A Tree in Our Soul

By Michael Tsaphah

A Tree in Our Soul discusses how the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil caused mankind to make the moral judgments of right and wrong. Michael Tsaphah's new book will explain why we suffer on this earth, because of this tree called morality. Also discussed are the word “righteous” and the difference between the carnal nature and the spiritual laws.

About the Author
Michael Tsaphah is a birth native of Reno, Nevada, raised by Raymond Edward and Mildred Jones. He is a veteran of the USMC, and now he's a teacher of the gospel. He has embraced the hand he has been dealt with by having clinical depression.
Michael thanks God for Carol Cluff, for giving him life, and his adoptive parents, for pushing him to grab his life by the horns and ride it to the end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891273511

Book preview

Preface

A man may believe his way is correct, but his logic may lead him to death.[1] Thus, we see death omnipresent in our world, desensitizing us to the wickedness around us. The apathy that led to the Fall of the Roman Empire is disturbingly mirrored in the contemporary United States. 

Today, divisions within the Body of Christ and clouded perceptions of morality and righteousness lead many in our country and worldwide around the world to follow religious traditions unthinkingly to follow religious traditions mindlessly—these range from Orthodox Catholicism to Protestant beliefs, fostering our society’s confusion between good and evil. 

The divisions we see today are fostering the rise of the Anti-Christ Spirit. This Spirit can cause many to falter, masking itself in religion as Adam and Eve did with fig leaves. As human beings, our focus should be on Jesus Christ rather than religious performance, which manipulates human emotions, morality, and natural affections, leading to spiritual bondage. 

Those trapped in this bondage live in fear of death and harbor bitterness, a bitter root that brings forth stringent bondage by undermining trust in the words of Christ. Consequently, many of God’s saints harbor resentment. 

A lack of unity within the religious community prevents us from dispensing justice. There’s no one to proclaim what is right or wrong. This brings forth a question: What does being right or wrong have to do with securing a place in Heaven? Is being a morally upright person enough to please God? Do you measure up when you assess your life through God’s Word? Or do we have freedom even within our captivity?

Historically, society’s perception of morality has consistently judged humanity. However, can we persist in judging ourselves, others, and God based on our conception of right and wrong? This only proves our lack of understanding. Ancient civilizations crafted moral codes based on God’s Ten Commandments, a spiritual, moral code for humanity.[2]

God delivered the Ten Commandments around 1441 or 1440 B.C.E., writing them with his finger. However, before these commandments, man adhered to a moral code inscribed on his heart. The Ancient Sumerians, for instance, had scripted laws for social order around 4500 B.C.E. 

Every ancient civilization employed a moral code centered on right and wrong. But what is God’s criterion for judgment? Is it another law or principle, or do we merely follow the broad path of morality paved by men’s traditions? The doctrines of devils and traditions of men have supplanted the Word of God, leading to a counterfeit sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence among believers today. 

Does religion utilize man’s earthly emotions, sensually natural affections, and devilish doctrine of morality to keep him in the Spirit of bondage?[3] 

Many fall from God’s grace out of the fear of death and are bound by a root of bitterness and hard bondage. They will abandon faith, succumbing to seducing Spirits and the teachings of demons.[4] Hence, many of God’s saints are bitter, fearful, and bound by oppressive Spirits. 

As I look back on my life, I see a long journey, thirty-seven years out of forty, I was wandering in a spiritual and physical wilderness. 

My time in the Marine Corps was marred by alcoholism and aggression. I never rose beyond the rank of Corporal (E-4). Rather than receiving deliverance from the demons of my childhood, I sank deeper into the darkness of oppression due to my disobedience. 

Upon leaving the Marine Corps, I used my separation pay to attempt to start a business and become a private investigator. However, my endeavors resulted in homelessness and a lack of success in my career. I was stabbed and died on the operating table, only to stand before God the Father, who judged me for the sins of my soul. Like me, many others search for religious experiences to fill their voids. 

As humans, we tend to transform the image of the incorruptible God into a likeness that aligns with the corruptible man.[5] Despite inviting Jesus Christ into my Spirit at twelve, I was left without a mentor to guide me. Like the root system of a bamboo tree, my faith grew slowly out of sight of humanity. The Spirit of God urged me to read the Gospel of John multiple times. 

Seven years later, I briefly returned to Christianity in an attempt to be an excellent father to my first two children. Eight years later, I again dedicated my life to Christ and was filled with the Holy Spirit. However, my soul remained wild and rebellious. I had rejected God’s call when I was seventeen. During my six recorded years in the Marine Corps, God used the Corps to teach me discipline. 

Despite these teachings I failed to glorify God, and He seared my heart until I cried out for help. On December 12, 1990, I was stabbed, and though the emergency surgeon attempted to save me, my soul and spirit was taken to Heaven to be judged for my sins and iniquities. I cried out to God the Father in Heaven but still wandered in a spiritual and physical wilderness.

Today, the Church is infiltrated by spiritualism, worldliness, and witchcraft. God has given humanity over to uncleanness through lust, covetousness, idolatry, charismatic witchcraft, and all other forms of rebellion. This behavior brings dishonor to their bodies and the Church of God. The tree amid our soul’s garden represents the worship of Satan, which will be performed for the spirit of the Antichrist. 

In the future, the Son of Perdition will manipulate humanity into worshipping him through witchcraft and spiritualism. As the religion of Satanism grows in popularity, it will eventually become the standard for getting closer to Satan. Generations will continue to follow and revere more doctrines of devils. 

Humanity’s unrepentant soul alters how we perceive the world through our immoral personalities. My thinking pushed my reprobate personality into darkness until I asked God for help. My soul plunged into a thirty-seven-year-long wilderness, aimlessly wandering for forty years. God took me on a quest from mountaintop to mountaintop. Hurry, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices. [6] The soul is defined as a person’s mind, will, and emotional state.[7] Therefore, our souls can help humanity oversee the behaviors that arise from a delivered reprobate soul.

Satan used the woman in the Garden of Eden as his psychological cadaver, studying her Spirit and soul. Adam and Eve were oblivious to Satan’s scrutiny. Only Adam was privy to the Law of the Garden of Eden regarding the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet…

Satan planned to challenge Eve’s knowledge of the two trees in the garden. He manipulated her mind, will, and emotional state by giving her post-hypnotic suggestions.

Satan used the serpent, a creature that walked on four legs and was considered beautiful, to tempt Eve through the lust of her eyes, her flesh, and the pride of life. Satan chose to speak to Eve, who was emotionally more in tune with her senses, rather than the more logical Adam.

This book will instruct both saints and sinners to understand the difference between being right and being righteous; the true meaning of righteousness; the definitions of nature, natural, and carnal; the definition of true morality; the meaning of traditional values; and the evidence of spiritual and natural laws and their creator. It will also explore how we can worship God and define the real meaning of the Tree of Morality.

I must warn potential readers that this book may not align with the political correctness of this generation. It may offend those not prepared to unclutter their thinking or hear this kind of information, especially those not spiritually minded.

In this book, we will delve into many aspects of the true meaning of morality, the origin of right and wrong, and various doctrines currently present in the Church to determine whether they are true of God. Have the serpent’s lies seduced us, or are these philosophies, new disciplines of study, and values derived from God’s wisdom and knowledge?

I hope this book enlightens you and your loved ones. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you as the Holy Spirit reveals the truth that will set you free.

Enjoy,

Michael Tsaphah

Chapter Notes

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1) Proverbs 14:12 (paraphrased), Oxford Theological Scholars of the Church of England, 1981 (1611)

2) Romans 7:12

3) James 3:15 (paraphrased)

4) Romans 8:15

5) 1 Timothy 4:1; Hebrews 2:15 (paraphrased)

6) Romans 1:23-24

7) Song of Solomon 8:14

8) 1 Thessalonians 5:23

Chapter 1

Is It I’m Right Or His Righteousness

Can anyone tell me if they’ve met people who always think they are right? Even when you have backed them into a corner with proof, they are wrong. You provide a truthful answer that you know has come from a dependable source or God Himself. Yet their response is always the same: They are correct, and everyone else is wrong.

Regardless of the argument, they claim they’re correct. It’s not about what is right or wrong; it’s about who is determining the correctness. Consider a situation when you’ve offended someone and assert that you have the right to defend yourself. Let’s say two people get into a disagreement that leads to a fistfight. How can the police judge the situation justly without all the facts when they arrive to control the disruption?

I recall an incident from when I was five years old. My mother, sister, and I were heading downtown for lunch after my appointment at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, a town still under Jim Crow law. My father, Raymond E. Jones Jr., was away, fighting in the Vietnam War. My mother went into the restaurant’s back alley of the restaurant to get us food while my sister Alicia was tasked with watching me.

Throughout our country’s history, there have been clear violations of people’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. However, we must need to distinguish between these infringements on rights and those unrighteous and sinful actions that are unrighteous and sinful before God. We profess wisdom, but we have become fools.

We have the freedom of religion, not the freedom to suppress others’ rights to believe or disbelieve in a God or gods of their choosing. We have freedom of the press, not to express vulgarity that objectifies children and women. We have the right to lawfully assemble, not the right to pillage and riot indiscriminately. We even have the right to bear arms for self-defense, but not to wage acts of terror on innocent people.

If we do not believe that God was the first to bestow upon humanity the right to live freely—firstly with Him, then with each other—we must ask ourselves: From where does the term right originate in human vocabulary?

If you believe I’m casting stones at any liberal, atheist, or agnostic while residing in a figurative glass house on this rights issue, consider this: Being a liberal is a choice, not a right. I am not a conservative, nor am I religious. I am a moderate and a believer. I don’t vote according to party affiliation.

To address the subject of right and wrong, here’s an example. Imagine you’ve spent a year studying exhaustively for an exam, and your hard work is rewarded with a 100% score. Then you discover that a classmate, who never attended classes and received a copy of the test from the dean of students in exchange for some unspecified favor, also received 100%. Would you feel indifferent? In all honesty, you would deem that person untrustworthy. You may go out for drinks with them or even share a more intimate connection, but would you trust them to oversee your taxes or offer them a position in your company? The answer is no.

This leads to the question, where does the word right fit into our definition? The word right originates from the Hebrew word Mishpat and the Greek orthos, signifying straight, level, true, or timely. According to the dictionary, rights are entitlements to a certain treatment grounded in one’s status. In the modern Western tradition, these are natural rights inherent to every human being. Other rights are acquired through contracts or ownership.

The comprehensive definition of right means to possess good moral character and make correct choices that benefit both you and humanity. The Hebrew word for moral, in terms of character and actions, is Tahor, signifying purification in a physical, chemical, ceremonial, or moral purification sense. In Greek, eleutheria means freedom, whether legitimate or licentious, primarily moral or ceremonial.

However, what if yesterday’s rights are no longer today’s modus operandi? What if behaviors considered wrong in the past (blasphemy, lying, stealing, adultery, and covetousness) become acceptable in today’s social order?

For example, my biological mother, Carol Cluff, a Caucasian woman in the 1960s, became pregnant from my birth father, Bruce Johnson, an African-American man. She was a college senior; he abandoned his paternal responsibility, leaving her alone. What should she have done? Kept the baby and leave college to raise the child? Found a back-alley doctor to perform an abortion? Had she secretly aborted the child herself? Put the child up for adoption?

In my case, options D and A occurred. My mother raised me for six months, then put me up for adoption when she felt she could no longer care for me. So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

Before anyone accuses me of being pro-life or pro-choice, let me clarify: I am both, and so is God: Today, I have given you a choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on Heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. You choose life that you and your descendants might live! Deuteronomy 30:19 MLT

Once you’ve made your choice, live with it. I will never tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. However, the decision to end a human life, no matter its size, has numerous mental and physical consequences. I leave that decision to you, dear reader.

Consider this: What if our societal decisions are no longer measured by good and evil but by what we can evade in societal norms? For instance, a political official is predicted to win an election regardless of the outcome. However, he desires a landslide victory and loses in several areas where the opposing candidate is favored.

The predicted winning candidate contacts the state’s governor, directing him to close certain areas where fifty to a hundred people intend to vote. It’s of no concern to him that these people have been standing in the heat for hours, waiting to exercise their right to vote.

Many have fought and died for the rights we often take for granted, requests that we should not simply relinquish for the sake of personal security. The events of September 11 can’t be an excuse for every infringement, and we can’t permanently always hide behind the government to solve our problems of personal responsibility. The question of right and wrong has been with us since the Fall in the Garden of Eden.

These right and wrong decisions of right and wrong have caused us to stray from God’s truth. We’ve partaken in the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. My theory is that this knowledge of good and evil constitutes our sense of morality, the measure we use to discern right from wrong.

To illustrate, I’ll use a story I read in a newspaper. A husband comes home from a hectic day at the office. His wife has spent the day performing her domestic duties and is about to relax with a bath. The husband insists on intimacy before she bathes. When she refuses, he waits for her to fall asleep when she refuses and then forcibly has his way. The following morning, the man wakes to find himself bleeding profusely. His wife had taken drastic action in response to his violation.

Though this example may be graphic, it illustrates a point. Is the phrase I want it right now being misused wrongly here?

These hasty decisions, made without consulting God, the owner of us all, could be considered wrong according to the Bible. When you say to others, I want it right now! are these instant decisions rooted in God’s righteousness, or are they merely expressions of selfishness?

We have mistaken personal rights for the justice and righteousness bestowed upon us by God. We’ve divorced our spouse, justice and righteousness, and wed ourselves to the whore of being right. What’s the yardstick we use when trying to do what’s right? Does being correct all the time please God? If being right doesn’t please God, what does?

Let’s look at what truly pleases God according to His story, as told in the Bible: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

Chapter Notes

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8) [Strong] H4941

9) [Strong] G3723

10) Merriam-Webster Dictionary [© 2000] paraphrased

11) [Strong] H2889

12) [Strong] G1657

13) Isaiah 5:20 [original]

14) Romans 8:1 (NLT)

15) Deuteronomy 30:19 (NLT)

16) Matthew 6:33

Chapter 2

The True Meaning Of Righteousness

As you have read in the previous chapter, we will try to define righteousness, which is two principles (laws). The two principles are based on 1 Thessalonians, chapter five, verse eight. The scripture reads: …Putting on the breastplate of faith and love….

Knowing the difference between being always right and walking in the righteousness of God the Father is based on seeking his will. Moreover, being righteous is not just talking about being in God.[15]

Seeking and doing the will of God is an act of faith and love. These two actions are made up of the Laws of Faith and the Royal Law of Love. According to Romans, chapter three, verse twenty-seven, the Law of Faith reads: Where is boasting then? It is excluded; by what Law? Of works, nay: but by the Law of Faith.

The Law of Faith states that faith always happens today, and faith is in eternity at the same time. Faith is the substance that moves God to act on your behalf. It will be the evidence of how you put total trust or hope in what God said in his word.

Now if God isn’t trusted, the faith will not work. In addition to this evidence and hope, the agreement from you toward God’s word and agreement from Christ Jesus and another like-minded person in the Spirit of faith. This trust and agreement in knowing that God will reward all that seek him first. If this law is not operated totally, then you don’t have faith but are afraid. And you are working in the Spirit of fear.

In the Royal Law of Love, this law states in James, chapter two, verse eight: If ye fulfill the Royal Law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ You do well. [17] This law will be discussed more in depth in a later chapter to show you, the reader, how far we have departed from the truth of God’s word.

Combining the two principles (laws) gives you God’s absolute righteousness, and they are the kingdom of God’s principle. The entire realm of Heaven and the universe is operated under the Law of Faith and love, along with abiding under several other principles that will be discussed later in this book. We must learn how to operate in righteousness and define the word’s true meaning.

In Romans, chapter fourteen, verse seventeen, we find that the kingdom of God isn’t meat or drink, which in layperson’s terms means God’s kingdom doesn’t consist of the possession of material things of the carnal world, nor by what we try to obtain. Then, we must learn to maintain what God has given us spiritually and naturally.[18] Although God uses what we call gold and other precious metals and gems to build his kingdom[19] He doesn’t care about the mammon or its value, nor does he lust to obtain more.

The total driving force of the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy, and these spiritual attributes are found in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Those attributes of the kingdom of God are the character of the Spirit of God. Moreover, God wants humankind seeking after him with the same intensity as one would if one were a soldier charging after the enemy.[20]

Let me warn you of this intensity of going after righteousness, which the seeking of justice in a legalistic fashion can lead to the error of self-righteousness. You could end up working into a doctrine of devils and forming a heresy that can make you misread the below passage of the gospel of Luke, chapter sixteen, verses sixteen and seventeen, like many denominations