Tag Archives: land

The God of Real Good Real Estate

The Christian God is a God of wealth and for our present focus, a God of good Real Estate. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. We are told every day how God made the earth better and better real estate. After making a perfect and good real estate God created man. God gave the dominion of this luxury real estate to man. God commanded man to use his dominion, to dominate the earth, to be blessed and multiply. God gave the world to man.  However, man sinned against God, by believing the word of a snake over the word of God. The first doctrine man learned in this, was the doctrine of faith. Man should have believed God.

God cursed man for his sin. Because man had dominion of God’s rich real estate, God’s curse greatly effected this aspect in two primary ways. First, this good real estate was cursed with corruption. This premium real estate that worked with man, now worked against him.  Second, the dominion of the earth that was given to man, God revoked and transferred into the hands of the devil (Eph. 2:2, Luke 4:6).

However, not all was lost. After man learned the importance to believe God and not other epistemologies, God made a promise that a savior would be born from a woman, who would destroy the devil. An important consequence of the savior destroying the devil would arise. The devil would lose his dominion over the earth that he received because of man’s sin.

The start of God transferring His premium real estate back to man, started with Abraham. God promised Abraham an onslaught of good things, and among these good things was the world itself. Paul says in Romans “God’s promise to give the whole earth to Abraham and his descendants was based not on his obedience to God’s law, but on [righteousness] that comes by faith.”[1] Paul summed up all the good things promised to Abraham by boiling it down to good real estate. Also, Abraham did what Adam did not. Abraham believed God.

God started the entire world transfer with promising Abraham a specific piece of good real estate. When Abraham’s children were later slaves to the Egyptians, God told Moses that He must bring the Israelites to the “Promise” Land, because God “promised,” Abraham that land. God is faithful to His promises. Jacob must possess his inheritance.

In Jesus Christ the gentiles have been grafted into God’s promise to bless Abraham. Paul argues, it was a promise based on grace, not works, and is received by faith. Jesus’ atonement does not make it obsolete, but ensures those who are saved by His atonement also receive the blessing of Abraham. Paul sums up the blessing of Abraham as the Spirit and miracles.

Paul also makes a substitutionary contrast with Jesus taking on our curses, and giving us the blessing of Abraham. Part of the curses that came with the law was bad real estate and/or having no real estate. One curse was to have your real estate filled with wild animals that would attack and harass you. Jesus was not only nailed to a tree, as a curse of the law itself, but had a crown of thorns on His head. This symbolized the curse of the ground from Genesis, which mentions thorns.  In exchange Jesus gave us the blessing of Abraham.

We can see how the blessing of Abraham overrides the curse of Genesis, when Issac reaped 100-fold in a time of famine and drought. The curse should have worked against Issac. The land was not producing and was doing its job to work against man. But Issac, through the blessing of real estate, override the curse and produced 100-fold. The passage goes on to say that Issac was made wealthy because of this. His blessing over real estate made him wealthy. This wealth from real estate was God’s mercy and love to Abraham and his descendants. This wealth made him the envy of kings. It gave Abraham and his descendants fame and gave them audiences with powerful people.

Because the blessing of real estate from the start was a “good” thing, and because it was a “good” thing given to Abraham, and a “good” thing ensured by the atonement of Jesus, it means it is a good thing for God’s children to be people of wealth and real estate. It is good in and of itself, and it is good because by such, Christians can richly fund the advance of the gospel. Rather than giving only 10%, they can give 20, 30 and 60% of their abundance to the gospel. Even if a Christian is a masochist, who likes being poor, they should stop being so selfish with their so-called faith and by it gain wealth and real estate, so they can give it all away, to the gospel, worthy widows and ministries.

Also, heaven is a real place. It is real, real estate. God’s elect have houses there. They have fantastic real estate promised them. Jesus is not invisible. He sits on a real throne, on the best real estate. Hell is also real. It is the worst sort of real estate. It is a land you do not want to live on.

The Christian God is a God of real estate. It was so from the beginning. It was so in Abraham, and it is so through Jesus Christ. We need to take off our limited, self-debasing thinking and embrace the God of real good, real estate. It is given freely by God, by unmerited and undeserved favor, and is received freely by faith in Jesus Christ.

[1] Roman 4:13 NLT [] by author.

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Drive Out and Take Possession

When you cross the Jordan River into the land of Canaan,  
you must drive out all the people living there. … 
Take possession of the land and settle in it,
because I have given it to you to occupy. Exodus 33:51-53 NLT

In Salvation Jesus saves us and we do nothing. This is typified with Israel crossing the Red Sea. God defeated their enemies, and they did nothing. All Moses did was wave his staff around a little. When they passed through the water, their baptism was one of freedom; they were no longer slaves. However, there was another baptism at the Jordon. (see Vincent Cheung, The Edge of Glory). God commanded two things after this second baptism into power. They were to “Drive Out” the inhabitants and then “Take Possession,” of the mike and honey, houses, gold and vineyards.

This archetype is realized in the baptism of the Spirit in Acts 1:4-8.
The decrees of God are logical (supralapsarian), and thus what we see in history is a reverse of the decrees. The book of Acts is the original, the promise land and Joshua was reversed engineered from the story of the church as described in Acts. They were the illustration, and Acts the original. Thus, the 2 baptisms in Exodus was the illustration for God’s original 2 baptisms of water and the Spirit.

Thus, we see Jesus and the disciple “Driving Out” demons and the religious leaders. Jesus and his disciples “took possession” of the good things, such as health, money, knowledge, spiritual powers, lands, leaderships and even kings.


This is where many Christians fail. They are like the people of Israel and are still stuck in the desert. They are there not because of persecution for the gospel sake, but because of their unbelief in God’s promises. God commanded Israel that the second baptism was one of power. Instead of God doing all the work Himself, He would empower them drive out and take possession. Because Israel had no faith they rebelled against God and refuse to be used by Him.

The issue is that good things like healing, prosperity, good relationships and so forth are in the promise land ready for God’s people to take procession of them. These are not like conversion and freedom, where you did nothing for it. The Spirit, like the wind blowing wherever it wants, gives new-birth and you were freed and started to believe. This is again like the Red Sea baptism. But after conversion God’s commands us to be baptized in the Spirit, which is seen in the Jordan. When Joshua and Israel come out of Jordan they had swords and shields. They were going to fight with God’s power, unlike with Pharaoh, when they did nothing.  In order for Jacob to grab his inheritance he must take up a sword.

God as already given healing and blessings in the finished atonement of Jesus. But unlike conversion, you must drive out Satan and take possession of these blessings by the fight of faith. Some are still in the desert and claim it is the will of God they are not healed. Like Israel, they put all the blame on God and overlook their unbelief. It is the same story over and over again. Some step into the promise land for 17 steps and claim they cant get healed because of the will of God, yet they haven’t faced one city or driven out one demon to take possession. Jesus commands us to pray and never give up. We are to keep driving out and take procession.

To be a good soldier one must develop internal power of faith, and be clothed with the power of the baptism of the Spirit.  When these are developed properly, there is no giant that can stop you from driving out and taking hold of any promise of healing, prosperity, relationships and moving mountains that Jesus said, no matter how big and glorious the promise.

The Hittites were the first Israel faced. Their name symbolizes fear. This is how demons, the old man and the 2 million Israelite unbelievers will try to pressure you to not go and take possession. But faith is stronger than fear, because faith has absolute confidence in God’s Word and not man’s sight or feelings.