Gardenkeeping

Jordan recalls as a teenager have a one-time opportunity to hear Otis Wasson preach. He taught on I Corinthians 12:1 (“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant”).

Jordan says, “Wasson made the statement, ‘You know that expression Paul says, I would not have you to be ignorant, is found six times in his epistles?! Each time it focuses on something you better know about!’

“I wrote that in the back of my mind and said, ‘I wonder where those six times are and what those things are about?’ and I went home, as a teenager, and wrote them down and studied them out.

“None of them talk about the fundamentals of the faith. These people are already saved and he says, ‘As Believers, you ought to know and be careful not to miss because these things focus on the functioning of your life in time for God’s glory and your ministry.’

“Every one of these statements focuses on something that the Adversary, in his policy of attack and evil against the Body of Christ, is focused on; special areas where the Adversary knows it’s to his advantage to attack in order to neutralize you.

“Romans 11:25 says, ‘For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.’

“This second great ignorant statement focuses on Israel and the mystery of Christ. William R. Newell said the test of a man’s theology is the answer to the question, ‘Is he Pauline?’

“My pastor, Brother Roy Lange, used to say, ‘Right division is clearing away.’ When you go out to plant a garden the first thing you do is get rid of all the stuff you don’t want; the weeds and all that. But then you never get tomatoes to grow if you just do that. You got to go plant them. And if you don’t keep pulling the weeds away they choke them out.

“A lot of folks think, ‘Well, we understand about Paul, his apostleship and so forth,’ and they think that makes them Grace Believers. No, that made them good Mid-Acts Dispensationalists. But there’s a whole lot of Mid-Acts Dispensationalists who are just as legalistic as the guy who doesn’t know anything about dispensationalism at all!

“That distinction between Israel and the body of Christ is missing in theology today. There’s one thing missing in every systematic theology book I’ve ever seen. They talk about theology (study of God), anthropology (study of man), angelology (study of angels and the spirit world), soteriology (the study of salvation), ecclesiology (the study of church), and eschatology (the study of last times) but there’s one thing that’s never there—it’s Israelology.

“I never figured out why somewhere somebody didn’t say, ‘You know, you can’t understand the Bible if you don’t understand the nation Israel so why don’t we add into our theology some Israelology?’

“You can come with me to my study; I’ve got a dozen different authors, different schools of theology, other systematic theology books. Look through all of them from Louis Sperry Chafer (who is the most voluminous dispensational theologian) to Charles Baker, who would be in our camp, all the way the over to Birkhoff and Dabney and Strongs or to the modern guys and they won’t have anything, or very little, about Israel and nothing in a real study of . . . Paul says, ‘I don’t want you to be ignorant about Israel and the mystery.’

“Satan’s found that it’s to his advantage to confuse the two. You’re trying to be somebody you’re not and Paul says ‘Boy, you better not do that and early on in your Christian life you better get ready for it.’

“I’ve learned that when you come to the place where you don’t have any wisdom of your own and you’re willing to be weak enough not to know anything and you’re willing to let God know it and tell you about it through His Word, you can come to some real understanding about some things.

“Jesus said, ‘If a man will to know the doctrine he’ll know it.’ It’s a matter of your will. It’s not you choosing to not know it yourself, or let it be what your church says.

“In Romans 9, Paul begins to deal with the issue, ‘Well, what about Israel? Their program was running just fine. What happened?’ Pastor J. C. O’Hair once wrote a book, ‘You can’t understand the Bible unless you understand Israel.’ ”