The book of Revelation opens the heavens to show what Christ is now doing there. Though we are here on earth, we can see what is going on in the heavens. We who accept the Bible as God’s revelation surely treasure what is revealed in this last book. Its contents are like a television program portraying what is taking place in the heavens.
Day by day an infinite number of activities is carried out on earth. These happenings, however, are for the most part insignificant. What really matters is what is taking place in the heavens and what there is on earth which corresponds to it. There the heavenly ministry of Christ is being carried out, and here there are the two earthly ministries which correspond to it, Paul’s and John’s.
Consider the books of the Bible which precede the writings of Paul and John. There are the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, the four Gospels, and the Acts. If you were asked to give a summary as to how these books conclude, you would probably find it hard to do so. You might mention God, the creation, the fall of man, the children of Israel, Christ, and the spread of the church. But to say what after all is the message of these books is difficult, because the Bible is not completed with them. There is a long record but no conclusion. Even the book of Acts is, as the title indicates, a record of the doings of the apostles. It does not contain much revelation to bring us to a conclusion of the Bible.
The book of Acts tells us that the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ ascended to the heavens. From there He took action to cause the acts in the Acts to take place. Peter, James, John, and even Saul of Tarsus were active because Someone above was gearing them to action. But there was not much revelation going on.
If you were to ask Peter the meaning of what he was doing in the Acts, he probably could not explain why he did what he did. Even from reading his two Epistles you can see that his part in the concluding revelation in the Bible was minor. He was honest and faithful to direct us to Paul, though he found in Paul’s Epistles “some things hard to be understood” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). Catholicism has exalted Peter, but Peter rather commended Paul to us, saying that Paul had written according to the wisdom given to him.
Peter might tell us, “Go to Paul. Some of the things he knows I really don’t quite understand. When I was called, the Man of Nazareth simply passed by and said, ‘Follow Me.’ He promised to make me a fisher of men. On the day of Pentecost I spread out the net and caught three thousand fish. Not too long after, some five thousand fish were caught. My calling was to be a fisherman, and catching fish was what I did. I don’t know much of God’s mystery. I had only a simple education. If you want to know about the deep things, check with Paul. He is an expert! From his calling you can see that he was ordained to be an expert. His calling was not simple like mine. He was called not by the Jesus on this earth but by the Lord Jesus in the heavens. He thought Jesus was dead and buried, but suddenly this One appeared to him, not from the tomb but from the heavens.”
It was a strange question which Paul heard from the heavens. “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). Jesus, Saul was certain, was in the tomb. Saul was surely persecuting the followers of the Nazarene even unto death, but this One was now claiming that Saul was persecuting Him. From such a calling Saul came to realize that the Me was a corporate Me. It included Stephen, Peter, John, and all the other believers. They had all become part of this enlarged Me. When Saul persecuted Stephen, he was persecuting Christ. How profound was this calling! It made Paul not a simple fisher of men, but a minister to supply and build up all the members of the Body.
After Saul found out who Jesus was and asked, “What wilt thou have me to do?” (v. 6), the Lord did not give him a direct answer. With Peter’s calling he was clearly told that he would be a fisher of men (Matt. 4:19). But Saul was told only that he must arise and go into the city in order that he might find out what to do. While he was in Damascus, he saw in a vision that a man named Ananias would come and heal him of his blindness. Here was another lesson for Saul to learn about the Body. He was directed not to Peter, the leading apostle, but to Ananias, a little member whom he had probably never heard of. Yes, the Lord Himself came to visit Saul and to rescue him. But He would leave it for His little finger to complete the rescue. An unknown disciple would represent the Body to receive this rebel into the Body as another member.
In Hebrews 3:1 Paul calls the believers “partakers of a heavenly calling.” Peter’s calling was from the earth, but Paul’s was a heavenly calling. We are partakers with him of that heavenly calling.
The sermons heard today usually linger around the four Gospels. Many Christian preachers find no place in their sermons even for the book of Acts. Yet even Acts is largely a record of doings, not of revelations. What about the books that follow Acts? From Romans to Revelation are twenty-two books. These books form the conclusion to the Bible. In them the ultimate issue is fully revealed. If you look into the messages we have put out in this country, you will find that most of them center on these very books. In my Bible the pages of these books are nearly worn out because I spend so much time in them. Others may neglect them, but we have focused on them.
From this it is clear that in the Lord’s recovery we do have the completing ministry and the mending ministry. Most of the messages these past eighteen years have been in the nature of completing. More recently we have been covering the mending ministry.
Christ’s heavenly ministry is fully revealed in these last twenty-two books. This ministry is carried out mainly by the ministries of Paul and John. The earlier messages in these series dealt with these ministries. All that remains for us to cover is the last part of the mending ministry. The first part is the Gospel of John; the second, his Epistles. Now we are on the last part, Revelation.
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