IN CHRIST AND CHRIST IN US IS AT HAND– Ron McGatlin
“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.”
Shocking world news is becoming routine and almost mundane in a world divided against itself. Nations, cities, and families are divided against one another. What in the world is going on today?
The short answer is “THE LORD IS AT HAND.”
The term “at hand” means something is here now and not that it will only be here someday in the future. It also implies that it can be in hand, and that a person can reach out and take it in hand.
Our hope is changing from a distant hope of the Lord coming back to earth someday to the reality that He is here now within His people. This is a mystery that was revealed to Paul 2000 years ago, and is being revealed again to the people of God in this season. Through the centuries of time and Bible translations, this mystery had been lost to the church.
Colossians 1:26-27, “The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. 27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
2 Thessalonians 1:10, “When He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.”
The Greek word translated “comes” in this verse is not a future tense verb. The form of the Greek word used can only be a present tense or imperfect tense verb. The imperfect tense would mean that it was in the past, and it continues today. It is at hand today!
THE BIG QUESTION
The truth of this mystery of Christ in us, the positive expectation of GLORY, brings us to the REALLY BIG question! If Jesus is here now with us and in us on earth, why is the world not experiencing the fullness of His kingdom now?
The short answer is “UNBELIEF.”
Most Christians do not believe that Christ Jesus, the King and Lord, is here on earth.
He is prevented from manifesting His life activities into the world in His people by their unbelief.
(Reader, bear with me on this brief presentation of a major part of the current transition and reformation that may be new and hard to believe or accept for some. Please do not quickly dismiss it, but give the Holy Spirit time to adjust our wine skins and bring forth the new wine.)
We do not believe because we have been led to believe something else from incomplete or erroneous interpretations and imperfect translations that occurred due to the lack of the Holy Spirit guiding in the hearts and enlightening the minds of theologians and leaders to the full truth.
Religious leaders were also influenced by spirits of darkness posing as angels of light, implanting faulty teachings quietly under cover into their interpretations and translations. Some of these cunningly devised teachings became foundational doctrines in the religious church systems. (2 Corinthians 11:14-15) (1 Timothy 4:1)
A return to the acceptance of the workings of the Holy Spirit in the last century or two has revealed some powerful and vital mysteries of truth that have been mostly hidden for many centuries.
One of the most limiting major foundational doctrines that stops the manifestation or appearing of Christ Jesus as King and Lord on earth now to establish the kingdom of God on earth is the “someday coming or future return of Christ.”
The erroneous teaching is that we cannot have the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven on earth until Jesus bodily returns to establish the kingdom, then at that time He will build His kingdom.
Until that appointed time, we could only hang on and do the best we could until we died and went to heaven, or Jesus bodily returned to earth to finish the work that He began over two thousand years ago. The belief that Jesus would bodily come back again to earth and establish the kingdom became the great hope of the church.
Understandably, anyone thinking in only the natural mind would see a bodily return of greater value and more real than His Spirit return to live in His people, His BODY on earth. However, in reality, the eternal Spirit created the natural or physical world and is of much greater value.
His Spirit return was at Pentecost and evidenced in those disciples that were filled with Holy Spirit that came to abide in them and all that BELIEVE and RECEIVE.
We have one Spirit God manifest in three Spirit persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If Holy Spirit God abides in us, Spirit Christ and Spirit God our Father all abide in us. Either person of Spirit God can manifest an emphasis in and to us, yet they are one God in us.
Spirit God became a man in a body to live a perfect, sinless life as the second and last Adam, and to pay the price at the cross for all sin and all mankind who will receive Him.
THE GREAT EVENT OF HIS APPEARING IN THE WORLD
He is now on earth again in the human bodies of those who believe.
THE GREAT “COMING EVENT” is only waiting for multitudes of His people to BELIEVE that He is alive in us to establish His kingdom on earth now!
When enough of us truly believe, then God can release the supernatural love, power, and wisdom along with a myriad of holy angels to destroy all evil darkness and fill the world with the glorious light of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. His people must be in place to establish and maintain the kingdom of God on earth.
THE BEGINNING OF THE GLORIOUS KINGDOM IS AT HAND
For the first time in all history, there are enough of God’s people in the world who believe that He is here in us to begin to cleanse the world and establish His kingdom. God is already beginning to release supernatural events and changes. That is why there are so many abrupt, extreme things happening at this time.
Without some understanding of what God is now doing, it is impossible to make any sense of the chaos in the world. There is great division in the world. All mankind and nations are being divided like sheep and goats. Even families are being divided, one member against another. (Matthew 10:34-39.)
Christ Jesus and the holy angels are now beginning to bring forth the glory of God by separating and sending those who will not turn to God into great tribulation or perdition. He is placing those who believe into the reality of the kingdom of God, a life of power, protection, and provision.
31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” Matthew 25:31-34, 41.
WORLDWIDE DESTRUCTION OF EVIL
At the same time that the glorious kingdom is growing in the hearts and lives of those in whom Christ fully dwells, all that is not of God on earth is being removed. This is a beginning season of great tribulation in the world, and at the same time, the glorious kingdom reality is growing in the people of God, in whom Christ Jesus our King and Lord fully dwells. He is now manifesting His pure, holy love of God on earth.
Everyone will be involved in the season of tribulation, and there will be major changes in how life is lived in the world. However, God will keep His people through to the end to replenish and repopulate the earth in the age of the glorious kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven
10 Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. 11 Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. 12 He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name. Revelation 3:10-12.
The spiritual City of New Jerusalem is the governing city of the new kingdom of God’s rule on earth. It is the mother city of holy love, rule, and order of God in and with man in this world. The New Jerusalem from above coming down to earth is the Bride of God, and is the mother of all the people of God.
Galatians 4:22-26. “For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, 24 which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar—25 for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children—26 but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.”
The order of life and governance of God, New Jerusalem is the mother of all sons and daughters of God fulfilling the original assignment of God to “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28.
Revelation 21:9-11 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.’ 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
Personal Note: Dear friends, I don’t know about you, but I am overwhelmed with the significance of the time and season of the glorious works of God now happening around us. It is truly time to lay aside the weights that hold us down and ascend to he higher places with Spirit God Almighty.
Love and Blessings,
Ron McGatlin
basileia@opehneaven.com
https://opehheaven.com