And I will cause the captives of Judah and the captives of Israel to return, and will rebuild those places as at the first." - Jer 33:7-8

Wherever there is a rebuilding, there must have been a prior building. By saying that "That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun." Ecc 1:9, Solomon was declaring the fact that God's purpose today is simply a return to what was and not what will be. What will be is what was and not vice versa!

In the beginning, the King of kings, Jehovah, created a people that will have dominion on the earth. God did not create man so that we can live in the heavens but rather on earth; someone to take ruler-ship of the extended domain of the King of kings on the earth. These people where created perfectly to ensure that they can relate perfectly towards both the heavens as well as the earth. They were not created to function with any less perfection towards either of both worlds and indeed this was the case – this was intended to be the normal life style of God’s kingdom as extended on the earth.

The specie – man that God created in Genesis 1 was a spirit being and hence instantly craeted perfect. However, for these spirit beings to be able to relate perfectly towards the physical environment of the earth, there had to be a ‘forming’ as in genesis 2. While the word ‘create’ is from the Hebrew word ‘bara’, which literarily means ‘to bring something forth from nothingness’, the word form on the other hand is from the Hebrew word ‘yatsar’ and literarily means ‘to give something a shape or a physical relevance’. This is why God had to 'form' the man he had created... (Genesis 2:7)

It is very important to note that while in creating man God did so instantly, however ‘process’ went into forming the man as with everything else created by God! This ‘process’ is necessary in order for the created man to be well positioned to do the will of God perfectly on a physical earth. A created man that is unformed will not be able to make any impact whatsoever in a physical earth environment, which is why despite having been created earlier (as in Genesis 1), still this was recorded in Genesis 2:5: “before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground”. In essence, there was no physically perfected man to relate with the physically created earth environment! Rather, God had to “form man of the dust of the ground...

This state of physical perfection meant that the created man can now perfectly influence or in other words, govern or have dominion over the physical environment with a consistent synchronism between the spiritual environment, which he remains alive to, and the physical environment, which he is now as much alive to (Not more or less) and which is governed by the spiritual environment he remains powerfully affiliated to. This is the perfect state in which God’s purpose is seamlessly carried out. This is why in making the gradual return to this perfect order as originally intended by God, this just as with the first Adam, had to be by a second Adam who, existing in the order of Melchizedek, is made perfect (Hebrews 2:10) towards God as well as men.

When Adam fell (as in Genesis), what was lost was the spiritual perfection or affiliation. However, since the physical perfection is sustained by the spiritual affiliation, he ceased to relate perfectly towards both God as well as towards his physical environment – hence the one given dominion became dominated and could not carryout the perfect will of the Almighty any longer!

God’s goal ever since has been to bring about a new creation, which was perfected in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 5:17). However, where there is a recreation of the spirit-man, there most also of necessity be a ‘reformation’ of the man, to bring about the needed synchronism between the two environments he now relates with.

Just as with the creation in Genesis, the recreation is also perfected instantly (which is why ‘whoever is in Christ is a new creation’, not will be or is becoming!). However, as with the formation in Genesis, the ‘reformation’ is also about a ‘process’ – the process of causing the perfect nature intrinsic in the spirit-man to be seamlessly expressed in his everyday normal life style, making it possible for man to indeed govern or dominate his environment once again as was in the beginning. This today is the process of spiritual growth or maturity.

This end had been declared by John in Revelation 1:6 as being made kings and priests onto God; Kingship being the highest form of office towards men (having dominion on the earth) and priesthood the highest form of office towards God. The Church has however wrongly placed emphasis on the new creation and has spent several years waiting for a new thing – moving on to live permanently in heaven, in the course loosing consciousness of the need for process that alone can lead to the God-intended order, resulting in a non-movement for many believers. Many in the Church celebrated what God had done or said, and lost touch with what God is doing or saying – they gained understanding of recreation, but missed the much valid need for the journey to physical perfection or maturity as can only be achieved in a ‘process’ of reformation.

Without a submission to this process in God, the best that can bring us some sort of satisfaction is clinging on to religion which allows for going round in circles without a destination in view. Anyone desirous of attaining the place of absolute dominion on the earth must embrace the call to reformation, which also is a call to accurate kingdom living on the earth. So, seeing that the reformation is indeed real, just as assuredly as the new creation in Christ is a journey towards a finishing; a finishing that we know since it had already once been, not one yet unknown, let us let go of every limitation of religious living and hypocrisy and submit to God to be taken on a journey of reformation – an assured path to accurate kingdom living.