What Happens When All Things Are Gathered in Christ?

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and farmer. Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for over 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say, time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, once again, we'd like to invite those of you watching with us on television to come in and be a part for this next 30 minutes. And we always like to remind folks that we're just an informal Bible study. And number one, we like to get folk interested in, once again, reading the book, studying it, and hopefully being able to understand it. Now, for many of you who are just coming in as new listeners are probably not aware that all the past programs going back to Genesis 1-1 are available in the videotape, the audiotape, and the little books as you see them on the screen. And we try to keep the cost as nominal as possible so that anyone can afford. And I guess I really should make mention, we have so many prison inmates that are using our little books, and they just love them. And there again, we send them to prisoners, inmates, free of charge. And I just had a letter again yesterday from a prison inmate, I think out in Ohio. And, oh, he said, all the fellas here just love your little books. So pray for them. That was one of the things he asked for. He says, pray for us. And Gail over here has a prison ministry in Oklahoma, and we were able to go with her one night. And these fellows really do. You know, you wouldn't think that there would be any opportunity for Bible study or so forth in prison. But the guy's telling me that usually, not always, but usually it's the best place on earth to be a Bible student. Because they have time on their hands, and I just never realized that they would have that kind of freedom. But evidently they do. And my, some of the letters we get from these prison inmates, I think they'd put a lot of theologians to shame, because they really have got time to study. So anyway, you be mindful, these fellows. And again, for those of you in prison who may be watching us, and if you would appreciate some of this material, if we know it'll be used, we'll gladly send it out to you without charge. Also, we've been announcing the last several programs now that we have been putting out a little quarterly newsletter. Nothing profound, but just has a short article, usually on prophecy concerning current events, and little excerpts from some of our letters. And then we announce whenever we go out for seminars and so forth, so that you'll know where we are and what we're doing. So if you're interested in our newsletter, free of charge, again, you call us or write to us and let us know that you'd like to be on our mailing list. I think that's all the announcements for now. We'll get right back into where we left off. And as we were just saying at break time, this little book of Ephesians is profound. I mean, it's not something that we're just going to gloss over to get rid of it. We're going to take it verse by verse, and now I think the next verse will take at least this half hour, and maybe two, just for one verse, because this is something else. I mean, most people read this and they say, well, how can you spend sixty minutes on this verse? Easy! Easy! Okay. Ephesians 1, verse 10. Well, I guess we should go back up and read what we just covered in the last couple programs. Verse 7. Ephesians 1, verse 10. Ephesians 1, verse 10. "...in whom," that is, in Christ, "...in the Beloved One we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. Wherein He," Christ, "...hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery," or the secret, "...of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself." Now remember I made the comment in the last program, everything begins and ends in and with God. Oh, especially when we teach the covenants in the Old Testament, when God made that covenant with Abraham in spite of all of the weaknesses of the nation of Israel and the children of Abraham. Did it break the covenant? No, because you see it began with God, and it�s going to end with God. And the same way with all of these promises of Scripture. They begin and they end in God Himself. Now then verse 10. "...that in the dispensation," or the administration, or that period of time, "...of the fullness of times." In other words, when human history will finally be brought to the full, when it�ll finally wind down, and we feel it�s going to be 7,000 years, we�ve already come six, so we know there�s a thousand years left, which will no doubt be this fullness of times that is still awaiting the human race. Now He has purpose, so we�ve got to keep the thought here now. "...having made known unto us the mystery," as we saw in our last half hour, "...according to His good pleasure." He�s Sovereign, He can do it any way He sees fit. He can keep things secret if He sees fit, and we saw that He did until He revealed many of these things to the Apostle Paul. Alright? "...which He has purposed in Himself," and here is going to be the fruition of the whole program. "...that in the dispensation of the fullness of time," when everything will finally wind up, "...that in the dispensation of the fullness of time, He," Christ, God, "...might gather together in one," all of it�s going to come together now, "...in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him." Boy, now some of you almost know right now where I�m going, especially with the line on the board. Alright, but before we go back to that, turn ahead a few pages to Colossians chapter 2. Oh goodness, I could just about go back to verse 1, but we haven�t got time for that. Drop in at verse 8. Colossians 1, verse 8. Colossians 2, verse 8. "...beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men." Wow! Boy, that hits a lot of people right in the face, doesn�t it? Oh, how many people hang on to tradition. Here we�re warned against it. Be careful. Don�t hang on the tradition of men, and after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Why? "...for in Him," that is in Christ, "...dwelleth all the fullness of the," what? The Godhead. All the Godhead is in Christ epitomized, and that�s what it says. And He is up there, not in some invisible, mythical, myth-like spirit world, but how? Bodily. See? Bodily. The same body that He left from Mount Olives and ascended, He is now epitomized in the Godhead in all the fullness manifested in Christ Himself. Alright, now before we go back and take a run at our timeline again, come back to Ephesians 1, because repetition, repetition is the only way these things finally soak in. He has purposed everything within Himself, for the purpose that in the dispensation of the fullness of time, in other words, in that final period of time where God is going to deal with the human race in a particular way, which we call the Millennium, the thousand -year reign. Alright, so that in that fullness of time He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on the earth. Okay, let�s go back to Genesis 1.1. Take your Bible and go back to Genesis 1.1. And you�ll find way back here that we�re going to have the earth made ready for Adam and Eve. But, even before we get to the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis chapter 12, where it all of a sudden now becomes a reality, in verse 1 of Genesis 1.1. we have two spheres of God�s influence, and what are they? Heaven and earth. Now remember what you just read in Ephesians? That He might bring in one all things in heaven and on earth. Now you can�t ignore that. Now we�re going to separate them, and then we�re going to see how they all come together. But here in Genesis 1.1. we find that God created heaven and earth. Now for sake of time let�s go all the way to chapter 12, where now the flood has been history, the Tower of Babel is history, and the whole human race. Now remember there weren�t billions yet, we�re only 200-400 years this side of the flood, and there�s probably quite a few million have come together already, but we�re not up in the billions yet. But here we are at 2000 B.C. Now I�m going to bring it up to my timeline. We�ve come through the early chapters of Adam, and we�re come up here to 2000 B .C., and we have the beginning of the Jewish nation, or the call of Abraham. Now look at what it says. Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, from thy kindred, from your father�s house, unto a land that I will show thee. Now L-A-N-D means what it says, and it says what it means. Where is land? On the planet. We�re not talking about something up in heaven, we�re talking about something on the planet. Go to a land that I will show thee. Now verse 2. God says to this one man, I will make of thee a great nation, and of course it�s the nation of Israel. I will bless thee, I�ll make thy name great, thou shalt be a blessing. I�ll bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and ye shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Now I�m doing this for the sake of many of our listeners who have just come into our viewing audience, since we�ve been long away from Genesis. But Genesis 13, and the Lord said unto Abraham, after Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward, southward, eastward, westward, for all the land which thou seest, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed forever, and I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth. So if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it, the breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee. Now here�s my reason for doing all this. Is this a heavenly promise, or an earthly one? Well it�s earthly. All of this is earthly. You�re going to have a geographical area of land on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and I�m going to multiply you as the sand of the sea in numbers. People, not angels, people. Now this is all earthly. Now everything that God is going to continue to promise, in fact let�s just take a brief run at some of this, come all the way up to Genesis 46. Now we�ve already lapsed several hundred years. Abraham has come and gone. Isaac has come and gone. Jacob is now filling the scene with his 12 sons, and Joseph is down in Egypt. Famine has hit Canaan and the rest of the world, but Joseph has the remedy, because he piled up the grain in the good years. Okay, here we have Jacob and his other sons, and God has constantly told them, �You stay in Canaan. Don�t you go down into Egypt, you�ll get in trouble every time.� And so they knew that. But now God does something different. How can He do that? Well He�s sovereign. God can do whatever He wants to do. And now it�s time for Jacob to do something that was anathema to him before. God says, �Go down into Egypt.� Well Lord, you�ve always told us not to. Never mind Jacob, go down to Egypt. I�ve got a reason. Alright, look at it. Verse 1 of Genesis 46, �And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and he came to Beersheba.� Now you�ve got to know your Middle Eastern geography. Beersheba is down south of Jerusalem, about 80 -90 miles, and it�s almost due east of Goshen, the part of Egypt where Israel would be. And so he wasn�t all that far from where God was going to take him. And so he says, verse 2, �Jacob, Jacob.� And he said, �Here am I.� Verse 3, �And he, God said, I am God, the God of thy father, fear not to go down into Egypt. For I, God says, remembering the promise that he made to Abraham, that his offspring would be as numerous as the pebbles of sand. For I will there in Egypt make of you a great nation.� A heavenly promise or an earthly one? Earthly. There�s nothing of heaven here. This is an earthly people with earthly promises, and now he�s told to go on down into Egypt where Joseph is, and he has food aplenty, because in God�s eternal purposes, what�s going to happen? The Jews are going to have a population explosion, and they�re going to come out some 215 years later, 5, 6, 7 million of them, which was more numerous than any other single tribe or nation in the Middle East. All right, God�s purposes. They had to go down into Egypt. They had to go into slavery. They had to be ready to come out when Moses led them. It was all part of the divine purpose. But what I�m emphasizing is, what was it? Earthly. Now all the way up through the Old Testament, we see that God never speaks of the nation of Israel going to heaven. When they die or when the nation becomes a full participant in the covenant promise, it�s always where? On the earth. And never lose sight of that. All of the promises that God makes to the nation of Israel are earthly promises. And when you understand that, when Christ begins to minister to the nation of Israel, it�s the same thing. Jesus doesn�t tell them, �Prepare for the glory land.� They�re to prepare for what? This coming Kingdom of which their Messiah is going to be the King. An earthly Kingdom. All right, let me take you all the way up now, for sake of time, to Daniel, I think is where I want to go. And I�ll probably come back to Isaiah. But Daniel chapter 2. Oh, come down to verse 35, honey. Daniel 2, verse 35. And of course, Daniel is interpreting the dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had. And this is part of the dream. That he sees this great image, of course we�ve taught all this in the past. He sees this great image with a head of gold, and the chest of silver, and the belly of brass, and the legs of iron, and then the feet and the toes of iron mixed with clay. Which was a picture, of course, of all the great Gentile empires that were in proximity with Israel. That�s why I do not feel America�s in prophecy. Because all prophecy deals only with the nations of the world that had something to do with Israel in the past. America hasn�t. Now there may be a lot of Jews in America, but that doesn�t count for that. But all the nations in the Old Testament historical setting that had proximity with Israel are in prophecy. And so we have all these empires. First, of course, the great one was the Babylonian. Then came the Medes and the Persians. Then came the Greek. Then came the Roman. And so they were all in the area of Jerusalem, and they had to do with the nation of Israel. Alright, then the 10 toes and the feet of iron and clay, we feel, are the revived Roman Empire, which I think is Western Europe as we see it coming to the fore. I put a little article on it in the newsletter. Watch Western Europe, because it�s coming up, up, up. And oh listen, be aware, European companies are buying up American companies, and we are losing our clout, and they�re gaining. And we know that the day will come when Western Europe will be the empire of the world. Alright, now verse 35. So as this whole Gentile system now finally prepares for its demise, the Second Coming of Christ, then was the iron and the clay, starting with the feet. Because you see, if this image is standing up, and if a roller is going to come and smash it, it�s not going to start rolling its head, it�s going to start with its feet. Well alright, this is the Coming of Christ, and He�s going to destroy first the empire that is contemporary with that day, which of course is the revived Roman Empire. And then in this revived Roman Empire, remember, are all the remains of the previous empires. Now if you know anything about history, you know that banking and business, and spending or using money for usury, began with Babylon. That was the first empire that began to promote banking and business in that way, and that�s why the Jews settled down so quickly in Babylon. Then came the Medes and the Persians, and many of their attributes are still with us today. Now they aren�t as evident as the Babylonian, or as the Greek. Now much of the Greek culture, Rome was very careful not to destroy, because they saw it was profitable to integrate it into their own empire. And so much of Greek philosophy is still with us, Greek architecture is still with us, Greek literature is still with us, and now comes the Roman Empire. Now the primary thing that is still with us today that began with Rome was our whole system of courts and law. That began in Rome. Rome was the first empire to declare a man innocent until he was proven guilty. See that�s why the Apostle Paul appealed to Rome. Even Israel wouldn�t give him that much day time, and so he says, �If you don�t give me a fair shake, I appeal to Caesar.� And so he knew that in Caesar�s courts he would have as good a chance as any place to be proven innocent and then released. So here�s what you have in all of these previous empires. You have banking and interest, you have Greek culture and Roman system of law. All is going to be incorporated in this final empire. But now look what happens when Christ comes. Then was the iron and the clay, the brass, the silver, the gold, all broken to pieces together and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floor, totally annihilated. And the wind carried them away that no place was found for them, and the stone, which is Christ at His Second Coming, the stone that smote the image and destroyed the world system, became a great mountain, or a kingdom. And where does this kingdom reside? It fills the whole earth. See how plain this is? It fills the whole earth. I�d back up all the way to Isaiah chapter 2, verse 2. Now this is all what we�re talking about in that 10th verse of Ephesians, when all things are going to finally be consummated in that final dispensation, or that final thousand years. And that�s why I wanted to come back and reconstruct the earthly promises, because they�re all going to be amalgamated with the heavenly promises of the Church, and it�s all going to come under one umbrella of Christ. Now they�re not going to be mixed. They�re still going to maintain their separate entities, but they�re under the headship of Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Isaiah chapter 2, verse 2. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that is that final thousand years that Ephesians is talking about, that the mountain, or the kingdom of the Lord�s house shall be established in the top of the mountains. Now remember a mountain in Old Testament symbolism is a kingdom. So His kingdom is going to be above all the other kingdoms, and it shall be exalted above the hills. Now no doubt under His rule He will establish other smaller kingdoms amongst the Gentile nations. And it shall be exalted above the hills, and now the last part of that verse. And all nations shall flow into it. Why? Because it�s going to be the hub of the planet. Jerusalem, the capital of this earthly kingdom, will be the center of the whole world�s activity. And all the nations of the world will flow to Jerusalem. I guess we could sort of use Washington, D.C. as an example today. We are the superpower, the only one left. And so everything sort of flows to Washington today, and everything flows back from it. Well Washington is not going to last that long, but Jerusalem will. And so Christ when He sets up that kingdom, it�s going to be headed up in Jerusalem. All right, let�s look at another one yet in the Old Testament. Let�s go to Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 14. The first three verses are the Battle of Armageddon. We�re all hearing a lot about that, when all the armies of the world are going to gather in the Middle East. That�s why I�m not too shook up about the Y2K, because if everything crashes like they tell us it will, these armies would never get to the Middle East. But they�re going to get there. I�m not looking for a total crash. There may be some blips, but I�m not all that shook up, because according to God�s time plan, it just is too early. Now if we were already out of here, and the tribulation had begun, and that would fit with the middle of the tribulation, I�d say maybe. But it�s too early. It�s just not time for the world to collapse. So I�m not jumping on that bandwagon. I never have, and I still won�t. But here we have the Battle of Armageddon. All the nations of the world are going to come together and be destroyed at the Second Coming of Christ. Zechariah chapter 14. Verse 4. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east. Where is that? Earthly. Not heavenly, earthly. And so he�s going to stand on the Mount of Olives. Now come on up to verse 9. And the Lord shall be King over all of heaven, all the earth. And in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one. 760 Kenta, OK 74552