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The Dawning Restoration of Masculine
Spiritual Authority
X. Relating Spiritual Gender to Natural GenderIn creation, the natural is a type of the spiritual. The qualities that distinguish men and women naturally in soul mirror the distinctions found between spiritual masculinity and femininity. We don't need to elaborate on this because it is so evident.
What is worth noting however is that natural gender does not specifically correlate to spiritual gender. There are men who have primary feminine spiritual gender. These of course make up the bulk of our pastors and leadership in the feminine stream Church.
Meanwhile, there are women who have primary masculine spiritual gender. There are women prophets and apostles (missionaries) who carry a strong confrontive or withdrawing nature. Many women have excelled in exploring the internal depths of Christ's love through the cross or in pioneering new ministries.
This lack of specific correlation can often make life difficult for those whose natural and primary spiritual gender are opposite. It is difficult for men with primary feminine spiritual gender to be effective leaders in their homes. They find it difficult to administer correction to children and set a clear course for family direction.
Oppositely, women with primary masculine spirit gender find difficulty in establishing their identity in the Church. They are often unaccepted and rejected for their efforts in pioneering ministry. It is also difficult for them to submit to their husbands' leadership when they feel they have such a clear vision for where their family should go.
The greatest difficulty is found in homes where a primary masculine woman is married to a primary feminine man. It's exceedingly hard for a man with a pastor's heart to be married to a woman with an apostle's nature!
In more general ways, some correlation between natural and spiritual gender does visibly exist. This is most evident when we consider the population of a mainstream feminine Church. We discover that mainstream churches are made up mostly of women and children. By contrast, a higher degree of participation by men tends to exist in the hidden masculine stream churches.
Natural gender goes beyond individual bounds. Entire groups and regions of people are characterized by a certain natural gender of soul that makes them unique. For instance, the soul of the people here in New England is strongly masculine. People are forthright, distant and withdrawn, individualistic, hard to get to know but generally dependable and self-disciplined.
By contrast, the soul of the people in next door Maritime Canada is strongly feminine. The people are followers, not leaders as in New England. They are easy to get to know and given to camaraderie and social fellowship. They are very friendly and outgoing. They are also an "at home" people. Their knowledge of life is very provincial, governed by their relationships to their families and clans.
Natural gender, whether individual or in a region, is governed by the natural life force in the blood, the force in which is rooted our knowledge of good and evil and our sin nature. Not only so, but natural gender is the deepest element of that life force. It characterizes our nature at its lowest possible denominator.
Therefore, our strongest hurdles over sin and over our knowledge of good and evil are found in taking on natural life force as manifest through natural gender. Sex is the hardest place to find our sanctification and deliverance into the nature of Christ—the source issue of the deepest personal shame and corporate scandal.
If this is true, and if it is also true that overcoming our knowledge of good and evil is the key to our spiritual gender perfection, then we see that to obtain that perfection, we must overcome natural life force most where it is displayed through natural gender. Obtaining natural sexual purity and cleansing of our bloodstream is at the root of our ability to grow in spiritual gender perfection.
We've always known we must become pure and keep our selves pure this way. Now we know why! It's the key to our spiritual completion. We cannot overcome to grow into spiritual perfection if we do not allow God to touch our natural life force as manifest through our natural gender. This is a critical disciplining from the Lord we must accept if we want to go on in Him.
As a gift from God, there is nothing wrong with gender. The problem is that gender is where the root of our natural life force is found, so it is where we find our greatest difficulty and trial by the Lord for purification. This is where the cross has to be applied most deeply if we want to enter spiritual gender perfection.
Those who are single are at an advantage here. It is easier to find our purification when the only natural life force we have to deal with is our own. It's even harder when our souls have become intertwined with the soul(s) of a partner thus subjecting us to the weight of their natural life force as well.
This is why Paul advocates celibacy (I Cor. 7). But this doesn't mean to be celibate is more righteous or "spiritual." Nor does it mean those who are married or those who have otherwise defiled themselves cannot overcome natural life force to develop spiritual gender perfection.
Those whom God has gifted for marriage are gifted by grace to find cleansing within that context, harder though it may be. Where there is the gift, there is the grace. God's will is for all who are married to obtain spiritual gender perfection. His will is to take advantage of our natural gender to make us perfect in gender spirit.
God will take all those situations, those relationships, that marriage—especially that difficult marriage where the partners are of opposite spiritual gender—and use the conflicts raised by natural life force to deliver us from that force and lead us into that increasing blending of spiritual gender in our lives. The goal of this cleansing is restored virginity. It is this virginity that characterizes those perfected manifest sons of God in Rev. 14:4.
To conclude: the importance of the relationship between natural and spiritual gender is not in the way one mirrors the other, but in the way natural gender is the root manifestation of the life force from which we must find deliverance in order to overcome the knowledge of good and evil in order to grow into spiritual gender perfection.
It is for us therefore to commit our natural gender over to the dealings of a faithful creator so we may proceed into that increasing perfection toward translation. To the degree we find deliverance from our natural life force, we are released into increasing perfection where we are able to function faithfully according to our primary spiritual gender en route to total spiritual perfection and translation as part of the bridal body of Christ.
XI. Becoming a People of the Dawn
The closing challenge of this article is an exhortation to us to become the people of the dawn. The dawn is that place where the sun rises, or, in this case, where the Son rises. To look to the dawn, we must look to the horizon.
What is the horizon? The horizon is that place where earth and heaven meet. If we want to come to the sunrise, we do not look up at the heavens (though there be stars to guide us), nor do we look down at the ground (though we have a lamp to our feet). We have to look to the horizon.
All of this is a metaphor. For the rising sun speaks of the rising era of sonship and spiritual perfection. It is the rising of Christ in our hearts, fully manifesting His brilliance through our perfected being. It is that daystar in our hearts of which Peter speaks (II Pt. 1:19).
The heavens and the earth speak to our primary spiritual gender. The heavens speak of primary masculine spirituality and the things of the Spirit. The stars speak of the spiritual revelation by which masculine sons perceive their way to God. The earth speaks to primary feminine spirituality and the things of the soul. The lamp to our feet speaks of the revelation by which the daughters of God find their way toward God.
The horizon speaks to that place where femininity and masculinity become one, where spirit and soul function in perfect union within us. It is the place to which we must ultimately look if we hope to find the sunrise. Through the course of our journey, we may look primarily up to the heavens for our guidance, or down to the earth with its lamp. At different seasons we look up and down.
But ultimately, we must look toward the horizon of perfection of spiritual gender. This is the only way we will come to the manifestation of the Son in our hearts, and to the place of the third dimension. If we get stuck looking up or down, we will miss it.
Behold, the time is at hand. The way is before us. Let us press on in hope of the prize of the high calling set before. Let us commit to become that people of the dawn who will serve as the witness to future generations of the removing of the veil, and of the entering of the Church into the Most Holy Place of the third dimension. Let us be that first generation that can witness to the perfection of spiritual gender and the unhindered manifestation of the Son of God through an eternal body.
We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereto you do well to take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the Day Star arises in your hearts. II Pt. 1:19
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined! Isa. 9:2
Take us where we’ve never been before—
out beyond the Spirit’s golden shore;
To the place where earth and heav’n meet,
and together at His table we will eat
—and stand in Him complete.
C.B.A. March 11, 1989
Chris Anderson
written from Merrimack, New Hampshire
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org
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