THE TWIN RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHURCH

THE TWIN RESPONSIBILITES OF THE CHURCH

 

It always amazes me when I see new things in scriptures that I have never seen before. This happened to me recently when reading (Eph 3:10) for the umpteenth time. I suddenly saw the Lord's explanation of the True Church's responsibility, as well as what I had seen before in (Acts1:8), and also in

(1 Peter 3:15), so I'm now calling it our "Twin Responsibility". As we know Acts 1:8 tells us that when the Holy Spirit comes upon us when we receive the "baptism of the Spirit" we will be witnesses of Jesus everywhere. And the passage from Peter says to always be willing to tell people about the hope that is within you. But as I now understand Eph 3:10 to say that we have the responsibility to fulfill, "God's purpose in all this was to use the Church to display His wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places". NLT. This then brought forth the question about what is meant by the "heavenly places", and exactly where they are located. This led to the creation of a 5 part article on this topic that I put together earlier this week. My conclusion is that this place Paul refers to as the "heavenly places", must be that space between the first heaven and the third heaven where God's throne is presently located. The first heaven that is visible when we look up at what we call the "sky". Psalms 8, and 19    describes it quite well, and shows forth the glory of God both by day or night. Therefore we can safely assume that these heavenly places must be somewhere between these two known locations.

 

We know that this location is still invisible to our "natural" eyes, and therefore requires the use of our "supernatural" eyes of the Spirit, so to speak. This is where "walking in the light", as John commands us to do in his first letter (1 John 1:5-7), and Paul tells to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:16), which is a command by both of these apostles. So guess what we must do if we wish to make use of this supernatural ability? It is not difficult to understand, any born again child of God who has been adopted into the Father's Forever Family (Eph 1:3-14), is able to function in this spiritual realm. So we need to stop listening to the lies from our enemy, who is the father of lies (John 8:44), and spend time in God's Word, and believe the words of Jesus who claims to be "The Truth" (John 14:6). This is rather a simple process, wouldn't you agree? It only requires faith in Jesus, and obedience to His will, which is always meant to be a blessing to those who "Have decided to follow Jesus"!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                    24/03/12