Rightly Dividing

2Ti 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

We’ve been considering MAD BAD hermeneutics, and we’ve looked at study and shew thyself approved. Naturally, we have to look at that final phrase, rightly dividing the word of truth! In the Textus Receptus, which is the Word of God, rightly dividing was accurately translated in the King James from the Greek word, orthotomeo, which means to dissect correctly, or to make a straight cut, or to rightly divide.

Corrupt, modern translations butcher this passage almost to the point of incoherence by changing rightly dividing to accurately handling. Other versions say rightly handling. Correctly handles. Handling aright. Correctly explains. One says straightforward dealing. Properly handling. The Amplified Bible says accurately handling and skillfully teaching. Some just say correctly teaching. Some say rightly explaining.

NAB says Imparting the word of truth without deviation. The only way one can impart the word of truth without deviation is to stop reading the NAB.

What do any of these expressions even mean? What does accurately handling even mean? How does accurately handling explain how we’re supposed to study the Word of God? Or if you think the beginning of that verse ought to say be diligent then how does accurately handling the word of truth explain how you’re to be diligent in presenting yourself before God to earn His approval of you? The modern versions have taken a verse with very specific instructions designed to help you understand your Bible and they’ve made this verse so generic as to now render it almost meaningless. If you’re accurately handling the word of truth, does that mean you’re supposed to have some sort of accurate understanding of the truth? If everything in the Bible is about you, to you, for you, all about you and nobody else, than what is there to accurately handle? It’s all about you, isn’t it? If the whole book is all about you, then how can you have any issues understanding it? How can there be so many denominations out there? Somebody has to be right and somebody has to be wrong.

How do we figure out how to study our Bibles?

When I was reading all those books on hermeneutics, I noticed that lots of people have trouble understanding their Bibles, which is why they’re turning to hermeneutics. Things don’t line up. There are blatant contradictions in the Bible. How do we explain Israel vs. the church today? God knew you’d have those questions. He wanted you to have those questions. And He already explained how He wants you to study His Bible. You are to rightly divide the Word of truth. All these modern translations are happy to say anything other than what God wants you to know about how He wants you to study His Word, and that is to rightly divide it. Rightly dividing the Word is an inconvenient truth for a lot of theologies and denominations who want you to think you’ve replaced Israel.

So where do we divide His Word? Where do we draw this line of demarcation? How about between the OT and the NT? How can that be when the Gospels and the early part of Acts is a fulfillment of the promises made to Israel in the OT?

Consider the promises in the Old Testament.

After the fall in the garden, God promised a Redeemer (Gen. 3:15). Later, when God created the nation of Israel through Abraham, He promised a land (Gen. 12:1-2; Heb. 11:8-16). And God promised to David a future kingdom here on earth (Psa. 2:7-8; Jer. 23:5; Isa. 42:4). Christ, the Messiah of Israel, would come into the world through the line of David and establish His kingdom here on Earth (Isa. 7:14; 9:6; Matt. 1:23).

When we did the End of the World series, we went through volumes of prophecies about this kingdom. I shared my top 50 takeaways about the kingdom, and I had a hard time keeping it down to 50.

There is no question that the kingdom is literal, physical, visible on this Earth. In the OT prophecies, the Lord meant exactly what He said. Jerusalem wasn’t code for the church today. Jerusalem means Jerusalem. Zion means Zion. And the Earth means the Earth. Words mean things and God means what He says. And in this literal, physical, visible kingdom, Christ Himself will reign out of Jerusalem (Isa. 2:3; 24:23; Jer. 3:17) over the entire Earth. David wrote, “Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him” (Psa. 72:11).

Israel will then fulfill their God given roles to be a kingdom of priests and they’ll become a blessing to all nations: ‘In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you’ (Zech. 8:23).”

The fulness of joy because of the presence of the Lord on the Earth will also be a distinctive characteristic of the millennial age (Isa. 9:3-4; 12:3-6; 14:7-8; 25:8-9; 30:29; 42:1, 10-12; 52: 9; 60:15; 61:7, 10; 65:18-19; 66:10-14; Jer. 30:18-19; 31:13-14).

The Abrahamic covenant will be fulfilled. Israel will finally possess forever the promised land. Not only that, they were told again and again in OT prophecies that they shall inherit the Earth. David wrote, “I shall give Thee… the uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy possession”.

The Davidic covenant will also be fulfilled. Christ will sit on David’s throne atop Mt. Zion in Jerusalem here on the Earth. I’ll never forget Jer. 33:17 telling us that David, who I think will bethe prince of the kingdom, shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. David wants the Lord to rule. He loves the reign of the Lord. He will never feel compelled to occupy the throne himself. Ironically, the city of David, the city that was the center of David’s government will become the center of the global government of David’s greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Mosaic covenant will be fulfilled, although the law will still exist in their hearts. As Hal said on one of our podcasts, “The form is erased but the substance remains.”

In Jerusalem, with the combination of the sun and the glory of the Lord shining atop Mount Zion, perhaps also the glory of the Father, Jerusalem will be during the daytime, seven times brighter than it is now from the sun (Isa. 30:26).

The sin-curse is lifted from creation (Isa. 35). Deserts will no longer be the barren death traps we know them as now. They’ll blossom as a rose. They will open up to reveal the beauty within. I still love Ezekiel Eze 36:35, “And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited.”

The saints will have memory of the past. They will remember what certain places of the Earth used to be like, and they will compare the past of that location to how it is now in the kingdom, and they’ll say, “This place used to be desolate. Now it’s like Eden.”

Animals will be at peace. Health and long life shall be restored. The blind will see. The deaf shall hear. The mute shall sing, and the lame man shall leap as an hart (as a deer). Isaiah writes the earth shall be FULL of the knowledge of the LORD.

Everything people will see will have God’s creative genius stamped on it. Every glorious aspect of the Earth they see, the natural realm, the animal kingdom, all of that will teach people about the Lord Himself and the wisdom of His ways.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. In other words, we cannot conceive of the exercise of all the power vested in Christ, and all of that power will be comparable to the depths of peace that will exist under His rule.

Righteousness will be the descriptive term characterizing the nature of Christ’s rule and His kingdom as a whole.

Christ and His government will deal swiftly with any outbreak of sin should that occur. “He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked” (Isa. 11:4).

For the resurrected saints, there’ll be this continual feeding of their souls by being in the Lord’s righteous kingdom, by observing righteousness everywhere, by seeing righteousness in all the fellow saints, with whom there are close loving bonds of fellowship, and by observing the rightness of God in all His ways in His leadership. There is leadership in the kingdom. They’re fed by seeing and living a sermon (Ezek. 34:22-24).

And finally, everything that is established in the kingdom will carry over into the eternal state. Almost every characteristic in the kingdom is almost always written as a feature that will be eternal. Almost everything about the kingdom will continue forever, but after those thousand years, God will judge all the unbelievers at the Great White Throne, and then He will redecorate the universe with a little bonfire. We’ll have a new Heaven and a new Earth (Rev. 21). The Lord will give everything back to the Father (1 Cor. 15:24-28). God will be all in all. And most things will continue as it was but… even more glorious.

So after everything we’ve covered about the kingdom, are we to now conclude that nothing was actually literal but it’s all spiritual? Are we to conclude that we’re now somehow living in His spiritual kingdom?

What about Israel? Are we to conclude, as some would teach, that God took away all those promises to Israel and He gave them to the church today, the Body of Christ? Wouldn’t that make God a liar? If God takes away His promises to Israel and gives them to us, why should we ever trust Him? What’s to stop God from taking His promises away from us?

And what are we to make of the Gospels, and as Matthew wrote how everyone proclaimed to all of Israel that the “kingdom is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 10:7)? What kingdom did they mean? Were they not talking about the literal physical kingdom that flooded OT prophecies with the arrival of their Messiah in the person of Christ? Did not the Son of God arrive in the flesh to fulfill all the promises made to the fathers of Israel about their kingdom on Earth? All of Israel needed to receive their Messiah by faith, be baptized of water, Spirit, and fire, to become that nation of priests God had always intended so that they would bless the world about Christ in His kingdom. Through the priests of Israel, the world would be offered salvation in Christ.

Would this not mean that the Lord’s words during His earthly ministry were not meant for the Gentiles but for the Jews only? Is this not why the Lord said in John 4:22 that “Salvation is of the Jews?” You remember, in Luke 1, John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias said that the Messiah had come “To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God.” Christ would tell His disciples in Matt. 10:5-6, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.”

Is this what we do today? Do we avoid preaching to the gentiles? Do we seriously preach in our churches to Jews only that the kingdom is “at hand”? And are we to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead? When was the last time YOU raised someone from the dead?

When a Gentile woman came with her request to the Lord to save her demon-possessed daughter, He refused to help her. He told her “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). Some Lutherans and Presbyterians and Methodists have lost their minds over Matt. 15, because the Lord told that woman, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. How dare He call a woman a dog? They’re unhappy that the Lord’s not being inclusive. The Lord’s not behaving the way they want Him to behave.

The problem isn’t the text or what the Lord said. The problem is their insistence of imposing their own diversity, equity, and inclusion principles onto the text rather than let the text adjust their thinking. Because the Lord didn’t sin. He didn’t misspeak. He didn’t do wrong.

The solution to Matt. 15 is a dispensational one. The Lord isn’t demeaning her personally. He’s rightly identifying her with the Gentiles and telling her that His teachings and His miracles were not given to the Gentiles. They were meant for the children of Israel. Because the salvation of the Gentiles would be through a converted Israel functioning on the Lord’s behalf as a kingdom of priests. That was the program.

After that, the gospel of the kingdom would go out into all the world. The point is – the Lord’s ministry was to Israel and for Israel because God had promised His people a kingdom on Earth, and they alone would be the instruments of His blessing to the world and the Gentiles.

But, of course, His own people rejected Him and crucified Him.

Contradictions

Which brings us to Pentecost. Israel’s second chance to get right with God and fulfill their destiny to establish His kingdom here on the Earth.

Look at what Peter has to say in Acts 3 to thousands of Israelites on the day of Pentecost. Just consider his tone of condemnation for crucifying Christ. Act 3:13 The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. Act 3:14 But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; Act 3:15 And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. Act 3:16 And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. Act 3:17 And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. Act 3:18 But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Act 3:19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; Act 3:20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Act 3:21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

Consider what rightly dividing ISN’T. Rightly dividing isn’t about making the church today spiritual Israel, spiritualizing all the prophecies of the OT, which turns God into a liar. And another thing rightly dividing isn’t – it’s not a church that began at Pentecost.

Did you notice how Peter condemned these people for crucifying their Messiah? Is this what we preach today? Do we condemn churchgoers every week for Israel’s sin of crucifying their Messiah? And do we preach, as Peter preached here, that if we all only repented of Israel’s sin of killing their Messiah, then God would send Jesus back? Peter said, Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you. How many of us Gentiles have to repent of Israel’s sin before Christ comes back? Do you really think this is what we’re supposed to be teaching people today?

In my book, I tell a story of a woman who said she stopped believing in God because of prayer. She and her husband went to a denominational church. Her husband had an advanced form of cancer. They wanted healing. And they prayed for healing. Her pastor encouraged her by taking her to the words of Jesus in verses like John 15:7 in which Jesus said, ‘If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.’

Her pastor told her, “God promises,” he said, “that if you ask what you desire, it shall be done without any shadow of a doubt. Believe it. Trust in God, and your husband shall be healed.”

Church members also pointed out to her James 5:14-15 in which James wrote, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” “You see,” her pastor told her, “the Bible says that the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. Believe it, and God will heal.” So they followed the directive of James right down to the smallest details. They anointed him with oil. The elders all laid their hands on him as they prayed over him in the name of the Lord.

Then her husband died. She was devastated.

She turned to her pastor for answers. And what did he tell her? He suggested that her husband’s death could have been because she or her husband at some point doubted or did not have enough faith. Or maybe there was some secret sin in her life or a secret sin in the life of her husband. Or maybe they failed to tithe one week. Or maybe her husband wasn’t a Christian.

Those were all garbage excuses.

She never doubted God’s Word. She believed with every ounce of faith she could muster within herself. She begged God in prayer in tears to heal her husband never doubting His promises. How much faith was enough faith to have her prayer requests honored? Did not the Lord say repeatedly, “That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven”?

Out of all the many Christians who prayed together for her husband, was there not enough authority being gathered in His name that their request could be honored? Out of all those Christians, was there not enough faith to save her husband?

How about when the Lord said plainly, “Ask, and it shall be given you… For every one that asketh receiveth”? What about John 14:13-14 in which the Lord said, “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it”? And where did it say that a secret sin in her life would cause her husband to die? And why should a secret sin in her husband’s life cause him to die when James clearly wrote that “if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven”?

She knew her husband was saved because he spoke often of his faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross. He was a passionate student of the Word, and he witnessed to many to bring them to a saving faith in Christ. He loved Christ as much as any man she ever knew. So, naturally, she came to, what seemed to her, the only logical conclusion to the loss of her husband and this whole emotionally exhausting ordeal – that there really is no God, that every promise in the Bible about receiving whatever you ask in prayer must be a lie, and that everything she once believed as a Christian was a fraud.

What’s the solution to this problem?

The solution is a dispensational one. Jesus was making those prayer promises to His disciples with the kingdom in view. When the kingdom is here, when the disciples are in their glorified resurrected bodies, freed from the presence of sin, filled with the Spirit, THEN anything they ask, they shall receive because their requests will be perfectly righteous in perfect harmony with the will of God.

So how do you explain the fact that Christ promised the disciples that anything they ask they shall receive, and yet, Paul in 2 Cor. 12, when he had a messenger of Satan buffeting him, when He begged in prayer three times for the Lord to fix this problem and get rid of this thorn in the flesh, when the Lord responded to Paul, did He say He would intervene? No. Did He say, “Whatever you ask you’ll receive, if you have faith”? No. Did He say if he prays with two or more then he’ll receive whatever it is he asks? No. Did He say that if Paul starts a prayer chain He might intervene? No.

The Lord told Paul that His grace would be sufficient for him. His grace would carry him through all his trials. His grace would empower him. His grace would be the means by which he could endure all long-suffering with joy, and His grace would enable Paul to serve Christ with power. Why is the Lord making this point here with Paul when He had already empowered His other apostles to receive whatever they ask? Because a change had taken place. Paul was sent by God to teach something completely different than what had been taught before him.

This is why Paul three times talks about “my gospel” (Rom. 2:16; 16:25; 2 Tim. 2:8), because the good news Paul proclaimed was different than the good news of the kingdom being “at hand.”

This is why Paul three times under inspiration of the Holy Spirit tells us to “be ye followers of me” (1 Cor. 4:16; 1 Cor. 11:1; Php. 3:17), because he is our apostle for today and because Paul’s conversion by simple grace through faith was to be a “pattern” to all of us who “should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting” (1 Tim. 1:16). How can Paul be a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting when so many thousands of people were saved before him? Is Paul some narcissistic egotistical maniac? No. He’s your apostle.

A change has taken place. He is a pattern because we are in a new “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2), an interruption in the prophetic program in which God is now dispensing His grace to all, both Jew and Gentile, who come to Him by faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son as a payment for all our sins. We are, therefore, careful to rightly divide the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15). We must make a straight cut in the Bible between what is spoken to us and what isn’t, between God’s program for Israel and His program for us, the church today, the Body of Christ. While all the Bible is written for us, not all is written to us.

Consider the subject of forgiveness. In the Gospels, forgiving others was a requirement to receive forgiveness from the Father. The Lord said in Matthew 6:14-15, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Paul says we’ve already been forgiven! Colossians 2:13 tells us, “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you ALL trespasses.”

The gospel in the Gospels was faith in who Christ was. Joh 3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. In the first four verses of 1 Cor. 15, Paul describes the gospel as faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as a payment for all your sins.

In the so-called “Great Commission,” Peter and the 12 were told, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…” Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:17 that “Christ sent me not to baptize.” Do you think Peter and the 12 could say that? They were specifically told to baptize. Let me ask another question: how many different baptisms are there in Scripture? Eleven? Twelve? Matthew 3:11 showcases three baptisms: baptism by water, Spirit, and fire. So what did Paul mean when he wrote in Ephesians 4:5 that there is only “One Lord, one faith, one baptism?” Does not one mean one? One cannot mean three or twelve or however many baptisms you may think exists in the Bible. Paul doesn’t say “one primary baptism.” He doesn’t give us an umbrella theory. Paul said by inspiration of the Spirit that there is only “one baptism.” How can this one baptism not be the baptism of the Spirit that takes place the moment we believe (1 Cor. 12:13)?

Israel was promised an earthly inheritance. They were told again and again that they shall inherit the Earth. As David wrote, “I shall give Thee… the uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy possession”. Eph. 2:6 tells us that God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

The Lord told the rich man to give away all his possessions and follow Him. At Pentecost, they had all things common. Paul tells us in 1 Tim. 5:8, “if any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”

Tithing was part of the old Mosaic law given to Israel (Lev. 27:30-33). Paul tells us in Col. 2:14 that God took that old Mosaic law “that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross”. What Paul teaches about tithing can be found in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.” That’s true grace, brethren!

Paul’s Your Apostle

I ask you – how do you reconcile all these seeming contradictions? There’s only one answer. Paul is our apostle for today.

If you’ve never heard this before, I beg you. Prayerfully consider that what the Lord revealed to us through Paul was different than what had been taught before him, which

After Pentecost in Acts 9, the Lord did something that had never been prophesied. Instead of unleashing His wrath upon the world, He reached down in utter grace and saved the man who was leading the rebellion of the nation of Israel. He saved His greatest enemy, a man named Saul, who would later become the Apostle Paul. The enemy, who was “a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious” (1 Tim. 1:13) and who called himself the “chief” of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), was saved by the exceeding abundant grace of God and sent to the Gentiles with a message that had never been revealed before.

Paul writes: “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery…” (Eph. 3:1-3). The Lord Jesus Christ had a mystery, a secret, and He revealed this new message about this new “dispensation of the grace of God” to this new Apostle Paul, who reveals in his letters to us a whole new victory program by God’s grace through Christ’s all-sufficient work on the cross for both Jew and Gentile alike.

This program for us today would be entirely different than the kingdom program taught and proclaimed before Paul. In Romans 3:21-22, Paul writes, “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference”. In Romans 7:6, he writes, “But now we are delivered from the law…” In Ephesians 2:13, he writes, “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Consider that what Peter taught at Pentecost in Acts 3:21 were the things, “which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began”, but what Paul taught was “the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began”. But what about Israel?

Context

What did God do? He “cast away” the nation of Israel for a time.

As Paul wrote in Romans 11:15, “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” Notice in this verse that the casting away of Israel is only temporary. As J.C. O’Hair would say, “The nation of Israel was ‘cast away’ for a season and for a reason.” Paul makes the point that if the casting away of Israel brought about the offer of reconciliation to the world through Christ’s sacrifice, then just imagine what the receiving of them later shall be. This will be nothing less than life from the dead, which is the long-awaited resurrection of the saints at the Second Coming of Christ!

This brings to mind Ezekiel 37:12 when God told Israel, “Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.”

Look at Rom. 11:25, “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”

Notice, too, that the blindness of Israel is only temporary “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in…” This means that the Kingdom they waited for, the kingdom about which Christ preached while He was here on Earth, would have to be put on hold “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in…”

But, as Paul wrote in vs. 29, God’s promises to Israel shall be fulfilled. Why? Because “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance”. There are no take-backs when it comes to God’s promises. God’s promises are never taken away from one group of people and given to another.

And Paul says in vs. 26, “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written,” As it is written. All Israel shall be saved? You mean every Jew will get soul salvation? No, all Israel shall be delivered from the wrath to come, they’ll be delivered from the Gentile dominion, they’ll be delivered from all their enemies, and they’ll be delivered from sin itself. What does Paul say after that? There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”

We are living in a temporary interruption of the prophetic program, a period of grace, and all those great promises made by the Lord to His people about His kingdom will be fulfilled after the Rapture.