![[The Good Seed]](../images/thegoodseed.gif)
The Unveiling - The Promise Fulfilled
By Lloyd Ellefson
The veil which lies over man's heart prevents him from seeing spiritually. Since Christ is in the unseen realm, we cannot see Him with the natural eye. Neither the veil nor the unveiling are apparent to the human eye - nor will they ever be. The veil is not over Christ, for He can always see spiritually! In order for us to see Christ, the Holy Spirit has to reveal Him to us. When Christ is revealed to us, the Father is also revealed to us, for Christ Jesus is the exact representation of the Father.
Jesus said that no one knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to REVEAL Him. (Matt. 11:27) The only way we can get to know the Son is through revelation! Since only the Father knows His Son, only He can reveal the Son to us! God sends His Holy Spirit (the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of His Son), and He reveals Christ to us. If we have received that Spirit, God can speak to us, because the Son can hear Him. If we are true followers of Christ, the Holy Spirit has become our Lord! We have no other Lord!
God had a wonderful purpose in mind in the promise He gave to Abraham! The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was the fulfillment of this promise. Before Jesus was taken up into heaven, He gave His disciples an order to stay in Jerusalem until they received power from on high. "And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." (Luke 24:49) The Greek word for POWER is DUNAMIS, literally or figuratively meaning FORCE. DUNAMIS is frequently used in the New Testament, e.g. "My grace is sufficient for you, for power (DUNAMIS) is perfected in weakness." (2 Cor. 12:9) The power that came upon the church includes the power to submit itself to God the Father, because Christ is the only One who had true submission to the Father.
We must keep in mind that there is only one God. There is no other God, no other source of power, no other mind, and no other true presence but His! Since there is only one dominion, everything that is manifested has to come into subjection to that one power. People don't like that; they want the power and the dominion - but that is not going to happen. Jesus was the perfect example of perfect submission.
To know the Father we need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus ascended, He told the disciples "to wait for what the Father had promised...you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." (Acts 1:4-5) What promise was Jesus referring to? His Father had made the promise to Abraham, that a Seed (Jesus, the Word made flesh) would come one day. He was the promised Seed, the Messiah. The Messiah is the Christ, the Anointing! To accomplish this, God first sent Jesus. He had to die and be resurrected before this promise could be fulfilled by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.
After the Holy Spirit had come with a noise like a rushing wind, tongues of fire rested on all who were assembled in the upper room. Shortly after that Peter said, "This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear." (Acts 2:32-33) Peter became a witness when the Holy Spirit came upon him!
This is rather interesting in view of the fact that Peter denied Jesus three times after Jesus was arrested. Peter even cursed and swore that he did not know the man! This took place AFTER Peter had emphatically declared, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matt. 16:16) CHRIST and THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD are one! Jesus replied, "...flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven." How could Peter do this after he had heard from God? That is easily answered, because that is exactly what everyone does. People hear the word in their natural mind and think they know that Jesus is the Son of God, but when the test comes, they don't know Him! Peter would not have denied Jesus if he had been spiritually enlightened! After Peter received the Holy Spirit, he became a witness and boldly testified of Him! (Acts 2) Obviously the Holy Spirit's coming was the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham!
In Hebrews 11:13 we read, "All these died in faith, without receiving the promises..." They died before the coming of the Holy Spirit. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, `Cursed is every one who hangs on a tree' - in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." (Gal. 3:13-14) So we see that the blessing promised to Abraham was the coming of the Holy Spirit; the fulfillment of that promise is receiving the Holy Spirit by faith. Isn't that wonderful?!
A number of scripture passages reveal the purpose of God's promise to Abraham. In Luke 4:18 Jesus read from the book of Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor." God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit. After the Holy Spirit was poured out, Peter said, "...and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear." (Acts 2:33) Christ received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, and now poured out the Spirit on the believers. Here we see that the purpose of God's promise to Abraham was the giving of the Holy Spirit.
"`He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.' And He closed the book, and He began to say to them, `Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'" (Lk. 4: 18-21) However, this scripture was not fulfilled in their hearts - only in their ears. It was fulfilled because the Son of God, Jesus Christ Himself, had appeared in the likeness of human flesh, and the Spirit of the Lord had come upon Him at the Jordan River. In the Old Testament the priests were ordained and anointed with oil to the priesthood at the age of 30. In fulfillment of the type, Jesus lived under the law for 30 years. His public ministry began after He was baptized and anointed with the Holy Spirit. Then He began to preach under this anointing!
In Acts 10:38 Peter said, "You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; for God was with Him." The anointing in the Old Testament was with oil - a type of the Holy Spirit. In fulfillment of the Old Testament type, God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit! God gave this anointing to Christ, and then He poured it out on His disciples in the upper room. Now it is Jesus who anoints us with the Holy Spirit, as John the Baptist said.
Even as Christ's ministry began after He was anointed with the Holy Spirit, so our ministry is given us by the Spirit after we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit. There is more to the baptism of the Holy Spirit than speaking in tongues and functioning in the gifts of the Spirit. As we progress in this teaching, we recognize that the purpose of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Christ to us. The Father reveals Christ to us, and Christ in turn reveals the Father. Jesus said, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."
To Pontius Pilate Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting, that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." (John 18:36) Many seem to think that God will save this world's system and rule, as well as the Adamic, soulish, natural, carnal man who is subject to it. Actually God is redeeming us from this world and our Adamic sense of being. Since God's kingdom (rule) is not of this world, He is not laboring to change things in this world. "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ!" (Rev. 11:15) That means that the kingdom of this world is being replaced in us by Christ's kingdom. Christ is calling us out of this world because it is not redeemable! Nor is the old man! Redeeming the old man is not in God's plan, program and purpose because that man is not redeemable! God's plan of redemption is much greater than the patching up of the old man!
There is a god of this world (actually age)! He has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, so they cannot see the light of the gospel! The world lies in the wicked one. We don't have to wait for an antichrist world leader, because there already is a god who is ruling the unbelieving people. We have been called to come out of this world system! That is why the church is called the ecclesia - the called-out ones.
"Pilate therefore said to Him, `So you are a king?' Jesus answered, `You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.'" (v.37) Jesus, who was anointed with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, came to bear witness to the truth, because people did not know the truth! He spoke truthfully when He said that He was the way to God, the truth and the life. He becomes these things to us when we believe on Him. Jesus came to bear witness to the truth. This was His reason for coming into the world.
Although the Jews had the scriptures which were bearing witness to the truth, they did not know the truth. They had the letter, but not the anointing! We have to recognize that the letter is not the anointing. The letter, the scriptures (the Bible, often mistakenly called the Word of God) cannot anoint us. They cannot give us the Holy Spirit. Jesus called attention to their wrong ideas and emphasis when He said, "You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me." (John 5:39) Believing that the scriptures can give us life, is a false supposition or thought. We must come to Christ to receive life! He is the truth, the life and the anointing! When we come to Christ, we are submitting ourselves to the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever...But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." (John 14:16,26) Since He is with us forever, it means we will live forever! There is no death in God's life! Jesus overcame death, so death is not eternal!
"That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him, because He abides with you, and will be in you." (v.17) The world cannot receive the Holy Spirit, nor can it know Him. It cannot get this anointing, for it can never be received by natural man. Even though the Spirit is poured out on all flesh, the flesh cannot receive the Spirit, because the flesh is against the Spirit; it always rejects the things of the Spirit!
"After a little while the world will behold Me no more; but you will behold Me; because I live, you shall live also." (v.19) No one has ever seen the Christ in human form, because He is invisible to the human eye. He is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that came on the man Jesus after He had received the baptism of repentance at the Jordan. He made an about turn, and that is the meaning of repentance. Jesus was baptized by John in order to fulfill all righteousness. There is the righteousness of the law, and the righteousness of grace by the Spirit. At the time Jesus was baptized, the government of His life was changed from law to Spirit, and His ministry began.
Jesus was anointed with the Spirit of truth. He said, "I came into the world to bear witness to the truth." Natural man rejects truth because humanity does not have a receptive apparatus for receiving truth. Since the Jews had not repented, they were not candidates for hearing the Spirit. The Jews did not have any problem with Jesus as long as He was under the law. But after He was anointed by the Spirit, and began to testify about spiritual things, the problems began. The Jews had their own ideas of God, of salvation and the law, and none of them were correct. They claimed to believe Moses, but they didn't. Jesus said that if they had believed Moses, they would believe Him. (John 5) They didn't understand the purpose of the law, so they thought their righteousness depended on keeping it, but the law could not give them the righteousness of God!
In preparation for His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples that His leaving was to their advantage, and that He would return to them in the Spirit. As long as He was them physically, He was limited by time and space. In His return in the Spirit He could be everywhere at once. He is with us now in the Spirit; He is omnipresent! However, we cannot see spirit, and the anointing is spirit. Even though we cannot see Him, He is nevertheless present with us today!
Jesus came into the world in the form of a man to bear a double witness, the physical and the spiritual. The words He spoke bore witness to the truth; the people could hear His words and see the resulting miracles. The second witness was His spiritual testimony. When He stated that God was His Father, the Jews became very incensed with Him and said, "You are blaspheming." They wanted to kill Him - not for His good works, but because He called God His Father.
This brings the cross into being. It was in their hearts to kill Jesus, the true representation of God, long before He went to the cross. Jesus experienced the cross at the end of His life - not at the beginning. God had given the Jews the law, the prophets and a lot of teaching; He had performed many miracles and signs, yet they did not know Him. Finally He sent His Son, whom they rejected and killed. (Luke 21) This is a very graphic illustration of how man has continually rejected Him!
"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come." (John 16:13) Notice that the Spirit of truth does not speak on His own initiative. He operates on the same principle Jesus did. Jesus said, "I can do nothing of Myself, it is the Father in Me who does the works...If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not admissible as legal evidence...I only do what the Father shows Me to do." We too should only do what the Father tells us to do. The Holy Spirit does not witness of Himself, nor does He operate out of Himself. He continues to do Christ's work in us. He is the continuation of God Himself through Christ!
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth. Without the Holy Spirit to guide us we cannot have truth. All we have is our natural mind, but it cannot guide us into truth - it only guides us into error. The natural mind, the mind of the flesh, is always against the Spirit. It minds the senses and it falsely thinks it can comprehend spiritual things, so it causes us to be deluded. Therefore we need the Spirit to guide us into all truth!
The Bible is a testimony of spiritual realities, but we have to come to Jesus Christ to receive life! (Jn. 5:39-40) Paul said, "The letter is dead." The Bible is a tremendous book and a wonderful testimony, and we are very thankful for it, but it must be read in subjection to the Spirit! Otherwise the carnal mind will be taking over again. It's time we learn to submit ourselves to the Spirit.
"...and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you." (v.13-14) Everything we have in Christ comes to us through the Spirit. We can't divide God and Christ, nor can we divide the Spirit and Christ; we can't divide the Son and the Spirit, nor God and the Spirit.
In Gal. 4:6 it says that God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, calling Abba! Father! We have the Spirit of the Son (the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God) in us! We know this because we read, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him." (Jn. 14:23) Remember that Jesus said He would be with us forever! He told the disciples that they would experience sorrow when He would leave them, but their sorrow would be turned to joy! When He comes to us in the Holy Spirit, we have the joy of knowing His presence! In the scriptures, the word PRESENCE is used more often than most people are aware of, because the Greek word PAROUSIA, meaning PRESENCE, has often been wrongly translated as COMING in the KJV and in other versions.
In 1 John 2:27 we read, "And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you..." Notice the past tense. We know that God's life can never be fragmented nor divided. It is impossible to get a fragment of life and run with it. No separation of God and Christ took place when God gave His Spirit to Christ. It is impossible to separate God's life from Himself; neither can it be sustained by anyone else. Only God can sustain His life! Without His life we exist in death, so the only way we can have life is by receiving God's life. Life comes together with God - it's a package deal! In contrast to God's life which is immortal, having no beginning nor end, everything mortal has a beginning and end. We can never obtain immortality without God!
"...and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him." (1 Jn. 2:27) The anointing we receive by faith brings us into a union with God and we become partakers of His divine nature! His nature is not given to us in separation from Himself. It abides in us and doesn't leave us whenever something undesirable happens! It teaches us about all things, for it is truth! The Spirit of truth is the anointing. A spiritual illumination takes place within us whenever we receive truth. It is immaterial whether truth is received through the Bible, a book, or a teaching. Every message that is true, will help us to discern whether that knowledge comes from the tree of life or from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and is a ministration of the Holy Spirit.
"Beloved do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God..." (1 Jn. 4:1) There are many kinds of spirits, and many are evil. Therefore discernment is needed! The Holy Spirit gives us this discernment, for His witness to us is truth.
Angels are spiritual messengers, but they are not the Holy Spirit. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?" (Heb. 1:14) Angels don't have wings. The idea that they have wings comes from the cherubim mentioned in the Old Testament; also from the book of Revelation where it speaks of angels flying. The idea that they need wings in order to fly emerges from natural thinking. We know that God does not have feathery wings even though it says we are under His wings. Natural thinking remains our enemy, for it always wars against spiritual thinking. Natural man was an enemy of Christ when He was on earth, and he remains an enemy! He is our enemy as well. So we can also expect persecution because we are not better than He. Those who are ruled by the law will persecute those born of the Spirit. (Gal. 4:23,29) The law does not know the meaning of grace, so it will always persecute those who extend grace. We must be a people who not only talk grace, but also extend it!
In the Old Testament the priests were anointed with oil. This was symbolic of the New Testament anointing with the Holy Spirit. Those who are anointed with the Holy Spirit become anointed ones. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and He became the anointed One - the Christ, the Messiah! He is the fulfillment of the meaning of the word Messiah, meaning the anointed one. There are only two instances in our English New Testament where the Greek word CHRISTOS is translated MESSIAH. One is in Jn. 4:25, when the woman at the well said, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ)..." The other is found in Jn. 1:41, when Andrew said to his brother Simon Peter, "`We have found the Messiah' (which translated means Christ)." In the rest of the passages CHRISTOS is translated CHRIST. So when it says Jesus Christ, it means Jesus the anointed One; Christ Jesus means the Anointed Jesus.
Let's look at the effect the anointing had on the disciples, and on Peter in particular. The same Peter who had vehemently denied Jesus, fearlessly explained the meaning of the mysterious happenings that occurred when the Holy Spirit was given! He said, "...and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear." (Acts 2:33) After Peter and John were arrested, they boldly told the high priest and the rulers of the synagogue, that no one can be saved by any other name than the name of Jesus Christ! (Acts 4) When the disciples were commanded not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus, Peter and John answered, "We cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard." (v.20)
After they were released they reported what had happened to their companions. "And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, `O Lord, it is Thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them...Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Christ'." (Acts 4:24-26) This is a quotation from Exodus 20:11 and Psalm 2:1-2. People, in their humanity, look at Jesus as man sitting in heaven; they think His first name is Jesus and His second name is Christ. Actually the word Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua meaning Savior; the word CHRIST means the anointed one or the anointing, depending on its use as verb or noun. If you have been anointed with the Holy Spirit, you have received the Messiah and you are an anointed one.
Some people think this anointing only applies to Jesus Christ, but this is not the case. This anointing does not only reside in Jesus; it is the same anointing that resides in us! Jesus will not come back in human form, because He is SPIRIT! When people see visions of Jesus in human form, they are not seeing Him in His essence - in His true being. He is not coming back to re-anoint us with the Holy Spirit, and to straighten everything out. He has already dealt with sin! We have already been baptized into Christ by the Holy Spirit! Why should we want a better Spirit? Isn't Christ here - present in the Spirit? Paul said, "...examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you - unless indeed you fail the test?" (2 Cor. 13:5) Christ in you is the hope of glory! Christ is our life! (Col. 3)
Being members of the body of Christ does not refer to the physical body of Jesus; the body of Christ is a spiritual body! The Spirit has formed a body of faith and truth. This body is greater than our natural body, for it is eternal and our natural body is only temporal! Since the physical body of Jesus could be seen, we know it was a temporal body. Is Jesus coming back in a temporal body? Or was Paul wrong when he said, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal"? (2 Cor. 4:18) What about the body He had after He was raised from the dead? Was it a physical body? Does He have two bodies - one body that can be seen, and one that cannot be seen? When Jesus was raised, He showed Himself to the disciples in a human form so the disciples could believe that He was alive, but when He disappeared He returned to His true spiritual essence.
We look at the things that are unseen. We do not know Christ according to the flesh anymore. "Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer." (2 Cor. 5:16) We know He is here because He has come in the Anointing, and His Spirit is in our hearts! He has promised never to leave us! God wants us to have a deep realization of His presence within us in the Holy Spirit!
Jesus did not boast about being the Son of God. He said, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father." He did not come to boast about Himself, exalt Himself, nor to receive glory for Himself. In a sense we might even say that He never did a miracle, because He said, "The Father in Me does the works." Since Jesus did not glory in who He was, neither should we glory in who we are! Besides, we have nothing to boast about, because we are His workmanship! Everything we are is by His grace! Our strength depends upon our recognition of our weakness and His ability in us!
Before Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit He was under the law and in submission to the law; He was circumcised according to the law; He appeared in Jerusalem for the various feasts and brought His offerings to God. After His Jordan River experience, He was in submission to the Spirit. The Holy Spirit brought forth the manifestation of the Father in Him! The Son had been sent in the LIKENESS of human flesh. He was a manifestation of God in human form. That manifestation of God is no longer here. Instead, He has sent His Spirit - which is the reality of who Christ was in the form of the man Jesus! If we receive Christ, we are one with Christ, we are part of His body, and He has become our life! Just as Eve was bone of Adam's bone, and flesh of his flesh, so we are of the same Spirit Christ is! Jesus is not coming again in a physical body; He now comes into us by His Spirit and gives us His nature! He is already here in His true nature in His sons! For the Spirit of the Son has been given us in our hearts by the Holy Spirit! The Spirit within us cries "Abba! Father!" (Gal. 4:6) And in Rom. 8:15 it says that by the Spirit we cry "Abba! Father!" This illustrates our oneness with Him! That is why we don't cry "Jesus". We are one with Him, and He directs us to the Father.
Back in Acts 4, after the arrest and release of Peter and John, they related what the chief priests and elders had said to them. Then they all began to pray. They quoted David, saying, "Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things?" They applied this verse to the Jews who arrested Jesus. "The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Christ." The Holy Spirit was Lord in Jesus. Since they were against that Lordship of the Holy Spirit in Jesus, they were against His anointing! Now the disciples had that anointing, so the rulers were against the anointing in the disciples! The rulers wanted to lord it over others, and the anointing interfered with their power. Pretty interesting, isn't it?
"For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur." (vv.27-28) They all counselled together against Christ! These people did what God had predestined to occur. Some say that God killed Jesus. However, God did not send his Son and kill Him for us; He didn't put Him on the cross for us! People put Him on the cross! People killed Him!
Please listen carefully to this! Jesus did not die alone; He was not crucified alone; He was not buried alone; He was not raised from the dead alone; He did not go into the presence of the Father alone; nor is He coming back alone! Paul clearly taught this in his epistles. It says that we were crucified together with Him, buried together with Him, raised together with Him, seated on the right hand of God with Him, and when He appears we shall appear together with Him!
Why have we not believed this? It's because we have had the carnal thinking of natural man; therefore our understanding has been according to the letter! Those who don't understand the Holy Spirit cannot submit to His teaching, so they will be against those who are submitted to the Holy Spirit, just like they were against Christ - for we are not greater than He. They will persecute those who reveal spiritual realities. They will gladly hear those who talk about the physical Jesus, about heaven, about escaping hell, about Jesus coming back in the flesh, about Him standing on the Mount of Olives, about the rebuilding of the temple, about the Jews being saved, about the holy city coming down, and about the millenium. When these things are understood spiritually, they are seen to be deeper, better and eternal!
Never go back to carnal thinking! Never! Now that the Spirit is our teacher, we don't want to go back to having the law as our teacher! We are all born in Adam, we are all born in the flesh and we were all under the law; we have all had the mind of the flesh. Minding the flesh is death! Now we belong to Christ and are minding the Spirit!
In John 16:13 Jesus said to His disciples that the Holy Spirit would disclose to them the things to come. Previously the prophets had foretold the things to come. In Luke 16:16 Jesus said, "The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John." What did He mean by "until John"? The law and the prophets belong to the old covenant - and it ended with John. Jesus brought us the new covenant. Jesus continued His teaching by saying, "...since then the kingdom of God is being preached". The kingdom of God is the rule of God by the Spirit! The natural man does not receive His rule.
"But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory." (1 Cor. 2:7) God's wisdom is a mystery to the natural man because everything spiritual is a mystery to him. In Mark 4:11 Jesus said, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God; but those who are outside" (outside of this realization of the Spirit) "get everything in parables." Their ideas of God, heaven, tabernacles, etc. are in parables. Jesus spoke in parables because that was where they were living. His wisdom is a mystery to natural man. But in Christ we have the hidden wisdom! God had us in mind before the ages! Having God's wisdom is our glory! Christ is our wisdom; He is our spiritual wisdom!
Then it says, "The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, `Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.'" (1 Cor. 2:8-9) Had the rulers understood the wisdom of God they would not have crucified Jesus! Natural man is void of spiritual understanding! That is why the rulers crucified Christ! He has been crucified since the disruption of the world. This lack of understanding causes people to talk about heaven, harps, golden streets, pearly gates, etc., as natural things. Jesus came to destroy these natural ideas by giving us truth!
"For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God...But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth...and He will disclose to you what is to come." (1 Cor. 2:10; Jn. 16:13) The purpose of the Spirit's coming is to teach us truth and to reveal things to come. Without His teaching we would continue to live in error. The things God has prepared for us have nothing to do with things that bring glory to man, such as money, material goods, houses, mansions, power over people, etc. He subdues all things to Himself to the glory of God!
This world is not our home; we are only on a pilgrimage here. We are being taken out of the consciousness of this world's system and its rule, and are being brought into the consciousness of God by the Spirit! So we live by the faith of the Son of God while we are still here on earth! This makes us a tabernacle of witness!
The greatest gift God gives us is subjection to Himself. This subjection is given us in the Spirit of His Son, which is the Spirit of the Christ! His Spirit is a spirit of love! Thus we become vessels of God's ministry and God's purpose! We do not get involved in figuring out the times and seasons nor the whys and the wherefores; neither do we try to do anything for Him out of self-endeavor. Entering into God's rest means ceasing to do our own works; instead we do the work that is initiated by God and accomplished through the work of the Holy Spirit within us.
"Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit." (1 Cor. 2:13) The numerous translations of the Bible, and the reams of commentaries written by Greek and Hebrew scholars, can never give us a correct understanding of the Bible. Until the Holy Spirit enlightens us and leads us into truth, we will never understand the Bible correctly! The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Spiritual things have to be compared with spiritual realities! Examples of natural things cannot fully explain spiritual realities, for the spiritual is much greater than the natural. Unless the parables are understood spiritually, their meaning will be lost! That is why the people could not understand them; even the disciples couldn't fully understand, because the Spirit had not yet been given.
Even today, people cannot understand spiritually. So illustrations are often given. Care must be taken that these illustrations don't become methods. For example, in dealing with answered prayer the focus should not shift to what they did in order to persuade God to answer their prayers. If they do, it becomes a method of how to get God to answer prayer, etc. This brings glory to themselves. Jesus always looked to the Father to direct Him! He declared things, and there was life in His words! Most of His declarations of truth were not long explanations. He knew natural man wouldn't understand Him anyway.
People keep on trying to accomplish on the natural level what can only be accomplished on the spiritual level. Education cannot give us spiritual understanding. Seminary students and graduates, who have not received the Holy Spirit and have not had experiences with the Lord, cannot understand spiritually. ÿSo their teachings are far from the truth, but they seem logical to the natural man. Those who do not have the Holy Spirit are not being taught by Him, so they cannot understand the revelation knowledge taught by spiritual persons.
"But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." (1 Cor. 2:14) Since natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit, he is not ruled by the Holy Spirit! He has to be ruled by a law - a law of carnal commandments. If the natural man is honest, he will recognize that he cannot keep the law; this should bring him to the realization that he needs Christ. But most people just keep on trying to keep the law, for their vanity will not allow them to give up. They are like Israel who thought they knew God but they didn't! So they kept on using the law for self-righteousness! They used the power of the law wrongly to kill Jesus. They used their wrong ideas as leverage to persuade Herod, Pilate and the Roman authorities to kill Christ. They accused Him of being against their law, and of blasphemy because He called God His Father. They wanted Him to suffer the most torturous death - stoning was too humane! Pilate didn't want to crucify Him, for he realized that Jesus was innocent. But the people cried out and said, "We only have one king and that is Caesar...Give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus." So you see that they used their own idea of God and of the law to condemn Jesus and get Him crucified!
Jesus sent the Holy Spirit as His emissary to anoint us with the Holy Spirit! He is to be our Lord and teacher; He instructs us in truth. That means that Jesus Christ is not working to improve the sinner - the soulish, carnal, fleshly Adamic man. When Jesus died on the cross, that old man was also put to death. We have been baptized into that death - the death to sin. (Rom.ÿ6) We were crucified together with Him! So our old man is actually put to death, and it's our new man in Christ who receives the anointing. After repentance is accomplished in us, we can receive the Holy Spirit. Both repentance and instruction of the Spirit are ongoing events in our lives. We learn the true meaning of repentance - we do not only repent of sin, but from the man of sin. We repent from having lived in, and being part of the Adamic man through whom sin entered the world. Repentance from that man causes us to live in the new man! This repentance can only come through the Holy Spirit!
Jesus Christ is not building His church with people who are still in the Adamic man. He is building His church with new creation people who are born of the incorruptible seed of God, for they can hear the Holy Spirit. This becomes evident when we testify of the things of the Holy Spirit. We soon realize that even very few Christians actually hear what we are saying. And that is really sad! Nevertheless the Lord knows those who are His. It is with great joy that we drink from the wells of salvation, and testify of these wonderful truths of the Spirit.
To sum up, I want to remind you that the Holy Spirit is an anointing. Christ and Messiah both mean anointing; they are one! The Holy Spirit is the same as the Son, because Jesus confirmed Peter's revelation: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matt. 16:16) And Paul said, "The Lord is the Spirit." (2 Cor. 3:17) So they are one! The Messiah is not estranged from us because we are the Lord's Christ - meaning the Lord's anointed ones! We never boast about that, because it is not our doing.
Natural man's perception of God is not a true one. He only has an idea or imagination of God; he has a dead god. Unless we have seen the Christ spiritually, we can't see the Father - the real God - for they are one! Jesus said, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father..."
I sincerely hope that you will take these things to heart! This message can only become alive in your heart through the Holy Spirit. Otherwise it will just be more carnal knowledge. May you desire and receive the enlightenment of the Spirit. The Lord will bless you as you do this. So consider what I say, and may the LORD give you the understanding. Amen.