There are violent Christians who fly into murderous rages. Do they really believe they will enter the new Jerusalem? It never shall happen!

Some believers cannot accept authority. God will not accept them.

Gossip and slander must be conquered and there are to be no excuses or justification. The same is true of a critical spirit.

Some have to have their own way. If their will is not followed they make everyone around them miserable. The Christian wife forces her will on her husband. The husband dominates his wife. Such shall never inherit the peaceable Kingdom of God.

There are Christians who are malicious, believers who are bitter. There are no such personalities dwelling in the Presence of Christ. Such individuals must conquer these tendencies if they are to inherit "all these things." At present they are outside the wall of the new Jerusalem—Christian or not!

No form of sorcery or witchcraft is permitted in the Kingdom. Sorcery (witchcraft) is an attempt to manipulate the physical world by nonphysical means. The positive thinking, imaging, speaking creative words advanced recently as Christian practices are hardly that. They come dangerously close to sorcery and may in fact be a form of sorcery. We are not to have faith in faith but faith in Jesus. Can you imagine Jesus or the Apostle Paul exercising faith in order to get money?

Any experienced Christian could probably double the list we have just presented. These adamic and demonic lusts, attitudes, and practices war against us all the day long. They must be overcome if we are to inherit all these things, if we expect God to be our Father and to be called His son.

The following passage is used to support the idea that being an overcomer means merely we have "made a decision for Christ." I think there are passages in the Bible that the Holy Spirit put there so if our heart is wrong we can prove our error from the Scriptures. If so, this is one of them.

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (I John 5:4,5)

Verse five is used by some teachers to prove that to overcome is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Such an approach is Gnostic. It is to make the Christian salvation an affair of the mind rather than transformation into a new, righteous creation.

The New International Version inserts the word only which gives the true sense. Only the person who believes Jesus is the Son of God overcomes the world.

The passage is referring back to the concept found in the third chapter. That which is born of God overcomes the world. Our steadfast faith in Christ brings us to victory over the spirit of the world, the lusts of the flesh, and our pride and stubbornness. No person who does not believe Jesus is the Son of God can possibly overcome the world.

To be continued.