What Happens When the Last Gentile Is Saved?

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, it's good to have all of you back with us, and we're just going to pick right up where we left off at the end of our last program. But you know, every day we get new listeners, so I have to keep repeating these things, otherwise they're going to call and they'll say, well, don't you have any books or tapes? Yeah, we've got them all. So if you happen to be a new listener and you're unaware of it, we do have all the past programs available on the little books, which are 12 programs in succession, or six hours of videotape, or six hours of audio tape. And if you're interested in any of that, why, you just call us, write to us, and we'll get the material in your hand. I think that's all I have to put on for announcements at this time. Ephesians 1 is where Paul writes that in the dispensation of the fulness of time, referring of course to the thousand year reign of Christ, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, or the heavenly things, or those which are on earth. Everything is going to be brought together, even in Him. Now you can be turning back to Galatians chapter 1, and while you do that, I want to remind you now that all the way up through the Old Testament, dealing with the nation of Israel under the Abrahamic covenant, including Christ's earthly ministry, including the early chapters of Acts, it's all dealing with God's earthly people, Israel. And Israel remember had nothing but earthly promises. The Jew knew nothing of dying and going to heaven. All he understood, as Job puts it so beautifully back there in chapter 19, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the latter days shall stand on the earth. He didn't say, I'll see Him in heaven, but in the latter days shall stand upon the earth, and in my flesh, Job says, I shall see God. And so all of the promises given to Israel were earthly, never lose sight of that. Their Temple was in Jerusalem, it was earthly. And you get to the book of Hebrews, and Paul I think wrote it, and again he's constantly comparing that which was good back there in the past, where God resided in the Temple, you remember, in the Shekinah glory. It's all earthly. But now you and I are not connected to a Temple on earth, we are connected to the Jerusalem which is in heaven. And so from the time of, I think, Paul's commissioning to go to the Gentiles, as we're going to see here in a moment, and the Body of Christ now is heavenly, whereas Israel is earthly, and hopefully we can tie this whole period of human history coming together after God has finished over here, winding up everything with His earthly people, and then we'll go into that which this verse is referring to, the thousand years, when He will be King of kings, and Lord of lords, when everything of the earthly, everything of the heavenly will come under His reign and rulership. Well that's just sort of a preview of what's to come, but anyway, now come back with me to Galatians chapter 1, and let's pursue a little more of the heavenly concept of all this. I think we pretty much gave you an overview of the earthly promises made to Israel. Israel rejected it, they crucified their Messiah, and God immediately turned through the Apostle Paul, of course, to the heathen or the Gentile. Now in Galatians 1 verse 11 is where we have the real basis of it, after you've left Acts chapter 9, and now of course he's been out amongst the Gentile world, and we are some 28-29 years after Pentecost, I think that's subtracting right, but anyway he says, Now be careful how you read this, the gospel which is preached of me, in other words the Pauline message, is not after man. And here's what he's talking about in the next verse. I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. So what's he saying? Well at his conversion on the road to Damascus, when the Lord spoke to him and said, I'm going to send you far hence to the Gentiles, Paul didn't immediately beat his way back to Jerusalem and check in with Peter and the twelve, but instead the Lord sends him the opposite direction down into Sinai and Arabia, and evidently for three years the Lord just laid on this man a whole revelation of all of these things that were never, never hinted at in Scripture. And this is what I try to emphasize to people, do you realize that all the way up through the Old Testament, all the way through the Gospels, all the way through the early book of Acts, you never once see the term, the Body of Christ? You don't see that term until you get to Paul. Now once Paul begins, never does he use the term, the Gospel of the Kingdom. Never does he use that term. Why? Because that was associated with the twelve. Just as they couldn't use the term, the Body of Christ, Paul can't use the term, the Gospel of the Kingdom. See, because they are forked in the road. That's the only way I can look at it. God comes up to the point when Israel rejected everything of the covenant promises, and God just says, Now I'll take a different tack. And so he went to the Gentiles. Now Paul lays this out so beautifully here in these verses, we've covered them a lot of times on the program. This is repetition for a lot of you. But now in verse 13, he continues on, verse 4. 4. You have heard of my conversation, or my manner of living, my lifestyle, in the times past, in the Jews religion. Now here I always have to stop. What's a religion? Oh, I've defined it so often on this program. Religion is always a compilation of the efforts of man to somehow appease a Holy God. That's religion. I don't care if it's the Oriental, I don't care if it's Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism. Religion is always what man attempts to do to somehow merit favor with God. Now you want to remember that the Jews religion, at the time that Paul was practicing it here in Christ's earthly ministry, and shortly after, that's all it was. There was nothing of the power of God in it. You want to realize that from the Law given back here to Moses, which was about 1500 B.C. out there in the desert, from the Law given to Moses, Judaism as we now term the religion, was in a constant state of degeneration. Usually things do, don't they? Very seldom does something reach a peak of more or less perfection and stay there. It always generates down. Entropy, as the word science uses, everything is always going into a less usable state. So you've got to realize that from the beginning of Judaism, if we want to call it that, and the giving of the Law to Moses, and then coming through the prophets and so forth, you get to the place of Christ's earthly ministry, and it was nothing but a dead, man-made religion. There was nothing left of the power of God in it. Oh, they went through the temple worship. They went through all the, listen, the verse I've been sharing with my Oklahoma classes quite routinely the last few weeks. Come back with me, and again, I didn't intend to do this either. Isaiah, Isaiah, but I think it behooves us to realize that even Israel's religion came up into God's nostrils as a stench. And I shook a few people up the other night, and I said, I wonder how many church services around the world on Sunday morning God doesn't feel the same way about as He does here in Isaiah. Now, I'm in Isaiah chapter 1, starting at verse 11, and there's the Word of God. This isn't my idea. In fact, it just kind of turns my stomach to read something like this, because this is frightening. But this is where mankind can get to when they follow their own devices. Isaiah 1, verse 11, "...to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?" Well, didn't God instruct them to bring sacrifice? Sure He did, but I read on, "...I am full." Today we'd say, I've had it. I've had it with the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of the fed beasts. "...I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or lambs, or of the he-goats. When you come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?" And I'm sure He's speaking of the temple complex. Now look at verse 13, "...bring no more vain oblations." One of what oblations was, was part of their sacrificial worship. And God said, don't bring any more. I've had it with them. You got the picture? Incense is an abomination unto me. Now listen, weren't they instructed to burn incense as a sweet smelling? Sure they were. And they were still doing everything exactly according to the Book. But now let's read on, and I'll tell you what the problem was. Incense is an abomination unto me, verse 13, "...the new moons, the Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies." Now there's nothing wrong with all that. That's what God instructed. I cannot away with it. Well, what's He saying? I'm fed up. See, I can't stand to look at it. "...even the solemn meeting, your new moons, and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth." Now this is God speaking to the nation of Israel. "...they are a trouble unto me. I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. And yea, when you make many prayers, I'll not hear. Your hands are full of blood." What was the major point of controversy that God has here with the nation of Israel? They were doing everything right. Oh, they wouldn't dream of approaching temple worship and not do it exactly right. I mean to the last jot and tittle, they did it right. But what were they lacking? Faith! See, there was no faith associated with all this, and it had become nothing but a dead religion. And isn't that exactly where Christendom is tonight? Oh, all of this rigmarole, and all of this, and you name it, you know it as well as I do. But how many people have faith to appropriate the real truth of it? And this is what God is looking for. He's looking for simple faith. All right, now I'll come back to Galatians 1, if you will. And so this is exactly what Paul is talking about. He was such a religious Jew, and he was like all the rest of the Israelites, doing everything according to the Book. But he was destitute of real faith, and consequently, he too was blind with regard to who he was and who Jesus really was. You know, you've heard me though, you who sit here that are in my classes every week, how many hundreds of times you've heard me say, "...Israel should have known who Jesus was, Israel could have known who Jesus was." Why didn't they? They didn't really believe the Word of God, see? Now we're in the same situation in America tonight. The Lord's coming. We don't know when, but I don't think it's very far away. And yet most people have no concept of where we are in God's timetables, and they wouldn't believe it if you told them. Why? No faith. No faith. All right, now I'll come back to Galatians chapter 1. So I was in the Jews' religion, and how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and wasted it, profited in the Jews' religion. And then drop down to verse 15, and here's the flip side again. Oh, he was a religious Jew. He was doing everything that the Book instructed, but when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace. And here was the purpose. Galatians 1.1 To reveal His Son, the Lord Jesus, in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen, the Gentiles, the non -Jew world. Immediately here again He puts the emphasis on which way He went. He did not go to Jerusalem and check in with Peter. But immediately He says, I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither did I go up to Jerusalem to them who were apostles before me. But where did He go? I went into Arabia. Now if you want to know where He went in Arabia, just turn the page in Galatians and go over to chapter 4, and drop down to verse 25, just to show you what was in Arabia. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. So I have to feel, and you've seen me put it on the board over and over again, just as surely as God gave the Law to Moses up there on Mount Sinai, and Moses took it down to the children of Israel, so this man went to the same mountain and received all the revelations of our doctrines of grace, and he didn't take it down to Israel, he took it where? To the Gentile world. And what a difference it has made, see? And then he goes on through the rest of the chapter, and he says that after the three years in verse 18, then he went up to Jerusalem to see Peter. Not until, he'd had three years alone, and you know I never made the point of it until about a year or so ago, and I think it was when I was teaching Corinthians here on television, that one of the major controversies, if I may use that word, that the Corinthians had against the Apostle Paul, was that he didn't have that three years with Jesus that Peter had. Now it's obvious of course, Peter and the eleven walked those dusty trails of the nation of Israel for three years, we all know that. And so they were kind of bombarding him, well now look Paul, you didn't have that three years with Jesus that Peter had. And then it dawned on me, oh no, yes he did, he even had it better. He had three years down there in Mount Sinai with no one around but the Lord Himself. And so he could come back and he said, oh yes, the Lord evened everything up. Peter had his three years, I had my three years. You know I always say God always evens everything up. Here we've got 2000 years where God dealt primarily with the nation of Israel, Jew only, with some exceptions of Gentile. Now we've come on this side, the Body of Christ has been on the scene for almost 2000 years with a few Jews. Everything balances out. It always balances out. God has never, you know I had a gentleman call the other day about putting our program on his station, and he said, you know what I like about your program? You've got balance. Well thank you, because this is what we try to maintain. We're not going to go clear off on the right until the teeter totter goes this way. I don't want to go clear over here to the left until it goes that way, but you maintain a balance. You just have to keep your eyes on the Word of God and not get taken clear off this way or that way. And so everything that God is in is always balanced, everything. And so yes, Peter had three years with the Lord here, Paul had three years with the Lord at the onset of his ministry. Now let's come on down. Verse 19. Other of the apostles I saw none, except James the Lord's brother, who was not one of the twelve. Verse 21. Afterwards, after he had stopped at Jerusalem for a couple of weeks, I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Now of course that's the area of Antioch and in his hometown of Tarsus, and so this was the beginning now of Paul's ministry of, like we saw in the first half hour, a calling out of a people for his name, but from among what people? From among the Gentiles. Calling out a people for his name. All right, what's happening to those people? Come back with me a minute now to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and see this is all fresh language. This is something you've never heard before in Scripture. And this is all a result of that three years of revelation, and the outpouring of the grace of God on this apostle of the Gentiles. All right, you've got 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and I guess we can start at verse 12, where he uses the human body as a comparison. For as the body, the human body, is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ, or the body of Christ. All of us have been brought into it and become members of it. We never lose our individuality, but yet we're all part of the composite. Now, how do we get there? Next verse. 1 Corinthians 12. For by one Spirit, who is it? Holy Spirit. Now here is the only true baptism of the Holy Spirit for us today. This is the true baptism that everybody better have, or they're not going to be in glory. Now that's it. And if you have this baptism, then your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and we're going to see you in glory. No doubt about it. 2 Corinthians 12. For by one Holy Spirit are we believers, all, not just the most spiritual, but every believer is baptized into the Body of Christ. Now that's not water baptism, nobody can tell you that, but it's a work of the Holy Spirit that at the moment of salvation, He places us into the Body of Christ. You know, I'm always using the analogy of the baby in the mother's womb. For nine months, what does that mother's body do? Adding cells to that little body in her womb, starting from invisible, and every day for nine months, cells are being added to that little body in the womb. And then all of a sudden, the last cells are all in place. I don't know what comes in last, but if it's fingernails, or eyes, or whatever, all of a sudden it's finally complete. And what happens? Delivery! See? A full-term baby, delivered. All right, that's the Body of Christ. Now, for 1900 and some years, God has been adding believers, one at a time, one at a time. He knows everyone, and here they come, from around the world, and then the next verse says who's in it, or reading the rest of verse 13, I'm sorry. We're all baptized into that one Body, whether we be Jew or Gentile. And I can always add, whether we're black or white, whether we're from the East or from the West, whether we're rich or poor, see? Bond or free, says that in so many words. We have been all made to drink, or partake, into that one Spirit. Now that's the Body of Christ that has been forming now, ever since it began back here, I think in Acts chapter 9, with the conversion of Saul. And it's building, and building, and building, and building. All right, when is it finally going to be raptured out? Let's go back to Romans again if you will. Romans chapter 11, well while you're there I might as well show you another verse that's so appropriate, and so few people know it's in their Bible, and that's verse 13. That's the one Jerry reminded me of years and years ago, he said, I never knew this was in my Bible. He said, Les, repeat it every chance you get, so I do. Romans 11, and I magnify my office, in other words, he takes a back seat to no one. But all right, that's free for nothing. Now come on over to verse 25. This is where I really wanted to go. Romans 11, verse 25. This is when the rapture will take place. Now it's not a day or an hour, not a month or a year, but when that last cell, or that last person is brought into the Body of Christ, he says, I would not brethren that you should be ignorant of this mystery, or secret, lest you should be ignorant, or lest you should be wise in your own conceit. And here's what we're supposed to know. That blindness in part, or for a certain period of time, not forever, but blindness in part has happened to Israel until a particular time in time. We don't know what it is, we're getting close we think. But, that when blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness, or the completion of the Gentiles is brought in. Now what does that tell you? That Israel is out there in a spiritual blindness tonight, has been for almost 2,000 years. But the day is coming when once again their spiritual eyes will be flipped open, and they're going to see, and they're going to recognize their Messiah. Israel as I've said so often, will be born in a day, but before that happens, the Church has to be brought to the full. And the last person brought in, and then of course we will see the beginning of God finishing then His program with Israel. Well, in the few moments we have left, we're calling out the Body, the Heavenly. Let me take you back a minute to show the heavenly connection, I think I have time. Go all the way up to Colossians. Now here again is our heavenly connection. These are heavenly promises. Israel was never told something like this. Colossians 1. Now let's drop down to verse 13, Colossians 1, verse 13. All with it? Where he writes, "...who has delivered us, speaking of God the Father, who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has, past tense, it's a done thing, and He has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son." Now where's the kingdom of the Son tonight? Well, it's in Heaven, see? And so we have that heavenly connection. Now if we've got time, oh we don't, we've only got a few seconds left. But here is what the Apostle Paul is showing, that as a heavenly people, we have heavenly promises. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.