Three Holy Ghost Staggerments (Part 1)

Jesus said in Matthew 18:2-4:

2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

The blood-bought have been called to childlike simplicity.  II Corinthians 11:3:

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Childlike faith is the currency of the Kingdom of God.  Access to His marvelous kingdom cannot be gained by the world’s scholarship, or it’s power or beauty; nor can it be gained by the world’s strength or wealth.  No, it can only be accessed by childlike faith. Hebrews 11:6:

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.    

Faith is the currency of the Kingdom.  Childlike simplicity is required.

Were the children of this simplicity embarrassed and red-faced because of their faith in God’s Word which said that there was a first man called Adam and a first woman called Eve by whom the whole earth was populated?  You guessed it: The answer is NO and NO STACKED.  Rather, it was the academics who were forced to the tall grass to update their unbelief. The great university wizards confidently told us that there was no common parentage like the Bible described, just life popping up all over the earth. In fact, this was their theory up until just a few decades ago when microbiology established with certainty that, wouldn’t you know, every human on today’s earth is the offspring of one original mother they named mtDNA EVE and one common father called Y-Chromosome Adam.  When the Bible’s critics arrived at this inconvenient truth and were forced to concede, they discovered, much to their embarrassment, that the uneducated, easily-lead, Sunday-schooled Christians they had so derided were already there with banners unfurled and singing, “ ‘tis so sweet to trust in Jesus.”  Be assured, childlike faith is never bested.   

Dear visitor, have you yet to be BORN AGAIN as Jesus declares in John 3:3?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.   

Will today be your day to participate in the simplicity?  Many have asked, “what does BORN AGAIN mean?”  In the simplest terms, it simply means to be born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God—and believe me, it is literal. Today…all your sin and its shame will be washed away by Christ’s cleansing blood.  Today…all of Satan’s bondages in your life will be shattered. Today…you will be Holy Ghost clean and free. In just moments, I will invite you to follow me in a simple prompt, and if you follow from your heart, everything changes for you today.  Here is the prompt I promised: Click onto Further with Jesus for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:17:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

GOD SAID, Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

MAN SAID: There is no God and that goes double for the God of the Bible!  We don’t need a Creator. There was this Big Bang out of nothing and here we are. To me, that is so intellectually satisfying.

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1278 that will, for the 1,278^th time, contend for the faith of God’s beautiful Book. All of these faith-building features are archived here in text and streaming audio for your edification and to be used as bait by the fishers of men. Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.

Thank you for visiting. May God’s face shine upon you with Light and Truth.

I am a wordsmith by trade.  I am in the marketing business, which is an entire industry of words, so on occasion, I might be found coining a word or two. 

I asked God for a proper word to title a new revelation the Holy Ghost was instructing us in and the word that came to mind was staggerment.   At first, I thought we would be coining a new word, or at least modifying an existing word in a new way, but alas.  According to the 16^th volume of the exhaustive Oxford English Dictionary, staggerment is a proper word and defined as “great amazement, astonishment.”  The title of this short series will be “Three Holy Ghost Staggerments,” of which, this feature is the first.

The original creation of man was a glorious demonstration of God’s handiwork.  We were actually made in His image and after His likeness!  Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.   

At the start, everything was very good, but it didn’t take long for big trouble to arise.  In the Garden of Eden, our grandmother Eve chose to believe Satan’s words over God’s.  In an act of unbelief and disobedience, she ate of the forbidden fruit, Adam followed her pernicious ways, and the law of sin and death began to reign.  At this junction, immortality and paradise were lost.  The situation was all encompassing and so deadly. Genesis 2:16-17:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Even though Adam retained the physical image of God, his spiritual man died the day he ate. It does appear Adam and Eve died the second death first, and consequently all their children would have been spiritually stillborn.  Note, the word “quickened” used here in Ephesians 2:1 means “to make alive:”    

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins:   

God is a spirit and invisible to the human eye. At Eden, this spiritual God likeness was lost. 

Thoughts and words are not visible, physical things; they are spiritual in nature. God is invisible and John 1:1 tells us “…the Word was God:”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In the fall, man’s ability to discern and think God’s thoughts was lost, and God’s thoughts alone produce life and life everlasting.  The glorious news is that God made a way to escape our banishment, and that way is found at Calvary. 

We were spiritually stillborn.  We literally needed to be BORN AGAIN and this time of the Spirit of God…the WORD GOD, the God of all gods.  Proverbs 18:21 is so telling:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.    

At BORN AGAIN, we become children of God because we are literally born unto Him. John 1:11-12:

11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

We have been given the power to become the sons of God, children of God.  Here, everything becomes brand new.  Some examples include:

🕇 New Father;
🕇 New name;
🕇 New eternal birth certification;
🕇 New mind and new language;
🕇 New heart;
🕇 New spirit;
🕇 New Holy Ghost teacher;
🕇 New purpose;
🕇 New promises;
🕇 New eternal life;
🕇 New, new, new!

Literally, II Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Through the entirely transformative BORN AGAIN experience, Jesus Christ transports us to a place quite similar to Adam and Eve’s situation before the fall.  Jesus is known as the last Adam in I Corinthians 15:45. At this place, the child of God can once again communicate with the Father lips-to-ear.  At this place, I hear His voice and I am instructed and perfected by His own hand. At this place we once again can understand and think His thoughts.  Once again, we are pure and sinless.

It is at BORN AGAIN that we once again are being formed in the full image and likeness of God. It is at BORN AGAIN where the transformative glory begins.  Consider Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.   

“Transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  It’s astounding that as a result of BORN AGAIN, the physical brain actually changes in a phenomenon that science knows as neuroplasticity.

At BORN AGAIN, God begins to develop the Godlike brain He has placed between my ears. It is beyond marvelous.  Surely it is beyond understatement; the human brain is the most underdeveloped resource in the universe.  

The following excerpts from GodSaidManSaid features discuss our Godlike brain. 

📍 GodSaidManSaid, “Scientists Shocked to Find God in Implicit Pattern Learning:”

The summary regarding the Science Daily article titled “Unconscious Learning Underlies Belief in God, Study Suggests,” published September 9, 2020, reads:

Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists. [End of quote]

📍 GodSaidManSaid, “Unlock and Develop God’s Brain Power:”

Michael Denton, in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, reports the following:

The brain is a literal pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and administering medical team all in one.  It creates from the materials at hand a magnificent array of drugs and medications, and automatically administers them when needed.  Imagine: your brain weighs only three pounds.  Yet a computer with the same number of “bits” would be 100 stories tall and cover the state of Texas. [End of quote]

Do you need more proof that your brain is made in God’s likeness?  Consider this:  To build a building 100 stories tall that would cover the state of Texas and then fill it with information bits would cost more than the aggregate wealth of the world.  Your (God-like) brain has infinite capabilities and is beyond price, and there are over 8 billion of them.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Nancy McVicar reported on the 2002 PBS series titled The Secret  Life of the Brain, and wrote:

A baby’s brain in the first year of life may be the most complex organism on earth, wiring itself to form one thousand trillion connections between brain cells—many more than there are stars in the universe.  [End of quote]

Did Adam inherit from God phenomenal capabilities and is today’s science beginning to discover this truth?  Psychiatrist Darold A. Treffert began researching the savant phenomenon in 1962.  He authored a feature in Scientific American. A few paragraphs follow:

The August 2014 issue of Scientific American published a six-page feature titled, “Accidental Genius.”  In the article, research addressed the concept of acquired savantism.  Through an accidental blow to the head or a traumatic experience of some kind, people have been known to emerge from that experience with unearthly and unlearned, savant-like skills in music, math, or other subjects and still retain normalcy.  Following are a few excerpts from that feature:

Discovery of this unusual phenomenon raises the possibility that dormant potential in some artistic or intellectual realm—an “inner savant”—resides in each of us.  If so, perhaps a way can be found to tap these buried abilities in the absence of disease or injury.

One plausible explanation for the hidden talents that emerge in savant syndrome—whether early in life or induced by injury—is that these reservoirs of skill and knowledge must be inherited in some way.  We do not start life with a blank slate that subsequently gets inscribed through education and other life experiences.  The brain may come loaded with a set of innate predispositions for processing what it sees or for understanding the “rules” of music, art, or mathematics.  Savants can tap into that inherited knowledge far better than the average person can.

Acquired savantism provides strong evidence that a deep well of brain potential resides within us all.  The challenge now is to find the best ways to tap into our inner savant—that little bit of Rain Man—while keeping the rest of our mental facilities intact. [End of quote]

Mr. Treffert suggests meditation as a way to open up the inner savant.  As a believer meditates upon the Word of God and practices the principles he discovers, he will find that wisdom will begin to multiply.  A host of verses declare this scientific truth, and nobody can meditate like the BORN AGAIN. [End of quotes]

📍 GodSaidManSaid, “Meditation Rebuilds Grey Matter in 8 Weeks:”

Harnessing the brain to meditate on God’s Words has enormous life-changing power. 

The headline in the February 27, 2015 issue of the publication The Week reads, “Meditation Delays Aging.”  An excerpt from this short article follows:

Meditation doesn’t just improve mental and physical health in the present; it also slows the aging process and can help meditators stay mentally sharp into old age, a new study has found.  Once people reach their mid- to late 20s, their brains begin to lose volume and weight, which can eventually result in the loss of some functional ability.  But when researchers from UCLA compared brain scans of 50 people who meditated for at least four years with scans of 50 people who didn’t, they found that those who engaged in the practice had smaller reductions in gray matter—the neuron-containing tissue responsible for processing information. 

The headline on FeelGuide.com reads “Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds the Brain’s Grey Matter in 8 Weeks.”  An excerpt from the article follows:

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University.  The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s grey matter. [End of quotes]

📍 GodSaidManSaid, “God’s Brain and Harnessing the Placebo:”

Dr. Howard Brody, M.D., Ph.D., titled an article in a 2000 issue of Psychology Today, “Mind over Medicine.”  Part of the subhead reads, “Diseases and disorders are hardly ever ‘all in your head,’ but often the power to heal is.”  [End of quote] The power of words is immeasurable. 

You’re aware of the placebo effect.  In clinical measurements, for instance, a proposed medical remedy is measured by taking a group of people and distributing the correct medical product to part of the group and a harmless sugar pill—or placebo—to the other part.  Results are then tabulated.  According to the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, the placebo (sugar pill) clocks in with a cure rate of 33%, which is sometimes higher than the proposed remedy that is administered.  They also discovered that the benefits of the fake placebo spikes measurably upward if the doctor talks up the benefits of the fake placebo.  It’s a matter of words.  Converse to the placebo effect is an effect now known as the nocebo effect, which is the simple, measurable result of negative words.  [End of quote]

Positive, uplifting silent and spoken words release the power of the placebo effect.  What medical science calls the placebo, the Word of God calls hope.  The placebo is spawned in hope—or rather, it is hope itself. 

Medical researchers are shocked at what they’re finding. Discover magazine’s July/August 2014 publication, in an eight-page spread, addresses the subject of the placebo effect.  The subhead of the feature reads, “Once dismissed as a psychological curiosity, the placebo effect is now recognized as the key to the brain’s ‘inner pharmacy.’ If only doctors knew how to open the medicine cabinet.”  Excerpts from the article follow:

The new evidence has established that placebos trigger the brain’s “inner pharmacy”—in essence, a warehouse perpetually stocked to deliver active drugs to itself.  In addition to improving Parkinson’s symptoms, that same inner pharmacy can affect conditions like pain, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, schizophrenia, and more.  As the placebo effect emerges from a long history in the shadows, the new question is:  How can we use this age-old brain trick to our advantage?

Suddenly, it was clear that when a patient improved on placebo, it wasn’t just some delusion or an effort to please a person in a lab coat.  It was a measurable brain event and reflected an actual reduction in the experience of pain. 

Today, placebos are widely recognized not as a psychological mirage, but as a potent inner pharmacy that we might someday even harness. [End of quote]

Releasing the power of the God-like brain between our ears is a Biblical directive.  We know this concept as putting on the mind of Christ, and it yields life-changing benefits—whether it is the opening of your pharmacy’s doors 24/7 and the healing of the flesh or a myriad of other marvelous blessings.  The human brain was created by God to flourish when faith and hope are lifted high.  What science calls placebo, God’s Word calls hope. 

The difference, though, of the placebo effect versus God’s hope could not be more stark.  The placebo is hope placed in a fraud.  The believer’s hope is founded upon the truth that never changes, which is backed by the entire supernatural Kingdom of God.  The results of the hope effect are 100% positive. [End of quotes]

Jesus Christ has returned the BORN AGAIN to the marvels of the image and likeness of God.  At this place, we are called to participate in the Three Holy Ghost Staggerments. 

THE TAKEAWAY:

1. We lost the image and likeness of God:
   • Kept physical image
   • Lost spiritual, invisible life image
   • Appears Adam & Eve died second death first
   • Consequently, we were spiritually stillborn
   • We were dead in trespasses and sins
     
     
2. Restored at the Cross and at what Jesus Christ calls BORN AGAIN:
   • We were quickened, made alive
   • Development in likeness and image begins
   • Transformed spiritually and physically
     
     
3. Everything becomes new:
   • New blood-washed heart
   • New and constantly renewing mind
   • New living, redeemed soul
   • New God-focused strength
     
     
4. In Jesus Christ, the last Adam:
   • Once again and called upon to harness God’s mind
   • Once again communicating with our Father lips-to-ear
   • Once again I can think God’s thoughts

God willing, GodSaidManSaid will publish Three Holy Ghost Staggerments (Part 2) next week.  Remember the definition of staggerment:  Great amazement, astonishment.  Prepare to travel.  Proverbs 4:18:

But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:17:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

GOD SAID, Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

MAN SAID: There is no God and that goes double for the God of the Bible!  We don’t need a Creator. There was this Big Bang out of nothing and here we are. To me, that is so intellectually satisfying.

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “God’s Brain and Harnessing the Placebo”

GodSaidManSaid, “Meditation Rebuilds Grey Matter in 8 Weeks (My Soul is Continually in My Hand)”

GodSaidManSaid, “Scientists Shocked to Find God in Implicit Pattern Learning (But It’s Bigger than That)”

GodSaidManSaid, “Unlock and Develop God’s Brain Power”

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