I concluded my reading of the second book by Earl Jabay, The God Players: How Not to Run Your Life, and am posting a couple of exerpts that consider specifically the human spirit and the Kingdom of God.

“One of the first things the Scriptures tell us about man is that he bears a likeness to God. . . . we are created in the image of God. . . . That is, as God is Spirit, so man is spirit. Man is essentially a spiritual being, related to and of the type similar to God the Eternal Spirit. Human spirit and Divine Spirit are not the same but they are in the same spiritual order. Man, being created, is lower in the spiritual order than God, for ‘thou hast made him little less than God,’ but man is highly honored in that ‘Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands’ (Psalm 8:5,6).

“That man is human spirit is a profound and difficult thought. It means that an unimaginable gift has come to us, in that we are in the same spiritual order as God. It means that we are not what we externally appear to be. It also means that man is quite as indefinable and as descriptively elusive as God Himself. The most the word spirit can do is tell us that what we really are cannot be seen.”

This “unimaginable gift” given to man by God enables the personal, intimate communion intended by God between Him and the immaterial spirit and soul of man. It is a bidirectional, dualist interaction that has been restored to repentant people through the sin sacrifice of Jesus Christ who now indwells His people as the Counselor, the Helper, the Holy Spirit.

In the near future I will be posting selected excerpts from a second book by Jabay I am now reading. Jabay discusses elements of what it means to join the Kingdom of God, dying to Self and allowing the indwelling Holy Spirit to govern all aspects of our lives. A second book I am studying, Imagine Heaven, by John Burke makes the compelling case for the immateriality and eternality of our human spirit and soul. I look forward to sharing these excerpts with you and encourage you to read these book for yourselves.

Jabay concludes his book with the following passages:

“I sense so keenly in these last few moments of our fellowship the need for us all to receive and remain open to that Divine Person, the Holy Spirit. ‘Be filled with the [Holy] Spirit’ (Eph 5:18), says Paul. Let these simple words come true in our hearts [souls]. . . . We are witnessing a twentieth-century Pentecost. God is now filling us with His Holy Spirit once again. The people of the Paraclete [Holy Spirit] are becoming Spirit-empowered, Spirit-disciplined and, most importantly, Spirit-led. Praise the Lord!”

It is my hope and prayer that my books and blogs have provided compelling evidence for the reality of dualist interaction between the immaterial Holy Spirit, human spirit and soul and the material synaptic networks of the human brain. The Holy Spirit has provided a way to restore His personal communion with us in our time, and we are learning how this is happening.

Jabay continues with compelling comments about the basic problem in human life:

“The movement of the Holy Spirit accurately discerns the spiritual nature of our basic problem in life. Most charismatics, following the teaching of that most unusual Chinese Christian, Watchman Nee [I cite Nee in my books, a man whose writings provided guidance to my research], affirm the biblical teaching that man is composed of spirit, soul, and body. Modern psychology ignores man’s spirit, because the behavioral scientists are so completely absorbed in the study of man’s soul (intellect, will, and emotions) [and I have pointed out in my blogs how neuroscience is focused on material reductionism, that all expressions of the soul are based entirely in the physiology of the brain]. We are encouraged to develop our soulish powers by which to assert our mastery over life. Watchman Nee correctly discerned that this is the very worst mistake man can make. What we need is not soul-development but for our dead human spirits to be brought to life and joined by the Holy Spirit. We cannot really be helped until we are born of the Holy Spirit. Once our spiritual need is met by the Holy Spirit joining Himself to our spirits, a sure foundation for emotional health is laid. What this means is that the problem with man is basically spiritual rather than psychological or genetic or environmental. We are human spirits who need the [indwelling of the] Holy Spirit. When ‘he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him’ (1 Cor. 6:17), the basic life-problem is solved. How simple!”

Jabay has compelling comments about egoists:

“This is the basic problem with all egocentrics: we lack the power to deliver ourselves from the power of evil. This is why we must turn away from the pseudoreligionists and the psychologists and turn to the God of all power. This God - this God of all power - has a name. He is the Holy Spirit. Many egoists, when they are sick and tired of being sick and tired, ask for and receive the Holy Spirit and His power. That old obsessive fascination with power now leads the weary egoist straight to the source of all power in the Holy Spirit. So thank God for our power-hungry egoism! But praise Him even more that the Holy Spirit is today dramatically filling our need for the power to be delivered from the Kingdom of Self. God is again revealing to us that the Holy Spirit is abundantly powerful to bring us into the Kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ. Just look around and see what is happening today. The Holy Spirit is falling upon God’s people all over the world. A new Pentecost has come upon us as thousands upon thousands are receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I rejoice to participate in the current charismatic revival. Why? Because I am a devotee of the divine person who possesses all power - the Holy Spirit.”

Jabay states, “It is true, also, that God can and does speak directly to a person through the Holy Spirit. When we are brought before governors and kings, we are not to be anxious about what we are to say, for the Holy Spirit will tell us what to speak (Mark 13:11). The Holy Spirit is speaking directly to the hearts [souls] of His people today as never before, praise the Lord.”

I am sharing these comments from Jabay:

“In summary, there are two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Self and the Kingdom of God. If God’s kingdom becomes established in the human heart [soul], it is hardly noticed at first, because we allow God only the smallest control over our wills. King Self surrenders by degrees [in the process of sanctification]. Ego-slaying and obedience are terribly painful, and yet afterward there is a quality of inexpressible joy which the presence of God generates in us. It is a law of the Kingdom of God that we must lose all to find Him. We must die to our egocentrism to be born anew into the eternal Kingdom. Finally, to live under the King who is God, means to live with other persons in a loving, non-violent style of life.”

And I have shown in my books and blogs that the Holy Spirit - God -communes with the repentant, receptive human spirit and soul in our time. Please read my next blog with comments by Jabay.

I lead the excerpts taken from Jabay’s book with his introduction to Chapter 5:

“The Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of Christ, the Kingdom of God - these are all the same Kingdom. . . . The Kingdom is Christ’s because Christ is God’s Son, and, therefore, He is heir to the Kingdom. This Kingdom is God’s, and He is the rightful King not only because He alone is divine, but because His subjects have freely invited Him to rule over them.

“I hasten to add, however, that He chose us as His subjects long before we chose Him as our king. He led us to Himself with an utterly uncoerced coercion. God did this and is doing it today through the cross - His and ours. The demonstrated love of Christ dying as an atonement for our sins evokes our love. But God is also drawing us to Him through the suffering of our personal crosses. When the deadly cup of suffering finally kills off all intention of self-rule, we are made ready for the rule of God.

“For us today, the Kingdom of God is also at hand. I understand this to mean that we should not think of the Kingdom of God as some past or future event. Nor should we think of it as something which we must bring into our lives by hard work. Everything has been done. The Kingdom of God is now, at the very moment you are reading these words.”

A treasured friend and spiritual mentor presented me with two books by Earl Jabay. I will share excerpts from his book entitled “The Kingdom of Self: A Fresh, Penetrating Analysis of Your Greatest Predicament.”

I have endeavored to present justification for the dualist interaction between the Holy Spirit and the immaterial human spirit and soul through the neural synaptic networks of the brain in our time. Most important is our accepting the reality of how this interaction leads to our becoming members of the Kingdom of God. But first, we must overcome our idolization of the Kingdom of Self and submit ourselves wholly to the Counsel of the Holy Spirit who indwells us in repentance, sent by the resurrected Jesus Christ as He promised His disciples just prior to His death.

In the “Concluding remarks” of his paper Pulvermuller includes the following statement:

“. . . widespread cortical regions and cortico-cortical long-distance connections provide the machinery for holding together and integrating semantic representations and circuits.”

I would add to this important point that, indeed, these connections in the neural networks of the brain transmit semantic information instantiated within linguistic neural codes consisting of the amplitudes and frequencies of spike trains of action potentials. Nerve impulses are quite undifferentiated throughout the brain and cannot be directly interpreted as mountain scenes, the beauty of music, creative expressions in composition and art and the like. It is in the province of the immaterial cognitive mind that such interpretations are generated from neural codes learned in a lifetime and archived in memory. I address this point in detail in my books and blogs. This article gives no credit to the immaterial mind interactive with the material synaptic networks of the human brain. The author’s reference to “semantic hubs” is consistent with the function of the cognitive mind.