David Berg
—MOJanuary 27, 1974GP NO.620
1. THE CHURCH TRIES TO MAKE GOD SO BIG, SO HIGH AND MIGHTY THAT HE'S ALMOST TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE, so that you can't even understand His system or means of communications or how He works or His government. How much have they ever explained to us about the spirit world or how God works or what, or how things are organised there?
2. GOD'S VISIBLE CREATION IS AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE THINGS IN THE SPIRIT, of that which is invisible. I have always said that everything God created, everything God ever made, all the visible creation, is in some way an illustration of something spiritual.
3. SO THEREFORE THE SPIRIT WORLD IS NOT SO TERRIBLY DIFFERENT FROM THIS PRESENT EXISTENCE that we can't even comprehend it or can't even understand it. Otherwise, when we got ushered into it we would be completely lost. It would be just too far out, too totally different, we couldn't even relate.
4. WE ARE GOING TO BE MUCH THE SAME AS WE ARE NOW‚ EXCEPT THAT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SUPERNATURAL BODIES. We will look like we do now, just as Jesus did after His resurrection. He could even eat and drink and they could feel Him and touch Him as well as see Him, and yet He was in a miraculous supernatural body, His new resurrected body. (Lk.24:36-43)
5. OUR OLD DECAYING NATURAL PHYSICAL BODY GOES BACK TO THE DUST. But His new resurrected body, His new spiritual body was very much alive and supernatural! It could materialise or dematerialise, appear or disappear!—Think of that! It could pass from one dimension to the other through locked doors and solid walls! (Jn.20:19 & 26.)
6. WE DON'T UNDERSTAND ALL OF THIS but that helps you get it down to where you can begin to grasp what He meant and what these things mean, to where even a scientist might be able to understand it!
7. THEY ALREADY SAY THAT IT'S POSSIBLE THAT YOU COULD PASS FROM ONE DIMENSION TO THE OTHER if you could figure out some way to spiritualise or dematerialise the body in such a way that you were out of tune with the walls or solids around you. There is enough room between atoms and between the parts of the atoms that you could walk right through the wall and not one atom would even scrape another one!
8. THERE'S SO MUCH SPACE IN THE ATOMS OF YOUR BODY that there's hardly a chance in a million that one of them would even bump into another one! Now science says that this is actually theoretically possible, but they just haven't figured out how to do it yet!—Ha!
9. NOW YOU MEAN TO TELL ME GOD IS SITTING UP THERE HAVING TO RUN THE WHOLE SHOW BY HIMSELF?—You'd think that was the way it was by the way the churches talk! Is He by His one Holy Spirit teaching everybody all kinds of different new languages and giving all kinds of different gifts? Is He doing it all directly instead of through agents? Do you understand what I mean?—Let's be sensible!
10. THE PROTESTANTS HAVE ALMOST TOTALLY SKIPPED OVER OR DE-EMPHASISED THE AGENTS THAT GOD USES and they give very little credit to the angels or good spirits. They give as little credit to the angels and spirits as they possibly can. They don't even give too much credit to the Devil!
11. MOST OF THEM GIVE ABSOLUTELY NO CREDIT TO THE GOOD SPIRITS OF THE DEPARTED "DEAD" as being agents and messengers. And yet, it's there as plain as day! It makes it all very simple if we realise God uses angels, departed human spirits, etc., as His agents or messengers.
12. HOW DOES GOD GIVE A GIFT OF TONGUES? How does He give a gift of interpretation? How does He give a gift of wisdom or knowledge of certain things? How does He give all these various gifts of the spirit—healings, miracles and so on?
13. WHY CAN'T THESE GIFTS COME THROUGH SEPARATE SPIRITS OF GOD?—Born of course of His Holy Spirit of which they are a part, even as we are. If we have become a part of God‚ our spirit is then His, and His Holy Spirit has taken over our spirit, and it has become a part of His Spirit, right?—So every good spirit, every departed saint, every angel is a part of God, is a part of His Spirit, because He is a spirit‚ right? Do you get what I'm trying to drive at?
14. (MARIA: IF HE GIVES DIFFERENT GIFTS TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE, THEN WHY CAN'T HE GIVE DIFFERENT SPIRITS TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE? What's the difference?) Why then are not these gifts and exercising these gifts the work of His Holy Spirit through these different good spirits or guardian angels that He gives to people? Now to me that would be the most reasonable, simple, logical explanation of how you get the gift of tongues, for example.
15. EVEN WHEN PEOPLE RECEIVE THE SAME GIFT, EVERYBODY'S IS DIFFERENT. For example, everybody who gets the gift of, let's say, of speaking Hebrew, they don't all speak exactly the same Hebrew with exactly the same words or exactly the same voice. I am very scientific and very analytical, really, and I have to analyse everything and figure it out.
16. I BELIEVE BY MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, THAT THAT IS HOW I RECEIVED THE GIFT OF TONGUES‚ BY RECEIVING MY GUARDIAN ANGEL ABRAHIM! Even though I didn't yet know it, I had received him weeks before in Houston‚ Texas, when he jumped off that Gypsy king onto me—hitchhiking! (See Letter No. 296, "Abrahim the Gypsy King.") He even described it as hitchhiking once, and he was obviously the one who was telling us about the Chinese Spirits. (See Letter No. 273, "Chinese Spirits!") Hallelujah! Praise You Jesus! Hallelujah! (Tongues:) Oh thank You Lord! "What wisdom Thou dost give unto the Words of David!" Thank You Lord! Now let's study I Corinthians 12 about the supernatural gifts of the spirit:
17. "NOW CONCERNING SPIRITUAL GIFTS, BRETHREN, I WOULD NOT HAVE YOU IGNORANT: ... Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit."—The same Spirit with a capital "S". All right‚ they all come from God in other words‚ right?
18. "THERE ARE DIFFERENCES OF ADMINISTRATIONS, BUT THE SAME LORD." Well, now He's talking about the Spirit and then He's talking about the Lord! Well, there're two different personalities right there!—Because when you talk about the Lord it usually means Jesus, right?
19. "THERE ARE DIVERSITIES OF GIFTS, BUT THE SAME SPIRIT." I'm sure that when we come out with this doctrine they'll use that fourth verse to try to say there's only one spirit. Then why did He say over in John's Epistle (1Jn.4:1): "Beloved, try the spirits to see if they be of God"?
20. "BELOVED, BELIEVE NOT EVERY SPIRIT, BUT TRY THE SPIRITS WHETHER THEY ARE OF GOD!"—So some of them are of God! "Because many false prophets are gone out into the world." So therefore if some spirits are false prophets, others are true prophets, right? Some spirits are true prophets.
21. IN OTHER WORDS, SOME OF OUR PROPHETS HAVE THE SPIRITS OF DEPARTED PROPHETS, and that's how you get a gift of prophecy: you get the spirit of a departed prophet! (Maria: That reminds me, the Lord said last night that you have the spirit of Abrahim‚ the spirit of Moses and the spirit of the Psalmist David.) There you are! There you are!
22. THAT'S WHY SOME OF THESE PSALMS GOD GIVES US SOUND LIKE DAVID BECAUSE DAVID IS SINGING THEM, he's giving them! That's probably why some of the wisdom He gives me in lecturing sounds like Moses, because it is Moses speaking!
23. HOW SIMPLE THAT MAKES IT ALL, AND HOW MUCH MORE CREDIT THAT GIVES TO THE LORD and His system of organisation and His methods of operation instead of to an over-glorified individual who proudly boasts: "Oh‚ I have the gifts of tongues and I have the gift of interpretation and I have the gift of healing!"
24. YOU ARE JUST BLESSED WITH SEVERAL DIFFERENT SPIRITS THAT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU WHO HAVE THESE TALENTS and it's not you at all! They're just working through you—you don't know a thing, nothing! You're nothing but a channel that they work through. They're the ones that have that wisdom, that gift, that talent, that supernatural tongue and who give the prophecies or the interpretations!
25. LOOK HOW THAT PERPETUATES THE WISDOM AND THE TALENTS AND THE GIFTS THAT GOD HAS GIVEN EACH INDIVIDUAL! Moses' ministry continues in his wisdom of administration and leading the people and hearing from God that he gives to me. David's wisdom and administration as a king and his beautiful channel as a prophet of God and that beautiful poetry and prophecy and all the rest God gave him continues on in me!
26. THOSE MARVELOUS TALENTS AND ABILITIES ARE NOT LOST AND GONE FOREVER way off in some Heavenly places except for what happened to be written down. They continue to minister, do you understand? Hallelujah! Hallelujah! (Tongues:)
27. "OH, KISS THE WORDS THAT I HAVE GIVEN THY FATHER DAVID! Kiss the wisdom of the Words that I have given unto thy father David!" Thank You Jesus! Thank You Lord! Praise the Lord, amen? How about that?
28. SEE, I DON'T KNOW ANY OF THIS, IT'S ONE OF THESE SPIRITS WHO ARE PUTTING THESE THINGS IN MY MOUTH‚ but they come from God because God sent them to tell me. Now either Abrahim or one of them is telling me, and one of them just hit me with this whole explanation!
29. I WAS SITTING HERE STUDYING THIS LETTER AND THIS TEXT OF THE LETTER ON ABRAHIM and trying to figure how we could say it in a simple way that even the uninformed who knew nothing about the Bible or the Holy Spirit or anything else could understand.—And this explains it all!
30. THIS MAKES IT VERY SIMPLE HOW GOD OPERATES AND HOW HE GIVES ALL THESE GIFTS and different languages to millions of people throughout the world: It's through the angels and the departed spirits of the departed saints! It's just as simple as that!
31. WELL, IF THE DEVIL'S EVIL SPIRITS POSSESS PEOPLE AND GIVE THEM EVIL POWERS and evil tongues and evil wickedness‚ evil strength and evil wisdom‚ how much more so should the good spirits of God give His good people, His children, these godly gifts and godly powers when possessed of the spirit of God!
32. THE ALL POWERFUL, OMNIPRESENT‚ OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT SPIRIT OF GOD PERVADES ALL THINGS, He is everything and everything is God, in a sense, it's all God. He's so great we can't even understand Him! I mean He is everything!
33. THAT TABLE THERE IS NOTHING BUT ENERGY! It's not actually material the way we think. This chair is only energy. Whose energy? Where did it come from?—God's energy!
34. LITERALLY, THE SCIENTIFIC WORD FOR SPIRIT IS ENERGY. Do you understand? So everything's a part of the Spirit of God. Everything is the Spirit of God, really, right? And of course they're divided into good and bad spirits and so on. (See 1Sam.16,18,19.)
35. WELL, THIS MAKES THE EXPLANATION SO SIMPLE OF HOW A PERSON CAN RECEIVE A GIFT OF TONGUES! (An unlearned language.) It's almost always just one language, did you ever notice that? In a very few cases I've heard of some people who maybe had different tongues, more than one language, but rarely.
36. GOD LETS ANOTHER SPIRIT SPEAK THROUGH YOU THEN IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE‚ the native tongue of your particular individual guiding spirit, like Abrahim is to me, the particular spirit that God uses who is assigned to you personally. Hallelujah! Thank You Jesus, amen. Ha, ha, ha!
37. THAT'S THE FIRST TIME I'VE SEEN ABRAHIM SMILE FOR A LONG TIME! Isn't that something, he is grinning from ear to ear, he's so happy because I'm getting the point, see? Thank You Lord! (Maria: He was just waiting to show you!) Yes, holding out on me until I got to working on him!
38. THAT MAKES IT SO SIMPLE HOW YOU GET A GIFT OF TONGUES!—YOU RECEIVE A HOLY SPIRIT FROM GOD! Not only the Holy Spirit which is everywhere in everything and which you have of course when you're saved, but a special spirit from God who has that gift, whatever it may be.
39. (MARIA: THAT'S WHY YOU COULD GO ON FOR SO MANY YEARS‚ YOU HAD THE HOLY SPIRIT. That's why you could go on in the power that you did have in your witness for so many years.)—Yes, and I definitely had at least four gifts already that I knew of:
40. I HAD THE GIFTS OF DISCERNMENT, WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH EVER SINCE I GOT THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT when I was 19. I knew I received the Holy Spirit then in great power. Now what Holy Spirit? I was already saved, had been saved all of my life! You mean I didn't have the Holy Spirit before that?—Of course I did! But I didn't have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the full power! (See Acts 19.)
41. NOW WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, "BAPTISM" OF THE HOLY SPIRIT? Let's try to translate it into something we can understand. I was not yet possessed or in possession of one or more of these special holy spirits, empowered energies of God, personalities who have these gifts, do you understand?
42. (MARIA: YOU MEAN YOU EVEN GOT DISCERNMENT AT THE TIME YOU WERE 19 when you had the baptism?) I don't know exactly when, but I know that immediately I began to feel the leading of the Holy Spirit and He began to show me things right away‚ so I think it was right then.
43. OF COURSE, EVER SINCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY THERE WERE SOME OF THESE GIFTS I SEEM TO HAVE HAD. But when I received that particular anointing of God's Spirit at that time when I was 19, I knew I had a much closer relationship with the Lord and I was being more directly led of His Spirit. Now how did He lead me by His Spirit?
44. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS EVERYWHERE AND LEADS EVERYBODY.—How? Well, I think he does it partly through these holy spirits‚ his angels and these spirit beings, these departed saintly spirits, one or more of which is assigned to each of us who have this new anointing or empowerment of the spirit!
45. THE SO-CALLED BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT IS THEREFORE NOT ONLY THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT but a sudden yielding and surrender to one of these holy spirits of God. Along with the Spirit of God we receive specific spirits who have these specific gifts. How about that? I mean that makes it very understandable. This explains then why things happened to us the way they did in the beginning with Abrahim, right?—Back to I Corinthians 12:
46. "THERE ARE DIVERSITIES OF OPERATIONS, BUT THE SAME GOD." Now you've got the Holy Spirit, you've got Jesus and and so you've got God the Father. Well, here are three distinct personalities or spirits in the same body, yet He says they're all the same!
47. IN OTHER WORDS, ALL OF THESE GIFTS ARE FROM GOD and He's saying they're from God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. All right then, so it is logical that the way He imparts these distinct and separate special gifts of His Spirit is by His spirits, do you understand?
48. THESE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD ARE SPIRITS OF GOD, THEY ARE SPIRITS OF HIS SPIRIT! They come from His Spirit and they are given by His Spirit, right? They are spirits who empower us to do these different things by the power of His Spirit. This all just hit me all of a sudden when I started working here on Abrahim‚ God bless him!—1Cor.12:7:
49. "THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRIT IS GIVEN TO EVERY MAN TO PROFIT WITHAL. To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom." Now here's why I like to go to the original text, see? "To another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit."
50. IT ALL COMES FROM GOD, OF COURSE‚ BUT ARE NOT EACH OF THESE GIFTS A PARTICULAR MANIFESTATION OF A DIFFERENT ONE OF THE SPIRITS of God sent by His Spirit, given by His Spirit‚ certainly by the same Spirit. Now let's see what we have here:
51. "WISDOM": I KNOW THAT GOD GAVE ME THAT GIFT A LONG TIME AGO for the sake of leadership. There are certain gifts I knew I had already received.—Wisdom was one of them.
52. IT SEEMED THAT SOMETIMES I HAD THE GIFT OF HEALING. One of the gifts is healing.—And I had special faith for certain things. The Lord has performed healing miracles at my hand time and again.
53. "TO ANOTHER THE WORKING OF MIRACLES." Now that's an outstanding visible thing. Well, I have seen some miracles that the Lord has wrought through me.
54. "TO ANOTHER PROPHECY." NOW I DID NOT HAVE PROPHECY UNTIL AFTER I RECEIVED THE SPECIAL ANOINTING of the Lord when the Jesus Revolution began. Then for the first time I began to get some prophecy. I didn't have tongues yet at all‚ but I had prophecy. Now that was fairly recent.
55. "DISCERNING OF SPIRITS." THAT I THINK I'VE HAD ALMOST SINCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY. "Tongues"—I only got with the recent coming of Abrahim. Then "faith", unusual faith. Then "knowledge"—to know certain things supernaturally.
56. I HAD DISCERNMENT, WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE, FAITH, SOME HEALING AND A VERY FEW MIRACLES. But isn't that strange that the three gifts that are almost the last three on the list—prophecy, tongues and interpretation—I got last, just since the beginning of the Jesus Revolution?—Interpretation came first, then prophecy came next and finally the very last gift that I got was tongues!
57. SO NOW, IN A WAY, I HAVE ALL GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT‚ but some of mine work better than others‚ and there are undoubtedly people who have better gifts of different things than I have.
58. OKAY, THANK YOU LORD! ABRAHIM'S GETTING SUCH GOOD COMMUNICATION ... he doesn't even have to burst out in his own language! I think he sometimes bursts into his own language because he gets so frustrated many times. He feels free to speak in his own language, and then he tries to interpret it.
59. (MARIA: WHAT DID HE SAY JUST NOW?) Honey, that's a pretty big statement. (Maria: That no one has better gifts than their father David?) That's a pretty big statement.
60. (MARIA: WHAT DID HE SAY? TELL ME!) I don't want to tell you, I don't have to tell you. Can we cut off the tape recorder? (No, just say it!) Thank You Lord, in Jesus' Name.
61. FORGIVE ME FOR MY PRIDE, LORD, THE GIFT OF PRIDE SURE ISN'T FROM YOU! I don't like to tell some of these things, because then it gives me too much responsibility and then I'm afraid I'm going to have to live up to it! The Lord just said:
62. "BEHOLD, WHO HAS GREATER WISDOM THAN THE WISDOM OF THE AGES that I have given unto thee through My gifts of My Spirit?" (Maria: Praise the Lord, that's right!)
63. AND IT'S A FUNNY THING, THE LORD GAVE US THAT SCRIPTURE THE OTHER NIGHT, "BEHOLD‚ A GREATER THAN SOLOMON IS HERE!" That was a verse used about Jesus, but that night the Lord was not applying it to Jesus. Do you know who He was talking about? (You!) Greater than Solomon? (Of course!)
64. I DON'T SEE HOW I COULD BE GREATER THAN SOLOMON. It's so simple, I mean, before I even got the words out of my mouth, Abrahim flashed across with: "Because of the gifts that God has given you!"—Because of all these helpers I have!
65. I HAVE THE WISDOM OF THE AGES AND THE SAGES AND ALL THE PROPHETS AND ALL THE KINGS AND ALL THE GREAT MEN OF THE PAST AVAILABLE TO ME to help me! They're all trying to help me in this last dispensation, in this last age. Because they're so interested in what we're doing‚ they're trying to help me wind things up. So I can call on the Lord and He gives me wisdom through any one of them, whatever I need!
66. I MEAN IT'S LIKE A LENDING LIBRARY OF GOD'S SAINTS who are, you might say, arranged on heavenly shelves and you can just pull down any one you need any time—or the Librarian can. God's the librarian, or His Spirit is.—He can hand you any one that you need at any time. Can you imagine! Think how many spirit-books He's collected by this time!
67. WE'VE GOT THE BENEFIT NOW OF SUCH A TREMENDOUS COLLECTION OF DEPARTED SAINTS, men of God, great men of wisdom‚ administrators, kings‚ prophets‚ psalmists and what have you! Look what a collection God's got by this time!—Of all these that have gone on to be with Him! Why‚ He's got people available for anything you want to know, for anything that needs to be done. (Heb.12:1.)
68. HE CAN CALL ON ANYBODY TO GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU NEED, you just need to want it and receive it and have the faith to give it. I mean, that explains everything! That makes it at least more understandable to me, does it to you? "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." (Mt.7:7-8.)