By John Thiel, Let This Mind Be in You Conference, Study 2, mp3

The relation of the physical organism to the spiritual life is one of the most important branches of education. {COL 348.1}

Our physiological study and its relation to our spiritual life is one of the most important branches of education.

It should receive careful attention in the home and in the school. All need to become acquainted with their physical structure and the laws that control natural life. He who remains in willing ignorance of the laws of his physical being and who violates them through ignorance is sinning against God. All should place themselves in the best possible relation to life and health. Our habits should be brought under the control of a mind that is itself under the control of God. {COL 348.1}

We are honing in on this important, divinely appointed subject.

Those who understand physiology and hygiene will, in their ministerial labor, find it a means whereby they may enlighten others in regard to the proper and intelligent treatment of the physical, mental, and moral powers. Therefore those who are preparing for the ministry should make a diligent study of the human organism. {6T 302.1}

There are a lot of minsters of religion that are ignorant on the subject of physiology. It is an essential part of ministry. They must understand how physiology relates to spirituality in order to help people.

There is a science of Christianity to be mastered… {MH 453.4}

In the Christianity of today it’s all about the emotional worshiping of God without a clear understanding of what it is all about.

…a science as much deeper, broader, higher than any human science as the heavens are higher than the earth. The mind is to be disciplined, educated, trained; for we are to do service for God in ways that are not in harmony with inborn inclination. Hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil must be overcome. {MH 453.4}

Often the education and training of a lifetime must be discarded, that one may become a learner in the school of Christ. Our hearts must be educated to become steadfast in God. We are to form habits of thought that will enable us to resist temptation. We must learn to look upward. The principles of the word of God–principles that are as high as heaven, and that compass eternity–we are to understand in their bearing upon our daily life. Every act, every word, every thought, is to be in accord with these principles. All must be brought into harmony with, and subject to, Christ. {MH 453.4}

Why is this important? That through humanity the divine nature may be revealed in its fullness. That we may know how to let the mind of Jesus be in us. This is the objective of our research; to understand how the mind of Jesus, the divine nature, can be in us and can govern us. In the human physiology of the brain, we are governed by four different components of the nervous system. Have you heard voices or impulses pushing you in the brain? Four different voices in the brain alone plus humans, God and the devil talking to you. Which voice will you choose to obey? What does the Spirit of Prophecy say about these different components? Here are three areas of the human brain.

It is not enough to have an intellectual knowledge of the truth. . . . There must be an entrance of the Word into the heart. It must be set home by the power of the Holy Spirit. The will must be brought into harmony with its requirements. Not only the intellect but the heart and conscience must concur in the acceptance of the truth. {TMK 192.3}

There is the intellectual, the heart and the conscience that must be exercised.

There is but little moral power in the professed Christian world. Wrong habits have been indulged, and physical and moral laws have been disregarded, until the general standard of virtue and piety is exceedingly low. Habits which lower the standard of physical health enfeeble mental and moral strength. The indulgence of unnatural appetites and passions has a controlling influence upon the nerves of the brain…

What has the controlling influence? The appetites and passions that we have indulged.

The animal organs are strengthened, while the moral are depressed. It is impossible for an intemperate man to be a Christian, for his higher powers are brought into slavery to the passions. {3T 51.1}

We want to understand that physiologically. We have moral, intellectual and animal organs. Are the Atheists correct then when they say we are animals? Partially, yes. You and I have animal instincts, just like the animals do. But we have something higher than the animals, the moral area of the brain. Where is the animal part of the brain? The following statement from the Spirit of Prophecy is in relation to some women who used to put artificial hair pads over the base of the brain.

The artificial hair and pads covering the base of the brain heat and excite the spinal nerves centering in the brain. The head should ever be kept cool. The heat caused by these artificial coverings induces the blood to the brain. The action of the blood upon the lower or animal organs of the brain, causes unnatural activity, tends to recklessness in morals, and the mind and heart are in danger of being corrupted.–H. R. {HL 185.1}

The heat caused by these artificials induces the blood to the brain. The action of the blood upon the lower or animal organs of the brain, causes unnatural activity, tends to recklessness in morals, and the mind and heart is in danger of being corrupted. As the animal organs are excited and strengthened, the moral are enfeebled. The moral and intellectual powers of the mind become servants to the animal. {RH, October 17, 1871 par. 9}

There are mental/intellectual organs, moral organs and animal organs.

Jeremiah 17:1 The sin of Judah [is] written with a pen of iron, [and] with the point of a diamond: [it is] graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars;

Horns On Your Altars

Do you know what a horn represents? Governing power or control.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it?

17:10 I the LORD search the heart, [I] try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, [and] according to the fruit of his doings.

Reins are what you control a horse with. God is speaking scientifically here about the horns of your altars, your reins. Your heart has brain cells in it.

Isaiah 1:5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

1:6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head [there is] no soundness in it; [but] wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

God is saying we’re sick from head to foot. Your physiology is shattered. Our heredity and our cultivated history have shattered us. The sins are inscribed upon the horns of your altars. Physiologically you have horns. In the spinal column extending to the base of the brain. The base of the brain is the animal organ. It’s called the autonomic organ. The sin is inscribed with a pen of iron upon these organs. What happens? There is the posterior horn of your spinal cord and the anterior horn in the spinal cord. The posterior horn is where the senses travel, touch, taste and sight. The body is programmed to send those sensory messages up into the place of the brain where the brain decides what to do with the message it receives. It then sends the message back down the anterior horn called the motor nerve. What has sin done? Sin has developed reflexes. Have you seen a little child touch a hot stove and will cry but it hasn’t learned the reflex? There is a reflex action which jumps straight from the sense into the motor nerve for a response. That is one reflex action. Reflex and impulse is action without thinking. That is a consequence of sin. Sin has inscribed upon the horns of our altars so that you don’t think before you act. A lot of people do that, don’t they? But if you will permit the impulse/sense to arrive at the brain, it will then make a very careful decision and act accordingly in the moral organism of your brain in the frontal lobe.

This is developed in all its completeness at the age of 30. People will say 17 and 18 year olds have not had their frontal lobe developed properly. The mental part of your brain, the intellectual has to do with sight and other senses. In a child the mental has not been developed yet. It is still developing until the age of 20/21. The spiritual is developed at the age of 30. Then everything can function. But sin has happened and its thrown into chaos. In the middle is the pituitary gland. The endocrine system is to do with the animal organ. The pituitary gland is next to the thalamus, the emotional centre of our brain. When a wrong feeling is triggered by sin, the pituitary gland sends a message and says no. The hormone is in the blood without thinking. The adrenaline is pumped in without you thinking. It is the same thing in the sexual world. That is the animal instincts. There is the spiritual/moral, intellectual and animal. We have a mucked up system, sin has done some terrible things. What has sin done? This is one of the strong reasons why the world today does not want the bible.

It is not for want of evidence that men doubt divine truth; they are not infidels through ignorance of the character of the word of God. But through sin the whole human organism is deranged, the mind is perverted, the imagination corrupted. Temptations from without find an answering chord within the heart, and the feet slide imperceptibly into sin. And so it is that many hate the Bible. Some would not care if there were not a Bible in the world. {CT 424.3}

What does the bible do? It condemns what sin has been doing within us so we don’t want to know. I love my ignorance, ignorance is bliss. If anyone comes and teaches the truth, get out, because I love indulging my impulses, passions and feelings, is what the world says. The whole heart and head is sick. Sin has deranged my entire system. None of us are exempt. We like the idea that we are pretty good but don’t give over to that thought. We are a terrible mess. We are an electro-magnetic chemical soup, terribly mixed up. What’s going to happen? How can we be saved? The brain is the central control system connecting the wiring of your entire body. How does each brain cell pass the message onto the next cell? It stops at the end of the cell. The synoptic connect is dependent upon chemistry at the end of nerve, to connect the next nerve cell. Can you imagine if there was interference in that connection? What you do in your body, the chemistry you create, very much affects your mind. When you realise it’s all been deranged like this, is it possible that God can penetrate through that mess? Through this sin sick nervous system? Can he restore our system? These things make it impossible for us to see the way through. We need power outside ourselves to take us out of that mess, a true scientist.

Romans 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but [how] to perform that which is good I find not.

7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

The moment you want to pick yourself up, realise that God is right, know that the Ten Commandments are good and say okay I want to make a change but you can’t. The very good you want to do, you can’t do. The very evil that you don’t want to do, you keep doing! Is there any hope?

Romans 7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

The animal in you can control you. It will enfeeble and affect your moral and mental organs.

Romans 7:21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

7:22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

7:23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

It’s written on the horns of our altars. Before you even think, impulse, reflex, it all happens without thinking because sin has been in our flesh for so long through our hereditary and cultivated tendencies it becomes slavery.

Romans 7:24 O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. What does Jesus Christ have to do with rearranging this chemical soup? God knows exactly where we are. What does he do? He sends Jesus Christ who is God himself one of the three of the Godhead to be born of Mary. The Catholic religion teaches it was an immaculate conception. That means Jesus Christ was prevented from receiving the physiology of Mary. That is not biblical truth. Jesus received every item of our human deranged chemical nature. What was it for? He became at one with us so that through Him we might gain the amazing, beautiful answer to our derailed condition. Was there a time when Jesus nervous system was riddled with our kind of experience? Jesus bore our own sins, where? Upon his body? Some people read it this way but no, he bore our sins in his own body.

1 Peter 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Notice the way he described the experience on the tree, baring our sins. He is so anxious that we would recognise this with his plaintiff cry. I’m hanging here on the cross, please!

Lamentations 1:12 [Is it] nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger.

1:13 From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate [and] faint all the day.

1:14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand:

It was the yoke of my transgression laid on him so much that he says, the yoke of His transgression.

Lamentation 1:14 …they are wreathed,

Just like the wreath of a chromosome.

Lamentation 1:14 …[and] come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into [their] hands, [from whom] I am not able to rise up.

Jesus needs to be studied and then we will become totally humbled. When you realise the God of heaven came down to reach our deranged nervous system, our emotional, intellectual and animal confusion and partook of that in his body, what is the impact of this?

Hating sin with a perfect hatred, He yet gathered to His soul the sins of the whole world, as He trod the path to Calvary, suffering the penalty of the transgressor. Guiltless, He bore the punishment of the guilty; innocent, yet offering Himself to bear the penalty of the transgression of the law of God. The punishment of the sins of every soul was borne by the Son of the infinite God. The guilt of every sin pressed its weight upon the divine soul of the world’s Redeemer…

Can you imagine the terrible internal suffering? The purity of God suffering the pain of this system?

…. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. In assuming the nature of man, He placed Himself where He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, that by His stripes we might be healed. {TMK 66.2}

He placed himself, how? By receiving our physiology, deranged by sin.

In His humanity Christ was tried with as much greater temptation, with as much more persevering energy than man is tried by the evil one, as His nature was greater than man’s. This is a deep mysterious truth, that Christ is bound to humanity by the most sensitive sympathies. The evil works, the evil thoughts, the evil words of every son and daughter of Adam press upon His divine soul….

What pressed? The evil works, evil words and evil thoughts! Wonder why you had an evil thought when you didn’t want it? Had terrible dreams?

… The sins of men called for retribution upon Himself, for He had become man’s substitute, and took upon Him the sins of the world. He bore the sins of every sinner, for all transgressions were imputed unto Him. . . . “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3). {TMK 66.3}

If i neglect this, i will have no way out. This knowledge to reach the moral organs and intellectual organise of the brain. When he was going through this, what did this do to him?

Psalm 40:12 For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.

What did Jesus die of? High blood pressure. Such high bloody pleasure that it ruptured his heart, because he was suffering under the horrible conglomeration of all the sins of the world. When he cried out, my God why hast thou forsaken me, how did God respond? What is God’s attitude to a person in this deplorable condition and cries out, God help me?

Psalm 40:1 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

40:2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, [and] established my goings.

Jesus says into thy hands I commend my spirit. He waited patiently, even unto death. It was god that took him out of that horrible pit. That is god’s response. Are you in a pit? Do you feel overwhelmed? Cry out to god as Jesus did. God can do it.

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

He was quickened, that’s the old English word for new life. That is what happened at the resurrection. He did it for our sake, so that when we are in this mess that sin has created, thoughts and feelings that annoy me and have me by the throat, what is the quickening activity of the spirit of Jesus for you and me?

Ephesians 2:1 And you [hath he quickened], who were dead in trespasses and sins:

2:2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

2:3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

He has quickened us together with Christ. How was Christ quickened? By the spirit. As you and I take the word of God regarding Jesus into your intellectual mind, what is the transaction upon your nervous system? If you let this amazing story penetrate your intellect, what will it do that electrical current of life-giving energy? People whose hearts stopped, what do you do to them? You send an electric current through them and their heart starts. Man can do something.

We have great victories to gain, and a heaven to lose if we do not gain them. The carnal heart must be crucified; for its tendency is to moral corruption, and the end thereof is death. Nothing but the life-giving influences of the gospel can help the soul. Pray that the mighty energies of the Holy Spirit, with all their quickening, recuperative, and transforming power, may fall like an electric shock on the palsy-stricken soul,…

We are an electro-chemical soup. If God can send an electrical current through all that and rearrange it all, won’t you let him? The Holy Spirit has the energy of the whole universe.

… causing every nerve to thrill with new life, restoring the whole man from his dead, earthly, sensual state to spiritual soundness. You will thus become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust; and in your souls will be reflected the image of Him by whose stripes you are healed. {5T 267.2}

Isn’t that profound and precious? Let this happen to you. God can do it. We saw it in Jesus. Let it happen and look at the way the bible enunciates it.

Romans 6:9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

6:10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

You and I must reckon it to be so. Our intellectual organs that have received the message of what we have read, reckon it to take shape in our life.

Romans 6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

They came upon Jesus too. What did he to do them? He hated and repulsed them and he died entrusting it all to his Father.

Romans 6:13 Neither yield ye your members [as] instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members [as] instruments of righteousness unto God.

Yield to the impact of the Word and don’t any more yield to your sinful deranged soup. The apostle said, I die daily. Every day we need to do this. Not just once. Because we still have this deranged body we need the electrical shock every day. Some people think they’re saved at a single point. You are not saved unless every day you die to self.

Genuine conversion is needed, not once in years, but daily. This conversion brings man into a new relation with God. Old things, his natural passions and hereditary and cultivated tendencies to wrong, pass away, and he is renewed and sanctified. But this work must be continual; for as long as Satan exists, he will make an effort to carry on his work. He who strives to serve God will encounter a strong undercurrent of wrong. His heart needs to be barricaded by constant watchfulness and prayer, or else the embankment will give way; and like a millstream, the undercurrent of wrong will sweep away the safeguard.

No renewed heart can be kept in a condition of sweetness without the daily application of the salt of the Word. Divine grace must be received daily, or no man will stay converted. . . . {OHC 215.2}

You can never say I am saved because tomorrow if you are not watching and barricading, you can lose yourself.

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

What Jesus did at the cross with my sinful nature, he did every step of the way. Although he lived in that sinful flesh, he never sinned. This is how you can I can do the same. Yield to the shock treatment, let it happen. Let this mind be in you.

Amen.