No need for Antichrist hand signals

While the “Ancient Mysteries” are being studied at a seemingly unparalleled pace today in the all-consuming demand for "illumination and enlightenment" by the New World Order's elite, the real mystery, the one that defines New Agers' gross ignorance, remains hidden in plain sight.

Paul writes in I Corinthians 2:7-8, “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
[8] Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

In a nutshell, before God created anything, the godhead had an eternal life conference where they devised a plan to form the church the Body of Christ.

After sin entered with Adam, Jesus Christ agreed to come to earth and die for man’s sins. From heaven, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ reached out and saved Saul of Tarsus and made him the preacher and teacher of some information formerly kept hidden, precisely so man WOULD crucify Christ.

Satan thought that since his angels had control over the heavens through the rebellion he created up there, all he needed to do was kill off Christ to secure control over the earth and heavens.

What Satan didn’t count on was that the death and subsequent resurrection of Christ would make it possible for anyone—Jew and Gentile—who just believed in Jesus Christ’s accomplishments through His death, to gain a position of control in the heavens through their membership in “the Body of Christ.”

The clue-in passage from Paul the vast, vast majority of Christianity doesn’t see for what it is is Romans 16: 25-26: “Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,
[26] But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.”

 

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“Secret” is the Bible word that’s hardly touched on in any theological commentaries, textbooks, dictionaries, etc. They don’t even try to examine it, even though it has absolutely everything to do with understanding God’s program for humanity.

God the Father has made known to humans the secret of His will; something that He purposed in Himself. Ephesians 1:9 says, “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself.”

“This is the wisdom God ordained before the world unto our glory,” explains Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). This is the information that back here before the foundation of the world, before Genesis 1:1, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit—the triune godhead . . .

“Now, when He calls it ‘the secret,’ that means it’s something He didn’t reveal back here (before Paul’s ministry). Since the world began, He did reveal what the Bible calls ‘prophecy.’ It’s literally that God the Father takes us back into the board room of eternity past and says, ‘Here’s the original plan. Here are the minutes of what we plan to do.’

“I Corinthians 1:21 says God back before the foundation of the world, in His sovereign free will, determined to make (Believers) into the Body of Christ. In theology talk, they’re called the ‘eternal decrees.’

“My point to you is these decrees, these plans that God purposed in Himself back there, what does the verse say about them? He’s made them KNOWN. There’s no secret plan that God had before the foundation of the world that is STILL a secret. You got to get this!

“What was once a secret has NOW been made known. If He hadn’t made it known, you would have never known it was there because it was a secret.

“You see, we have secrets from one another, but you really don’t want a secret you haven’t told anybody, because if somebody doesn’t know I’ve got a secret, I get no jollies out of it.

“But if you know the secret, and you know I got a secret, and we know we’re not telling anyone else the secret, then you and I can have fun.

“God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—THEY knew the secret! They had fun with it. They had their jollies but they just didn’t tell anybody else outside of the godhead.

“That secret is what they purposed in themselves. Each one of these members of the godhead purposed and came to an agreemet about what they were going to do.

“If you’re going to have truth that’s going to pursue God-likeness, if you’re going to have truth that’s going to pursue a thinking that matches the thinking of God, you’re going to have to get it through Paul because that’s what his apostleship is for.

“Here’s what his message is founded in: ‘In hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began.’ God, before the world began, promised eternal life. Verse 3 says Jesus Christ reaches down, saves Saul, and through Paul the Apostle reveals this mystery that he kept secret since back here. That mystery was God promising eternal life.

“Now, that matches Ephesians 1:9 when He says this is information that He purposed in Himself. If I make a promise to somebody—‘I’ll promise I’ll do it’—who was back here for God to promise anything to? It’s before He made anybody. But was there anybody there?

“Ephesians 1 says ‘he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.’ Before the foundation of the world, He predestinated us that we should be ‘without blame before him in love.’

“In John 7, Jesus prays to His Father, and He talks about the love they shared together before the world began. We know that the love God has for us today, when He puts us into Christ, is really the love He had for Christ before the world began. You see you share in everything that belongs to Jesus Christ!

“And when you go down through Ephesians 1, you’ll see that He put you back into this relationship that the Father had with the Son back here before any of this mess started.

“Well, who’s he promising things back there to? There are only three people back there. When Jesus Christ stepped out on nothing and created the universe, He had a plan in mind that among themselves (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) they were going to accomplish.

“Do you ever do that? Promise yourself you’re going to do something? If you were God, do you think you could accomplish it?”

 

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“The Corinthians, as Paul tells us, were not able to receive these secret things God intended to do from before the foundation of the world, through the Crosswork of Christ,  because they remained ‘carnal as unto babes.’

“In other words, there was some information they needed to get, but they couldn’t get it until they grew up to the place where they could handle it. ‘So we speak the wisdom of the mystery.’ What wisdom? The hidden wisdom.

“See how that verse there (2 Cor. 2:7) defines for you what the mystery is? What is the mystery? What is the secret? It’s the hidden wisdom. It’s hidden. It’s secret. But it’s hidden WISDOM. Now that wisdom aspect that is available for advanced understanding is what the Book of Ephesians is about.

“Paul reminds in Ephesians 1:8, ‘Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.’ This wisdom is for people who’ve gotten the foundational edification in their life established. They’ve grown to maturity. They’ve become oriented to the grace of God. They understand what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ and how they’ve been equipped to live on Planet Earth as a member of the Body of Christ in all the details of their life. They learn what the ministry of the Body of Christ is in time.

“Now, for that person, there’s some wisdom that’s an advancement on that. Prudence is a step beyond wisdom. You know there’s knowledge when you know things. Wisdom is not just knowledge; it’s how to apply that knowledge for the best advantage. But prudence is beyond that.

“Prudence gives you the lay of the land. It isn’t just that you know how to operate right now, it’s that you understand that what you’re doing gets into the Big Picture.”

 

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Paul reminds in II Corinthians 10: 4-5, ‘For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’

“I’m going to tell you that for years I misunderstood that verse,” admits Jordan. “There was a time I would have told you that what you need to do is corral up all of your thinking and make your thinking obey what God says in His Word. Then it dawned on me one day that that was stupid because you couldn’t do that anyway!

“It doesn’t say obedience TO Christ; it says obedience OF Christ. That’s not taking your thinking and saying, ‘I have to think the way God says think.’ Because you know what you’ll do? You won’t think that way!

“God’s grace doesn’t say, ‘Here, do this. Work and I’ll give you this reward.’ That’s ‘law’ thinking. The reason grace doesn’t do that is because grace knows you CAN’T do it! The law commands and you fail.

“The verse says it’s OF Christ. Whose obedience is the issue in the verse? Not your obedience but HIS obedience. That’s where I had gotten it backwards.

“What is the obedience of Christ? Philippians 2:8 says, ‘And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’

“Romans 5:19 says, ‘For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.’ It’s not your obedience; it’s HIS obedience. He was obedient to the Father’s will; He went to the Cross.

“Now, you know wives love to quote that verse in Ephesians 5: ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.’

“They set up the standard of, ‘Okay, you do this, this and this and that means you’re loving me like Christ loves the church,’ but that’s not how He loved the church. He loved the church according to the will of His Father.

“You follow that? If you ever get that, it will blow your mind. Christ loved the church. He said, ‘No man takes my life from me; I lay it down.’

“How in the world could Jesus Christ go to Calvary and be MADE sin and not be a sinner? Sin is a transgression of the law. The answer is He was made sin in obedience, not in rebellion. It was obedience to the Father’s will. He loved you and me out of obedience to the will of His Father.

"He was walking by faith, and when you bring your thoughts into captivity to what He has accomplished for you, not what you’ve got to do, but what He’s done . . . our task is simply to focus on that.

“Paul says in II Corinthians 3:18, ‘But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’

“As I behold His glory, the Spirit of God takes that glory that shines in the face of Jesus Christ and puts it in me and then out through me and that’s what transforms me.

“That’s being strengthened by might, that transforming power of God in your inner man by His Spirit. That’s the process, that’s the path.”