I said something like, “If you didn’t know better you’d think the
Rapture wasn’t so far off after all,” to which my friend proceeded to tell me
his preacher says the timing of Christ’s return has something to do with the head
count of beheaded martyrs for Christ.
I told him about the theory that the exodus of Christians and the ushering
in of the tribulation will in some ways mimic Noah and his Ark, only this time
it’ll have to do with the number of those remaining on earth who understand and
believe in and are willing to communicate to others “the mystery of the
dispensation of grace,” as laid out by the Apostle Paul.
*****
At the beginning of Ephesians 3, Paul reveals one of the most
crucial chunks of information in all of the Bible. It is the whole ball of wax
really.
Paul writes, “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you
Gentiles,
[2] If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to youward:
[3] How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,
[4] Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)
[5] Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
[6] That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.
[2] If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to youward:
[3] How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,
[4] Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)
[5] Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
[6] That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.
*****
In a recent
study examining this passage, Jordan started out, “I’ve always loved that verse
where he says, ‘If you’ve heard.’ That means there’s some people there who
hadn’t heard.
“Paul spent
years in Ephesus ministering and now he’s writing back to them about ‘if you’ve
heard this.’ I think about that all the time. How many people do you know that
haven’t heard? Well, it’s a lot bigger than the crowd that HAS heard.
“How are you
going to understand this knowledge in the mystery of Christ? You’ve got to READ
it. You’re not going to sit under a tree and say, ‘Oh, Lord, show me what you’re
saying.’
“I sat a
whole hour with a preacher not too long ago where we went through some things
in the Scripture, and I drew out the ‘right division’ chart, and he said,
‘Well, brother, I’ll pray about it.’ I said, ‘Dude, you don’t need to pray
about it! You need to believe it or don’t believe it but there it is. You don’t
have to pray and ask is that true. Read the verse and tell me whether it’s true
or not!’
“People
listen to me on the radio and TV and say, ‘Don’t you know any other verses
besides Acts 3:21 and Romans 16:25?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I do. If you get those,
we’ve got some more coming. You got to get that first, though.’
*****
*****
“Paul
writes, ‘Which in other ages was not made known unto
the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by
the Spirit.’
“There’s that
which is spoken by the mouths of the holy prophets since the world began
(prophecy) and that which was kept secret (mystery). A six-year-old kid who
flunked kindergarten can get the difference between those two things.
“Preachers
who’ve been to seminary know Greek and Hebrew and all kinds of systematic
theology go, ‘Huh?’ You know why that is? Because it just takes simple faith in
what the verses say and what all that other stuff does is tell you how you
don’t have to believe it.
“You don’t
have to know anything about Greek or Hebrew, or have a college education or a
preacher who does have all that stuff. All you got to do it take a King James
Bible and read Acts 3:21 and Romans 16:25-26 and you can get it IF you want it.
“When you
read those verses and say, ‘I don’t get it,’ it’s because you don’t want it! You
see, God’s Word ‘discerns the thoughts and intents of your heart.’ This stuff’s
too clear. You can’t miss it unless you WANT to miss it. That’s just the long
and the short of it. I might as well be honest with you.
*****
“In Ephesians
3: 4 Paul tells you the way you get this is you READ, because as you read what
he wrote, you get his understanding about what God’s doing; about ‘the mystery
of the Church the Body of Christ.’ You and I are so completely, thoroughly
identified with the Lord Jesus Christ that we bear His name.
“I Cor. 12:12
says, ‘For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is
Christ.’
“You live
out of a consciousness of who you are. Everyone lives out of a consciousness of
their identity.
“One of the
big problems Christian people have is they think they’re Israel. You’ve never
been big enough a day in your life to make God do something He’s not doing and
He’s not forming the nation Israel today; He’s forming the Church the Body of
Christ.
“If you
can’t live in an understanding of who you really are then you live in a false
identity and that doesn’t bring success; that brings failure.
“So living
out of an understanding of who you are as a member of the Body of Christ is the
key to the Christian life in its application. You need to understand the way
God looks at you is He’s made you ‘accepted in the beloved.’ (Ephesians 1:6)
“I love
that. In Ephesians, Paul talks about being in Christ, in Christ, in Him, in
Him, and ONE time he says ‘in the beloved.’ He could have said ‘in Christ’
because that’s who the beloved is, but when he said he made you ‘accepted in
the beloved,’ I believe Paul did that because that puts your mind back to the
place where the Father looked at the Son and said, ‘This is my beloved Son in
whom I am well pleased.’
“Oh, that’s
a wonderful thing. You know there’s one person in the Bible who lived in the
consciousness of that identity of being the beloved? He wrote a book. He calls
himself ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ That’s not somebody else describing
him; that’s him describing himself.
“Five times
in the Book of John the writer calls himself ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’
He lived in a consciousness of the love of God for him. That’s a great study in
those things about ‘here’s what someone does when they live in a consciousness
of God’s love for them.’
“You’re
accepted in the Beloved. You’re in the one in whom the Father’s well-pleased.
He couldn’t be more pleased with you because He’s pleased with His Son. What a
status to have; what a position to have.
*****
“When Paul
talks about ‘my knowledge in the mystery of Christ,’ he’s talking about the
Church the Body of Christ and he calls it ‘the mystery of Christ’ because,
well, when God looks at the Body of Christ, He says, ‘There’s mine. It’s done.’
The Body is one in Him.
“The Body of
Christ IS the great mystery Satan didn’t know about ‘which in other ages was
not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed in his holy apostles
and prophets by the Spirit.’
“You read
that and you think, ‘How could anybody miss that?!’ Well, because they want to.
That’s the only explanation.
“What is this great mystery?
‘That the Gentiles should be
fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in
Christ by the gospel. Down in verse 9 he
calls it ‘the fellowship of the mystery.’
“What you and
I share together in the one Body is we’re fellowheirs, we’re the same body and
we’re partakers of His promise. You and I share together everything that God
has for us in His Son. It’s a fascinating thing about that.”
(new article tomorrow)
(new article tomorrow)
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