Chapter 3-4:1

 

           The concept of this chapter is simple. In the first six verses we meet the celebrity of the Church Age. If Christ is truly your only celebrity you are in supergrace. In verses 7-18 we see the sign of reversionism. So this is a chapter of signs. Sign of supergrace: the celebrityship of Christ; sign of reversionism: breakdown of the faith-rest.

            So:  Verses 1-6, the celebrity of the Church.

            Verses 7-18, the reversionism of the Exodus generation.

            The sign of supergrace is the celebrityship of Christ; the sign of reversion is the breakdown of faith-rest.

           Verse 1 — “Wherefore,” the adverb O(qen. O(qen connotes place, fact, or reason. Here the adverb connotes reason and should be translated, “For which reason” — because Christ is the only celebrity of the Church Age, because Christ is able to help those being tested. The same adverb begins Hebrews 2:17 which introduces Christ as the only supergrace celebrity.

           “holy brethren” — a)delfoi a(gioi. The trouble with just giving it the straight “brethren” is because fundamentalism has taken such phrases and distorted them into phrases of good luck, mysticism, and a facade of hypocrisy. When people stop thinking they always have to have a smoke screen, and the smoke screen can be very neatly set up (to show that you’re not thinking) with certain pet phrases, like “brother this” and “sister that,” “blessings on you brother”, “praise God brother”, “hallelujah”, etc., all said in great sincerity. But there is no benefit in that kind of hot air. It becomes a facade, a smoke-screen that hides ignorance. “Brethren” means we are members of the family of God. We are brethren, we are members of the family of God, we are all born into the family of God, and we are in the same family. “Holy” is all right if you understand that holy means in union with Christ. The only reason that any of us are holy is because we are in union with Christ, not because of what we do or give up. The word “holy” is also used for supergrace believers. However, the context will soon demonstrate we are not talking to supergrace believers. The context includes Hebrews 5:11-14 and it is quite obvious in that passage, as well as others, that this passage — Hebrews chapters 3,4,5, and 6 are addressed to reversionistic believers in the year of our Lord, 68 AD. “For which reason, holy members of the family of God”.

           “partakers” — nominative plural, metoxoj which means partners or associates. It is in the plural to include all of us. The plural puts us all in the same situation: partners of Jesus Christ and we are His associates.

 

           Summary

           1. Metoxoj, the noun, emphasises then fact that every believer is in full time Christian service.

           2. Furthermore, this noun emphasises Christianity as a relationship in contrast to religion which is slavery to the devil — trying to work your way into heaven by works, works, works.

           3. In religion man works to gain the approbation of God. He is stimulated by Satanic doctrine, by Satanic principles.

           4. In Christianity God works to bless man.

           5. Religion is human good; Christianity is divine good.

           6. Religion is legalism; Christianity is grace.

           7. In Christianity every believer is holy. That is, he is in union with Christ. In religion is every believer is trying to be holy.

           8. Because of union with Christ every believer is a partner with God or associate of God.

           

            “associates of the heavenly calling” — genitive singular of e)pouranioj, which means heavenly in respect to locality, essence or character. With it, however, is the genitive of klhsij. There is a difference between the two. The first genitive, e)pourainoj, is a genitive of description. Heaven is the source of our blessing. The second genitive, klhsij, is a genitive of relationship. We are related to God through election. It is translated, “associates of the heavenly vocation.” Klhsij means vocation, station in life, position as well as calling. The emphasis is placed on the fact that every believer priest is in full time Christian service. The avenue of this service is determined by knowledge of doctrine in the supergrace status of phase two. Christ is our high priest; he was appointed on the cross at the point of propitiation. We as a kingdom of priests are appointed at the moment of our salvation. So all appointments go back to the cross. The priesthood comes through the cross, the reality; the substance rather than the shadows of the Levitical offerings. You cannot have a universal priesthood of believers as long as you are dealing with shadow worship. Bona fide shadow worship existed in the Age of Israel; now we have the reality, the cross. When the substance replaces the shadow, then the universal priesthood of the believer replaces the specialised Levitical priesthood. Once that happens there are two breakthroughs in the plan of God. The first is the intensification of the angelic conflict, and it is accompanied by the universal full-time Christian service of the believer.

             We now come to the first verb, an imperative commanding us to enter the supergrace life. The people to whom this was addressed are negative toward doctrine. They are truly born again, Jews living in Jerusalem and the surrounding territory, and they are three years from the fifth cycle of discipline. They have gone negative toward Bible doctrine and therefore they have scar tissue on the left bank of the soul. They have also built scar tissue on the right bank of the soul by means of legalism; they have become super religious. The opening of mataiothj brings through the vacuum false doctrine which attacks the right lobe’s frame of reference, memory centre, vocabulary, categories, norms and standards, and the launching pad, setting up emotional revolt of the soul and the function of reverse process reversionism. This is the condition of the people to whom the writer addresses Hebrews. They must break out of this and he is going to devote part of Hebrews — chapters three through six — to getting them out, comparing them to the one generation that everyone likes to avoid.

            The first command is to get out of reversionism and get into supergrace, because every priest must have one celebrity: Jesus Christ. He is the only celebrity in the Christian life. We have the aorist active imperative of katanoew. Kata means against or norm and standard; noew here refers to thinking. It means to think down, to think according to a norm and standard, it also means to think in terms of concentration; you get that from “down”; to think down means to concentrate, bear down with your mind on something. To think according to norms, standards or criteria plus thinking down, comes to mean to perceive, to understand, to concentrate. It means to be occupied with someone in your mind, therefore in your soul. If someone is in your soul, then you are concentrating on them. The verb connotes occupation with Christ or category #1 love concentration. This is only possible through the daily function of GAP to the point of the edification complex, and then to keep on into supergrace. Occupation with Christ makes Christ the only celebrity. The aorist is culminative, it demands the function of GAP all of the way to the ECS, and all of the way to supergrace. Supergrace becomes the point at which the believer becomes occupied with Christ. Katanoew: concentrate, category #1 love response. The initiator is Jesus Christ. He initiates on behalf of the entire Trinity, He represents the Trinity, He is the visible member of the Trinity, He is how we understand the other members of the Godhead. As you take in doctrine and take in doctrine you are going to get to the point of an erected ECS, and once it goes up and you move into supergrace your capacity to love is going to be phenomenal. The active voice is a command to every believer priest. Every believer is to be occupied with Christ. Every believer priest is to occupy with Christ to the point where his heavenly association and vocation are reality. The imperative mood: this is a command to enter the supergrace life. It is impossible to respond to the love of God, to love Jesus Christ, apart from Bible doctrine in the soul.

            Next we have the word “Apostle” used for the Lord Jesus Christ — “the Apostle”, it has the definite article. It is the accusative singular of a)polstoloj, used in a very different manner than it is with the twelve where it is used for authority; here it is a little stronger than that. A)postoloj is used for the highest authority in the priesthood, it is used for the high priest. Jesus Christ is unique among high priests. Therefore a)postoloj indicates the uniqueness of Jesus Christ among high priests in that He has received the highest commission and greatest responsibility that any high priest ever had from God the Father. All priesthoods which are bona fide in the past must come from God the Father as the source. He does the appointing. He appoints a line of priests through perpetuation — the eldest son. So we have kai, used as a conjunction of apposition, to relate the highest-ranking word, a)postoloj, to the highest-ranking high priest, the unique high priest. And in this way we now have the accusative singular of a)rxiereuj. A)rxiereuj emphasises celebrityship. Aaron was the first high priest of the Levitical priesthood. He wasn’t a celebrity or even a hero, but God graced him out, He made him the high priest. Here is a high priest who is a hero because He became supergrace in His humanity, but He is also a)postoloj, He is the only celebrity.

            “of our profession” — genitive singular of o(mologia which means “acknowledgement” — “the High Priest of our acknowledgement.” Acknowledgement simply is the fact that we recognise as of now, this passage, that every believer is a priest. We acknowledge it as a point of doctrine.

              The word “Christ” is not found in the original, just the word “Jesus.” Why? because here we have the humanity of Christ. When did the second person of the Trinity become Xristoj? At the point of the virgin birth. The word means anointing, appointment, commission. In eternity past the second person of the Trinity agreed to do these things, but there comes a time when the commission is recognised. David was anointed king by a prophet, Samuel. That was his commission. The virgin birth is the commission of Jesus Christ; He became Christ at that point. At the point that He was commissioned the Messiah came into the world: “Thou shalt call His name [His human name] Jesus.” He became human at the point of His birth but when was He appointed a high priest? Thirty-three years later on the cross when He propitiated the Father, this was the time He was appointed priest.

             The one who was appointed priest was a true member of the human race because a priest must be a man to represent man. That is why Jesus Christ was not Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a human being, Aaron was a human being. You had to be a human being to be a priest. A priest is a man who represents himself or others to God and before God. So on the cross when Jesus was appointed high priest you can call Him Jesus but you can’t call Him Xristoj — not in connection with the priesthood because Xristoj makes Him, the anointed one, King. We are talking about priests, and while He is a King-Priest we are talking about the point of His appointment and therefore it is Jesus and not Christ Jesus. There is no “Christ” in the passage and it does make a difference.   

             Translation: “For which reason, holy members of the family of God, associates of the heavenly vocation, concentrate on the Apostle even High Priest of our acknowledgement, Jesus.”

             There is a principle involved here. While the believer is appointed to the priesthood at the moment of salvation he does not function as a priest until he enters the supergrace life by way of the edification complex. You are a priest now, your function in the priesthood awaits your entrance into supergrace.

            The objective of the Christian life is to enter into supergrace. This is achieved by the constant exposure to Bible teaching, taking doctrine into the left lobe where it is understood objectively by the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Positive volition or faith then transfers this doctrine into the human spirit where it becomes e)pignowsij or useable doctrine. E)pignwsij transferred into the right lobe or the heart enters the frame of reference, memory centre, vocabulary and categories, norms and standards, and is place on the launching pad. Once e)pignwsij is accumulated it also begins the construction of the edification complex of the soul (ECS). First floor: grace orientation; second floor: mastery of the details of life; third floor: relaxed mental attitude; fourth floor: capacity to love in all categories — toward God; right man-right woman; friendship; and then +H which is the penthouse of the ECS. Once the ECS is achieved the believer enters into supergrace where with the continuation of doctrine he has capacity for freedom, for life, for love, happiness, and this is the objective of the Christian way of life. However, once the ECS is partially or almost constructed there is a great danger. The danger is entering into reversionism. Reversionism takes the opposite tack. It is negative volition toward Bible doctrine, producing scar tissue on the left bank of the soul which opens up a vacuum through which comes Satanic doctrine into the heart or the right lobe. Satanic doctrine attacks frame of reference and memory centre, it attacks norms and standards, the vocabulary categories, it attacks the launching pad with human viewpoint, it produces scar tissue on the right bank, it leads to emotional revolt of the soul, it begins the destruction of the ECS which, when completed, causes the person to be in reversionism and to practice reverse process reversionism.

             The issue of chapter three is this: Is Jesus Christ the celebrity of your life through supergrace? Or are you in reversionism. The ones to whom this is addressed, Jewish believers living in Jerusalem in 67 AD, were in reversionism and this is their challenge to get out of reversionism.

           

          The doctrine of occupation with the person of Christ

             1. The basis for occupation with Christ is the intake of Bible doctrine through the function of GAP. God makes love to the believer through Bible doctrine, and the communication of Bible doctrine is the basis for entering into the celebrityship of the Lord Jesus Christ — Jeremiah 9:24; Ephesians 3:18-19; 4:20. You cannot, you will not ever love Jesus Christ apart from the intake of Bible doctrine. This is the capacity to love Him.

              2. With doctrine as the working object of faith the believer has maximum category #1 response causing him to be designated as filoj qeou — “Friend of God” — James 2:22,23.

              3. Occupation with Christ is based upon the glorification of Christ — Colossians 3:1,2.

              4. Occupation with Christ standard operating procedure of the Christian life — Hebrews 12:1,2.

              5. Occupation with Christ is illustrated by the doctrine of right man-right woman — Ephesians 5:25-32; 1 Corinthians 11:7 (the long hair is the sign of responding to right-man).

              6. The function of GAP is the believer responding to Christ’s love — James 1:21,22.

              7. The sealing of the Holy Spirit guarantees eternal love relationship between Jesus Christ and the believer — Ephesians 1:11-14.

              8. Occupation with Christ bring the believer into a total dependence upon grace provision. Grace provision existed in eternity past, it is the believer’s experience linking up with what God did for him in eternity past — Psalm 37:4,5.

              9. Occupation with Christ is related to both stability and inner happiness — Psalm 16:8,9.

             10. Occupation with Christ is the basis for blessing in suffering. Reversionism intensifies suffering; occupation with Christ minimises suffering — Psalm 77.

             11. Occupation with Christ is based on the believer’s entrance into the supergrace life — Hebrews 3:1, 6.

 

             Verse 2 — the celebrity of the Christian way of life, the Lord Jesus Christ. The word “who” is not found in the original. We start out with the word “was,” the present active participle of e)imi. The subject of this participle is the word found at the end of verse 1 — “Jesus.” “Jesus being” (constantly being).” “Jesus” belongs in verse 2, not in verse 1.

              Then we have the object of the preposition, “faithful,” accusative singular of the noun pistoj. Pistoj means faithfulness to the utmost here because of the absolute status quo verb. “Jesus, being trustworthy [dependable, faithful to the maximum]” .There never was a time when Jesus Christ was unfaithful to you; there never will be a time. Under category #1 love Jesus Christ loves you with a perfect love. He is the object of true love in category #1.

              Nothing is solid, stable, worthwhile, honourable or good until first of all it is directed toward God. In other words, if you love Jesus Christ with category #1 love, when you are occupied with the person of Christ, then you have capacity to love others. Your capacity for love is dependent upon going Godward first, then the human part takes care of itself.

              After pistoj we have the words “to him” — dative singular of the definite article o( and should be translated “to the one” [to God the Father]. “Jesus, being faithful to the one.” This is the dative of indirect object to indicate the one, God the Father, in whose interest faithfulness, dependability and trustworthiness existed. Jesus Christ is faithful to us today because first of all He was faithful to God the Father from the time of the virgin birth to the time of the cross. He was faithful in every step of the way, He fulfilled everything that the Father required of Him, including the cross. Faithfulness took our high priest to the cross where He received His appointment.

             “that appointed him” — dative of advantage, aorist active participle of poiew. Poiew means to make, to do, and sometimes when you make something you appoint something. The aorist tense is gnomic. Gnomic aorist takes an occurrence in eternity past and fulfils it in time at the cross. The aorist tense relates God the Father’s plan in eternity past to the cross in time. The gnomic aorist is an absolute. It is an absolute fact that the Father planned it, it is an absolute fact that the Son executed it, therefore the gnomic aorist means this is without equivocation an absolute fact that cannot be changed by God, by man, by Satan, by anyone or anything. The active voice of the participle indicates that God the Father did the appointing, and the participle itself denotes a principle and at the same time the concept. We also have the fact that the action of the aorist participle precedes the action of the main verb. The main verb was given in verse one — “concentrate on Christ”, be occupied with Christ. Before we could be occupied with the person of Christ and before He could be our celebrity, first of all He had to be appointed high priest. He was appointed in eternity past, He fulfilled the appointment on the cross. It was a part of the Father’s plan in eternity past, it was executed and fulfilled on the cross. We have one celebrity: Jesus Christ our high priest. “Jesus, being faithful to the one having appointed him.” “Him” is the accusative singular of a)utoj which is a reflexive pronoun, here used in its true reflexive sense — “having appointed he himself.” So often the reflexive pronoun a)utoj is used to demonstrate great emphasis, what is really important.

             “as also” — w(j kai sets up an analogy. Before w(j kai we have Jesus Christ the only celebrity; after w(j kai we have heroes. There is one celebrity and many heroes. For example, we are now talking about the Jewish Age, the dispensation of Israel. One of the greatest heroes in the dispensation of Israel is Moses. Here is Moses set up as the greatest of Jewish heroes in the Jewish Age, but remember that Moses was a hero because he was a supergrace believer. Jesus is the only celebrity; Moses and Jeremiah are heroes in their own dispensation or their own house. At this point the faithfulness of Moses is emphasised because the Jews involved are believers in the Church Age in 67 AD. In three years the fifth cycle of discipline will hit Jerusalem. Jerusalem will fall and 900,000 people will be slaughtered in two years, and at the end of that time 90,000 Jews will be taken into slavery. It will be one of the greatest disasters in all of human history. The book of Hebrews is written to these people who are believers in reversionism so that they can recover from reversionism and get out of Jerusalem before this occurs.

             Moses was considered by all Jews to be great, that is, all Jews but the Jews of his own generation. He was the most damned, the most cursed, the most despised, the most maligned, the most slandered man of his own generation. He was not appreciated, he was despised, the two-million Jews had a lot of complaining to do, and Moses was their target. But no matter how they maligned him, no matter how they hated him and despised his authority, they stayed under his authority in reversionism.

            Principle: There is only one celebrity; there are many heroes. What made Moses a hero? Not his human genius. What made him great was not anything that Moses could crank up. It was grace. He was one of the most oriented men to grace of all time. God said he was the meekest man that ever lived. Being meek meant that he was the most grace-oriented man who ever lived. He was a supergrace believer, therefore a hero.

            Now we meet a hero. We have been discussing in this passage and in the first two chapters, the celebrityship of Jesus Christ; now we come to heroship. This always deals with a believer. The faithfulness of Moses was emphasised by God when he was criticised and maligned for marrying the second time.

            Numbers 12:1 — Moses’ wife was an Ethiopian princess, a beautiful woman, and all of the ruling class of Ethiopia at the time of Moses were all white.

            Verse 2 — “And hath the Lord spoken only by Moses?” — There are other Bible teachers beside Moses! “Hath he not also spoken by us?” How about that Miriam! Women Bible teachers! There is no place for them.

            And Aaron gets a little nervous now because; “What if they have children,” he says to himself, “if they have children it may be that God will set me aside as the high priest. But God always takes a mealy-mouthed mouse like Aaron and makes him the high priest — so he doesn’t run anything. And God set the precedent. There will always be a stronger man running the priesthood of Israel and there always was. The priesthood of Israel tried to run the country from time to time but they got their butts kicked all over the place. God does not intend for a specialised priesthood to control but to do a job. The specialised priesthood was communication of Bible doctrine through ritual and through teaching. But once you get a universal priesthood God still doesn’t intend for the priest to run the show.

            “And the Lord heard it.”

            Verse 3 — (Now the man Moses was very meek [grace-oriented], above all the men which were upon the face of the earth). Here is a super supergrace believer. Moses had more doctrine in his soul than any man in his time. Moses was the man who communicated doctrine to Israel.

            Verse 4 — The Lord finally called in Miriam and Aaron and chewed them out, and made it very clear who was running the show.

            Verse 6 — “And he [the Lord] said, hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you. I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and speak unto him in a dream.”

            Verse 7 — “My servant Moses, not so” — everything they had said about him was wrong — “he is faithful in all my house.”

            Verse 8 — “With him I will speak mouth to mouth.”

 

            Hebrews 3:2 — we have seen in Numbers 12:7 that Moses was e)n plus the locative of o(loj, plus the locative of o)ikoj. O(loj means entire; o)ikoj means “house” and refers to a dispensation. Literally then, “Jesus, being faithful to the one [God the Father] having appointed him, as also Moses being faithful in his entire house.”

            The house of Moses is the time in which he lived, the dispensation in which he lived, the generation in the dispensation in which he lived.

         Verse 3 — the difference between a hero and a celebrity. “For” — the particle gar used to express cause, inference, continuation or explanation. Here gar is used in the explanatory sense and should be translated “For example.” The word “this” is a demonstrative pronoun, o(utoj. O(utoj is a demonstrative pronoun giving special emphasis to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only celebrity in the Church Age, and it should be translated “this one and only this one” .Jesus Christ is our only celebrity, this is one of the great principles taught in the book of Hebrews.

              “For example, this one [Jesus Christ]” — “was counted worthy of,” perfect passive indicative of a)ciow, it means to be considered worthy of, to be considered deserving of, and it is here a perfect tense. The perfect tense is the permanence of the celebrityship of Jesus Christ. This verb is used to portray for the first time that Jesus Christ is the only celebrity, and the perfect tense is used to show that this is a permanent status quo. In human life celebrities come and celebrities go, but here we have the perfect tense to show that Jesus Christ always was and there never will be a time when He is not a celebrity. Then we have the passive voice: Christ received this permanent evaluation from God the Father when He told Him to sit down at the right hand of the Father. The resurrection, ascension and session of Jesus Christ forms a part of the permanent evaluation of the passive voice. Under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit and under the plan of God the Father the humanity of Christ was resurrected, the humanity of Christ went up to the third heaven, and the humanity of Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, waiting for operation footstool. The indicative mood is the reality of Christ being permanently evaluated as the only celebrity for believers in any dispensation. Moses was a hero in a certain dispensation, Israel, but Jesus Christ is the celebrity of all time, the only celebrity. Moses was the hero of Israel; Christ is the unique person of the universe. “For example, this one [Jesus Christ] has been permanently evaluated deserving of.”

               The word “more” is a genitive singular of pleion, a comparative of poluj. Poluj means “more.” It is found in the emphatic position in the sentence — “absolutely more,” excluding everyone else. The word “glory” is also in the genitive singular of description — doca, to indicate that there is a glory that belongs to Jesus Christ that is absolutely unique, one that makes Him the only celebrity. There is not such thing as another celebrity, and anyone who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and who has reached supergrace has maximum capacity to love Jesus Christ, therefore occupation with Christ, therefore recognises the celebrityship of Christ. Therefore everything else falls into its proper place. This is a genitive of description. When a genitive stands out boldly in its typical significance without shading off into any combination with some contextual idea this is classified as a descriptive genitive. In other words, the descriptive genitive we might call here the genitive of celebrityship and glory has been used to describe.

               When you have a comparative somewhere in the context there must be something with which the comparison is made, and we have that now — “than Moses” .When you have a comparative of poluj or a comparative of anything else there must be somewhere a preposition plus the accusative. Para is often used for such a comparative, so para is translated here “than.” “Moses” is in the accusative case, and this is what is called para plus the accusative used for a comparison and is correctly translated “than Moses” .Moses, along with the apostle Paul, stands out as a man of unusual genius. If the writer of Hebrews was addressing reversionistic believers he must pick someone who is an obvious, unusually great man, one of the greatest heroes of all.  he can’t pick the apostle Paul who is persona non grata with the reversionistic believers of Jerusalem. The apostle Paul is only famous in Jerusalem for the fact that he murdered Christians before he himself was saved. He was a zealous exterminator of Christians. Moses is an illustration of a great hero, a spiritual hero, but Jesus Christ is unique.

              Next we have “inasmuch as” — the preposition kata plus the accusative of o(soj, a correlative relative meaning “as great as” or “as much as.” In the prepositional phrase with kata it should be translated “by so much as.”

             “he who hath builded” — occasionally we find a relative pronoun, like “who”, used in the translation of a aorist participle. We have here an aorist active participle, we do not have a relative pronoun. This was a legitimate way about 150 years ago of translating. Often participles in a foreign language were translated by a relative clause in the English. Our clauses in the English, however, are so fouled up that to improve the translation we stray away from using that relative pronoun in the English. “He who hath builded” is an aorist active participle of kataskeuazw which means not only to build a house but to furnish it. The builder does the furnishing. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ as the only celebrity. Moses operated in a house. That house is called the Age of Israel; it is actually divided into three parts. First of all we have the patriarchs from Abraham to Moses. Then we have the law from Moses to Christ. Then we have the dramatic interruption for the Church Age. But there is still some to go on the Age of Israel — seven years — and the Church is going to be raptured and the Jewish Age will then finish up. The first two parts of the Jewish Age are sequential. Then we have an interruption followed by the third part which is the Tribulation. This is a house which really hasn’t been finished yet but Moses lived in this house. He was a hero in the house of Israel or the Age of Israel, but Jesus Christ constructed the house. Jesus Christ is the author of the dispensation. Again, that makes Him the only celebrity. But in the house are some heroes and the one on whom the Holy Spirit focuses with this writer is Moses. So we have “the one having constructed and equipped the house” .The aorist tense is a gnomic aorist. That means that in eternity past the Lord Jesus Christ constructed the dispensations. The active voice: Jesus Christ not only constructed but furnished. And it is a participle. The action of the aorist participle precedes the action of the main verb.

               “the house” — o)ikoj. You would think that since this is the object of the verb it would be in the accusative case, but it is in the genitive case. This is an objective genitive and the reason it is put in the genitive is because what follows the verb as the object of the verb is used in the sense of description. There is no accusative of description but there is a genitive of description, therefore the genitive case is often used as the object of the verb to show possession or description. In this case description. We have already had the description. This is not referring to a house, it is referring to the structure of human history which is the dispensation of Israel. So by putting it in the genitive God the Holy Spirit tells us we are dealing here with a dispensation, not with a literal house. With a literal house you would put it in the accusative case. So how do you know when the Bible is literal or figurative? You know by exegesis, you know by the grammar, the structure of the original language.

               “hath” — here is the main verb, the present active indicative of e)xw. Sometimes it means to have and to hold, here it means to have — “keeps having,” present linear aktionsart. Active voice: Jesus Christ is the subject. Indicative mood: this is the main verb which follows the action of the aorist participle. First of all, in eternity past Christ constructed the dispensation, now He has more honour than anyone in the dispensation in time. He has more honour than Moses because in eternity past He designed the dispensation.

               “more honour” — the accusative singular of timh which means honour and evaluation, and again we have the accusative singular from pleion which is the comparative of poluj.

               “than the house” — o)ikoj, and this time o)ikoj occurs in the ablative of comparison, and again it refers to dispensations.

               Translation: “For example, this one [Jesus Christ] has been permanently evaluated deserving of more glory than Moses, by so much as the one having constructed and furnished the house, keeps on having more honour than the house.”

               This verse says that no matter how you slice it or in what age you find yourself it has always been the same story without exception, Jesus Christ is the only celebrity in history. Jesus Christ constructed the dispensations, He furnished the dispensations with grace provisions. There are heroes within the dispensations. In this Church Age dispensation in which we live any believer who reaches supergrace is a hero, but there is only one celebrity: many heroes; one celebrity.

               Verse 4 — there is also a difference between the creature and the creator. This is a new distinction. So much for the dispensational distinction which adds to the celebrityship of Jesus Christ. Now for one which is used to approach Jesus Christ from the standpoint of His deity. Obviously Christ is the only celebrity, Jesus Christ is our saviour. He is also God. He is true humanity but He is undiminished deity.

               Again we have the particle gar beginning the verse. Gar is used as a conjunction to express cause, inference, continuation, estimation, and here is the explanatory use for the second time in a row. Why? Because in the previous verse the dispensational aspect is used to present the celebrityship of Christ. Now gar is used again, this time to express the deity of Christ as over against a creature.

               “every house” — we have paj o)ikoj, referring to any dispensation. Now that we have learned that the house here refers to a dispensation, the meaning of a word is determined by its first use in context, it continues to means a dispensation. But now we go from the dispensation of Israel, a specific, to the generality concept. All of the dispensations are involved at this point.

               The first dispensation is the Age of the Gentiles, the first age in history. It began with Adam in innocence, from the creation of man, and concludes with the destruction of the first “united nations” building. God does not care for the United Nations, it is just simply a Satanic tool. Whenever someone in associated with promoting the United Nations it is always the same story: that person is the devil’s own tool. So here is a Satanic operation being pushed today in our age of apostasy. In this Age of the Gentiles there are three parts. There is man in perfect environment. Man did not have a sin nature and God provided everything for him. He provided doctrine, sex and food, and man rejected the perfect provision of God. Negative volition was expressed through food; there was one forbidden food. Negative volition caused the fall and once man has an old sin nature he needs protection, so he gets his protection from the laws of divine establishment. So we go from the period of perfect environment to the laws of divine establishment. Then, finally, the laws of divine establishment result in nationalism. So these are the three periods in the dispensation of the Gentiles. Nationalism was attacked by the “united nations” and at that point this particular house was removed from the scene of history and the second house was put up — Israel: the patriarchs, the law, the interruption by the Church Age, and the completion of the Jewish Age with the Tribulation. Then we have the third age which is the Church Age — the third house — in which we find ourselves living today. It is easier in principle to be a hero in the Church Age than in any other house constructed by God. Why? Because the Church Age is the age of the completed canon of scripture. The Church Age is only divided into two parts: from 30 to 96 AD when the canon was being form, called the pre-canon period; from 96 AD right down to this moment we have the post-canon age. So it is easier to be a hero now and to be occupied with the celebrity, Jesus Christ. Why? Because we have doctrine in written form. In principle this should make it easier, but in this generation we have more believers in reversionism than in all of our past history. This is the age of apostasy, reversionism, rejection of Bible teaching.

              There is one more house that should be added to round out the scene: the Age of Christ, called the Millennium because it lasts 1000 years. But it is the age of the personal rule of Christ in human history. The personal rule of Christ lasts forever but it is divided into two parts. The first part is the Millennium or the first 1000 years of His reign — the last 1000 years of human history. After that He reigns in eternity forever and ever. Jesus Christ as the only celebrity, as the God-Man, as the King of kings and Lord of lords, is going to return to the earth. He is going to be crowned and He is going to live as the ruler of the world for 1000 years. There will be once again, as at the beginning of history, perfect environment on the earth.

              So, “every house” refers to the whole pattern of history from the viewpoint of dispensations. Remember that a dispensation is merely a period of human history from the divine viewpoint, from the standpoint of divine design, divine planning and divine construction. “For every house,” paj o)ikoj, means every dispensation, “is builded” — the present passive indicative of kataskeuazw, which means to construct and furnish. The present tense is the continuation of dispensations. The passive voice: God uses human agents, human heroes, to administer each dispensation. The one in context is Moses in the specific house of Israel. The indicative mood is the reality of human function, believers in each dispensation who are supergrace heroes. Right now you are a believer priest. Right now God is constructing the Church Age from the lives of believer priests as he has provided for them in grace. The heroes of this dispensation are supergrace believers. So we read, “For every house is constructed and furnished by some man”, literally, “by the agency of someone” — we have the preposition u(po plus the ablative which is used to express agency. We have as the ablative here the indefinite pronoun tij, meaning “someone.” So it should be translated “by the agency of someone” .The agency in this case is Moses. God used many agents during the Age of Israel — Abraham, Moses, Joseph, the judges, the prophets and certain kings. This passage emphasises, however, Moses as the great hero in his house.

            “but” — this is the adversative use of the particle de to set up a conjunction of contrast — “he that built”, kataskueazw here is an aorist active participle. Twice the word is used with God as the subject, once as man. When the subject is God it refers to the only celebrity, Jesus Christ. When man is the subject it refers to a hero of the faith. One celebrity; many heroes. This time the subject of the participle is really Jesus Christ as it was the first time.

            “all things” — the accusative plural of paj used to indicate everything that Christ constructed. History and the dispensations is only one thing that Jesus Christ constructed. This is in the plural to indicate He constructed the universe — Colossians 1:16.

             “God” — there is no verb here; there is no definite article with qeoj. When a Greek wanted to emphasise the meaning of a noun they put the definite article in. If they wanted merely to define the noun it would be o( qeoj. But the absence of the definite article in the Greek indicates the quality of the one being defined by the noun. So the absence of the definite article emphasises quality or essence here, the essence of God. God is the creator and, specifically God the Son is involved at this point. Jesus Christ is the only creator — John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:10.

              Translation: “For every house is constructed and furnished by the agency of someone; but the one [Christ] having constructed and furnished all things, God.”

 

              Summary

              1. Jesus Christ is the author of the dispensations — Hebrews 1:2.

              2. Jesus Christ is the only celebrity; Moses is one of many heroes in the Age of Israel.

              3. Jesus Christ is the unique person of the universe, the only celebrity. In this passage He is recognised as a celebrity because He is God and therefore infinitely superior to all creatures. Secondly, He is recognised because of His priesthood. Thirdly, because of His Kingship. Fourth, because of His relationship to the plan of the Father and the fact that he is the revealer of the Godhead to man and He is the advocate and the intercessor from mankind to the Godhead — He is the mediator, then.

             4. At the point of doctrine there are many grace heroes but only one celebrity.

             5. Moses was a hero in the house furnished by grace, but Christ is the celebrity who constructed and furnished the house.

              6. In the history of grace there are many heroes but there is only one celebrity who is the source of all grace. In other words, the only celebrity is also the source of grace.

 

              Verse 5 — “And Moses” — Kai Mwushj. This is in the emphatic position. We have an emphatic kai plus the Hellenised form of the Hebrew word for “Moses.” This relates back to the prepositional phrase of the previous verse “by the agency of someone.” Moses is emphasised as one of the greatest heroes on supergrace of all time.

               “verily” — the particle used is an emphatic particle, men, and it indicates that everything before it in the sentence has great emphasis. “And Moses in fact” would be a good modern translation. Then we have the word “faithful,” the nominative singular of pistoj which means not just faithful as we understand the word but faithful with the connotation of dependability. Dependability is a sign of stability. To be consistent in certain things that ought to be done, that have to be done; to be consistent in certain functions of life which are legitimate and bona fide, functions of modus operandi or modus vivendi. “Moses in fact was dependable [faithful, trustworthy] in all his house” — e)n plus the locative of o)ikoj refers to the entire dispensation of Israel. Moses was the one man above all men who was more positive to doctrine than anyone who lived in his dispensation.

               If Bible doctrine becomes your life, no matter what your expressions of life may be, no matter what your job, then you have the opportunity of being something fantastic. The real secret to success for any believer is measured in terms of his attitude toward Bible doctrine. Whether you have any ambition in life is really inconsequential. You have been left behind in this life in order to honour God in a special way, and it depends entirely on Bible doctrine. “And Moses in fact was faithful [trustworthy, dependable].” Pistoj is used here for his attitude toward doctrine. He was consistent in the intake of doctrine, he was consistent in his desire for doctrine, he realised that the most important thing in his life was doctrine and that everything else was secondary.

              “as a servant” — this is not douloj, which means “slave.” There is another word in the Koine Greek which is only used here: qerapwn. Then word means a noble servant, not just a slave who does his job but a slave who has nobility of soul and it manifests itself. One of the greatest by-products of being a supergrace hero is nobility of soul from Bible doctrine. The background of the individual makes absolutely no difference. A person who is a supergrace believer is not a product of his environment, he is a product of the plan of God. What we are because of physical birth becomes of no consequence, it is what we are after the new birth. A noble servant is a believer who is pistoj when it comes to Bible doctrine — dependable, faithful, trustworthy, stable. Bible doctrine is more important than anything else and everything else is set aside as secondary.

             “for a testimony” — e)ij plus the accusative singular of marturion. This does not mean “for a testimony.” If we are going to give it its exact meaning in modern English we have to be very clear — “for evidence.” Moses is evidence, evidence for the importance of entering the supergrace life. Moses and his positive volition stands as the all-time evidence of how important it is to enter supergrace, how important it is to be positive toward Bible doctrine. This is divine evidence that it is possible for a person with the greatest handicap in the world, that is, to be a super genius. When a super genius will set aside everything and be positive toward Bible doctrine that is evidence.

             “of those things which” — not correct. “For evidence of things being communicated” is the correct translation.

             “were to be spoken after” is the genitive plural, future passive participle of lalew. Lalew is a future tense to indicate in the participle that Moses will stand in every future generation as to what can be done when a person is positive toward doctrine. No one has ever exploited grace like Moses, and like the apostle Paul, but anyone can who is a believer. You have to make up your mind to do it and are going to have to set aside everything to take in doctrine and take in doctrine. The passive voice means that Moses receives commendation as evidence. The participle indicates this will always be true, and it should be translated “of the things which were to be communicated.” Supergrace was to be communicated in the New Testament epistles. Many principles of doctrine were to be communicated throughout the formation of the canon of scripture, and whenever these were to be communicated Moses stands as evidence. This can be accomplished, you can enter into supergrace, you can exploit the grace of God through doctrine. Moses as a grace hero is used as evidence not only against reversionism, and specifically against reversionism in the Exodus generation, but every generation of believers who through negative volition toward doctrine become reversionistic. So Moses is evidence for the importance of supergrace, but the word “evidence” [marturion] really here means evidence against. And every believer who ever goes negative toward doctrine for any time, Moses stands as evidence against him. Moses is evidence against his own generation but the future tense of the participle indicates he is evidence against every generation.

            Translation: “Now Moses in fact, faithful [dependable, trustworthy] in all his house [the dispensation of Israel], as a noble servant, for evidence of things being communicated in the future.”

               Verse 6 — “But Christ” — the adversative use of the particle de sets up a contrast between Moses as a supergrace hero and the Lord Jesus Christ as the only celebrity — “as a son,” the adverb w(j plus u(ioj is in contrast to the previous verse. U)ioj means an adult son, a mature son. In the previous verse we saw that Moses was w(j qerapwn, a noble servant, a hero, but Jesus Christ is in contrast to him as the adult son, as the only celebrity in any dispensation.

                “over his own house” — the preposition e)pi plus the accusative of o)ikoj. We had, for example, Moses in the previous verse e)n plus o)ikoj, and here is the difference, the preposition e)pi over e)n. E)pi means authority over something; e)n means in something. So the Lord Jesus Christ is over the house of Israel of which Moses was a hero in the house. Moses is in the house; Christ is over the house, once again establishing the uniqueness of the person of Christ. He is undiminished deity and true humanity in one person forever. He is the only manifestation of God, He represents and epitomises everything that is important in God’s plan under the concept of grace. He is the object of category #1 love, but people do not love Christ apart from the intake of Bible doctrine. Lack of doctrine means lack of appreciation, lack of capacity for loving the Lord Jesus Christ. Capacity for loving Jesus Christ is based upon Bible doctrine in the soul. So Christ is the only celebrity. Once this is achieved through the intake of doctrine and the entrance into the supergrace life then the believer fulfils his priesthood. There is no fulfilment of his priesthood until he is a supergrace believer. The universal priesthood of the Church is based upon being a supergrace hero.

                Christ is both over the house of Israel and over the house called the Church. In other words, He is the chief cornerstone, the stone on the corner where two walls come together. One wall is Israel. Jesus Christ is the King of Israel, David’s greater son and a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Christ is also the head of the Church, the groom to the Church, His bride; He is the head of the body. So Christ is the chief cornerstone.

                So literally, “But Christ as an adult son over his house.”

               The next phrase indicates that we are now discussing not the house of Israel of the previous verse but the house which represents the Church Age; “whose house” — genitive singular of the relative pronoun o(j, referring to the Church Age. And again we have o)ikoj, only this time it represents the Church Age rather than the Age of Israel.

               “we are” — present active indicative of e)imi, the absolute status quo verb — “we keep on being.” Since the Church Age is a house over which Christ rules as an adult son it has certain unique features which did not exist in the previous dispensation mentioned in verse 5.

 

            There are nine unique features of this particular age

              1. Every believer is in union with Jesus Christ, this was never true before. Every believer has been entered into union with Christ as of the point of salvation, this is the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

              2. Every believer is indwelt by the person of Jesus Christ. No Old Testament believer was ever indwelt by Christ.

              3. Every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. While God the Holy Spirit had a ministry of enduement or empowerment to certain Old Testament saints the universal indwelling of God the Holy Spirit is unique to the Church Age.

             4. For the first time in history every believer is his own priest, therefore every believer must function in his priesthood and this demands the supergrace life.

             5. We have a completed canon of scripture and in this house or dispensation all divine revelation is in written form. There is no extra-biblical revelation in this dispensation. God does not speak except through His Word.

             6. We have a clearly-defined grace way of life superior to and superseding anything that has ever existed prior to this dispensation. This is also the dispensation of grace.

             7. Therefore every believer is in full-time Christian service, every believer is an ambassador for Christ, every believer represents Christ in the devil’s world. In the devil’s world there is no Jesus Christ because He is seated at the right hand of the Father, He is represented by you.

             8. We have the intensification of the angelic conflict. Never before in human history has there been such an intensification of the angelic conflict. Therefore we live the most difficult of all dispensations, much more so even than the Tribulation.

               9. All believers are commanded to go for the supergrace life by way of the ECS, and all such commands are based upon the full and only expression of the priesthood. Every believer is a priest, God does not intend for your priesthood to get rusty. Every believer is an ambassador. God does not intend for the corrosion, for the disintegration of your ambassadorship.

 

              The objective of the Christian is to take in Bible doctrine, and when you reach the supergrace point God will have you occupied with those things that are productive. But we never think in terms of production, we think in terms of occupation with the person, not in doing something for God. God does not depend upon us for His plan to succeed in time. God’s plan depends upon God’s essence, God’s concepts, God’s grace; it never depends on us. The fact that we are permitted under grace to be productive to the maximum is simply a manifestation of His perfect plan. All believers are commanded to enter the supergrace life by way of construction of the ECS.

              “if” — “we” refers to all believers. The only people, however, who qualify are believers who enter the supergrace life. Supergrace heroes function under the priesthood and have the privilege of maximum glorification of Christ under the intensified angelic conflict. All believers are the house of Jesus Christ but only supergrace believers become heroes as Moses was. The word “if” introduces a third class condition. Third class conditions are easy to recognise. We start out with e)an in the protasis plus the subjunctive mood of the verb. The conditional clause is divided into two sentences, the protasis and the apodosis. The protasis always qualifies what the apodosis says. For example, if the protasis says “If you give me the car I will go to the store.” The store is across the street. The person is qualifying under what conditions they will go to the store. They will go to the store if they are permitted to drive. The Greeks could say this in four ways. They could say, “If you will give me the car I will go to the store” — 1st class condition, and you will give me the car. Sometimes in English you can translate a 1st class condition, “Since you have given me the car I will go to the store.” But in the second class condition you have been told, “No, you can’t go.” So you say, “If you will give me the car (and you won’t) I will go to the store,” which means “I won’t go to the store.” The third class condition means you haven’t asked for the car yet, so the 3rd class condition is potential — maybe yes, maybe no. This time, “If you give me the car I will go to the store” is a bribe: “If you give me the car I will do something for you.” Then the fourth class condition expresses a youngster who has just learned to drive and you don’t allow them to drive yet: “If you will give me the car (I wish you would but you won’t) I’ll go to the store. In the English we have no such exegetical, grammatical systems to make these distinctions, so we have to make them in other ways. The third class condition indicates the believer’s volition in moving toward supergrace or toward entering into reversionism. This “if” indicates the direction in which you or I will go as believers in the Church Age. The first part of this sentence says, “But Christ as an adult son over his house; whose house we are.” We live in a certain time in history, we live in the dispensation of the Church, we are the administrators of that dispensation. As an administrator, as a believer in the ministry, as an ambassador, as a priest, you are a part of the function of this dispensation. And if you could know the divine interpretation of history your life is of much greater significance than the broad scope of activity historically in our time in this world. What you do is much more important and your first objective after salvation is to reach the supergrace life. Until you reach supergrace you’ve had it, you are just wobbling around. But once you reach supergrace there is a big “if,” and here it is.

               “if we hold fast” — “we hold fast” is an aorist active subjunctive of a compound verb, katexw. Kata is the preposition of norm or standard, it also means “down” under certain conditions. E)xw means to have and to hold. It means here to have and to hold according to a norm and standard, to have and to hold down something. It means here to hold fast, or even stronger than that, to keep in one’s memory, to occupy, to have in full and secure possession. There is also a nautical use of this word: to steer toward something or to make a heading, to be on course. All these meanings relate to heading for and maintaining a course toward the supergrace life. In the breakdown of the verbs there is a definite relationship between these compounds. In Hebrews 3:1 we had the aorist active imperative of katanoew. This is the verb for occupation with the person of Christ as the only celebrity of our dispensation. It used for occupation with Christ on the part of a supergrace believer. Now in verse 6 we have katexw used for heading toward and maintaining a course toward supergrace. Verse 1 gave us the objective, now under katexw we have the course. There are three meanings of the verb that are pertinent here. “If we hold fast” is the simplest translation. It obviously refers to doctrine in the right lobe, doctrine in the ECS, and doctrine in the supergrace area. “If we hold fast” — maybe we will and maybe we won’t — depends upon the function of GAP. Bible doctrine goes into the left lobe as gnwsij. As gnwsij Bible doctrine is understood objectively but is not useable. James says this is hearing the Word but not doing it. If you are going to do it it must be transferred by positive volition into the human spirit where it becomes e)pignwsij. E)pignwsij is useable. First it is cycled into the right lobe or the heart. It enters into the frame of reference with the memory centre, it enters into our vocabulary and categories, into our norms and standards. It becomes swfia or doctrine on the launching pad. It is also used for the construction of the ECS — first floor: grace orientation; second floor: mastery of the details of life; third floor: relaxed mental attitude; fourth floor: capacity for love; and the fifth floor is +H. From +H you enter into the supergrace life which is capacity for freedom, capacity for life, capacity for love, capacity for happiness. That is the objective. “If you hold fast” — keep on taking in doctrine, keep on taking in doctrine — you will reach the objective where you can have the normal function of the priesthood which is the supergrace life.

               This also means “if we have in full and secure possession” .And again, it has the same meaning: doctrine in each one of the lobes, doctrine in the human spirit, doctrine in the ECS, doctrine contributing to the supergrace life.

               The third meaning is the nautical term: “If we steer for and maintain our course.” This emphasises the daily function of GAP leading to supergrace. This is the translation we will use. Katexw is in the aorist tense here. This is the constative aorist which gathers into one ball of wax every time we take in doctrine, every day that we feed our soul on Bible doctrine under the system designed for the Church Age: a pastor-teacher communicating with authority to a congregation of believer priests. The active voice: the believer priest must persist in the function of GAP until he reaches the point where he can function in a normal way. We are born again at the point of salvation. That is the point at which we become priests, but we are, as it were, born into the family of God born into a priesthood and we must become spiritually mature in order for normal function to exist in our priesthood. Normal function does not exist until we enter the supergrace life, then we are able to actually function under the priesthood. The subjunctive mood here indicates a third class condition — maybe we will, maybe we won’t .The third class condition indicates, along with the subjunctive mood, that you have volition. You can choose for Bible doctrine or not. You can set aside other things and take in doctrine on a crash basis. You can take in Bible doctrine daily. But every time you come to a Bible class that is a decision you have to make. And if at some point you neglect doctrine, if at some point you fail to take in doctrine, and if you fail to make this decision, then instead of going for supergrace you move into reversionism through the usual process — negative volition toward Bible doctrine, scar tissue on the soul, emotional revolt of the soul, blackout of the soul, reverse process reversionism in practice, reversionism in status quo. All of these things will occur. So there must be a course toward which you steer and a course which, once you are steering in that direction, you must maintain. There are two objectives, nautically speaking, from this verb katexw. One is to steer, so we set the course and steer in that direction. But maybe to maintain that course you have to even tack in order to maintain the course in spite of   contrary winds, in spite of difficulties, storms, and so on.

              “the confidence” — “confidence” here is the accusative singular of parrhsia. It really means here confidence or assurance or authority, confidence in the authority of doctrine. These meanings are derived from the original concept of this noun which meant outspokenness or boldness of speech, and confidence here is confidence in the authority of Bible doctrine as it is presented to you.

              The next phrase has to do with a fulfilment concept. It has to do not with being in the house, the Church Age, but being effective in the house, being effective in our priesthood. If we do “steer and maintain our course with confidence in doctrine” we are going to end up occupied with the high priest, occupied with the person of Jesus Christ the only celebrity of the Church Age. So we have “and the rejoicing of the hope.” The word “rejoicing” is not rejoicing at all, it is the accusative singular of a noun kauxhma which means “boasting” — the object of boasting. It refers to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only celebrity of the Church Age. However, Christ can only become the object of boasting to the believer who has erected the edification complex and has capacity to love Jesus Christ. Capacity to love Jesus Christ comes from Bible doctrine, it comes from taking it in daily.

               “of the hope” — this is what is called a descriptive genitive singular of the noun e)lpij. Generally, e)lpij would mean confidence, hope, or expectation. Here it means expectation. This is anticipation of our life with the Lord in phase three. Right now we are here in time. Our whole life is ordered by time. Let’s assume for the moment that you are going to enter phase three through physical death, through dying grace. That is what is meant here by “the object of boasting of the expectation.” The expectation of the priesthood is to be with God forever. In other words, there is a time coming when you are going to depart from this world and your soul will vacate your body. You will no longer be in the house called the Church Age, you will be taken immediately to heaven. Your soul will be absent from the body and face to face with the Lord. You will go from whatever you are in this life to perfect happiness. That is our expectation or our hope.

               The next word is “firm”, the accusative feminine singular from bebaioj and it doesn’t mean firm, it means “stabilised.” This means never leaving supergrace for reversionism.

               “unto the end”, an adverbial preposition of time, mexri plus the genitive of teloj. It should be translated “until the end” — until the end of phase two.

               Translation: “But Christ as an adult son over his house; whose house we are, [if we hold fast, if we have in full and secure possession] if we steer and maintain our course of the confidence and the object of boasting [Christ as the only celebrity] of the expectation, stabilised until the end.”

               Verse 7 begins with the word “Wherefore.” This is the beginning of the study of the reversionism of the Exodus generation. In verses 7-11 we have a warning from the Meribah revolution, one of the most serious revolts of all time as far as believers are concerned. The worst thing that can happen to any believer is the status of reversionism. There are basically three kinds, and possibly four, of reversionism. There is phallic reversionism, monetary reversionism, ritual reversionism, and also the negative volition type of reversionism which is really the basis for everything else. In this particular chapter we see one of the greatest illustrations of a generation of believers totally failing. Ordinarily we do not think of believers as failing because of the tremendous benefits of the grace of God. But through the principle of reversionism this failure is not only probable but is very definite reality. Here is what reversionism can do to destroy a whole generation of believers. The word “wherefore” which begins verse 7 is an inferential conjunction, dio. It is a compound conjunction made up of dia plus o(j and it means “for this reason.” Because of the celebrityship of Jesus Christ, because of the potential heroship of every believer-priest in the Church Age, this following paragraph is given as a warning. There is a potential danger always from reversionism. Every believer is a priest, every believer has unlimited divine operating assets which can come to him through the daily function of GAP and result in the ECS and the function of the supergrace life. The supergrace life for the believer is the area of heroship, it is also the area in which Jesus Christ is the only celebrity.

                “as” begins an analogy. The adverb kaqwj is used to set up a comparison and should be translated “according as.” Then, in addition to that we have the next phrase “Holy Ghost.” This is a mistranslation of to pneumatw a(gion. A(gion never means ghost. This was an attempt on the part of translators 300 years ago to use some device to distinguish between the technical and non-technical use of the neuter noun pneuma. Sometimes pneuma means nothing more than breath or spirit, and sometimes it refers technically to the human spirit as a part of God’s provision of the inner life. Sometimes it is used for the third person of the Trinity, and in an attempt to show that this member of the Trinity was just as much God as the others, but invisible, they set upon the concept of using the word “ghost”; a fairly respectable word some 300 years ago but has now fallen into decline. While the translation device was workable at the time it is a part of the problem of anachronism which obscures certain portions of the Word of God today. So we translate it: “According as the Holy Spirit.” This is a reference to the third person of the Trinity, also a reference to that member of the Trinity responsible for the canon of scripture — its accuracy and the principle by which the canon of the scripture is the only source of Bible doctrine. So here we have the divine author of the canon of scripture, and 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21 both indicates the same principle. The writers of the scripture in the Old Testament had the gift of prophecy; the writers of the scripture, New Testament, had the gift of apostleship. These two gifts under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit made it possible to store in writing the very mind of Christ.

                 “saith” — present active indicative of legw which means to communicate. So this is the divine side of the preparation of the Holy scripture. Now we have with “saith,” Psalm 95:8-11 quoted. The passage deals with the Meribah revolution, and the repercussions of the Meribah revolution and the reversionism which started it are alive in every generation. First of all in the Meribah revolution there are several things to be understood. All revolution is rejection of human or divinely constituted authority. All revolution is antagonistic to the laws of divine establishment, and the greatest antagonism to authority as constituted by God comes from born again believers in status quo reversionism. The greatest antagonists to authority are believers in reversionism. The source of legalism is believers in reversionism. The source of everything that is antiestablishment and detrimental to humanity comes from reversionism. This is the great lesson of the Meribah revolution.

                 “Today” is an adverb, shmeron, which begins the quotation. The whole principle of beginning the quotation with shmeron — which is translated “this day” — indicates that this passage dealing with a revolution which occurred in the time of Moses is pertinent to us right now. However, this adverb occurred first of all in the Hebrew text of Psalm 95. That means it was pertinent to the generation in which David lived which was 1000 BC or roughly 450 years after the events occurred. It was also pertinent to believers of the first century AD because it is quoted in Hebrews chapter three. That means Hebrews chapter three was written in 67 AD, so nearly 1000 years later the Meribah revolution is still pertinent to the life of the individual believer. It is also pertinent to the 20th century believer to whom it is now being taught and it is also applied to the Exodus generation.

                 “Today” is literally “this day”; this is a continuous day. This is a day in which the Meribah revolution is pertinent to every period of human history. It is a warning to believers that their individual and collective reversionism has a detrimental effect upon history.

                 As a part of this particular passage we have to understand that immediately we go into a protasis, and in this particular protasis we begin with the word “if,” introducing a third class condition — e)an plus the subjunctive. Remember that conditional clauses have a protasis and an apodosis. The apodosis is the main clause; the protasis[1] is a clause which limits the main clause and is always introduced with the word “if” to indicate a condition. E)an is an “if,” a third class condition meaning “maybe yes, maybe no.” This conditional clause emphasises your volition as a believer priest and how it relates to Bible doctrine. There is a principle from the word “if” here: The believer can always find time to do what he thinks is important. Man can always find time to do what he wants to do and the believer is no exception. The word “if” is used to introduce the fact you can take in Bible doctrine every day but that is strictly up to your volition. God will provide a way for positive volition.

               “if ye will hear” — the aorist active subjunctive of the verb a)kouw. This means to hear and to concentrate and is used here for the function of GAP. It also means to hear and accept the authority of the one who teaches and communicates the Word and it has basically the true Biblical concept of discipleship. The believer in the local church is a student without privilege and without portfolio. He has come to learn the Word and therefore he must set aside all human authority or human ability or human talent and must take in Bible doctrine. The aorist tense here is a constative aorist used for every time the believer functions in GAP. The active voice: Every believer must produce the action of the verb by his daily function of GAP, this is the basic reason for the priesthood. There was no universal priesthood of the believer until there was a canon of scripture available to every priest. Now we have the universal priesthood of the believer and the canon of scripture. All doctrine, all divine revelation is in writing. Since it is all in writing every believer priest on positive volition can GAP it daily. The subjunctive mood goes with the third class condition to indicate the potentiality of GAP, depending on whether the believer is positive or negative toward Bible doctrine. There are two things that must be connected here and that is the adverb and the verb. The adverb is “this day,” shmeron; the verb is a)kouw. Believers in every generation, from the Exodus generation to the present, must be consistent in the intake of Bible doctrine as it is presented in each generation. The principle concept, then, is that Bible doctrine is absolutely necessary every day. This is how you grow; this is why your soul is saved, so that in phase two you might take in Bible doctrine.

 

           The doctrine of GAP (Grace apparatus for perception)

               1. In considering any system of perspicacity by grace we must distinguish between human and spiritual IQ. Human IQ is the number assigned to a person on the basis of dividing their mental age by their chronological age. There is no equality at birth and there is no equality after birth in the field of perspicacity. A person can be as a believer very stupid by the measuring standard of the IQ test. However, this same believer can be so positive toward doctrine that he is given by grace the perspicacity of a genius, and if he sticks with Bible doctrine there is nothing he cannot learn. There is a distinction between human and spiritual IQ, and this distinction is brought forth in 1 Corinthians 2:1-16.

               2. Human IQ is excluded from the grace apparatus for perception. You can be a genius and be stupid about doctrine; you can be stupid in human realms of measuring IQ and be brilliant in the field of doctrine. Human IQ is excluded from GAP — 1 Corinthians 1:19-2:16. While human IQ is often considered a factor in learning it is no factor in learning Bible doctrine. To say that human perspicacity overflows into the Christian life is to give all low IQ believers a handicap, and grace excludes human handicaps.

               3. The perceptive lobe in the grace apparatus for perception is the left lobe. However, having information there is not going to cut it. You must have information in the right lobe, which is called the kardia in the Greek, or heart. It has inside of it a frame of reference with a memory centre. In order the develop and increase your capacity for knowledge you must have vocabulary receptacle and a categorical receptacle. This gives you the ability to think and to advance in your thinking. It takes vocabulary to think; it takes vocabulary to advance in thinking. In addition to that you have norms and standards which undergo change as you become the recipient of information in life. You also have a launching pad which is the area for the unbeliever’s common sense. This is the area for application of information you have received, this is the basis for practising professions. For example, you take information you have learned in medicine, information you have learned in law, in military, in engineering, and so on, and you apply it to a specific project in life. So that the right lobe is really the basis of your functioning in life, and what you really are is what goes on inside of your own right lobe or your own heart. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” This is the real person. Now you have a basis for human freedom and something in common with the angels: volition. And you have a positive pole and a negative pole. Your free will is designed so that you can have a part in the angelic conflict. Angels also have this same volition. In addition to that you have emotion, your response to what exists in your right lobe. Emotion is a sounding board, a responder. Emotion is the right woman to the right lobe’s right man. In addition to that you have a conscience.

                In the concept of GAP it is necessary for Bible doctrine to enter that left lobe. That is the perceptive lobe, the mentality of the soul. Whenever you hear Bible doctrine God the Holy Spirit takes that information into your left lobe and makes it real to you. It is impossible for spiritual phenomena to be real apart from the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, and He makes that objective information so that doctrine in the left lobe is objectively understood but non-usable. This is the person who is the hearer of the Word and not the doer. The doer of the Word is the believer with doctrine in his right lobe. The perceptive lobe is called nouj and its content is called gnwsij, and it is translated “mind” .The Holy Spirit causes the believer to understand Bible doctrine in the left lobe. This is objective learning but it is not the basis for application. This is known as perceptive comprehension — data understood but not applied.

               4. The grace provision for learning Bible doctrine. Bible doctrine must cycle into the right lobe. It cycles through the human spirit and enters the right lobe. God had to set up some way for doctrine to go from the left lobe, where it is non-usable, to the right lobe where it is useable. Doctrine must become operational, useable, and that has set up a grace system for learning doctrine and making it useable. There are nine principles involved:

               a. The formation and preservation of the canon of scripture — the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration whereby God has put our spiritual food in storage to be utilised on a day-by-day basis.

               b. The classroom for learning doctrine, the local church. This is divine authorisation for doctrinal communication and worship. The classroom is the local church.

               c. A spiritual gift, the gift of pastor-teacher. This is the divinely authorised communicator.

               d. The priesthood of the believer for privacy and freedom of reception of doctrine.

                e. Without these, however, we would still not be on an equal basis for the intake of doctrine were it not for the fact that God the Holy Spirit indwells every one of us. So we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for the function of GAP — 1 Corinthians 2:9-16; 1 John 2:27. However, the believer must be filled with the Spirit in order for the intake of doctrine to occur, and therefore we have the command of Ephesians 5:18, “Be filled with the Spirit.”

               f. Grace provision for the filling of the Spirit is the rebound technique, as per 1 John 1:9.

               g. We have the human spirit as the first target for GAP — Job 32:8; 1 Corinthians 2:12.

               h. We have the provision of the divine laws of establishment whereby the government of a nation protects the freedom and the privacy of the local church.

               i. The next provision has to do with human anatomy. It has to do with grace in anatomy whereby the body carries on certain non-meritorious functions making it possible for you to take in the Word of God. For example, we have oxygen getting into the blood.

               5. The mechanics of GAP.

               a. Under these mechanics we have operation ICE. Operation ICE is the job of the pastor-teacher whereby he communicates doctrine to the local assembly. He does so under the verb didaskw. He is the absolute authority in the classroom, he has the authority in communication. He must communicate, however, a content. He message must contain the tree following: First of all, when necessary, it must contain isagogics. Isagogics refer to a principle of exegesis and interpretation. The Bible must be interpreted in the time in which it was written. Nothing can be understood in the Bible apart from the background of the time in which it was written. So isagogics interprets the Bible in the framework of its historical setting, and whenever necessary this must be brought in. Therefore the pastor must be a student of the times in which the Bible was written. Secondly, he must be able to think categorically. He must learn to recognise categories in scripture. He must be able to take various portions of scripture and by comparing scripture with scripture determine their classification of doctrine. And in his content he must emphasise the principle that scripture must be compared with scripture. Thirdly, he must be able to analyse scripture, preferably from the original languages. He must be able to emphasise the grammar, the syntax, the etymology of the original languages. And if he is not versed in these things he must depend on someone else so that he is able to present a true analysis of what the scriptures say in the Hebrew, Aramaic and the Greek. This we call “ICE,” and ever pastor must be familiar with isagogics, categories and exegesis. This is the ICE principle in communication.

               b. He must so communicate to his hearers that they enter into operation gnwsij. This is equivalent to receptive comprehension whereby the believer is positive toward doctrine, concentrates on what is being said, is filled with the Spirit as he listens, and comprehends what is being taught. Comprehension at this stage does not mean agreement or disagreement, it means objective perception. It means an understanding of the doctrines, the principles, the names, the dates, the places, the formulas, the categories involved in a specific passage of scripture.

               c. Next we have operation e)pignwsij. In this area doctrine goes from the left lobe to the right lobe by means of the human spirit. This comprehension demands agreement with what is taught. You cannot learn without at some time agreement with the one who communicates. It may take awhile but sooner or later there must be agreement or you are in the wrong church! Positive volition toward what is taught and what resides in the left lobe transfers it so that it becomes useable. It moves it out. Therefore, this doctrine goes in two areas. It goes first of all into the human spirit, the pneuma. Here it becomes e)pignwsij, and e)pignwsij moves. E)pignwsij becomes structural material for the ECS, it immediately cycles up to the right lobe where it is utilised.

               6. The frame of reference. What is its function?

               a. It is the basis for the comprehension of more advanced doctrine.

               b. Frame of reference establishes a new conscience in the believer, a conscience whose norms and standards comply with divine norms and standards.

               c. It forms the divine viewpoint in the right lobe. The divine viewpoint is out in the launching pad for application to life.

               d. It deals with problems of the subconscious and the guilt complex.

               e. It provides a true content for prayer and really turns one into a good prayer warrior.

               f. It provides accuracy to communicate the Gospel to others — witnessing — and in helping those who are not as far along in the faith as you are.

               g. It provides discernment to detect false doctrine.

               h. It provides capacity for liberty, life, love, and happiness.

               i. It provides capacity to detect what is important in life and what is not important. It gives a true scale of values.

                j. It makes possible for God in grace to share His own happiness with you through the erection of an ECS and the entrance into the supergrace life.

                k. It causes proper function of the priesthood of the believer in the devil’s world.

 

               “his voice” — we now have an objective genitive, fwnh plus the genitive of possession of a)utoj, referring to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Here we have the principle of the communication of Bible doctrine. Bible doctrine is called the Word of God in Hebrews 4:12, the mind of Christ in 1 Corinthians 2:16, the voice of the Spirit here in Hebrews 3:7. In this context the voice of the Spirit refers to the Bible doctrine, to the promises, to everything which becomes the object of the faith-rest technique, for the faith-rest technique is born in the believer’s right lobe. But the right lobe must have doctrinal content in order for the faith-rest technique to be born.

               Translation: “For this reason therefore (according as the Holy Spirit communicates, This day if you will hear and concentrate on his voice”

 

            Chapter 3:8 via Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95:8

             In order to understand the structure and the background of the next paragraph in our passage in this chapter it is necessary to have two things clearly in mind. First, how does a believer enter into the supergrace life? There are two frontal lobes. The left lobe is designed for objective understanding of all information in life. The left lobe is called the mind — nouj; the right lobe is called the heart — kardia. The right lobe has a frame of reference and a memory centre, norms and standards called the conscience of the soul, it has a vocabulary and categories and a launching pad for Bible doctrine. Bible doctrine is taught isagogically and enters into the left lobe where as spiritual phenomena the ministry of God the Holy Spirit makes it objective information — perception through the objectivity of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This doctrine is called gnwsij in the Greek, it has to be transferred for utilisation. James says, “Be not a hearer of the Word but a doer.” First of all you have to hear the Word before you can do the Word. Hearing it is not doing it. It has to be transferred and the system of transfer has to be consistent with God’s grace. Positive volition, called pistij — faith — transfers that doctrine down to the human spirit where it becomes e)pignwsij. Now for the first time Bible doctrine can be utilised. E)pignwsij is cycled into the right lobe. It enters the frame of reference, it enters memory centre, it forms a new technical theological vocabulary in your soul. It eventuates in categories of the soul, it takes your norms and standards and makes them comply with divine norms and standards, and it puts divine viewpoint on the launching pad for application. At the same time this is occurring this same doctrine in the human spirit now becomes building material for the ECS and the supergrace life. This is comparable to Canaan. Canaan is never a type of heaven. Canaan or the promised land is an illustration of the supergrace life, and in the picture found in this passage the Jews of the Exodus generation were first of all liberated from the slavery of Egypt. That is a picture of redemption. Then they were given the opportunity and the promise of supergrace but they never were able to reach Canaan which is analogous to the supergrace life. Instead, the died the sin unto death in the desert over a period of forty years. The reason why they failed is because from the time they were freed from slavery, from the time of the Passover, until the next generation bivouacked at the Jordan these people were in a constant state of reversionism; a state whereby they had to be disciplined and removed.

               What is reversionism? Reversionism starts with negative volition and reverses the process of God’s plan and God’s objective for every life. Reversionism is negative volition toward Bible doctrine, negative volition building scar tissue on the left bank of the soul, opening up mataiothj and allowing doctrine from Satan to attack the various parts of the right lobe. This is called in our passage “hardening of the heart”, and there is a command coming up: “Harden not your hearts as in the Meribah.” That is Satanic doctrine in the right lobe crowding out Bible doctrine and presenting in the launching pad the human viewpoint of life or Satanic viewpoint of life. Then, of course, the trends in the old sin nature go to work and there is scar tissue on the right bank of the soul eventuating in the blackout of the soul which is delineated in Ephesians chapter four. Then there is the emotional revolt of the soul which blocks all the valves of the right lobe. Then there is a destruction of the ECS, bit by bit as doctrine is forced out of the right lobe. Then the practice of reverse process reversionism.

               This is the history of the Exodus generation and the Exodus generation is used as an illustration of why believers fail to use their priesthood in the Church Age. Every believer is a priest, that is what Hebrews is all about. The objective of Hebrews is to get believers into the sphere of occupation with Christ. That comes under the supergrace life. The objective of the priesthood is for the daily function of GAP to result in a supergrace life. But you and I are going to fail as the Exodus generation failed if we go negative toward Bible doctrine. Bible doctrine is the spiritual food, the spiritual phenomena, whereby the believer enters into the supergrace life, becomes occupied with the person of Christ, fulfils the purpose for which he remains in this life. The priesthood appointment occurs at salvation but the priesthood does not properly function except in the supergrace life, and that is what this passage is all about.

              Verse 8 — the apodosis[2]. “Harden not” is the present active subjunctive sklhrunw plus the negative mh. Sklhrunw is used in a technical sense. It means to be negative toward doctrine. That is where reversionism begins. Negative volition toward doctrine produces every stage and every facet of reversionism. If you are negative toward Bible doctrine it is because of some attitude you have picked up (you can pick it up in a short period of time), some mental attitude sin that crops up in your life, some concept of getting your eyes on people, on things — the frustrations of life, the disappointments of life all do this.

                “your hearts” — the hardening of the heart isn’t something where you freeze up over night, it is something where you get very subtly sloppy in your volition. The hardening of the heart is where a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time; and then you begin to think like any unbeliever would think, but no doctrine left.   So we have the present tense plus mh. Linear aktionsart plus mh plus the subjunctive means this is a command. Not all commands are given in the imperative mood in either the Greek or the Hebrew. In the Greek language the subjunctive mood carries a strength of the imperative but recognises human volition. Linear aktionsart to indicate negative volition toward doctrine producing scar tissue, producing blackout of the soul, producing emotional revolt, producing reversionism, producing reverse process reversionism. This should be translated “Do not go on hardening your hearts” .It means you started at some point in a subtle way. And this does not recognise hardness of heart, it recognises the process of getting there. The hardening of the heart is reversionism, but this is “do not go on hardening your heart.” The active voice plus the negative means the believer priest must discontinue something that he has already started. And the passage was originally addressed to Jews in Jerusalem in 67 AD. In that year the Jews in Jerusalem were reversionistic. They have three years to recover and to get out of Jerusalem before the great catastrophe of the fifth cycle of discipline. So far they have shown no signs of recovery. Then there is the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive is a mood of probability; the indicative mood is of reality. The subjunctive assumes unreality, it leads to a list of potential moods and as the meaning of the verb departs farther and farther from reality the subjunctive shades into the optative. This subjunctive is somewhere between the probability of the subjunctive and the desirability of the optative, and therefore it becomes a strong imperative to stop a disaster course, to turn away from a disastrous course, to turn away in your thinking (for the issue here is what you think), to turn away from some sloppy attitude that is knocking you down, some sloppy attitude that is making you negative toward Bible doctrine — “do not go on hardening your hearts.” Kardia in the Greek here refers to the right lobe with the frame of reference, the memory centre, the vocabulary, the categories, the norms and standards, and the launching pad. The right lobe has all four areas where doctrine must be resident and it is the objective of the teaching ministry of the Church Age to get Bible doctrine into your right lobe. It is the objective to do this in a local church with a pastor-teacher communicating to a group under the principle of monologue. Nothing is accomplished by dialogue. Hardening the heart describes the reversionistic believer with emphasis on negative volition toward doctrine. Every stage of reversionism involves negative volition toward doctrine. Reversionism not only means a failure of GAP but it means also in any stage of reversionism when you start to go negative toward spiritual food. When you stop eating your daily manna from heaven, you are going to have a breakdown of the basic techniques — rebound, GAP, faith-rest.

                The adverb “as” takes us to the Meribah — w(j, which sets up a correlation in the field of reversionism. The classic example of reversionism is the Exodus generation whose hero, Moses, was mentioned in the first part of this chapter. In this chapter the believer has a choice of supergrace or reversionism, the choice of the celebrityship of Jesus Christ, at which point the character of God is ultimately more important than the promises that emanate from that character.

                The celebrityship of Christ or discipline from God — “as in the provocation” — e)n plus parapikrasmoj. Parapikrasmoj is a translation of the Hebrew word from which it is quoted. “Provocation” comes from Psalm 95:8.

                Exodus 17:1 — the Jews had been liberated from Egypt. Egypt is a picture of the slave market of sin. The deliverance of the Jews is a picture of redemption through the cross. The Passover is a picture of leaving the slave market into freedom. As of the Passover the Jews are free, and when God makes you free he always makes you free on a wonderful basis. He not only made the Jews free but He made them very wealthy free people. Now, once the Jews are free they can make a choice. They can move to supergrace, which is going to be Canaan promised to them, or they can move into reversionism which comes from neglecting Bible doctrine. And they chose reversionism, they “hardened their hearts.” Unless they were in supergrace they were not capable of entering the land, but no reversionistic generation is going to enter the promised land. If you are going to have God’s plan for your life, if you are going to have God’s best, you must have the capacity for God’s best and the capacity for God’s best is supergrace. There is no substitute. You only get to supergrace one way: positive volition on a daily basis.

               Here is the big choice now. God has to give some tests for the utilisation of Bible doctrine. By the time the Jews reach this test have already undergone tests and have had a lot of doctrine, and all this test is for is to apply doctrine from the launching pad to “no water” .That’s all it is. They were there by the will of God. And they camped in Rephidim, and Rephidim means refreshments in the plural. They had come to a place to stop and have Bible class. But in the place of refreshment the people had no water. All they have to do is apply another water situation. They have just recently gone through a place where there was too much water. God moved it out of the way. Now there is no water and God can bring water for them to drink. If there is doctrine on the launching pad the battle is the Lord’s .And if there is doctrine on the launching pad that doctrine says the very character of God demands that I stay alive. It is up to God to provide. That’s grace.

                Verse 2 — “Wherefore the people did strive with Moses.” The verb is ribh which means to complain. Complaining is a sign of reversionism. From this word comes a noun, meribah. They complained because there was no water and complaining is an insult to the character of God. Moses can’t provide water. God is the provider; Moses is the leader. And when they go to Moses in their sarcasm and say, “Give us water”, they have rejected God’s authority and they have rejected Moses. Moses is the human authority. They have rejected his authority, they have rejected God’s authority, and their manners stink. And Moses said to make the issue clear, “Why do you complain to me? Why do you tempt the Lord?” Tempt the Lord of what? To remove you. The Lord is tempted to remove reversionists immediately. He never succumbs to that temptation because of grace and because He cannot sin. They think that no water is the source of their danger. No water is not the source of their danger, it is reversionism in the soul that is their danger. The fact that there is no water and that water is necessary to sustain life is not the problem. The problem is no doctrine in the soul. And typical of reversionists they had their eyes on Moses. If they had their eyes on the Lord and were moving along they would respect Moses’ authority and they would go to the Lord from their own souls. But, having their eyes on people, this is the time to put Moses down. There is no water, there is no hope of water, and they are going to put Moses and the Lord down all at the same time.

              Verse 3 — “… the people murmured against Moses.” Was Moses wrong here? No. But even if Moses had been wrong they are still wrong. When God sets up an authority it may be pitiful in your eyes but it is still God’s authority. A reversionist always considers any authority as pitiful. He may go along with it so that he doesn’t wind up in jail but he doesn’t like the authority of the police or the judge, he doesn’t like a lot of authority. Why? Because he is stuck on himself. He is having a great love affair with himself and there are no rivals. When a person doesn’t accept the authority of others it is because he is so full of pride and arrogance that he only thinks of himself as an authority. And God must put these mad dogs down, and does. These mad dogs are the first ones to die under the sin unto death, the first ones to die in Israel. The ones who rejected authority went. They accused Moses of deliberately leading them to this spot so that he could wipe them all out. What ever gave them this idea? They were slaves to the details of life. Remember they were all wealthy. They superimposed their own low standards on Moses. Moses didn’t lead them out their to rob them or kill them. Reversionism breeds a set of mental attitude sins that bring up this kind of stuff out of the sewers of their souls. They are jealous of Moses, bitter toward Moses. They are implacable and vindictive and so they are sitting around their tents having their rap session. They accused Moses, they maligned Moses, the slandered Moses. Moses was a supergrace believer and therefore a target. Why? Who criticises the supergrace believer? The legalist — the son of the bond woman always persecutes the son of the free woman. That’s Abraham, now we are dealing with Moses. Any believer in reversionism, no matter how great he has been in the past, is critical of a believer in supergrace or approaching supergrace. So reversionism and supergrace are divided and the supergrace crowd always are the targets for the reversionist. The reversionists always malign and judge and ridicule the supergrace crowd, or individuals.

               Verse 4 — Moses didn’t say a word to them. Notice, a supergrace believer doesn’t try to justify himself to the people. He doesn’t go out and try to explain himself to the people. All he does is go to the Lord about it in prayer.

               Verse 5 — God knew that Moses was personally a brave man, so he told him to go out and demonstrate it. This rod with which Moses “smote the river” actually refers to the principle of striking and getting water, striking and using it for different things. This rod represents divine power in human hands. It was the rod of judgement: Exodus 7:20. When the rod of judgement strokes the rock it will represent Christ being judged. The rod that he is to take out in front of them represents judgement, divine power in human hands.

               Verse 6 — “the rock.” The Hebrew word for “rock” is necessary at this point — tsur. This is a sharp, jagged rock, and they have rocks in their hands, “You stand by a sharp, jagged rock.” The rocks in their hands are their maligning. The rocks that they have to stone him are to judge him. They want to kill him with those rocks. The rock Moses stands by represents judgement. It actually represents Christ, the Rock, being judged for us. Moses holds in his hand a rod which also represents judgement. He is told to strike the rock. (The striking of the rock is a picture of Christ the Rock bearing our sins} Strike it, and water will come out of that rock. And Moses did.

               Verse 7 — “And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah.” Massah means testing; Meribah means complaining.

               This particular incident is described in Psalm 95:8 — “Harden not your hearts” — The Hebrew has a verb, the hiphil imperfect of qasah. Qashah means to make stubborn or obdurate. We have with it the negative — “Do not harden” — the hiphil imperfect, and this is a jussive in the hiphil. The hiphil is the causative stem, it carries the same weight as our aorist subjunctive which means to harden — “as in the day of provocation” — Meribah; “as in the day of Massah” — temptation.

               Hebrews 3:8 — “Harden” — sklhronw, present active subjunctive. The subjunctive carries the weight of an imperative. This is a prohibitive subjunctive with the negative mh. “Do not go on hardening your hearts as in the Meribah.”

               “in the day” — the preposition kata plus the accusative of h(mera. It should be “on the day,” or “on the time” .It is a reference to the first Meribah incident of Exodus 17:1-7.

               “of temptation” — at this point we face the genitive of peirasmoj which means testing for the purpose of good or evil. The Jews were tested to see if they had supergrace or reversionism; tested for the purpose of finding out if they were ready to go into Canaan. Supergrace believers can go in. Are you ready to go or not? The no water test was to determine the celebrityship of Jesus Christ as over against reversionism. Therefore, this passage should read so far, “Do not go on hardening your hearts, as in the reversionistic revolution of Meribah, on the day of testing in the desert.”

 

            Principle

             1. Canaan is a type of the supergrace life.

             2. The Exodus generation failed to enter Canaan because of reversionism.

             3. Reversionism was manifest by the malfunction of faith-rest.

             4. Reversionism cannot cope with either the charge of the mosquito or the charge of the elephant.

             5. The function of our partnership with Christ today demands supergrace, depends on supergrace.

          6. Therefore, to reach supergrace we must GAP it daily.

             7. Then thrust of this passage is supergrace versus reversionism; blessing versus misery; prosperity versus the sin unto death; occupation with Christ versus pseudo-love fanaticism of the psychopathic personality.

 

             The doctrine of revolution

                1. The Word of God does not justify revolution — Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13,14; Numbers 16.

                2. Revolution involves the overthrow of the laws of establishment. It also involves lawless mobs which can neither think nor achieve anything compatible with divine institutions or the laws of divine establishment. A mob cannot think. A mob has a leader or leadership but it does not think for itself and there is always a power grab involved.

                3. Revolution means apostasy and reversionism, therefore lack of or lack of the influence of Bible doctrine — Isaiah 1:3-5; 59:13.

                4. Revolution is always anti-God — Isaiah 31:6.

                5. Revolution is caused by a breakdown of the laws of divine institution in the right lobe. The laws of the divine institution are found in the frame of reference. In the memory centre they are part of the norms and standards of the conscience of the soul. They are located in the vocabulary and the categories of the soul, and the laws of divine institution are on the launching pad of the soul. Reversionism destroys these things. Revolution is caused by the failure of the right lobe, known as reversionism — Jeremiah 5:23. Therefore revolution is involved with emotional revolt, blackout of the soul, reversionism, and revolution itself is the practice of reverse process reversionism.

                6. Revolution or revolt against authority always has a primary motivator, and apart from the lust pattern of the old sin nature jealousy is the prime motivator — Isaiah 11:13 cf. 1 King 12:19 and 2 Chronicles 10:19.

                7. The communication of Bible doctrine is designed to stop revolution — Ezekiel 2:3-10.

                8. Heathenism, gypsyism, hippieism, is the result of revolution or the precursor of revolution. The gypsies and the hippies are not only antiestablishment but in that sense they have defied the very laws that protect the freedoms of the human race, and they usually do it from freedom. So this type of gypsyism and heathenism is the result of revolution — Romans 1:19-26. The result of such revolution is human degeneration — Romans 1:27-32.

                9. The principle of revolution is the function of reversionism in the field of approbation and power lust implemented by mental attitude sin clusters from jealousy, destroying the freedom, the rights, the privacy and the property of individuals. Hence, revolution is a Satanic device in the angelic conflict to establish Satan’s cosmic kingdom and to superimpose his will over mankind.

                10. Reversionism, therefore, is the basic cause of revolution and supergrace becomes the antidote — Hebrews 3:8,9.

 

                Verse 9 — begins with an adverb, o(u, and it means “in what place” or “where.” It does not mean “When.”     

              “your fathers” — nominative plural of pathr. This is addressed to Jews of the southern kingdom of Judah in AD 67. “Your fathers” refers to people in the same nationality. It refers, therefore, to historical background of a nation. The very phrase, “Where your fathers,” is a biblical reminder that there are many lessons to be learned from our own history. Every nation has a history. Every nation has a period of prosperity. This period of prosperity is based on the laws of establishment. Every nation loses its prosperity and loses its freedoms by antiestablishment, by revolution. Therefore people can learn even historically from their own nation provided that history is not distorted by liberalism. Liberalism is always forerunner of revolution. First there is theological liberalism, then comes political liberalism, and then comes the destruction of the nation through revolution. It can be a mental revolution, or it can be a revolution of violence. Generally, both are involved.

                “tempted” — aorist active indicative of peirazw. Peirazw means to test for the purpose of determining good or evil in an individual or in a group of individual. This is an ingressive aorist. The ingressive aorist is used here to indicate that the reversionistic Jews began to tempt God at the first Meribah. They tempted God to remove them by the sin unto death, they tempted God with reversionism. God must discipline reversionism. The Jews could not enter the land in a state of reversionism, the water tests were used to demonstrate that. The Jews could not enter the land, as illustrated one year from Meribah in Kadesh Barnea. The Jews could not enter the land in a state of reversionism, the water tests of Israel were used to demonstrate that fact. God was tempted to destroy them when it began at Meribah, but the water tests will continue. Some of these water tests include: 1. Too much water: the Red Sea — Exodus 14. An impossible barrier of water. God provided in grace. That should have told them something. 2. No water — Exodus 15:22. 3. The wrong water — Exodus 15:23. 4. Plenty of water at Elim — Exodus 15:27. 5. No water at Sin — Exodus 17. The indicative mood is the reality of Jewish reversionism testing God’s grace. Not content with the doctrine, the promises, the Jews of the Exodus generation in their reversionism made great demands upon God. They demanded things from God when they already had things from God.

               We should notice that there is a difference between peirazw, the verb which means to test for the good or evil, to test and see what is there, and the verb dokimazw which means to test to prove that someone has passed the test. We also have noun that goes with the verb, a cognate: dokimoj. The word “me” is not found in the original manuscript. It should read “in which place [Meribah]” .They have already had every water test possible. Now at the end of four water tests they had the Meribah test, and they flunked it.

               “In which place [Meribah] your fathers began testing to determine good or evil by means of testing to approve God if God passed the test.” That is what is meant by “proved me” which is not correctly translated. The word “proved” is a prepositional phrase. We have e)n plus the instrumental of dokimoj — “by means of testing” .Dokimoj is testing for approval in contrast to peirazw which is testing to see of there is good or bad.

 

           Summary

               1. When believers begin to test God to see if God is good or evil they are in a state of reversionism.

               2. If God does what they want Him to do they will approve God, but if not they will disapprove Him.

               3. The Jews of the Exodus generation, the Jews of the Hebrews generation, were in the status of reverse process reversionism.

               4. This is the believer who is never content with doctrine but must have some extra natural or ecstatic experience, or God must somehow bribe him with something.

               5. The reversionistic tendency began at Meribah, Exodus 17, and continued for forty years, finally ending at second Meribah in Numbers chapter twenty. Both Meribahs are described in Psalm 95 which is being quoted.

               6. Therefore they did not enter into Canaan, which is a type of supergrace.

 

              “and saw” — aorist active indicative of o(raw. O(raw means to have a panoramic view of something. The aorist tense here is culminative. The culminative aorist looks at the forty years during which every day God manifests His grace. Now they are looking back at it. The active voice: the reversionistic Jews saw God’s grace and never responded to it. The indicative mood is the reality of seeing the grace of God, the work of God, for forty years, being indifferent to it and therefore dying the sin unto death which is maximum divine discipline.

              “my works” — the accusative plural of the noun e)rgon. E)rgon in the plural means production — “my production.” Production is the grace of God. In grace God does the working. God provided every need of the Exodus generation in eternity past.

 

             Summary

             1. The reversionistic believer ignores grace because he has no capacity for grace.

             2. Capacity for grace cannot be acquired or assimilated through any human function of life. Capacity for grace comes only from Bible doctrine in the soul. Bible doctrine inculcation must move to the point of supergrace.

             3. Reversionism begins with negative volition toward Bible doctrine which is the only hope for capacity for grace and loving God.

             4. The reversionistic believer, therefore, has no capacity to appreciate grace or the source of grace. The source of grace is Jesus Christ.

             5. However, God continues to be faithful even though the reversionist is unfaithful.

             6. Reverse process reversionism causes the believer to become fanatical in his pseudo love of objects he substitutes for God.

             7. Only doctrine in the soul leads to capacity of love which makes Christ the only celebrity of the universal priesthood of the Church Age.

             8. The celebrityship of Jesus Christ is only possible through the consistent inhale of Bible doctrine through the function of GAP. This must inevitably lead, if it is consistent, to the supergrace life which is analogous to the land of Canaan.

              9. Reversionism has rejected doctrine, therefore reversionists have no capacity for grace, no appreciation of divine provision and faithfulness. This same concept is covered in 1 Corinthians 10:1-12.

 

             So in principle we have this: Reversionism cannot occupy the land in the day of the Exodus generation because they have no capacity in their souls to appreciate the land. The land was a land of prosperity under an agricultural economy — “a land flowing with milk and honey”, an idiom for prosperity. You have to have capacity for prosperity. The Exodus generation had no soul capacity. And what is the analogy and why is this recorded in the Word today? Because believers have no capacity for their priesthood. Capacity comes from Bible doctrine in the soul and if the soul is shrivelled up in neglect and rejection of doctrine, and you are in reversionism, then you have no capacity for the thing that God has given you. Bible doctrine is the only way that you will ever have compatibility with your priesthood.

             Verse 10 — the divine reaction. “Wherefore” — the inferential conjunction dio, a compound which comes from dia plus the relative pronoun o(j. It should be translated, “For this reason,” or “Because of which.” “Because of which reversionism.”

             “I was grieved” — aorist active indicative of prosoxqizw. The word means to be angry to the point of being provoked, to be disgusted to the point of provocation. It is an anthropopathism for divine displeasure. In other words, God walked another mile and another mile in grace and finally became disgusted. The aorist tense is a culminative aorist. God put up with guff for a long time before He disciplined. That’s grace. But grace doesn’t mean that it is always going to be the same. There comes a time when provocation has arrived. “Because of which reversionism I was disgusted to the point of provocation with that generation.”

             “that generation” — dative of indirect object and disadvantage.

 

             1. Reversionism was the spiritual malady of the Exodus generation.

             2. Liberated by God’s grace from slavery they failed to appreciate grace provision because they were negative toward doctrine.

             3. Their needs were provided in grace for forty years. Their food was provided, their money was provided, their safety and security was provided.

             4. Not once did they appreciate what God had provided. They had no capacity.

             5. They did not know how to use their freedom, they lacked capacity for freedom.

             6. Therefore in this verse we have the anthropopathism of disgust to express the divine reaction to negative volition.

 

            It should be noted that there were some exceptions: Moses, Moses’ second wife, Caleb, and Joshua are at least four recorded exceptions.

            “and said” — aorist active indicative of legw. This legw is a gnomic aorist for stating an absolute.

            “They do always err” — the word “err” means to wander. It is the verb planaw. This means to wander, to go astray, to be deceived to be seduced in the passive voice. They were seduced away from doctrine, they were deceived in their souls by reversionism, and it all came about because they wandered from doctrine — negative volition toward Bible doctrine. The present tense is linear aktionsart for the function of reverse process reversionism. Negative volition toward doctrine causes all of these things. The passive voice: they received these things as a result of negative volition toward doctrine. The indicative mood is the reality of reversionism in their souls. They were deluded, deceived and seduced.

           “in the heart” — the heart refers to the right lobe, the real you: frame of reference, memory centre, vocabulary, categories, norms and standards, and the launching pad. That is where they were deceived, the mentality of the soul.

         “they have not known my ways” — aorist active indicative of the verb gnwrizw which means to know because of doctrinal instruction in this passage. This is a culminative aorist. They have been deluded over a period of time. It is possible to be saved and to be saved for a long time and not understand how God operates. The negative here is very strong. The active voice means that the individual in reversionism produces the action. The accusative plural of o(doj refers to what God is like. There is the source. The accusative plural indicates that God has many ways of blessing you. Many facets of God’s grace exist. The word “way,” o(doj, originally meant a road or a course of action, but it also means a system of doctrine which explains the road or the highway or the course of action. It was used for teaching in the most comprehensive sense of the word. It was also used for doctrines as a specific system, whether it was in philosophy or whether in the truth. Here it refers to Bible doctrine. “They have not learned my ways through a system of doctrine” .

               Translation: “Because of which reversionism I was disgusted with that generation, and said, They are always being deluded in the right lobe; and they have not learned my ways [systems of doctrine].”

 

              Summary

              1. The divine indictment of believers in phase two is always related to their ignorance of Bible doctrine from which all evils of phase two originate. When you fail to relate the source of grace with the benefits of grace, you’ve had it. Doctrine in the soul is the missing link.

             2. The indictment does not stress the works or production, as is the modern tendency of apostasy, but the ignorance of doctrine.

             3. Because of this, believers of any generation are under perpetual divine discipline terminating with the sin unto death.

             4. This anticipates the next verse.

             5. Remember, the land of Canaan is not a picture of heaven. The land of Canaan is analogous to the supergrace life with its capacities — capacity for freedom, capacity for life, capacity for love, capacity for happiness, capacity for grace.

              6. The Exodus generation was in reversionism, therefore they did not enter into the supergrace life or its capacities.

              7. Reversionism has no capacity, therefore reversionism cannot occupy the land.

 

              Verse 11 — “So” is a comparative particle indicating the manner in which something proceeds — w(j, and adverb which is often used as a conjunction. W(j is actually a correlative adverb and should be translated here “In keeping with the facts just enucleated.”

             “I sware” — aorist active indicative of o)mnumi which means to make a solemn oath, the most serious, the most solemn oath that one can make. The aorist tense is a gnomic aorist. This is an absolute fact. That generation would not enter the land. The active voice: God produces the action of making a solemn oath. The indicative mood is the reality of God’s solemn oath of discipline to reversionistic believers of the Exodus generation, to reversionistic believers of any generation.

              “in my wrath” — e)n plus the locative of o)rgh. O)rgh is used for indignation. It is used here as an anthropopathism to express in human language the basis of God’s discipline.

               O)mnumi always has an elliptical oath, and we have now the elliptical oath. The elliptical oath is a Greek idiom in which the one who takes the oath takes it in his own name. Literally then, we should have first, “I am not God if.” This is the solemn oath. God is taking the oath and He is saying “I am not God if.”

               “if” introduces a first class condition and the protasis of the solemn oath — “they shall enter, future active indicative of e)iserxomai, which means to enter into something so as to take full possession of it. The analogy is to enter into supergrace with all of the capacities. And of course they failed because of reversionism.

               “my rest” — this is the preposition e)ij plus the accusative singular of katapausij. Katapausisj is a very interesting word for rest, it means a state of complete settled rest, a state of inner and complete happiness and tranquillity. It is used here for Canaan which is a type of the believer in the supergrace life.

                           Translation; “In keeping with the facts, I promise with a solemn oath in my disgust, My name is not God if they shall enter into my rest.”

              This same discipline of keeping the Exodus generation out of the land is expressed in Jude 5 and in 1 Corinthians 10:5.

 

            The doctrine of rest or Sabbaths

            1. Salvation is described in terms of rest — Matthew 11:28, the rest of eternal life.

            2. The land of Canaan is a type of the supergrace life and in this context supergrace is manifest by faith-rest. The rest of Canaan in Hebrews 3:11 is the supergrace life characterised by maximum use of faith-rest with doctrine.

            3. We have a third kind of rest, the Sabbath rest of Genesis 2:2,3. The Hebrew verb for this Sabbath rest is shabath, which means to rest, to relax, to have tranquillity. On the seventh day of the earth’s restoration we have everything provided for man and God rested. God rested in the sense that there was absolutely nothing else to be provided for man, rest in the sense of the total provision of grace. That is the concept of the Sabbath rest of God in Genesis 2:2,3 — it is a memorial to the grace of God. Under grace God always provides everything.

            4. The fourth Sabbath is the Sabbath of Israel — Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15. This was every Saturday. It came around once a week and it was the last day of the week. The Jews were permitted to work for six days but on the seventh day they had to stop all work. The very change of pace was not only beneficial to them physically and even mentally but it had ultimate benefit in the spiritual realm because it was a reminder of grace. The fact that they had to stop work at the end of every week was a reminder that they could do nothing for salvation, they could do nothing for blessing. It is the provision of God.

            5. The Sabbatical year of Israel. This was the big test of supergrace — Exodus 23:10,11; Leviticus 25:3,4; 26:33-37. Every seven years the Jews were supposed to stop work, and if they had been functioning properly under supergrace then this was really a year’s vacation, they didn’t have to work. They lived without work and without it being detrimental to them. This was a great test of whether they had entered into supergrace or not. They had to depend for one year on God’s provision. The failure of the Jews to observe the Sabbatical year was the basis for determining how long they would stay out under the fifth cycle of discipline. From the Exodus down to the first administration of the fifth cycle of discipline to the southern kingdom was 490 years. In that time they had not observed one Sabbatical year. In 490 years they had accumulated seven Sabbatical years, so God in His great sense of humour said to them in 586 BC, “You missed your Sabbatical years, I’ll give them all to you now in slavery.” That is why the first administration of the fifth cycle of discipline was seventy years. This is all taught in the sequence of verses in 2 Chronicles 36:20,21 cf. Daniel 9:2; Jeremiah 25:11,12; 29:10.

            6. There is a moment-by-moment Sabbath for the Church Age. In the Church Age we do not have a Saturday Sabbath. That didn’t work too well, the Jews didn’t learn anything from it. So in the Church Age, since every believer is a priest, God beefed it up. He gave us a moment-by-moment Sabbath, the faith-rest technique. This is also a principle by which the believer enters into the supergrace life. So the moment-by-moment Sabbath or the faith-rest technique is the growing stage, and then the annual Sabbath (taking a Sabbatical year) is supergrace.

            7. Illustrations of the moment-by-moment Sabbath or the dynamics of faith-rest. a) Abraham in Romans 4:17-21; b) Moses at the Red Sea — Exodus 14:10-14; c) The bones of Joseph in Hebrews 11:22; d) Caleb and the giants — Numbers 13 and 14 cf. Joshua 14:6-14; 15:14; Judges 1:20.

 

            So it is inevitable that the daily function of GAP, the daily function of the faith-rest, will eventuate in the supergrace life which is your spiritual Sabbatical year.

            Verse 12 — the warning against reversionism. “Take heed” — present active imperative of blepw. Blepw means to look. “Look out” or “Beware” here. The present tense means be constantly alert. Active voice:  every believer is a priest and therefore has the basis for alertness. The imperative mood is a command to alertness, a command based upon Bible doctrine in the right lobe. The daily function of GAP is the basis for alertness.

            “brethren” — a)delfoj refers to members of the family of God; “lest” — the Greek introduces here a negative purpose clause mhpote plus e)imi — “that there not be.”

            “in any of you” — e)n plus the locative of an indefinite relative pronoun, tij — “inside anyone of you.”Here is the warning. The Exodus generation is the illustration. This was a warning first given by interpretation to the Jewish believers of Jerusalem in 67 AD, three years before their nation went down. Now it comes to us. Therefore we as believers ought to become alert, become aware of the importance of what is important, namely Bible doctrine.

            “an evil heart” — the word “evil” here, ponhroj, means malignant, evil, or worthless. What is an evil heart? It is a heart minus doctrine, it is the heart of a believer in reversionism, the heart being the right lobe.

            “of unbelief” — unbelief here is the ablative of means, a very strong noun, a)pistia. It is, however, not the ablative of source but the ablative of means. Therefore it becomes a very unusual expression. As the ablative of means the source and the origin of unbelief, or the breakdown of faith-rest, is emphasised. And reversionism is the source of unbelief. Reversionism is characterised by a breakdown of the faith-rest technique — Colossians 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:7; Hebrews 11:6. This is not a rejection of Christ as saviour here. It is tantamount to a rejection of Bible doctrine leading to reversionism. It is the failure of the believer under reversionism to claim either promises or doctrine. Hence, reversionism is further described as withdrawal from God, revolt against God, on the part of the believer. God’s promise was the land of Canaan, analogous to the supergrace life, and the Exodus generation is in reversionism and could not claim either the promise or the doctrines as they went along, therefore they were incapable of entering the land. They had no capacity.

            “in departing” — the preposition e)n plus the instrumental case of an aorist active participle a)fisthmi, and it should be translated “by revolting.” We have the instrumental case here and it should be “by revolting against the living God.” Reversionism is a revolt against God on the part of the believer.

            “from the living God” — the word “living” is the present active participle of zaw — “always living God” .Just as reversionism kept the Exodus generation out of the land of Canaan, so reversionism keeps the believer from erecting the ECS and entering into the supergrace life. Just as reversionism put the Exodus generation under the sin unto death, so today the believer is placed under the sin unto death by reversionism.

             “always living God.” We do not have the definite article, its absence calls attention to the character of God. The “always living God” means that He is still waiting around to bless you. God wants to give you great things.

        Verse 13 — “But” is an adversative conjunction. It sets up a contrast between the reversionistic believer in revolt with a malignant right lobe and the progressing believer through the daily function of GAP. Remember verse 12 — “Beware, members of the family of God, that there not be in any one of you a malignant heart of unbelief, by revolting from the always living God.” There are two principles involved at the end of verse 12. One is revolt and the other is a form of revolt — spiritual revolt called reversionism.

 

             The doctrine of revolution

              1. The Word of God does not justify revolution — Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13,14; Numbers 16.

              2. In the Biblical sense of the word revolution involves lawless mobs which can neither think nor achieve anything compatible with the laws of divine establishment.

              3. Revolution means both apostasy and lack of Bible doctrine — Isaiah 1:3-5; 59:13. In this sense reversionism is an apostasy and revolution.

              4. The Bible teaches that revolution is anti-God — Isaiah 31:6.

              5. Revolution is caused by failure of the right lobe which the Bible calls the heart — Jeremiah 5:23. Revolution is always involved in the soul and in the soul’s right lobe before it becomes an overt system of violence for overthrowing the establishment. Therefore revolution is involved with emotional revolt of the soul as well as reversionism.

              6. Jealousy is a motivator in revolution — Isaiah 11:13 cf 1 Kings 12:19; 2 Chronicles 10:19.

              7. The communication of doctrine is designed to stop revolution — Ezekiel 2:3-10. However, that doctrine must be communicated on a basis of the principle of the local church today, a basis where there is freedom to accept or reject the doctrine. Rejection of doctrine always leads to some form of revolution. In the history of the human race wherever people have gone reversionistic revolution and violence is the order of the day.

              8. Heathenism is the result of revolution — Romans 1:19-26. The result of such revolution is human degeneration — Romans 1:27-32.

              9. The principle of revolution is found in the soul. Approbation and power lust seek to gain power by the destruction of freedom, rights, privacy and property of others. Therefore, revolution is a Satanic device in the angelic conflict to establish his cosmic kingdom and to superimpose his will over mankind.

             10. Reversionism causes revolution. Supergrace is the antidote — Hebrews 3:8,9.

 

             The doctrine of reversionism (Review)

              1. Reversionism must be defined. It is a believer who starts out properly in the Christian life, taking in Bible doctrine and advancing. He constructs an ECS and then moves into the supergrace life. Somewhere along the line, if he goes negative toward Bible doctrine, he begins to retrogress. First of all, there is scar tissue on the left bank of the soul, scar tissue on the right bank of the soul, emotional revolt, the blackout of the soul, the practice of reverse process reversionism. Remember, a reversionist is a person who loses what he has. He is not the same as a spiritual moron who never took in doctrine. So by definition reversionism where the believer is concerned refers to a believer who constructed partially or completely an ECS and then went negative toward doctrine and then into apostasy. For the unbeliever we have a different situation. He is a person who followed the laws of establishment, but he goes from that down to reversionism. So the unbeliever can also enter into reversionism. The result is a reversionistic nation. No nation is ever destroyed under the fifth cycle of discipline without first of all passing through one generation at least of reversionism.

             2. The mechanics of reversionism. The principle: 1 Corinthians 10:12. The concept of mechanics: Romans 6:16-23. The believer goes negative toward doctrine; the unbeliever goes negative toward the laws of establishment.

             3. The illustrations of reversionism. The Exodus generation — Psalm 77; Exodus 17:3. The generation of Jeremiah — Jeremiah chapters 42-44. In the area of the Church Age one or two stand out. The Corinthian church — 1 Corinthians chapters 10 and 11. Also the church of Laodicea — Revelation chapter 3.

             4. The principle of reversionism is found in Galatians 5:4, which does not say falling from grace as such but literally translated says, “You reversionists have become null and void, useless, powerless, unprofitable, non-productive, from the ultimate source of the Christ. Whosoever are being vindicated by means of the law, you have drifted off course from grace.” To drift off course from grace describes the principle of reversionism.

            5. In reversionism the believer uses mental attitude sins to perpetuate his apostasy — Hebrews 12:15.

            6. There are certain Biblical descriptions of reversionism in the Bible.

            a) Galatians 5:4 — drifting off course from grace.

            b) No one failing from the ultimate source of the grace of God — Hebrews 12:15.

            c) Uncircumcised of heart — Jeremiah 9:25, 26.

            d) The tortured soul — 2 Peter 2:7,8.

            e) The unstable soul of 2 Peter 2:14.

            f) The lukewarm believer of Revelation 3:15,16.

            g) The enemy of the cross — Philippians 3:18.

            h) Leaving your first love — Revelation 2:4

             i) Fallen — Revelation 2:5.

             7. Recipients of Hebrews involved in reversionism are described in Hebrews 5:11-14.

             8. Reversion recovery is impossible apart from the daily function of GAP in the field of basic doctrine — Hebrews 6:1-3; Revelation 3:19,20.

           9. Reversion recovery is impossible so long as one continues to practice the things that make them negative to doctrine — Hebrews 6:4-6; 2 Corinthians 12:20,21.

            10. Reversionism produces national disintegration — Romans 1:29-32.

            11. Reversionism intensifies suffering — Psalm 77.

            12. We have a principle under the practice of reversionism called reverse process reversionism. This is the abnormal practice of reversionism. Normally a believer under category #1 love loves Jesus Christ but he accepts an inconsequential person or an idol as a substitute — like in the days of Jeremiah, Baal was the substitute. We have some illustrations of this: Jeremiah 8:9-20; Revelation 3:14-21; 2:4,5, 14,15. In category #3, friendship: You have true friends and false friends. Under reversionism you are going to run with your false friends.

            13. Reversionism leads to psychosis — 2 Peter 2:15-19. In reversionism and the practice of reverse process reversionism, first of all the believer becomes psychopathic, and then he becomes neurotic or psychotic. Most believers lose their common sense, discernment and their sense of humour. This is illustrated by Baalim in 2 Peter 2:15-18.

            14. There are categories of reversionism.

            a) Phallic reversionism — 2 Corinthians 12:21; Ephesians 4:19; 5:5; Colossians 3:5; Revelation 2:14, 20-23.

            b) Ritual reversionism. This is a legalistic type — Hebrews 5:11ff.

            c) Monetary reversionism — James 4:13,14; 5:1-6; Revelation 3:14-20.

            d) Drug addiction type of reversionism — Galatians 5:20 (farmakeia — drug addiction).

            e) Antiestablishment reversionism — Romans 1. This destroys a nation.

             f) Mental attitude reversionism — James 4. They include jealousy, hatred and bitterness.

             g) Verbal reversionism — James 5:9,12.

             h) Mental illness reversionism which results from many of these things.

             15. Reversionism destroys supergrace living. Just as reversionism kept the Exodus generation out of the land of Canaan, so reversionism keeps the believer from the ECS, the supergrace life, and all the happiness involved. 

 

             Verse 13 — the prevention of reversionism. Notice again, we have the adversative “But.” That sets up a contrast between the reversionistic believer in revolt and the believer who functions daily under GAP.

            “But exhort” — present active imperative of parakalew — “But keep on encouraging.” The present tense is an iterative present. The iterative present is designed to take in doctrine on a consistent daily basis, but don’t take it in every second of every day. Parakalew is a flavour-type verb, it means to encourage here, it means to encourage with flavour. You encourage people to eat by flavouring it up. The active voice: the believer produces the action. The imperative mood: this is a command to encourage one another to GAP it on a consistent basis.

             “one another” is the accusative plural from the reflexive pronoun h( a)utou. In the plural it becomes a reciprocal pronoun and that is the use of it here. This means it should be translated “each other.” But with this imperative it means “Keep on encouraging self and others.”

               The next word gives us the frequency with which we should feed upon the Word. “Daily” is what we have in the English but that isn’t what is in the Greek. We have a preposition, kata, plus the accusative of e)kastoj, plus the accusative of h(mera which means a twenty-four-hour day. It means here “on each successive day” .

               “while” is an adverb of place or time, a)xri, which means “as long as” .In other words, as long as you have a day you have some time during that day when you can take in Bible doctrine — “it is called” — present passive indicative of kalew. The present tense is iterative. The passive voice: the subject receives one day at a time. The indicative mood: the reality of receiving from God by grace one day at a time.

               “To day” — literally, “This day.”

 

            Summary

                1. The emphasis of the adverb is that each day is a gift from God to the believer priest. God measures your life in days after salvation. You measure your life in years; God gives you one day at a time. Why? Because the emphasis changes. Once you accept Christ as saviour it is one day at a time and it is very difficult to switch your thinking. Bible doctrine must come in and help. You must switch from thinking in terms of anniversaries, in terms of birthdays, in terms of certain special days out of each year, and you must think in terms of every day is now a special day. “Keep on encouraging self and others on each successive day as long as, in whatever day you are located it is called This day.” That’s what it means.

                2. The believer should take advantage of every day to take in doctrine on as much of a crash program as possible.

                3. Opportunities to take in doctrine are not always available. Therefore, use each day to GAP it to the point of the ECS and supergrace.

                4. Therefore, it should be translated “as long as, in whatever place you are located, it is called This day.”

                5. The principle of GAPing it daily is both preventative of reversionism and progressive to supergrace.

 

            The doctrine of one day at a time

                1. The believer with an ECS and the supergrace life regards every day as unto the Lord — Romans 14:5,6

                2. Only the believer has the grace provision to redeem time — Ephesians 5:15-18. The capital for the purchase of time is called “greater grace” — James 4:6. This refers to the supergrace life. God the Holy Spirit provides the basis for supergrace through His gracious teaching ministry of doctrine in the function of GAP — John 14:26; 16:12-14; 1 Corinthians 2:9-16; 1 John 2:27.

                3. Every day we live as a believer in phase two is a gracious gift from God. The only time we possess to honour God is the number of days in phase two — all provided by grace — Psalm 90:12; James 4:13-15.

                4. The fact that the believer lives another day on the earth is a sign of divine grace and faithfulness — Lamentations 3:22,23.

                5. God has provided soul capital in the form of Bible doctrine to make each day count for His glory — James 1:21. The “engrafted word” is Bible doctrine in the soul of the believer through the daily function of GAP. So therefore the importance of acquiring doctrine on a daily basis — Jeremiah 15:16; Matthew 4:4.

                6. Every day is a special day in phase two — John 11:9,10.

                7. Each day in phase two the believer must avoid mental attitude sins which produce self-induced misery. Why? This is the worst category of the three categories of sin — Proverbs 27:1. Furthermore, mental attitude sins are motivators for all other kinds of sins. So every day you must have a relaxed mental attitude — 1 John 2:9-11.

                8. Since there is no suffering in phase three — Revelation 21:4 — God can only demonstrate His grace provision for you now, in time. And it is one of God’s objectives in the days you have left on this earth to show you something of great prosperity, to show you something of His provision in adversity, so that no matter what your circumstances may be at any time you can have great happiness through it all — 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Psalm 102:1-3.

              Verse 13 — “Keep on encouraging self and others on each successive day, as long as in whatever place you are located it is called This day...”

              The rest of this verse is made up of a negative purpose clause which emphasises the use of GAP in a preventative connotation. The daily function of GAP not only moves the believer priest into supergrace by way of the ECS but prevents the believer from falling into the malignancy of reversionism or the reversionistic revolt against God. Verse 12 gave us the reversionistic revolt against God.

             The word “lest” introduces a negative purpose clause, i(na plus mh plus the subjunctive in the verb for a negative purpose clause — “any of you.” The word tij plus e)k plus the pronoun su — “anyone from among you.” Then we have the verb in the aorist passive subjunctive, “be hardened” — sklhrunq, which means to be hardened. Here is means to become hardened. The aorist tense is a constative aorist. This gathers into one ball of wax every act of negative volition toward doctrine. The constative aorist takes in negative volition today, tomorrow, the next, the next, and so on. And when one is negative like that this is what happens: negative volition toward doctrine, scar tissue in the left bank of the soul, the accumulation of scar tissue opens up the mataiothj and through this vacuum comes Satanic doctrine into the heart or the right lobe of the believer’s soul. It comes into his frame of reference, clutters up his memory centre, enters into his vocabulary, works into his categories and destroys categorical teaching, changes his norms and standards to comply with Satan’s cosmic system, puts human viewpoint up on the launching pad which causes him to make a frantic search for happiness, putting scar tissue on the right bank of the soul. It leads to emotional revolt of the soul, the practice of reversionism and reverse process reversionism, and therefore it is destructive to the believer.

             Sklhrunw means scar tissue. The constative aorist looks at the fact that every time you say no to Bible doctrine, every time you reject an opportunity to take in the Word of God, you in effect have hardened your right lobe. The passive voice: the result of scar tissue is received from negative volition toward doctrine or the daily neglect of doctrine in the part of the believer priest. The subjunctive mood indicates the purpose clause, and with a negative it means a negative purpose clause. The purpose is “that you not become hardened.”

             The word “deceitful” is the instrumental of a)path, and it doesn’t mean deceitful, it means “delusion.” This is the same concept as “strong delusion” in 2 Thessalonians 2:11. It is a reference to reversionism. Delusion of the old sin nature is a part of reversionism, and under this delusion the Exodus generation can only be disciplined to the point of the sin unto death. The have no supergrace capacities to enter and enjoy the land. Hence, the function of the old sin nature under reversionism has deluded them and they will die in the desert over a period of forty years. Saul reigned for forty years, most of it in reversionism. The Exodus generation were free from slavery forty years, most of them in reversionism. Reversionism has no capacity to enjoy freedom.

              Translation: “But keep on encouraging self and others on each successive day, as long as long as in whatever place you are located it is called This day; that not one from among you become hardened by the delusion from the sins.”

              Verse 14 — a statement of our supergrace partnership with God. The first word is a particle, “For” — the particle gar is a conjunction. It is used to express cause, inference, continuation or explanation. Here is the explanatory use of this particle. It is designed to relate the daily function of GAP in the previous verse with the objective of phase two: partnership with God in the supergrace life. We fulfil our priesthood, our ambassadorship and our partnership only as supergrace believers.

              “For we are made” — perfect active indicative of ginomai, should be translated “we have become”; “partakers” — the nominative plural of metoxoj, which means sharers or associates or partners — “of Christ” is the genitive singular plus the definite article. It is a genitive of relationship and also a genitive of possession. The possessionship of Christ is based upon eternal relationship with Christ. This should be translated, “For we have become partners of the Christ” .

              “if” — e)aonper. This is a rather unusual compound particle. It is composed of the conjunction, e)an, which introduces a third class condition, plus the particle per. Per is an enclitic particle and it gives the concept of supposing. So we have “if supposing.”

 

              We will summarise what is coming with this compound particle:

              1. E)anper plus the subjunctive introduces a third class condition. The third class condition relates to the believer’s volition toward Bible doctrine and the supergrace life.

              2. In other words, the effectiveness of our partnership with Christ depends on our entrance into the supergrace life.

              3. While the believer is appointed a priest at the cross he does not function effectively as a priest and a partner with Christ apart from the possession of the ECS and the entrance into the supergrace life. Notice that “partnership” [metoxoj] is used for this reason: it is a synonym for the priesthood of the believer. Christ is the high priest; we are a kingdom of priests. Whenever this passage is talking about partnership it is talking about the priesthood.

              4. Also implied. Reversionism destroys the function of both partnership and priesthood.

              5. The third class condition, e)anper, indicates that the believer’s attitude toward doctrine will determine his status — whether he is a supergrace believer or a reversionist.

              6. In supergrace the believer will recognise Christ as the only celebrity as a part of his category #1 love response.

              7. By way of contrast, in reversionism the believer will have a total breakdown of the faith-rest technique like the Exodus generation.

              8. The believer in reversionism will also end up like the Exodus reversionists, outside the land under the sin unto death.

              9. Canaan, therefore, is a type of the supergrace life.

              10. The Exodus generation was kept out of Canaan because of their reversionism. The believer is kept out of supergrace by reversionism.

              11. The manifestation of their reversionism was the malfunction of the faith-rest technique. Therefore the faith-rest principle comes into focus as proof of reversionism or proof of supergrace.

              12. Therefore the effective function of faith-rest, depending on Bible doctrine and the ECS becomes a demonstration of a supergrace life.

              13. Maximum use of faith-rest is exploited in supergrace, claiming both promises and doctrines. Therefore, the third class condition sets up the alternatives which every believer must face: supergrace versus reversionism.

           

             “we hold” — the aorist active subjunctive of katexw. E)xw means to have or to hold; kata means norm or standard — “if we retain and secure.” This means to retain and secure possession of something, to retain and hold fast mentally. It refers to Bible doctrine in the soul through the function of GAP.

              “the beginning of our confidence” — the accusative singular of a)rxh plus the definite article. With the definite article it refers to a definite beginning. “The beginning” has to do with the daily function of GAP by which the believer starts to grow. That is the beginning of “our confidence” — genitive singular of u(postasij. U(postasij means essence, real being, confidence, assurance, steadfastness. The “beginning of our essence” refers to the beginning of the essence of the priest. The believer only is a priest, therefore the believer has the essence of the priesthood. What is it? Positive volition toward doctrine. He takes doctrine into his left lobe, called the mind. Positive volition cycles it into the human spirit as e)pignwsij. The e)pignwsij is cycled into the right lobe or the heart, into the frame of reference. The memory centre then scatters it and puts it into your vocabulary, develops categories, norms and standards, and puts it on the launching pad. At the same time this doctrine becomes the basis for constructing the ECS. When the ECS is completed you have +H or the sharing of God’s happiness. This leads to the supergrace life which is more +H — all of the capacities, including the function of the priesthood and the capacity for partnership with Jesus Christ are all involved in the supergrace life. So there must be the securing of Bible doctrine in the soul for these things to exist. The reality or the essence of the believer priest is the doctrinal structure of the soul.

             “steadfast” — accusative feminine singular noun, bebaioj, which means stabilised. This is a reference to the continuation of GAP and the construction of the ECS plus the entrance into the supergrace life. Stability comes to the believer upon entrance into supergrace. Then great danger to the believer is the neglect of doctrine after a partial completion of the ECS.

              “unto the end” — this is an adverbial preposition, mexri, plus the genitive singular of teloj. This means stabilised by supergrace “until the end”, the end of your life on this earth.

             Translation:  “For we have become partners [associate priests] of the Christ, if indeed we retain and secure the beginning of our essence [the daily function of GAP to supergrace], stabilised [by supergrace ] until the end [of phase two].”

              Verse 15 — the rejection of the supergrace partnership is reiterated. The first word is “While” but in the Greek it is a prepositional phrase — e)n plus the locative case of the definite article, which is translated “So long as it is.” Then we have an infinitive which is the object of the preposition. It is a present passive infinitive used as an idiom. This idiom is used as a temporal clause which quotes again Psalm 95:8 in order to apply the reversionistic failure of the Exodus generation to the Jewish believers living in Jerusalem in 67 AD, and in order to make the same application to us who are alive in this 20th century. “So long as” means as long as these things continue there will be a gradual and a continual destruction of the national entity.

               “it is said” — this is the object of the preposition. The preposition e)n has as its object the verb mistranslated “it is said.” But we have a present passive infinitive of legw, it is a part of a temporal prepositional phrase. This is an idiom. The present tense is the retroactive use of the progressive present. It is used to apply something in the past to the present. Something in the past is the failure of the Exodus generation, the failure of the generation of Jews in 67 AD who would be destroyed by the Roman legions in 70 AD. The passive voice is used for the second time to quote Psalm 95:8. The infinitive is part of the idiom and is the object of the preposition. “So long as it is being said” is a better translation.

              Then we have the word “today”, an adverb, shmeron. Shmeron begins the quotation. The adverb connotes a continuous day pertinent to every generation of believers. The adverb is used because believers live one day at a time. This also has the concept of generations of believers. The Exodus generation is the generation being observed in the quotation. David made the application in Psalm 95:8. Then in the first century AD a generation of Jews, believers, and after the second generation of believers in Jerusalem reversionism was so rampant that they destroyed themselves.

              “if” — a Greek conjunctive particle e)an plus the subjunctive which introduces a third class condition. It emphasises the believer’s volition related to the teaching of Bible doctrine. The third class condition means maybe yes, maybe no. It all depends upon your volition, your understanding of the situation.

              “ye will hear” — aorist active subjunctive from the verb a)kouw. A)kouw means self-discipline and concentration in the daily function of GAP. Every believer after salvation faces the same issue. His attitude toward Bible doctrine determines which fork in the road he will take. Bible doctrine makes the difference. If he is positive toward doctrine he is going to take the supergrace road. If he is positive toward the Word of God he will grow into supergrace. That is the place of great blessing, the place of prosperity, the solution to our national problems. But if he is negative toward doctrine, then he is going to enter into reversionism. As goes the reversionist, so goes the nation. That was true of the kingdom of Judah is 67 AD, that was true of the Exodus generation, that was an issue that David faced when he wrote Psalm 95, that is an issue in every generation of people. What think ye of doctrine?

              Jesus Christ is the issue at salvation but Jesus Christ never becomes an issue to the believer apart from Bible doctrine. You can’t understand Jesus Christ, you can’t love Jesus Christ, you can’t respond to His love, you can’t appreciate His love, you can’t recognise the celebrityship of Jesus Christ, until you have started to take in enough doctrine to know what it is all about. So the reversionist always winds up under the sin unto death. The supergrace believer always winds up in a place of great blessing in the capacities for life. He has capacity for every aspect of life.

              “his voice” — the objective genitive of fwnh. It refers to Bible doctrine. Bible doctrine is the source of all blessing for the believer. This is the voice of Jesus Christ. This is the way Jesus Christ makes love to the believer.

              “harden not your hearts” — this is where reversionism begins. We have the present active subjunctive of sklhrunw. Sklhrunw is a technical word. How do you harden your heart. It is a present tense again; it means it is a process, not linear aktionsart. The active voice means at certain times you harden your hearts toward doctrine. The subjunctive mood says this is potential. The subjunctive plus the negative indicates this is going on at the time the writer of Hebrews sent this message to the believers of Jerusalem in 67 AD. The same thing was happening to them that started to happen in David’s day. However, in David’s day they overcame this thing and supergrace saved the day. But in the day in which this was being sent to the Jews they did not repent, they did not get back on Bible doctrine, and the result was the destruction of the nation.

              Mechanically, how do you harden your heart? This says, “Harden not your hearts.” We have the accusative plural here of kardia. This is addressed to a lot of believers, it is in the plural. The heart is the right lobe of the soul. The heart has a frame of reference with a memory centre, a vocabulary, categories, norms and standards, and a launching pad. This is the right lobe, this is where you live. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” The left lobe is the processing point. Doctrine comes in here and goes into the human spirit from where it is transferred to the right lobe where it is used to erect the edification complex of the soul, and the believer enters into supergrace with capacity for freedom, for life, for love, for happiness, for adversity, occupation with the person of Christ, recognition of the celebrityship of Christ, love of Jesus Christ, and so on. This is the place of great happiness and blessing, this is where God feels free to pour out all of His blessings upon the individual. Hardening the heart means to shut it down. The way it is done is negative volition toward doctrine. Hardening of the heart begins with scar tissue on the left bank of the soul. This opens up a vacuum line which attacks the right lobe. Satanic doctrine, doctrine of demons, comes through this vacuum and attacks the frame of reference, attacks the memory centre, attacks vocabulary, categories, norms and standards, and it attacks doctrine on the launching pad. Then there is emotional revolt of the soul which shuts down the valves, and all of the valves fail to function and there is no feeding of doctrine from one part of the right lobe to the other when emotional revolt occurs. The heart is hardened by negative volition toward doctrine, by emotional revolt of the soul which shuts down all of the function of the right lobe. Therefore “harden not your hearts” is a command to believers. The subjunctive carries the strength of a command but recognises that your volition is involved. The negative indicates that they are doing it at the present time. They are in reversionism, they are practising reverse process reversionism, they have destroyed the ECS.

           

               Summary

               1. The heart refers to the right lobe of the mentality of the soul where in the function of GAP doctrine becomes part of the believer’s life. Doctrine functions in the right lobe and this becomes the believer’s life.

               2. The first objective of GAP is to get doctrine into the right lobe’s frame of reference, therefore moving it into the conscience, the vocabulary, the category compartment, and on to the launching pad.

               3. The next objective is the erection of the ECS and entrance into supergrace.

               4. The hardening of the heart hinders this, for the hardening of the heart is the description of reversionism with reference to the stages by which the individual goes from negative volition all of the way to reverse process reversionism.

               5. Such reversionism is accompanied by malfunction of the faith-rest technique, as at Meribah.

 

               “as in the provocation” — the word “as” is w(j which relates reversionism to the Exodus generation at Meribah. This relates the failure of the Exodus generation of the Meribah to our situation. The words “in the provocation” is a prepositional phrase — e)n plus the locative of parapikrosmoj. Parapikrosmoj means revolution — “as in the reversionistic revolution.” Actually, parapikrosmoj is a translation of Meribah which means revolution, revolt. This is a historical citation to Exodus 17:1-7. It also sets up an analogy: Canaan is a type of supergrace; the wilderness is a type of reversionism. Believers who live in reversionism die in reversionism. Reversionism keeps the believer out of the supergrace life. Reversionism keeps the believer from divine blessing, from the sharing of God’s happiness, from the capacities of life, from occupation with the person of Christ. Therefore reversionism keeps the believer out of the supergrace life.

              Translation: “So long as it is being said [Psalm 95:8], This day if you will hear and concentrate [function in GAP] on his voice [Bible doctrine], do not go on, hardening your hearts as in the reversionistic revolution.”

               David was challenged by the concept that once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and enter the family of God, God has a purpose for your life. This purpose is blessing. God is glorified by blessing the believer. That is the principle. God is not glorified when He has to spank or to discipline. God is glorified and we are blessed when the believer takes the road of positive volition toward Bible doctrine, consistent persistent positive volition. This is the road where when one reaches it the priesthood begins its normal function. The whole subject of the book of Hebrews is that you are appointed a priest at the point of salvation. That means that every believer is in full time Christian service; every believer is a priest. But his priesthood only has a normal function when the supergrace status is reached. The supergrace status is characterised by: 1) Occupation with the person of Jesus Christ; 2) Supergrace capacity — that is the cup in the soul constructed of Bible doctrine; 3) God is glorified in the angelic conflict when the supergrace blessing begins to flow. That is God pouring into the cup.

              In the history of Israel as a nation there are men who hold specific records. Moses is the record-holder for supergrace leadership of all time. It is a very rare thing for a man to be such an outstanding leader when he has a rebellious negative generation of people. Moses led, roughly for forty years, some two-million rebellious type people and yet he is one of the greatest of all. His human genius is not the issue here but the fact that God provided for him through Bible doctrine a cup, and his cup was running over practically all of the time. He is the greatest man in the field of supergrace leadership who ever lived. No one ever had more opposition, no one ever had more problems with people, no one ever had so much static from his own, and yet God kept pouring and pouring and pouring. There are some different supergrace blessings. For example, he finally acquired his right woman which is always paramount in the minds of those who are still in single bliss. But where he holds the record is in the principle of leadership.

             Then there is the period when the Jews reached their peak. This is the period of David. And David also holds a supergrace record but it is a different kind. You would think that because Israel had reached an all-time high that his would be leadership also, but instead God did other things for David. God poured in unusual ways for him and David holds the variety record. For example, David was the wealthiest man if his day and one of the wealthiest men who ever lived. In fact, his son Solomon was the wealthiest man in the world and he merely inherited from his father. We have great wealth and great success. God promoted David more than any person who ever lived. David holds the record for promotion. As God said, “David is a man after my own heart.” He also holds the record in other areas for variety: anything in a materialistic way, anything that has ever been related to success or happiness, David had it, he had more of it than anyone else.

             And then we get down to the end of the monarchy, the nationalism of Israel, and we have another record holder of a most unusual type: Jeremiah. As the fifth cycle of discipline was approaching God used Jeremiah in a very wonderful way. Jeremiah had fantastic message for the approaching of the fifth cycle of discipline or the disintegration of a national entity. During this time you wouldn’t think that God was pouring because Jeremiah lost his right woman. In addition to that he lost all of his friends and just about everything he could lose and still stay alive. This went on for a long, long time. Jeremiah holds a record though. Jeremiah must have been past seventy when God started to pour for him in a special way. Jeremiah is the all-time record holder for happiness and blessing after seventy. He holds the record that proves the principle: If you have a cup, God may not pour right away but when He pours He really pours. After Jeremiah left Egypt and went to Babylon and lived under the final years of Nebuchadnezzar’s great reign he had the greatest happiness, the greatest blessing that could ever come, and he had it all at the end. Jeremiah is a perfect illustration of when you have a cup you live happily ever after, and eventually it came to that. He holds the record for happiness and blessing in old age.

            But there is another record that is also involved from a Jew. The apostle Paul holds the record for doctrine. After Israel is out, as it were, and about to go out again under the fifth cycle of discipline the apostle Paul was the greatest recipient of doctrine in his cup of anyone who has ever lived.

            The interesting thing is that the blessings which came to Moses, the blessings which came to David, the blessings which came to Jeremiah, and the blessings which came to the apostle Paul are all available to the believer priest in the twentieth century right now. All of these blessings are available under supergrace. We have it in the canon of scripture and it is available to anyone. It is possible for these blessings to all be yours. That is why the writer of Hebrews is so frustrated on his subject of the priesthood, and that is why when we get to chapter 5:1-10 he is going to stop because he is dealing with reversionism and not people who are positive. It will be chapter seven, verse one, before he gets back on his subject of the priesthood. In fact, he hasn’t even mentioned the priesthood yet, he has called it partnership. He is still pressing toward his point and will finally make his point in the fifth chapter and then he will sever off from his point because we have a problem: you can go the road to supergrace or you can go the road to reversionism. The road to supergrace is the road of great blessing; the road to reversionism is the road of cursing. All of the believers who get on the road to reversionism are going to see the love of God. The love of God is expressed in a beautiful way to the supergrace believer: “We love him because he first loved us.” But the love of God is expressed to the reversionist in a different way: “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and he skins alive with a whip every son whom he receives.” There are three areas of divine discipline. There is self-induced misery on this road and there is also divine discipline. The first area of divine discipline is the warning or the knocking [on the door] stage. The second area is the intensive stage. The third area is the dying stage. Inevitably, those who stay on the road to reversionism, like king Saul, die the sin unto death. On the road to supergrace you reap what God sows, on the road to reversionism you reap what you sow: divine discipline. The road to supergrace is the road to Romans 8:28 — “to them who love God” .The only believers who love God are those who have enough doctrine in the soul so that they have now reached the fourth floor of the ECS — capacity for love, category #1. This is really where supergrace blessing begin to flow because doctrine comes into the left lobe, by positive volition it is cycled to the human spirit, it picks up a siphon which takes it into the heart or the right lobe, into the frame of reference, into the memory centre. It becomes a part of your vocabulary. You develop categories and classifications. You have new norms and standards and eventually you have doctrine [divine viewpoint] on the launching pad, and that causes to make an application toward the celebrityship of Christ. The celebrityship of Jesus Christ is a combination of maximum doctrine on the launching pad, plus the ECS — 1st floor: grace orientation; 2nd floor: mastery of the details of life; 3rd floor: relaxed mental attitude of a)gaph love; 4th floor: capacity love really begins. There is an application from the right lobe and there is capacity for love coming out of the ECS, and this creates a vacuum that goes all of the way back into eternity past where God has provided two kinds of blessings. Blessings which belong to you on the basis of grace and blessings which belong to you on the basis of supergrace. The blessings that belong to you on the basis of grace do not involve your volition; the blessings that belong to you on the basis of supergrace requite positive volition and GAPing it all of the way to supergrace. This depends upon doctrine in the soul.

             There is one other distinction that should be made. There is a difference between a carnal believer and a reversionistic believer. A reversionistic believer is negative toward doctrine and out of fellowship, a carnal believer is positive toward doctrine and temporarily out of fellowship. The carnal believer uses rebound and gets back in fellowship and keeps GAPing it, but a reversionistic believer is negative toward doctrine, does not rebound and stays perpetually out of fellowship.

             Verse 13 — “But” — a)lla, an adversative conjunction which sets up a contrast between the reversionistic believer with his malignant right lobe in the status of reversionism and the positive believer moving toward supergrace. This is addressed toward those who are positive toward doctrine. And the word “exhort” is not exhort here, it is the present active imperative of parakalew. While parakalew in some passages means to exhort it also means to encourage. The present tense is linear aktionsart. The active voice: the subject, the believer priest, producing the action. The imperative mood is a command.

             “one another” is not quite correct. It is a reciprocal pronoun h( a)utou in the accusative plural and it means self and others.

             “daily” is a prepositional phrase, kata plus the accusative of h(mera. Kata plus the accusative has several translations. H(mera plus the accusative plural means “on each successive day”, and this particular prepositional phrase reminds us that there are certain things that God gives you whether you like it or not. For example, when you were saved God gave you eternal life whether you like it or not.

            “Keep on encouraging self and others on each successive day.” This is a command, an order to every believer priest. How do you do it? No matter what happens in any particular day, not matter what conflicts exist, it is the concept of positive volition toward doctrine. That is the encouragement of self. No matter how bad you feel positive volition toward doctrine in the encouragement of self. The overflow of your grace capacities to others is encouragement to them. The principle is that every believer is going to live one day at a time, and on every day just as you have physical food you need spiritual food.

             The encouraging self and others means first of all to beware that you do not fall into primary negative volition. Primary negative volition says, I’m not going to Bible class, I’m not going any more, to hell with them, etc. This, again, is usually a disillusion reaction, an apathy reaction, a boredom reaction, a discouragement reaction, a self-pity reaction, and so on.

               Once you get to Bible class, however, and you sit down, you have another problem. You have already passed the primary volition test. Next, there is a secondary volition test and that comes when you hear. Your failure to transfer means you are a hearer of the Word and not a doer. You can accumulate a lot of information in the left lobe but it is not useable. To be useful it has to go down to the human spirit from where it is transferred into the right lobe where it is useable and where you become a doer of the Word.

              The writer of Hebrews did a very smart thing. He took the combination of David’s Psalm 95 about the Exodus generation and applied it to the Jews in Jerusalem in 67 AD. The Exodus generation was 1440-1400 BC; Psalm 95, about 1000 BC; the Jewish believers in Jerusalem in 67 AD. By God the Holy Spirit causing this writer to quote Psalm 95 into the Greek, bringing in the Exodus generation, actually makes it possible for a challenge to be set up for us in the 20th century right now with regard to our priesthood. So he pulls the whole thing together for us: “Keep on encouraging self and others on each successive today while it is designated today” .In other words, if you eat every day you also should eat spiritual food every day. “Today” is an adverb, shmeron. Shmeron actually means “This day” .

 

              Principle

              1. God has supplied every believer with X amount of time in phase two. But God has provided this time on the basis of days, so the time in given one day at a time.

             2. Every day is a grace gift from God to the believer priest.

             3. Positive volition is measured each day on the basis of attitude toward Bible doctrine.

             4. Opportunities to take in doctrine are not always available, therefore each day when doctrine is available through teaching that should be regarded by the believer as a GAP day.

             5. The real issue every day is to beware of the malfunction of unbelief in the function of GAP. The malfunction of GAP comes through negative volition.

             6. The objective of GAPing it to supergrace in this context is the normal function of the priesthood. Normality in the function of the priesthood comes with the supergrace life. The supergrace life only comes by the daily or consistent function of GAP. GAP is also the preventative of reversionism; GAP is also the basis of recovery from reversionism.

 

             Next follows a negative purpose clause which emphasises the use of GAP to prevent reversionism. The daily function of GAP not only moves the believer toward his supergrace life, the normal function of the priesthood, but prevents malignancy in his life, the malignancy of reversionism. The negative purpose clause begins with the word “Lest.” We have a conjunction plus the negative — i(na, which ordinarily is used to introduce a purpose clause. With this we have the negative mh. I(na plus mh means “that not”, literally. So, “that not one from among you.” “Any of you” is not quite correct, this is an indefinite pronoun tij. The indefinite pronoun is designed to make this a personal impersonal factor. Personally, you may be involved. You may be one of those who has neglected Bible doctrine. But you are in a group, and being in a group you can take this personally without it becoming a personal issue to the entire congregation. That is the purpose of having an indefinite pronoun in the Greek. This indefinite pronoun tij means not “any” but “anyone”, and it is designed to be impersonal and objective. With it is a prepositional phrase, the preposition e)k plus the ablative plural of su. E)k means out from among and su in the plural means a group — “out from among you all.” In other words, you are in a group. That is what the plural says here. And being in a group, that gives you the only way you can properly and objectively take in Bible teaching. For example, if this was one on one like a pastor-teacher and a sheep (which is forbidden), then you would have to take everything personally. “Among you” means believers assembled together.

             The next phrase, “be hardened” is an aorist passive subjunctive of sklhrunw. Sklhrunw means to become hardened or negative — “that not one from among you begin to become negative.” Why? Because the aorist tense here is an ingressive aorist. In the aorist generally you have what is known as the entirety — the ball of wax. Sometimes the action of the aorist tense is at the beginning. We call that ingressive. Then, the whole ball of wax may be considered. Something is extracted from the ball of wax which is the same, like GAPing it daily. That is what we call constative. Then, the action may be viewed from the results of this ball of wax or at the end, so we call that culminative. So you have ingressive, constative, and culminative aorist. Here we are looking at the beginning of something — “Don’t begin to go negative.” This passage is addressed to believers living in Jerusalem in 67 AD and they have begun to go negative, so it denotes here the entrance into a state or condition., and they are entering into reversionism. And they are entering in the usual way. Something has happened and they are disillusioned, they have become bored, they have become discouraged, they have become overcome with self-pity, they have become frustrated, they are full of bitterness or jealousy. And to one or more of these things they react with a frantic search for happiness. In 67 AD these believers, either through legalism or lasciviousness, have gone into their frantic search for happiness accompanied by emotional revolt and resulting in either apathy, indifference, or antagonism for the Word of God. All of these things, of course, are negative volition toward doctrine. The Word of God, Bible teaching, is neglected. So the aorist tense notices that they are beginning to enter this status.

              The passive voice of our verb: the believer begins to be hardened or begins his negative volition toward doctrine when he reacts. Again, he may react to disillusion, to boredom, discouragement, etc., and his reaction is a frantic search for happiness. The frantic search for happiness upsets the soul with emotional revolt. The inevitable result is negative volition toward doctrine, both primary and secondary, and the believer priest to receive hardness of heart through this activity. The subjunctive mood denotes the purpose clause here, and we now have the fact that the believer is becoming hardened.

             The frantic search for happiness includes self-delusion. No one ever gets into the frantic search for happiness without being involved in self-delusion. And, of course, the frantic search for happiness involves both self-delusion and sin. So self-delusion plus sin characterises frantic search for happiness and this is brought out in our next phrase, “through the deceitfulness of sin.” The word “deceitful” is an instrumental case of the verb a)path, and it means self-delusion. Then we have the word “sin” which is the ablative singular of a(martia, and a(martia means basically to miss the mark. Here a(martia means a frantic search for happiness. The Exodus generation tried a frantic search for happiness in operation golden calf, which also illustrates the self-delusion of sin — but not sin in carnality, sin in reversionism. Remember, there is a difference between a supergrace believer’s sinning and a carnal believer.

             Translation: “Keep on encouraging self and others on each successive day, as long as it is called This day; that not one from among you begin to become negative by delusion from the source of sin.”

             Delusion from the source of sin is the frantic search for happiness.

 

           “On each successive day while it is called today” means don’t wait for tomorrow when it comes to taking in doctrine. You come home at night and you’re tired and warn out, and you sit down and say that you really don’t think you can make Bible class tonight. If I did I wouldn’t get anything, I’m too tired, I’d fall asleep. There is always some way to rationalise. So the phrase, “while it is called today”, is very important. It means don’t let a day go by without taking in some spiritual food.

 

             The pattern of this verse can be summarised under eight points

              1. The believer becomes disillusion, bored, discouraged, overcome by self-pity, frustrated, bitter, jealous. One or more of these factors arise in the life.

              2. The believer reacts to one or more of these conditions and enters into a frantic search for happiness. This function is the self-deception or the self-delusion of sin.

              3. Delusion from sin results in emotional revolt. Emotional revolt further destroys capacity for love and capacity for life.

              4. The combination of frantic search for happiness plus emotional revolt of the soul causes negative volition toward doctrine.

             5. Negative volition, either primary or secondary, causes scar tissue on the soul which opens the vacuum to the right lobe, into which Satanic doctrine is sucked or drawn. The Satanic doctrine leads to demon influence.

             6. The result is called in Ephesians chapter four the blackout of the soul in which the believer has no doctrinal resources for his priesthood to function. Remember that your priesthood functions only on Bible doctrine.

             7. The blackout of the soul is followed by reverse process reversionism.

             8. During this entire process the believer reaps what the believer sows. He reaps self-induced misery, he reaps three stages of divine discipline — warning, intensive, dying.

                We have now arrived in the section of the passage which deals with our partnership with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is imperative that we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ recognise the principle of full time Christian service. In the day of apostasy in which we live a distinction is made between clergy and laymen. This distinction is often based upon erroneous principles and concepts. The distinction does exist in the area of spiritual gifts and does exist in the assembly of the local church. The authority in the local church is vested in the communicator and whenever and under whatever conditions there is a gathering together of believer priests for the teaching of the Word every believer is a student without portfolio. Yet through the fulfilment of this objective every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ reaches the objective God has for him. This objective should begin immediately after salvation. Once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ there are two roads you can take. One road is a road of progress that leads to the supergrace life. This is a road of functioning daily under GAP. This is the road which fulfils that which we are appointed at salvation. One of the 36 things we receive at salvation is a priesthood. Every believer is a priest as of the moment he puts his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The normal function of the priesthood does not occur until the supergrace life. This means the constant intake of doctrine into the left lobe of the soul, the cycling of that doctrine into the human spirit of the soul, the picking up of that doctrine by a vacuum line that takes it into the heart or the right lobe of the soul, resulting in doctrine in the frame of reference, doctrine in the memory centre, doctrine in the vocabulary and the categories, doctrine in the norms and standards, and doctrine on the launching pad.

               Now with doctrine on the launching pad, that send out a signal and that signal matches the fourth floor of the ECS which is capacity for love, category #1. The two signals together form a vacuum that goes right into eternity past at which point God begins to pour. In other words, supergrace is characterised by 1) occupation with the person of Jesus Christ, 2) by supergrace capacities. That is the cup. That is when God starts pouring. The supergrace capacities include capacity for freedom, for life, for love, for happiness, prosperity, for adversity, and so on. And this is God’s objective, to pour. But God never pours without a cup. That is one of the rules of the angelic conflict. Once there is a cup then God begins to pour, and divine prosperity designed for us in eternity past is poured, and we call that supergrace blessings. That is the objective. That is when God is glorified by your life. Most people think that you glorify God by doing something for God, but glorifying God is God being glorified by being able to give without reservation to you. So we have that principle in the supergrace life.

              All of this is related in our passage to the priesthood of the believer. We saw in chapter one how Jesus Christ became a member of the human race and in resurrection, ascension and session became higher than angels. We have seen not only this to be a fact and a principle involved in the angelic conflict, but as a result of this there is one man in all of the universe who is now higher than angels: Jesus Christ in resurrection body seated at the right hand of the Father. Ultimately this is the objective for all believers from the beginning of time to the end of time — to occupy a resurrection body, to live in heaven, and to be completely and totally superior to angels. But this superiority will not exist until resurrections occur, and at the present time the only one who has been resurrected is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. However, in the flesh every believer is designed in this age to be a priest. Every believer is in full time Christian service. There is no such thing as a layman. Whatever you do in life it is your full time service. And it is God’s objective to bless to the ultimate, and also to provide adversity where there is absolute blessing in the adversity. God has designed the most wonderful life but God cannot even begin to pour until you come to the party. And no believer priest comes to the party until first of all he has possession in his soul of an ECS and has entered into the supergrace life.

              To be a traitor of a country is one of the most awful things that one can conceive, but there is something worse than that and that is to be a believer-priest and a traitor to God. This traitorship comes through reversionism.

              There are two roads then, the road to supergrace which is now emphasised in this verse, and the road to reversionism which has been emphasised since chapter three, verse seven. On the road to supergrace the believer reaps what God sows. The supergrace believer comes under Romans 8:28. Romans 8:28 does not apply to any believer except the supergrace believer, and is so stated in its context, “We know that all things work together for good to them who love God.” The “all things” refer to the fact that God has planned it in eternity past for you — money, prosperity, right man or right woman, blessings that are almost beyond human understanding. All of these things were provided, and that is one thing. The other thing is to reach the supergrace life, and when one thing combines with the other thing you have “all things working together for good”, or God pouring. Romans 8:28 is God pouring for the believer who has the cup, the believer who has the supergrace capacity. That only applies to the supergrace believer. To the reversionist God’s love applies in a different way.” “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” and God’s love is expressed in a different way in reversionism. In reversionism you reap what you sow. You reap divine discipline in three categories. You reap self-induced misery. The believer priest is neutralised in reversionism; the believer priest fulfils the very purpose for which he is still alive on this road. The difference: one is positive volition toward doctrine and the other is negative volition toward doctrine. That is the difference we must face as we now come to the supergrace partnership in verse 14.

               Verse 14 begins with a continuative explanatory particle. The particles often reveal a great deal of what is going on in the scripture. Gar is a continuative explanatory particle, it is designed to relate the daily function of GAP and the warning against the neglect of doctrine with the believer’s priestly partnership with God in the Church Age. You are in full time Christian service. The moment that you believed in Jesus Christ God did 36 things for you. One of those 36 things was to make you a priest. Another was to appoint you an ambassador. It is your priesthood which is in view right here. The word “priesthood is not mentioned yet because of the reversionism of those to whom this was originally addressed. Priesthood will not be mentioned until chapter five. In the meantime a word to substitute for priesthood is the word that we have now — “partakers”, the Greek word metoxoj means “partners.” We are in partnership. However, that isn’t quite correct. The verb isn’t correct because it says here in the English “we are made.” This is the perfect active of ginomai which means to become something you were not before. Before we were not partners, we were nothing. Now, at the point of salvation we suddenly become something in that God made each one of us a priest. And while the priesthood is not anticipated until chapter 5:1ff, right now it must be understood that the priesthood is called “partnership.” Every believer living on the earth is in partnership with Jesus Christ the high priest seated at the right hand of the Father, and we became this. We were not priests before; now we are a priest. We have become something we were not before, and it is erroneously translated “we are made.” To make it even worse, this is the perfect active indicative of ginomai and in the Greek the perfect tense is the tense of completed action. In other words, the fact that we are in partnership, the fact that we are priests, that was an action completed at the moment we believed in Christ. The perfect tense is something that has happened in the past — at salvation — but the results go on. The results in view here: supergrace is the objective of the priesthood of the believer. So we have a completed action. Not only is the action completed but the results of the action are emphasised. Here is what is called the intensive perfect of the Greek. It emphasises the existing results from the completed action. At the cross the believer was appointed a priest and this is a phase one commission. All believers are appointed a priest. The results in phase two only can be realised through the daily function of GAP, and as you GAP it day by day you will come to recognise and to appreciate your priestly partnership with Jesus Christ for it is a partnership into which you have entered.

                Now when you enter into a partnership it is not a religion. Religion knows nothing of partnerships. Religion knows something of hierarchies. Religion dispenses good on the basis of you being good. Religion is a combination of human good inciting human good. But your partnership is not designed to do that. Your partnership is a relationship and therefore if you think you are religious you are wrong. There is no religion in Christianity. Christianity is a relationship, but more than that, Christianity is a partnership. Right now, you have a life of meaning and purpose and definition, even though you might say to yourself, I have a difficult life, I have a miserable life. There is no such thing in God’s sight. You are a partner and God is waiting for His partner to come to the party so He can pour. And you ask, “Well, why haven’t I been able to come to the party?” It is the simplest thing in the world. You GAP it to supergrace and once you have supergrace capacity it is a party from then on out, the rest of your life is a party. Reversionism is leaving the party. So God has a purpose for your life. God has invited you at salvation, by making you a priest, to a party that won’t quit!

               Do you know what it is like when a party is over after it has gone on for two or three days? You have seen how a street is broken up with a trip hammer. Well five of those guys are in your head, one in each one of the compass directions and one going out the top! That is what happens when a party is over, and that is the way reversionism is too. Reversionism is a spiritual hangover. And God says there is no excuse for reversionism. God says, I will never stop pouring, and your capacity is the only thing that counts. Your capacity is based on the intake of Bible doctrine.

              Here is the principle. Most people think that Christianity is some painful thing where you must constantly be “suffering for Jesus” so that somehow you will make points for eternity. God intends for you to enter into this partnership — you are already a partner — by receiving from Him all the blessings He designed for you in eternity past.

                Isaiah 30: 29 — “You shall have a song, as in the night [a party] a holy solemnity is kept [that is what God calls His party]; and +H of the right lobe [happiness], as when one goeth with a pipe [flute] to come into the mountain [a party in the hills] of the Lord, to the Mighty One of Israel.”

               This is party language and this is what God intends for you. God intends for you to come to the party. How do you get into this party? All you have to do is show your priesthood at the door for God knows your priesthood as of the moment you are saved. God is waiting to bless you. God is thoroughly disgusted with people who have all of these wonderful blessings waiting for them and they won’t come to the party. God has for some, great wealth; He has for some, promotion; He has for some, success; He has social and sexual prosperity; He has some adversity too to prove that He can handle that for you and show that you can have perfect happiness in the midst of that adversity. God has a fantastic life but no one really lives the Christian life while they are growing. All have heard the old idiom, “Green behind the ears” to express callow youth, and God cannot bless callow youth. God has fantastic blessings and God never stops pouring, but for some of you He will never start pouring and He will be disgusted with you. And how does God express His love plus His disgust? You go out under the sin unto death. Just think. By missing all of the blessings of God in supergrace, what is the alternative? To die miserably under the sin unto death. You really have to be stupid to want one over the other.

              The perfect tense is intensive. We have become in the past with results that will continue — when we come to the party. And what is the book of Hebrews? A manual of instruction on how to come to the party. It is a manual of instructions of what to do with your priesthood. it is a manual of instructions of how to come to the place of occupation with the person of Christ. The book of Hebrews is designed to bring the believer to the celebrityship of Jesus Christ.

             The active voice: the believer priest produces the action of the verb when he reaches supergrace. No capacity for divine blessing means no capacity; no cup and God does not pour. The indicative mood is the reality of the partnership without the blessings of the partnership. The writer to the Hebrews is addressing himself to believers in reversionism, people who are not coming t the party but are saved. The partnership is the reality at salvation, the blessings of the partnership come through supergrace.

             “For we have become partners of the Christ” — we have a genitive of relationship with the word Xristoj plus the definite article — “the Christ.”

             1. The priesthood stands because it is based on salvation. You will always be a priest no mater what kind of a priest you are. You may be the world’s worst reversionist but you are still a priest, and as long as you are a priest you have the right of recovery and the right of moving to supergrace.

             2. But the blessings of the priesthood demand supergrace capacity.

             3. The principle of partnership is part of the priesthood but the experience of partnership comes from the entrance into the supergrace life. In other words, it is one thing to be a priest, it is another thing to enjoy the blessings of the priesthood. In other words, the normal function of the priesthood begins at supergrace and until you reach the supergrace status you are not even a normal believer. So there is a difference between being appointed as a priest and functioning as a priest.

             Therefore a condition is set up. You are a priest, you cannot lose your priesthood. You have eternal life, you can’t lose it. God vindicates you on the basis of a priesthood which you will always have, but the blessings of that priesthood only come to those who enter supergrace.

             That is why our next word in our verse is “if.” This is a compound particle which becomes a conjunction — e)anper. Usually e)an is used to introduce the third class condition — e)an plus the subjunctive — but here we have the enclitic particle per added to it to make a compound. Why? E)anper plus the subjunctive introduces a third class condition of great intensity, a third class condition of great importance. it means you must sit up and take notice because here is available to you divine blessing beyond your greatest imagination. God wants to give you that which is perfect for you but you won’t hold still long enough to get anything. It is one thing to be a priest, it is another thing to have God pouring to the priest. And God does pour. When David said, “My cup runneth over”, that was one of the greatest understatements of the Bible. There are no limitations with God. The limitations lie with the ruler of this world, Satan. Now there are limitations. No one ever sold himself out to the devil and got anything but trouble, but the believer who goes all out for the Lord (and it is so easy. All it means is taking in doctrine once a day) there are no limitations. Without stretching it one of the easiest things in the world is to take in Bible doctrine daily. It is not all that hard. And the repetition of doctrines from time to time doesn’t make any difference. It is easy to take in food every day and it is easy to take in spiritual food. God has made it available.

              Now what does e)anper have to do with this wonderful partnership? The effectiveness of our priestly partnership depends on entrance into the supergrace life. While the believer is appointed a priest at salvation he does not function effectively in this partnership until he reaches supergrace. And this is an intensive 3rd class condition. It emphasises the volition. It emphasises the principle that your consistent attitude toward Bible doctrine will determine your spiritual life and the function of your priesthood on this earth. Only the supergrace believer functions under category #1 love — i.e. toward his high priest, Jesus Christ. In supergrace Christ the high priest is recognised as the only celebrity. The 3rd class condition, then sets up alternatives of reversionism versus supergrace with emphasis on supergrace status at this point. In other words, salvation is a simple issue. Your attitude toward Christ determines where you stand in eternity — salvation or eternal condemnation, the lake of fire. After salvation that is no longer the issue, the issue is your attitude toward doctrine, your attitude toward spiritual food. To take it in on a daily basis is the road to supergrace; to reject it is the road to reversionism.

            That is why we now have a verb with the compound particle e)anper — “If we hold”, the aorist active subjunctive from the compound verb katexw. Katexw is composed of the preposition kata for norm or standard and the verb e)xw which means to have and to hold. Kata also means “down.” It means to hold something down permanently, and therefore katexw doesn’t really mean to hold here, it means to retain — “if we retain.” Now bringing out the per in e)anper it would be “if indeed”, a little more intensive.

               “if indeed we retain the beginning.” A)rxh is used in many ways in scripture. In this case it has the definite article referring to a specific beginning — “if indeed we retain the beginning.” The beginning has to do with the way we started. No one is ever saved without getting some information about the Gospel, about Christ. And we took that in and the Holy Spirit made it real. And the volition of the soul responded to that and said, Yes, I believe. That is the beginning. The fact that you believed in Christ means that you retained, momentarily at least, enough information to be saved. The retention factor here must be perpetuated. The Gospel is doctrine. After salvation it is still doctrine. Why? Principle:  God must vindicate His Word, doctrine, in the soul of the believer priest.

               The aorist is the constative aorist. How do we retain? The principle is we take in doctrine today, tomorrow, the next day, and the next and the next, and so on. So we have a constative aorist. The active voice: volition is always involved in all uses of the angelic conflict, this is no exception. You must be positive toward doctrine. The subjunctive mood goes with the third class condition.

               “of our confidence” — unfortunately, not correctly translated. The word for “confidence” is the noun u(postasij. It means essence. So what is the concept here? The real essence of the priest is doctrine in the soul. God knows this, therefore God has provided everything to fulfil the u(postasij or the essence of the priesthood. First of all, at salvation every believer was made a priest. After salvation, what does a priest function on? How does he fulfil his partnership? Doctrine. So God has provided from eternity past the doctrine that the believer priest needs, and He provides it on a basis so that you can have it on a daily basis, a consistent basis, so that you can go all the way to supergrace. Therefore God set up a law in eternity past, a law which He does not and has not violated.

               In eternity past he decided how it would be done so that he could keep His own essence intact. First of all, there must be the capacity and therefore God provided the spiritual manna for the believer priest to the Church Age — doctrine. And when doctrine comes and fulfils its objective in the soul of the believer priest behind it comes supergrace blessings. The occupation with Christ must come first, and it does. You don’t have to worry about it, it always does where doctrine is taken in. After occupation with Christ or the celebrityship you have the capacity which is the cup and behind that is the supergrace blessings so that all things — one thing in eternity past and one thing in time — blend together for good (which is what work together really means. It means they blend for good). Therefore, what is holding you up from great blessing right now?

               In eternity past God provided for you, and He provided X number of things to keep you alive. That is simple grace. Then He provided for you X number of blessings whereby you would enjoy life and put the devil right back on his angelic ear. That is the supergrace area. The first factor doesn’t depend on anything, God is keeping you alive whether you like it or not. The second factor does depend on your attitude toward doctrine — a non-meritorious attitude, that is always the way of grace, it never changes. Therefore, we must retain the beginning of our essence.

               “if indeed we retain the beginning of our essence” — and the retention merely follows God’s law: Doctrine before blessing; capacity before fulfilment. You must have the capacity before the fulfilment. The capacity factor is supergrace status. Once you reach that then God will bless you in a fantastic way. Doctrine in the soul is the essence of the believer priest. It begins with Gospel type doctrine and ends up with the whole realm of doctrine.

              “steadfast” — this is a noun, the accusative singular of bebaioj and it means “stabilised.” Stability results from the consistency and the continuation of the intake of doctrine. The real stability comes from reaching supergrace. Supergrace with the ECS becomes the stabiliser of your life.

                Now this should go on until the end of your life. “Unto the end” is a prepositional phrase. We have an adverbial preposition, mexri. This is called an impersonal preposition. And we have the genitive singular of teloj, the ordinary Greek word for termination or ending — “stabilised by supergrace until the termination or the ending of your life.” There is a time coming when you will depart from this world. If the Rapture doesn’t occur first it will be based upon physical death. In heaven there will never be one moment of suffering or one moment of regret. There is no embarrassment in heaven. The alternatives to supergrace are your own self-induced misery leading to discipline.

               Translation: “For we have become partners of the Christ [our high priest], if indeed we retain the beginning of our essence [doctrine in the soul] stabilised by supergrace until the end.”

 

             Summary

             1. The priestly partnership of the believer has an essence. The essence is doctrine in the soul. What changes your life experientially? Doctrine in the soul. Not decisions you make but doctrine you receive.

               2. Why? because God must vindicate His Word in the souls of believers. God is no respecter of persons but God does respect His Word — Psalm 138:2, “He has magnified His Word above His name.”

               3. The universal priesthood of the believer was designed to operate on doctrine in the soul.

               4. Therefore the canon of scripture was completed for the Church Age, was completed for the age of the universal priesthood of the believer. This is the only dispensation in which every believer is appointed a priest at salvation. Therefore the canon of scripture was completed for the Church Age so that every believer would have his spiritual food in writing. This spiritual food is available through the teaching of the Word of God.

               5. The stability of this partnership comes through the supergrace life.

               6. The supergrace life comes through the consistent intake of doctrine.

               7. The supergrace life begins the normal function of the priesthood and capacity for divine blessing. By divine blessing is meant all of the things that God provided for you in eternity past.

             Verse 3 — “… the one who has builded the house has more glory than the house.” It is God’s desire to construct a house of prosperity and the day that God can prosper you in supergrace is the day that God is glorified, and there is a permanent record in heaven of you having so been blessed in time. In other words, reward in heaven is based upon receiving divine prosperity in time. God isn’t glorified by your suffering, God is glorified by your being blessed. A priest is designed to be blessed just as the house should be built well. And if God is the builder the house is built well.

               Verse 15 — the rejection of the supergrace partnership by some believers. The partnership is there, the partnership is a reality, but every reversionist is not only in revolt against God as a believer but he rejects the very partnership which he possesses, and therefore never derives any benefit from it.

               “While it is said” — the word “while” is a prepositional phrase, e)n plus the locative of the definite article plus the present passive infinitive of legw. It is an idiom. There is also a definite article between the preposition and its infinitive object. Now this is actually an idiom to introduce a temporal clause which quotes from Psalm 95:8. The temporal clause quotes Psalm 95:8 in order to apply the reversionistic failure of the Exodus generation to the Jewish believers living in Jerusalem in 67 AD, and it is recorded in the Word of God to further apply to any reversionistic believer living thereafter. From the time of the writing of the book of Hebrews in 67 AD to the present day. Right down to this moment this particular phrase, this temporal clause, was designed to apply to anyone who is indifferent antagonistic, or in any way negative to Bible doctrine. It is incompatible with your priesthood to be indifferent, negative or antagonistic. So literally, this passage should start out by saying, “So long as it is being said.” This is the best way to translate the idiom. The idiom applies to the Old Testament passage and to every generation from David to the present. And since Psalm 95 goes back to the Exodus generation it applies to the Exodus generation, 1440-1401 BC. It applies to David’s day. David wrote and cited the Exodus generation as the illustration of reversionism. It apples to 67 AD to whom the unknown writer of Hebrews applies it. And then being a part of the canon of scripture it goes on applying as long as time exists. The idiom applies, an Old Testament passage then, to every generation of believers but places the emphasis on the Church Age. Why? Because in the Church Age every believer is a partner with Christ, and that partnership will be defined when we get to chapter five as a priesthood. For the first time in history a radical change has occurred. This isn’t the first time in history that a universal priesthood was offered. A universal priesthood was offered to Israel and rejected, just as at one time Moses was the only supergrace believer in Israel and God said I will destroy the rest of Israel and give you the land and give you a new progeny. And Moses turned down that very attractive offer, and in this way again demonstrated the fantastic concept of supergrace blessing.

              So the essence of the priesthood is doctrine in the soul. The appointment of the priesthood occurs at salvation but all essence of the priesthood is related to doctrine in the soul. The normal function of the priesthood begins at the point of the supergrace life.

             The word “Today” is the adverb which has been used so many times — ha jom in the Hebrew, shmeron in the Greek. It now takes on a new meaning. If today and tomorrow and the next day we do not take in doctrine it constitutes, according to this passage, a repudiation of our priesthood, a repudiation of our partnership with Christ. Therefore the next word is again that conjunctive particle e)an which introduces the third class condition and shows the options of the Christian life. Here the third class condition emphasises the believer’s volition related to the teaching of Bible doctrine.

             “if ye will hear”— the aorist active subjunctive of the verb a)kouw. This is in the constative aorist which gathers up into one ball of wax every time the believer assembles and listens to the teaching of Bible doctrine; taught, of course, by one with the gift of pastor-teacher. The active voice: the believer priest in partnership with Christ produces the action of the verb. The objective is supergrace. The subjunctive mood indicates a third class condition and the involvement of the individual’s volition.

              “his voice” — this is actually Bible doctrine. This is the genitive singular of fwnh. It is a descriptive genitive for doctrine. Doctrine is said to be the mind of Christ, the voice of the Spirit. Once again this is the concept. This is Bible doctrine taken from the Word and communicated to you. The conditions under which you hear His voice are grace conditions. We must never forget that. It is grace that you have the Bible. It is grace that God has given the gift of pastor-teacher to someone. It is grace that the pastor-teacher can communicate to an assembly. It is grace that assembly exists. And the whole thing is called GAP, the grace apparatus for perception.

 

               The doctrine of GAP (Review)

                1. It is vitally necessary for every believer to shed any inferior attitude toward his own IQ. Some people are very proud of having a high IQ; some people are very disturbed about having a low IQ. It is therefore absolutely necessary to recognise that when you assemble as a believer priest your human IQ is no handicap in the intake of Bible doctrine. Human IQ is the number assigned to someone on the basis of dividing their mental age by their chronological age. The mental age is determined by testing, the chronological age is determined by interrogation and there is a very definite way in which an IQ is established. Spiritual IQ, however, is the amount of Bible doctrine stored in the human spirit, in the right lobe. Also it is based upon how much of the ECS is constructed in the soul. The information on which this is accomplished is strictly a matter of grace perception. The distinction between human and spiritual IQ is the subject of 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and from that passage it is demonstrated that a low IQ person can understand as much as a high IQ person in the field of Bible doctrine.

               2. Human IQ is excluded from GAP. Everything with which God is related, everyone has the same crack at it — 1 Corinthians 1:19-2:16 is the basic passage and it teaches that human IQ, which is a feature in learning academically, has absolutely no connotation in taking in Bible doctrine. In other words, a low IQ believer is not handicapped in learning doctrine. In eternity past God found a way through grace whereby every believer can learn doctrine apart from any human perspicacity ability. For this reason every believer in the dispensation in which we live is not only a priest, not only a partner with God, but he is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit — he has at the point of salvation a human spirit — and the indwelling of then Holy Spirit plus the activation of the human spirit totally sets aside any human IQ concepts. So that a genius believer who is negative cannot learn as much as a very stupid positive believer.

             When you and I were born again, the moment we were certain grace things were provided for us whereby spiritual phenomenon is learned. a) God the Holy Spirit; b) The activation of a human spirit; c) A classroom (local church) set up in eternity past but not revealed until the Church Age began; d) A person who has the gift of pastor-teacher. All of these things are provided as grace gifts. None of them are earned, none of them are deserved, none of them are based upon any type of human merit.

             3. Everything begins with the perceptive lobe or the left lobe in the mentality of the soul. Recalling once again that the soul has self-consciousness by which you are aware of your own existence. That is sometimes called by the first person singular pronoun, e)gw in the Greek. It is not pride, it is awareness of your own existence. Pride is a mental attitude sin which is an extension from the ego, but ego itself is never sin. Then the area where you do your thinking, the two frontal lobes. There is your volition, your emotion, your norms and standards or conscience.

              Involved first of all are the frontal lobes. The two together form the mentality of the soul. Mentality is divided into two frontal lobes and the perceptive lobe in the perceptive lobe. It is called in the Greek nouj, just as the right lobe is called kardia or heart. One is called “mind”, one is called “heart.” Mind plus heart makes up the mentality of the soul. The perceptive lobe or the nouj in the Greek is the basis for all information being processed. Whatever you learn, whatever you have learned by human perspicacity or the grace system for perspicacity, whatever you have learned in all of your life, it all started in one lobe. This is actually the staging area for all information. In the field of human perspicacity you have a number of wires going back and forth between the two lobes. it is processed in one place as objective information and it is passed into the next lobe for utilisation. That is human perspicacity and that is not the way God does it. God has given us the Holy Spirit and God has given us a human spirit at the point of salvation. And with the ministry of God the third person and the human spirit as a second staging area it is now possible for us to learn the whole realm of doctrine. That is the command to all believers without exception. God intends for every believer to learn the whole realm of doctrine. It must be communicated; it must be received.

              4. The left lobe or the mind becomes the staging area for spiritual perspicacity. The Holy Spirit must control the believer at the point of teaching. This is why rebound is so important and why rebound is the first function of the priesthood and the baby function of the priesthood. It is absolutely necessary for God the Holy Spirit to control the life because this lobe is the concentrating lobe. An initial concentration begins here. Once you concentrate on the information and you understand it objectively , then you have gnwsij which is nothing more than objective information residing in your left lobe. This information in the left lobe cannot be applied to anything, ever. Your applier is the launching pad. And this is why James said don’t be just a hearer. “Hearer” means to objectively understand. A “doer of the Word” is the believer with doctrine in his right lobe. The effectiveness of your life is based upon doctrine in your right lobe. It is possible to have an objective understanding of something but that does not make it a part of your soul’s assets. The left lobe information is never cognisance, it is objective understanding in a staging area. Information in a staging area is not a part of the soul’s assets. The doctrine must be in the right lobe.

              This is known historically as receptive comprehension. Receptive comprehension means to understand data but not to be able to apply it. We must remember that receptive comprehension is the first stage of GAP and is vitally necessary but not the end. In order to understand the end let’s take up, for example, what God has provided in grace so that we can learn doctrine. These are things that God has provided whether you want them or not. Remember, we have grace provision in eternity past. You are alive; that’s grace. You have had food today; that’s grace. You have shelter, you have clothing; that’s grace. Supergrace is dependent upon a consistence in positive volition reaching a status. But grace includes everything that we are now going to outline:

              a. God has provided for you the Bible, the formation and the preservation of the canon under the doctrine of inspiration. That is grace. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t deserve it.

              b. You have a classroom (local church), and that is grace. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t deserve it.

              c. The spiritual gift of pastor-teacher. Somewhere, you have a right pastor. You don’t earn it or work for it, neither does the right pastor earn or deserve the gift. This is grace provision.

             d. The priesthood of the believer for privacy and freedom of reception of doctrine.

              e. God the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, indwelling so that GAP will function apart from, over and above, human perspicacity or human IQ — 1 Corinthians 2:9-16; 1 John 2:27. And the believer must be filled with the Spirit for this function to occur — Ephesians 5:18. And, again, the filling of the Spirit is a grace function, the rebound technique — 1 John 1:9.

             f. The rebound technique whereby any believer can recover the filling of the Spirit in a relatively short time.

            g. The human spirit given at the point of salvation which is the target for GAP. The human spirit is a distributor of spiritual phenomena.

            h. The provision of the laws of divine establishment whereby the national entity protects the freedom and the privacy of the local church.

            i. The realm of human anatomy. Without oxygen it would be impossible for us to assimilate, and God provides oxygen. There must also be sugar whereby the neurones in the brain can function, etc. All of this is a grace provision.

            5. The whole area.

            a. Operation ICE is the communicating end. “I” is for isagogics which interpret the Bible in the framework of its historical setting. The Bible must be understood in the time in which it was written, not the time in which it is being interpreted. The “C” is for categories, Categorical teaching is based upon a very simple hermeneutical principle of comparing scripture with scripture. It develops the concept of the classification of information in the scripture. “E” is for exegesis which is the analysis of each verse within the framework of its context, emphasising its grammar, its syntax, its etymology, from the standpoint of the original languages. All of these things are put together and they form the communication of information.

            b. This information goes to the left lobe — operation gnwsij. This is, again, receptive comprehension whereby the believer is positive toward doctrine, concentrates on the information in the assembly, being filled with the Spirit he listens, he understands what is taught or re-taught, he comprehends at this stage, but it does not mean he agrees with it. In the left lobe receptive comprehension means you understand what is being taught. Understanding does not mean agreement. The real issue comes, as James points out, not in hearing but in doing the Word. And that is operation e)pignwsij. Before doctrine is any good to you the doctrine in the left lobe as gnwsij must be transferred into the human spirit and converted to e)pignwsij. Gnwsij is objective information, made clear by the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, but which cannot be applied. It is e)pignwsij which is appliable, useable. It is e)pignwsij which is the basis of all growth. The transfer of the information to the human spirit from gnwsij is faith. Faith merely says, “I believe it.” Faith sees the truth of it and converts it to e)pignwsij. It is secondary negative volition that keeps people from growing. Secondary negative volition is to say no to what you understand. “Yes” no gnwisij is a non-meritorious function. The word is pistij — “faith.” Pistij is not only used in the Greek for faith, it is also used for doctrine or what is believed, and it is pistij that converts gnwsij to e)pignwsij. Secondary negative volition refuses to convert gnwsij to e)pignwsij, which is a condition of the reversionist.

             Who did the teaching to the Exodus generation in view in this passage? a) Moses, the greatest Bible teacher of his day and one of the greatest Bible teachers who ever lived; b) Angels. They were actually taught by angels; c) Aaron, and eventually his sons as they became adults.

            So it is non-meritorious positive volition, i.e. faith, which transfers gnwsij into e)pignwsij. Once e)pignwsij is in the human spirit then e)pignwsij is working doctrine. First of all e)pignwsij is picked up by a vacuum line which takes it into the right lobe and distributes it in the frame of reference. The memory centre then picks it up and makes it a part of your new vocabulary. You have to have a vocabulary with which to think. Then the classification of doctrine, or the categories, begins to build. The norms and standards are filled with this doctrine so that they comply with divine norms and standards. The launching pad begins to fill and, as a matter of fact, it is from this launching pad that you get that first vacuum going back into eternity past. At the same time e)pignwsij is not only siphoned in a vacuum line but it also builds and begins the construction of the ECS. As e)pignwsij increases it is taken into the right lobe, it is used for structural material in your ECS, and there comes a time when you initiate from your launching pad through doctrine, from the fourth floor, capacity for love, category #1, which creates a vacuum going all the way into eternity past and, as it were, God pours through that vacuum the supergrace blessings.

             In the frame of reference we have some very interesting factors, factors which are extremely important. It is your frame of reference which actually links up with your launching pad and makes you a believer oriented to what is going on. For example, the fame of reference is basic comprehension for more doctrine. The greater your frame of reference and the greater your vocabulary from the frame of reference the easier it is to understand new and more doctrine. When in your frame of reference, for example, you have the supergrace concept, reversionism, the few basic doctrines in this area, and you have a vocabulary and have them down categorically, this means that any new information on any of these subjects, or related subjects like the priesthood, is easily grasped. And when this becomes e)pignwsij — like the priesthood — you can relate it immediately. The next few chapters relate the priesthood to either reversionism or supergrace showing the advantages of one and the disadvantages of the other. As a matter of fact they put your whole life on the line and, at the same time, they structurise certain areas of your soul.

              For example, your ability to love God is based upon Bible doctrine and if Bible doctrine never goes any farther than the gnwsij stage you do not love God, you cannot love God, you are a fake. Oh you can say, “I love God”, but you really don’t because you don’t have the capacity. Comprehension of more doctrine is based upon e)pignwsij. E)pignwsisj, then, is the basis for setting up comprehension of more advanced doctrine. It also establishes a new conscience, it gives you the divine viewpoint, it deals with problems of the subconscious. Right off of your frame of reference is your subconscious and this is a very dangerous spot. This is where you store things to which you react in a guilt way. Information for guilt reaction is kept here. This is once and for all sealed off by a maximum amount of e)pignwsij doctrine, so that the problems of guilt reaction are minimised and removed. Your content for prayer, your accuracy in witnessing, your discernment of false doctrine, the beginning of your capacity for life, the beginning of your capacity for love, your ability to identify a true friend as over against a false friend, your ability to identify right man, right woman. All of these plus the normal function of the priesthood all begin at this particular point. Therefore it is imperative to understand the issues connected with it.

              This is what is means when it says, “if you will hear his voice”. This and one other thing which we cannot ignore. You must accept the authority of the communicator. If you do not then you will be guilty of one or two types of negative volition. Primary negative volition means you will not assemble. You will “forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is”. All believers are priests and are commanded to assemble. Or, in assembly you will have gnwsij doctrine but you will fail to transfer it, and this is secondary negative volition. And either primary or secondary or a combination of both will keep you from ever growing and will guarantee a life of reversionism, a life of self-induced misery and divine discipline. The “if” indicates that it is up to you as a believer priest.

             “harden not” — present active subjunctive of sklhrunw plus the negative mh. The present tense plus the negative mh indicates to stop doing something you are doing. This means that the people to whom this was originally addressed were hardening their hearts, were in a state of obstinacy. The active voice: the believer priest in this case is producing the action of the verb. The believer priest is a Jew living in Jerusalem three years before one of the greatest of all historical cataclysms. Then the subjunctive mood is a prohibitive subjunctive which carries the force of a command but recognises the involvement of human volition, and recognising that volition is an issue in the angelic conflict, states it without a command but to show you the danger of the course on which you have embarked. This was true of the born again Jews in Jerusalem in the year 67 AD.

 

            The doctrine of the hardening process (Review)

                 1. The believer is in a certain type of status which includes disillusion, boredom, loneliness, discouragement, self-pity, frustration, bitterness, jealousy. For one reason or another one or more of these in the life forms a reactor — not response, react. (You respond positively; you react negatively) You react to these things. The reaction is the frantic search for happiness.

                 2. The frantic search for happiness can be of a number of types. Everything depends upon the condition of the old sin nature as it relates to the soul at that time. All factors of the old sin nature can be involved, or some. For example, if the frantic search for happiness involves sinning, it may be just simply living it up, going out on the town, fornicating, raising hell, and so on. Or if the area of strength is involved it might be going to Africa as a missionary, etc. If your trend is toward lasciviousness then you are going to go out and fornicate, but if it is toward asceticism you are going to give up everything. If it includes approbation lust you are going to become a holy-roller and go out and speak in tongues, etc. All factors of the old sin nature become involved, and also with them the frantic search for happiness is coterminous with or the emotional revolt immediately follows.

                3. There is always then, after the frantic search for happiness, the third stage of hardening the heart — emotional revolt. Under emotional revolt your whole personality is changed. If you are a woman you are no longer feminine. If you are a man you are no longer masculine. The man has a tendency to become effeminate; the woman has a tendency to become horsy and pushy. Other factors involved are multitudinous. They involve such things as getting into the holy-roller activity, finding something to stimulate the emotion, etc. But there is one factor that cuts out doctrine as long as it occurs. Emotional revolt has a principle that goes with it. Emotional revolt demands entertainment. It demands that someone do something for you to entertain you, to make life pleasant. Emotional revolt cannot stand to be crossed or rejected. That is why a lot of people can’t stand Bible teaching, because Bible teaching isn’t entertainment.

               4. The fourth factor is the combination of emotional revolt and frantic search for happiness leads to the signs of negative volition toward doctrine, primary or secondary, or in between, the rebound concept. Negative volition toward doctrine can be apathy. It can be antagonism. It can also be rationalism. But whatever combination you use the result is scar tissue on the soul and the opening of a vacuum which is as harmful as the vacuum from the human spirit to the right lobe is a blessing. This is the tube through which all Satanic doctrine reaches the right lobe. It is called in the Greek mataiothj and is often mistranslated by the word “vanity”. But it is a vacuum line, and this vacuum line draws in Satanic doctrine or the doctrine of demons of 1 Timothy 4:1. The accumulation of doctrine of demons becomes the sup of demons and a believer cannot drink of the cup of demons and the cup of the Lord. As a result of this information going into the right lobe the believer’s attitude on everything in life, his norms and standards, completely change and the result is the blackout of the soul.

               5. The blackout of the soul. This is the state of no doctrine plus demon influence. No believer can be demon possessed but he is under demon influence. Demon influence is the doctrine of demons so saturating the soul as to form a blackout of the soul.

               6. The blackout of the soul leads to the practice of reverse process reversionism. Reverse process reversionism is characterised as the hardening process. Each one of the points adds a little hardness to the heart, as it were. The hardening process which begins with point #1 terminates with what we have in 2 Thessalonians: “Strong delusion.” That is the ultimate in hardness.

 

              “in the provocation” — we have the preposition e)n plus the locative of the noun parapikrasmoj which means revolution, revolt. So we will call it “the reversionistic revolution”. It refers, of course, to the Meribah. The Hebrew word is meribah but it is translated from the Hebrew to the Greek, parapikrasmoj which is embitterment leading to revolt.

               Translation: “So long as it is being said, Today if you will hear his voice, stop hardening your right lobes, as in the reversionistic revolution.”

 

              The doctrine of revolution

              1. The Word of God does not justify revolution — Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13,14; Numbers 16.

              2. Revolution involves anti-authority mobs, people who are against authority set up by establishment. Therefore lawless mobs which can neither think nor achieve anything compatible with the divine institutions. Remember, a mob does not think.

             3. Revolution by Biblical standards means apostasy, rejection of authority, lack of Bible doctrine — Isaiah 1:3-5; 59:13.

             4. So that a conclusion is drawn: Revolution by its strictest definition is anti-God — Isaiah 31:6.

             5. Revolution is caused by the failure of the right lobe in the soul — Jeremiah 5:23. Invariably revolution involves as its constituents or personnel a maximum number of people suffering from emotional revolt of the soul, and invariably they are reversionistic.

             6. Many revolutions do not start with so-called evil. This is the rationalisation of revolution. The real motivator of revolution is jealousy — Isaiah 11:13 cf. 1 Kings 12:19 and 2 Chronicles 10:19.

             7. The greatest hindrance to revolution is the communication of Bible doctrine — Ezekiel 2:3-10.

             8. Heathenism is the result of revolution — Romans 1:19-26. And no revolution sweeps a country without being accompanied by degeneration. Revolution always means degeneration of a people. This degeneration is described in principle in Romans 1:27-32.

             9. The principle of revolution. Approbation and power lust on the part of some seek to destroy whatever is necessary to gain power. Revolution is always a power grab based upon power lust. It includes the destruction of freedom, rights, privacy, and property of others. Revolution is a Satanic device in the angelic conflict to establish a cosmic kingdom and superimpose Satan’s will over the human race.

             10. Reversionism causes revolution; supergrace is its antidote — Hebrews 3:8,9, 15,16. First, the temporal revolt is reversionism constructed on rejection of the laws of divine establishment. Both believers and unbelievers can be involved. Secondly, spiritual revolt is reversionism based on rejection of Bible doctrine and it for believers only. So we must distinguish between temporal revolt and spiritual revolt. Temporal revolt is the believer and the unbeliever revolting against establishment, but a spiritual revolt is the believer in a state of reversionism revolting against Bible doctrine and God’s plan.

             The balance of this chapter is devoted to application. In verses 16-18 five questions are asked the generation involved as the original recipients. The original recipients of this passage are those born again Jews living in Jerusalem in the years 67 AD.

               Verse 16 — the particle which begins the first question is used as a conjunction to express and explanation. The particle is used in many ways in the Greek — Gar. It could be explanatory as it is here, the illitive or inferential, it could be continuative. It has many uses. The problem here is the word “some” which is an interrogative pronoun in the nominative plural — tij. It should be translated, “For who”, and it refers to a lot of people.

              “when they had heard” — aorist active participle of the verb a)kouw, one of the most common verbs for the function of GAP, indicating that the Exodus generation definitely had Bible teaching. The aorist tense in the constative aorist which means for forty years as they travelled through the desert they had constant teaching from Moses, from Aaron, from angels. They had phenomenal, excellent Bible teaching. The active voice: they did the hearing. This is also an aorist participle. The action of the aorist participle precedes the action of the main verb. The main verb is coming up next: “did provoke.” “For who having heard”. All the Jews of the Exodus generation heard Bible doctrine but only the reversionists provoked. Some were positive toward doctrine in the Exodus generation but you could count them on one hand — Moses, Joshua, Caleb, Moses’ second wife, and possibly Aaron. Most of the Jews of the Exodus generation were all born again believers, those twenty and over, and they all went the way of reversionism.

              The problem in the translation is “did provoke” — aorist active indicative of parapikrainw which means to revolt. It is again a constative aorist because somebody was always in revolt. People in reversionism are in different stages just as growing believers are in different stages. Parapikrainw is usually a transitive verb which means to provoke or to be made angry, but it is intransitive in its use here. This verse so far should be translated, “For who having heard revolted.” That is the first question posed by the writer of Hebrews. The word “revolt” refers, of course, to reversionism.

 

          Regarding this question

              1. This question refers to the fact that the reversionists of the Exodus generation were all exposed to Bible teaching, and lots of it. Furthermore, they not only had the communication and teaching of Bible doctrine but they had it under the best possible communicators. So that every adult person who was liberated from bondage or slavery in Egypt heard consistent, excellent communication of doctrine.

              2. The goal of the Exodus generation was Canaan. Canaan is not a type of heaven , it is an illustration of he supergrace life. And furthermore, the capacity to enjoy Canaan demands the supergrace status on the part of the Exodus generation.

              3. As with the Exodus generation so with every believer in the Church Age. We have the opportunity for learning doctrine. We have something they did not have, we have the canon of scripture completed, and that means everything we need to know is in writing — preserved in writing forever. Therefore, just as they had the opportunity so we have the opportunity of spiritual growth — the

erection of the ECS, entrance into the supergrace life with the celebrityship of Jesus Christ, with supergrace capacity and supergrace blessing.

             4. Therefore, as is always the case, reversionism is not a matter of ignorance, it is a matter of negative volition — primary: refusal to assemble; secondary: refusal to transfer from the left lobe to the human spirit by faith.

             5. Negative volition toward doctrine, either primary or secondary, inevitably results in scar tissue, blackout of the soul, reverse process reversionism.

             6. The question again: “Who having heard revolted?” The answer to the question is simple: all the Jews of the Exodus generation revolted — entered into reversionism, minus five: Moses, Aaron, Caleb, Joshua, Moses’ second wife. Our of those, only two out of the five supergrace heroes actually entered the land — Caleb and Joshua.

 

          The doctrine of reversionism

              1. Definition:

              a) Reversionism is the status quo of the believer in phase two who is negative toward doctrine. Consistent negative volition toward doctrine enters one into the status of reversionism.

             b) Reversionism is also recession from any stage of growth in the spiritual life. This means that you may have a partial ECS when the recession begins. You may have a completed ECS. You may be like David and have already entered supergrace.

             c) Reversion is one of the two states of phase two, the other being supergrace. There are refinements within these two stages dealing with carnality and spirituality, but these are the two general concepts and the scripture constantly emphasises these things.

             d) The unbeliever in life can also enter into reversionism. His reversionism is recession from the laws of divine establishment. The mechanics of his reversionism as well as the principle of it are found in 2 Peter 2:17-22. it is always a recession from establishment and it eventuates in liberalism. All liberalism is a form of recession just as apostasy is a form of recession.

             e) Mechanically the unbeliever can also reversionism through rejection of the Gospel. When an unbeliever rejects the Gospel he becomes a candidate for reversionism. In this case he is making a recession from Gospel hearing.

             f) Reversion must be distinguished from carnality. The carnal believer is a believer out of fellowship but he is positive toward doctrine. On the other hand, reversionism is negative volition and perpetually out of fellowship. The carnal believer gets back in fellowship; the reversionistic believer does not rebound.

            g) The carnal believer rebounds, continues to GAP it to supergrace while the reversionist does not rebound and continues to move toward the sin unto death.

             2. The mechanics of reversionism:

            a) The believer enters a status which produces reaction — disillusion, boredom, discouragement, loneliness, self-pity, frustration, rejection, bitterness, jealousy.

            b) The believer reacts to one or more of this list by a frantic search for happiness. A frantic search for happiness can be obvious or subtle. An obvious one is going out and raising hell. A subtle one would be getting what they call the second blessing. There are many ways to react, but whatever the frantic search for happiness reaction is it will be characterised by one thing: the omission from your agenda of any Bible teaching. That will be sure. The frantic search for happiness always upsets the soul — always. The part of the soul that is upset is the emotion.

             c) The emotional revolt of the soul, which occurs simultaneously or immediately after your brand of frantic search for happiness begins.

             d) Frantic search for happiness plus emotional revolt leads to the next sub point which can be manifest in a number of ways. It is negative volition either in apathy, indifference, or antagonism. There are a number of areas in which negative volition is expressed: 1. Refusal to assemble — primary negative volition; 2. To assemble but to refuse to rebound; 3. Refusal to transfer doctrine by faith into the operational stages, the human spirit and then right lobe — secondary negative volition.

             e) Negative volition resulting in scar tissue and opening a vacuum to your right lobe — the mataiothj — by which the doctrine of demons of 1 Timothy 4:1 enters the heart or right lobe. With the entrance of the doctrine of demons you begin to drink of the cup of demons and you are now in a status called demon influence. This is not demon possession. Demons cannot indwell the body of the believer. They can possess doctrinally your right lobe.                        

            f) This results in a blackout of the soul and the practice of reverse process reversionism.

                          3. The discipline of reversionism.

             a) The warning stage — James 5:9; Revelation 3:20. This is the category of discipline in which rebound plus GAP produces the recovery.

             b) The intensive stage — Psalm 38:1-14. Not only is the discipline intensified but this is the stage of strong delusion — 2 Thessalonians 2:11. In this stage repentance and, in most cases, healing from some disease is necessary for recovery — James 5:14-16.

             c) The dying stage — Psalm 118:17,18; 1 John 5:16. This is related to the sin unto death. Reversionism is the cause of the sin unto death every time. No one ever dies the sin unto death unless they are in the stage of reversionism — Jeremiah 9:16; 44:12; Philippians 3:18,19; Revelation 3:16. Relationship between negative volition toward doctrine in reversionism and the sin unto death is found in 1 Chronicles 10:13,14.

                4. The principle of reversionism is found in Galatians 5:4 — “All of you reversionists have become null and void [useless, powerless, unprofitable, non-productive] from the ultimate source of the Christ, whosoever of you are being vindicated by means of the law, you have drifted off course from the grace.” So reversionism is drifting off course from grace.

               5. Reversionism always rejects the authority of Bible teachers. Good one like Moses — Exodus 16:20; 17:3; Numbers 11:5. Or like Jeremiah — Jeremiah 44:16. Or like the apostle Paul — 2 Corinthians 6:11,12 and chapters 7,10,11. To bring it down to today: Every born again believer has a right pastor, and it means rejecting the authority of and the communication of one’s right pastor.      So when there is a large number of reversionists there are a lot of right pastor’s being unheard.

               6. In reversionism the believer uses mental attitude sins to perpetuate his carnality, and this invariably contaminates others. A reversionist always is characterised by a maximum number of mental attitude sins which contaminate others — Hebrews 12:15.

                            7. Biblical descriptions of reversionism:

                a) Drifting off course from grace — Galatians 5:4.

                b) No one failing from the ultimate source of the grace of God — Hebrews 12:15.

                c) Being uncircumcised of heart — Jeremiah 9:25, 26.

                d) A tortured soul (Emphasising the self-induced misery that goes with reversionism) — 2 Peter 2:7,8.

                e) An unstable soul — 2 Peter 2:14.

                f) Lukewarm — Revelation 3:15,16.

               g) The enemy of the cross — Philippians 3:18.

               h) Leaving your first love. This emphasises category #1 love or occupation with Christ — Revelation 2:4.

                i) Fallen — Revelation 2:5.

                8. Recipients of the book of Hebrews were involved in reversionism — Hebrews 5:11-14.

                9. Reversionism recovery is impossible apart from the daily or consistent function of GAP — Hebrews 6:1-3; Revelation 3:19,20.

               10. Reversion recovery is impossible when one continues to practice religion — Hebrews 6:4-6 — or when one is involved in the phallic cult — 2 Corinthians 12:20,21. In other words, certain conditions can exist in life whereby reversion recovery is impossible. And notice that they go back to the old sin nature’s trends: lasciviousness or asceticism (phallic cult or religionism).

               11. Reversion leads to perversion. Some people on the reversion road become very abnormal — like homosexuals, lesbians. These people aren’t sick, they are sinfully degenerate. When homosexuality is tolerated on a national scale the laws of divine establishment are ignored and the national entity disintegrates — Romans 1:29-32.

              12. Reversionism always intensifies suffering — Psalm 77.

              13. The doctrine of reverse process reversionism. Reverse process reversionism is departing from a proper and normal relationship in life and picking up an improper and abnormal one. It is a reversal of objects, from the right object to the wrong object. It occurs in every category. For example, category #1 love. The object of our love in category #1 is Jesus Christ, and it is the rejection of that. And, for example, in the days of Jeremiah there is the turn to Baal — Jeremiah 8:9-11, 15,16, 20. Also, this was what happened to the Nicolaitans in Revelation 2:14,15. This is again stated as a principle in Revelation 2:4,5 — “leaving one’s first love.” In category #3 love — James 2:1-5.

             14. Reversionism in psychosis — 2 Peter 2:15-19: certain areas of reversionism and the practice of reverse process reversionism lead to one form or another of psychosis.

             15. There are categories of reversionism. Phallic reversionism — Colossians 3:5; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Ephesians 4:19; 5:5; Revelation 2:14, 20-23. Ritual reversionism — Hebrews 5:11-6:6. Monetary reversionism — James 4:13,14; 5:1-6; Revelation 3:14-20. Drug addiction reversionism — Galatians 5:20, the Greek word is farmakeia, mistranslated “witchcraft” and means drug addiction. Antiestablishment reversionism — 2 Peter 2 and Romans 1. Mental attitude reversionism — James 4. Psychotic reversionism comes from that — Job chapters 3 and 4. Verbal reversionism — James 5:9,12.

             16. Reversionism destroys supergrace status and supergrace living. Just as reversionism kept the Exodus generation out of the land of Canaan so reversionism keeps the believer from the ECS and the supergrace life, supergrace capacities and supergrace blessings. And just as reversionism caused the Exodus generation to die under the sin unto death so today it puts believers under the same maximum discipline.

                17. The profile of reversionism — Psalm 7:14-16.

                “For who having heard revolted?” We are dealing with reversionism. The second question: “Howbeit not all” is a)lla o)u pantej and should be translated “But did not all?” A)lla o)u pantej is a Greek style brought in from the classical Greek. It is the diatribe style in which a rhetorical question is answered with a rhetorical question.

              Then we have “that came out”, the aorist active participle of e)cerxomai, referring to coming out of slavery in Egypt. The action of the aorist participle precedes the action of the main verb. We translate so far: “But did not all having come out from Egypt” — e)k A)iguptoj. This emphasises the fact that the entire generation was not only delivered from slavery but they were also born again believers.

             “by Moses” — dia plus the genitive should be translated under the concept of agency — “through the agency of Moses.”

             First question: “But who having heard revolted?”

             Second question: “Did not all having come out from Egypt through Moses?”

            This expects an affirmative answer, minus five.

 

            Summary

            1. Moses was the grace agent, the grace leader, the supergrace hero of God to deliver the Jews from slavery.

            2. The action of the aorist participle precedes the action of the main verb — “revolted.” They came out of Egypt before they revolted. That is the point. They had freedom before they used that freedom to revolt in reversionism.

            3. The Jews were graciously delivered from Egypt before they entered into the reversionistic revolution against God.

            4. At the time of the Exodus, 1440 BC, there were approximately two-million adult saved Jews delivered.

            5. The very nature of the grace deliverance plus the faithful dissemination of Bible doctrine should have oriented the Jews to the plan of God and the pattern of grace. In other words, grace deliverance demands, logically, more grace afterward — Romans 8:32.

            6. The logical conclusion of grace in salvation is supergrace in phase two.

            7. At the cross God provided the solution to the greatest problem of all, the sin problem through grace. Now God provides the solution to minor problems through His supergrace.

            8. We have more grace as believers when we need it less than we had at the cross when we needed it more.

            9. Remember in this concept the analogy to doctrine. The deliverance from slavery in Egypt is an illustration or a type of salvation. The Passover is the appropriation of salvation. Canaan is a picture of the supergrace life. Between the Exodus and Canaan is the issue of attitude toward doctrine — positive or negative, GAP or no GAP. The testing from God in the desert is to bring out the total ability of grace and the complete inadequacy of reversion. The celebrityship of Jesus Christ makes supergrace heroes out of ordinary believers.

            Verse 17 — the third question: “But with whom was he grieved forty years?” We have a transitional particle here used without any contrast intended — de. This particle is often used as an adversative conjunction. Here, of course, it is merely a transitional particle. Instead of “but” it should be translated “then”; “with whom” is the dative plural of the interrogative pronoun tij; and then “was he grieved” is the aorist active indicative of projoxqizw which means to be disgusted. It is an anthropopathism, the same as found in verse 10. It indicates the presence of love coated with disgust. it is a human term ascribed to God in order to explain why God disciplined the Exodus generation. “Then with whom was he disgusted forty years?” The forty years is the length of the Exodus generation’s reversionism, their discipline, and the time of their dying. The answer to the third question is the reversionist of the Exodus generation.

             The fourth question: “Was it not with them that sinned?” “Was it not” is a very strong negative used as an interrogative word — o)uxi. This particular negative is not only interrogative but it demands or expects an affirmative answer. “Was it not with the ones who missed the mark?” A(martanw is an aorist active participle which means sin but it has a basic meaning of missing the mark. It means sin in that sense.

             “whose” — genitive plural of the relative pronoun o(j. It refers to the reversionists of the Exodus generation; “carcasses,” — kwlon indicates almost two-million bodies — “fell”, the aorist active indicative of piptw should be translated “had fallen”. The aorist tense is a constative aorist referring to the entire Exodus generation. Every time someone died in the Exodus generation it was discipline. The active voice: the reversionist produces the action of the verb, and the action of the verb is the sin unto death. The indicative mood is the reality of the sin unto death to the Exodus generation — “whose dead bodies had fallen in the desert?.” And then you have to add to that, “Affirmative.”

              Translation: “Then with whom was he disgusted forty years? Was it not with the ones having missed the mark? Whose dead bodies had fallen in the desert? Affirmative.”

              Verse 18 — “And” is the transitional particle de, and should be translated consistently as “Then” — “to whom,” a genitive plural of the relative pronoun and again it is referring to the reversionists of the Exodus generation — “sware he” — aorist active indicative of o)mnumi, which to promise with an oath. It is used for a solemn promise — “that they should not enter into his rest”. “Enter into “ is e)iserxomai, and refers first of all to the land of Canaan. And Canaan represents supergrace, and since they were minus capacity for supergrace they were minus supergrace. “His rest” — e)ij plus katapausij. This is the rest which is analogous to the supergrace life. Other times “rest” is different in the Greek and has a different connotation. “Then to whom did he promise with a solemn oath that they should not enter into his rest”, and then there is an answer. The word “but”, e)i mh in the Greek, means “except” — “except to them that believe not” is not quite correct. It is the dative plural aorist active participle of a)peiqew which doesn’t really mean not to believe. Peiqew means “obedience; the a in front of it means “no obedience”. And it means to be obstinate, to reject authority, to be a rebel in the soul.

             Translation: “Then to whom did he promise with a solemn oath that they should not enter into his rest? Only to those having been obstinate.”

 

             Principle

             1. Reversionism keeps the believer out of the supergrace life.

             2. Reversionism also means perpetual discipline for the believer all the way to death. The climax, then, to reversionism is to die before your time under the sin unto death, therefore under miserable conditions.

             3. In this sense 1 Corinthians 10:5 tells us that the Exodus generation was strewn out all over the desert.

             4. Moses was the exception. Moses died viewing the land of Canaan. He did not go into Canaan but he did not die from reversionism — the sin unto death.

           

             Verse 19 — “So” is a conjunctive kai used in the explanatory sense. In other words, one clause is connected with another clause by kai for the purpose of explaining the first clause. To explain those five questions we now have a conjuction, translated “And so we see”, the present active indicative of blepw. This is a customary present tense. “And so we see [we conclude, we learn].” The active voice refers to the individuals listening to this being taught. The indicative mood means to understand under the function of GAP.

              “that” introduces a Greek conjunction. It is used after verbs of perception to indicate the content of perception, to see what is being understood — o(ti. Conclusion: “And so we perceive that they could not.” This is not a Koine Greek phrase. The morphology here is Attic Greek, and it is the Attic aorist active indicative of dunamai. It is much more ancient than the Koine Greek. This plus the negative means “they were not able”. The aorist tense, being a constative aorist, takes up the whole forty years. In other words, any years between year one and year forty any or all of these people could have recovered from reversionism and GAPed it to supergrace and still gone into the land. But they didn’t. In other words, God gave them forty years. The constative aorist says n effect that the possibility was always there. They just didn’t avail themselves of the spiritual food.

            “to enter in” — the aorist active infinitive again of e)iserxomai, referring to the land of Canaan, an illustration of supergrace. The culminative aorist tense here means taking the whole ball of wax and coming down to the end. It gives us a conclusion. The infinitive indicates that God’s purpose was still open. The active voice: they were still alive and any time they were alive they could have recovered and moved. They did not recover. The Exodus generation has to be, without equivocation, the worst bunch of idiots who ever believed in Jesus Christ. They had everything in the world going for them but the thing that really counts.

               “because of” — preposition dia plus a)pistia, which is correctly translated “unbelief” and can be translated “lack of faith” or “unfaithfulness.”

               Translation: “So we perceive that they were not able to enter in because of unfaithfulness.”

               It is not unbelief here. Unbelief wasn’t their problem in the sense that we use the word. Unbelief connotes no salvation. They were saved people. Their problem was not rejection of Christ, their problem was rejection of doctrine. Technically, in our language we use the word “unbelief” for those who do not believe in Jesus Christ when the Gospel is presented. And for those who are believers, those who are born again, rejecting doctrine is called unfaithfulness.  

 

               1. The Jews of the Exodus generation are used by the unknown writer of Hebrews to set up an example for the Jews living in Jerusalem in 67 AD.

               2. Both generations, the Exodus and the generation of 67 AD, were reversionistic.

               3. However, one generation, the Exodus, was out of the land trying to get in, while the other, in 67 AD, was in the land trying to get out. But essentially the condition of soul was the same: born again believers who had neglected Bible doctrine to the point of maximum reversionistic complications.

               4. One generation was punished by the sin unto death in the desert, the other was punished by the sin unto death in Jerusalem.

               5. Both generations reached the point of the sin unto death in the same manner: negative volition, indifference, apathy, rejection of Bible doctrine.

               6. They failed to feed on spiritual food, they failed to GAP it daily, and therefore they failed to utilise faith-rest in the function of GAP.

 

              Conclusion from the whole chapter

               1. Every generation of believers faces the identical issue. After salvation the issue is: What think ye of doctrine? This is the issue of phase two, the issue to which you must have a continuous positive attitude.

               2. Why? The principle: God must vindicate His Word. The only place where God can vindicate His Word in relationship to you is in your soul. It is the Bible doctrine in your soul through GAP that God vindicates in you. That is where God starts pouring.

               3. Therefore blessing or cursing depends on your attitude toward Bible doctrine during your stay on this earth.

               4. Positive volition toward doctrine leads to supergrace and the normal function of the priesthood.

               5. Negative volition toward doctrine leads to reversionism and the sin unto death.

               6. Reversionism means cursing; supergrace means blessing.

               7. The difference between reversionism and supergrace is doctrine in the soul of the believer.

               8. From this doctrine in the soul comes the principle. Under supergrace the believer reaps what God sows, and the reaping is the icing on the cake. God gives you the cake whether you want it or not. On the other hand the cursing of reversionism is the believer reaping what the believer sows. He sows negative volition; he reaps divine discipline.

 

               Chapter 4: Outline. Chapters four and five go together, they should have been one chapter.

               1. The challenge to supergrace:  4:1-13

               2. Supergrace related to the priesthood of the believer:  4:14-16

               3. Introducing the unique high priest:  5:1-10

               4. The reversion of the Jews interrupts the discourse:  5:11-14.

              

               In verses 1-3 we have the application of Israel’s failure to reach supergrace in the Exodus generation.

              Verse 1 — we begin with the word “Therefore” which is a particle used as an inferential conjunction — o)un. It is designed to remind us that the application is the conclusion of the matter as far as the Exodus generation is concerned. We notice from our study of the last chapter that the Exodus generation is a failure generation and therefore a parallel to the generation to whom this was originally written. And it is a part of the Word of God to remind you that you too can be a part of a failure generation when your contribution is simply negative volition toward Bible doctrine.

             The Bible is very clear when it tells us not to be afraid of anything. Fear is really a mental attitude anyway, a mental attitude sin — Isaiah 41:10. Over in Timothy, “we have not been given the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sound mind”. One of the characteristics of the supergrace life is freedom from all of the psychotic, neurotic, sociopathic problems of the soul.

             The inferential conjunction, then, states a conclusion from the previous context and turns it into an application. And there is an area where we are commanded to be afraid. The Exodus generation failed, their carcasses were strewn all over the desert. There is nothing wrong with dying but there is everything wrong with the way they died. They died the sin unto death, horribly and painfully and before their time. The same thing is about to happen in one of the great catastrophes of history, the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. A lot of believers to whom this was originally written are going to die horribly in that siege.

             “let us fear” — aorist passive subjunctive of fobew which means to fear. The aorist tense is a peculiar type of Greek idiom. Here it denotes an action as occurring without reference to its progress. This is what is called an indefinite or unlimited use of the aorist tense. The Greek word a)oristoj means unlimited or indefinite. This particular aorist states the fact of the action without regard to its duration. So here we have what is known as a dramatic aorist. A dramatic aorist states a present reality with the certitude of a past event. It states a result which has been accomplished. Basically this is a dramatic aorist with an ingressive concept. On other words, at this point the writer says under the dramatic aorist, “Other people have failed, you are doing the same thing. Now it is time for you to be frightened about your failure.” “Let us begin to fear” — that brings in the ingressive aorist concept. As a result of their reversionistic failure they have before them an illustration of what is going to happen — the Exodus generation. The writer says, Now that you have met the Exodus generation it is time for you to be afraid that you. too, will go the same way as the Exodus generation. The passive voice: the subject receives the action of the verb. The subject is the believer priest living in Jerusalem in 67 AD, and he should receive fear as he now realises the implications of the third chapter of Hebrews. It is time to get frightened. The subjunctive mood is what is called a hortatory subjunctive, the writer invites the readers to join him in a course if action. The subjunctive carries the weight of a command here but it emphasises the importance of human volition. The human volition of the believer priest determines whether he continues in reversionism or backs off and recovers and goes toward supergrace. Actually, the fourth chapter is the chapter of hortatory subjunctives. There are four of them: the one here —”Let us begin to fear”; verse 11 — “Let us labour [be diligent]”; verse 14 — “Let us hold fast”; verse 16 — “Let us come boldly.” Somewhere, somehow you have to become frightened about something important. You are to be frightened about nothing except missing the boat with regard to Bible doctrine.

              The verb itself sounds warning bells in the soul because the believer is commanded not to fear anything in this life, as per 2 Timothy 1:7, and when you get an exception the exception is to act as a warning. Different things frighten different people, so there is in this passage a thing called the secondary cognisance of fear. What you ought to be afraid of is not getting doctrine but if you go into reversionism you are negative toward doctrine so you couldn’t care less about doctrine. So in the warning stage of divine discipline you get things that frighten you so that you will want doctrine again. So in the first stage the Lord Jesus Christ knocks on the door, and the knocking on the door are things that would frighten you; not someone else, but you. So God dumps a whole lot of whatever scares you right in your lap. In that way some will open the door and get right back to Bible class. So the exception is the believer being frightened of missing all the wonderful things God has for him in time.

               “a promise” — this is a part of the genitive absolute. It is therefore a noun in the genitive singular, e)paggelia. It means a promise of great blessing. God has promised blessing. It refers to the promises that are involved in the principle of Romans 8:28. The promise belongs to the supergrace believer with the supergrace capacity — wealth, promotion, etc., anything that belongs to the over and above category.

               Along with the noun in the genitive case we have a participle in the genitive case which finishes up the absolute — “being left,” present passive participle of kataleipw. Kataleipw means to neglect, to leave behind, to leave unclaimed. The noun and the participle are a thought in themselves. They are both in the genitive case, they are not grammatically connected with the rest of the sentence. This is what is called grammatically a genitive absolute in which something is isolated and given maximum importance. The promise being unclaimed is of maximum importance. This participle is in a present tense which is an unusual one: the futuristic present which denotes an event which has not as yet occurred but is regarded as so certain that the tense regards it as already occurring. So the present tense is a futuristic present. God has these things for you, therefore all you have to do is have the cup and God pours. The Exodus generation and the Jews of 67 AD had failed through reversionism and the writer to the Hebrews is saying this is a possibility of very great reality with you. All of God’s promises and all of God’s blessings come through doctrine. They are all related to doctrine and God is waiting to provide them. They are claimed through the cup. God pours when the cup exists. So “a promise being unclaimed” is a genitive absolute — great emphasis.

              “of entering into his rest” — the aorist active infinitive of e)iserxomai. The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it contemplates the action in its entirety. It takes an occurrence regardless of its extent or duration and gathers it into one ball of wax. In the Exodus generation we know the duration because it is stated — forty years. The generation of believers in Jerusalem is AD 67, and it is three years for the constative aorist here. No entrance into supergrace; no supergrace blessings. The active voice: the subject, the believer in GAP, produces the action of the verb by entering supergrace which is consistent with his function of GAP. The infinitive mood indicates God’s purpose that the normal function of the priesthood will be under supergrace status.

               “into rest” — e)ij plus katapausij. In Matthew 11:28 you have a)napausij. Pausij in both cases means rest; kata means a norm or standard; a)na means again and again. One is eternal life and one is supergrace. So it is a rest according to the norms and standards God has set up, a rest based upon the intake of Bible doctrine, reaching supergrace. Under supergrace the believer reaps what God sows. God sowed in eternity past, we reap it now. God does the pouring, we just simply have a cup running over. Under reversionism the believer reaps what the believer sows, by way of contrast.

               “any of you” means “anyone from among you.” The fact that others around you fail does not mean that you have to fail. We have tij e)c u(mwn — “anyone out from among you”. No one else’s failure has to hold you back.

              “should seem” — a bad translation. It is the present active subjunctive of the verb dokew which means to have a subjective opinion. It refers to subjective thinking. This is the thinking of the reversionist, the thinking of discouragement, the thinking of self-pity or frustration or disillusion. It is the thinking that comes into your soul when you have been jilted, when you are reacting against someone. So this is the thinking of reaction, the thinking that leads to the frantic search for happiness, the thinking of emotional revolt of the soul. The present tense is linear aktionsart, you keep on thinking that way.

              “to come short” — perfect active infinitive of u(sterew, which means to fall short of something, to fail to attain a goal, to be below standard or to default. It means here to default. It is in the perfect tense, the intensive perfect which places emphasis on the results of the failure to reach supergrace. The results of the failure is default. You have defaulted, you have failed to attain God’s goal for you. The active voice: the believer produces the action of such failure and he reacts. God sets up a goal for you; you default. God has this wonderful thing for you. Why default? We have the verbal use of the infinitive expressing the result of subjective thinking and negative volition.

             Translation: “Therefore let us fear, lest at any time a promised blessing being unclaimed of entering into his rest, anyone from among you should think subjectively to the point of default.”

           

                        Summary

              1. Thinking subjectively to default means to come short of supergrace blessing. This is the ultimate tragedy of phase two, since God has designed supergrace blessings for all believers.

              2. God has a plan for your life. This plan has a goal. God wants to bless you in supergrace, God wants to pour, God wants to share His perfect happiness and certain specific materialistic blessings. This passage says you have to be afraid of missing this.

           

           

           

           


1                    [1]Protasis: That phrase or clause in a conditional sentence that sets forth the conditional elements contingent upon the following condition or statement.

2                    [2]Apodosis: The phrase or clause in a conditional sentence that sets forth the conclusion or statement resultant from the conditional factors stated in the protasis.