I do believe we are
living in the last days of this dispensation of the grace of God [as opposed to the 'last days' of Israel's prophecy program]. There is no time limit on it; we have been
living in the last days for a long time now.
But with each passing day, we get one day closer to God’s longsuffering
being ended, and him taking us, i.e., the members of the church—the body of
Christ, to our home eternal in the heavenlies by the rapture and then
fulfilling his prophetic program in the earth with the nation of Israel. That’s the bible’s past, present and future;
that is rightly dividing the word.
2 Timothy 2:15
Study to shew
thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of truth.
But now is the time
to make wise use of our time…
Ephesians 5:16
Redeeming the time, because the days
are evil.
Colossians 4:5
Walk in wisdom toward them that
are without, redeeming the time.
Just like
in college, a person would major in the field they are interested in as a
vocation. Say you want to be a doctor of
medicine, you should major in biology and anatomy and other things that will
help you be a physician. It would be
foolish to be a journalism major and then major in a lot of scientific courses,
because they are not going to be pertinent to your degree. It is just as foolish for member of the church,
the body of Christ, to spend all of their time in epistles and books of the
bible that aren’t written to us or about us.
That doesn’t mean you can’t study them; it means you don’t apply them to
your life.
When you are in
Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, James, 1&2 Peter, 1, 2&3 John…or 2 Samuel,
it is okay to study them. But, we study
them a different way than the way religious denominations study them. They will read Matthew 6:14 and preach if you don’t forgive your brother their
trespasses, neither will God forgive you!
That is a true verse if you are Israel living in the times past, or
in the future, i.e., the ages to come.
When you rightly
divide the word of truth, you learn God doesn’t withhold forgiveness from you
and I who are living in the dispensation of grace. That is why you have to rightly divide! Because what Paul says God is doing today is
different from what God was doing through the Lord’s earthly ministry to the
nation of Israel in Matthew through early Acts.
My job as a grace
teacher is to give sound, Pauline doctrine and when I do teach Hebrews
(which looks to the future) or Acts
(which transitions from time past) it is to compare and contrast what he is doing with
them with what he is doing with us today.
It really is not that hard; actually, it is simple. But it is hard when you try to wrest the
scriptures for your own good and that is what those guys in most of Christendom
do—they mix law and grace, prophecy and mystery, and it is confusing to their
listeners. There are questions in their
hearts as to why there are contractions in the bible, why the healing verses
don’t work for them, and how this guy says this and that guy says that. There is confusion. God is not the author of it...Satan is.
1 Corinthians 14:33
For God is not the
author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
Confusion reigns
because of a lack of rightly dividing the word.
Transcribed excerpt from 146 What is True Fellowship R.K..mp3 from
Bro Ron Knight’s studies in “First
Corinthians”
Hopefully this helps!
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Do you have a question for Pastor
Ron?
This is, truly an awesome read! Thank you, so very much, for posting it. It is so very necessary for all to know this, regardless of how well-meaning they be when they apply wrong scripture to today!
ReplyDeleteI will be spreading this article through my Facebook and my blog.