PART  V –  ASSOCIATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE LAMP-STAND MODEL

Subpart B – The Trumpets / Witness of the Spirit Corollary

Article  2 – The Role of Belief

Section (a) – SIGNS & WONDERS AS MEANS FOR BELIEVING

By Daniel Irving

This section may be watched in video format at . . . 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U9MPwfE7_8&feature=youtu.be

 i.    Trumpets as a Redemptive Principle Associated with the Witness of the Spirit

ii.   Power & Demonstration as a Principle Associated with the Evangelistic Message

iii.  Signs & Wonders as Congruent Principle with the Gospel’s Power & Demonstration

Section (a) – SIGNS & WONDERS AS MEANS FOR BELIEVING

 i.   Trumpets as Redemptive Principle Associated with the Witness of the Spirit

As outlined in Part Two of this treatise, the lamp-stand model provides an illustration descriptive of the plan of redemption and modeling the apostolic doctrine.  Within the model we discern a system of various relationships useful for the apprehension of the work of the Holy Spirit in the church.  We find these relationships to be of at least three distinct categories:

– Associational   (as occupying the same position in the model),

– Transitional     (as occupying positions vertically & serially one to another), &

– Transactional   (as occupying positions laterally-opposite one to another).

This Subpart undertakes a study of the associational aspects of the lamp-stand model.  Having addressed the associational relationship between the Hebraic Feast of Passover and its relative Witness of the Holy Spirit, we now move on to consider the associational relationship between the Hebraic Feast of Trumpets and its relative Witness of the Spirit.[1]

In order to keep these relationships clear it may be necessary to review either Part I wherein we constructed the lamp-stand model, or simply the video presentation relating to the lamp-stand’s construction provided on this website which lay out the model in clear fashion.  This section (a) will involve explanation of the Gospel principle of signs and wonders as relevant to the Trumpets/Spirit associational relationship.

ii.  Power & Demonstration as a Principle Associated with the Evangelistic Message

On the opposite side of the lamp-stand from the Feast of Passover is the Feast of Trumpets.  As Passover stands representative of the death of Jesus Christ at Calvary so its reflexive principle in the church is Trumpets which stands for the Spirit-empowered preaching of that message; the message of the Cross.  Therefore the apostle Paul writes to the elect saints at Cornith that rather than bringing eloquent oratory to their assembly, he had brought the power of a simple truth:

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.   And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.  And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power;  that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.                     I Cor. 2:2-6

This is the undiluted, Spirit-empowered evangelistic preaching of the Gospel that is the message of Jesus’ death on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for sin.  To preach an evangelistic message beyond this invites stumbling.  But to preach the undiluted message of the Cross, invites the Spirit’s power to bear a witness the soul will retain on the day God makes inquiry for sin.  Through the bare message of the Cross, the kingdom of God may come in power as the object of our trust is not divided.  If we have received the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit’s witness, we have received a testimony that shall also powerfully reveal the kingdom of God in the day we are invited to enter in to it.

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.       I Cor 4:20 

In fact, we are warned against following those that neglect this power, as Paul writes Timothy of those . . .

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.           II Tim 3:5     

Paul had no desire to impress men with his own eloquence and power of persuasive speech.  He knew that that the purposes of God were performed in power, ie. the “dunamis” that is the resurrection of Christ following His death which atoned for sin in humanity.

iii.  Signs & Wonders as Congruent Principle with the Gospel’s Power & Demonstration

In his 1882 classic The Ministry of Healing, A.J. Gordon alludes to the corrupt influences of spiritism that arose during the same period as the healing movement so as to operate as a Satanic counterfeit to the work of God.  He writes:

It is very natural that decent Christians in their recoil from such revolting wonder-working, should take the position of stout denial of all miraculous interventions in modern times, and of any supernatural healing.  But we believe this to be an unworthy and unfaithful attitude.  It is as though Moses and Aaron had retreated in disgust before Jannes and Jambres, instead of pressing on with miracle upon miracle till they had compelled them to surrender to the Lord of Hosts.  It is as though Paul had been ashamed of the power of the Spirit that was in him when he met the “damsel possessed with a sprit of divination,” and had renounced his miraculous gifts for fear of being identified with soothsayers and necromancers, instead of asserting his power as he did the more mightily, and saying to the evil spirit that possessed her, “I command thee in the name of the Lord Jesus to come out of her.”[1.5]

Gordon’s book was highly influential to many in dispelling the heavy nineteenth-century mindset that miracles in the name of Jesus Christ were no longer a valid way for God to operate in declaring His kingdom.  This mindset continues heavy today especially among the churched.

While few would deny that the true Gospel of Christ should come with the Spirit’s power and demonstration as expressed by the apostle Paul, there are many that will draw a line between power and demonstration in terms of its effects – emotionally, internally, and transformationally – upon the man, and power and demonstration in terms of the overt supernatural phenomenon that could be called a miracle.  Nevertheless, it is clear that when Paul preached the Gospel in the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power”, this was inclusive of observable supernatural phenomenon.  The Biblical record clearly underscores miracles as a sign of the Gospel affording men reason to believe.  God performed outward miracles as a testament concerning Christ:

“. . Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you . . .”   Acts 2:22 

Not only were dramatic miracles worked by Jesus Christ before His death, but they clearly continued after His death and resurrection as a means for believing during the church age:

And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.                                                     Acts 6:8

And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.               Acts 8:6

Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, Declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.                                                                                       Acts 15:12

And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul.     Acts 19:11

Not only were miracles performed by the apostles as a means for believing, they were performed within the church as a means of believing.  Paul alludes to some within the church to whom was given “the working of miracles”.[2] In his letter to the Galatians he alludes to miracles as if they were a common and expected attribute of church life:

He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth He it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?          Gal. 3:5

The kingdom of God comes in power as a divine testimony confirming the Person and work of Jesus Christ.  Thus the Gospel age is one of . . .

God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders and with diverse miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will.        Heb. 2:4

Therefore it is difficult to understand how so much of Christiandom would deny that the Holy Spirit should work in signs and wonders today.  If we agree that the internal work of regeneration is a miracle, then we should not deny God His work in aiding that internal work via power & demonstration by His Spirit.  And if we receive the Spirit’s power and demonstration as He performs in an inward work upon the man, we should also receive the outwardly miraculous as gifts of God’s mercy, sent to aid us in believing on the name of Jesus Christ.  Jesus said:

“Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.”                                                                                    John 4:48

And the apostle Paul relates clearly that early converts to Christ were wrought upon through the means of Divine signs of God’s presence within the Church, including the sign of miraculously-imparted knowledge.  He writes to the Corinthians:

And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so, falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.      I Cor. 14:25

There is a witness to the world that God is in the midst of His people, which works salvation for those who believe.  For God as intervened in the material world through the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and He did so unto the purpose of salvation.  Salvation, is to die in righteousness.  The means of death in righteousness  is to believe in the One Who so intervened:

This is the work of God, that you believe in Him Whom He hath sent.     John 6:29

Therefore God will send signs and wonders as a part of the Spirit’s power and demonstration relating to the internal work of regeneration.   When the Gospel is preached (typified in the feast of Trumpets) the Spirit shall testify (represented in the Witness of the Spirit) and we should expect that signs and wonders should occur.

Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God;  So that from Jerusalem to Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.  Rom. 15:19