'Invisible realm' UNSEEN by almost everybody on earth!

Risen from the dead in Luke 24, Jesus appears before His disciples and says, “Peace be unto you,” terrifying them because they think they’ve seen a spirit. He asks, “Why are ye troubled?” and proceeds to show them His hands and feet, encouraging them to “handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Jesus asks for some meat and is given a piece of a broiled fish and a honeycomb. While eating, He says, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.”

“The passage continues, [45] Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
[46] And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.

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“Is there anything new Jesus is divulging (in Luke 24)?” asked Preacher Alex Kurz in a Bible study from the other week. “The death of Messiah was already predicted. Nothing new about that. Anything new at all? You see what Jesus Christ is doing? He says, ‘Go back, go back, go back. Look at Psalms 22, look at Psalms 69, Psalms 41, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 53.’

“This is so critically important. Our objective is not to preach a unique system of theology. Our purpose is to preach Jesus Christ within the context of information never divulged in human history.

“Jesus says in John 5:39, ‘Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.’

“Do you understand that if you continue to preach Jesus within the context of His messiahship and His first coming as it relates to the nation of Israel, you are actually defying God’s commandment for edification? That’s why Paul says, ‘Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope.’

“We don’t decide on a whim how to preach Jesus. We have no right to pick and choose how we preach Jesus. God issued a commandment, saying, ‘If you want to be stablished and stabilized in your faith, you’re going to have to follow the design for proper edification and you can only find it through Paul’s gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery.’

"Paul writes in Romans 16:25, ‘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.’

“Paul explains in Ephesians 3:8, ‘Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.’

“Didn’t Jesus say, ‘Search the scriptures because they testify of me’? Paul doesn’t talk about searching Scriptures to learn about Jesus. He says, ‘The things I’ve been given are unsearchable.’ Paul’s saying, ‘You can’t go back to the Old Testament. Indeed, you can’t even go back to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.’ Paul’s the FIRST and Paul even says, ‘In me first.’ Words have meaning.

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“I Corinthians 2:16 says, ‘For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.’ The answer to the question, ‘Who hath been his counselor?’ is answered in this system of revealed information called ‘the mystery.’

“In Ephesians 3:8, you see what grace was given Paul. That verse pretty much sums it all up. In verse 7 he says, ‘Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.’ God by grace commissioned Paul to be a minister of the Gentiles, an apostle in the dispensation of grace.

“Look at how Ephesians 3 begins: [1] 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.

“This is God’s wisdom on open display and to demean and diminish the wisdom of God by continually focusing in on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, when even Jesus Christ says, ‘I’m not even sent to you guys' . . .

“Can you imagine if Jesus walked in this room right now and I said, ‘We’re here studying the Sermon on the Mount.’ He’d scratch His head and say, ‘Why are you teaching Jewish doctrine to a bunch of Gentiles? I said, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'

“That’s teaching Jesus according to prophecy and what did Jesus say? ‘Search it, guys. Nothing new. It’s already been there.’

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“The problem (for people who don’t see this) is a lack of faith. The problem is unbelief. The ultimate manifestation of Israel’s rejection and unbelief was they killed the very one who the prophets kept saying, ‘Watch out, He’s coming! He’s going to say this, He’s going to do that.’

“The Old Testament prophets even gave Israel a time table in which they could identify the Messiah on any calendar. God’s wisdom in advance told the nation, ‘He’s going to do a bunch of things. He’s going to command the waves. He’s going to command the water. He’s going to heal. He’s going to comfort the brokenhearted.’

“The Book of Psalms provides a wealth of detail about the Lord Jesus in His incarnation. Israel by faith, if they were studying the Word, would be, ‘Okay, we know by faith this is what He’s going to do. We know what He’s going to say.’

“Isaiah talked about the ‘good tidings’ and how the Lord’s going to release the nation from the bondage of the policy of evil. But those Old Testament passages also taught that there is a period of time in which He’s going to show up and, by the way, there were people already waiting for redemption; they already knew that they were in that period of time.

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“My point is this: Israel had the benefit of, for over a thousand years, access to the Scriptures. By faith they should have been studying. Paul says the ‘law was a schoolmaster to bring Israel to Christ.’ All of that Scripture was leading Israel to an intelligent identification of, ‘Who is this One? Who is this Emmanuel and how is it God’s going to tabernacle in human flesh?’

“When Jesus appeared, they said, ‘Who is this guy?’ and so what did the Lord do? ‘Search the Scriptures, search the Scriptures, search the Scriptures.’ The Apostle Paul never ever, ever says, ‘I’m just going to RETEACH what the law of the prophets and the psalms taught about Jesus.’

“By the way, when you understand the key to right division, the Old Testament makes crystal-clear sense. It breaks my heart when people say things like, ‘Yeah, when I get all discouraged I read the psalms.’ Some of those psalms passages are disturbing. Remember where God says, ‘I’m going to make your enemies a footstool'?

“Listen, there’s a lot of information about the Antichrist in the psalms. There’s a lot of information about the impending wrath of God in the psalms. Don’t get me wrong, are there passages that provide comfort? Yeah, if you’re in the tribulation.

" ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.’ Do you understand that’s a tribulation passage? It’s a glorious passage but it has NOTHING to do with somebody dying and going to a funeral and having someone pass out those little death cards. Beautiful passage but its immediate application concerns a Jew who finds himself in the 70^th week of Daniel.

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“What 'right division' does it unlocks the richness of ALL the Word of God. We don’t have to start spiritualizing and twisting it. Or like Peter says, ‘Wresting the scripture to their own destruction.’

“The ‘sacred secret’ found in God is Ephesians 1:9: ‘Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself.’

“Ultimately the mystery is the sacred system of hidden revelation that concerns the Father’s determined purpose. A mystery has to do with, ‘What’s God doing?’

"He’s the object of the mystery. The object of Jesus Christ’s message and ministry and life was, ‘Father, glorify yourself.’ The mystery has everything to do with the glorification of God the Father because He determined in Himself to do something.

“What is it the Father predetermined to do? Verse 10: ‘That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.’

“Who before Paul ever talks about this?! No one! Remember how Jesus taught seven specific mysteries of the kingdom?

“By the way, sometimes you hear, ‘Oh, you mystery people, you mystery cult, you guys reject what Jesus taught in Matthew 12-13 when Jesus says I’m going to tell you about the mysteries of the kingdom.’ Listen, there’s a difference between mysteries within a dispensation and an entire dispensation being a mystery! See the difference?

“They say, ‘Oh, you guys are always blowing smoke about the grace of God. Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord. Gotcha!’ Well, what happened to everybody else? They drowned. Did everybody else find grace in the sight of the Lord? No.

“Do you understand that God today is literally dispensing excessive, overabounding grace to who? Not just the world, but to a bunch of worthless sinners consigned to the satanic policy of evil through whom the 'spirit of disobedience' works. God says, ‘I’m going to dispense grace to everybody.’

“What is this mystery about? The Father determined that ‘he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.’

“Where before Paul do you read anything about that?! ‘All things in Christ, both which are in heaven …’ Wait a minute, isn’t Jesus already ‘lord of lords and king of kings’?  Why is this 'the mystery'? Why does God say, ‘I’m going to predetermine that in my Son all things are going to be gathered together in one’? Aren’t they already? No, can’t be. Not yet.

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“The point is, nobody ever talked like that before. The 'revelation of the mystery' has as its object the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ, not your eternity in heaven. We can and will live eternally in heaven because of what Jesus did as we by faith trusted in Him, but the mystery is, ‘Look at what I’m doing with my Son!’ That’s the mystery!

“In a very technical sense, if somebody says, ‘What is the revelation of the mystery?’ It’s that Jesus Christ is the supreme head, the supreme ruler, of ALL things. That demands that He wasn’t ever taught in the Old Testament as one who is the supreme emperor of ALL things because God says, ‘I kept this secret!’

“Colossians 1:18 says, ‘And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.’ What does it mean to preeminent? Jesus is going to be the universal emperor of two very specific realms. The Old Testament says NOTHING about that!

“Philippians 2 says, ‘Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name. [10] That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.

“What it means to ‘make all things one’ is all things are going to be centrally consolidated. It doesn’t say all things become the same thing. You can’t do that. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Two specific realms.

“Go to Revelation 21 and John saw 'a new heaven and a new earth.' The two never became one thing. Rather, the two are brought together in one under the supreme preeminence of the Jesus Christ. ‘In Him,’ as the verse says.

“So the issue has to do with this singular authority vested in the Son, the Lord Jesus. Did Peter ever talk about that in Acts? Did Jesus ever talk about that in His gospel ministry? Did the Old Testament ever say ANYTHING about that? It was a secret; mum’s the word.

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“Talking about Jesus, Colossians 1:15 says ‘Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.’ That doesn’t mean invisible because its unknowable or it isn’t real. It’s invisible because it’s the spiritual realm. But the point is, you have heaven that’s invisible and earth that is visible. What is it on earth that’s visible which correlates and parallels itself with whatever’s happening in heaven and is invisible? Paul tells us.

“Colossians 1:16 says, ‘For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.’

“Over and over, what we discover is that this mystery concerns itself with a specific realm—the unseen invisible realm.

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“In conducting His earthly ministry, did Jesus Christ ever say anything about how, ‘I’m going to rule in the heavens’? You know what Jesus kept saying? ‘Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth . . . Our Father which art in heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.’

“Where does Paul get off talking about thrones and principalities and powers and dominions and rulers in heavenly places? That’s crazy talk. Nobody ever talked like that before. Do you see why Paul was accused of being ‘beside himself’? Festus says in Acts 26, 'Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.' Paul was accused of being mad. He’s going off talking about these spiritual governmental structures. Paul was deemed mentally unfit. It’s kind of funny that he says in I Corinthians, ‘Whether I be beside myself, it’s okay . . .’

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“The focus of Jesus is, ‘I want this kingdom from heaven to come DOWN.’ The focus in Paul’s epistles is to redeem and rescue a people so they can be caught UP and function eternally in the heavens. There’s a big difference.

“Ephesians 2 says, [6] And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
[7] That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

“To ‘sit together’ means we will reign together. By the way, why does Paul say he ‘hath raised us up’ in present tense? Again, what is for us a future event is in the mind of God an accomplished fact.

“But here’s the point. The Lord Jesus kept talking about, ‘It’s coming down on earth.’ Paul’s telling us we’ve been RAISED. Paul’s always using language that prevents us from thinking our eternal hope is coming down on the earth. He uses deliberate language and terms that are always saying, ‘We’re outta here! We’re going somewhere else!’

“When the verse talks about how we’re seated already, in the mind of God, we ALREADY have the right to access and utilize some authority. The thrones, dominions, every name that’s named—those are the seats of governmental authority.

“By default, because we’re in Jesus Christ, and we are now living, loving, eternal members of this new creature ‘the church which is His body,’ as far as God’s concerned, He’s ALREADY installed us in the very realms of heavenly government. Is there anything we’re waiting for to happen down here?”