The doctrine of the hardening process

1. While the believer is commanded to persist there are certain attitudes, moods, status of soul, that hinder persistence or become antagonistic toward persistence. These attitudes are disillusion, boredom, discouragement, self-pity, loneliness, frustration, bitterness, jealousy.

2. It is not unusual nor abnormal to suddenly discover in your life these enemies of positive volition. The abnormal and unusual thing is to cater to them, and the believer caters to them by reaction. The believer caters to this status by reacting with a frantic search for happiness.

3. The frantic search for happiness always upsets the balance of the soul, and in this upset balance emotion takes over from the heart. The heart becomes hardened because the emotion doesn’t respond to it. Remember that the heart of the soul is the right man and the emotion is the right woman, and if the heart initiates and the emotion turns around and takes over the heart hardens. So coterminous with or immediately following is the upset balance of the soul which we call emotional revolt of the soul. Emotional revolt of the soul gives added intensity to the frantic search for happiness. If it happens to be a self-righteous search this is how we get holy-rollers. If it happens to be a lascivious frantic search this is how you get into the phallic cult.

4. The combination results in a changed attitude toward doctrine. The changed attitude can be apathy, indifference, or antagonism. This leads to some form of negative volition.

5. Negative volition toward doctrine produces the necessary scar tissue of the soul which creates a vacuum to the heart. The heart has already been hardened, now there is a vacuum line going to the heart of the soul. This vacuum line draws in doctrine of demons — 1 Timothy 4:1 — which is how we get the cup of demons in the devil’s communion table of 1 Corinthians 10:21. To drink of the cup of the Lord: supergrace; to drink of the cup of demons: reversionism. This is not demon possession, this is demon influence.

6. Resultant demon influence causes a blackout of the soul. The hardness of the heart shortens out all the systems of the soul. This blackout of the soul is immediately followed by a complete change of life, a spiritual and negative change called reverse process reversionism.

7. Under the hardening process the believer begins to sow that he reaps. First, in the category of self-induced misery, and secondly, in the category of divine discipline