1.
Why Don’’t Churches Preach The
Revelation of Jesus Christ??
By Warren Litzman
“Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, accordding to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began” (Rom. 16:25).
A young woman had just been ushered into my office. She was so stirred in her soul that she was crying and her body was trembling. As she sat down she began to tell me her need. She said, “I am so confused and upset, I don’t even know today whether I am saved or not. Never before in my Christian experience have I come to such a confusing moment. I was all right until I came to your meeting and heard the preaching on divine revelation. For a while I could bear the message, because I didn’t think it was so important, but now, after a long period of time, the truth of the message so burns in my soul that I can do nothing but think on this matter.” She continued, “Brother Litzman, I have to know if this message of a revelation of Christ is as important as you say it is. I cannot find the message taught or advocated anywhere else. I have grown up in a Pentecostal home.My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher, as is my father. I have grown up in large churches with a strong Full Gospel background, but I had never heard the message of revelation until I began to read Life in the Son magazine and hear you teach. If this message is of God, why didn’t my father preach it? If it is of God, why doesn’t the Full Gospel movement of today preach this message? Why don’t the evangelists and Bible teachers preach this truth?” As I listened to her, I discerned that she was honest and sincere and that, very likely for the first time in her life, the Holy Spirit had brought her to a point she had never known before. Now she was faced with the decision of whether or not she really wanted to know Jesus.With the Word, I soothed her troubled mind, put her on a Scripture searching program and encouraged her by prayer to wait before God until she had a renewed mind. But as she left my office the question continued to burn in my mind—why don’t churches, especially those with a Full Gospel emphasis, preach the revelation of Christ? This message is clearly and plainly taught in the Scriptures. No one needs to make a new doctrine or twist the Word to come to such a conclusion. The Word is plain. The highest scriptural instances of consecration in the New Testament are centered on revelation.
Christ Taught Revelation
“When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him,Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:13–17). At the time of Peter’s confession, this is the high-est peak of consecration reached in his relationship to Jesus. The one thing Jesus wanted all men to see in Him was His Lordship and Sonship. Men wanted to make Jesus a healer, a miracle worker, a great prophet; but they did not want Him to be the Son of God. Actually, Jesus was killed by His enemies because He said He was the Son of God. In all of Christ’s teaching and training of the disciples, the one thing He wanted them to see was that God was manifested through Him unto all men, but natural man could not see or understand this.When Peter made his great declaration, “Thou art the Son the living God,” Jesus said, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”In this high moment of spiritual understanding, Christ commends Peter’s consecration. At the center of it all is a revelation that Christ is the Son of the living God. What happened to Peter on this occasion must happen to every believer. Peter was already a follower, a disciple, a believer, and a miracle worker; but until this moment he had not experienced divine revelation. This is evidence that our experiences do not necessarily embrace the greatest of all truth, divine revelation.
Paul Preached a Revelation of Christ
In the first chapter of Galatians,we have the vivid account of Paul telling his story of Christ-life. He begins in verse 6 by contrasting a man-made gospel with the Spirit-taught gospel.He goes on in verse 10 to show that he has no intention of pleasing man by bringing a man-made gospel, but rather the Jesus he preached must be revealed by the Holy Spirit. In verse 12, he states that man cannot bring the revelation of Christ, that it comes only by the Spirit. In verse 17, he says that the apostles before him, who saw Jesus with their natural eyes and heard Jesus with their natural ears, did not teach him Christ. In verse 16, he says that God revealed Jesus in him that he
might preach Christ among the heathen. For many years I preached that this was a special
revelation to Paul and not available to anyone else. This is the same plight by which many in gospel circles have become bound. There is not the slightest inference that the revelation of Christ in Paul was just something special for him; rather, the record bears that such a revelation was available to all believers. In fact, all believers were challenged to have this revelation of Christ (Eph. 1:17). The record in Galatians chapter 1 states that Paul’s revelation of Christ came at least three years after his conversion on the road to Damascus. He was healed and filled with the Spirit when Ananias laid hands on him, but his revelation of Christ did not come during any of these experiences but was, in truth, the summation and fulfillment of all his experiences.Once again, I must state that not one of our experiences, short of a revelation of Jesus Christ, brings the fullness of Christ It is further interesting to note that the apostle made the revelation of Christ necessary to preaching the gospel to the heathen. I wonder if this is not the reason why our generation is faced with the hopeless task of world evangelization. Perhaps the fullness of Christ taught in the New Testament as coming through the revelation of Christ is the only answer to world evangelization today, as it was in Paul’s day.
Peter Preached a Revelation of Jesus Christ
In 1 Peter chapter 1 the apostle declares that the Christ, whom we have not seen (v. 8), and yet believe in with joy unspeakable and full of glory, cannot be seen with the natural eye. It is interesting to note that Peter combines the revelation of Christ in the believer and the revelation of Christ in the end time together. But while everyone sees Christ with the natural eye in the end time at His revelation, only those who have been ministered to by the Holy Spirit are able to see Him as their life. In this first chapter, Peter makes inseparable the sufferings of Christ and the revelation of Christ. To this day, we too will have to say that a revelation of Christ as our life is inseparable from the sufferings of Christ.He who would have a revelation of Christ must surely enter into the sufferings of Christ. We must never teach the fullness of Christ through divine revelation of the Holy Spirit without teaching the crucified life. It is impossible, scripturally and practically, to go deeper in understanding and not enter into the fellowship of His sufferings. Once again it must be stated—a believer may have all the works of grace in his life and still not have a revelation of Jesus Christ. All works of grace are steps toward the fullness of Christ, and are necessary to a fullness of Christ, but do not necessarily mean within themselves that the believer has received a revelation of Christ in him.
The Ephesians Received Divine Revelation
When Paul prayed his first prayer in the letter to the Ephesians, he prayed that they might be given the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Eph. 1:17). Most commentaries will agree that the Ephesians were among the most spiritualbelievers ministered to by Paul. They were a large church with a fruitful ministry. Because of the his- torical record in the book of Acts, and because of the established pattern in the New Testament church, we must believe that the Ephesians were saved and Spirit-filled and came behind in no spiritual gift. Yet, Paul prayed that they might have a revelation in the knowledge of Him. This was not a sideline message. This was the heart of Paul’s gospel. Knowing Christ, to Paul, was not just knowing about Jesus. Seeing Jesus, to Paul, was not a work of the natural man and his senses, but rather it was seeing Christ as his life through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is further interesting to note that Paul prayed that they might have a revelation of Him, not of His works or His name or His body or His miracles. The revelation was of Him. Succeeding verses in Ephesians 1 show that understanding, calling, inheritance, and power are all works of Christ in the believer (v. 20). They are not gifts to the believer, rather Christ do these work's through the believer, who is in him and who is his very life.
The Galatians Were Taught The Revelation of Christ
In Galatians 1, Paul gives his vivid description of how Christ was revealed in him. Undoubtedly, the impact of Paul’s witness was great upon the Galatians. After the introduction of his great revela- tion, he continues, in this epistle, to show how this great work of grace consummates the plan of God for our lives. The outline is given in chapter 4. In verse 1, the believer is an heir and lord of all, but because he is an ignorant child he does not differ from a worldling or a servant. Therefore, the believer—the heir—is placed under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father (v. 2). Very often these tutors and governors are nothing but the elements of this world—our circumstances and situations, the old “C & S gang.” They are tools the Father is using to shape sons (v. 3). But after a time of training and shaping (v. 4), God brings forth in the creature,made of a woman,made under the law, a true son. I believe that the true Son can come forth only when the Spirit has taught the believer the difference between his life saved, and Christ’s eternal life in him. At this juncture, what it means to be adopted as a son is revealed to the believer. This constitutes the revelation of Christ as our life, and because we know we are sons, the Father is able to send forth the Spirit of Jesus into our hearts, crying, “Abba Father” (v. 6). Thus, he who was a servant now becomes a true heir and a son indeed through Christ (v. 7). Adoption is completed on God’s part at regeneration, but the process of adoption continues on the believer’s part as the Son really becomes his life. Again, I must say that there is a difference between God’s work for us at regeneration and God’s work in us at the revelation of Christ.
The Corinthians Were Taught The Revelation of Jesus Christ
In 1 Corinthians 2:9, Paul contrasts the carnal believer with the spiritual believer. In verse 9, the carnal, earthly believer is explained as one who can not see, hear, or feel with his natural senses the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him. In verse 10, the spiritual believer is the one to whom God has revealed these things, even Himself. The Spirit alone is able to search out the deep things of God (the deeper life of Christ) and reveal them unto those who love Him. Could it not be that great numbers of believers yet depend upon their sense knowledge—what the eye sees, or the ears hear, or the heart feels—as their means of knowing Christ and have never really had Christ revealed in them? We could go on with these scriptural references on revelation, but this is perhaps enough to show that this message was very likely the heart of the gospel. The message shows Christ in us, the hope of God’s eternal plan. Since no man could explain this miracle and no writer could communicate it, God designed that only by a revelation of the Holy Spirit could man have the fullness of Christ.
Why Churches Don’t Teach the Revelation
Since this message is so plainly written in the scriptures, and is so forcibly preached by those who have had a revelation of Christ, it is little wonder that the woman who was in my office was confused as to why most churches do not preach a revelation of Christ After contemplating this instance for sometime, I felt led of the Lord to enumerate a few instances showing why I believe churches do not preach a revelation of Christ. First, it is very likely that the ongoing movements of God in the church have not been ready to distinguish between what Jesus does for men, and what Jesus does in men. Some time ago, a prominent deliverance preacher told me that he believed he had had a revelation of Christ and could see the scriptural basis for such a spiritual act of God in the believer’s life today, but he could not preach such a truth as it would destroy the people who sat under his ministry. He went on to say, “For so long I have preached what Jesus can do for people that I am afraid to begin to preach what Jesus could do in people for fear I would lose my ministry.”This same plight exists for many gospel churches. With the world going to hell, the heathen still without the gospel, and American Christianity becoming more and more carnal, I cannot possibly see how the preaching of the true gospel could by any means is jeopardize any ministry God has given. Indeed, I told my preacher friend that he was hurting the people more. By not giving them the whole truth, He was feeding their flesh, thus denying them the Christ-life.
Second, many churches will not preach the revelation of Christ because they do not want to pay price to live the life. When I began to preach these truths of the overcoming life of Christ in the believer, I immediately saw that unless I was willing to die daily and pick up the Cross and follow Jesus, I could not be scriptural. It is impossible to separate the fullness of Christ and crucified living. When I began to teach this truth, a great number of my friends said that even though I was right in what I was preaching, the Christ-life could not be lived because no one could live the crucified aspect of it. Not only do I believe that the crucified life can be lived, but I believe it must be lived if we are to reach the world with the gospel. Scores of pastors have told me that they could preach the gospel and yet not live the crucified life. The two points are incompatible. To have the fullness of Christ, you must live the Christ-life. Or, to state it positively, you can only have the Christ-life when you are willing to live His crucified life. Gospel churches will not preach the life of Christ, nor will anyone else, until they are willing to join with Christ in the fellowship of His sufferings.
1.