“Tis mystery all,” the great hymn writer Charles Wesley wrote, referring to the Lord’s death to pay for our sin and save us. And the unveiling of the great “Mystery” to the Apostle Paul in Ephesians and Colossians remains an unwanted riddle to most believers today.
Would you like to know what the “mystery” (Eph. 3:1-5, Col. 1: 25-27) – a long hidden truth now revealed – really is? Then join me as we together look into the most important secret the Lord kept to Himself down all the ages of time. It is nothing less than God’s plan to put right all that’s wrong in heaven and on earth, even to the far reaches of the universe. And, amazingly, He is going to use weak, grace-saved sinners like you and me as his instruments to do so.
In eternity long before time began, the Lord foreknew Satan would rebel, attack and seize positions of power in the heavens, then bring sin and death to earth. So before Lucifer said in his heart “I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14) He drew up a plan to destroy Satan, his evil hordes, and return heaven, earth and the whole universe to their original righteous state.
Just how and when He will achieve that is the great mystery, the secret now revealed to and through the Apostle Paul so that you and I as Gentiles can learn about now (Eph. 4:8-9). For we are still in the “times of the Gentiles”, in which God having ceased to recognise the nation Israel as his people set them aside at the end of the Book of Acts and sent his salvation to all nations of the earth instead (Acts 28:28).
Marvellously today in the “dispensation of the mystery” (Eph. 3:9, where fellowship is actually “dispensation”) any person, Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free, can be saved by grace, freely adopted as a child of Christ (Eph. 1:5) and then find they were “chosen in Him before the foundation (casting down) of the world” (Eph. 1:4). And that world, Lucifer’s world, existed long before the “heavens and the earth that are now” (2 Peter 3:6-7) which were formed out of emptiness and chaos (Gen. 1:2) by the six days of God’s recreation in Gen. 1:3-27).
The upshot is that saints who respond today to the “high calling of God”, (the calling to go up on high), Phil. 3:14) will learn that even before Satan rebelled and marred the original perfect creation of the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1) God had already chosen them to be frontline warriors in and through Christ in the final battle to destroy evil and bring in everlasting good. What wonderful destiny for those who were once “taken captive by Satan at his will”?
Now perhaps you see why Satan fights so strongly against any mention of the “mystery” dispensation given by God through Paul. Why churches and Christians at large refuse to recognise that this is what God is saying and doing now. And why you and I also hated any mention of it until the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Christ) (Eph. 1:17) shed light to teach us better.
It’s vital that we let this stupendous truth take hold of us because it unfolds the master stroke of God’s plan to purge both heaven and earth of sin and prepare a holy eternity for those He calls to live in them. How often have we wondered how and when God will finally defeat Satan and “put everything right”? Well, the “mystery” unveiled in Paul’s letters written from his prison cell has the answer. And not only that, it explains just who we are in Christ and where we fit into God’s plan to restore all things, all beings in heaven, earth and even under the earth unto Himself.
What’s more the revelation given to Paul explains what happened long ago to plunge the then universe into chaos and darkness. Fact is Satan’s fall and his rebellious attempt to take over heaven caused the destruction of a once holy ancient world. But even before that God who foreknows all things drew up a plan to banish all evil and put everything right in both heaven and earth.
Yes, Satan and his dark demons still bedevil the world we live in now but their doom is assured. God from way back has purposed it. Indeed, long before Lucifer first let pride and lust for power enter his heart God drew up a brilliant plan to both crush this enemy, and create a glorious new universe.
And in this plan you and I are called to play an important role. Exciting stuff? Sure is. So hang in there to learn more, for God wants you to have ‘the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery…” (Col. 2:2).
Granted, only the “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Christ)” given by the “Father of glory” (Eph. 1:17-18) can open your heart and mind to receive these stunning and little known or recognised truths. Which is why most Christians don’t know them. But the God of glory will give His spirit to you to do so if you ask Him.
To understand God’s greatest secret unveiled through the Apostle Paul we must go back beyond time and into eternity past. There we find that even before trouble broke out in what had been a perfect created universe, the Lord, who foreknows and ordains everything, had determined exactly how He would bring it to an end and make all things right. But the creator Christ Jesus the Lord hid this master plan in his heart and told no one of it until He revealed to Paul in his prison cell in Rome.
Now to make that journey back beyond time we have to accept some Bible truth that is strongly opposed and discredited by theologians and preachers to this day. For example, can you accept that Christ Jesus the Lord gave the Apostle Paul a special commission to reveal truth God kept hid through all the ages of human history and even long before that?
Would you believe, because the Bible says so, that this commission - called a “dispensation” in the King James Bible - was given exclusively to Paul to proclaim among the Gentiles, not to fallen Israel? Most churches and preachers won’t. (Not that Jews are excluded; indeed the dispensation of the “mystery” is for everyone.). Accordingly, Eph. 3:8-9 says:
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints (saved people) is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. And to make all men see what is the fellowship (dispensation) which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Christ Jesus.
Importantly, scripture distinguishes the “dispensation of the mystery” (Eph. 3: 8-9, Col. 1:25-27) which “in other ages was not made known to the sons of men” (Eph. 3:5) from the “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2) which was also given to Paul to promulgate.
What’s the difference, you ask? Simply put it is that that “dispensation of the grace of God” now extends salvation to all men (Acts 28:28), whereas before it came only courtesy of Israel. In contrast the “dispensation of the mystery” deals with the purpose for which God is now saving all men, especially Gentiles, (since Israel as a nation was temporarily set aside from God purposes at Acts 28:28).
That purpose is that the now newly commissioned church of the “one new man” (Eph. 4:24) may be the instrument of God to “make known unto principalities and powers in heavenly places ... the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph. 3: 9-11).
The NIV translation puts it well:
…and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, that through the church (which is his personal body, Eph. 1:22-23) the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places … according to the eternal purpose He has realised in Christ Jesus our Lord.
To talk to John please email him at the address below.
John Dudley Aldworth
Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com
Website: https://www.dayofchristmnistries.com/rss/all.xml