The Church is not established upon her understanding of end time events, but upon her revelation knowledge of Jesus Christ.
The Book of Revelation itself is NOT primarily the revelation of what the end of the world will be like (although we do learn that), but the Revelation and Testimony of Jesus Christ (Revelation 1:1,2). How many of us have been taught that the book of Revelations is mainly about end times?How many of us have been taught that the Book of Revelations main topic and point is the revealing of Jesus Christ as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, is beyond dispute?
The Church is not built upon Peter the individual,as the Catholic Church believes and teaches, but upon all those who know Jesus Christ by revelation (Matthew 16:17,18). Apart from this we cannot be numbered among the Ecclesia. This IS the Church: those to whom the Father has revealed the Son by the Spirit.
Paul, formerly known as Saul, was a self-proclaimed "Pharisee of the Pharisees", religious, devout, learned, and righteous according to the law of Moses, zealous for the things of God and the traditions of the Jews. Yet, we find him to be persecuting the Church of Jesus Christ, erroneously thinking that God was pleased with him. How is it that Saul, with all his learning, did not understand Who Jesus Christ was?The same way that 90%+ of the Church is doing right now! Simply because it had not been revealed to Saul by the Heavenly Father. Indeed, it was the Pharisees and other religious leaders and teachers who rejected the Lord and had Him crucified. They lacked the Revelation, as does the large portion of Churches today. The Pharisees and Scribes had the written Word memorized, but there stands the Word made flesh and all they see is "the carpenter's son", a demon-possessed man, a blasphemer, a magician. This demonstrates how worthless religious flesh and blood knowledge is.That folks is what most of us claiming to be Christians have!
One day the grace of God determined to grant Saul the Revelation of Jesus. That is to say, Saul was not seeking revelation, he believed he had it already. Is that not true of most of us who claims that we have it already? But if many are honest with themselves they find that their lives still sucks ,because in all honesty their lives from within has not changed, although they have made changes on the outside, they were not done because of any inner change but because it was expected of them to do! When Saul met the Lord, Jesus didn't say, "Why are you persecuting My people?" With the simple words, "I am Jesus, the One you are persecuting," Paul received revelation into the Person of Jesus Christ as well as the Church. To persecute the followers of Jesus is to persecute Jesus Himself. Why? Because Christ and the Church are one!
Revelation is the difference between religious activity and true knowing (Matthew 7:23).Calling yourself a Christian these days is almost the same as calling yourself a Republican or Democrat. Becoming a Christian these days is a simple matter, we come forwards during a meeting and we decide to be a Christian, and then carry on with life as usual, we now are saved from hell because we did what we were told to and followed the procedure down to the letter. It has become more of a label for social convenience sake than a true testimony that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, dwelling within us.That the potential exists for us to do things in the name of Jesus without truly knowing and being known of Him ought to put us on our face before the Lord, praying for experiential knowledge of Him by way of revelation. There's no other way to truly know Him. God has made sure of that.Most teachers are teaching what was taught to them, and their teachers learned it from their teachers, and so on it goes until we no longer have Spirit-birthed revelation, we have third and fourth-generational head-knowledge, yesterday's manna and hand-me-down flesh and blood doctrines. There is an ocean of difference between repeating what you have heard and speaking of what you have experienced! Is it any wonder that there is much learning, but no experiential knowledge of Truth.Paul says once he obtained revelation he had no need to confer with flesh and blood,why? Because the Revelation of Jesus is sufficient guidance. Flesh and blood cannot add to or take away from the Revelation.
When a person has the Revelation of Christ they will gladly and with great joy suffer the loss of all things. A person who has the Revelation will willingly lay down their life for what they have seen (Revelation 6:9;12:11).To be sure, when you really and truly meet Jesus of Nazareth, when you "see" Him for the first time, when He reveals Himself to you, it will immediately put you at enmity with those who claim to see but do not see: mostly, the religious and "spiritual" ones, the denominations and Towers of Babel which dot the landscape of Christendom, the scribes and Pharisees of Organized Religion. From time to time I will visit 'ex-Christian' sites on the Internet, and when they give their de-converting testimony , many times in the response section, some Christian will reply that apparently they never were Christians in the first place, and boy do they (the ex christian) get animated about that, they will say that they had did what all Christians were told to do, repented, confessed, was baptised, and went to church and opened their Bibles from time to time and Prayed to God as often as most of us do, there are even ex ministers and ex-pastors and even ex-bible scholars and ex-Bible translators stating the same criteria of what it means to be come and to be called a Christian. They are right they were as 'Christian' as any of us are, but NONE OF THEM every had a Revelation of Jesus Christ by the Grace of God, and His good pleasure! That is why they are Atheist they understand more than the rest of us who play church, that Christianity the Religion, as is preached and taught today is truly a sham! It's too bad that we can not come clean with the same truth and understanding as well.
Matthew 7:21 – 23
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
If you notice in the verse above that these Christians were doing all the right stuff , and yet Jesus Christ does not even know who they are? Why is that? They were considered evil doers, really? aren't they preaching and healing and doing miracles? It is evildoing if we do not have Revelation Knowledge of Christ ,acting like Christians is not true Christianity, it is having a Revelation of the King of kings and Lord of lords, and if that is not our experience, then we are wasting our time playing church, because getting people saved is not the deal , introducing others to the fact that life without Christ is meaningless is the deal, when we realize our need, then our need, will be met in Him.
Once our eyes are open to see God as/in Jesus, we will naturally fall down to our knees in awe and worship.
I, speaking from my heart can honestly say that I have not Seen this Jesus, I have only head knowledge of this man but no revelation as a gift of God that he was not just man but God . I know that the 30+ years of Bible study, and listening to Preaching and teaching, that I can safely say I have NOT had such a revelation of Jesus!. I have not eyes that see, truly see, and ears to hear that truly hears the Revelation of Jesus, I have had religion taught to me, but I can truthfully say, that God has not graced me with the Revelation of Jesus, and that my friends has been MY personal problem, I will not and have not gotten very far on faith alone, because it has not done a thing for me yet. But I know that I know, that when God by His Holy Spirit gifts me with that Revelation then and only then will I be a Christian and then and only then I will be truly born again, and then and only then I will be known to Him, but until then, I am just playing church and tossing around some words and teaching here and there, and definitely doing nothing to furture the kingdom of God. I know , flesh wise, that there has to be more to life than my life I am living now, there has to be more to Jesus Christ than I have experience thus far, how do I know that ? It must be a revelation from God, because I do know from experience that all my years of learning the Bible has led me no where and left me with an empty religion, and a religion , I know I do not want.
God, what a sham my life is! Forgive me for living such a wasteful life. God I know there must be more to it that what I have experienced thus far. I know I do not know you or Jesus Christ, and unless you by your grace reveal him to me, I literally have nothing in this world that is worth my time and effort. If Christ be true, reveal Him to me and to the rest of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment