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[Addendum - 2016] 

PART IV -- The Nature Of The Ministry To Come

 

To this point I have outlined the broad principles that will mark the outworking of the new revelation of Christ to mankind.  Now I want to go back and fill in some of the color in the picture.

 

 

IX. The Nature of the New Message and Ministry

 

A new revelation requires new foundations, a new apostleship, for bringing living instruction to those who are converted to the revelation of Christ.  There are yet many unknowns concerning what the theological foundations of the new salvation will entail simply because we don't even know what the new revelation of the Lord will be like. 

 

However, based on what the Lord has privately been building into me over the last 20 years, there are some major things I believe I can tell you will mark the new configuration. (Note: These are things which Christianity either rejects or is simply blind to.  Again, I may offend any number of folk by one or more of the following assertions.  So pray about these):

 

 

          A.  New Theology Based on New Spiritual Reconciliations

 

The next revelation of Christ will see a greater union between heavenly and earthly realities.  Fulfilling what we now struggle to resolve through lesser competing perceptions, this new revelation will reconcile many previously unsettled spiritual tensionseliminating many unresolved theological and experiential contradictions of our present gospel age.  The underpinnings of the new apostolic theology will lay out these resolutions which among others will include:

 

                   - Unification and Proper Alignment of the Word and Spirit

 

Throughout the gospel age, the relationship of the Word and the Spirit has been filled with tension.  But through the new revelation, they will no longer be precariously balanced, but wholly reconciled in us. 

 

The dichotomy between reformed/evangelical and pentecostal/charismatic will be eliminated.  Even the distinction between Word-oriented apostolic and Spirit-oriented prophetic will be dissolved.  A new language that perfectly blends the work of the cross (transformation) and the anointing will also come forth. 

 

The operation of the united Word and Spirit in this revelation will transcend anything seen in the restorations and revivals of the present era. Not only will the Word of Truth and the Spirit be reconciled in us, but also they will be properly aligned to where the Spirit will function totally in subjection to and support of the Word of Truth. 

 

The coming apostolic move will be centered in the Word of Truth, not in the activity of the Spirit.  Yet the activity of the Spirit will be there as never seen before.  The Word of God with all its masculine natured authority will be restored to supremacy.  Living Truth beginning with the fear of God and leading through the disciplines of sonship will be primary.

 

        - The Reconciliation of Spiritual Natures: Masculinity and Feminity

 

As an extension of the reconciliation of the Word and Spirit, there will come the full reconciliation and realignment of the masculine and feminine spiritual reflections of God seen through the offices and natures of His people.  As the Word of Truth displays the masculine nature of God, the extension of that nature is seen in the fathering ministry of the apostle.  As the Spirit displays the feminine nature of God, that nature is mainly displayed in the mothering nature of the pastor.

 

The Church Age has been a spiritually fatherless age in which the churches have been ruled by pastors.  But in the body that forms around the next revelation of the Lord, this will not be so. The new body will be under the full spiritually masculine headship of the apostles.  Pastors will no longer rule, but will come into right alignment under apostles filled with Truth.  That which is people sensitive will be subject to that which is Christ sensitive. 

 

This will all occur in a context where the local people of God are no longer governed as empires under the control of bureaucratic elder boards or one-man tyrants, but under collaborative teams specifically fitted together by the Lord to represent His complete nature.

 

Meanwhile, for the first time will appear those who have seen the complete reconciliation of these natures within themselves, obtaining what Christ has already demonstrated as the 'fullness of the Godhead.' Many will walk in the fullness of reconciled, realigned masculine/feminine nature, demonstrating the perfection of sonship.

 

      - Reconciliation of Secular and Sacred

 

When I was in university, there was a revered maxim that said, "There is no difference between the secular and the sacred." While in theoretical perfection this is true, in the nitty gritty reality of the gospel age, it has not been true.  There has always been that element of the world as opposed to the Christian.

 

But under the coming revelation, the extension of God's grace to pure Secularists with no Christian background or gospel exposure is going to change that.  Where those converted under the gospel age have been under the confining separation of godly from worldly, those who are converted to the new revelation in Christ will know no difference between worldly and spiritual. 

 

Yes, evil will still exist and be more extreme than ever.  But the power of the enemy to use the natural creation as a weapon of temptation will be broken.  Thus, no matter how much evil may surround, the next walk in Christ will be such that converts will simply be blind to anything that does not minister Christ to them or aid them in their walk.  Conversely, whatever they touch will be of God simply because they touched it.  There will be no laborious choice over "Is this right?  Is this OK for me?"

 

[Note: This coming grace will end the debate between those who believe God's people will simply be removed from a world given over to evil and those who believe a utopian vision where all nations will be converted under the power of good.  This new grace will have the power to deliver from the evil that daily bombards the senses where the gospel has not demonstrated that power.  But it will not eradicate all evil, convert all nations to good or remove the Lord's people out of the world. 

 

The power of surrounding evil will continue to grow until the Lord's full arrival.  But the grace under the new revelation will supercede the awareness of the evil.  In fact, the evil will become so great that the new grace for becoming oblivious to it will offer the only hope of surviving its deluge.  As stressful as this dilemma will be, the pressure (i.e., tribulation) produced by it is essential to our ultimate deliverance from the knowledge of good and evil into glorified life.]

 

 

          B. New Teaching on Purified Identity

 

Under the next revelation, the new lineage of faith will truly transcend all natural and religious identity to take on a pure identity in Christ alone, spearheaded by the converted Secularists.  Throughout the Christian era, men have repeatedly tied their faith to their nationality, preventing them from becoming part of the true body that transcends all nationality (Gal. 3:28).  To this day in America, evangelicalism is tied to American nationalism.

 

The remarkable thing about the next revelation is that the New Gentiles, who as the creme of internationalism have rejected all nationalism in favor of a one world system, have unknowingly been washed from a pollution that has dogged the Christians for 2,000 years.  When the new revelation breaks out, these converted internationalists will immediately absorb the true transnational vision that the gospel always called for. 

 

Understanding that their kingdom is not of this world, these converted Secularists will be above all politics.  In them political left and right will be reconciled as they will be neither.  Because of this, they will be temporary reconcilers between impossible political and social polarities, bringing a stop-gap harmony to society never seen.  This will remain possible until the final wars come.  But before the dam of judgment bursts, that harmony will provide the final window of opportunity for salvation of all remaining sheep amidst mounting world social chaos.

 

Not only will the new body transcend all nationalism, but also all denominationalismfrom Roman Catholic to Non-Denominational. Under the confines of the gospel era, men have either given in to denominationalism, or else rebelled against it only to inadvertently create their own denomination.  No move of God within Christianity has had the power to break this. 

 

No truth under the gospel era has come forth to exonerate any man or movement as the sole incontestable heir to the first apostles.  Denominationalism will be broken only when Christianity itself is altogether transcended by the new revelation of Christ.  Those who leave Christianity together with the converts from Secularism will make this transcension.

 

Because they will be transcending Christianity, this new people of God will not be called Christians, but will have a new name.  At that time, the term Christian will be reserved to religionism and to those who have only a name to live.  Meanwhile the new people, though not called Christian, will be everything Christianity was supposed to have been in this age, but failed to demonstrate.

 

 

        C. Changes From the Gospel Age Message

 

-    A Gospel Based in Judgment (Rev 14:7) and the End of Benign Universalism

 

The most notable difference between the nearing revelation of Christ and the present gospel is that the next revelation will carry a hard authoritarian flavor that establishes the fear of the Lord as the basis for knowing God.  The present gospel of John 3:16 will be replaced by the gospel of Revelation 14:7.  The grace of God will be revealed only in context of the imminent judgment of God.  The present concept of the love of God will be radically altered to reflect this. 

 

The kind nature of the love of God will only be revealed in context of His hatred of evil together with an unquestionably clear conviction of moral righteousness.  This righteousness will need no proof, but will be its own self-evidencing witness in the heart, transcending all debate in the present no-win conflict between the humanistic moral relativity and Christian moral hypocrisy. 

 

Anyone converted to the new revelation will have an experience similar to that of the Damascus Road experience of Paul.  There will be no half-hearted "acceptance" or "receiving" of the Lord.  Because of the severity of world conditions, the new revelation will demand immediate total surrender, or else.... In many cases, conversion will be an instantaneous matter of life or death in which, unless a person surrenders to Christ, he will be executed by angels on the spot.

 

This will be the last great salvaging of spiritual sheep and the last revelation before final firestorm and waves of judgment burn all world societies to the ground in preparation for the manifest kingdom.  Those converted to the new revelation of Christ will be converted to a new power of truth that will break the many deceptions that surround the spread of the present gospel.  This will include:

 

-         an end of appealing to human sovereignty as the basis for entering into relationship with God.  New revelation concerning God's election, power, and omnipotence regarding human will shall come forth.  There will be no more pleading with men to believe.  The new revelation will command faith through surrender.  All human sentimentality will cease.  All human questioning of God's fairness concerning His sovereignty will be replaced by surrender to truth.

 

-         an end to the benign universalism that has governed the preaching of the present gospel since the time of John Wesley.  Benign universalism teaches a non-discriminatory redemptive love which holds out the objective hope and possibility for the conversion of all men without exception.  The new revelation will bring out the truth concerning the discriminatory love of God toward sheep, and the elect hatred of God for goats.  It will also detail the distinctions between non-redemptive love applied to all men, and redemptive love applied only to ordained, appointed sheep.

 

-         an end to utopianism and false kingdom theologies that imagine the redemption of the present world system under Christianity.  All who are converted to the new revelation will know this is the last revelation before final destruction.  They will not be motivated by the false utopianism that believes their revelation can prevent ultimate final destruction or some how "turn it all around." With hearts set on the imminent appearance of the unseen city made without hands, all ministers of the new revelation will know that their engagement of society is only for the targeted redemption of sheep, and that whatever blessing, order, or reconciliation their presence brings is but a temporary window of opportunity geared to this strategy of last redemption.  Converts will be functioning with a mindset largely akin to that of the two witnesses that destroyed Sodom. (Compare Rev. 11:3-6 with Genesis 19.)

 

-         an end to academic discussion surrounding the truth.  Those ministering the new revelation of Christ will not be entering into theological debates with Christians or apologetic debates with Secularists.  They will simply be proclaiming truth out of the power of a living reality within them.  At the heart of the new revelation will be the clear knowledge of glorification as the end product of this word, and the imminence of translation among those who are ready.  Thus all converts will be consciously laboring toward translation as the concrete goal of their own salvation as well as that of the sheep to whom they minister.

 

-         an end to humanisticly defined love.  The love of God will become re-centered in obedience to God and apart from obedience to truth will not be acknowledged (Jn 15:21,23-24).  Love for others will be referenced by personal obedience to the Lord, not by humanistic perceptions of love for people that are then used to evaluate one's love for God.

 

        - Relationship to the Scriptures

 

The new revelation of Christ will have the same relationship to the Bible that the original revelation had to the Old Testament.  As the Old Testament was used extensively to witness to Christ, even though his name did not appear in it nor the specific facts that marked his life and ministry, so the Bible will be used to testify to the new revelation. 

 

Yet the same truth will be in force.  The new revelation will bring forth an entirely new work of the Lord not detailed in the Scriptures.  It will require a faith to believe in the Lord's new revelation equal to that required of the first apostles.  The faith of God's new people will be in a revelation that is happening now, not 2,000 years ago.

 

Not only will the revelation of Christ transcend the Scriptures, but it will be occurring amidst the greatest language revolution in the history of mankind.  The new revelation will speak to men in contemporary language.  It will also be written down in contemporary language even as the New Testament was written in the Greek of the Gentiles, not the Hebrew of the Jews. 

 

Because the new revelation will transcend the Bible as the focus of attention, it will reduce to triviality the debate concerning translations.  In particular, the King James Version will be reduced to a status of archaic importance to remaining English-speaking Christians.  Meanwhile, the revelation itself will be characterized by new terminology paralleling the information explosion, just as the words apostle and evangelist came into being through the first revelation.

 

The new revelation will be advanced through new channels for communication even as new technologies were used in past restorations for the spread of the gospel (viz., the printing press and the Reformation.) The children of the information revolution converted under the new revelation will not only become freed from their addiction to technology but will skillfully use it to advance the revelation of Christ.  The new gospel will not be dependent on technology for its spread, yet it will make great use of all technology.

 

Much more importantly, however, the coming revelation will transcend both human language and technology as we know it.  There will be a manifestation of the Spirit with this revelation that will simply bypass human communication.  This bypass will be an amplification of what was prefigured through the original gift of tongues.  As a result of this bypass, the new gospel will span the intelligence gap.  Those who are naturally intelligent will have no advantage and those without strong intelligence will have no disadvantage at being able to receive the new power of Christ.

 

 

          D. Nature of New Structure for Relationship

 

The coming body that forms around Christ's next revelation will become the realization of what the church pre-figured, but it will not be called the church.  It will be given a new name to distinguish it from everything in this age that has been confined under the old gospel revelationeven as the original term church was coined 2,000 years ago to distinguish it from the synagogue or other Gentile gatherings. 

 

This body will have a simple common name even as the word ekklesia was a common Greek word of the day, but it will not be a term that has been used by any of the churches of this age.  Possibly a high tech term like forum will be used.

 

We have already noted the realignment that will come in the pastoral and apostolic offices.  But more than this, there will be a total realignment of the relationship between the new body as a spiritual gathering, and the natural units of the home and the school.  A structure as has been dreamed of throughout the church age by remote prophetic visionaries is even now being anticipated and developed in the spirits of present apostolic thinkers. 

 

Where the church, home, and school have either been totally fractured as in the evangelical era, or under the total enslavement of a false man-made system as under pre-reformation Catholicism, the new body will be a totally unified, cohesive society mediated only by the power of Christ.  It will be the realization of the one, universal society that Roman Catholicism vainly imagined it alone stewarded.

 

[In Part 5: Possible Relationships to the Ultimate Coming of Christ ]


Chris Anderson
Merrimack, NH


First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

4/96 [ed. 11/09]



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