This week’s inspiration came from and old worship tape I ran across called, “War in the heavenlies.” The title song comes from 2Corithians 10:4-5. As I study the book of Revelation, I find I keep coming back to the same point of origin. Jesus, by first delivering all mankind from the curse of the law with His own righteousness, a righteousness accepted and respected by His Father, then by issuing three simple commandments, commandments that can be conveniently rolled into one, has brought all mankind beautifully down into a valley to judge for sin.
The grace the Father expressed through the Son is a magnificent thing. Consider again 2Corinthians 5:17, 18 and 19, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Christ Jesus, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”
We are told, “All things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Christ Jesus.” The “all” things that became new is the complete and total free and unmerited redemption of mankind from the whole old covenant law. The word, all, from verse 18 refers back to the word all in verse 17, “Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” The old things are the old covenant law; the new things are the complete and total redemption from it. All mankind was guilty of transgressing the Law of Moses, a law God had enumerated and set forth, and through Jesus Christ, God completely and thoroughly redeemed mankind from His own law. The Law of Moses condemned all mankind to eternal death but through Jesus Christ, all mankind was delivered from that eternal death. All things became new.
This new reality can hardly be fully known and appreciated by mankind. Mankind was not fully aware of the sentence of death it lived under and therefore cannot fully appreciate, value, and understand the reconciliation it now enjoys at Jesus’ expense. So, when Jesus issues the three commandments of the new covenant, mankind cannot fully appreciate the beauty of the new covenant. These three commandments make up the new.
“To wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” There are not words in the English language to describe what has just been said. That the Father, who had condemned mankind to eternal suffering, was in Christ, in Christ’s suffering, the God suffering for man, reconciling the world to Himself by not imputing their sins to their accounts, is immeasurable. Talk about unmerited favor; talk about love. “This is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us first and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for us.” “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The majesty and beauty of God is unrivaled.
So, when Jesus issues that one new pivotal commandment, the one on which the whole new covenant is founded, to wait for a baptism with the Holy Spirit, the expected response, the predicted response, the anticipated response, the only reasonable response, from even the most callous human being, to such love would be obedience. That the whole of mankind, down to the last man, chose to ignore the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, he who holds all authority in heaven and in earth, He to whom all power in heaven and earth was given, who is above all principalities and powers, at whose feet every knee will bow in heaven and in earth, is beyond reason, unfathomable.
As much as the majesty and beauty of God is unrivaled, the dishonor showed the Son is beyond understanding. Jesus suffered horribly for mankind’s redemption and reconciliation only to be turned upon and spat upon by the very people Jesus died to save. Isaiah said it so poetically. “This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.” Mankind has nothing but good things to say about Jesus, but the authority He gained through His suffering and death is passed over as having no value whatsoever.
In many cultures, when one man saves the life of another, the saved is said to owe a debt of life, yet Jesus died to save all mankind and no debt of life is observed or considered. God’s reconciliation of mankind is as elegant as Jesus’ condemnation. This is the purpose of the book of Revelation. We could bow now willfully and keep His commandment or be forced to bow during the tribulation period. Now our obedience would abound to our favor but when we are forced to obey, our forced obedience will abound to our detriment.
There is an old covenant of condemnation and shame for disobedience and a new covenant that contains no condemnation or shame. Mankind was delivered from the old by the extreme grace, mercy and love of the Father but mankind was delivered from the old and to the new. The Church rejected the new to embrace the old. This failure to preach the new has caused the whole world to think it is condemned for not keeping the old. Most of the Church, if not all, is oblivious of the new.
Which brings us back to 2Corinthians 10:4-5. In this chapter Paul is comparing himself to other teachers and preachers in the faith of Christianity. Paul has taught the Corinthians one truth, but others have come in after him preaching another truth. In this discourse, Paul says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”
In the first sentence, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,” Paul identifies he is in a war and that his weapons are not of men. This tells us his opponents are using arguments of men. In other words, men interpret God’s Word. In Mark 7:6, Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13: “Well has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Jesus goes on to illustrate how men have interpreted God’s Word and inserted their interpretation in the place of God’s Word.
When Paul says, “But mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds,” he is saying the truth of God’s Word is greater than interpretations of men, and is able to pull down the stronghold built by the proclamation of the interpretation. Jesus goes on in verse 10 of Mark 7 to say: “For Moses said, Honor father and mother and who so curses father or mother let him die the death, but you say,” and here the Pharisees had added their interpretation. The Pharisees, by their interpretation, had built up strongholds in the people’s minds. Belief is a powerful force.
I find most people will hold to their beliefs and negate the Word of God. I will use John 3:16 as an example. God’s Word says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus is a complicated figure though. According to John 1, Jesus was with God in the beginning and was God but then we are told He stripped himself of His Godhood to come to earth as a man. As a man, He died on the cross and descended into hell where He resided three days and then ascended back to earth where He entered His body and ascended to heaven. There, He presented Himself to the Father spotless, and was sacrificed as the Lamb of God on that heavenly altar. He was raised from the dead by the Father and enacted a new covenant. Which Jesus does belief in produce everlasting life? Most will say the one who died on the cross. Their belief is strong even though it is rooted in a lie.
Consider John 3:16 again: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Which Jesus does God say you must believe in to gain everlasting life? It is the only begotten Son we must believe in, so when was Jesus begotten of the Father? It is in Genesis where we are told everything begets after its own kind, so when was Jesus not God? He was not God on the cross but when did the Father give life to Jesus? That happened after Jesus’ blood poured out of His body on that altar in heaven. It was not after the cross that the Father raised Jesus from the dead. The Lamb of God was not tortured and killed; it was lovingly held and sacrificed. Jesus did not die as the Lamb of God on the cross but He did die as the lamb.
The life is in the blood, as we are told in Leviticus, so when Jesus’ blood poured out in a bowl in heaven, Jesus was dead. This is when the Father infused His own life into Jesus, begetting Him as His own Son and the Father had given His only begotten Son for mankind’s sin. The Father infused His own life into Jesus, making Jesus the only begotten of the Father. This is the only time the Father infused His own life into another.
It is not the Jesus who died on the cross we have to believe in to gain everlasting life; it is the resurrected Jesus, the one who issued the commandment to wait for a baptism with the Holy Spirit. Faith without works is dead, so anyone who practices this belief must wait for this baptism daily. The baptism occurs as a gift of tongues pours out of the belly and over the lips, saturating the whole man as He goes.
This is an example of an argument that tears down carnal arguments. Anyone who cares about their eternal well being would be required to lay aside faith in the Christ who died on the cross and pick up faith in the Lord who died in heaven. Faith without works is dead, so faith in the resurrected Jesus must produce the work of obedience to the resurrected Jesus’ commandments. However, Paul continues: “And every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”
Now, here we find a correlation between 2Corinthians 10:4-5 and Ephesians 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Paul reveals his warfare is not with humanity, even though it is humanity that preaches the false gospel. Belief is a powerful force because belief is a spiritual force; a force of the spirit, and is either backed by God or by Satan. It is principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places, that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And this is the reason it is very hard to argue someone out of their beliefs. The belief is enforced by powerful spiritual forces and has to be attacked in the spirit realm.
This is not done by taking authority in the spirit realm; it is done by proclaiming the truth. It is the publishing of the truth that unravels the lie, tears down its authority, and releases people to believe the truth. Consider the commandments of the resurrected Jesus. His first commandment was to wait for a baptism with the Holy Spirit. The word, baptize, means, to saturate. Anything baptized is also saturated. Saturation is a moving target. One can be fully saturated or mildly saturated or barely saturated. The goal is to maintain some level of saturation. Jesus’ second commandment was to preach this gospel, the gospel of saturation.
By preaching a gospel of saturation, spiritual warfare would be going on constantly, as every believer in the resurrected Jesus proclaimed the truth. In Paul’s case, Paul was met with such an onslaught of carnal truth that he, as well as the other believers, was never strong enough to quash the onslaught of arguments supplied by the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places, that were trying to hold mankind in bondage. Obviously, the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places ruled the day and it is their gospel that has been preached for nearly 2,000 years now.
This is why it is absolutely critical that new covenant believers keep Jesus’ commandments daily. We must maintain some level of saturation at all times. That way we preach by the power of the Holy Spirit; our proclamation is by the authority of God and our message is able to tear down the message of Satan. Jesus’ final commandment was to disciple the converts. If new believers are not taught the truth of the new covenant, they cannot go out preaching it, and if they can’t preach it, mankind’s belief will never change. The principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places are relentless in the preaching of their lie.
The last line of 2Corinthains 10:5 reads: “Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” but it is the “weapons of our warfare,” proclaimed over and over again to every person and tree and blade of grass that brings every thought captive unto the obedience of Christ, because it is the preaching of the truth that overcomes the lie proclaimed by the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. Again, the obedience of Christ is keeping the three commandments of the resurrected Jesus. This obedience is performed through faith in the resurrected Jesus.
As soon as Jesus was resurrected from the dead and established a new covenant, the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places, knew they had a new foe and a new battle to fight. They knew they had to come up with a parallel gospel to preach and so it took them some time to formulate a plan. Likewise, it took the apostles some time to understand the requirements of the new covenant and get their message honed. There were more demonic forces than godly forces at work and the demonic forces already had strongholds in the Jews, who had interpreted the Ten Commandments and were living by the interpretations. Christians have been living and believing a lie ever since.
This is why Jesus’ first act of the tribulation period will be to raise the dead in Christ. He will instruct them in the new covenant, and send them out preaching the truth. The dead in Christ have been asleep in Jesus; they did not go to heaven to be with the Lord, and will arise from their sleep knowing something is wrong. They will eagerly eat up the words of Jesus, who will not instruct them from earth; He will come back in the air, never returning to the earth. The established church, which has believed the lie, will never see Jesus or recognize the gospel the dead in Christ preach.
As this army of dead goes out preaching the new covenant, war will be conducted in the heavenlies; the truth will overcome the lie, and people’s beliefs will begin to change. Jesus needs an army of committed souls to preach the new covenant if he is to ever take back the earth as His own. He has found this army in the dead in Christ.
The dead in Christ are those who believed Jesus died on the cross for their sins and have died. Though the truth is; Jesus did not die on the cross for our sins, He died to deliver mankind from the curse of the old covenant. These are people committed to the Christ, and when they are raised, they will remember that commitment. You will have to admit, it is a brilliant, magnificent, plan, one even the angels long to understand. Consider 1Peter 1:1-12.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,
2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:
9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
10 Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.
12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
Peter writes to a people “who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Let me remind you, God is omniscient, and being omniscient, He knew mankind’s failings, so to ensure success, He reserved all Jesus’ disciples into reserve, so that He could call them forth in that last day. They receive the “end of their faith, even the salvation of their soul” at that time. Let me remind you of Romans 9:33: “Behold I place in Zion a stumbling stone,” and all the disciples of Jesus stumbled over it. The stumbling stone is a commandment. When Jesus commissioned the Church, He issued three commandments, but all Christianity stumbled over those commandments and wrote them out of the book by interpretation.
This reserved all Christianity. All Christians sleep, waiting for the Lord’s return, where He will call them forth and send them out as a great army, prepared to fight for the Lord. By so doing, He has reserved their salvation till the end, when they could not lose it by disobedience. While most Christians are told they are saved through faith in Jesus’ death on the cross, Hebrews 5:9 tells us Jesus gives eternal life to those who obey Him. The last line of 1Peter 1:12 reveals even the angels of God long to understand how God’s salvation works, which means the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places don’t know this and are not prepared for what’s coming
.
Belief is still a very personal thing and even when the strongholds are torn down, not everyone will believe on the Lord. There will remain a remnant of mankind who will fight against Jesus till the bitter end. This is what the book of Revelation is about.