THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST There is an Eastern saying that goes like this: "When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger!" Truly we are learning that as far as the heavens are above the earth, so far does the understanding imparted by the spirit of the Word transcend the understanding gleaned from the letter of the Word. The letter is merely an indication or sign pointing to the reality, not the reality itself. One must go far beyond the letter (the finger) and experience the reality in the spirit (the moon) if he is to know truth! If we involve ourselves only with the letter of the Word, we will soon be quagmired in external applications and surface interpretations devoid of any spiritual significance in our lives. But if we are attuned to the spirit of the Word, then God Himself becomes known to us as the inward nature, life, power, wisdom and truth that enables us to walk as the revelation of Christ in the earth! Nowhere is this more true than when we come to the book of Revelation! The book of Revelation is written in code. If we try to literalize the book with the understanding of the carnal mind, we will have an incredible horror show on our hands! And we will miss the reality of what the Spirit is saying altogether. Early in the book we meet a lamb. Even the literalists have enough sense to understand that the lamb is not a four-legged woolly little creature romping through the pasture squealing, "Baa...baa...baa...!" It is, in fact, Mary’s Little Lamb, but not the one in the nursery rhyme! We could preach on the "lamb" of God in any church in America and everyone would agree that this lamb is not a barnyard animal. But what amazes me is that they use an altogether different rule of interpretation on almost everything else in the book of Revelation! They spiritualize what they like and literalize what they don’t understand. Preachers have been preaching from the book of Revelation for centuries, identifying the lamb as a symbol for the man Christ Jesus who came to die for our sins, then proceed to assert that the throne of God is a seat somewhere out beyond the Milky Way that actually has a rainbow around it; the mark of the beast is an actual imprint on people’s foreheads; the blood flowing up to the horse’s bridles is literally going to happen over in the valley of Megiddo; and the New Jerusalem is a huge monstrosity that will one day come floating down out of the sky and land on the earth like a bump on a little boy’s head! If John was in the Spirit when he saw these things, it seems to me that we are going to have to get in the same Spirit John was in to see the same things that John saw! John was not ignorant of Old Testament types and shadows. Once a man is able to identify the symbol he sees in the Spirit, for the first time in his life he will understand what it is that the Lord is saying. He will no longer beat the air like a blind man in a pillow fight, spewing forth spiritual absurdities in the name of the Lord. Make no mistake about it — every spiritual thing that a child of God learns, he must learn by a revelation from the Spirit of God! Any other understanding is fleshly, carnal, and devilish. Jesus, in the days of His flesh, spoke often in the language of symbols. All of His wonderful parables were given in symbolic and allegorical language. But He also used symbols in His speech on many other occasions. The disciples were showing Jesus the temple and its grandeur. The gifts of the ages were reposited there, and the whole temple was built with the greatest cost and magnificence, so that nothing was more stupendous in all the nations. It was adorned with gold and silver and the whitest of marble, some of the foundation stones were more than sixty feet long, seven and a half feet high and nine feet broad. Jesus stood taking it all in, and gazing at the temple, said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again!" This totally "blew" the carnal minds of those standing there who heard these words! They were incensed and were ready to kill Him. With countenances distorted by anger the Jews replied, "It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" It wasn’t what Jesus said that upset them, it was what they thought He said! They were good "Fundamentalists," and they believed in taking the word of God literally unless God clearly specified that He was speaking figuratively or spiritually! Even the disciples, still concerned with the natural, were understanding with carnal minds, unenlightened by the spirit of wisdom and revelation from God. They failed to discern that He spoke of the temple of His body! These men in their then unspiritual state, could not be expected to understand what Jesus spoke by the Spirit. They were more concerned about the outward edifice of stones than the living temple not made with hands! They were more concerned about the passing, than the permanent. But the Master had finished with this. The time had come for God to raise up in the earth a glorious temple of living stones, of which the temple of the Old Covenant was but a faint type and shadow. So He had little interest now in that which represented a fallen order, devoid of God’s presence and power and majesty. What Jesus was really saying was, "The temple of God is standing in front of you, ladies and gentlemen!" He was saying, "Here’s the tabernacle of God, and if you destroy this living temple I will raise it up in three days." He was taking a literal picture from an Old Testament reality, bringing it out of the realm of shadow and enigma, into the realm of spiritual reality. By these words and many others Jesus was establishing His own principles of interpretation in the new order of the kingdom of God! If we were to take even half of Jesus’ words in the natural by literal, carnal understanding, we would be in deep, deep trouble! So if you feel we are wrong in speaking spiritual truths from literal pictures, you are going to have to deal with Jesus, for He is our Teacher, and that is the style He preached in. Many years later He came to John on the isle of Patmos and He was still proclaiming the power and glory of the kingdom of God in the same metaphoric pattern. But the Fundamentalists just didn’t get it! And they still don’t, today. That’s why they have a literal antichrist coming, sitting in a literal temple in Jerusalem, stamping a literal mark on literal foreheads, and fighting a literal battle in a literal valley over in the literal state of Israel in the literal Middle East. Their spiritual comprehension is no brighter today than that of the Jews who stood with Jesus that day on the temple mount before the buildings of Herod’s temple! The seemingly strange language of the Bible is, in reality, picture language. Such expressions as, "the earth melted" at God’s voice, the earth reeling "to and fro as a drunkard," or the idea of those cast into "outer darkness" as "weeping and gnashing" their teeth are misleading to the carnal mind. The Bible is literally filled with symbolic language! Symbols or pictures are intended to clarify what the Lord wants to convey to us — but only to the one who hears by the Spirit! All others are confused. Some want to interpret the scriptures literally, and say that the spiritual interpretation is to change or "spiritualize away" the plain word of God. How can you spiritualize away that which is spiritual! Jesus said, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Little wonder that years later on the isle of Patmos, among the visions He showed to John, He should say again and again, "He that hath an ear, let Him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches!" Some of the most beautiful and well-known promises in the scriptures, by which the Lord assures His people of His care for them, are presented in very colorful, pictorial language. The 23rd Psalm, known and loved so widely by Christian people, is a classic example of this. When David writes, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters," none of this passage is literal! David put himself in the position of a sheep, and Yahweh as His shepherd. Certainly no one would argue that David was actually, literally a sheep! We may not care to lie down in green pastures, or be led about by a rod and a staff! But without these thoughts being illustrated for us, God’s leading, God’s direction, God’s discipline, and God’s provision of all spiritual things in our lives would not be nearly so impressive and comforting! Another wonderful word that is deeply meaningful for every son of God is found in the 91st Psalm. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler..." This is a wonderful promise made more understandable and forceful through the use of symbols. God is likened to a "refuge" and a "fortress." He is also spoken of as having "feathers" and "wings." No one would want to say these words were to be understood literally. We have meaningful illustration in this Psalm! It is a vivid word picture of God’s deliverance and protection of His sons who dwell in the secret place of the Most High, in the Most Holy Place of our spirit, where God dwells within as life, beyond the veil of flesh! None of our enemies can penetrate that high and holy realm of His blazing glory! All of the emotions of the flesh, the powers of the carnal realm, the pressures of the world, the snares of the devil, the seducing allurements of the harlot religious systems, and the very powers of sin and death themselves are neutralized here within our "refuge" and "fortress," and beneath the "feathers" and "wings" of our heavenly Father’s power and nature! What a dwelling place! And all God’s sons are learning to dwell there, to make the Most High within our habitation! I hear about people who have visions on their death bed of mansions and golden streets in that bright glory-world above. Some have died and have come back, imagining that they have walked with Jesus on the golden streets of heaven! I will tell you what they are seeing. They are seeing a vision. But you see, beloved, visions require an interpretation. When Peter was praying on the roof-top he saw the vision of the sheet let down from heaven full of all manner of unclean beasts, birds, and creeping things. The voice of the Lord spoke to him, saying, "Rise up, Peter, kill and eat!" Peter, as a good Israelite, was repulsed! He could not understand the vision, and objected, saying, "By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth!" With his natural mind he supposed the Lord was tempting him to eat meat that was unclean under the law. But in visions you usually don’t see the thing the vision stands for — you see only the representation, the figure, the type, the symbol that stands for the reality being conveyed. In Peter’s case, the unclean animals stood for the Gentiles who were outside of God’s covenant. God was telling Peter that the Gentiles were now cleansed by the blood of Jesus, to be received in one body as the people of God through faith. So the vision had to be interpreted! Only the spirit of wisdom and revelation from God could unfold the meaning of the vision! Many times visions have been given and men accept the visions as the reality (literally) rather than a picture or symbolic representation of the truth God is revealing. Millions of Christians are expecting a mansion over the hilltops of Glory with a gold street out front, with a lawn that never grows and never needs mowing, off on some planet called Heaven. This hope is based on the visions seen by dying men, or the visions received by the apostle John on the isle of Patmos. But all these are merely visions and they must be interpreted! What you see is not what you get! What is seen is not what God is showing! It is merely a symbol of the reality, not the substance! There are no literal streets of gold any more than there are literal beasts rising up out of the sea, or literal horns of the head of the Lamb of God! These are all word-pictures portraying spiritual realities. Dying men see pictures of a physical paradise because they are unprepared for the spiritual realities themselves, so as they pass from this gross material realm the Lord presents those realities to them in a way their minds are able to comprehend — the images of a vision! If you want to experience the true heaven of God’s Spirit then you must awaken to the place where you are seated together with Christ — now! No word written or spoken could hold more truth in this regard than the words of Paul when he speaks of the power "which God exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named..." (Eph. 1:20-21). These terms used by Paul are figures of speech! God is omnipresent spirit — He doesn’t physically sit on anything, nor does He physically have a right hand! It means that Christ is raised up permanently into that highest spiritual realm where He has all power and authority! The "throne" spoken of in other scriptures and throughout the book of Revelation refers to His omnipotent power. So now we know where Christ ascended! HE ASCENDED INTO THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF ALMIGHTY POWER AND AUTHORITY! And that is where we are raised up and seated in Christ! "And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together — giving us joint seating with Him — in the heavenly sphere by virtue of our being in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6, Amplified). It is a blessed day for us when God makes it clear to our hearts that all who are in Christ have been raised up and given joint seating with Christ in the very same heavens of God’s Spirit where He sits enthroned with His Father! That is the true heaven — not visionary mansions with gold bath tubs, earth-like flowers that never fade, or a river running out of a throne. Every son of God is receiving a clear and powerful understanding by the Spirit of what it means to live in heaven, walk in heaven, and reign from heaven! Most Christians have no idea of where heaven is, what heaven is, or the realm out of which they should be living. They think they are where their natural mind tells them they are. Heaven seems a far-off place. They have missed the spirit reality altogether and understand not that they are born from above and that their citizenship is in heaven. That high and holy realm is not away off beyond the galaxies, but a place in our spirit where we rise up above our earthiness and learn to compare spiritual things with spiritual things. It is there that we touch reality! God is in heaven, and God is in our spirit! In this world we live by symbols. We use either written symbols or sound symbols to express every thought or feeling, to identify every person, place, or object. Words are only symbols. Names are only symbols. Numbers are only symbols. Our alphabet is only a group of 26 small symbols that can be organized into words — then words into sentences — sentences into thoughts — and thoughts into knowledge. You read a book and you take a journey to far away lands with exotic scenes, smells, and noises. But all you have really done is sit and look at thousands of symbols on a couple hundred paper pages! But the symbols have conveyed to your mind the reality! Our Lord Jesus Christ claims the tile of the "Alpha and Omega," or "A" and the "Z" of the alphabet which includes all the other letters in between and can contain and express all knowledge. In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge! To be in Christ is to dwell in that dimension of life where all reality lies! Symbols only represent the things for which they stand, not the reality itself. Money is considered the most important factor in human life by many because it represents power and security. Of itself, money has no value whatsoever more than the paper or metal it contains, though through it, it is possible to purchase the comforts and luxuries of earth. There is as much difference between the symbol and the reality as there is between the letters of the alphabet and the great thoughts that can be expressed through those tiny little letters. There is as much difference between the symbol and the reality as there is between the money in your pocket and the actual things that money can buy. The man who settles for a mansion in the sky or a stroll down the street of gold with the blue-eyed Jesus is like the man who reads a book about Arabia but never goes there. He misses the reality! How much greater is the reality! The reality is those things which God is now showing unto us by His Spirit! When our Lord said, "Ye are the salt of the earth," He was speaking quite obviously in figurative language. He did not mean that believers were to be put into a gigantic salt shaker and shaken over the globe! Nobody would be so ridiculous as to believe that. The sons of God today are indeed the salt of the earth! God’s elect is that spiritual power which gives flavor and preservation to all things. We are the guarantee of the world’s glorious future! The whole race of mankind and all nations are being lifted, raised up into a new state and condition by the life that flows out of the Lord’s people! And when Christ said, "Ye are the light of the world," He didn’t mean we had to be lit like a candle and put up someplace where we could shine! God has chosen to speak to us through the scriptures by the use of symbols. Consider the implications if Jesus had meant it literally when He said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you" (Jn. 6:53). If this statement had been intended literally Jesus would have become the founder of the world’s most bizarre religious cult — cannibalism! But beyond these physical figures lies the glorious reality of which He spoke, the reality that His flesh means His Word and His blood means His Spirit-life! And yet — people have the audacity to accuse us of spiritualizing away the word of God! The Bible is a spiritual book! The words that Christ speaks into our hearts are spirit, and they are life! There is only one sure way to distort and destroy the meaning and message and power of God’s eternal truth, and that is by carnalizing it away! To carnalize the word of God is simply to interpret it by the superficial reasoning of the carnal mind. The whole church world today has created its entire system — rituals, ceremonies, ordinances, creeds, doctrines, methods, programs and promotions — by the carnalization of the word of the Lord!
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 02:50:12 +0000
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