So easy to get; apparently so hard to believe

A noun generally gets its meaning from its verb form so the word "dispensation," repeatedly used by Paul, means “to dispense, to give out.” Another word for the same idea is “administration,” used by Paul in I Corinthians 12: “And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord."

“A dispensation is not a time period; it’s what’s given for man’s obedience during a particular time,” explains Jordan. “The issue is what God gave for man to know and to obey and to follow. Here’s this truth given to Paul and that issue of, ‘Have you heard it or not?’ is the key.

I Corinthians 11:1 is a verse of scripture that I’m convinced most preachers don’t know is in their bible. Paul writes, ‘Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.’ There’s not a hard word in that verse. That’s not hard to understand; it’s hard to believe.

“Paul said, ‘Follow me.’ Only three people in the Bible said, ‘Follow me.’ Moses was one because God made him the law-giver to Israel. Jesus told the people, ‘What Moses commanded you, go do that.’

“Jesus Christ is Jehovah God the Son who stood on Mt. Sinai and gave Moses the law. Did you know that? Jesus Christ is the eternal God. He’s the one who gave Moses the commandment; He gave him a position of authority in Israel and said, ‘You got to do what Moses tells you. Why? Because I’m telling him.’

“Jesus comes as God in human flesh but He’s also ‘a minister of the circumcision to confirm the promises.’ So He says, ‘Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.’ Now, that idea of being a fisher of men comes out of Jeremiah and it’s talking about rescuing the Believing Remnant of Israel in the tribulation, so He’s gathering them together.

“Then you come to Paul and he says, ‘Be ye followers of me as I also am of Jesus Christ.’ If you’re going to follow Jesus Christ today, you have to follow Him the way He wants to be followed. And He’s not being followed today as He was with Moses. The way you follow Him today is not as you did in His earthly ministry.

“The way you follow Him today is the heavenly ministry that He gave the Apostle Paul. It’s this new information that, previous to Paul in other ages, was not made known.

*****

“It’s a fascinating thing, if you start reading the book of Romans, you know what the first thing you read is? Paul. If you read I Corinthians, the first word is ‘Paul.’ It’s the same with II Corinthians and Ephesians. There are 13 books where the first word you read is the same word—‘Paul.’ You’d think people would get the idea that dude’s important.

“Paul writes in Romans 15:8, ‘Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers.’

"By the way, If you’ve got a different bible than I’ve got, your bible doesn’t say that. I’ve come to the conclusion that the New King James Version--any time you got to take somebody else’s name and put it on your bible to make it sell, you know there’s a problem.

“Paul says in Galatians 5, ‘A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.’ What the NKJV does is it takes the right text, almost always, and then uses the modern translation techniques to translate that text. That’s why it’s not a King James Bible. Because there are two issues really—one is the text and the other is the translation. That’s why a NKJV won’t tell you about the faith OF Christ. They retranslate those verses.

“Now, why do they do that? There is no logical reason that a first or second-year Greek student would translate that phrase from the King James, ‘the faith of Christ,’ as ‘faith IN Christ,’ because you learn rules about how to translate to tell you a genitive has a certain way to be translated.

“There are modern sophisticated gymnastics that say you can do it differently. I know about them. I read about them. But that’s my point. They’ve adopted the modern techniques of the translator. What did they do? They took that verse away from you.

“They take this verse in Romans 15 away from you. They say Jesus Christ IS a minister of the circumcision. Is He or WAS He? Is He? No. Izzy can’t get in; he’s down at the shop with Louie and Iggy. He WAS, but that’s a translation thing.

*****

“I’ve actually come to the conclusion that the NKJV is the most dangerous translation out there because you get so close and yet so far that you pull away things that you need in order to be able to stand on that truth.

“Someone told me the other day how they were talking about biblical issues to their family and the response was, ‘Well, your problem is you use a King James Bible. Your doctrine comes out of it, not out of our modern version.’

“I had a Baptist preacher sit across the table from me once and say, ‘If I believe the KJB is the Word of God I have to do just like you do!’ (Acts 2:38) I said, ‘What’s wrong with that?!’

“The new bibles says Jesus Christ ‘has become’ the minister of the circumcision. He hasn’t become; He was. He isn’t now; He WAS a minister of the circumcision. He WAS Israel’s minister. That’s why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all of His ministry, focused on the nation Israel. That’s why Jesus Christ would say, ‘I’m not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ That’s why He told His apostles in the great commission, ‘Don’t go to the Gentiles!’ That’s why He did that!

“It wasn’t because He didn’t love everybody but because He knew the program back there was that through redeemed Israel, and the hope God gave Israel, the nations of the earth would come to God. Christ knew what the program was and He was a minister of that covenant program.

*****

“A lady said to my wife recently, ‘Well, I can believe all that stuff about Jesus dying for my sins, but I can’t believe all that other stuff in the Bible.’ When asked, ‘What stuff?’ she said, ‘All that stuff like, whatever you ask you receive. I tried it and it didn’t work.’

“See, that’s what lost people are thinking about. The answer to her was, ‘Have you ever thought that He might not have been talking to you?’ I watched her eyes snap open: ‘No, I never thought about that.’

“If you got a letter in your mailbox tomorrow addressed to me from Publisher’s Clearing House saying you won $10 million, would that excite you? It wouldn’t excite you nearly as much as if it had your name on it, would it? People get that; they understand that.”