TEEN TREE 
OF LIFE
THE DOCTRINE OF
AUTHORITY ORIENTATION
Part 3
August 5, 2018
BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).
As we continue to look at authority according to God’s Word, we learn that there are three categories of Divine Sovereignty that function in human history. (Sovereignty means supreme power or authority, esp. over a state or other political body.) The first category is the Directive Will of God which is made up of the Divine Mandates for believers and unbelievers. The second category of Divine Sovereignty is the Permissive Will of God in which God permits us to have free will in opposition to Divine Mandates. The Permissive Will of God allows us to have negative volition. The third category is the Overruling Will of God which enables God to prevent self-destruction or national destruction because of the existence of a large group of mature believers living in a particular nation.
The function of the three categories of the Will of God is important to understand. Under the Directive Will of God, He has a plan for believers’ lives. In our dispensation – The Church-Age – it is the Pre-Designed Plan of God. Under the Directive Will of God, He has a system of order for all humanity which is called the Laws of Divine Establishment. There are four areas to God’s Divine Establishment. All are oriented to a system of authority: 1) volition (authority over one’s own soul), 2) marriage (authority of the husband over the wife), 3) family (authority of the parents over the children) and 4) nationalism (authority of the government over the citizens).
Under the Permissive Will of God, negative volition is permitted, but Divine Justice provides awesome and painful punishment! Under the Overruling Will of God, the minority is always correct. The minority is defined as the group of mature believers whose execution of the Pre-Designed Plan of God delivers the nation from the fifth cycle of discipline: destruction of a nation due to maximum rejection of Biblical principles. Human volition can override the Directive Will of God, resulting in the Permissive Will of God going kicking in. The minute you disobey any of God’s Mandates or you sin, you have overruled the Directive Will of God, which is not to sin.
Under the Directive Will of God, there is no discipline. Under the Permissive Will of God, there is Divine Discipline for us because He allows us to sin. So, the result is suffering under the Law of Volitional Responsibility plus national punishment, illustrated by the Five Cycles of Discipline.
Let’s look more closely at the Five Cycles of Discipline. God administers discipline to His client nation when the group of mature believers in that nation begins to dramatically shrink through negative volition towards doctrine. He does this in five stages or cycles of discipline. At any stage there can be recovery through rebound and a change of heart towards positive volition of Bible doctrine at which time God will remove His discipline. The Five Cycles of Discipline are: 1) Loss of health, decline of agricultural prosperity, terror, fear and death in combat, and loss of personal freedoms due to negative volition toward Bible doctrine; 2) Economic recession and depression, increased personal and individual discipline for continued negative attitude in spite of the first warning; 3) Violence and breakdown of law and order, resulting in cities being broken up; 4) Military conquest and/or foreign occupation, scarcity of goods (reduced to one-tenth of the normal supply), and the breaking up of families; 5) Destruction of a nation due to maximum rejection of Biblical principles. All of this is taught in LEV 26. Take a moment to read it from your Bible.
The Permissive Will of God is based on the fact that human volition and human freedom are the means of resolving the Angelic Conflict. The Angelic Conflict is the result of Satan and the fallen angels being in opposition to God, which began with the fall of Satan and continued until all angelic creatures had made a decision for or against God. The Angelic Conflict refers to the two trials of Satan and the fallen angels, one in prehistoric times, the other during human history today. The Permissive Will of God permits human volition to operate under the concept of human freedom. This volition either makes a nation great or destroys it. When the Directive Will of God is rejected, the Permissive Will of God is activated. This explains why rebound (naming and citing your sins to God in His Son’s Name) is so important, because when we sin, only the use of rebound can put us back under the Directive Will of God.
When the Permissive Will of God becomes activated, resulting in Divine punishment, the only hope is the Overruling Will of God. Our nation is now under the Permissive Will of God because so many people have rejected the Laws of Divine Establishment, rejected every form of authority, and because believers have rejected Bible doctrine. So, God permits us to be alive but to be punished. This can only be changed by the Overruling Will of God.
The Overruling of God is only used by Him in national emergencies because of the existence of the group of mature believers living in the nation who have executed the Pre-Designed Plan of God.
The believer is designed to function under the Directive Will of God. When the believer rejects the Authority of God’s Word and its Mandates, he has destroyed the Authority of God in his life and has reverted to the cosmic system and the authority of Satan.
Now let’s look at Spiritual Freedom. There are two categories of freedom related to authority: temporal freedom and spiritual freedom. Temporal freedom is authorized by the Laws of Divine Establishment. It includes your privacy, the sacredness of your property, and your life. Spiritual freedom is authorized by the Mystery Doctrine of the Church-Age, related to life in God’s Power System. Spiritual freedom can only function in God’s Power System. Spiritual freedom is related to believers only, but only those believers who reside in God’s Power System, under the enabling power of The Holy Spirit, along with momentum from metabolized doctrine.
The privacy of spiritual freedom is the believer’s priesthood which exists only during the Church- Age. All believers in the Church-Age are Royal Priests and represent themselves before God: … you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1PE 2:5) No longer is there a specialized priesthood like the Levitical Priesthood of Israel. Every Church-Age believer, regardless of race or background, is a royal priest.
The purpose of spiritual freedom is for the execution of the Pre-Designed Plan of God which results in the glorification of God through the function of the invisible hero. The function of this freedom is related to God The Holy Spirit’s Omnipotence inside God’s Power System under two principles. The first principle is the Filling of The Spirit. It can only occur inside God’s Power System. It is mandated in EPH 5:18: And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit and GAL 5:16: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
The second principle is perception of Bible doctrine which is the Ministry of the Holy Spirit inside God’s Power System. We learn about His Ministry in JOH 14:26: But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Jesus Christ teaches us about The Holy Spirit’s Ministry in JOH 16:12-14: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
Spiritual freedom without authority is ignorance of Bible doctrine. The authority for spiritual freedom belongs to the Pastor-Teacher who has the spiritual gift of the communication of Bible doctrine.
{to be continued}