Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit, which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak not in the words man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. (1 Corinthians 1:12-15).

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe (Ephesians 1:15-19).

Years ago, when I was just getting to know the Lord, He opened my eyes to “see” Ephesians 1:15-19. I shared it with a Bible study group, and we all prayed God would give us this Spirit of illumination. Evidence that He did so in my case is found in a 40-year-old old Bible I still have, the pages of which, particularly in Ephesians, are torn, heavily marked and falling apart. As it is said: dirty Bible, clean Christian; clean Bible dirty Christian.

The truth is that without the Spirit’s illumination we cannot understand what God is telling us through his word, the scripture. For, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Often, instead of relying on the Lord to teach us, we ask our sinful mind to tell us what it means and as a result believe a lie.

For example, a friend recently looked at writings about the “day of Christ”, the pre-millennial kingdom of God in which Christ, while seated in the heavenlies, will take over government of the world and create a new age of peace and obedience to God on a renewed earth (Acts 3:21).

He quickly grasped that this “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) according to my understanding was to come at the Lord’s “appearing” when He will inaugurate his kingdom (2 Timothy 4 :1) but then rejected this scenario, saying that he could not “see” any difference between the “appearing” (Greek: epiphaniea) and the Lords return to earth at his “coming” (Greek: Parousia). “To me they’re both the same event,” he said. And so, says most of Christianity blindly following its leading Bible scholars and theologians.

Yet the plain fact is that the Spirit of Jesus who inspired all scripture, chose two hugely different Greek words, epiphanea and parousia to describe two very different events and set out vitally separate truths about them.

Strangely, in the last 30 years or so only three men seem to have been illumined by the Lord to see this important difference. By the grace of God, I am one of them and so are Otis Sellers and Tom Ballinger, both pioneers in publishing premillennial scriptural truth.

Elsewhere I’ve told how when studying the mystery of why the “day of Christ” is cited in 2 Thessalonians 2:2 amid a passage about the “day of the Lord”, the Lord asked: What do you know about the “day of Christ?”. Nothing, I had to confess.

But a Bible search showed the “day of Christ” is proclaimed seven times in Paul’s epistles and the “appearing” is set forth in Titus 2:13 as both imminent and the “blessed hope” we should be looking for. Neither of which I would ever have known had not the Lord shown me. This huge and imminent dispensational change, to wit the “appearing” as the blessed hope and the bringing of the kingdom of God in the “day of Christ”, will fulfil Old Testament prophecies such as Psalm 22:27-28 and 97:4,6:

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s and He is the governor among the nations.

His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw and trembled.

“Lightnings” here are not those of the thunderstorm but the blazing light of God’s glory, grace and righteousness being shone on all people. This will happen at his appearing. It is when all will be made to see the majesty of the supreme ruler of the universe, the Lord Jesus Christ.

What’s more, when the people of this day open the Bible, they will both hear and see what it says and means. Because…

…in that day, “the day of Christ” shall the deaf hear the words of the book and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness (Isaiah 29:18).

What a wonderful day it will be when “God shall bless us and: and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him (Psalm 67:7). It was when Christ shall speak from his throne in heaven and everyone on earth will be made to listen:

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh (all people) shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isaiah 40:5).

For the last some 2,000 years our God has not spoken directly and audibly to those on earth. Rather, He has committed his last message from his heavenly throne to the Apostle Paul commanding that it be written down as a prophetic message in writing and “made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:25-26). The message is that those seeking salvation must now be “stablished” by “my (that is, Paul’s gospel) and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery” (Romans 16:26-26). And that preaching and message is now found only in the written scriptures.

For Romans 16:25-26 insists this important message is “now made manifest and by the scriptures of the prophets according to the commandment of the everlasting God made known to all nations for the obedience of faith”.  So, God now speaks through his written word, particularly the last seven epistles of Paul. However, to spiritually understand its true meaning the illumination of the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” is essential.

But the day is almost upon us when the Supreme Potentate, the Lord Jesus Christ, will speak audibly from heaven to the whole world and every person in it. Thus, Psalm 18:13-19 prophesies that...

The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire.

When the Lord speaks and thunders from heaven the whole earth and its people will listen and fear. They will tremble and bow down before Him. Why? Because they have been enlightened by revelation to do so.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: johndaldworth42@gmail.com