YES, I AM - PART FIVE

TRUE LOVE AND INFATUATION

Another form of intercession is also on a deeply personal level and may well be misunderstood by those who have not learned the right use of their soul-body outer affections.

To start with, as we have intimated when looking into spirit-soul relationships (see Chapter 30): Do any of us know and become settled in the difference between soul-affection and spirit-love without some death-and-resurrection experience of it? The strongest form of desire is misguided soul-body "inordinate affection," which we can mistake for love. It is Paul who calls it "inordinate affection" (Col. 3:5), the misuse of the flesh in its "affections and lusts," which he says we have crucified (Gal. 5:24); and "flesh" is only another word for soul-body.

Human flesh is God’s precious way of manifesting Himself. Jesus was "God manifested in the flesh." "Sinful flesh" resulted from Satan capturing our flesh through its "affections and lusts" - flesh misused for self-gratification. But our Christ in His death "condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3), threw sin out of ownership and put it behind bars. This means that sin no longer owns the flesh but is a condemned criminal behind bars, awaiting execution. Meanwhile, however, it shouts at us from behind its bars by using temptations of the flesh. One of these is the use of our soul-body emotions and affections for self-gratification in some diversionary "love" - as if it were genuine love - which is what Paul calls "inordinate affection" and what we here call infatuation.

But God’s love, self-giving love, which is now ours, is other-love. It may or may not be manifested through our soul-emotion and body-desire; but should it be, the emotion is not the love but only an outer expression of it. God’s love, our love as He, is a laying of ourself on the altar for others: spirit-love, a will-love, even when without the emotions of soul-love.

This is supremely so in marriage when the chemistry of the soul-body attractions has simmered down or gone into the background. Love is then the two living together, as one of my friends writes, "when we are for each other, keeping each other where we belong in Christ. It is the reality of a loving God who is living in us for each other."

Indeed, husband and wife then never raise the question of whether they love each other. Of course they do, for love means that each has given himself for the other in their marriage bond "till death do us part." That love is expressed in the practical self-giving of both in all aspects of their family life; and when both are the Lord’s, in the additional bond of spiritual fellowship and service. That is the love, of which physical and emotional love is a beautiful ingredient, but by no means the central reality of the love-bond.

But to go still further, the deepest revelation and understanding of true marriage is that all we who are in Christ are inwardly - each of us in our own self - married to Christ; so we are each inwardly bride to Bridegroom, wife to Husband. That is the only eternal and real marriage, and thus all God’s redeemed people have an inward marriage of the Spirit.

Our outer physical marriage is really a symbol of this eternal inner marriage; and that is why marriage is one to one, is not to be violated by an illicit union, and is not to be destroyed by divorce. This is what Paul is saying in Ephesians 5:25-33: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the church" (vss. 31-32).

As a result, when we do understand and recognize our true, eternal marriage, we do not overrate our earthly marriage, or mistake it as our true marriage. It is only as shadow to substance, symbol to reality; and we see our earthly marriage as a means of exemplifying the true, eternal union.

Many of us don’t know this ultimate truth about marriage, and so I repeat it. Each of us has our true Husband within us, we being the bride of Christ. That is the only eternal and true marriage union. Our flesh marriage is an earthly figure of it, by which we learn its joys and responsibilities, and is meant to be secondary to our true marriage. If we mistake our earthly marriage for the real one, we soon find that its hold on us weakens as the dominant factor in our lives, because it is not! It is, certainly, a fixed earthly union, but is only the shadow of the substance. For us who know this, a divorce cannot be considered or be in our vocabulary. "Let it not be named among you, as becometh saints" (Eph. 5:13).

But until we have learned to recognize the difference between spirit and soul love, it is extremely common for us to have a sudden soul-body attraction for one who is not our mate - and this can be devastatingly strong, for God created us with strong soul and body affections for His use. Then, if we have not learned our lesson, this sudden infatuation can fill us with guilt and condemnation. If we do not yet know or are unsettled in the truth that our soul and body as well as our spirit are wholly God’s, and in His total control and keeping, we can remain in great turmoil and suffer distressing temptation - or even be swept off our feet into sin - and we may appear to ourselves to be unfaithful to our mate when we are not. (Of course, those who have not been born of the Spirit can know only flesh love, and divorces these days are the common way of exchanging one flesh love for another.)

Even those of us who are God’s people may - if we have not yet grasped this division between soul and spirit – easily confuse the attraction of a soul-body "inordinate affection" with true, inner, spirit-love. It diverts us like a rival and adulterous "love." And should our mate also not recognize the difference between infatuation and real love, he or she may be consumed with jealousy or retaliation. Let us not mistake the temporary invasion of a soul-affection for the permanent reality of the spirit-love which has bound us in marriage.

Many of us, including myself, have had such an invasion of soul-love, both being condemned by it and intensely resisting it. But by that means we have learned a great secret - that the response to a soul-affection is not to resist or condemn it, but to recognize it for what it is and then use it for another purpose. We use it, and indeed swallow it up, by turning it into an opportunity to express God’s love towards that one who has attracted us. That means I inwardly "fight the battle through" by setting my affections in only one direction, with only one purpose and desire: that the one who has attracted me will have Christ fully formed in her or him - as in me. That is the single eye of faith and so the soul-affection becomes a channel of spirit other-love.

And - though it may take time when the soul-affection is strong - the whole condition is reversed from guilt and condemnation over the temptation into being a means of intercession for the other: that by my dying to a misuse of soul-affection there is a rising - first in me, by which I gain the intercession, and then in the other one - of the reality of Christ within. I have proved that as fact, for it happened just like that, as the intercession was walked and gained.

If one becomes aware of such a soul-affection in his or her mate, and at first is disturbed or jealous because of it, if he (say it is a man), rather, by faith-knowing will believe that his mate is really still fixedly bound in spirit-love to him, and will hold steady - having faith (that is, his intercession) that his mate will use that outer soul-affection for the forming of Christ in the other individual - then there will be no question raised about her continued fixedness in her mated love for him.

I know one close friend, a husband, who loves the Lord. His wife was caught by such an enslaving affection toward another man. But God used that to show her once for all the difference between soul-love and spirit-love, and settled her back in her true love to her husband. Meanwhile, her husband stood steadfastly and loyally by her, though not without pain, and by this he himself grew in the Lord. They now are a wonderful couple, steady in their own family life and helping many who have like problems.

A LETTER OF MUCH INSIGHT

The fact is… we have long misused our souls and bodies under the old illusion that the evil was in us, not in Satan. We now know differently; and we know that now Christ is expressing Himself by us in place of Satan. Yet we, most of us, still remain suspicious of our flesh, particularly regarding sex - especially we men, most of whom have strong sex drives. We may have misused our sex in our former days. We may even have slipped since. But let us really accept that the trouble is not in our sex or flesh, but was caused by Satan (sin) in us, and that God has now replaced indwelling sin by His own total ownership of our bodies as His dwelling place. Now we can fully trust Him that every appetite and faculty has been put there by Him for His full, liberated use. But where we have not totally accepted that fact, we walk fearful of our body passions and think that we must keep some check or control on them - or who knows what we will do? We do not totally accept the fact that God only is our keeper of body and soul, as of spirit.

Paul speaks of keeping our bodies under subjection, lest we become disapproved in His service (1 Cor. 9:27). This means that we are to settle the matter that our bodies are so totally His living sacrifices that we are in total safekeeping. We cannot consider them being used for any sin purposes - and we are in full physical activity, not seeking to keep our bodies by self-effort but by faith and without fear.

So then, as we move right through to who we really are, whole persons, wholly His and none other’s, we know the limits the Spirit of love has put on us. We know plainly that sex is sacred to marriage and our bodies are for our mates. So we boldly take the stand of faith - that misuse of sex is sin and is out for us. Paul stated it plainly: "Shall I... take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot?… Flee fornication. Every [other] sin… is outside the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" (1 Cor. 6:15-20).

So this kind of sin is not in our vocabulary. Any thought in that direction is rejected. We boldly do this on the word of Scripture, inwardly confirmed to us by the Spirit, that God is our keeper as He says He is, and will keep us. We "cannot sin because [we are] born of God" (1 John 3:9). Therefore we accept our freedom in soul and body, and express our love one to another, for it is God loving by us - unafraid.

It is on this basis that some of us have used our soul-body affection - even if tempted to misuse - not to condemn ourselves, but by accepting the temptation as a door being opened for us as intercessors, for God’s love to reach another.

John T. (Tony) Ketcham, a Washington lawyer, and his wife Bette, live in Bowie, Maryland, where their home is a family center for many of us who have fellowship together in the Spirit. Bette has very helpfully written to a friend on the operation of soul-affection and spirit-love, and we will all profit by it. I quote her letter at length:

I think this is of sufficient importance to underline this fact again. We may have entered in by the Spirit’s revelation to knowing we are He in our forms. We know that, as spirit joined to Spirit. But often we have not equally totally recognized that He is the owner and indweller of our whole persons - soul and body as much as spirit - as we read in that word of Paul’s: "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless" (1 Thess. 5:23).

Therefore our soul and body are not mere appendages to be conveniently used - they are we! In our old misconception we wrongly thought there were evil tendencies in them, such as sex, greed, hate, jealousy, etc. Then we found out that the evil in our souls and bodies was the indwelling sin (Satan) misusing us. Then we moved on by faith recognition and inner witness to having indwelling sin replaced by indwelling Christ. But our problem is that often we’re not so quick and complete in boldly recognizing that He has now taken full possession of our soul emotions and body appetites. We are not to walk in fear of our old excesses - as though, if we are not careful, they might recur and grab us. If we still have not had that settled in our believing, we are leaving the door open to much temptation. And we are still partially bound, because we live in secret fear of our soul-body rushing us into some sins. We still carry the graveclothes of some negative believing into our resurrection life. We are afraid of our temptation… so we must watch ourself; and we also suspiciously watch our brother and sister (or our mate) as though they still carry their graveclothes around.

So there’s a further bold step needed: a total accepting of our death in Christ to sin, the world, and our flesh in its "affections and lusts" - recognizing it as crucified, so far as its misuses are concerned (Gal. 5:24). Against fears, suspicions, temptations, we boldly say He is our keeper, and He is doing His job and will do it. When any stirring strong winds of temptation blow on us, instead of fighting, or fearing, or running away, we say, "No, it is what God means us to have - the temptation that James has told us to count all joy." It is merely sin shouting at us through the prison bars. "But You, Christ," we say, "have all of us, including our tempted areas; and You will now use them to express Your self-giving love through us in place of our temptations to self-getting and self-gratification."

I think this is a further stage of total recognition of this word of Paul’s earlier quoted: "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless." The whole of us. So reject fear, for "perfect love casteth out fear." Replace it by the boldness of faith, for what you believe holds you. If we continue in the negative belief that we are so weak and temptable that we had better keep watch over ourself, then we shall have the fruits of our negative faith in temptation and bondage. If we replace these perverted believings by a bold, total, positive faith in Him, the Total Sanctifier, we shall have the fruit of our faith, the freedom to be ourself in expression of our emotions, reasoning, and body-affections; and equally, we shall free ourself from negative suspicions and judgments of our brethren.

This will obviously appear dangerous to some who read it. And it is! Life in the Spirit is living dangerously. Of course it is nonsense and absurd! - not only for those still in the flesh without Christ, but also for those of us in Christ who have not yet entered into union - in death-resurrection reality - with Christ, and who therefore are fearful (as in Romans 7) of the assaults of the flesh, not knowing how to meet them. But I am writing on the third, the intercession level, where we do know that difference between soul and spirit, and can discern (or maybe learn by experience) that soul’s inordinate affection is outer flesh-pull, not the true love of the spirit. It is of this I am writing - of how temptation to self-gratification can be reversed into an outgoing of the Spirit of love... for God’s "completing work" of Christ to be formed in the object of the affections.

YES, HE IS - I AM

I correspond with an Indian friend, Biva Tampoe of Madras, who read one of my books some years ago and wrote to inquire further about the life of union in Christ. Recently she sent me her only copy of a little book published by her father, the late Professor Coomarasamy Tampoe of Kavali College in Andhra Pradesh, who also taught in British universities. The book is called The Problem of Good. I was struck by the way he wrote of Jesus as a man who walks the same faith way as ourselves, and I am putting in my own words, at the close of this book of mine, what I found to be his stimulating outline of that faith which overcome the world, and by which, John says, we also overcame our world. I want to see how He walked, for John says we are to walk as He walked.

It is obvious from Luke’s saying that Jesus "grew in wisdom and stature" that, whatever the inherent knowledge He had as to who He was, He still had to advance into an enlarged understanding of that truth. Probably Mary told Him, when old enough, of His miraculous birth, confirming to Him that He was the Son of God.

But His means of discovering the purpose of His coming was from the Scriptures. We know that because, at twelve years of age, He spent three days fascinating the theologians of the temple, not by a display of any knowledge of His own, but by "hearing them and asking them questions" of a type which obviously amazed them. Then He returned to His carpenter’s bench for another eighteen years. His subsequent constant reference to the Scriptures shows that this study was His main occupation those years, and from those Scriptures He saw the revelation of the coming Messiah, the anointed One of God, to found the kingdom which would have no end.

Evidently most Jewish readers of the Scriptures, and maybe even some of the prophets themselves, understood this to be as king of an earthly kingdom which would have dominion over all nations, who would pour in their wealth to Him. But there were always the men who saw in the Spirit: like Abraham, who looked for "a heavenly city"; like Moses, who said circumcision was of the heart, not flesh; like Jeremiah, who saw that all men were to have the law written in their hearts; and like Isaiah, who, full of the glory of the coming Savior, wrote of His uniqueness in being born of a virgin, His royalty as "Everlasting Father" and "Prince of peace," and His outreach extending to the Gentiles and the ends of the earth... but also foretold His suffering and death as our sin-bearer. From the Psalms, so full of references to Him, Jesus saw the details of His coming crucifixion, His bodily resurrection, His ascension and eternal priesthood. To those two on the road to Emmaus, after His resurrection, He "expounded in all the Scriptures, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, the things concerning Himself." Soon after that, when with His disciples, He "opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures" and told them: "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day."

So plainly, while a carpenter at home, His eyes were fully opened to all the revelation in Scripture. But the point is that no man can live by outer information, not even by the account of His birth from his mother. We can only live by fixed inner consciousness; and so, even though Jesus was conceived of the Spirit, He had to be baptized in the Spirit to know and fulfill His life’s calling. He knew His cousin John was the prophesied "voice of one crying, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’" He saw the multitudes following John and repenting of their sins; and that all John could give them was that outer assurance of remission of sins. John kept telling them that Another was coming whose shoe latchet he was not worthy to unloose, and that He would give them the inner baptism of the Spirit, for by that alone could they inwardly know their sins were forgiven.

And what was more, though John knew (presumably from his mother) the story of his own special birth and the miracle birth of his cousin Jesus, yet he still said he did not know Him as the Messiah until His baptism. Then he and Jesus - no one else - saw the Spirit coming on Jesus in the form of a dove, and heard the voice saying to Him, "Thou art My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." It was not sufficient for John to know the outer story of his and Jesus’ births, any more than it was sufficient for Jesus to know it… or all that the Scripture said about the prophesied Messiah. But from the moment of the coming of the dove and the word from heaven affirming His consciousness of who He was, from then on He both knew and acted as the prophesied Christ.

Do we see the point? Man, being spirit, can only operate as who he is when he has the inner spirit-knowing imparted to him. For Jesus to know and declare that He, this carpenter’s son, is God’s own eternal Son and the world’s only hope and Savior - that is the commitment and persistence of faith. As Kierkegaard said, "That is walking on sixty-thousand fathoms of water."

What a commitment! He is to found an eternal kingdom to embrace the human race, a kingdom which has nothing to do with the founding of a kingdom of this world with its pomp and power and material display. His is to be a kingdom of the Spirit, not of this world, a kingdom whose major characteristic and activity is love - something unheard of all through the centuries and totally the opposite of all human blueprints for the occupant of David’s throne. And His calling is to walk it by faith - to be the author and firstborn of the new race! What an adventure of faith!

Therefore, who Jesus was had first to be fully confirmed and demonstrated by a total confrontation with the god of self-centeredness, the god of self-interested self, this prince of the world who had already deceived and made captive the whole human race. In those forty desperate days of confrontation, the temptation was marvelously subtle. (I know of no one who has defined it more fully than did Dostoevsky, in his Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in the The Brothers Karamazov, with the words put in the mouth of the atheist Ivan Karamazov.) It had nothing to do with fleshly enticements. It was altogether suited to the human person who was now affirming that He was the Son of God. "If you are such," Satan says to Him, "you are the ultimate human self… with ultimate powers. Now use them for the full purpose of being a real human self - to own and control and manipulate all the rest of the human family for your own personal benefit."

It is in this focus that we understand the three temptations. First, if Jesus had power to make bread out of stones, He was obviously able to provide for the physical needs of all men (as He later proved He could, in feeding the five thousand). Second, if Jesus were to jump from the pinnacle of the temple and descend in safety among the crowds below, He could quickly be acclaimed as their Messiah - not because of what kind of person He was, but by appealing to their idolatrous human desire for a "superman." And third, by accepting Satan’s shortcut to power, Jesus could have the kingdoms of this world to use for His own ends. Here is the history of all man’s dictatorships - the masses are for the benefit of the few. Here is total self-magnification and self-gratification.

This is what the devil offered and pressed on Jesus all those forty days. "You are the superman. You must be if you are the Son of God. Now have the whole race at your disposal and for your own benefit. They are like a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle. They need a leader, so you will be benefiting them as well. Here are your three ways of doing it: Feed their bellies. Be to them the leader who captures their imagination and adoration. And use them for your own ends." This constituted the ultimate form of self-deification, and what looked like the easiest and most pleasant way to achieve it.

But Jesus was His Father’s Son, and no usurper of His Father’s prerogatives for His own ends. And His Father is the Servant of His creation: self-giving, not self-getting. The Son, filled with the Spirit of the Father, was likewise. So He turned back Satan’s temptations - the same basic temptations as in the Garden of Eden - by quoting the outer word, "It is written," "It is written," "It is written," and equating His innermost fixed purpose with the will of His Father, whose nature is eternal, self-giving love.

So the Messiah, who by His anointing already had the inner confirmation of who He was, was now established as who He was by His rejection of this supreme temptation to be a self for self. It was His inner personal death and resurrection which now established Him in His freedom to later physically die and rise for a world. Not the world for Him but He for the world. This is precisely the way all we commissioned-ones have the revelation of our own inner union confirmed - through testings which fix us in it.

Then Jesus took the inaugural step - a public declaration at Nazareth that He was the promised One. He quoted from Isaiah regarding the prophetic nature of the coming Christ - not as an enthroned king, but a ministering servant: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me... to preach the gospel to the poor, and bring deliverance to the captives, brokenhearted, blind, and bound. And this is I. This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." What a statement! What a shock to hear these words from the lips of a common carpenter!

From then on, as I read John’s Gospel, I find Jesus had only one answer to every challenge and every need: I am. I am. I am - the light, bread, water, good shepherd, way, truth, life, the Son of the Father. This is what strikes me in John’s Gospel: no profound theological explanations, but again and again I am, I am, I am. Yet when the secret is opened up to inquirers, "It is I, yet it is not I. I am nothing by Myself. I am saying and doing what the Father says and does in Me. It is He, not I; and yet it is I. I am, I am."

And He never wavered, never watered down that potent statement. No, no. It was even "Before Abraham was, I am." And all He was was love, love, love, ministered without respect of persons to all needs: yet love which ruthlessly exposed false love - the type of self-love He Himself had rejected in the temptation. So at a price that cost Him His life, while loving and never condemning anyone in need, particularly the sinners, He hated and exposed anything which masqueraded as an expression of His Father in the form of self-love or self-gain or self-glorification. Sinners He loved. Hypocrites He exposed; and above all, those who concealed their hypocrisy under the guise of representing God.

But what I am watching is not so much His words and actions, but His attitude toward Himself. He never compromised about Himself. He was who He was, the Father in the Son form, and all He came to be and do was to bring us lost humans back to that One - His Father, represented by Himself. He alone could do it - not doctrines, not forms of worship, not activities, but He - the Way, Truth, and Life.

And I am watching how we now, as "I ams," are steadfast and boldly uncompromising about ourselves as expressions of Himself. "If you see Me, you see the Father." Likewise, if you see us, you see Jesus. Never, from His baptism onward, did He say anything less than that. And then He came to the final leap of faith. He was the last Adam, the quickening Spirit. He was founding the eternal kingdom: not of this world, but a spirit family, all forms of Him. He was that Himself: the Spirit in His human, Jesus form. This meant - and He knew it from Scripture - that He must physically die, and that He would physically rise to found the new kingdom of the Spirit.

Then the last leap of faith: that this same Spirit, through His death and resurrection, would enter His followers, and they become what He was - they, common humans, become the anointed sons of God, as gods and forms of the God who is love. So He had to yield Himself up to death, and walk this way by the same faith as He had walked those three years as the I AM: believing that He would rise from the dead by the Spirit raising Him up, and that when He returned to His Father in the spirit kingdom this same Spirit would take possession of the world of humans… and these would form the kingdom of God.

And now, why do I enter in such detail with our Christ of history? Because we are "I ams" also. As He is, so are we in this world. It has meant watching Him grow from His outer understanding of Scripture and what He must have learned from His mother into a fixed consciousness that He is that One; His being established as who He is by Satan’s temptations; His three years of constant declaration, "I am, I am, I am He"; and right through to His time of death, when His final confirmation before Pilate of being God’s Son sent Him to the cross.

Now with our fixed inner consciousness, our inner baptism, we too know. But only by Scripture inwardly confirmed. That is all. And we are to be as uncompromising as He in saying who we are. That is why I named this book YES, I AM.

We know the reason so many hesitate to say it: It is because we haven’t got it clear that our human selves are nothing but containers. As long as we wrongly think there is something in our humanity to be changed, we hesitate to say "I am." But once it becomes clear to us that we have not changed, but that the false god is replaced by the living God, we see we are an exchanged "I am." I was Satan in my human form, now I am Christ in my human form. And as the boldness of Jesus’ positive "I am" left an indelible impression on His hearers, so it is with the boldness with which we say "I am the branch form of the Vine," "I am a body form of the Head," "I am the wife that bears the children of my heavenly Husband." Therefore all that He is is expressed by me - power, wisdom, love. His "I am" is my "I am."

And the hesitation of us Christians to affirm our "I am," and our tendency to self-depreciation, constantly weakens the total position which was His strength and impact, for it really means that we’re not sure that we really are nothing, and He everything, and now we are everything, precisely as it was between Him and His Father.

And as with Him, so with us. We now lay down our lives, knowing who we are, so that others may find out who they are. We can’t help it. The Intercessor has laid hold of us as we have moved on from Spirit-baptism to Spirit-intercession. That is our total occupation. We are this, and the Savior-Spirit in us causes us to walk in these saving ways. So we are bond-slaves of Jesus Christ. And I hope that the revelation which God has made plain to us by His Word and Spirit will bring many into that same inner confirmation which He has confirmed to us: that we are among those pressing on in our high calling as intercessors, of whom it is being said, as of The Intercessor, that "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him"; and that we say like Paul, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," with this one perfect outcome - "So death worketh in us, and life in you." What a life! Christ magnified in our bodies, whether by life or by death - from grace to grace, from faith to faith, from glory to glory.

THIS IS THE REALITY

I include as a final word a letter I have just received. It is from a brother in Christ, thirty-two years of age, who lives with his wife and small son on some acres of land, which he is farming part time, in Hawaii. He also has daily employment with a construction firm as an operating engineer of heavy equipment.

I first met him over a year ago, and the letter he then sent me of the Lord’s liberating revelation in him made me wonder whether I should include it in this book. But now, a year later and after another visit, this much fuller letter has come. He is, praise God, only saying what very many among God’s people are saying and rejoicing in, and I hope this will become the same revelation of the Holy Spirit in many who read this book.

July, 1980

(We sometimes sing this little song - no great poetry, not set to great music, but great truth. Alongside each phrase, I list the Bible statement.)