BEHOLD, WONDER

AND PERISH 

Part III

Thus far in this three-part study we've explored what caused the Lord through the Apostle Paul to bluntly tel Jews in a Pisidian synagogue: Behold ye despisers, and wonder, and perish, For I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise belieive though a man declare it unto  you (Acts 13:41).

We’ve seen that this “work” was removing the rebellious nation Israel as an instrument of God’s purpose and sending the salvation message to Gentiles “and they will hear it” (Acts 28:27-28).

Now it was in AD 62 that the Lord through the Apostle Paul announced the setting aside of the unrepentant, once chosen nation. In the upshot signs, miracles and supernatural wonders of the Acts period abruptly ceased and just eight years later Israel “perished” as prophesied.

This is how. In AD 70 the Romans besieged and sacked Jerusalem, killed a third of the population and enslaved most of the rest. As Isaiah foretold only “a remnant” was saved. Nevertheless, God will keep his promise to preserve the “Israel of God”. In the soon-to-be “Day of Christ” Israel will be restored through resurrection (Romans 11:16).

But we must ask: Is God doing a “work” in our “days” that many Christians will “in no wise believe”? And, sadly, the answer is, yes. For the truth of “Dispensation of the grace of God” and the accompanying revelation of the mystery remains largely untaught and vigorously rejected today. And certainly the “man” sent by God to proclaim this best of all good news, the Apostle Paul, is still largely sidelined if not shunned by popular Christian teachers.

Thus, in our time, God is indeed doing a work that most of Christendom will not believe, even though “a man” (the Apostle Paul) has been sent by God to explain it to us. In short, it is a work of sheer grace and a completed salvation as set out in the “prison” epistles, the last seven letters to believers penned by Paul.

Importantly, this “work” requires us to understand that today we are in a new and very different dispensation to that of gospels or the Book of Acts. Yet this the bulk of Christendom refuses to accept. Back in Acts and the “gospels” the “gospel of the kingdom” was proclaimed as “at hand”. It was accompanied by numerous miracles rarely seen today. Then God suddenly halted the prophetic kingdom programme, setting Israel aside, appointing Gentiles to proclaim salvation through Jesus and saving the called solely by grace. Thus, Paul writes:

For this cause, I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ, for you Gentiles; if ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God , which is given me, to you-ward: How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in few words); whereby when ye read ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages (i.e. those before the dispensation of grace) was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel (Ephesians 3:1-6).

So, what we should focus on now is God’s display of unlimited grace and the mystery which is “Christ in you the hope of glory” and which unveils his ultimate purpose to “gather all things together in Christ” in the forthcoming “dispensation of the fullness of times” (Ephesians 1:9-10).

But where does Isaiah 6:9-10 fit into that, you ask? Answer: Because like Israel, most Christians are turning blind eyes and deaf ears to God’s current “work” of building and growing a spiritual “temple for an habitation of the Spirit, in Whom (that is Christ) ye are also builded together” (Ephesians 2:19-22).

This temple is also called the “one new man” (Ephesians 22-24 and Colossians 3:10) and is the “church, which is his body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23).

Strange, isn’t it, that throughout the western world there are denominational church buildings representing all the different schools of Christian thought but not one can be found that proclaims the temple God is building today, still less the church which is his personal actual body – the fullness of all that He is poured into all who believe his latest through the Apostle Paul.

Why? Because Christendom wilfully ignores this great, good news from God, the “gospel of glory” or the “glorious gospel” (1 Timothy 1:11) which is that true believers are now fully saved by being “found in Him (that is Christ)”. You see, being made an irrevocable part of Christ Himself is the prize Paul aimed for but at that time had yet to achieve in Philippians 3:9. Sadly, today the common Christian view is that this further dimension of God’s saving love can be safely ignored, because “once saved always saved” and passage to “heaven” is secured by “acts of contrition”, water baptism and church attendance. But that is not what the Bible says.

Rather, it commands that we …work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12). Meaning that our salvation is now all by what God does not that of our own efforts. We need, however, to both believe it and “work it out” practically in real life.

We do that by gratefully agreeing with God when He says He has already done in us all that is needed for us to be completely acceptable to Him (Ephesians 1:6)

The end.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: johndaldworth42@gmail.com