Featured Baptism and Regeneration of the Spirit

How can your concept of the "bride" of Christ, which you claim is equal to the "body of Christ" which you claim none could enter before Pentecost except by the baptism in the Spirit include "all believers in Christ" UNLESS you are denying that Pre-Pentecost saints were believers in Christ???? Obviously John the Baptist was a believer in Christ and preached the gospel of Christ as John 3:36 records that undeniable fact. Yet he lived and died BEFORE Pentecost didn't he?

Peter claims that ALL THE PROPHETS were believers in Christ (Acts 10:43) and Paul claims the very same gospel received by faith was preached both before and after Pentecost to the Jews (Heb. 4:2)!

So either your view of the "bride" is wrong or your view of the gospel is wrong or both are wrong because there were believers in Christ BEFORE Pentecost and yet there was no "bride" or "church" or "body of Christ" before Pentecost. Can you see your dilemma?

 

External Repentance and faith in the gospel is the manifestation of internal regeneration!

Look at 2 Corinthians 4:6 and compare it to the unregenerated description found in Ephesians 4:18. Let us begin with the unregenerated description in Ephesians 4:18:

Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

Take note of the unregenerated condition:

1. DARKENED understanding
2. ALIENATED from God's life
3. IGNORANCE in them
4. BLINDNESS of heart

Now, lets look at 2 Corinthians 4:6 and we will see that the creative act of God in the heart in connection with the gospel reverses every aspect of this unregenerated description:

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Cor. 4:6

1. This is a CREATIVE ACT of God - "For God, who commanded the light to shine" is a direct reference to Genesis 1:2-3

2. This CREATIVE ACT occurs "IN THE HEART"

3. This CREATIVE ACT removes the "darkness" (Eph. 4:18) with LIGHT

4. This CREATIVE ACT removes "ignorance" with "light of KNOWLEDGE"

5. This CREATIVE ACT removes "blindness" with "the glory of God in the FACE OF JESUS CHRIST"

6. This CREATIVE ACT is performed in Genesis by a CREATIVE WORD - "and God said, let there be light, and there was light"

7. This CREATIVE WORD is when the gospel comes "in the Spirit and in power and in much assurance" - 1 Thes. 1:4-5 thus "by his own will we are quicked by the word of truth (James 1:18). "Being born again of the incorruptible Word of God....that word which we preach" (1 Pet. 1:23, 25).

8. This CREATIVE ACT brings the spirit of man back into spiritual union with God thus reversing "being alienated from the life of God THROUGH IGNORANCE" as the "light of knowledge" is removes the "ignorance" and thus restores ETERNAL LIFE or UNION with God.

Moreover, it is this "light of knowledge" created by God in the heart that removes the guilt of sin as it is the good news of Christ paying for all our sins, thus it is an internal WASHING of regeneration of the guilt of sin, "the filth of the flesh" from the conscience (Tit. 3:5; Heb. 9:17; 1 Pet. 3:21).

Repentance and faith are experiential manifestations of regeneration. They are inseparable graces just as repentance and faith are inseparable graces. As Jeremiah said, "Turn us Oh Lord, and we shall be turned." God is the one turning (regeneration) and if God is turning then the experience of being turned is conversion.

The Old Testament saints were repentant believers in the gospel of Christ (Messiah) who later was revealed as "Jesus" from Nazereth (Acts 10:43; heb. 4:2). Their repentance and faith in the gospel was the manifest experience of inward regeneration or turning by God.

The fallen man LOVES darkness and will NOT COME to the light. This inward TURNING is from darkness to light (Acts 26:17-18) through the empowered creative word of the gospel. God uses human instruments to bring the gospel to the EXTERNAL ear, but it is the CREATIVE power of God that speaks into existence INTERNAL "light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ". This is the REVELATION of God responsible for Peters confession of faith (Mt. 16:16-17). This is the revelation of the Son in the heart of Paul (Gal. 1:15-16) that is the counterpart of PHYSICAL BIRTH - spiritual birth.

The hallway of faith in Hebrews 11 is the hallway of NEW BIRTH as repentance and faith is the external manifestation of internal new birth.

 

Don't confuse the attack upon your doctrine with any attack upon your person. I attacked the former not the latter. The former I utterly detest because it is not merely false, but it attackes the very heart of Biblical salvation and the gospel itself.

 

Ok, tell me how the Pre-Pentecost John the Baptist who lived an died prior to Pentecost but not only preached Christ but believed in Christ (Jn. 3:36) could be in your concept of "the bride" when you teach the "bride" is a metaphor for the Post-Pentecost body of Christ which none could enter previous to Pentecost. Sounds like a real series of knots and contradictions to me. Either the baptism in the Spirit was the means for entrance into your kind of church bride, church body or it is not, which is it? Apply your answer directly to John the Bapitst as you believe he was part of your concept of the "bride."

 

There has alweays been ONE way God can forgive and save sinners, that being the Cross of the Messiah, Yeshua, but the salvation that OLT testamnet believers had was not the same as we under the new testament age experienced, as he remitted and passed over their sins due to Him knowing that messiah was to come for them, yet not until pentacost was the Spirit given to all who were saved by His grace...

The Old Covenant had no means to secure a new life in christ, as the Spirit did not come to permentaly indwell all of the redeemed until death/resurrection of jesus///

 

saved by the Cross, yet not part of the Church of Christ, as the were under the provisions of the Old Covenant, and the New One is when the Spirit came to indwell all saved flesh now..

 

God passed over and remitted their sins on the basis of Him knowing that Jesus would come to redeem them from their sins, yet the new birth experience required Pentacost to happen under the new Covenant...

 

It is literally NOT 'born again', it's 'born from above', as in:

26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother.
27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: For more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath the husband.
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also it is now. Gal 4

This 'Celestial Zion' and Her children are alluded to in passages such as Gen 3:15:

and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Or Ps 87:

3 Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah
4 I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know me: Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia: This one was born there.
5 Yea, of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one was born in her; And the Most High himself will establish her.
6 Jehovah will count, when he writeth up the peoples, This one was born there. Selah
7 They that sing as well as they that dance shall say, All my fountains are in thee.

Notice all those Gentiles in Ps 87. All through the period of the Mosaic covenant there were FAR MORE of these ‘children of the heavenly Zion’ with circumcised hearts among the Nations than there ever were in Israel as clearly indicated in Isa 54:

1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Jehovah.
2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.
3 For thou shalt spread aboard on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

Christ told of them in Jn 10:

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice: and they shall become one flock, one shepherd.

Paul refers to them in Ro 2:

13 for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified:
14 (for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves;
15 in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them);

And in Col 1:

26 even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to his saints,
27 to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

In Rev 12 we’re given an awesome visual picture story exposition of Gen 3:15, the seed germ of all prophecy, detailing the enmity down through the ages between the Serpent and the Celestial Zion clothed with the sun and the moon and the stars and her children:

1 And a great sign was seen in heaven: a woman arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars;
2 and she was the child; and she crieth out, travailing in birth, and in pain to be delivered.
3 And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems.
4 And his tail draweth the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon standeth before the woman that is about to be delivered, that when she is delivered he may devour her child.
5 And she was delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and unto his throne.
17 And the dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus:

I assure you, Christ was not implementing a 'new' thing in Jn 3, He was revealing a mystery from of old:

....It behoveth you to be born from above; the Spirit where he willeth doth blow, and his voice thou dost hear, but thou hast not known whence he cometh, and whither he goeth; thus is every one who hath been born of the Spirit. Jn 3:7,8

OT Saints were no better than us, they required the supernatural act of regeneration just as we do in this age.

 

Actually you have completely avoided the problem I placed before you. John the Baptist is not Abraham. John the Baptist saw Jesus with his own eyes not merely with the eyes of faith. John the Baptist, like Abraham lived and died prior to Pentecost, yet you claim that John the Baptist was part of "the bride." In the past, you have argued that the "bride" is the "body of Christ" the church and also argued that your church had no existence prior to Pentecost, but as you know, John the Baptist lived and died prior to Pentecost. You simply have not addressed the problem I have placed before you.

In regard to Abraham, Paul explicitly says that the covenant promise made with Abraham by God was "IN CHRIST" 430 years prior to Moses (Gal. 3:17). There are HUGE problems with your denial of rebirth prior to Pentecost - huge problems. Indeed, I think it can be easily shown to any objective person that there is no such thing as "salvation" apart from re-birth anytime for anyone between Genesis and Revelation, there is no salvation for anyone at anytime OUTSIDE of Christ, and I mean without being "CREATED IN CHRIST" as you cannot be "in Christ" by natural birth.

Furthermore, of course the coming of Christ was by promise before Christ came! Of course the ultimate obtaining of salvation from sin and death was not obtained prior to the cross, nor has it been obtained yet but is still future. However, no human being prior to pentecost is any different than any human being born after Pentecost - they have IDENTICAL PROBLEMS in regard to sin and the fallen nature. There are not TWO different ways to save a person from his fallen nature. There are not TWO different gospels or TWO different ways of salvation. The fallen nature of man can only be resolved by new birth as there is no other possible solution (Psa. 14:2-3; Rom. 3:9-23). Justification by faith is merely the external manifestation of the new birth and indeed is impossible apart from new birth.

 

Ok, so you believe that the church existed prior to the ministry of Christ. Tell me, if the baptism in the Spirit is the mechanism for placing a person in this body, then how was that done prior to the day of Pentecost?

Second, tell me how the foundation consists of apostles as the "first" set in this body (Eph. 2:20; 1 Cor. 12:28) and yet even though you believe "not many" were placed in this body prior to Christ's earthly ministry how is it they are not "first" or at least the Old Testament "prophets" are not "first" to be set in this body?

 

???

But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother. Gal 4:26

Jesus answered and said to him, `Verily, verily, I say to thee, If any one may not be born from above, he is not able to see the reign of God....It behoveth you to be born from above; Jn 3:3,7 YLT

 

who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Jn 1:13

It's a supernatural birth from above, solely of God. Every child of promise, OT or NT, is a child of the heavenly Jerusalem.