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"The Spirit and the Bride say: Come"
With ONE Voice:
"The Spirit and the Bride say, 'Come.'And let the one who hears say, 'Come.' And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price." |
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Revelation 22:17. | |||||
This statement in the completing book of Holy Scripture expresses the absolutely unique relationship of the Spirit of God to His redeemed people as His sacred Bride. |
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The basis of this special relationship to the Holy Spirit is their belonging to the Christ of God, the man Jesus, and therefore represented in this metaphor as His Bride. |
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No angel of God has ever had the intimacy of this Spirit relationship with God, and this is immeasurably more than any prophet of God ever enjoyed prior to its Jerusalem inauguration on the Day of Pentecost in 30 AD. |
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This unique relationship between the people of God and His Spirit is the least understood reality in the life of the Christian Church. |
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The gift | of this special relationship to the believing congregation of "about 120" on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:15) was the gift of the Christ of God's own sinless personal human relationship to the Spirit of God, which He had received from God for His ministry when He arose from the water of John's baptism under the supernatural sign of the 'dove', which signified the new beginning for humanity in Jesus, as the dove had meant a new beginning to Noah at the end of the World Flood. |
Genesis 8:11. | |||
This | anointing of the Christ was more than that which the prophets of the past had received who gave us our Old Testament.
This was more than a divine empowering for service as it had been to them.
This meant – |
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sharing directly in the spiritual consciousness of God's Messiah, of being immediately aware as was the Christ of God Himself in His ministry, in order to continue and complete His ministry ("this gospel" Matthew 24:14) at an international level! |
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What began in Jesus was God's new beginning for humanity, which was exemplified at Pentecost as an essential characteristic of the Christian Church, His Bride, as God sees His Church! |
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The divine | Christ, as part of the eternal infinity of God, had first humbled Himself to become the Creator in His direct association with all that is finite through bringing it into existence.
Christ's incarnation within the womb of the virgin was His second act of divine self-humbling, an unprecedented self-limitation to fully walk in-our-shoes – so as to open the way for our personal redemption and also for our corporate future as His unique people. |
Colossians 1:16-17. | |||
The | consequent intimacy of the Holy Spirit's direct relationship to every true believer was demonstrated for us in the Apostle Paul's experience portrayed for our understanding in Holy Scripture – |
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for individually – "we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for [known] words." This does not refer to the gift of "tongues" (glossolalia) which is a ministry to others via the gift of interpretation. |
1 Corinthians 14:5, 18. Romans 8:26; This is NOT the Advocacy of Christ at the right hand of the Father |
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This refers only to the very intimate, personal, and exemplary prayer life of the Apostle Paul, who gave us most of our New Testament and whose personal ministry revealed the newness of the New. |
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After the | Day of Pentecost this openness and sensitivity to the person of the Holy Spirit was soon jeopardised by the racial and cultural prejudice of the Jerusalem church. Therefore, the outreach beyond the Jewish people, which the Lord Jesus had instructed in the beginning when He said "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...", had to be initiated again. This time in the church in Antioch while its leaders were spending extra time in worship and so became more sensitive to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit –
"While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said..."
and so compassionate prophet Barnabas (nicknamed bar-Nabas meaning 'Encourager') and anointed teacher Saul of Tarsus are released from their pastoral leadership duties "...for the work to which I have called them". |
Matthew 28:19. Acts 13:1-2. |
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This sensitivity to directly hear the authoritative voice of the Holy Spirit Himself
is an absolute essential to completing the mission commission of the Lord Jesus, upon which the end of this age hangs, for the Lord Jesus said –
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Matthew 24:14. |
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"Blessed are those who wash their robes [behaviour], so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the [Bride] city by the gates. |
Revelation 22:14-15. | ||||
Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood." |
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