God’s Mystery Church In Creation
Rapidly fulfilling Bible prophecies proclaim the near advent of Christ our Lord. He who is the master Architect, and Builder, is building His glorious Church according to His plan and purpose. He ordered the life for all His creations, and also the Church within His spiritual kingdom. This newest began at our Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection at Calvary. It was fully formed and set in His Divine Order at Pentecost. (Acts 2:4) And it will be perfected at His coming, as promised in Ephesians 5:27. He promised and prophesied in Matthew 16:18, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." We see God’s divine purpose of man’s creation, stated in the covenant of Genesis 1:26-28: "Let us make man in our image and after our likeness...and let them have dominion over all the earth." All of God’s creations are within the three dimensions of time, space and matter. We know the workman by his workmanship. His primal ministries are those of creation, redemption, and restoration. God did not make us to be defeated and driven by the storms of life, but that through faith in Him, we should be more than conquerors and have dominion over all things that now hold dominion over us. So let us lift our faith to the heavens, for practice never goes beyond our revelation.
As we look up into His vast universe, His workmanship proves Him omnipotent in foreknowledge, wisdom, and power. Man’s largest telescope will not reveal the outer boundaries, within which whirl countless millions of celestial bodies, all created and set in perpetual motion by His Word. He as the dive Architect, had to foreknow the size, weight, and magnetic attraction of every single star world. He had to figure accurately, its rotating speed in its prescribed orbit in age long cycles. The giant Milky Way, the circle or equator of all this universe, is a wheel of giant suns perfectly balanced. One giant sun out of its ordered place would have started a chain reaction and destroyed all of creation. But God never fails or makes a mistake. He placed our moon at the proper distance from our earth so that its gravitational pull would lift the seas and form our tides, yet not close enough to lift the crust of our earth and destroy it. One is amazed as he studies God’s balance in all nature. In their proper order, He brought forth light, air, water, and food. Then properly mixed came the gases of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon. Then came life into the earth, in its balanced order of vegetation, sea, and animal life. and into this paradise came man, created out of the dust of the earth. "The Lord has prepared His throne in the heavens: and His kingdom ruleth over all." (Ps. 103:19). Here we see that God set up His throne room to reign from within His vast universe or kingdom in the heavens. In like manner He set up His lesser spiritual kingdoms in the earth. One was the nation Israel, and the other is the Kingdom of Heaven, known as the Church. This latter is His newest creation. The new creation kingdom is a phase of God’s heavenly kingdom our Lord set up in earth by his death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus our Lord tells us in John 3:7, the requirement for entrance is the new spiritual birth. "Marvel not that I say unto thee, you must be born again." This is a kingdom of created spirits as seen in 1 John 3:9, and comes not by observation, but our Lord Jesus declared to be within us. The Church is the material and visible aspect of this spiritual kingdom from which our Lord reigns in His Body of born-again believer.
This new creation can not lift itself up into a higher one, but the higher one can reach down and lift the lower life up. As an illustration, the vegetation creation reaches down with its roots and takes up the lower life of mineral creation and assimilates it. The animal feeds upon the lower vegetable creation and lifts it up assimilated into a higher creation life. Man feeds upon the lower life of the animal and assimilates it. Thus Christ had to reach down and enter our spirit to lift us up into His eternal standing as a child of God.
Jesus our Lord gave seven messages to the seven churches in Revelation, chapters two and three. We are now in the last, the Laodicean, a time of spiritual declension before the Lord returns. The dryrot of modernism is bringing forth a clergy begotten of an apostate church where many have commercialized their calling and changed it into a profession.
The Bible speaks of them in Matthew 15:9, saying, "But in vain do they worship me. Teaching for doctrine the commandments of men." Christ Jesus’ body was broken on the cross before His resurrection and today His Church Body is broken and divided; and now it is time for full restoration of the prophet Joel’s revival remnant. As we approach the last frontier God is moving by His Spirit. And a great host of small independent assemblies are rising all over the earth. These are obeying our Lord’s last command in Acts 1:4 to "wait for the Promise of the Father" the Holy Spirit, who would clothe Himself with the blood-washed believers and restore His dynamic miracle-working ministries and restore God’s Due Order according to the pattern given on the Mount of Calvary. True Body Ministry is seen in the earth again and all the promised signs are following those who obey and believe.
Every believer in Christ has his or her own standard of righteousness which is usually based on the standard of righteousness of his particular church. Older Christians see the rapid declension in denominational church standards. As a small boy the writer attended Methodist camp meetings, and there saw many healed by the fervent prayers of righteous people. He saw fall from their benches and lay in the sawdust numbers of deeply consecrated men and women under the power of God, often seeing the family later place them in wagons and take them home when the service was over. In all of the churches of that day there was a high standard of righteousness and often the willful transgressor, unwilling to repent, was disciplined and the church withdrew fellowship from him. In those days the consecrated people lived separate lives, but today there is a lowering of the standards in the same church groups. A spiritual standard has been replaced by a moral standard and a moral gospel prevails. But God’s high standard of Christian conduct, that gives the believer the right standing, or the right to stand, or the righteous stand before God, is just the same today. When Israel’s holy ark was captured, God’s glory was lifted. Truly today under lower standards of discipline, God’s holy ark is in enemy hands and God’s glory has departed and Ichabod is written over many church doors.
Out of this gloomy picture the Lord has painted in Rev. 3:14-21 there is coming a day of restoration in the approaching pretribulation days. Today the visible Church stands in the same place as ancient Israel as they stood before the Red Sea surrounded by their enemies. Today the Church, surrounded by her enemies of righteousness, stands before the great tribulation and God is moving to prepare us for the crossing over. We are now witnessing the third worldwide revival for Christ and His New Covenant Church. The first worldwide revival came through the apostle Paul, and his revelation to the Church in the first century Apostolic Church. The second worldwide revival came out of the Dark Ages when Martin Luther rediscovered the truth, "The just (justified) shall live by faith." (Gal. 3:11) The world Reformation spread rapidly over the earth. Now again at the turning of this century there came the third worldwide revival and fulfillment of Joel 2:28-29 and Acts 2:16 as the mighty Holy Spirit was poured out as at Pentecost. Israel, set in Due Order at their first Pentecost, continued to celebrate the event each year, waiting for the day of Pentecost, which came to the disciples waiting in the upper room, bringing the three Jewish signs of: the voice of God heard at Sinai, the mighty wind of Sinai and the leaping fire seen at Sinai. Many millions of Christians have been brought under the power of this worldwide revival at Pentecost.
Rapidly fulfilling Bible prophecies proclaim the near advent of Christ our Lord. He who is the master Architect, and Builder, is building His glorious Church according to His plan and purpose. He ordered the life for all His creations, and also the Church within His spiritual kingdom. This newest began at our Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection at Calvary. It was fully formed and set in His Divine Order at Pentecost. (Acts 2:4) And it will be perfected at His coming, as promised in Ephesians 5:27. He promised and prophesied in Matthew 16:18, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." We see God’s divine purpose of man’s creation, stated in the covenant of Genesis 1:26-28: "Let us make man in our image and after our likeness...and let them have dominion over all the earth." All of God’s creations are within the three dimensions of time, space and matter. We know the workman by his workmanship. His primal ministries are those of creation, redemption, and restoration. God did not make us to be defeated and driven by the storms of life, but that through faith in Him, we should be more than conquerors and have dominion over all things that now hold dominion over us. So let us lift our faith to the heavens, for practice never goes beyond our revelation.
As we look up into His vast universe, His workmanship proves Him omnipotent in foreknowledge, wisdom, and power. Man’s largest telescope will not reveal the outer boundaries, within which whirl countless millions of celestial bodies, all created and set in perpetual motion by His Word. He as the dive Architect, had to foreknow the size, weight, and magnetic attraction of every single star world. He had to figure accurately, its rotating speed in its prescribed orbit in age long cycles. The giant Milky Way, the circle or equator of all this universe, is a wheel of giant suns perfectly balanced. One giant sun out of its ordered place would have started a chain reaction and destroyed all of creation. But God never fails or makes a mistake. He placed our moon at the proper distance from our earth so that its gravitational pull would lift the seas and form our tides, yet not close enough to lift the crust of our earth and destroy it. One is amazed as he studies God’s balance in all nature. In their proper order, He brought forth light, air, water, and food. Then properly mixed came the gases of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon. Then came life into the earth, in its balanced order of vegetation, sea, and animal life. and into this paradise came man, created out of the dust of the earth. "The Lord has prepared His throne in the heavens: and His kingdom ruleth over all." (Ps. 103:19). Here we see that God set up His throne room to reign from within His vast universe or kingdom in the heavens. In like manner He set up His lesser spiritual kingdoms in the earth. One was the nation Israel, and the other is the Kingdom of Heaven, known as the Church. This latter is His newest creation. The new creation kingdom is a phase of God’s heavenly kingdom our Lord set up in earth by his death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus our Lord tells us in John 3:7, the requirement for entrance is the new spiritual birth. "Marvel not that I say unto thee, you must be born again." This is a kingdom of created spirits as seen in 1 John 3:9, and comes not by observation, but our Lord Jesus declared to be within us. The Church is the material and visible aspect of this spiritual kingdom from which our Lord reigns in His Body of born-again believer.
This new creation can not lift itself up into a higher one, but the higher one can reach down and lift the lower life up. As an illustration, the vegetation creation reaches down with its roots and takes up the lower life of mineral creation and assimilates it. The animal feeds upon the lower vegetable creation and lifts it up assimilated into a higher creation life. Man feeds upon the lower life of the animal and assimilates it. Thus Christ had to reach down and enter our spirit to lift us up into His eternal standing as a child of God.
Jesus our Lord gave seven messages to the seven churches in Revelation, chapters two and three. We are now in the last, the Laodicean, a time of spiritual declension before the Lord returns. The dryrot of modernism is bringing forth a clergy begotten of an apostate church where many have commercialized their calling and changed it into a profession.
The Bible speaks of them in Matthew 15:9, saying, "But in vain do they worship me. Teaching for doctrine the commandments of men." Christ Jesus’ body was broken on the cross before His resurrection and today His Church Body is broken and divided; and now it is time for full restoration of the prophet Joel’s revival remnant. As we approach the last frontier God is moving by His Spirit. And a great host of small independent assemblies are rising all over the earth. These are obeying our Lord’s last command in Acts 1:4 to "wait for the Promise of the Father" the Holy Spirit, who would clothe Himself with the blood-washed believers and restore His dynamic miracle-working ministries and restore God’s Due Order according to the pattern given on the Mount of Calvary. True Body Ministry is seen in the earth again and all the promised signs are following those who obey and believe.
Every believer in Christ has his or her own standard of righteousness which is usually based on the standard of righteousness of his particular church. Older Christians see the rapid declension in denominational church standards. As a small boy the writer attended Methodist camp meetings, and there saw many healed by the fervent prayers of righteous people. He saw fall from their benches and lay in the sawdust numbers of deeply consecrated men and women under the power of God, often seeing the family later place them in wagons and take them home when the service was over. In all of the churches of that day there was a high standard of righteousness and often the willful transgressor, unwilling to repent, was disciplined and the church withdrew fellowship from him. In those days the consecrated people lived separate lives, but today there is a lowering of the standards in the same church groups. A spiritual standard has been replaced by a moral standard and a moral gospel prevails. But God’s high standard of Christian conduct, that gives the believer the right standing, or the right to stand, or the righteous stand before God, is just the same today. When Israel’s holy ark was captured, God’s glory was lifted. Truly today under lower standards of discipline, God’s holy ark is in enemy hands and God’s glory has departed and Ichabod is written over many church doors.
Out of this gloomy picture the Lord has painted in Rev. 3:14-21 there is coming a day of restoration in the approaching pretribulation days. Today the visible Church stands in the same place as ancient Israel as they stood before the Red Sea surrounded by their enemies. Today the Church, surrounded by her enemies of righteousness, stands before the great tribulation and God is moving to prepare us for the crossing over. We are now witnessing the third worldwide revival for Christ and His New Covenant Church. The first worldwide revival came through the apostle Paul, and his revelation to the Church in the first century Apostolic Church. The second worldwide revival came out of the Dark Ages when Martin Luther rediscovered the truth, "The just (justified) shall live by faith." (Gal. 3:11) The world Reformation spread rapidly over the earth. Now again at the turning of this century there came the third worldwide revival and fulfillment of Joel 2:28-29 and Acts 2:16 as the mighty Holy Spirit was poured out as at Pentecost. Israel, set in Due Order at their first Pentecost, continued to celebrate the event each year, waiting for the day of Pentecost, which came to the disciples waiting in the upper room, bringing the three Jewish signs of: the voice of God heard at Sinai, the mighty wind of Sinai and the leaping fire seen at Sinai. Many millions of Christians have been brought under the power of this worldwide revival at Pentecost.