The Word
Vol.
9 No. 10
Upper Room Discourse
John 15:2-8
Suffering
For Blessing/Conclusion
In
The
Doctrine of Suffering for Blessing.
The Delight of Sacrifice,
by Oswald Chambers.
“I will very gladly
spend and be spent for your souls.”
(2 Cor
“Once “the love of God has
been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,” we
deliberately begin to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ’s interests and
purposes in others’ lives (Rom 5:5).
And Jesus has an interest in every individual person. We have no right in
Christian service to be guided by our own interests and desires. In fact, this
is one of the greatest tests of our relationship with Jesus Christ. The delight
of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, Jesus (see
As Chambers stated, “One of
the greatest tests of our relationship with Jesus Christ is the delight of
sacrifice; laying down our lives for our friends,
But laying down our lives
sacrificially does not come naturally. Therefore, God the Father has designed a
plan that strips away the negative influences of Satan’s Cosmic System so that
His Word can flourish within our souls, thereby renewing our way of thinking,
So with this understanding,
we have been noting the various categories of Suffering for Blessing that come
with Spiritual Adulthood, which is God’s pruning process, designed for one
purpose; that you produce “much fruit”. And as I have stated, in order to
produce “much fruit” we need to have Divine Viewpoint with self-sacrificial love,
“laying down our lives”.
In order to obtain
self-sacrificial love we must pass Momentum Testing to fortify our souls
against human viewpoint and Cosmic thinking.
Therefore, God has provided a pruning process, (Momentum Testing), to come into
our lives in order to strip away the negative influences of Cosmic and human
viewpoint, thereby allowing Divine Viewpoint to flourish within our souls
leading to Divine good production, “much fruit”.
We have already noted the
four categories of Momentum Testing, (Disaster, People, System and Thought
testing), So we are now going to note the final form
called Prosperity Testing.
6. Prosperity
Testing (P.T.).
a.
Prosperity is the most subtle distraction to life inside God’s Power System (
b.
Believers sharing in prosperity can easily become
distracted from God’s Word and Divine good production in the spiritual life.
They can be lured away from the Plan of God for their life because of
overemphasis on materialistic things.
c. P.T. is also a test of the true origin of your inner peace
and happiness. Is your peace and happiness based on materialistic things of
this world or is it based on your relationship with God. Therefore, Prosperity
Testing demonstrates that true peace and happiness are found in God, because
worldly prosperity cannot bring happiness apart from the believer's residence,
function and momentum inside
1)
When you have the same happiness in adversity as well as prosperity, it means
you have passed the test.
2)
If you are unhappy in the midst of prosperity, it means that you have flunked
one of the prosperity tests do to a lack of doctrine in your soul or the
application thereof.
d. Two categories of P.T.
1) Individual Prosperity Testing in which some form of success
challenges the top priority of Occupation with Christ. This can include:
a) Wealth, given by God
when you have capacity from Doctrine in your soul to truly handle and
appreciate it.
b) A shower for those not
able to bath regularly.
c) Food, after
starving for days.
d) An abundance of friends, unity of the body of
Christ, family members, etc. (People).
e) Success on the
job when you line up with the Authority, Policy and Goals (System).
f) Inner stability, the result
of grace that comes from appropriation and utilization of God’s grace, having
peace of mind (Thought).
g) Tranquility of mind after a long hard day at work
or home with the children.
h) Peace of mind during adversity or conflict (Disaster),
etc.
i) Being blessed inside one or more Divine Institution,
(volition, marriage, family, or nationalism), as a result of honoring those
Divine Institutions.
2) Collective
Prosperity Testing in which a city, state, nation, or group becomes very
prosperous.
Collective
Prosperity Testing often results from combining the three categories of
manifest destiny: landed aristocracy, industrial complex, and the undeveloped
frontier. When these three have been fulfilled, the entire society usually
becomes very hedonistic, making pleasure the chief function in life. Hedonism
is self‑indulgence; the pursuit of pleasure to the exclusion of truth and
Bible doctrine. It contends that moral duty is fulfilled in the gratification
of pleasure‑seeking. The pursuit of pleasure excludes the priorities of
integrity both in establishment and in the Christian life. Collective
Prosperity Testing challenges the entire society to choose between truth and
hedonism.
e.
Our capacity to enjoy prosperity so that it does not become a distraction to
our relationship with God must always precede the attainment of the prosperity
itself.
f.
In order to achieve Spiritual Maturity, every believer must pass the Prosperity
Test, and the only protection you have to pass this test is Spiritual
Self-Esteem where your happiness is based on God’s Word resident within your
soul.
g.
The Cosmic System can offer you success, sex, fame, wealth, promotion, social
and professional prosperity, but all of these without capacity will not bring
you happiness and in fact will make you miserable.
h.
The Prosperity Test is vitally necessary before reaching Spiritual Maturity
because passing this test consolidates the believer's scale of values, making
them consistent with the Plan of God, resulting in stabilizing the right
priorities of life, and giving capacity to enjoy prosperity.
i. Passing this test means that the mature believer receives God's
greatest prosperity, the greater blessings of time and eternity.
We now move to the final point
of our doctrine which is Evidence Testing experienced by the believer who has
achieved Spiritual Maturity.
J. Evidence Testing.
1. Definition: Evidence Testing,
(ET), is Satan’s cross‑examination of every witness presented by God in
the historical appeal trial of Satan and all fallen angels. In human history,
man's thoughts, motives, decisions, and actions are entered as evidence,
exhibits, precedents, and arguments in Satan’s appeal trial. Every believer who
attains maturity is an argument or witness for the prosecution (God) against
Satan and the Fallen Angels. Evidence Testing, then, is Satan's
cross-examination of every witness presented by God.
a.
Definition of Angelic Conflict.
1)
Lucifer, the son of the morning, (a.k.a., Satan), learned in eternity past that
he could not attack the sovereignty of God, (Isa
2)
The Appeal Trial.
Between the passing of the
sentence in eternity past and the execution of that sentence at the end of the
Millennium and the Gog revolution,
3)
Six parts to the Appeal Trial:
a)
The Formal Appeal which took place during Old Testament history. The Garden
represented heaven before the fall and Old Testament history represents angelic
rebellion.
b)
The Rebuttal Phase of the Prosecution (God) which took place during our Lord’s
First Advent and continues throughout the Church Age. Our Lord and the
invisible heroes of the Church Age are the witnesses for the prosecution. When
any Church Age believer utilizes the omnipotence of God the Father and God the
Holy Spirit to advance to SM, there is a tactical victory in the angelic
conflict.
c)
The Rebuttal Phase of Satan will take place during the Tribulation. All of
Satan's rebuttal arguments come in the form of violence and anti-Semitism.
d)
The closing arguments and summary of the Prosecution includes the Second Advent
and the millennial rule of Christ. This duplicates the conditions before the
fall of Satan and the fall of man in the garden.
e)
Satan's closing argument is the Gog revolution at the
end of the Millennium.
f)
Final sentencing occurs just after the God revolution 4) Why an appeal trial?
To demonstrate the perfection of Divine justice and the fairness of God's
sentence to all fallen angels, God invented and created man and simultaneously
the principle of human history, the new creature demonstration. This new lower
creature, homo-sapien, with like kind volition as
angels, would demonstrate in a system called history the fairness of God, the
perfection of His integrity, and the righteousness of His judgment on fallen
angels in prehistoric times. The prehistoric trial was based on the fact that
from their own free will angels rejected whatever Divine salvation was
available, not only once, but they continued to reject it for an unknown
duration. As a result, God has duplicated in human history everything that Satan
and the fallen angels used as objections in the original trial, and apparently
a part of that is suffering. For, as presented in eternity past, it is Satan's
theory that mankind, like angels, will not be able to handle suffering,
especially if they think it is unjust, and that the only reason anyone ever
stays with God is because he blesses them. But the prosecution demonstrates
that this isn't true, as in the life of Job. Job proved that his love and
loyalty to the Lord was because of Bible Doctrine resident within his soul, not
because of blessing. It demonstrated the power of Bible Doctrine and the
fantastic ability from God’s Word to have great happiness under every
circumstance of life. So we see that man was created to resolve the Angelic
Conflict, and to simultaneously glorify God. Although man was created inferior
to angelic creatures, he still has volition like angels, and some choose for
God in positive volition. Those who choose for God become witnesses for the
Prosecution especially those honored to be placed under Evidence Testing.
2. The pattern of evidence
testing is found in
a.
In
b.
3. Evidence Testing can be on an
individual basis as noted in Job and Zechariah, or on a group basis, (i.e. the
local assembly can be entered into Evidence Testing).
4. A believer or group does not
qualify as a witness for Evidence Testing until they have attained Spiritual
Maturity, having passed both Providential Preventative Suffering (
a.
Therefore, the three stages of Spiritual Adulthood (Spiritual Self Esteem, SSE;
Spiritual Autonomy, SA; and Spiritual Maturity, SM) are the prerequisites for
facing and passing the three categories of Suffering for Blessing,
b.
ET is then equivalent to the fulfillment of the Predesigned
Protocol Plan of God for that believer’s life. No believer ever receives
Evidence Testing (ET) until he has attained SM.
5. Every believer who attains
Spiritual Maturity is a witness for the prosecution, either in the formal trial
of Old Testament history, or in the rebuttal phase of Prosecution (God) during
the First Advent and Church Age, or in Satan’s rebuttal of the Tribulation, or
in the closing argument and summary phase of the Second Advent and the
Millennium.
6. Evidence Testing is Satan's
attempt, through his cross-examination of suffering, to discredit those
believers who attain Spiritual Maturity.
7. It appears that Satan always
administers Evidence Testing, but under restrictions imposed by God before the
ET begins. For example, Satan was not permitted to kill job,
8. There are two categories of ET.
a.
The relationship to the Plan of God test as illustrated by our Lord Jesus Christ
in Mat 4:1‑11.
b.
The relationship to life test as illustrated by Job.
9. Apparently, the Spiritual
Mature believer does not take both tests, and which one he receives is a matter
of the sovereignty of God.
10. The pattern of the
relationship with God test is found in the three unique temptations to our Lord
Jesus Christ, which were temptations to His humanity only; as God He cannot be
tempted. The three parts are:
a.
Relationship with the Holy Spirit, Mat
4:1‑4.
b.
Relationship with the Word of God, Mat
4:5‑7.
c.
Relationship with the Plan of God, Mat
4:8‑10.
11. The unique lesson about our
Lord's ET was that instead of performing miracles under His own power, He used
the greatest power ever known in the history of the human race. He used Bible
Doctrine in all three parts of His Evidence Testing.
When God performs a miracle, it
requires only His sovereignty. But when a believer uses Bible doctrine and
makes correct application and advances in the Plan of God that is the greatest
power the world has ever known and the highest function that any member of the
human race can attain.
12. Because the first part of
relationship with God test involves one's relationship with the Holy Spirit,
and since Satan is locked away during the Millennium, this category of ET
obviously belongs only to the rebuttal phase of the Angelic Conflict trial.
There is no relationship with the Holy Spirit on the part of all believers
except in the Church Age, the precedence of which was established by our Lord
during His First Advent and incarnation. Therefore, this category of ET applies
only to our Lord and the Royal Family of God in the Church Age.
13. Job took the relationship to
life test. After receiving his escrow blessings, it was all swept away in the
first part of Job's relationship to life test. The three parts of his test are:
a.
Loss of prosperity including children,
b.
Loss of health, social life, and attractiveness,
c.
Loss of friends and receive maligning,
14. Job passed the first two
parts, failed the third, recovered, and received his blessings back;
15. While ET comes quickly,
without any notice or warning, and always occurs at a time when least expected,
since the believer has reached a peak in his spiritual life, it is completely
and totally undeserved suffering. It is very, very severe. However, it never
puts on the believer more suffering than he can bear. Only the negative
believer functioning under the punitive law of volitional responsibility piles
on himself more than he can bear.
16. ET is the third and highest
category of Suffering for Blessing. When
passed by the mature believer, it results in a great phenomenon that occurs
perhaps only once or twice in every generation: a doubling of escrow blessings!
God isn't quite saying “double or nothing,” but it seems like that at the time
the ET is administered.
Conclusion:
History is a very short time
compared to all eternity. Your time on earth is a drop in the bucket compared
to eternity. All of you who place other things in life above God’s Word in your
false scale of values are losing all the equal privilege and opportunity God
has provided for you in time to advance spiritually. All those “other things”
will become so very meaningless to you in eternity, at most adding up to your
regret at the BEMA seat of Jesus Christ.
In eternity you will realize
that the things you considered important were not important at all. Although
you cannot lose your salvation, you are a loser of rewards. A part of the agony
of the sin unto death is to realize that you had an opportunity to make your
life count in a fantastic way. Instead, you chose to follow the plan of Satan
for human life on this earth.
This study sheds light on the
importance of mature Church Age believers glorifying God by tactical victories.
The suffering the mature believer endures under ET is a major factor in
breaking the back of Satan. Two things break the back of Satan: 1) The strategic
victory of our Lord on the Cross, 2) The tactical victory of those who advance
to maturity.
If you would
like more information on this subject,
you may listen
to lessons 10-024 through 10-026.
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