Because man is born into the world soulishly and physically alive, but spiritually dead, everything he does is out of the initiative of his soul and therefore sin. This is what we mean by man being in total depravity: not whether a person is good or bad but that whatever he does he does without God or God’s initiative. This is why anything man does cannot save or correct his lost condition because it comes from the initiative of his soul, not from the initiative of God. This is why secular psychology trying to solve man’s problems by focusing on his soul will not ultimately solve man’s problems. Man is dead and destined for hell and stays that way, no matter what his therapy is, until He receives Jesus Christ and is born again spiritually and comes back into relationship with God. Until man does this, he does not even begin to solve whatever his problems are because his trying to solve his problems through the reasoning of his soul, rather than through the initiative and counsel of God first, is the problem. Whatever man’s problem is, God’s will for him in the matter is the only solution. This is why Secular psychology is not the answer to any of man’s problems because they are not dealing with what is really man’s problem: his dead spirit and broken relationship with God, and what God’s will is for the person in the matter which when once known will solve the problem they are seeking counsel about. Understand that this is not an attack against the profession of psychology or psychiatry, but what it is based on. Psychology and psychiatry based on the Word of God and led and administered through the Holy Spirit is a very powerful healing tool. However, when based on man’s reason and the initiative of his soul alone is totally destructive and does not lead to any true solution to man’s problems or needs.

If man had not been created in God’s image with a spirit soul and body in perfect relationship with God, which was then later destroyed through man’s sin, that would mean that what man is today is what he has always been. This would mean that he is normal and that death is normal. This would also mean, therefore, that there is no meaning to Jesus’ death and resurrection for man because man is normal and therefore in no need of salvation. This is what happens when you do not take the first three Chapters of the Book of Genesis as literal historical fact: the Gospel loses all meaning and purpose and falls to the ground.

But if God did create man instantly with a spirit, soul and body and in His image and with everlasting life and man chose to rebel against God resulting in his spiritual and physical death (Genesis 2:16-17), then what man is today is not normal. Man is not what God originally created him to be. Death in the world is not normal. If this is true, then Jesus’ coming and death to save us from our sins and to deliver us from our fallen condition and spiritual and physical death have total meaning and an answer for the sinful condition that man is in. This is why we must take what the first three Chapters of the Book of Genesis teach us about the creation of the cosmos, the world and the creation, constitution and fall of man as being absolutely literally historically true and why we cannot alter these teachings of the Bible.

This is what page 3 of WEL does: first, it establishes that Moses is the author of the first five books of the Bible. Jesus said "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me" (John 5:46-47), thus Jesus affirmed that Moses is the author of the first five books of the Bible. Second, it establishes who Moses is writing about: Jesus said, "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me." Who was Moses writing about? About our Creator and His creating the world and man. What Creator? According to Jesus Christ, Moses was writing about Him. In saying this Jesus affirmed that He is Yehovah Elohim of the Old Testament our Creator in the flesh. Third, WEL affirms that what Moses wrote about the Creation of the world and Adam and Eve and about the fall of man and God’s judgment of man through the World Wide Genesis Flood and all other recorded events in the Old Testament, and what Jesus said, the New Testament: God’s Word is absolutely true and why: because Jesus came back from the dead Physically Alive! to prove to us that the Bible is true and that it is to be taken as literal historical absolute truth. Once you establish this, the person you are sharing the Gospel with will take to heart everything else you share in the pages that follow including that man is not normal but fallen sinful man and in need of redemption through Jesus Christ.

The third Biblical foundational truth that cannot be altered or played with, if we are to be successful in Evangelism and in bringing men and women to saving faith in Jesus Christ, is what the Bible teaches us Jesus claimed about Himself: that He is fully God and fully Man. The significance of Jesus being God Himself who came down from Heaven and became man is all wrapped up in what is necessary for our salvation. I discuss all aspects of this thoroughly in Chapter 8 of this Section.

Page four of WEL states clearly what the critical claims of Jesus Christ are concerning Himself. Jesus claimed to be God the Son, God’s ONLY Son. The Apostle John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Jesus said about Himself, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The Apostle Paul wrote concerning the significance of Jesus’ Physical Resurrection: "who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom 1:3-4). Jesus claimed to be the ONLY Son of God, thus of the essence of God, God Himself.

Second, Jesus claimed to be our Creator. The writers of the New Testament record:

"All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. . . . He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and the world did not know Him." (John 1:3, 10)

"God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the ages." (Heb 1:1-2)

"For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (Col 1:16-17)

See Illustration

Third, Jesus claimed that He became man through Holy Spirit conception of the Virgin Mary. Isaiah in Isaiah 7:14 prophesied about Jesus’ virgin birth: "Therefore Yehovah Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel." The Apostle Paul records, "Who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom 1:3).

Matthew, in the Gospel of Matthew 1:18-25, tells us that an angel of the Lord told Joseph, Mary’s husband to be, that Mary’s present pregnancy was by the Holy Spirit and that for this reason he was not to put her away. The full significance of Jesus’ conception through the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary is also fully explained in Chapter 8 of this Section. Second, the angel told Joseph that this baby’s name was to be Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. The significance of this being that Jesus means, Yehovah is Savior.⁵⁴ Jesus is Yehovah and the Savior from our sins. God speaking through Isaiah in Isaiah 43:11 states, I, even I, am Yehovah; and there is no Savior besides Me. Yehovah God of the Old Testament tells us plainly that He and He alone is Savior and that there is no Savior besides Him. The angel is telling us plainly that Jesus is Yehovah God of the Old Testament in the flesh who has come to save His people from their sins. Finally, Matthew tells us that all this took place as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 that a virgin would be with child and that the child would be God Himself in the flesh and that for this reason Jesus would be called Immanuel (lae WnM;[i) because Immanuel means God with us.⁶³

Some false religions try to say Jesus was not God but that God was saving us through Jesus. The angel however states plainly that He was to be named Jesus because He, Jesus, would save us from our sins. The angel makes plain that Jesus is the one who is doing the saving, thus affirming that Jesus is Yehovah in the flesh, the second person of the Trinity, saving us from sins.

Fourth, Jesus claimed that He died on the cross for our sins and that, fifth, He rose from the dead three days later as absolute proof to all these claims. The Apostle Paul wrote,

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as it were to one untimely born, He appeared to me also." (1 Cor 15:3-8)

Sixth, Jesus claimed that forty days later He ascended to heaven and will come again Physically Alive! to judge the living and the dead. Luke, the physician, wrote in the book of Acts,

"And after he had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was departing, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them; and they also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.’" (Acts 1:9-11)

Peter stated, recorded by Luke in the book of Acts,