The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Christian author Paul A. Pomerville entitled Cultural Blind Evangelicals and the Good News of the Kingdom of God. In the book which illustrates the problem of Western Culture and its negative effect on “the Gospel” or “Good News” of salvation of Christ and the coming Kingdom of God –the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the believer in Jesus.
In the book it can be seen that while many evangelicals speak of the “Good News” or “Gospel” focusing on the salvation story of Christ, the second part of the story is largely being forgotten or bypassed by evangelical church today that of the Kingdom of God on earth—the present Kingdom of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believers.
In the book he quotes another author Harry Boer, who in his book Pentecost and Missions, stares the following perceptive point.
“At Pentecost a distinct period in the divine economy of redemption was introduced, the characteristic feature of which is the presence of the Holy Spirit. We may therefore say that after creation and Incarnation the outpouring of the Spirit is the third great work of God”
Pomerville writes:
“The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost represents a unique work in salvation history that unequivocally is part of the salvation of God…The event marks the coming of the kingdom in power to those who have faith in Christ. The expression “Kingdom of God” includes the “already” present power and rule of God in the followers of Christ, as well as the “not yet” triumphant presence, power and rule of God at the Second Coming of Christ.”
This absence of the Kingdom of God of the Holy Spirit by some evangelicals today is also due largely to the church’s adoption of poorly thought-out and incorrect doctrine of classical Dispensational Theology first brought about in mid 1800s by John Nelson Darby.
Darby was a defrocked Irish priest of the Anglican Church of Ireland who popularized his dispensationalist theology in the 1830’s.
Classical dispensational theology is based on a literalist futurist interpretation of the Bible which focuses on an Israel-centered salvation story and not a Christ-centered theology.
This unorthodox theology got its name from Darby’s reading of the Bible in which he divided it up into seven economies or dispensations of time in which God deals with mankind differently.
Darby assumed there was a pattern throughout the seven dispensations where God offers deliverance and prosperity to his people based on their obedience, or judgement based on disobedience. Because in each dispensation humankind is alleged by Darby to have failed the test of obedience, this brought on a new dispensation with new opportunities.
Unfortunately, Darby believed that his present dispensation of biblical time, the age of the Church and age of the Holy Ghost, had also failed or was already failing, so he centered salvation on Israel and the millennial future kingdom of God with a future Jewish kingdom.
Darby also brought in the theology of “secret rapture” doctrine which has also grossly infected to a large degree the church of Christ today.
Darby narrowly focused the Bible into seven key dispensations which today can be seen in following widely accepted examples:
1. Innocence
2. Conscience
3. Human Government
4. Promise
5. Law
6. Church (or Grace)
7. Kingdom
While one certainly can try to explain the Bible by these seven dispensations of time, it does a disservice to God as all these are focused upon man and how God deals with man.
Furthermore, premillennial dispensational theology replaces Jesus’ kingdom of God on earth and the age of the Holy Ghost with a future millennial Jewish kingdom and teaches an incorrect interpretation which separates Israel from the Church. It teaches that some Scriptures in the Gospel books were written only to Israel and not meant for the Church. Its focus is largely on the Last days and events which take place in the future, rather than in the present Kingdom of God on earth and God’s will for the Kingdom’s holy inhabitants.
As Pomerville wrote in another great book of his, The New Testament Case Against Christian Zionism speaking of premillennial dispensational theology:
“The Darby-Scofield system of theology causes a shift in focus from Jesus Christ and his first coming (incarnation, redemptive sacrifice, resurrection and ascension to the throne of God in heaven and sending the gift of the Holy Spirit) to physical Israel and post-Second Coming eschatological events, especially Christ’s rule in a Jewish-oriented kingdom in the millennium. According to its definition and theory of dispensations, it creates “the great parenthesis” of the church age. According to the New Testament, what it creates is the “great betrayal” of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom of God that has already arrived in the church age.”
Would it not rather be healthier to focus our focus of the Bible on God, and How God glorifies God in the Holy Bible as he deals with his creation?
There are three glorious works of God which can easily and better describe God’s purpose for mankind. More importantly for evangelicals they focus the attention to God, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
So, let’s look at the three chief glorious events on the Biblical narrative of the full story of the Holy Bible.
We start in the beginning.
Genesis 1:1
¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:26-27
¶ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
This is the first glorious event in the Bible, God, YHWH (possibly pronounced as Yahweh) or the Father who created the earth and all mankind knows and has today in God’s creation of the heavens the sun, stars, moon, the earth, water, plants, trees, the animals, insects, birds, reptiles, fish, whales etc., and Man, or humankind on earth.
This was the First glorious work of Creation of the Father.
The Second glorious work of God is the Salvation work of the Son.
It’s with the Son we have birth of Jesus.
Luke 1:30-33
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. 32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
It's with the Son we have the life and ministry of Jesus.
Matthew 4:23
¶ And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
It’s with the Son we have the redemption in the death of Jesus on the cross.
Luke 23:33
And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.
It’s with Son we have the resurrection of Jesus from death to Life everlasting.
Mark 16:2-6
And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. 3 And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? 4 And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. 5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. 6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.
It's with Son we have Jesus’ ascension into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God.
Acts 1:9-11
And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. 10 And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; 11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
So, the Second work of God’s glory was the Son—his birth, life, ministry, death on the cross, resurrection to life and ascension to God in heaven — Jesus the Christ!
The Third work of God’s glorious Salvation to man is the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is the fulfillment of the Jesus’ Kingdom of God on earth poured out on the apostles and believers of Christ, indwelling in the heart of those who have faith in Jesus the Christ.
It’s the Holy Ghost who teaches us about the things of God, helps us to resist sin to live holy, and protects us from the forces of the Devil, and nourishes us in our daily lives while we wait for the return of our King.
John 14:15-20
¶ If ye love me, keep my commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. 18 ¶ I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. 20 At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
Acts1:8
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Acts 2:1-3
¶ And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Acts 2:38-39
Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. 39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.
1st Corinthians 3:16
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
2nd Corinthians 1:19-22
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. 20 For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. 21 Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; 22 Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
The age of the Holy Ghost is the present age in which we live and is also the main era of God’s salvation in Christ which will continue up to the Second Coming when Jesus will return to reward those who possess the Holy Spirit of God indwelling in themselves and judge all others who failed to heed Christ’s message, teachings and good news of God’s salvation.
So instead of seven dispensations which carve and divide up the Bible in a poorly conceived theological basis, we now have three key works of God or works of Glory of God which unify the Bible and better explain God’s will in the Holy Bible.
1. God’s Creation—The beginning of creation with the Father, YHWH.
2. God’s Salvation—The Salvation of mankind by God in the Son, JESUS the Christ.
3. God’s Kingdom—The fulfillment of God’s plan through the indwelling the Holy Ghost within the faithful of the Kingdom of God.
Luke 11:2
And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
The goal here is not to create another simplistic systematic way of viewing the Bible, rather to focus on the importance away from man or Israel, and a future earthly kingdom, to focus back on God, his glory, his salvation, and his present holy Kingdom of the Spirit.
Jesus spent much of his time devoted to teaching about the coming Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven, before he gave his life on the cross for the sins of mankind. After he dies and is risen from the dead to life and ascended to his Father to receive all power over heaven and the earth, God sends forth his Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, to the begin God’s Kingdom age on earth and an age of the Spirit which extends up to his Second Coming where Christ Jesus will return to reign over his Holy Kingdom.
Mark 1:15
And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
Shouldn’t we as Christian believers in Christ Jesus and being filled with the gift of the Holy Ghost, give God his rightful honor and have honor to the Holy Spirit of God in a more intimate spiritual experience with the Holy Ghost?
If Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God so much, then we as Christians should also teach the same doctrine using the lessons of Jesus and his Kingdom of God.
Won’t you take this time to praise God the Father for giving us his Son Jesus, the Christ, and for sending to his believers the Holy Ghost, so that we might become a part of the Kingdom of God with the very Spirit of Almighty God indwelling in our converted hearts.
What an amazing plan God had for his creation all men women and children who if they only would believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized in his blood sacrifice, his death on cross, and believe his resurrection to Life and ascension to the Glory of God, that they would receive the gift of God—his Holy Spirit—a Comforter to help them in this life on earth and next to come in Heaven within God’s holy Kingdom.
Do you know Jesus?
Do you know he died for your sins?
Will you be a part of the Kingdom of God?
What shall you do to be saved?
Do you have faith in Jesus?