By Wendell Tenison
LESSON THREE: OFF AND RUNNING
Lesson three will cover from birth to the age of accountability. To my knowledge nothing has ever been written about the spirits of little children, so we will exhaust every effort to learn as much as we can from the word of God.
OUR SPIRIT ANIMATES US:
(Jas.1:26) "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."
The lessons we learn from this verse are twofold: our spirit animates us, meaning, that every movement of our body parts are initiated by our spirit whether it be by walking , speaking, or any other voluntary or involuntary action of the body. The other great lesson that we learn is that as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. Faith is a work within itself, that is, believing is the work of God, Jn.6:28-29. However, works (that is, righteous works) by man demonstrates his obedience to God in answer to his commands, because we believe God to be a true and just God who rewards accordingly to all who obey or disobey him. In short, it is not enough to just acknowledge that God is, but we must conform to his wishes.
Briefly going back to the womb before birth, we want to see a recorded event in the scripture where the spirit animated the body. We all know that babies kick, suck their thumbs, hiccup, and move around before birth.
(Luke 1:41-44) "And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:.........And she spake out with a loud voice, and said Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb..........And whence is this to me, that the mother of my lord should come to me?........For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."
John the Baptist leaped for joy when the news came that Mary had conceived of the Holy Ghost to bear the Son of God. We must realize that the understanding of John the Baptist to the news of Jesus, was a result of John being filled with the Holy Ghost himself from his mother's womb. That is not to say, that all other babies conceived do not have the understanding of joy or emotional reactions. We will prove this point just a little later in our discussion.
OUR SPIRIT AND OUR BREATH (SPIRIT) NOT THE SAME:
(Job 27:3; 33:4) "All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils........The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life."
The breath of God or the air that we breath is the same as the spirit of which sometimes it is referred to in the scriptures. The Spirit of God who made us is the Holy Spirit of God. For some reason the word spirit in verse four was not capitalized, but it is the Spirit of God. I repeat again, the earliest copies of the Greek were all capital letters, few or no punctuation marks in the ancient copies, nor paragraphs in the Greek New Testament. Those were added by the arrangers and we should not get too carried away with their accuracy. Our spirit is totally different from the two mentioned here.
(Jn.3:6-8) "That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit........Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again...........The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
Kinds or like kinds beget themselves: Flesh begets flesh and Spirit begets spirit. Our fleshly bodies are taken from the earth and our spirits are taken from the Spirit of God. The application here is showing that the new birth or the one created by God as a new creature in Christ is spiritual and cannot be seen with the eye any more than can we see our spirit with the eye. Our spirit and the spiritual inner man were both made by the Holy Spirit of God. This is confirmed in Heb.12:9, where God is the father of all spirits.
(Eccl.3:20-21) "All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.............Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"
We are superior to the animals in all respects except that the bodies of both return to the dust from which they were taken. The difference at that time is that our spirit goes back to God who gave it and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth. There is no evidence that the spirits of animals are taken from the dust of the ground because spirits are kindred. However, according to the reading the spirits of animals become insignificant and dormant. The expression "upward and downward" are figures of speech; that is, if one lived on the north pole and the other lived on the south pole, then their spirits would be going in opposite directions when they die.
GOD GIVES OUR SPIRIT UNDERSTANDING:
(Job.32:8) "But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding."
Why have scholars for centuries been mute on this subject? But, having attained the status of scholar by their peers should not have withheld from their readers some of the most needed understanding of the scripture.
We have already learned from "Heart-Soul-Spirit" the attributes of man's spirit, but, now, the Lord willing, we will be more definite in our determinations. The spirit of understanding is one of the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth, Rev.1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6; Isa.11:2; Zech.4:10. Isaiah lists the seven spirits and one of them is the spirit of understanding. Without any debate, God through his seven spirits equips man's spirit from day one to be a whole (1Thess.5:23) spirit designed for its use in the fleshly body. God forbid that we shorten the hand of God that the quality of the spirit is just by chance.
As God has given, so also can he take away in all the areas of his masterful creation of the spirit. It may be that the reader of this course should read many times the verses listed above in order to achieve the maximum benefit from them.
Speaking only from the standpoint of the spirit and not of the heart and mind, at birth the child has the ability to understand and other things that God has crowned him with. The child begins to develop very rapidly in both body and mind. It would be beyond my scope of understanding to prove that the spirit of man develops as does the body, heart and mind. As we continue in this study we will see things pertaining to our spirit as perhaps we have never seen before.
LITTLE CHILDREN NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS:
(Matt.19:13-14) "Then were brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them..............But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Those little children may have had sickness and disease as did the adults. At least the Lord put his hands upon them for some reason in objection to the disciples. The point here is that of such are the kingdom of heaven. Little children are pure in the sight of God regardless of the false teaching that is in the world. Everything leans on the heart of man and until the heart reaches that age of maturity to know right from wrong, God does not hold them responsible.
We know that this a growing process, because little children do the same things that adults do, but are not condemned for them. Things such as selfishness, spiteful, hateful, destructive, vengeful behavior and other things which we all understand, can only be corrected by the parents. Does the spirit react the same within children as it does in adults? Obviously the answer is yes. The heart has not reached that point of command yet in their lives where they can control the spirit. It appears that when a child reaches the age of sexual maturity, they then start to become aware of the rightness or wrongness of their actions. Parents do not have to be Christian in order to be good parents and tutor their children in the right ways. That is certainly not to say, that they do not have to be Christians in order to be saved. Beginning at day one what a child learns is imprinted in their minds forever. That is why it is so hard to convert those to Christ who have been taught error all of their lives. By age two our children have advanced far beyond those of the same age twenty years ago. The reason is their exposure to higher technology by various different means. Generally speaking, those in the church highly underestimate the learning capability of our little children to understand things in the bible which they consider to be over their heads. As a result ignorance becomes in full bloom when the child is about to encounter the most critical time in their life, that is, when they reach the age of accountability.
The old testament and the other books of the bible with the exception of the new testament, are not our rule of faith and practice; however, there are rules and conditions that have been in place from the very beginning and will continue until the end of time that will never change. Our next highlighted topic will reveal one of these.
In regards to the other books mentioned above, this clarification must be made:
Long before my son DeeWayne gave me a copy of the Septuagint, by discovery I learned that the testament or what was later referred to as the old testament by new testament writers, were only the books written by Moses. These are called the law and commandments, or the covenant that God made with Israel. These books begin with Exodus chapter 20 and end with the last book of Deuteronomy. The book of Genesis has nothing to do with the law and commandments, but is a record of the creation and reveals many laws by which the patriarchs lived. No one knows who wrote the book of Job, but he lived in the first dispensation of time as did Moses. The other books known as history, prophets and poetry, Moses did not write. But most assuredly all of the books of the bible are inspired by God and given by the hand of the Holy Spirit.
The edition of the Septuagint that I have was given by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton (1807-1862) and was first published in London in 1851. In the introduction and preface, reference is made to the law, prophets and writings; also referred to as the law, prophecies and the rest of the books. It is believed that with the translation of the Septuagint from the Hebrew scriptures to the Greek (approx. 285 B.C) by Hellenistic Jews in the newly founded city of Alexandria, Egypt, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, that the whole of God's writings to the Jews began to be called the old testament.
Three centuries had elapsed from the translation of the Septuagint to the birth of Christ. The Septuagint was in widespread use by the time our Lord was born and it was the common form in which the old testament scriptures had become diffused. It is no wonder that the Gentiles were so knowledgeable about the law and had a burning thirst to hear more from Jesus, knowing that possibly salvation for them was near at hand.
Christ, Matthew, Luke, John, and Paul confirm that the whole of the Jewish writings were not the old testament, but to the contrary identify the law and commandments as separate from the others. Listed below are how the law, prophets, and poetry were referred to by the new testament writers:
Matt.5:17; law or the prophets
Matt.7:12; law and the prophets
Matt.11:3; prophets and the law
Matt.22:40; law and the prophets
Luke 16:16; the law and the prophets
Luke 16:29; Moses and the prophets
Luke 16:31; Moses and the prophets
Luke 24:27; Moses and all the prophets
Luke 24:44; the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms
John 1:45; law and prophets
Acts 13:15; reading of the law and prophets
Acts 24:14; law and prophets
Acts 26:22; the law of Moses and the prophets
Acts 28:23; the law of Moses and the prophets
Rom.3:21; the law and the prophets
Most people will always call all of the Jewish writings the old testament because that is what it says on the cover.
THE LITTLE ONES HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL IN THE DAY OF DELIVERANCE:
(Deut.1:39) "Moreover your little ones, which ye said would be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it."
(Isa.7:16) "For before the child shall know to refuse evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings."
The Lord included both the small children and the larger as not knowing between good and evil. Only the men twenty years and older were numbered and they were considered to be the age of war. By our definition of the age of accountability, it is much less than what the Lord considered here. We must bear in mind that we have the revelation of the gospel of Christ and our eyes have been opened, where they knew nothing about eternal salvation. The point here is that God does not hold little children responsible for their actions. A point that should be made about children is that they are forgiving and do not harbor malice, 1Cor.14:20.
(Num.14:29)"Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me."
This number included men and women all above the age of twenty years. God started his new nation of Israel at a young age, the maximum of sixty one years, with the sole exceptions of Joshua and Caleb who were ten to twenty years older.
DO CHILDREN HAVE ANGELS?
(Matt.18:3-5,10,14) "And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,.............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............Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven................And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me...........Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven...............Even so it is not the will of your father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."
We take what our Lord said at face value; we can get into all sorts of debate on this subject that if children have angels, then why does the Lord allow evil things to happen to them? The evil things such as death, disease, torment by others and starvation are the result of sin that was introduced into the world by Adam. As a result, death by sin passed upon all generations. Be careful what you do to little children because the angels will tell on you.
As some food for thought please read the following verses.
(Heb.1:14) "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" See also Ps.104:4
(Acts 12:15) "And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel."
(Eccl.5:6) "Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?"