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[Addendum - 2016]

PART V - Possible Relationships To The Ultimate Coming Of Christ

 

 

Although I have raised untold questions that disturb our standard thinking relative to the Lord's return, I have purposely left discussion about this to the very last.  Underneath all I have described about the next revelation of Christ, there remain gnawing questions:

 

"How does this next revelation relate to what we already know about the end times, the return of the Lord, and the glorification of the saints?  What will the revelation itself be like?  If this next revelation is not the physical revelation of Christ but perhaps leads up to it, then how does it relate to His ultimate coming?  How does it relate to our glorification?  Does it involve glorification or does it precede that as well?"

 

My heart continues its patient wait for specific answers to these questions.  As I have more illumination I will share it.  For now, I can only give out as much as I have been given.  But I believe I do have some understanding about the nature of the Lord's final coming and our seeing of Him that might set the stage for receiving these answers.

 

 

X. The Nature of the Appearance of the Lord

 

The structure by which our minds describe the happening of events and the way things actually happen are quite different.  This difference is especially obvious when it comes to describing events in nature.  Human thinking is very exact, sequential, and compartmentalized when describing events--like a cartoon strip.  Consider the blooming of a flower.  We say, "First the seed was planted, then a shoot appeared, and then a leaf came, and finally the blossom popped out." Very neat, eh?

 

But in nature, things are not so exact and defined.  It's actually impossible to pinpoint the moment something moves from one stage into another.  There is, pardon the word, a ceaseless developmental evolution of events in which we can't really nail down the precise time the shoot actually broke the surface, and then bore a leaf, and then a bud.  We only know the moment when we first observed it.  Our observations are like snapshots, giving us still pictures of a living process we really can't track as it really is.

 

This also applies to our understanding of prophetic events, especially the coming of the Lord.We have these neat prophetic cartoon strips in our minds based on illumination given by the Spirit. With these spiritual snapshots we tell a very orderly arranged story where we say, "First this will happen, then this will happen next, and then this..... But when Jesus actually appears, the reality will be far different than our neat pictures of it imagined. (No, this is not a denial of dispensations, but only of our "exactness" of perception of their demarcations. Flowers still have "stages" of growth.) 

 

The Scriptures liken the coming of Christ to the coming of a new day.  The arrival of a day is a progressive event with a developmental evolution.  First, there is a tinge of light on the horizon, then the tinge becomes a twilight that affects half the sky, then the lighter blue turns to a yellowish-orange haze called dawn, then a single piercing ray pops above the horizon, and finally, the entire sun appears.  Each of these stages is a snapshot.  But in reality, there is no clear demarcation between them.

 

In the same way, the coming of Christ will have a living development.  This development allows for a series of transitional stages of appearance that defies pinpoint definition.  But we do not allow for this in our thinking.  Our beliefs about Christ's return are made up of assumptions based on our bias toward nice, black and white demarcations of events.

 

Consider, for instance, I Cor 15:51-52: "We will all be changed--in a flash, in the twinking of an eye, at the last trumpet." Fine.  So we shall.  But what do we assume?  When we read this, we assume that this moment of translation is simultaneous for everyone-- that we will all be changed at the same moment.  We assume the last trump is a "little toot" and, bang, there we all are.  But is this justified?  Suppose the last trump blares for a period of time?  Just because each of us will be changed in a single moment doesn't mean it will be the same moment for all of us.

 

Nor does the suddenness of the change itself mean there is no development to the change and the appearance of Christ to us.  The moment Paul describes here is just the moment of sunrise of Christ's ultimate appearance.  But what about that which leads up to sunrise?  Does it not follow that there must be stages of revelation and translation before that full sunrise of His appearance and our glorification?

 

May not Christ arrive in the earthly environs in gradual stages of influence and perception, producing an increasing glow in our spirits before He fully appears?  Before our body is fully reconstructed, may there not be stages in which an element in our blood is changed first, then a few days later, another element, then suddenly another such that we begin to have the heavens opened to us, then finally that moment of complete change occurs and we see the Lord?

 

And what about after the sunrise?  Consider the moment of translation again.  We make an assumption that the moment we are changed is the moment we disappear.  But may there not be an interval between the moment of complete change and the moment of disappearance?  Suppose there are minutes or hours between the two.  Sure, two shall be in the field, one taken the other left.  But cannot the one who is taken be changed some minutes or hours before disappearing?  Who is to say?

 

These are the developmental realities about the Lord's coming that our sequential thinking cannot define and so does not make room for.  My only point is this: It is entirely within the realm of reality to say that the next revelation of Christ does not begin with His full-blown bodily appearing. 

 

The revelation I have described in this article will certainly be different than anything we have called a revelation of the Lord in this era.  It will not be based on the gospel.  It will be an entirely new class of revelation with a power to save beyond the power of the present gospel revelation.  It is a revelation that belongs to the overall totality of the second coming of the Lord.

But that does not require it to immediately consummate in the full appearing of the Lord.  It does not even require full glorification to be consummated in us before being received.  This revelation will be but part of the dawning, a dawning that will include other developmental aspects before the Son of God appears in all his glory to take over the earth. 

 

We could be talking a period of 3 to 15 years between these stages, or maybe only some months.  Who knows?  To be sure, though, the revelation I am teaching is to ultimately be considered as a part of the Lord's second coming, and is in no wise inconsistent with the promise of it.

 

 

XI. The Nature of Seeing

 

A revelation requires two things: 1) the appearance of an object, and 2) the ability to see the object.  We have just discussed the developmental nature of the appearance of Christ.  But we must also understand what is involved in our seeing of the Lord.  Here is another area where our understanding is plagued by misconceptions based on assumption.

 

When we talk about the return of the Lord, we have this unspoken mental picture in which we imagine looking up into the sky with the naked eye and suddenly, "It's a bird.. no, it's a plane... no.. it's Jesus!  Hi, Jesus! (wave everybody, it's Jesus coming back for us)..." We envision this purely physical-sensed apprehension of Him coming.

 

But the scriptures tell a much different story.  There are two kinds of seeing.  There is physical seeing, yes.  But there is a far more important seeing, a redemptive seeing, something which plain physical seeing is not.  Redemptive seeing begins in the heart, developing until it eventually manifests through glorified physical eyesight. 

 

When we talk about seeing the Lord's coming relative to our final redemption, this is the kind of seeing we are talking about.  What we must understand is that, as literal and physical as the Lord's coming will be, it is only according to the degree that our heart's eyes have developed that we will be able to behold Him in redemptive face to face communion at His coming.

 

Certain verses taken together make it absolutely clear that not only are we increasingly redeemed by our ongoing inward seeing of the Lord, but that our glorification is the final result of that process and depends upon the growth of our inward seeing.  Whenever we receive a vision of Christ at a given inward level, we are changed to that level:

 

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory..." (II Cor 3:18).

 

Notice the progressiveness of this.  Our inward vision moves through realms of glory resulting in corresponding progressive changes in us.  Ultimately we're led to that climactic vision of Him where our bodies themselves break out into that same exact glory: 

 

"...What we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure." (I Jn 3:2).

 

This is where the meaning of Heb. 12 comes in: "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Only through the holiness intrinsic to inward seeing do we come to the place where we can physically see Him in the fullest sense.  Without enduring the inward purgings that produce holiness, we can't develop the inward sight that moves us from glory to glory leading to the eyes of glorified existence which alone can see him close up.

 

"But what about those remaining on the earth who will still see him with physical eyes at His coming?  "

 

Those who only have natural physical vision will still see the Lord, but will be unable to look at Him or discern His face.  They will not have the eyes capable of looking at Him because his brilliance would destroy them.  It would be like looking at the sun now.  They will only see Him as a distant brilliant light.  This distinction between physical seeing and redemptive seeing is akin to the difference by which those in John 12:28-30 heard the words of the Father.  The disciples close to the Lord heard the words, but those more distant only heard thunder.

 

What does all this have to do with the next revelation of the Lord as taught in this article?  The revelation of Christ I have described for you today will still be an inward revelation tied to the process of redemptive seeing.  Our ability to enter into it as Christians will depend on how much we have already developed in our vision under the gospel era. 

 

As a part of the second coming, this next revelation will involve a distinctive transformation in us toward glory of a higher plane than anything attained in the gospel era.  But it will still likely be prelude to ultimate translation when we will physically see the Lord through glorified eyes.  It will certainly prelude the ultimate physical appearance as a bright light coming in final judgment that all remaining on earth will see.

 

But this new revelation will also be received by New Gentiles who have never developed any spiritual seeing under the gospel. For these who have never known the gospel, this revelation will generate a new life of higher grace "genetically superior" to that produced under the gospel. 

 

As a brand new planting of super grace, the next revelation of Christ will produce an incredible power of inner life from the start, enabling them to see the Lord with the same eyes that it has taken the most mature of the Christian era years to obtain.  It will cut the time it takes to move from initial conversion to glorification. 

 

In the gospel age, no one (that we know of) has obtained final glory, and the first are only about to.  Moving from inward glory to glory has been a very slow process.  But through this next saving revelation, men will move much more quickly through discipleship phases of glory and into final glory. 

 

Under the new vision, it will take new saints on average but a few years or decades to become translated without seeing death.  In the same way that the death process once accelerated after the revelation to Noah, the process that reverses death leading to immortality will be accelerated through this next revelation.

 

 

Pray For Us

 

If the things I have outlined in this discourse seem strange to you, be assured that they are to me as well.  Personally, this word forces me to reconsider my entire outlook for the future.  Til now, my focus has been geared on ministering in the temple until I can finally be counted worthy of that hour when the translation takes place.  I have focused only on my own race, basically having given up on trying to bring Laodicean Christians to maturity and the same goal, never mind bring the lost to Christ.

 

But now I am forced to see a wider picture, one that not only forces me to look outside my own personal race to glory, but requires me to do so among those whom I, like all Christians, have written off.  Personally, I have no desire to go back into the working secular world. (If we hate the church as it is, how much more do we hate the secular world?) Yet this is God's word to me.  As a prophet, I am responsible to just relay the word and then live according to it as the Lord enables.

 

Because of this, we feel inevitably impelled to become planted in the secular working world in advance of this next revelation.  For over 25 years, I have had a strange spiritual drawing to the Rhode Island area where I grew up.  My drawing has puzzled me because the area is as dead as a door nail, yet I have been unable to escape the attraction of it.  Now, I believe the time is at hand for us to move there, and I am beginning to see how this can fit with the Lord's will.  Apart from this, we have no other vision or sense of direction.

 

Make no mistake, we are not going back as if to ignite some old line gospel ministry, or become activists for the Christian message.  We are only going back in obedience to our sense concerning this word.  We know that, until God reveals himself in a new way, we can do nothing.  We await that new revelation, and can do nothing otherwise but to prepare!

 

We close by asking you to pray for us, and agree with us concerning the Lord's will in this matter of our move.  It will be a tremendous culture shock to say the least.  We need God to move on our behalf and open doors of contact and relationship, both secular and Christian, so we can move into this place. 

 

We welcome any commentary from any of you concerning these, things.  We are open to any other change the Lord may show us, even if it somehow included ministry involvement.  But under the limited sight distance we have, we are doing the best we can with what we have.  As things develop, we will let you know.

 

Meanwhile, I can only ask you to ponder the things I have written here.  I cannot prove the truth of any of this to you.  But I leave it with the Lord to establish a witness concerning it in your hearts.  If in any way I am wrong about what I have seen, I am happy to be corrected by any word of the Lord that can prove itself to be more authoritative than what I have here.

 

The Lord be with you all until this next revelation.

 

 

Love,

[In Addendum 2016: The Next Revelation of Christ: How Will the Word of God be Expressed? ]






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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