Introduction

One of the most important and basic questions we should ask ourselves as thinking beings is, ‘what exactly are we or, what does my nature consist of, or what makes me a human being’? Many have believed the irrational concept that we are merely atoms, molecules, proteins, cells, etc. – in other words, physical things are all I consist of. That is as unreasonable as saying that the nature of a computer is merely its hardware…that no software is needed to account for the ability of the applications to do what they do. Instead of believing that which is unreasonable, why not listen instead to the one who defeated death to validate what he believed?

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he (Joshua) said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment.”  (John 5:24)

In this very important saying, the Light of the world communicates not only the most important thing we human’s ought to be focused on, but also that their are three aspects to human nature that God created…our heart, soul and mind.

And in the following sayings, he teaches there is another aspect to our spiritual or metaphysical nature, our spirit:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matt. 5:3)

“Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  (John 5:24)

“And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.”  (John 5:24)

“Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above (or again).'”  (John 3:5-7)

“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”  (John 4:23-24)

So, to complete the picture of what the Light of the world teaches regarding human nature, he says people have a heart, soul, mind and spirit.

I encourage the reader to read Joshua’s teachings themselves to come to conclusions about what he teaches about these things. What I am presenting here are my thoughts about these things based on what I know of Joshua’s teachings, his use of these four terms, deduction based on his use of those terms, and my observations and experience in this world.

Our Spiritual or Metaphysical Nature

Our heart represents our will, the core of our being that controls the decisions we make regarding what we do with our both our life and the time we are given each day. Our heart determines what we value or consider important and thus it directs our will. So, for example, when a person says, “I am going to set my life to have a successful career as a ‘businessman, artist, athlete, engineer, etc.’, what they are saying is that following Joshua is NOT the will of their heart…that pursuing that which they (and of course they got their concepts of value from this world) consider valuable is more important than what Joshua considers valuable, which is loving each other, which is behavior focused on giving more than on taking, sharing more than keeping.

You could pursue those other things but only if they are less important than following Joshua. If they are primary and not secondary – if you spend most of your time pursuing those things and thinking about those things instead of Joshua, his teachings and doing what he says – then you forfeit eternal life. Why? Because the Light says that love is the most important concept that the Creator wants we his created beings, to order our lives by. When that is not the case, you get what you see, experience and for most, participate in each day in this world…lives guided by self-pride and fear and selfishness.

Stated another way, we are either using our will to follow the Light of the world and live according to his Way, or we are using our will to follow the world and what they say is valuable. Our will is normally misguided and desperately needs proper guidance which Joshua can provide.

Every human being has a will. The vast majority of human beings use their will to ignore the Light of the world.

Our soul represents both our emotional capabilities as well as our conscience.

Our emotions are what color our experiences and our thoughts. We experience emotions based on things that happen in our lives or thoughts we have about our lives, others or our experiences. All people have the capability to experience emotions, but sadly, most people today are allowing their emotions to make life and relationship decisions instead of using their mind and reason. That is about as smart as deciding which way to walk next to a cliff based on walking towards the cloud shapes I like the best instead of which direction the cliff is.

Or, as another example, it is about as smart as a person dying of thirst in the desert deciding which way the water spring lies in the desert based on which color or shape of sand that he likes instead of deduced facts like plants live near water. You might think these examples are silly, but the truth is that more and more people each day – including probably you dear reader – are making decisions based on “I feel” instead of on “for this reason”. As people have turned away from the One who says, “I am the truth”, and even away from the fact that truth exists, they are only left with the utter selfishness of “I feel, therefore I decide this”. An existence of being led by our emotions is a life of deep darkness.

Every human being has a soul.

Our conscience is that part of our soul which intuitively tells us what is right behavior from wrong behavior, or our ability to judge right from wrong on a non-intellectual basis. It is what sets us apart from animals. Animals don’t behave based on a moral compass of, “this action is wrong and thus I will not do it”, or, “this action is right and will help all animals in this area so I will do it”. Rather, they are programmed with instincts that control their behavior. To deny that humans have a conscience is to say that a child who lies has no idea that what they are doing is wrong…even the child who was never told that lying is wrong.

Go, test what I say – find a child and ask them to tell a person that the blue car is a red car. Humans were given the innate ability – through our metaphysical conscience – to know right from wrong. I obviously am not saying that human’s live by their conscience, because in general and for many, they obviously do not. Our will can easily overcome our conscience, especially when we perceive we will gain or lose something valuable to us based on some decision. We can also dull our conscience by going against it so many times that it loses its sensitivity.

Our conscience is why no human being will stand before our Life Judge and successfully plead, “I am innocent” or “I plead ignorance”.

Every human being has a conscience, but many dull or destroy their conscience through drugs (dull) or practicing wrong behavior (destroy).

Our mind represents our intellect – our ability to reason, use logic and thus to know truth from falsehood.

Our mind is distinct from our brain. To use a computer analogy, the brain is the physical hardware or ‘cpu, memory and storage’ while the mind is the metaphysical ‘software’ or operating system. Our mind is affected by our will and soul. In other words, our mind might successfully determine that something is true instead of false, but our will may take our conclusion and wash it away into non-action if we perceive we will lose something we want if we act upon the truth/conclusion.

If there is one thing that is needed today, it is for people to use reason well to arrive at truth. Tragically, most people do not because they have believed many false things about this realm called ‘the world’. They believe these false things because they are not willing to put truth above the comfort of their own existence in this world. Stated another way, they love this world more than they love Joshua and his Father – thus, they avoid the truth and only use lesser truths to serve their desires in this world.

Every human being has a mind.

Our will interacts with our mind as our mind informs our will about the realm in which we exist and interact with. Our will interacts with our soul as our soul provides ‘data’ on what is right and wrong.

Our spirit is that part of us that enables us to connect with our Creator. Through our spirit we can connect or communicate with outside entities or beings, including our Creator….being to Being without words or language communication.

Not all human beings have a fully functioning spirit, meaning their spirit can connect or communicate with their Creator – in fact, most adults do not.

The Transition From Child to Adult: The Death and Rebirth of Our Spirit

All people (except severely disabled people) are born with all three metaphysical components (heart, soul and mind) and their spirit. Those components develop over time as we grow. Children are known for their innocence and their willingness to accept what is told them as true. Innocence is defined as “freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil”, or, ‘not knowing what wrong is, accepting things at face value, and having an intuitive predisposition to do right; trusting people’. As young children, we place our faith in our parents or the people caring for us and helping to learn to live in this world. We look to our parents as gods, more or less, as they are the only or primary source of our material and relationship security in this world. Good parents take care of us and try and do what is best for us, thus validating our faith in them.

As children, we know that we exist and that we are more than mere molecules, even though we cannot understand the Source of our existence…we have an innate trust in that which Created us, even if we were told the falsehood that our parent’s created us. (The truth is, our parents just brought together the raw materials of sperm and egg and the Creator’s miracle of genetics took over to create our bodies (the ‘hardware’) while the Creator Himself continues to be the Source of existence of our spiritual or metaphysical components (the ‘software’). See the video, Am I More Than Molecules? or the video’s transcript here.)

However, something happens as we start reaching adulthood and enter into our teen age years. We transition from the innocence and rightness of childhood and its basic outlook and relational dynamic of trusting others, and we move into a non-innocent state of existence where we both know what is wrong and also want what is wrong to some degree. This causes us to not trust others because of the wrongness we see in this world, with others and the wrongness we experience with ourselves. We remove our faith in our parents and put our faith in ourselves and/or other, less stable or less worthy things like material wealth or friends, etc. We withdraw into a protective cage made up of fear, self-pride and selfishness.

Many young people will blame God for the many wrongs they see in this world or that they personally experienced due to the false things they have learned about God. Many are taught the harmful false belief that “God is in control” and so rightfully and logically blame God for all the wrong they see in this world. Many others wrongly impugn human characteristics on God or attribute wrong characteristics to Him and thus decide He is not worthy of our trust/faith or worse that He does not exist. One things is certain – when young people remove their faith from their parents, very, very few place their faith in the Source of their existence – their heavenly Father.

When we leave innocence and a simple trust/faith in our Source, our spirit dies, or we become spiritually blind, deaf and dumb…stated another way, we fall into darkness. This happens when we turn away from a simple faith in our Creator to placing our faith in other things like ourselves or money or education or careers or others we deem worthy.

So, there we are, ‘walking dead’ as teenagers. We have our hearts, souls and minds, but our spirit dies as we walk away from innocence and start living some version of, ‘everyone has to do it to survive in this world’ or ‘everyone does it, so so will I’. We enter into the darkness of a life now guided by fear, self-pride and selfishness.

We live to preserve our life in this world, often at any cost. We reject faith in anything we cannot prove by physical means or validate with our senses. We reject sound reason and objective evaluation when it points to ‘places where we don’t want to go’. We start building walls of fear and self-pride, and justifying all our selfish decisions, caring primarily about ourselves and usually only a limited number for others and usually only if we get something out of them. We put ourselves in a prison of our own making.

This is the reason the Creator sent His Life…to bring us back alive and to set us free! This is why the Creator, our Father, sent his Light…to bring us out of the darkness. This is why the Life and Light said this…

“I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness.”  (John 12:46)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above (or again) he cannot see the kingdom of God… I say to you, unless one is born both naturally and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”  (John 3:3, 5)

“If you continue in my word (NOT ‘the bible’), then you are truly disciples of mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  (John 8:31-32)

This necessary experience/event that Joshua speaks of above is required to bring our dead spirit back to life – he does not want us to “remain in darkness”…he does not want us to remain bound in our prison…he does not want our spirit to remain dead. If a person has not been born from above, then they cannot see – nor enter – the kingdom of God. Sadly, when many people get a slight understanding of what the Light is saying here, they will immediately claim they have been ‘born again’ even when they have not. These are the religious crowd.

How can a person know if they have been born from above? That is like asking a man who has been in a prison and tortured for years if he knew when his rescuer got him out of that prison! You will know!

Or it is like a woman caught in a fantasy world, pretending she is living a real life, but she knows at some deep level that what she is living is somehow false, and one day, a real person extends a hand to her and pulls her out of the fog/delusion/fantasy.

Many will claim that they love the Lord our God with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength…but claiming something does not necessarily make it true. We can only love a Person if we truly believe they exist…and in respect to Joshua and God, if we have truly transferred our faith/trust/confidence to those Persons.

How can a person know if they have truly been born from above? How can a person know if they truly love their heavenly Father with all that is in them? That is like asking a child who loves her parents – and those parents are taken away when she is 10 years old – if she will know when she is reunited with them after 2 years! You will know!

Here are some objective signs of that new birth…if we have changed significantly from a person who was primarily guided by self-pride and fear and selfishness, to a person who lives and fights for what is true, for what is right, and who desires to love Joshua, our Father and others above all things.

• If we now think about and talk about our Father and Joshua most of the time;
• If we want to bring other people to our Father and our Master and that is a driving motivation in our life;
• If we see OUR sin and our wrongness and are troubled by it;
• If we hate the wrong in this world and will do what is required to bring change, no matter what;
• If we want to spend out time with others who have come to know our Father and our Master;
• If we are truly willing to lay down our lives (physically die) out of love for our friends;
• If we don’t live for money and material security and entertainment and pleasure and for those from whom we get something back, and the other things the people of the world live for.

What about you dear reader? Do you just have some religious/bible knowledge and a few rituals that mark your life ‘for God’? Do you have some past event at a religious organization – like raising your hand or walking down an aisle or an emotional event – as a substitute for a truly new life? Or are you a truly changed person who lives to tell other’s of our Father, our Master, and the Life they bring? Do we truly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength?

Please, enter into his Life and come, join the peaceful revolution!