The Unveiling of The Body of Christ

Paul said in 2 Thess. 2:3, (KJV)

"Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;"

Not two many years after Paul wrote this statement the Church went into what we call the dark ages. The Word of God was mostly in the hands of the governing bodies of the Church who would interpret the Word of God and tell the people what it said. This was their way of controlling the masses.

It wasn't until Martin Luther came along and begin to question the teachings of the status quo that the great reformation begin. Since that time we have been in a process of restoration bringing us to this point in time. In the 50's the Lord was restoring the office of the evangelist. In the 60's He restored the office of the pastor. In the 70's He restored the office of the teacher. In the 80's He restored the office of the prophet and in the 90's He restored the office of the apostle.

We have now entered a time period of the unveiling of the Body of Christ. It is during this time frame that the world is beginning to see the life of Christ being demonstrated among His body, the Church.

Please open your hearts to the Word of the Lord that I will share with you and search the scriptures to see if they are true. I must warn you that many of the truths you will read in this lesson will be new to you.

 

Revelation 1:1 says, (NIV)

"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,"                         

This book is the revelation of Jesus Christ. In the Greek it is the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which simply means the unveiling of Jesus Christ. This is the disclosing of the Lord Jesus Christ and where He has been all the time. This word, 'apocalypse', indicates that this revelation is not something that is being brought from somewhere, but it is something that is here now that has a veil to conceal it from sight.

This book, then, is going to open up the veil so we can see. I want you to know that it is not the unveiling of Jesus and it is not the unveiling of Christ. It is the unveiling of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the firstborn Christ and God has made Him the head of the Christ or the head of the Body. Paul said that He is the firstborn of many brethren and God made Him both Lord and Christ. He is the Lord of Lords and the Christ of Christ's.

When we speak of Jesus Christ we are speaking of the Head and the fullness of Christ. Therefore, we are speaking of His Church, which is called the fullness of Christ. Paul said in 1 Cor. 12:27, (NIV)

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it."

Therefore, since we are a part of the Body of Christ, we are in the book of Revelation. As a matter of fact, we are being reveled in this book. We are the ones behind this veil. Paul saw this and recorded it in Romans 8:18-19, (NIV)

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed."

There is a son company that is standing behind the veil and all of creation is looking for them step out from behind this veil. But before we can get out from behind the veil, we should find out how we got there in the first place. The veil that I am talking about is found in the Tabernacle of Moses. The tabernacle was a tent in the confines of an outer court and was divided into two parts, which were divided by a veil. The larger part can be likened to The Feast of Pentecost and the smaller part can be likened to The Feast of Tabernacles.

The problem with most of us in Christianity is that we have progressed through the Tabernacle under the order of the Law and not the order of the Spirit. We came in from the outside through the door, past the brazen alter, past the brazen lavor, into the Holy Place, to the candlestick, to the table of shewbread, to the golden alter of incense and that is where we have become stuck. We have become stuck there in front of the veil because we don't know how to get through the veil.

The problem with this thinking is that my bible tells me we are not in front of the veil but we are behind the veil. This being the case, it must have been here that I started from in the first place. How could that be, since the Church taught me that in the beginning, Adam transgressed. And through His transgression, sin and death passed onto all of us and we have been trying to get back right with God every since.

Paul said in Eph. 1:3-6, (NIV)

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."

God blessed us when He chose us out of Himself in Christ before the creation of Adam. We came out of God by His plan and into Christ. Paul said in Rom. 11:33-36, (NIV)

"Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

          How unsearchable his judgments,

and his paths beyond tracing out!

          "Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?"

          "Who has ever given to God,

that God should repay him?"

          For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen."

Did you realize that God doesn't always judge everyone or every situation in the same way? For example: He blessed one king, David, through an adulterous relationship with the Seed of Promise. He destroyed a whole family of priest because of adulterous sons and He blesses the prophet that pronounced the judgment and then his sons have the same problem. We know that God judges every liar through the lake of fire. Rev. 21:8 says that all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire. Yet, God took a man called Jacob even before his birth and formed him as a deceiver and gave him a conniving nature and Jacob lied three times to his father in order to steal his brother's birthright. And God blessed Jacob, the liar.

The thing that we need to understand is that we can't figure God out because we are still in the process of renewing our minds according to the truths contained in His Word. The riches of His knowledge and the riches of His judgments are untraceable. The summation of all of this is found in verse 36 which says:

"For from him and through him and to him are all things."

This is a description of the word 'infinity', and also a circle and this tells me that we came out of Him and go through Him to get back into Him. We were chosen out of Him in Christ before the foundation of the world and we have been processed out of Him through Christ into God. To put it simply, God is all and He is in all.

When you begin to see and understand this, you will wonder how and why you ever got away from Him to such a degree that He had to provide a way for you to come back in? Paul said in Col. 1:21-23, (NIV)

" Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation...."

We got out of God by doing something that wasn't divine. Something that was contrary to His nature and because our conscience was guilty, we became alienated and enemies in our minds to our father. But all this time we were chosen out of Him that we might come through Him to get back to Him. We really did not leave Him except in our own thinking. This is what caused our mistaken identity.

If you can understand this principle then you will be able to understand the unveiling of Christ. When Christ came down to this earth in the form of one called Jesus, all of what Christ is was in Jesus. This means that you and I walked in Him some two thousand years ago. We had a place in Christ when all of Him was revealed in a man called Jesus. Christ is the promised seed to all of creation and we are in that promise. Do you realize that your salvation is in a promise and not because of your works?

The Law came to preserve a lawless people until the promise came. We were found in Him and His whole purpose here was to go to the cross and then be resurrected so we could be with Him in His death, burial and resurrection. He told the leaders of the Israelites and the powers that be that if they destroyed this temple, He had the power to raise it up again. He could say this because He knew where He came from. Jesus wasn't going somewhere, because He knew He had come from somewhere with a purpose and because He had come from somewhere with a purpose, He knew that He could accomplish what He came for.

Jesus came to this earth and as He walked out His purpose for being here it led Him to the time of His crucifixion. Paul learned something about this when he was converted on his way to Damascus. In Gal. 2:20 he said, (NKJV)

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

Paul was saying that when Jesus was crucified, he was crucified with Him. Compare Rom. 6:3-4, (NKJV)

"Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."

We came to the brazen alter some two thousand years ago in Him. When He hung on that tree, we were in Him because he took on our sins and iniquities. When He hung on that tree all of us were there with Him in God's site. Paul said in 2 Cor. 5:14-15,

"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."

Jesus did a finished work for us. He took us to that brazen alter and there our life came to an end. He then picked us up in His own blood and made us High Priest in the order of Melchisedec and He carried us into the Most Holy Place and deposited His blood and us on the mercy seat of God before His Father. Paul said in Eph. 2:6-7, (NIV)

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."

I want to make a very strong statement and I want you to think about it. I don't have any plans to go to heaven!! I have found out that wanting to go to heaven is a false hope. I don't need to go because I am already there. Someone will say, "Brother Dave, Paul was not talking about heaven, he was talking about heavenly places." In the Greek there is no difference.

In Eph. 1:20-23, Paul said, (NIV)

"That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way."

Can you see that the Church is His body? Well, where my head is you can be sure my body is there also. Paul said that, "God seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms," This tells me that God is there and Jesus is there and He has raise me up to sit with Him. We are not going to heaven; we are seated with Him in heaven. What is this seat is He talking about us being seated with Christ on? It's the mercy seat. Where, then, is the mercy seat? It's behind the veil in the Most Holy Place!

It has all been done for us. This is why Jesus could say with His last breath, "It is finished!" For some two thousand years religion has told us that Jesus begin a work and we have to finish it and that someday He is going to come and take us to where He is. What really happened is that Jesus ascended and ten days later, on the Day of Pentecost, came back as the Christ and took up residence in His Church and He has been coming every since.

Paul said in Col. 1:27, (NIV)

"To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

That is why I started in this lesson with the unveiling of Jesus. The first thing we have to see is that we have to unveil the finished work. When we unveil the finished work, we discover that Jesus has done it all for us. He went into the Most Holy Place as the forerunner and took us with Him.

Now that you have seen this, it is going to require of you to use your faith to begin walking in what you now know to be the truth. You need to meditate on the following: That you died with Him, that you were buried with Him, that you were made alive with Him and that you were raise with Him and are seated with Him far above all rule and power. This will require more faith than your initial salvation took. When you first got saved you had faith that you could be good enough to please Him. You had this faith because you thought you could rely on yourself to be good. But now your faith is not in yourself but in Him and you can relax knowing that He has done it all for you and that your faith now rest, not in what you can do but what He has done for you.

In Heb. 12:1-2 it says, (NKJV)

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,"

He has begun a good work in us and He is going to bring it to perfection. Now, I have another problem. I now know that I am in the Most Holy Place, but I have got to find my identity. We have been taught by religion that we must try to get to God and all the time God has been trying to get me to see what He has accomplish in me so that I can go out and let the world see Him in me.

Paul said in 2 Thess. 1:10, (NIV)

"...on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed."

When you begin to see yourself seated with Him you will then begin to see Him in all people. The Lord is now saying to those who have advance in Him this far: "It is time for people to quite quoting the words of dead men and begin to speak from My heart!" This doesn't mean we are to throw away the bible, but it means that when we look into the bible. It is to be a reflection of what He is doing in my life and a witness to what the Lord is saying to me. Revelation doesn't come from a book to you or from a preacher to you. Revelation comes to you in your heart by His Spirit.

The Lord said in Heb. 10:16-17, (KJV)

"This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

This law is administrated on the earth by sons who step out from behind the veil.

In the summer of 1997, I spent several weeks teaching on the Set Time Has Come For God to Favor Zion. I talked about the fact that we have come into a time that the Lord has set aside to bless His people with revelation of Himself. This Set Time is a throttle in your hand. You can speed this process up in your life or you can stop it and miss it completely. You can go forward or you can sit right where you are. You can go fast or slow or not at all. Corporately, we can do the same thing. God is, as the song says, "I'm leaving it all up to you!"

Peter said in 2 Peter 3:11-12, (NIV)

"Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming."

If you want to see this Church move forward in sonship authority it is in your hands to cause it to happen. Someone will say, "Yes, but you don't know just how much work the Lord has yet to do in my life." This statement is nothing more than Mistaken Identity!!! IT IS FINISHED!!! ALL OF IT!! The only work left to be done in you is for you to come out of unbelief. When you believe God you won't have to worry about being in the flesh because the flesh has been destroyed. You won't have to worry about sin because it has no more dominion over you. You won't have to worry about the devil because he has been destroyed and has no power over you.

The windows of heaven have been opened for some two thousand years and we have just come into a time frame where we can now see it. We are not looking for something to come bounding down out of heaven to bless us now.

Rev. 11:19 says,

"Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightning's, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail."

In Rev. 4, John was told to look up,

"After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven:"

Who is the door? Jesus! He was told to come on up because this is where you are seated. Who is the temple? We are! And where are you located? In the heavens! When we say the heavens have opened, we are not seeing something over us; we are seeing something opened in front of us. The window is opened for us to make an exit out of. It is time for us to come from where we have been to where we have been wanting to get to. John looked up and saw into the temple that is in God's people. And what did he see? He saw the Ark of the New Covenant and this tells us that the veil is opened.

 Malachi 3:8 says, (KJV)

"Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. "But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' "In tithes and offerings."

In present truth God is asking, "Will Adam conceal or veil God?" And you say, "Wherein have we robbed God?" "I give my tithes and offerings faithfully every week." What is the tithe? A firstfruit! You have robbed God by not recognizing that you are a firstfruit and you haven't offered yourself to His creation. You have identified with being Adam and are bound by a law that you think can buy you blessings from God. We have been living in a false image. The truth of the matter is that there has not been an Adam around for two thousand years. The reason we have acted like we have is because we never considered the fact that we are Christ. The image we have is false because it is something other than Christ. We have been taught that we are just sinners save by grace and that is a lie!

Here is the veil that we must get from behind. First, we must come out from behind our identification with an Adam who no longer exists. Our identification is with Christ. We then must step forward through this open door by stepping out from behind our traditions, our forms, and our religious ceremonies. We do not have to try to take peoples doctrines away from them!!! Just give them life and let them see that Christ is in you. People will take truth over a lie when they see the power of the truth being manifested.

When you recognize what the veil is, you are suddenly exposed. Your religion cannot hide you anymore. Your identification with Adam can't hide you because you are no longer identified with him. Sin consciousness can't hide you because you don't have it anymore. Now, you are an opened temple in the heavens and the Ark of the Covenant is seen in you.

Moses was told by the Lord to build the temple exactly according to the pattern that was given to him. In our attempts to build the Kingdom of God we have been building it backwards. The first thing that Moses was told to build was the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is a box made of arcia wood. Arcia wood is a gnarly, knotted, twisted wood and is very difficult to work with. It represents those of us who are very difficult to work with. An ark is a place of ingathering. God had them to take gold and beat it flat and covered the ark inside and out. It was beaten so thin that you could see through it. You could see all the gnarly, knotted, and twisted wood which could be clearly seen and would shine brightly under the transparent gold. God has place His divine nature in you and upon you but it will not hide your humanity because He wants it to show.

The next thing he built was the mercy seat and it was made out of pure gold. Jesus became our mercy seat and he is placed on top of us as the head and we are His body. When those two pieces of furniture were joined they never became parted again. They became one. That Ark of the Covenant is in us. In Isaiah 49:8 God tells us that He has made us to be a covenant to the nations. We are the Ark of the Covenant to the nations and for what purpose? To set them free, to loosen their bonds. We have something to do because we are a promise of God to all of creation.

As we progress out from the Most Holy Place, we come to the Table of Shewbread. Here we partake of the bread and the wine that represents the body and the life of the Lord. It is here that we learn to partake of one another and the life that sustains us and we offer ourselves to the world so they too may partake of us.

From here we step outside the Tent into the Outer Court. It is here that we come to the brazen alter. Now, we can present to the world the cross as it has never been presented. We can now go and tell people that God loves them right where they are. When they accept Jesus and learn about whom they are there will be changes take place within them.                         

How did I ever get outside the plan of God? Paul said in Col. 1:21, (NIV)

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation--"

We got out because we did something that wasn't divine. Something that was contrary with out true nature. This caused our conscience to begin to condemn us and in our minds we became an enemy of our Father.

If you will meditate on what I have shared with you and allow the Lord to reveal this to you it will set you free to be what He has purposed for you to be. He told Abraham that in him and in his seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Don't you think it is about time we live up to what He has purposed in us and bless everyone we come in contact with?