Excerpts

The Lighthouse Apostolic Centre

Friday, 25th October 2024

(Day 5 – First Morning Session)

The Abiding Nature of the High Priest on High

Pastor Thompson Ehima

1. The concept of the High Priest of Jesus comprises His Person and His office. The high priestly ministry order of Jesus has to do with His person - Jesus is a very high person. Express image means He is the exact image of the person of God and no doubt, the person of God is high. Jesus is a High Priest in things pertaining to God: the things of God were the elements used to raise Him.

2. The office a man operates by is according to the measure of his person. Hence, the measure of a man is what determines the strength of his office. Do not see the High Priest of the Majesty on High firstly as an office, it firstly has to do with His person.

3. The High Priest of the Son of God was made; He allowed Himself to be made, He submitted Himself to the training until the reality became so tangible to His heart.  He underwent a raising to be made the High Priest, and if He was made like that, we also can be made. He was made like unto the Son of Man. Jesus was in the similitude of the order of Melchisedek (Heb. 7:3). He was not in the very order of Melchisedek, He was only in the similitude. This is the order that men in Rev. 14 entered into.

4. No man can abide unless the laws that make him up are abiding material. The former creatures are not abiding creatures. The former things will not abide, the things that will abide are the things of the new. The former and the present are not made up of abiding properties – though they are everlasting, they lack abiding laws. But this High Priest of the Majesty is a Person that abides (John 15:4, 1 Cor. 13:13).

5. Something cannot be called majestic if it does not have abiding properties; if anything will be majestic, it must be abiding. The Son of God has an abiding texture, and nothing can abide except that which pertains to God. If it is not God, it cannot abide. The Everlasting God is a creator, but the Eternal God does not create, He manifests in Himself (Isa. 40:28).

6. The Heavens that the Son of God will fold up are the same Heavens that Jesus purged by His blood. He will fold them up because they cannot abide – we must know the person of the High Priest of Majesty.

7. The law is responsible for the forming of our person and nature. The law of sin and death is what is responsible for the nature we have; hence, when God wants to tamper with the death in us, He converts the law in us (Ps. 19:7). The life you give expression to depends on the law at work within you.

8. The operation of the false prophets and false teachers will arise in the last days and they will profess that Jesus is the Christ, but the way they paint Jesus will be to deceive many. They will magnify the person of Christ so high that men do not see that it is possible for them also to be sinless – that is the deception. That is not what God had in the beginning; men are not meant to settle for Christ formation alone – we are meant to come into the express image of the person of God (Gen. 1:26, Rom. 8:28-29, Heb. 1:3).

9. Nobody could have access to God's exact material until Jesus came. Until the Son of God came, there were no abiding substances. This Earth is everlasting; it can still remain for many years, but it is not abiding. We know this by its reaction when God opened His face. Heaven is not also as new as it was when God created it. It has an everlasting texture, but it cannot abide.

10. What makes us christ is His Person. What makes a man abiding is truth, even the truth of Christ. These are properties of newness. This new man is not the image of God, it is after the image of Him who created Him. Abiding starts with the new. This image is new and what created that which is new is righteousness. Jesus of the Majesty on high has righteousness, and so when referring to Him as a High Priest, He is referred to as the king of righteousness. Every righteousness of the present is still a filthy rag (Isa. 64:6). The first item used to train the High Priest is righteousness.

11. There is a phase when we have to awaken unto righteousness (1 Cor. 15:34). What made Melchisedek without father, mother, beginning of days, and end of life is a righteousness. However, this righteousness is not the same as that of Christ; He lived by this righteousness and founded it. There is a righteousness of the Kingdom which He found. The things pertaining to God that were given to Jesus are righteousness.

12. The righteousness of faith to faith is the righteousness that can please God, there is no righteousness that can please God unless it abides. It must have abiding textures, laws, and strength. When we have righteousness that can abide, then we have that which can give life.

13. A man of peace is not bound by the law of sin and death and is a prince of peace. God needs to take away the enmity in a man’s mind to make him a king or prince of peace. The reason men cannot come under the law of God is because they already have their own laws. There is a subjection to the law of God that is meant to bring about Life Everlasting and Life Eternal within.

14. A carnal-minded man cannot be subject to the law of God. To be a man of peace is not that there will be no challenges, but these men are subject nonetheless. They are subject to authorities and to government (Rom. 13:1, 1 Pet. 2:18). Your nature and life is in obeying laws. If any man does not subject himself to government and authorities, he will not be able to be subject to the higher power.

15. The reign of righteousness and peace cannot be extended until a people have made peace through the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus in their soul. Subjecting men to the obedience of the faith in the Gospel will teach us the righteousness of God so we can allow the government of God to flourish (Isa. 9:7).

16. The nature of the person of the High Priest is that He continueth and this is why He has an unchanging priesthood. The strength of His abiding is in His righteousness. We know the strength of a man or his dominion by his righteousness. Continuity is the strength of life in dominion that is on the inside of God. For something to be able to continue, it must be without any limitation.  If any man will follow the path of the Majesty, he must have a heart that can continue.