Good morning, brothers and sisters.
I am sort of the shuttle speaker. Lance is speaking every night, Brother Stephen is speaking every morning, and I am morning, evening, morning, evening—in between. So, since it is morning, I did not feel I had to wear a wake-up shirt.
Anyway, I feel much better now that Lance has spoken and, you know, the thunderstorms have ceased. Let us hope for a good day as we enjoy the Lord and fellowship together.
I would like for us to begin again by turning to Ephesians 1, reading verses 9 and 10. This tremendous summing up that we are part of today—actually, you are part of it whether you realize it or not, if you belong to Him. Either you are being dragged or you are willingly being gathered into all that He has for us.
It is amazing how reticent we are to enjoy all the good of our inheritance and the fullness of Jesus. Why is it that our flesh so resists these things? Wow.
And yet, here is the mystery revealed in verse 9:
He made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him,
with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times,
that is, the summing up of all things in Christ,
things in the heavens and things on the earth.
Then I would like us to look at those familiar verses at the beginning of Hebrews—Hebrews 1, just the first two verses:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets
in many portions and in many ways,
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the world.
Then we want to turn back to the Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 39 and 40:
You search the Scriptures,
because you think that in them you have eternal life;
and it is these that testify about Me;
and you are unwilling to come to Me
so that you may have life.
And then, finally, Matthew 23, verses 37 through 39:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to her!
How often I wanted to gather your children together,
the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,
and you were unwilling.Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!
For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me
until you say,
“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Let us just have another word of prayer.
We thank You, Lord, that we can gather together in the name of our Lord Jesus this morning. We can open our hearts and sing songs of worship and praise to You. We can sense the effect of Your precious blood, cleansing us, and Your Spirit, quickening us.
And now, in Your presence, as we come to look at the Word of God again, we ask that Your Holy Spirit would be our Teacher, and teach us of the fullness of Christ, and gather us up into Christ in fullness.
We thank You for this privilege to be together as Your people. We realize many people do not have such an opportunity. So quicken our mortal bodies, and anoint our ears that we may hear what the Spirit would say to the church today. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
We see here in Matthew 23 a very solemn moment—a crossroads in the life of Israel. Their Messiah is standing face to face with the leaders in Jerusalem, and these leaders do not see Who He is.
They have resisted His gathering, time and time again: “How many times I have come to you and wanted to gather you together, as a hen gathers chicks, but ye would not.”
There is something very willful in our fallen nature that resists being gathered, even by the Lord and Savior—and, in this case, the Messiah.
So they stood at this awful crossroads, and they heard the Messiah, though they did not recognize Him, speak a curse upon them for their rejection: desolation, because they did not recognize the hour of their visitation.
Now, these are solemn words, and we shudder as we have seen Israel’s subsequent history, filled with trial and filled with awful dealings of the Lord, as well as mercy. It brings us to the place where I hope we realize the importance of recognizing the hour of His visitation.
But there is another aspect that is the matter I want to dwell on this morning. It was not only that they did not recognize Jesus as their Messiah. Their culpability went deeper than that, for they had been given the Word of God—the Law and the Prophets—which spoke of Him.
Yet they resisted that Word of God. They would not allow the Spirit to deal with them. Though, praise God, there were some who were waiting for the consolation of Israel, and in that position of waiting, when they heard the word of the Messiah, they responded.
But these leaders, for whatever reasons—in the end, it was sin, whether the vested interest of their power, or their self-righteousness, or whatever it was—though they had the Word and the Prophets, they did not hear the voice of the prophet speaking and pointing to the Messiah.
Is it not strange that these very people, who were standing before the Messiah blind to Who He was, were the very people who had memorized large sections of the Word of God?
Indeed, Jesus could speak to them in John 5 and say, “Ye search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life. And these are the very ones that are saying, ‘Look at Jesus.’ But you will not come to Me.”
Basically, if you will not come to Me, the Scriptures are closed to you. These people had a tremendous outward knowledge of the Word, which, as a letter, was killing, because they would not see that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.
Now, this solemn matter is not really what I want to speak upon—that is, Israel’s subsequent history. What I would like to do is speak upon this wonderful matter of the summing up of all things in Christ through the Word of God.
You can imagine these brothers and sisters in Richmond getting together after we had the planning meeting and deciding who is going to speak on what. They just say to me, “Dana, present everything there is to know about Christ. Now, you have three sessions. Do not take too long, because the children get restless in the various Bible classes.”
This is impossible: speak on Christ, the sum of all things, and then, if you would also take up this matter of fullness. And we have three sessions.
To return to it is pretty easy—or to be ready for it, even. It seems simple the way Lance put it: forget the prophecies; be ready. That was it.
Now all I have to do is speak the rest of the Bible. That is all.
In this small portion given to me, I have decided that rather than speak by way of testimony of His height and depth and width and breadth, I would rather say to you and point you to the fact that the Word of God brings us to the fullness and the summing up of all things in Christ.
The Word of God, in relation to this summing up, has three different dynamics to it:
So we would say this morning that which you already know: you could start from any place in Scripture and preach Christ, as dear Philip did out there in the desert. Just give them a passage and let them go, and the Holy Spirit can present something of Christ.
I want to share on this matter of the Word of God as it presents the summing up of all things in Christ. Of course, how could I completely do that? And I also have to talk about my own pilgrimage in relation to the Word of God.
I know that for some of you, this whole matter of Christ and His fullness—the sum of all things—is almost kindergarten. You have known it so long. But I am also very much aware of the fact that many new people are always coming to the conference and hearing things for the first time. We have young people here who perhaps have not heard these things rehearsed. So, I am going to go back to some basic things.
How can we come into this gathering into Christ through the Word of God? Very simple.
I want to start by telling you about my own struggle with the Word of God.
I was saved when I was twenty years old. I finished up at a Christian college, took some courses in the Bible, and then went off to seminary to study for the ministry. There I took all kinds of Bible courses. That was my favorite thing to do. I took Bible courses in Greek, Hebrew, and English. I loved them.
As a matter of fact—not to toot my own horn, because I have never done anything with it—I was at the top of my class. So they asked me if I would go into the doctoral program. They had a position for me, but I did not feel like a scholar. Since meeting Brother Christian Chen, I am so glad I did not even pretend.
Well, I could be a scholar, but I had training, you understand what I am saying? Training. I set off in a ministry, and ten years after I was saved, I had already been serving for eight of those ten years as a pastor.
That was when I bumped into, in the fullness of time, our brother Stephen Kong.
I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I was actually a co-pastor of a little church there. I do not know how it happened, but some folks came over from some little meeting and said, “Why do you not come and hear this Brother Stephen Kong?”
I said, “Who is he?”
“Well, he has translated some of Watchman Nee’s works. You should come.”
Well, I came, and he was doing this little thing—I do not think you know about it—that he was doing there in Raleigh once a month. He would come for a weekend and do this little series called Christ in the Bible, the series which he was doing here in Richmond also over the years: taking a book of the Bible and showing Christ.
I picked up in Numbers—how you find Christ in Numbers. I had no idea. He found Him—enough for three messages. Then I came back the next month and heard Christ in Deuteronomy, and then in Joshua, Judges, and on and on.
But immediately, when I heard it, I thought, “This is some of the most clever Bible gymnastics I have ever seen.”
How he gets all these things to point to Christ, and he finds all these types and pictures and illustrations in the Old Testament—it is masterful the way he does it. But hermeneutically, it is completely wrong.
Now, I must stop here, because some of you do not even know what hermeneutics is. Neither would I if I had not gone to seminary. You start using scholarly language, but hermeneutics is very simple: there are laws and principles for interpreting Scripture. There are, and they are important.
Most cults come out of an improper interpretation of Scripture—either non-contextual or eisegetical, or many things like that.
One of the things hammered away at in seminary was the hermeneutical principles of studying the Old Testament. Number one: Old Testament theology is not equal to New Testament theology.
So you cannot take an Old Testament example and say it is teaching about the New Testament. No, you have to be honest. Take each book of the Bible as its own, with its own historical context and its own use in what they used to call the Yahwistic cult in my seminary. That means the Jews, the people who followed the Lord. “Now the Yahwistic cult,” according to Gerhard von Rad—that is a whole other story.
We learned these principles. Basically, the Old Testament was not a New Testament picture book.
They used to laugh at that little saying—I think it was a quaint saying of some Scotsman or something—who said, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.” They used to laugh at that. So I learned to laugh.
I learned that you need to be very suspicious of typology, allegory, and any kind of crossover usage. We were driven to the point at my seminary where we were taught that this was what the Catholics did: they brought all the Old Testament temple vestments and procedures right into the church. That was a no-no, a hermeneutical mistake.
And here was my brother crushing my hermeneutics every month with three messages: “Christ in Deuteronomy. Christ in Judges. Do you not see? Joshua is Jesus.”
I said, “What?” I studied Joshua in Hebrew. I said, “What is this guy doing?”
At the same time, I was being drawn by the beauty of it, drawn by the simplicity of it.
Man, the Old Testament is very complicated to a seminarian: thirty-nine disparate books with hardly any connection, and everybody who wrote them is questioned, basically—or at least half the book is questioned as to its validity, authorship, and everything. I mean, this is—and I went to a good Bible-believing seminary, evangelical today.
So first of all, I want you to understand: our whole approach to the Scriptures is hermeneutically incorrect to a mass of Christianity. Too mystical. Too typological.
Well, this was my conflict. I had an Old Testament that did not make much sense to me. I used it for occasional illustrations, but, as most evangelical churches do today, they just use the New Testament. The Old Testament is just: if you want to show how bad somebody is, pick Jacob; if you want to show how good somebody is, pick Abraham or David. That is basically the rule.
But now the Lord started dealing with me, because I could not help it. It was just so simple that it was causing a crisis. Let us see: do I want complexity or simplicity? What is logical here?
I saw the simplicity of the Word of God as our brother shared from month to month, and the Lord crushed my hermeneutics. How did He do it?
We had studied the Word of God, but there is a point about coming to fullness and realizing Christ is the sum of all things. It is something called revelation. Without revelation, you just do not get it.
That is where I was. Of course, I had seen revelation: Christ as my Savior; Christ as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit; revelation concerning a number of things regarding the doctrines of the church. But I did not see the connection.
The vital connection is this: I thought you received a revelation about something. What I did not understand is that true revelation is that you see Christ first, and then that revelation comes out of Christ.
Christ is the sum of all things. But I was looking at the Bible as these disparate parts.
Somewhere along the line, as my dear brother came humbly and shared every month there for the sake of the saints, I saw this revelation. You know what it is?
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Word of God.
Now, you say, “You knew that already.” I knew He was the Logos in John 1. I knew, “Word, Word, Logos.” I knew all that stuff. But I did not know He was the Bible, you see?
By that, I mean the spirit of the Bible. What does that phrase mean?
The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.
What it means is that, over and beyond the details of the prophecies given, over and above the outward matters of kingdoms and events and everything, underneath those prophecies the Spirit is saying, “The Lord is coming. Jesus is coming. He is setting up His kingdom.”
Prophecy all has to do, in some way directly or indirectly, with a gathering that is going to eventuate, with His kingdom being established, and with Him being the Messiah over this whole earth.
I did not see that until one day. I wish I could tell you that day, but I can tell you what happened on that day. When I saw Christ was the Old Testament as well as the New, the thing opened up. Suddenly I was soaking it in and drinking.
Then I heard about this crazy bunch of Christians called the Brethren, who had all kinds of books out about how the Old Testament is Christ, and types, and this and that. These guys were just crazy: every page in the Old Testament, they were finding Jesus. I thought Stephen was along that same crazy line.
Then I joined the crazies.
Believe it or not, it is not just that you have to be instructed by somebody who has this clever way of implying the Old Testament. If you see that Christ is the sum of the Old Testament, suddenly you see Him popping up on every page.
You can read Psalm so-and-so, and there He is. You can read a prophet like Nahum, and there He is. You can read Genesis, and there He is. When you read it like that, I am telling you, the Word just goes—it is amazing. Is it not amazing?
Without revelation of Christ as the Word of God, I just could not see that.
It was as if a whole new hermeneutic rushed into my spirit—undefined, but things became so clear. I will just express three things.
First, I saw that Christ was the hidden thread that held all thirty-nine books together. I never saw that. The whole thing makes sense when you see Christ threaded through the whole thing—when you see God, in His mercy and good pleasure, gathering and preparing all things for His Son and for the end.
All of those thirty-nine books, as crazy as some of those books seem to be, have been threaded together because they are all speaking of the living Logos at the end. That was marvelous.
The second thing I saw was that the overall lessons of each book could only be unfolded by revelation of Christ. Each book itself has a story to tell.
Now, Brother Stephen always feels uncomfortable when I bring these kinds of things up, but I do believe one day, if the Lord tarries more than a few years, one of the great classics of evangelical literature will be Seeing Christ in the Bible. That is a most precious series of books.
If you do not have that, you need to stop by that bookstore and get it. Our brother Stephen has shared with the brothers and sisters here in Richmond, over the years, each book—just a little nugget, a one-message presentation of Christ in these books. What a marvelous book. I think that is so valuable. What a tremendous blessing for the saints in Richmond to see Christ through the whole Bible. Seminary never taught me that. This was a blessing I fell into by the mercy of God.
Third, and this is one of those “Why did I not see this before?” things: the New Testament writers themselves freely use the Old Testament and typology. Their hermeneutic was the crazy hermeneutic—the hermeneutic of revelation.
Paul—just look at this one little thing. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is summarizing the gospel in a few pithy verses. His basis for saying, “Here is the gospel, and here is how you know it is the truth,” is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4:
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
and that He was buried,
and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
What Scriptures? There was no New Testament. He is saying, “Do you not understand? Christ died for our sins according to the Old Testament. It is as clear as day.”
Then Paul used types all the time. The writer of Hebrews saw Melchizedek as applying to Christ. That is what I said, “No, no, no.” But the Word said, “Yes, yes, yes—by revelation.”
Then, of course, the final nail in the coffin, if I needed one—and I did—was Jesus Himself.
You know what really stunned me? Jesus believed that Jonah actually was in the belly of the fish three days. That really threw out the whole course I had had in Jonah.
God had to do a spiritual lobotomy in my seminary eyes and brain: if Jesus believed that, I believe it. If Noah was in the ark, I believe it. If Jesus said it, that is it.
But then I began to see that Jesus saw Himself. As He stood before the leaders just before His crucifixion and they said, “Are You the Messiah?” He said, “You shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of glory.” He saw Himself as the fulfillment of the vision in Daniel 7.
When the scribes were arguing with Him about various things, He saw that He was the fulfillment of the second Lord in Psalm 110:
The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit Thou at My right hand,
until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
The Lord Himself saw that He was the Messiah prophesied there in Psalm 110. These kinds of things began to blow me away.
Of course, He had to come to His disciples even after His resurrection to explain to them, “Do you not understand? I am the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Did you not see that? Did you not know that it was according to the Scriptures that I had to suffer and die?”
The disciples had not seen it until it was revealed through Christ’s actions. Even though the disciples knew the Scriptures, until you see it in Christ, you do not understand. It is reality. It is the revelation of Christ that is necessary to our lives.
And so the blinders came off.
At that time, a book came into my hands. I think it is out of print, but maybe it is back in print—you know how they do this. It was a book by G. Campbell Morgan called The Unfolding Message of the Bible.
Evidently, he just sat down with somebody and they started writing it down. He flew over the Bible. It is only about this thick, and he covers every book in the Bible. But it opened my eyes to the Old Testament some more.
It was about that same time, in the mid-seventies, that I began to see this tremendous summing up of Christ through the Scriptures. Brother Morgan put it in such a beautiful way. If I could borrow his basic setup, I would just like to fly through the Old Testament with you.
He says we see Christ revealed in the Pentateuch, the first five books. Not only is God sovereignly and mercifully gathering children unto Himself and revealing Himself, but He is raising up Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, who all look like Jesus in some fashion or form.
Now, you may find that very hard about Jacob, but Jesus looks like Jacob—the transformed Jacob.
As I told the young people this spring, Jacob was a grabber who was transformed at Peniel to become a grabber for God. Jesus was a grabber for God. He came to this earth to seek and to grab sinners down from the tree into His house.
You may not like the word “grabber.” If I said “possessor,” you would say, “Oh, that is so much better.” But Jesus looks like all of those men. If you take a close look, there is something to be seen.
Not only that, but Melchizedek in the middle of Genesis—it is a wonderful thing to see. But see God gathering. You read that Word and you are being gathered.
Then you come to Exodus, and you see God gathering some more. He is gathering by the Passover lamb. Hmm, what was that like? Then He gathers at the mountain with a covenant. He gathers the saints around the tabernacle. His gathering, His revelation of Himself—and then, of course, the raising up of Moses.
Oh, what a wonderful man of God. In the house of God in the Old Testament, I do not know if there was anyone better. He was the servant in the house of God.
Then, of course, Leviticus: you find all the sacrifices of Christ. Then you see Numbers, and you see God gathering His children through discipline, taking them through the wilderness, teaching them lessons about murmuring, placing that bronze serpent up in the wilderness for the times of their sin.
Then Deuteronomy: there is Moses standing almost on the border of the Promised Land, saying, “I cannot go in, but can I just tell you a couple of things? You know how the Lord has led you all this time? Has it seemed severe sometimes? You know the commandments that God has given you? Have they seemed tough to you sometimes? Can I share with you God’s heart for you, and how much He has loved you all this time?”
He reinterprets the Law through the hesed of God, and they see that God has cared for them, loved them, borne them along, and taught them lessons. Oh, what a tremendous soliloquy of Moses.
But what is the sum of our thinking? Here is where Brother Morgan has such a wonderful way of putting it. When all is said and done, and you have read the five books, and you have seen God’s mercies, and you see the people’s rebellion, and you look at the whole thing—even Moses, who himself could not go into the Promised Land—he says what comes out is a sigh:
Oh, for a priest
who could truly atone and change our lives,
so that we would not be such rebels.Oh, for a Moses
who could truly take us in
and not Himself be disqualified.If there were only One—
a Priest, a High Priest—
who could bring us the ultimate, once-for-all sacrifice.
When we read these portions, we sense a sigh. There is something incomplete about the Pentateuch until Jesus comes.
Then the next section is what we call in our English Bible the historical books. The historical books are obviously books of God’s gathering and preparing a kingdom.
Through Joshua—Jesus, the same name—He brings the children into this land that environmentally is perfect for the gathering into a kingdom. If there was ever a case to prove that environment does not change people, the children of Israel coming into the Promised Land is the proof.
They came in, and despite all of their victories, and despite the faith of Caleb and Joshua and so forth, it was not too long before we were in Judges and seeing the people resisting being gathered. Everybody does what is right in his own eyes. Who needs a king?
Even if the twelve tribes had stayed together as a unit, they could have warded off most of the outside enemies. But no, no, no—they bickered and fought with one another. They became so weak that anybody could come in and plunder one tribe at a time.
They would not be gathered. They remained independent. Only occasionally, when a judge came along, did the people begin to see that they needed to be gathered unto their God.
Samuel was the great judge, of course, and at Mizpah he gathered them. They came and worshiped God with their whole heart. There were moments of gathering in Judges, but for the most part, it was a very disappointing thing to see the opportunities God had given His children and what they had done with them.
But it became obvious: maybe the problem is not ourselves; what we need is a king. So they went ahead and got a king. To be gathered around their king was the ideal, but they picked Saul as the greatest king in the flesh they could pick—a big, tall guy, strapping, a good soldier, just the kind of king everybody in the world would want.
But he did not work. He did not work for the kingdom of God. It turned out the children of Israel would not even be gathered to him. When it was time for war, he had to threaten people just to get them to come out and fight. They could not be gathered by this fleshly king.
Then, of course, we come to that wonderful era of David. Somehow the people gathered around his heart. They gathered around this man.
Then they gathered around Solomon’s wisdom, and saw those great things, and stood together in those great things. But the story of the kings keeps going, does it not?
The list of kings takes us up and down on a roller-coaster ride that leads us into corruption, into kings that were so poor that the people just split up and went again, had to do their own things because the kings were so poor they could not even be trusted.
It is always interesting to me. Sometimes they bring in both statistics at once; usually they do not try to bring them in at the same time. But right now, President Bush’s approval rating is, what, thirty-two percent? Oh, it is abysmal.
But they do not always bring in the fact that Congress is at an all-time low at twenty-one percent.
Well, the kings had come to such a low level of approval that they were falling deeper and deeper into sin.
When you read those books of history, you are left with a sigh—a sigh for a Messiah, a sigh for a King: a King Who can keep His people and shepherd His people, a Shepherd-King, a Messiah greater than David but in his line. That is what is needed.
When you read those history books, you almost sense the yearning: “Oh, if we could just be completed.” But we are so incomplete unless this Messiah comes.
Then, of course, you have the prophets. Even in that decline, God can never leave Himself without a witness, so He began to raise up prophets.
These prophets presented before the people, blinded by sin and idolatry, the heart of God. They held up the heart of God, the standard of God, God Himself before those people. They warned of judgment time and time again, even down to the moment of judgment, still saying, “There is a way of repentance.”
But that way was not really found.
When the people were brought into captivity and went into judgments of various kinds, even during that time the Lord raised up prophets. They started speaking of the promise, of a plan, of a Messiah, and of a kingdom that would surely come despite all these years of travail—of a gathering that would come about one day.
The prophets were prophets of hope in those times of doom. But what was the result?
Well, praise God, through the work of the prophets, the remnant was raised up: people who believed the Word, people willing to suffer and stand.
Perhaps the greatest sign of their being gathered up before God was that they were waiting for the consolation of Israel. They were groaning. They were waiting, waiting, waiting, with that sigh expressed in their very lives.
They would wait by the temple when the others went home. We know those people. We meet some when Jesus comes on the scene. They are ever waiting, ever praying, ever giving themselves to the Lord, saying, “Oh Lord, please, we are incomplete without You.”
But even the message of the prophets leaves us with that sigh for the living Word that can come and transform us—not just a word spoken to the outside, a word that we know is true but cannot respond to, but a living Word that can come and indwell us and give us life: righteous life, godly life.
So we see that the whole Old Testament is waiting for Jesus. It can only be summed up in Jesus.
That is why we have four books that we call good news. When Jesus came, suddenly things that were waiting, and things that were only partially fulfilled, started to be fulfilled one after another as Jesus came on the scene.
As I said, I was saved in the spring of 1964. In the summertime, I was going to college and working a forty-hour-a-week job. But I was a brand-new Christian, saved on April Fool’s Day.
I worked all summer—June, July, August—and despite working forty hours a week, at every breakfast time, lunchtime, snack time, break time, all the time I could, I read the whole Bible through.
Genesis to Revelation. It did not hurt at all. I even did it the hard way: they gave me an old Scofield King James, and I read the whole thing through.
I remember somewhere toward the end of the summer coming to the Gospels for the first time as a Christian. I know many of you have known the Lord since your youth, and you have heard the Word of God just absorbed in your life. Praise God for that.
For me, I was hitting everything fresh. Oh man, when I hit the Gospels, I do not know—something happened to me. I was just so excited.
When I read Matthew, I thought that was a very complicated book. It seemed very religious and complicated. But the teachings in there, those parables and things, just stood out. I said, “Wow. Wow.” I remember that so clearly.
I would go back through Matthew 13 trying to figure them out. I misinterpreted every one of them, because I had little revelation about the kingdom at that time. I was just newly saved. But wow, look at those parables—Jesus always speaking in paradoxes and messing people up. He is really something, you know?
Then I hit Mark. In Mark, I just saw power. I saw power—Jesus’ power.
It was at that time, while I was reading Mark, that I received the Holy Spirit. I had such a hunger for that power. I said, “Look at Him. He has bound the strong man. What? That must be the devil. He is healing people and saving people. Wow, what a powerful Savior He is.”
I got down on my knees: “God, I want the power from heaven.” And I got it—a little drip. That is all I could handle at the time. I was only up to a hundred goosebumps in those days, so I could not get too much.
Then I came to Luke, and that is where I fell in love. I had never read a book like Luke. I found a champion. I saw a human being.
I was not quite clear who Jesus was, you know what I am saying. I knew He was God; I knew He was man. Wow, in Luke, what a man.
I found Somebody Who loves sinners. I was a sinner. I was the worst one in my family. My brother—he is here today, you know. I do not know if you know I have a brother. He is a very precious man. He was always better than me. My sister was better than me. I was the black sheep of the family.
And I found Jesus, Who loves sinners. And I loved Him.
When He died on the cross, it broke my heart. I mean, just the things He said—He forgave everybody. I just could not believe it.
I am so glad He rose again. In Luke, I was devastated. But I found my Savior. I found that Luke—I love Luke. I still see Him whenever I read Luke. He is walking. So wonderful. What a wonderful Lord.
I was being gathered up into the Lord Jesus. I was being caught by a loving God.
Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord Jesus.
Then, of course, I had to come to John and see something so beautiful. I did not know what to do with John. I did not understand the “I am.” I did not understand so much of it, but there were two things I really saw.
First, in His interviews, He brought everybody to understand that there is a spiritual side to everything. I did not understand that until I hit that.
Second, the other wonderful thing I saw in the Gospel of John was that love was redefined for me. Love was basically emotional, but I saw there a deliberate, self-giving love.
I remember when I came to John 13. Jesus knew where He had come from and where He was going. Having been with His disciples, even up to the end, He loved them to the uttermost.
I saw something so deliberate in love. I saw that love goes far beyond just feeling. There is a life poured out.
Well, the Gospels were great gospel for me, as you can imagine. Then, of course, we go through the rest of the Book. We have run out of time, and I still have all the rest to go. You say, “He cannot do his job.”
But at least in the Book of Acts, we can see a tremendous gathering. Now, would you agree? What a gathering. They gathered together in one accord. When has that ever happened before?
It is as if Babel was reversed. They all came together, the Spirit came down on them, and they started speaking in tongues. Then they were gathered in Jerusalem, then gathered in Antioch, then gathered at the centurion’s house, and then gathered out across the world.
Jesus—gathering, gathering, gathering, gathering them up.
Right from the start, I saw that Acts was Jesus gathering people, which I later found out was the truth, even though in seminary they told me the Spirit was gathering people. Well, He is. The Spirit, even to this day.
Oh, what a wonderful book. Oh, what a wonderful moment to see Jesus is the Word of God, and then, from that revelation, to have the Bible come alive to you—Old Testament and New.
It makes your heart, if you will study the Word, available to the Lord speaking to you and bringing you into fullness.
I am a poor student, but can you imagine what happened to the apostle Paul there on the road to Damascus, when he later, almost immediately—or quickly—went to Arabia for three years?
He had known the Old Testament backwards and forwards in the letter. But now that he had seen Christ standing before him, can you imagine his Bible studies in the Arabian desert? He was preaching to the sheep. He could not believe it. He was worshiping God and praising God for Christ here and Christ there. He was seeing Christ everywhere.
When a person goes through such a process, you are gathered. You cannot help but be gathered under His headship, because you see how immense He is. The fullness of Christ is seen through the Word of God.
That is why I say to you: rather than tell you, or try to tell you, if I could, of the dimensions of His glory, I point you to the Word of God.
Be a student of the Word of God. Yes, be a lover of the Word of God. It is your meat. It is your food. Without it, we cannot come unto fullness.
Even to this day, there is tremendous ignorance—not even Bible ignorance; revelation ignorance.
Oh, that we may see that the whole of Scripture is summed up in Christ; that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus; that all the various parts, even the parts we do not understand, somehow, in an amazing way, have to do with this whole gathering unto the Lord through His Word.
Oh, let us be gathered to the Lord. Let us come to that fullness. Let us recognize this precious Lord we own. It is right here.
Search for Jesus on every page.
You young people up there, be one who opens this Bible and says, “Oh Jesus, let me find You here in Leviticus.” The Spirit will reveal Him.
Be a faithful student of the Word. As we are gathered together unto the Lord, we are gathered together around His Word. What a wonderful provision of God.
Let us not despise it or get used to it. There is living revelation. You never can get used to living revelation. Oh, may the Lord help us.
Let us pray.
Oh, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lover of our souls, You have desired nothing better for us than to gather us around Christ.
Oh, how we need to see a revelation of our Shepherd, the great Shepherd of our souls. How we need to see revealed this great Hen, gathering His chicks together.
Oh, forbid, Lord, that we would be those people who have Bibles but do not understand them, standing in the same position as those leaders in Jerusalem—standing face to face with the living God and just looking at the letter of the Bible, and not getting the point.
Oh Lord, lead us in life in these last days. Give us further revelation of Yourself. It is the only way You can recover us, we know.
Lord, we pray not just that there would be some, a few here and there, who would receive a revealed word, but that every one of us could see a Logos revealed that would result in our everyday devotion being full of Christ.
Oh, You are the sum, the source, and the meaning of Scripture. We thank You, Lord. Help us continue to see that more and more, as we pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.