In the house

Popular Christian author Gene Edwards once argued that “the worst thing that ever happened to the Body of Christ” was the order in which the books of the New Testament appear.

“He said they should have been in the chronological order in which they were written,” recalls Jordan. “The difficulty with that is you can’t figure out when some of them were written. It’s much better to understand that when God put His word together, He collated the books and put them as they are.

"He didn’t wait until the 3rd and 4th centuries for a bunch of mossy-backed, apostate, spiritually dead church fathers and a council to do it. He had it done for you before the 1st Century was over. Every book in the New Testament was written, collated together and put together in book form before 70 AD and I use that year because that’s a date everybody knows about.”

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The word ‘trinity’ is not a Bible term but it’s certainly a Bible doctrine. Jordan explains, “If you don’t have a god you don’t have the ability to make decisions with moral certainty. You have to have more than a god because those doctors and those people out in the world have a god—it’s their own intellect. You have to have a triune god. Being monotheistic is not enough. If you have a one god and you don’t have the trinity, without the trinity you have no way to validate the authority and the truthfulness of the god you’re trusting. You just have his word for it.

“When you have a trinity you have three persons in the godhead who have observed and watched each other for eternity and they can each vouch-safe for the other’s integrity. There’s something about the godhead and the trinity—that’s a truth in Scripture that’s important. Fundamental to who God is the fact He’s a triune God. He stamped His triune image over all of creation, including you. You’re a tri-partide person and all of Creation has that image. There’s integrity in the godhead in that.

"By the way, we’re not just theo-centric, we’re Christ-centric. It isn’t enough to say, ‘I believe in God,’ because the Muslims and all kind of other people believe in god. It’s that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the God of creation through Him.”

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There are certain Bible passages many people who don’t know much of anything else about the Bible are familiar with. Classic examples include, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.”

Another big one is from John 14: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

“The reason people know these ones is they go to funerals and hear them quoted,” says Jordan. “You hear Psalm 23 and John 14 and occasionally you’ll hear John 3:16.”

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Those four simple words, “I will come again,” is the major message of the Bible. Jordan says, “There’s more information in the Bible about the Second Coming of Christ than any other single theme in all of the Bible. The very last thing it says at the end of the whole Book in Revelation 22 is, ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus.’

“That’s the reality of God’s intention to dwell in His creation. He didn’t create the universe just as a sandbox for us to play in, or a showplace to watch and see what we decide to do—He created the universe as place for Him to live; for Him to allow us to enjoy fellowship with Him. For Him to dwell among us. That’s what that word Immanuel means: ‘God with us.’

“The negative side of His coming is the flaming fire to do away with his enemies and evil and recompense those deserving of it, but in this passage in John 14 He’s talking about coming for His people, His saints.

“When Christ says He goes to prepare a place for you, He’s not saying, ‘I’m going to heaven to build a bunch of houses for you.’

“We sing that hillbilly song, ‘Just give me a cabin in the corner of glory land,’ and somebody says, ‘No, I want a mansion over the hilltop!’ which is from another hillbilly song. One of my favorite old gospel songs was, ‘And I shall go to dwell on Zion’s hill.’

“But there’s a lot of stuff in the hymn book that isn’t good doctrine. When He says, ‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ He’s not talking about going to heaven and working for 2,000 years on building you a house to live in, like another song goes. I know that’s sentimentalism but it’s unscriptural sentimentalism that turns into superstition.

“Think about how foolish that. The second person of the godhead could step out on the platform of nothing, speak a word and a universe is created. Why would He need two thousand years to create a home for you?! The sentimentalism is just kind of foolish. People argue, ‘Yeah but, He’s designing an intricate . . . ’

“How could He design anything more intricate than the creation you live in? Study the atom; study the science of our creation. The deeper scientists are able to dig into creation, or biologists into biology creation, the more complicated it becomes. It doesn’t get simpler. And there’s that creative complexity that’s designed in creation.

“When He says ‘in my father’s house are many mansions,’ He’s talking to His apostles about the temple that He’s going to build in the kingdom and the fact there’s a group of people who are going to dwell with Him in that temple—these people who come out of the Great Tribulation and go to this temple and serve there."

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If you go back to John 11 you see the word ‘place’ is not always used in a geographic sense. It can be used in a moral sense or, in this case, a spiritual sense.

John 11:47-48 says, “Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.
[48] If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”

Jordan explains, “They’re not talking about how they’re going to come down and kick us out of ‘our house.’ They’re talking about their position of rulership in the nation Israel. So when Christ is talking in John 14, He’s using that word place in that kind of idea of an idea: ‘I’m going to go create a position for you,’ and the fact He’s not talking about a physical location is demonstrated in the verses that follow.”

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The temple the apostles are seeing is called “my house” in Ezekiel 43-45.
“So He’s going to restore that temple in the kingdom,” says Jordan. “When it says ‘in my father’s house,’ He’s talking about the temple He’s going to bring down and set up on the earth in the kingdom. He says there are many mansions in that house. The reason he says that, if you look at Ezekiel 40, is because that’s exactly what’s in the house.

“Ezekiel 40:2-3 says, ‘In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south.
[3] And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate.’

“The frame of the city is that thing Psalm 104 talks about; the beams of His chamber being laid. But at this point, after their Second Advent, those beams are now exposed. The city hasn’t come down yet but the foundation is laid out for them to get there.

“Ezekiel begins to measure the environs there and lay out the measuring line and the measurements. Verse 9 says, ‘Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward. And the little chambers of the gate eastward were three on this side, and three on that side; they three were of one measure: and the posts had one measure on this side and on that side.’

“Notice that concept about the little chamber? You go down through this passage and you find there’s all kind of little chambers being built in this house and these chambers are little cubicles built into the wall.

“You can see it in the tabernacle of Solomon in I Kings 6. The people who ministered in the temple had their living quarters there. I Kings 6:5 says, ‘And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about.’

“You remember John the Baptist’s daddy, Zacharias, in Luke 1, he lived off in another town and had to go up to Jerusalem (when his course came) to serve in the temple for that week? David divided the priesthood up so every tribe of the two sons of Levi went twice a year to Jerusalem to work for a week in the temple. They’d come in on a Sabbath and leave the next Sabbath in the order of their course.

“Well, they didn’t have to go rent rooms at the Motel 6 or at the downtown Hilton while they were there. They had rooms provided for them in the temple—those little chambers. They were not chambers like over at the Motel 6. These things were decorated with cherubim and gold. They were mansions, gorgeous places befitting the temple of the God of all the earth; the God of Israel.

“When they rebuild that temple in the Millennium they’re going to have those chambers in there. They’re going to have all these dwelling places. . . A mansion is where a ruler lives. Well, the 12 apostles are going to be judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”

(Editor’s note: To be continued…”)