to the
possibility of EVER returning to that DIVINE ONLY state of His former
existence again. That was eternal death to His former life and soul, and
Ellen White said that the Holy Spirit is the soul of that former life and
that the life that He commended to His Father, is the Comforter, the Holy
Spirit. Hbr 9:16 For
where a testament [is], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. Hbr 9:17 For
a testament [is] of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength
at all while the testator liveth. In order to
Atone for the wages of our sins—eternal death, He had to experience eternal
death. The payment must equal the penalty or there would have been no atonement,
and the failure of God’s watchmen to see this fact, is just another means by
which the Sanctuary and the Atonement are GONE, just as Ellen White
prophesied. But as Ellen White stated, the ministering brethren look on to
these deeper truths and they cannot understand (Isaiah 56:10-12), and neither
can those who are determined to defend their apostasy, so they deride and
reject the precious light which they cannot understand, and which is the most
compelling evidence to motivate God’s people to cease sinning so the
Sanctuary can be cleansed. In the Alpha, the Sanctuary and Atonement were
rendered GONE. And so it is in the Omega of Apostasy, and via a number of
different causes. Sanctuary Gone Atonement Gone --
"In a representation which passed before me, I saw a certain work being
done by medical missionary workers. Our ministering brethren were looking on,
watching what was being done, but they did not seem to understand. The
foundation of our faith, which was established by so much prayer, such earnest
searching of the Scriptures, was being taken down, pillar by pillar. Our
faith was to have nothing to rest upon--the sanctuary was gone, the atonement
was gone." E.G. White, The
Upward Look, 152. "The
Holy Spirit is the breath of spiritual life in the soul. The impartation of the Spirit is the impartation of the
life of Christ. It imbues the
receiver with the attributes of Christ. Only
those who are thus taught of God, those who possess the inward working of the Spirit, and in
whose life the Christ-life is manifested,
are to stand as representative men, to minister in behalf of the
church." Desire of Ages, 805. "Christ
declared that after his ascension, he would send to his church, as his
crowning gift, the Comforter, who was to take his place. This Comforter is the Holy Spirit,--the soul of his life, the efficacy of his church, the light and life of the
world. With his Spirit Christ sends a reconciling influence and a power that
takes away sin. In the gift
of the Spirit, Jesus gave to man the highest good that heaven could
bestow.... The Spirit
was given as a regenerating agency, and without this the sacrifice of Christ
would have been of no avail.... It is by the
Spirit that the heart is made pure. Through the Spirit the believer becomes a
partaker of the divine nature. Christ has given his Spirit as a divine power
to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil, and to impress
his own character upon the church." E.G. White, Review and Herald Articles, May 19, 1904, vol. 5, p. 42. End note. The New Habitation of God is Jesus
& the 144,000 There could
be no restoration of that identical structure into one single human body
temple. If there had been, it could not be said that Christ had died a
permanent death – the death of the sinner. It would merely have been a
temporary death of sleep which is not the death of the sinner. This is
one aspect of the permanent sacrifice of Christ and of God’s giving of His
Son; for only as this original body and blood heritage of Christ was divided,
and provided for His individual saints, would it be possible to build a
comparable body temple structure. And while the fullness of the Godhead
dwells in Jesus, the fullness of the former body and blood of Christ
in the Holy Ghost, dwells in His saints. It is now a
co-operative unit of 144,000 human body temples. This is the new habitation
of God! He dwells with them; He dwells in them; He sups with them – it is the
communion of the Holy Ghost. Henceforth, the telescopic decisions of Jesus,
the Godhead, will be executed through His new body, the 144,000 saints who
have eternal power. And henceforth, the telescopic sensory perceptions of
Jesus, the Godhead, will be received through His new body structure – the
144,000 saints; for it is they whom the Holy Spirit will “guide into all
truth.” The record al all truth will be restored in them, and through them
transferred to the Head. This puts
Jesus in the humble position where He has placed complete confidence in the
voluntary co-operation of His saints. Should they choose to sin, they could
become eternal sinners and heap eternal suffering on their Saviour. Henceforth,
there can never be any accusation made against the character of Christ, for
it is placed on perpetual demonstration as the most humble of all. The
character of Christ has been completely vindicated, and His worthiness of the
position of supreme Law-giver and
Creator, and only-begotten Son of God cannot be challenged ever again.
He is now the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor – not the autocratic
dictator. Could There be a More Wonderful
Government? Although He
has vested all power in His saints, yet His saints serve Him from love alone.
There can be no question about this now, for without their voluntary
co-operation He could not function as all-powerful and supreme Ruler; for one
cannot function except through one’s body. This then is
the government of Heaven. It is a government of allegiance completely based
on voluntary submission and cooperation, prompted by the deep and sincere,
divine and self-denying love of the subjects for their Creator and their
Ruler. Could there be a more wonderful government? |