John 1:11 He came unto His own and His own received Him not.
A visitation of the Lord is taking place right now. But how many of us are receiving Him? Peter spoke of the attitude of many Christians in this day. Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. II Peter 3:3-4.
The Jews, particularly the religious leaders, were so locked-in to their old religious concepts and traditions that they could not accept Jesus when He came. He did not fit the mold they made for the Messiah. When Jesus came on the scene, He was so different from their preconceived ideas of the Christ that they rejected Him. Could that happen again? The presence of the Lord Jesus is now being manifested on a new level. And the revelation of Him will be so different from the old religious traditions and concepts, that many Christians will not recognize Him.
Religiosity has a way of rejecting anything of God in the present. It is okay to talk about Jesus the Nazarene who walked the shores of Galilee or to speak of a futuristic coming of the Lord, but keep Him out of the present. That is the way the Jews were. The Jews had agreed already that if any man did confess that He was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. John 9:22. It was all right to preach the Messiah, but keep Him in the past or the future. That is the way some churches are today. Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming on the scene and judgment will begin at the house of the Lord (I Peter 4:17). The Christian world will be the first to come under the judgments of God. He and He alone is going to be the Lord over His Church.
John 14:2-3 In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so,
I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that
where I am, there you may be also.
There are many dwelling places, or levels of spirit, in the spirit realm. That becomes quite obvious when we notice the various levels of spiritual growth among the members of the Body of Christ. Every Christian is not on the same level of spiritual growth.
I think every Christian who has experienced spiritual growth can attest to the usual process in which it happens. When we break through to a new level, we find that many of the ways in which we have functioned in our relationship with the Lord have changed. Not only that, but our concepts and awarenesses of the Lord have changed, too. We receive a greater revelation of Him, and He relates to us differently. The same principle is true in the natural. Parents relate to their two-year-old child one way, but when he becomes a teenager they relate to him differently. Many things that the two-year-old once did to get a response from his parents don’t work anymore. And it is that way with spiritual growth. The Lord, in many respects, becomes new to us, and many things we once did, which received blessings, just don’t work anymore.
Because we tend to settle on a particular level, the Lord will often withdraw and not meet us in the way He has in the past. He moves ahead and prepares the next level for us. In the meantime, we wonder where the Lord is, and why the things we do don’t seem to work anymore. Then we begin asking, “Where are you, Lord?” And He says, “I’m up here. Come on up; it’s time for you to learn to function on a new realm.” So for awhile we are learning to walk with the Lord all over again.
Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again (that is, I will reveal Myself to you again, but it will be on a new level and in a new way), and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. It is time for the Body of Christ to move up to the next level. It is transition time! He says, Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things do I declare…Remember you not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing (Isaiah 42:9; 43:18, 19). So if your walk with God seems to be drying up and He has not been meeting you as He had in the past, it is because He wants you to move up to the next level. It is as He told Israel, You have compassed this mountain long enough; turn northward (Deuteronomy 2:3). The Lord goes and He comes. He leaves the old level of spirit we lived on and reveals Himself on the next level.
John 14:28 You have heard how I said to you, I go away, and come again to you. If you loved Me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father; for My Father is greater than I.
His saying, “I go away, and come again to you,” in the Greek is literally, “I go and come to you.” Level after level this procedure takes place. We walk with Him on a certain level for a time, and then He leaves. We move up to the next level and walk with Him there for a season, and He goes again. What is He doing? Where is He leading us? “I go to the Father, for My Father is greater than I.” He is leading us to the Father. It is His way of bringing us into sonship.
John 16:7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.
Once again, we want to look at the original language. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away.” The literal Greek reads, “I the Truth tell you, it is profitable to you that I should go.” When the Lord departs from us, it is for our own benefit. If He continued to be a nursemaid to us, we would continue to be babies.
Copyright © 2010 by Henry DuBose