Saturday, February 8, 2014

A Testimony In Christ Jesus

My Testimony

 I praise God for leading me on a journey that has led me
to understand what God is doing today.
Many years ago in my first year after graduating from college, the days of Noah, God led me to desire to know Him. I really wanted to know if God was real and I asked God to give me wisdom to know and understand God.
That journey has led me closer and closer to Him. He led me through
areas that taught me not only about Him, but various factions that hold the world captive to this very day. That wisdom I asked for, did not come instantly.  God knew that the web of darkness the world is trapped in, is so vast, it would take time and experience, as He brought me out of it. It takes time to see and hear a little, here and there a little, and recognize what I was in ..... and to compare the counterfeit with the REAL thing.
To make a long story short, I really desired to grow and know in that wisdom of God. It took my whole life until the pieces of the grand puzzle have come together in His Manifold Wisdom, that He has revealed to me and the Church Which Is His Body today. It indeed is like a great mystery that was hidden from me for a long time. Only God can make it understandable via His Holy Spirit.  I guess you can call me a seeker of truth.  Back at the beginning of my journey, I was not finding it (TRUTH) in orthodox Christendom. There were very many questions and things I saw being done that did not make since to me. That is why I cried out to God for answers and His Wisdom.
God started me out with at least one foundational belief to hold onto, that He knew was most important. That belief was that the answers I was seeking, were to be found in His Word the Scriptures.
In and around the year 2005, I was introduced to the fictional series of books called...."LEFT BEHIND". I became fascinated with the idea of the
RATURE. I found that most of orthodoxy did not believe in this Rapture, as
Shown in the "LEFT BEHIND" book series. This study led me into seeing some very big pieces of the grand picture of things, that I did not even know that existed. I studied into what the orthodoxy believed to be true. Topics to be understood such as Covenant Theology, Replacement Theology,  Amillennialism.
I found that most around me in life, were just not interested in studying about God and seeking truth. I found myself quite alone, at least, in the journey seeking Truth. For some unknown reason to me at the time, God had placed into me a desire to share what ever nuggets of truth I would find. I knew that men needed to choose to believe God and His Gospel of Salvation, the Finished Work of God on the cross.
God put the idea in my head to start a blog to reach out to the world. Nobody around me desired to hear me talk about such nuggets of truth, so I would reach out to strangers. I told myself that if even one person out there was led to Salvation because of something they read in my blog, it would be worth it at the BEMA. The blog I started in 2008, is called....
growandknow.blogspot.com . You can still go there and read sort of a documentation of my early studies into the Rapture and other topics God led me to study. I realized that I was not a great writer, so I decided I would post articles I found in my blog that I felt to be leading me closer to ..."TRUTH" . The first post I made was about understanding the Rapture. I was convinced at the time, that the Pre-Trib Rapure was the correct understanding of that topic. But, oh, that was just the beginning of some new and wonderful nuggets I was to uncover.
I made many friends when I delved into this topic. ( I was to discover as time went on, the more truth I would learn,....THE MORE I WOULD HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN KEEPING THOSE FRIENDS OR KEEPING GOD'S TRUTH...........!      For some reason my new blog remained in the top 20 of over 2500 Christian blogs for about 3 years. God led me one day to look into a topic called "HYPER DISPENSATIONALISM".
There were many things in this study that I discovered were great nuggets of truth.
First of all, I discovered Paul, and how significant to my journey of seeking truth were his writings....
I discovered that Paul was used by God to introduce wonderful new revelations of truth for us after Christ Jesus was resurrected back to a God the Father, at His Right Hand in a Glory.
During this journey of discovering Truth, I was still mixed up as to what is the Truth for us today. I was yet to be introduced into a very important nugget of truth.....
"Right Division" of God's Word.  At this time in the journey, I believed "Mid-Acts" DISPENSATIONAL truth, and that the Church began when Paul was converted on the Road to Damascus.... , but.....
I had not yet been taught what it means to correctly cut what was for Israel and what is for us Gentiles today.
Finally God led me to understand the truth about who the Rapture is for and to whom it is not for, and when it will occur in God's Timeline of events listed in Scripture. God led me to study Acts and read what actually happened in that very unique period of time in history and the Bible. I was shown by God's Holy Spirit that successive new revelations were revealed to Paul. I discovered that he was
"SENT" as a messenger, an "APOSTLE" with a two-fold ministry. A ministry that was first sent to the Jews. This we find all the way through Acts to the end of Acts.
God was first giving the Jews an opportunity to recognize their Messiah all through the book of Acts via Paul, pleading with them as one of their own, under the law and a fellow Jew. At the end of Acts, the Jewish leaders rejected Christ Jesus as their Messiah. Paul pronounced that what the prophets spoke of in Isaiah, that they would hear but not hear and see with their eyes and not see..... But now the truth would be sent via Paul with the second part of his ministry to the nations.
Israel, in a nut shell, was rejected as God's people. They were divorced from God.
They were temporarily set aside as a nation to be of no more of significance then any other nation,  until the time they will recognize their Messiah in the future plan of God.
I have now been introduced to a great "MYSTERY". This mystery is unique in the mysteries mentioned in Scripture before it. This "MYSTERY" was completely hid in God, not Scripture, until the fulness of time until it was revealed to Paul in prison near the end if his life. It is a gospel beyond and unique to the Gospel of Salvation.
It is yet another very good news for us today about the "UNSEARCHABLE RICHES
OF GOD"..... You can now join me in my journey in my new blog...
appearinglorytimeline.blogspot.com

May God continue to open your eyes to His wonderful Manifold Wisdom .....
In TRUTH for us today... Grace and peace and great joy in searching out what is true for you today .....
"18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, 20 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, 21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: 22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all."
Very Sincerely,
Your brother in Christ Jesus
Mark

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