Sunday 21 August 2011

FOT3 - Able to Do-Exceedingly-Abundantly-Above All

Feast of Tabernacles - George H. Warnock
from CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
THREE GREAT FEASTS FOR THE CHURCH
We are confident that the hour has come in the history of the Church when Israel's annual cycle of Feasts is about to be fulfilled in the midst of the saints. And inasmuch as the natural observance of the Feasts constitutes a type and pattern of great and momentous spiritual events, it is vitally important that we should understand their meaning. The Scriptures reveal the fact that there were three annual festival seasons in Israel's worship. Other days were added in later years to commemorate certain events, but according to the original Levitical pattern there were three occasions during the year when all Israel was called upon to observe a national religious festival. And inasmuch as the Church of Christ is the true spiritual Israel (a fact which we will establish from the Scriptures later.) and what happened to natural Israel constituted merely a type and shadow of what should happen to spiritual Israel--we can derive great spiritual benefit and comfort by studying the types in the Old Testament, and then discovering by the Spirit wherein they apply to us on a higher and vaster spiritual plane. For the scriptures make it very clear that "all these things happened unto them for ensamples (as a figure, or type): and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." (1 Cor. 10:11).
And not only so. For we have abundant evidence from the New Testament to establish the fact that two of the three annual Feasts of Israel's worship have already been fulfilled in Christ and His Church: fulfilled, moreover, in a way so manifestly clear from the Scriptures that we do not hesitate to declare that we are now on the verge of the fulfillment of the last annual Feast of the Lord. If God declares that the Old Testament is to be fulfilled in Christ and His Church, that is certainly sufficient for us. Buy when we can actually look into the New Testament and see the manner in which two of the three Feasts have already been gloriously fulfilled, what great consolation and comfort it is for the saints who are looking forward to the fulfillment of the last Feast, the Feast of Tabernacles.
In this study, therefore, we wish to present some of the fundamental principles concerning the great events transpiring at this present season, and mention other events that are yet to transpire, by way of fulfilling the Old Testament Feasts. We appeal entirely to the Word of God and the Spirit of God; for it is evident that the natural man cannot receive, much less teach, the things of the Spirit of God. If it is God's Word, then it is infinite and eternal, and far beyond any human understanding; and only the Spirit can reveal and quicken it to us.
We are aware that we have only touched the fringe of Truth relative to this great subject which we have undertaken to explore; and we know that when the Scriptures are openly and manifestly fulfilled before our very eyes--the unveiled Truth and Glory of the Feasts of the Lord shall far transcend anything that we have ever imagined in our contemplation and meditation of the Word. But this, indeed, is cause for great encouragement--knowing that in the hour of the great Unveiling of the Sons of God we shall see and hear and perceive and experience a power and a glory such as we have never imagined to be within the realm of possibility.
May God, therefore, give us guidance by His Spirit to see and understand and contemplate wondrous things out of His Word--the entrance of which giveth light to such as are in darkness, and the appropriation of which giveth understanding to the simple, wisdom to the foolish, and illumination to the blind. We care not for established creeds or doctrines or theological disputes, nor for the marginal notes we find in our various expository and reference Bibles. God has spoken, and that is sufficient. If Christians are content to abide by the revelation they have received at the hands of great men of the past--let them be content. But God is now leading His people onward and upward to higher heights, to greater depths, to vaster expanses of Truth and Glory than the saints have ever enjoyed or appropriated in the past. Therefore we fix our hopes and our eyes upon the God of increasing revelation, even on Him who is
...Able to do ...Exceedingly ...
Abundantly ...Above all ...
That we ask ...Or Think ...
According to the power ...
That worketh in us.
Let others look at the apostasy of a corrupt church system; but let us behold the unfolding glory of the true Church, and exult with the Apostle Paul, in the face of all opposition; "Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus through all ages, world without end. Amen." (Eph. 3:20, 21).

MANY GROUPS IN THE CHURCH
We make no particular attempt in this study to distinguish between the Church, the Body, the Bride, the Sons, and so forth. That there are many different groups which may be included in the word "Church" is quite evident from the Scriptures, and from Creation itself. But the Lord knoweth them that are His in each particular group, and in His own good time it will be manifest. A building in its formative stages appears to be but one vast conglomeration of scaffolds, framework, brick and steel--and it is not too evident how many rooms there will be, and for what purpose the rooms are intended. But in the day of its completion it is all quite evident. So shall it be with the Church of Christ. For there are celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; one glory of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars--and even one star differeth from another star in glory. So shall it be in the day of Christ, when each man is revealed in His own order according to the plan and purpose of God.
Chris writes: People look at Jesus and think of Him on earth and His earthly ministry.
The Ephesians 3:20-21 verses are talking about way more than this. If you'd been around Jesus, what would you have seen? The many things described in the gospels and the things NOT written about in the gospels....there were just too many things to describe.But even this doesn't begin to cover what was going on in the short 33 year life of the Man Jesus. 30 years of normal behaviour, but without sin. Three years of a stupendous Spirit anointed life which empowered everything He shared, and His commission to raise up 12 men after His own kind. But the Book of Revelation, the incident of Paul being knocked to the ground and blinded for 3 days, in other words the ascended Man Jesus at the right hand of God the Father is what was being built "unseen" into Jesus while on earth. There was a whole lot more going on in the Spirit than we have ever imagined. So it is with us? What do we see? Yes already many of us have an anointing which shows up in God events. But what else do people see? Yes changed lives. But what else? Not a lot really, just the same as it was for Jesus the bulk of the time. The unspectacular nature of God's life in us as we are growing, maturing, loving people, learning totally belies its true nature.This is why the serpent was so able to trick Adam and Eve. The Life of God just is.But what it is building into us defies description. It is literally a layering of glory upon glory....but this side of things in the "natural", without eyes to see in the Spirit, we can be so fooled to thinking nothing is happening at all. The the "way of the world" is to DENIGRATE this life. To NOT GIVE the respect to older people that they deserve. Think about it! Anybody who has survived planet Earth for several decades has faced immensed struggles inner and outer. If we've overcome that is one thing. But even if we've fallen repeatedly, we have all over our inner being the knocks and the bruises by which we learn. Yet none of this sort of thinking gets even an eyelid's flash of recognition in the world system. The world system is almost TOTALLY BLIND. When Romans 12 says we are not to be conformed to their thinking, this is one of their false values......the total non recognition of the glory of God's life lived in man. To an evolutionist, extrapolating purely out from his philosophy alone, the phrase "the sanctity of human life" has no basis for meaning at all.

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