Excerpts

The Lighthouse Apostolic Centre

Tuesday, 22nd October 2024

(Day 2 am – 2nd Morning Session) 

Priesthood: The Template of God for Raising Sons

Pastor Dimeji Elugbadebo

1. The ministry of Jesus Christ as the High Priest is 100% Man and 100% God. He cannot be a High Priest if He is not a Man - you have to be a man to fulfill the conditions of mediating.  The Man Christ Jesus is a Man that became God and that is why He is qualified to be the High Priest of the things pertaining to God. The ministry of the High Priest has been a thought in the heart of God; it is a facility in God to meditate and bring man into the full program of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the medium by which God’s life can be inherited. 

2. The High Priest is a Being that functions in the highest dimension of God’s life; this means the life of God is in strata. He is at the peak of the dominion of God's life. When Jesus came into the flesh, He was not yet a high priest, He needed to be made a High Priest to qualify for the ministry of bringing man into the program of God.  The Priesthood of the New Testament is the vehicle to transition man from flesh into glory, this is the function of the High Priest.

3. Our Lord Jesus is the pattern and if this pattern is not followed, our building will be lesser than what He became. Doctrine is the medium of making and it cannot be many because the sons of God will be known by the same nature. Hence, if it is the same nature and inheritance we are coming to then the pattern and ordinances that raise us should be the same. Priesthood is an ordinance which is an everlasting pattern of making - that is, we will be made the same way Jesus was made.

4. Sin is not what we do, it is what we have; it can either be active or dormant. We are all sinners because we inherited sinful nature and the law of sin through birth.

5. The plan of the enemy for Adam was to move him to the next death (final death) but Adam did not journey to that level of death. If Adam had journeyed to the second death, it would have been the end for man, therefore the death in Eph. 2:1 is not full.

6. God wants all men not just to be born again but to be saved as He is.  Salvation is the inheritance of God's life; it is to be saved as God is.  It begins at the New Birth but ends at partaking of the inheritance of His nature. The spectrum of Salvation given to us as an inheritance in the New Testament is such that is incorruptible, undefiled and that fadeth not away and that is what Jesus came to meditate so we can partake of the nature of Salvation (1 Pet. 1:4).

7. Jesus Christ was made. The making of a High Priest is the making of the Son; the Son of God is the High Priest. The purpose of the high priestly ministry of Jesus is to begat sons who are like Him and have come into the stature of His life.

8. The proclamation that came upon Jesus at age 30 after being baptized was an understanding of a level of ownership to the estate of His Father. This was not a full ownership but an administration to begin to run the estate of His Father. He came into some levels of being begotten but not fully – He was called, ‘beloved’. A beloved Son is not a fully begotten. 

9. Jesus is a fully ascended Man. He could not come into the estate of being a mediator between God and man until He finished obedience in the flesh and was rewarded with the same quality of life that was in God. He finished the work (John 17:4); this work is beyond ministry work, it is the Father’s will which was the obedience required to inherit His life. The work that Jesus did is the image of the Father because it is needed to qualify as the High Priest.

10. The order of Melchisedec is the everlasting pattern for making sons. Jesus is a Priest in the order of Melchisedec. We must understand this order because it is the order of the New Testament. We have not entered into the core of the New Testament if the understanding of the Melchizedek priesthood is not clearly seen - this is how priests are made.

11. Redemption is just, and with no shadiness. Adam fell as a man, therefore, Jesus had to become like Adam to begin from where he stopped. Jesus had to die as a Man and received the promise of coming to all of the promises of God's life till His estate changed from man to God.

12. We need to understand the concept of obedience which has always been in our walk with God since even the first man.  God went in the cool of the day to fellowship with Adam and the purpose of that fellowship was to bring him into instructions of a life that He must obey. God began by giving him boundaries concerning his walk and as he consistently and faithfully obeyed, there were things he was to come into.

13. The Son of God is the brightness of His Glory and the express image of His person (Heb. 1:3). We are children of God but not yet sons of God, hence there is a need for growth because even Jesus grew. We cannot claim the image of God, it was not claimed by Jesus, He learned it (Heb. 5:8).

14. Angels are also sons in a measure and they have a measure of some things from God. God made Adam because He wanted to have a son in His own kind. Angels are sons but they are not sons of His essence or image. The greatest thing God can give a man is His image and attached to His image is oath. God can give many things which are not backed by oath but when it comes to image, He backs it up.

15. Jesus became the medium of God’s speaking and this is because He became the Voice of God. He is a representation of all the speakings of God. God is not interested in just talking, when He speaks, He speaks substances of His life. God gives life through the medium of speaking (Heb. 1:1-2). What makes sons is the speaking of God that is obeyed.

16. The doctrine of Christ is a prerequisite covenant to come into the everlasting covenant. It is a  transition (intermediary) to the everlasting covenant. The doctrine of Christ is meant to bring us to the Father.

17. Majestic things are things Jesus resurrected to carry on our behalf. We are designed for those majestic things. Jesus died, rose, and resurrected to become a Majestic Being and to inherit Majestic things on our behalf so that He can bring many of us into the realm of majesty. Things of majesty are the invisible things of God (Rom. 1:20).

18. The wisdom of God is the wisdom of Christ, it is the wisdom that brings us into the hidden wisdom of God. The wisdom of God has two compartments: there is the wisdom of God and the hidden wisdom of God. The wisdom of God that is Christ is a derivative of the hidden wisdom of God. The actual wisdom is the one that is in God but the Godhead brought out a strand of wisdom called Christ to be able to pick man from His state (1 Cor. 2:5-6).

19. It is everlasting life that will thrust out the enemy. God's everlasting life is older than sin because Everlasting life is older than the Heavens and Earth; it is the life of the Creator. The Creator is the Father, He created because He wanted sons (Isa. 40:28). The essence of creation is Sonship. If God stayed in His eternal domain, He wouldn't have sons and that is why the Earth is the realm of God's mercy. Mercy is love. 

20. The Lamb was slain at an everlasting domain. He catered for the infirmities of man, He saw that man is weak in his state and may reject Him, thus God made an alternative to achieving His will for man even before he fell. Jesus is not an afterthought, He is part of the very plan.

21. God has one project and it is to give man His life. The Gospel is giving man God’s life and nature. God’s nature is sinlessness and deathlessness; these are the two signs of the Son of God.

22. As we walk with God, a time will come that we will forgive easily; it means forgiveness has become our nature. A time will come that as we learn what Jesus learnt, we will not know how to sin because sin is a life that we learnt and if we learnt it then we can unlearn it.

23. Most of us have our way of loving God but we do not really love God. Some people prefer to pray than to sit down and learn doctrine. A soul that does not love doctrine does not really love God. The ability to sit and wait on the word is an exercise of love. We can measure the love of a soul by how much he waits on doctrine. The real work is that we should engage in doctrine.

24. The end of the journey in the tabernacle is to make us true. The speaking of the High Priest is to raise the True Tabernacle which is to raise true worshippers (John 4:23). Worshipers are servants of God; to serve God is to bear witness of His life.