“Mystery” in the New Testament

The word “mystery” occurs 28 times in the New Testament. It does not occur in the Old Testament at all. In our English language a mystery is something that can possibly by solved by the use of clues and deduction and so forth. We figure it out. Of course, there have been many mysteries that have never been solved. Perhaps the most common use of the word in English has to do with murder mysteries, “who done it’s.” We love to watch the famous detectives solve the mysteries.

In the New Testament a mystery is something that cannot be solved by man, and indeed it does not refer to what we call a mystery at all. A mystery in the New Testament is something that only God knows about – we are not aware of it at all – but that God reveals in his time. The phrase “the fullness of the time or times” occurs in Gal. 4.4 and Eph. 1.10.

In the fullness of the time God sent forth his Son. In the fullness of the times he will sum up all things in Christ. God has his own timetable. In his own time he makes known his mysteries. A mystery can be known only by revelation.

Mt. 13.11

In Mt. 13.11 (Mk. 4.11, Lk. 8.10) the Lord Jesus says to his disciples, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens…..” Now the kingdom of God was no mystery. Probably every Jew looked forward to the kingdom of God. They were a conquered people, ruled by Rome. Perhaps their fondest hope was to see their Messiah come and deliver them from the Romans and make them a free and powerful nation once again. No, the kingdom was no mystery. But there are mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens or of the kingdom of God (these are the same, the term “kingdom of the heavens” being used to point out that the kingdom of God is heavenly and spiritual and not of this world, though it will rule over the world forever). “The heavens rule,” Dan. 4.26 says.

What are the mysteries of the kingdom? The primary mystery in the verses just referred to is its hiddenness in this age. The Jews looked for and yearned for an earthly kingdom with their Messiah, the Son of David, sitting on the throne in Jerusalem. Even the disciples had the same hope: “Lord, is it at this time that you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1.6) They were looking for an earthly kingdom. The mystery being revealed by God is that the kingdom is hidden in this age. Satan is the ruler of this world (Jn. 12.31) and the god of this age (2 Cor. 4.4). This world appears to be anything but the kingdom of

God. But God rules over all nonetheless. The kingdom of God was present in the person of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament, a man who appeared to be just a man. He was the Messiah incognito. One day he will burst forth from the skies and take his seat on the throne in Jerusalem and the kingdom of God, hidden now, will be there for all the world to see.

But why would the Lord conceal the kingdom in this way? Chapter 13 begins with the parable of the sower. Then the disciples ask the Lord why he speaks in parables. There was a specific reason why he so taught, and Matthew tells us that, and his explanation brings out a vital point in his account of the Good News, and in the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus. I will quote the entire passage here, Mt. 13.10-17 (Mk. 4.10-12, Lk. 8.9-10).

And as they went along the disciples said to him, “Why do you speak in parables to them?” But answering he said to them, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, it will be given to him and he will have abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. Because of this I speak in parables to them, because seeing they are not seeing and hearing they are not hearing or understanding, and in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled which says,

“By hearing you will hear and not understand,

And seeing you will see and not perceive.

For the heart of this people has become dull, [lit., “fat”]

And with he ears they heard with difficulty, [lit., “with heaviness]

And they closed their eyes,

That they might not see with the eyes

And hear with the ears

And understand with the heart and turn,

And I will heal them. [Matthew’s quotation of Is. 6.9-10]

But blessed [happy] are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. For amen I say to you that many prophets and righteous men wanted to see what you see and did not see, and to hear what you hear and did not hear.

Matthew tells us in v. 10 that the disciples asked Jesus why he taught in parables. They did not understand the parables or why they were used, and that is just the point. The Lord’s answer to their question contains a sobering lesson:

To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him it will be given and he will have abundance, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. For this reason I speak to them in parables, so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear or understand.

Then the Lord quotes Is. 6.9-10 as a biblical support for what he has just said. These statements by the Lord make it appear that he is deliberately concealing the truth from people. At first, that seems an impossibility, but when we study the passage in Isaiah as well as the development of the theme of judgment in Matthew, we see that that is exactly what the Lord is doing. The verses from Isaiah occur in the well-known chapter in which Isaiah had the vision of the Lord in the temple, confessed his sin, and had his lips cleansed by the burning coal. Then he received his call from God to his prophetic ministry. In giving him his commission, God said to him,

Go and tell this people, “Hear indeed, but do not understand, and see indeed, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people fat and make their ears heavy and shut their eyes so that they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and do not understand with their heart and turn and be healed.”

The key words in this passage are “so that … not,” as it is also in its quotation in Matthew. In other words, the purpose of Isaiah’s mission to the Jews was to prevent them from repenting and being healed by concealing the truth from them. The reason for this was that they had rejected God for so long that God had finally put them under the judgment of spiritual blindness and deafness so that they could have no less a man of God in their midst than Isaiah and they would be unable to see or hear God through his man.

The same was the case with the Lord Jesus. Not only did the Jews have the long Old Testament history of rejecting God, but now they had also rejected John the Baptist and the Son of God himself. Thus the Lord pronounced judgment on them, not the fiery judgment of war or hell, but the living judgment of being unable to see or hear God even in his greatest spokesmen, even in his own Son. What a fearful condition these people brought themselves into! They had no further opportunity of repentance, for they were under God’s judgment of spiritual blindness and deafness. We see a similar judgment in 2 Thess. 2.11: God sending a “working of deception” on those who follow antichrist. See also 1 Kings 22.19-23. Thus the hiddenness of the kingdom.

A part of that hiddenness of the kingdom is that the seed is growing secretly. The number of those coming into the kingdom is constantly growing. Their maturity in Christ is constantly increasing. One day when the Lord Jesus bursts out of the eastern sky in a

blaze of glory to take his place on the throne of this world, every eye will see the kingdom of God and realize that the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ (Rev. 11.15). Praise him! He has been sovereign all along.

In this age entering the kingdom is not a visible thing, but receiving the Lord Jesus into one’s heart. Another is the coexistence of good and evil, wheat and weeds, with only God able to separate the two. Another is the seed growing secretly. The world appears to be growing more and more evil (See 2 Tim. 3.13). Either it is or people are more open with their evil. But the seeds planted by the Lord and his people are growing secretly and the kingdom will appear in its time. Another is the matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of the worthiness of one for the kingdom. If we, who have been forgiven so much, will not forgive others, how can we be worthy of the kingdom. Many people think that anyone who sins should be dealt with harshly and made to pay. Does that seem right in the knowledge of the way God has forgiven us of so much more than others have done to us? Another mystery of the kingdom is that everything about it is a matter of grace. The Bible makes much of rewards in the kingdom, but it also makes it clear that even our rewards are by grace. Do we earn a reward? Yes, but why did we do the Lord’s work in the first place? Grace. Like the laborers in the vineyard, no matter how much we work for the Lord, he does not owe us a thing. Our debt to him is immeasurably more than what he might “owe” us. It is all grace.

On the negative side is the matter of judicial blindness. We saw that it is possible to reject God to the point that a person gets beyond the possibility of repentance. God can blind a person to the truth so that he cannot and will not repent and will be lost. See 1 Tim. 4.2. This is a fearful prospect.

[Parts of these statements on the mysteries come from my paper, The Kingdom of God.] Rom. 11.25

The next use of the word “mystery” is in Rom. 11.25. In Rom. 9-11 Paul writes about the situation of the Jews now that their Messiah has come and been rejected by most of them. In 11.25 he writes, “For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, that you may not be shrewd in yourselves, that a hardening in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in.” Why would the Jews reject their long desired Messiah? That is a thorny question, but one reason is that he did not fulfill their expectation of a Messiah who would establish an earthly kingdom. Instead of being a conquering Messiah he was a crucified Messiah – the offense, the stumbling block, of the cross (Gal, 5.11). In Rom 11.11 Paul had written, “But by their trespass salvation has come

to the Gentiles so as to provoke them to jealousy.” Because the Jews, to whom he went first, rejected their Messiah, Paul turned to the Gentiles. There is a fullness of Gentiles to come in. Just as there is a fullness of the times to God, so is there a fullness of the Gentiles.

The hardening of Israel in part came because they did reject their Messiah. In Heb. 3.8 and 15 and 4.7 the writer, quoting Ps. 95.8, tells his readers not to harden their hearts. God hardens the hearts of those who harden their own hearts, as he did with the Egyptian Pharaoh in Ex. 4. He would not listen to Moses and soften his heart toward the Israelites, so God hardened his heart. It is a judgment. It is a dangerous thing to harden one’s heart toward God. The revelation by God in Rom. 11.25 is that God would use this hardening to turn Paul to the Gentiles to begin the coming in of their fullness. We are the beneficiaries of this act of God. We are part of the fullness.

Rom. 16.25

At the end of the book of Romans in Paul’s concluding doxology he writes, “Now to the one being able to establish you according to my good news and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to a revelation of mystery having been kept secret for eternal times….” We noted at the beginning of this article that a mystery is something that only God knows about and that cannot be known unless he reveals it. Here Paul says exactly that, “having been kept secret for eternal times.” But in the time of the Lord Jesus God chose to reveal it. The question in this verse is, What is the mystery? Paul does not tell us. The only mystery named in Romans we just saw in 11.25, the hardening in part of the Jews that led to the Gentiles coming in. Is it this or something further? Most students of the word believe that he means the full mystery of the good news, Christ and the church, including the coming in of the Gentiles. I will leave it at that.

1 Cor. 2.1?

Why the question mark? You are probably aware that there are many ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts, over 5800. These are not all full copies of the entire New Testament, there being very few of those. Because these were all copied by hand until the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, there were inevitable differences among manuscripts, these differences being called variant readings. That is the case with 1 Cor. 2.1. Some of the ancient manuscripts that are considered the most accurate have the word “mystery” in this verse, and others have “testimony.” It is easy to see why this difference would occur. “Mystery” in Greek is musterion, and “testimony” is marturion. So we are faced with the question as to which word Paul used when he wrote 1 Corinthians. I would say that the question cannot be answered. I looked through several

English versions of the New Testament. Some say “testimony” and some say “mystery.” I looked at four academic commentaries. They all have “testimony.” Whether Paul wrote “mystery” or “testimony” is itself a mystery, our kind of mystery, one that we know about, but cannot figure out! But there is one fact that may be the deciding fact. In 1 Cor. 4.1 Paul wrote, “So let a man regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” We also see “the mystery of God” in Col. 2.2 and Rev. 10.7, which we will consider in due time. Since we are considering “mystery” in the New Testament and Paul used “the mysteries of God” in 1 Cor. 4.1, let us assume that he also used “mystery” in 1 Cor. 2.1.

What is the mystery of God in 1 Cor. 2.1? In v. 2 Paul continues, “For I decided not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” It would seem that the mystery of God is Christ, and him crucified. Col. 2.2 speaks of “the mystery of God, Christ.” Christ is the mystery of God. The Old Testament is prophetic of Christ in many places, but it did not become clear just what he would be until he came to earth, lived, died, was raised, and ascended back to Heaven. We saw in Matt. 13.11 that there are mysteries of the kingdom, and in that case, the hiddenness of the kingdom. While he was on earth in the flesh the Lord Jesus was a hidden Messiah. He looked like any other man. He lived an actual human life. It took the revelation of God for people to know that he was in fact the Jewish Messiah, and more, he was God in the flesh, God become man. We saw the offense of the cross in Rom. 11.25. The cross hid the Messiah from those who would not see. The revelation of the mystery of God, Christ, brought him out before all who would see.

In this we see that, while there will be an earthly kingdom, God’s interest in sending his Son to earth was to save us spiritually first and then to establish his kingdom. If we were not saved from our sins we would not be able to be in the kingdom of God at all. First things first. The Jews wanted an earthly kingdom by force that would make them great regardless of their spiritual condition. God wanted a people worthy of his kingdom, people who had had their sins forgiven and their lives conformed to the image of Christ. For his kingdom is spiritual, not earthly. The heavens rule. The Jews wanted to be saved form the Romans. God wanted them saved from their sins.

1 Cor. 2.7

This verse is a continuation of v. 1, the mystery of God. Here Paul writes that he does not speak in words of the wisdom of the world (v. 4), but he speaks God’s wisdom in a mystery. Going back to 1 Cor. 1.22-23 we read, “For Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews an offense, but to Gentiles

foolishness….” What Paul speaks is a mystery to Jews – How could a crucified man be the Messiah? – and a mystery to Gentiles – What is the wisdom in getting oneself crucified? But then vs. 24-25 say, “But to the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, God’s power and God’s wisdom.” The mystery is Christ, God’s power and God’s wisdom, and that is a part of the mystery of God. A crucified Messiah was a truth known only to God until in the fullness of the times he revealed it.

1 Cor. 4.1

We quoted this verse above: “So let a man regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” We have just seen that the mystery of God is Christ, and Christ crucified, the offense of the cross. Paul goes on to write in v. 2, “In this case moreover it is required in stewards that one should be found faithful.” He shows that the knowledge of the mysteries of God is not just for the personal enjoyment or benefit of one, but it is a stewardship. Stewardship is the responsibility of taking care of something or of using something properly. Paul saw that his knowledge of these mysteries that had been revealed to him made him a steward and that God would hold him accountable for how he exercised this stewardship. He was to use this knowledge to bring people to Christ and to deepen them in him. He does not specify in this verse what the mysteries of God are, but they include what we have seen about the crucified Messiah and his hiddenness and what we will see as we continue. I would say that the term “mysteries of God” would include all of the mysteries. We will see more of this matter of the stewardship of the mysteries, so I will stop for now at this point.

1 Cor. 13.2

In this glorious chapter that shows that love is above all else, Paul writes,

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become as a noisy brass or a clanging cymbal, and if I should have prophecy and understand all the mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

The mysteries are profound and are of great importance. They are the very secrets of God that, revealed, bring us to salvation if we trust in God. Paul is not revealing another mystery here, but makes it clear that the mysteries are not designed to be used by us for our own benefit, to make us great preachers or apostles or anything great. They are designed to be used in love to accomplish the will of God. Love is a part, the greatest part, of the stewardship of the mysteries of God. Without it there is nothing.

1 Cor. 14.2

This verse is a part of Scripture that has been the subject of great controversy and division. I will quote 1 Cor. 14.1-5 to provide context.

Pursue love, but be zealous for the spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy, for the one speaking in a tongue is not speaking to men, but to God, for no one hears [i.e., understands], but in the Spirit he speaks mysteries. But the one prophesying is speaking to men – edification and encouragement and consolation. The one speaking in a tongue edifies himself, but the one prophesying edifies the church. Now I desire you all to speak in tongues, but rather that you should prophesy. Now the one prophesying is greater than the one speaking in tongues, unless he should interpret so that the church may receive edification.

I am no expert on speaking in tongues. Years ago I was around speaking in tongues a good bit, but I never did so myself. All I can do is say what I see in the Scriptures about it. First, it seems to me, based on this passage, that speaking in tongues is biblical, but it is also clear to me that not every Christian does so. In chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, v. 30,

Paul writes, “Do all speak in tongues? No.” This verse could also be translated, “All do not speak in tongues.” Either way it is the same. Some speak in tongues. Some do not. It is a gift of God that he gives to some and not to others, as with all the other gifts.

Combining 1 Cor. 14.2 with v, 4 we see that a person who speaks in tongues speaks mysteries and edifies himself. By edifying himself does he understand what he is saying so that he understands the mystery, or is just the experience of having a tongue from God edifying? Or both? Not having spoken in tongues, I cannot say.

This statement is really an aside from our subject, but I want to say that I think it is a tragedy that the church cannot be a place where each one can exercise the gift he has to the edification of all. I do not think that I have ever heard tongues used biblically, with interpretation, but I would love to be in a meeting where someone spoke in tongues and he or someone else gave the interpretation so that we could all hear a message from God. That has never taken place in my own experience. I have heard tongues with no interpretation so that no one was edified, except possibly the speaker. I have heard much denunciation of tongues. It is sad to me that this gift has been lost to the vast majority of the church for whatever reason. It is a gift of God and should be used biblically.

Back to my subject.

1 Cor. 15.51

In this passage Paul reveals a great mystery, great to all of us who trust in Christ. In the Old Testament the idea of the resurrection of the dead is barely hinted at. The Jews of that era believed in sheol. There is much confusion about this word. In the King James Version of the Old Testament the word “hell” appears 31 times. In every case it translates the word “sheol.” But sheol does not mean hell. It is the same as hades in the New Testament, which also does not mean hell, but death or the grave or the prison house of the lost dead awaiting final judgment. I have written on this in detail in my article, Hades, Hell, Paradise, and Heaven. The Old Testament Jews believed that everyone died and went to sheol. It was not Heaven or hell, but a rather shadowy existence, almost nonexistence. Resurrection is mentioned in the Old Testament Is. 26.19 and Dan. 12.13.

By the time of the New Testament there was widespread belief in the resurrection of the dead, and the Lord Jesus prophesied resurrection himself in, for example, Lk. 14.14 and 20.35-36 and in Jn. 5.29, and in Jn. 11.25 he says that he is the resurrection. But Paul reveals a great mystery in 1 Cor. 15.51-53:

Look, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep [i.e., die], but we will all be changed, in a moment [the Greek word is atomos – atom], in a blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For a trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed, for this corruptible must put on the incorruptible.

In 1 Cor. 15.44 Paul had said that our bodies would be raised a spiritual body. He adds in Phil. 3.20-21, “For our commonwealth is in the heavens, from which indeed we are awaiting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation, conformed to the body of his glory, according to the energy enabling him to subject all things to himself.” What is a spiritual body? The spiritual by definition not material. The material by definition is not spiritual. It is a mystery, our kind of mystery, one that we know about, but cannot figure out. But the mystery in this passage is God’s kind of mystery, one we did not know about till he revealed it, but we will have spiritual bodies.

We will not just rise from the dead, but we will have bodies that are spiritual in nature, no longer subject to temptation, pain, disease, death, decay. “And so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4.17). That is a wonderful mystery revealed to us by God in his time.

Eph. 1.9, 2.11-3.12, 6.12

Now we come to Ephesians, which has a good bit to say about mysteries. We begin with 1.9-10. You may know that virtually all of Ephesians from 1.3 into chapter 2 is one sentence, as though Paul had the thoughts just pouring out so that he could not find a stopping place. The revelation was flowing rapidly. For that reason we must begin in the middle of the sentence: “… having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him for stewardship of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth….” The mystery of God’s will. What is the mystery of God’s will?

We have seen that the Jews, including the disciples right up to Pentecost, were expecting an earthly kingdom centered on the throne of David in Jerusalem. There will be an earthly kingdom under the Lord Jesus, but there will be far more than that. All things, in the heavens and on the earth, will be summed up or headed up in Christ. The heavens, from our perspective, include everything outside the earth, including Heaven itself and the created universe. The Jews had little concept of Heaven. Other than it being the dwelling place of God there is not much said about it. There is no thought of going to Heaven at death, but rather to sheol. Judaism was largely earth-centered. And the Jews had no access to God. He was dwelling in a building that no one but priests could enter, and even then only the High Priest could go into the very presence of God, and that only day a year, on Yom Kippur. Now through Paul God reveals a whole new concept, the summing up of all things in Christ. Col. 3.11 says that Christ will be all and in all. In the kingdom of God there will be no division, but perfect unity, with Christ dwelling in and being the life of everyone.

We continue with Eph. 2.11-3.12. Chapter 2 does not include the word “mystery,” but it is part of this passage that deals with what the mystery is. I will quote it in full because to some extent it is the good news.

¹¹Therefore remember that once you Gentiles in the flesh, those called uncircumcision by what is called circumcision, made with hands in the flesh, ¹²that you were at that time separate from Christ, having been alienated from the people of Israel and strangers of the covenants of the promise, not having hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you, the ones once being far off, came near by the blood of Christ.

¹⁴For he himself is our peace, the one having made both one and having broken down the dividing wall of the fence, the enmity, in his flesh, ¹⁵having annulled the

law of the commandments in regulations that he might create the two in himself into one new man, making peace, ¹⁶and might reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, having put to death the enmity by it. ¹⁷And having come he preached the good news, peace to you the ones far off and peace to the ones near [Is. 57.19], ¹⁸for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹in whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, ²²in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

3. Because of this I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles,²if indeed you heard of the stewardship of the grace of God having been given to me for you, ³that according to revelation the mystery was made known to me, as I wrote before briefly, ⁴by which you are able, reading it, to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as it was now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: ⁶the Gentiles to be fellow heirs and fellow members of the same body and fellow partakers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the good news, ⁷of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God having been given to me according to the working of his power. ⁸To me the least of all saints this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the untraceable riches of Christ ⁹and to bring to light what is the stewardship of the mystery having been hidden from the ages in God, the one having created all things, ¹⁰that the manifold wisdom of God may now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies through the church, ¹¹according to the purpose of the ages which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, ¹²in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him.

We dealt with the matter of stewardship in 1 Cor. 4.1. Here in Eph. 1.2-5 Paul writes,

…if indeed you heard of the stewardship of the grace of God having been given to me for you, that according to revelation the mystery was made known to me, as I wrote before briefly, by which you are able, reading it, to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as it was now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit…

The last part of this quotation shows the mystery aspect of what Paul is writing about: it was not made known to earlier generations, but is only now revealed, the very essence of mystery in the New Testament. Paul wrote of the stewardship of the grace of God. It was by grace that the mystery was made known. God revealed it for purposes of his grace, namely, the salvation of his people. Paul is under a stewardship, to make known this mystery so that people can be saved. And what is this mystery?

Going back to Eph. 2.11-12 we see that the Gentiles were excluded from the people of God. They were “separate from Christ, having been alienated from the people of Israel and strangers of the covenants of the promise, not having hope and without God in the world.” But then something revolutionary took place: “But now in Christ Jesus you, the ones once being far off, came near by the blood of Christ.” The Lord Jesus came to save all people, not just the Jews. When he died on the cross he took the sins of the world on himself so that all who will trust in him can be saved and become a part of the people of God. He reconciled Jew and Greek. He destroyed the enmity between Jew and Gentile. He not only made peace between the two – he is the peace. What was the enmity? It was the “the law of the commandments in regulations.” The Jewish law excludes the Gentiles unless the Gentiles become Jews. This does not mean that the Jewish law is not still valid. It is still valid, but it cannot save anyone, but only shows people that they cannot be saved by keeping the law because no can keep the law perfectly. We mentioned grace just above. The New Testament reveals that we are not saved by law, but by grace. We can never be saved by keeping the law because we cannot keep it perfectly, but God was willing by grace for his Son to take the penalty of our sins on himself and forgive us. And it is another subject, but the New Testament teaches what we saw in 1 Cor. 13, that love is the answer. If we love we will keep the law without even knowing it because we will do only what is right. We do not keep the law to be saved, but we do what is right because we have been saved and want to do what is right.

I wrote above that even the Jews did not have access to God, except for the High Priest one day a year. It is though God was kept locked up where no one could get to him. But look at what Paul writes in Eph. 2.18: “… for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” We, we! Have access to God. Not even the High Priest had access to God, but we do! We Gentiles

are no longer strangers and aliens, but … fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

God kept locked up in a house? WE ARE THE HOUSE! We live in his very presence all the time. Are you jumping up and down with joy?

We quoted Eph. 3.4 where Paul speaks of the mystery of Christ. We have seen the mystery of God – Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2.1-2, Col. 2.2). Now we have the mystery of Christ. What is the mystery of Christ? Eph.3.4-6:

… the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as it was now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: the Gentiles to be fellow heirs and fellow members of the same body and fellow partakers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the good news….

What is the mystery of Christ? Just what we have been seeing in Eph. 2.11-22. There is a new entity in the world. It is called the church, and it includes the Gentiles. The church was not revealed in the Old Testament. The people of God were the Jews in the Old Testament. Judaism was it. Is. 42.6 and 49.6 say that God intended for the Jews to be a light to the nations, to the Gentiles, but they failed in that assignment. What they failed to do the Lord Jesus did: he is the Light, not just of the Jews, but of the world. We “are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” The mystery of Christ is the church, including all who will come to him.

Eph. 3.8-12:

To me the least of all saints this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the untraceable riches of Christ and to bring to light what is the stewardship of the mystery having been hidden from the ages in God, the one having created all things, that the manifold wisdom of God may now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies through the church, according to the purpose of the ages which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him.

Here again Paul mentions his stewardship. He is accountable to God for what he does with this mystery revealed to him. In 1 Cor. 9.16 he writes, “For if I should preach the good news, there is no boasting for me, for necessity is laid on me. For woe be to me if I should not preach the good news.” People’s salvation was in his hands. He has this great mystery “hidden from the ages in God.” What will he do with it?

There is a very interesting statement in these verses. We noted that the heavens include everything outside the earth, including Heaven and the created universe. Here Paul writes “that the manifold wisdom of God may now be made known to the rulers and

authorities in the heavenlies through the church.” Judaism was and is of the earth. The Christian faith is not earthly, but spiritual. It permeates everything in the heavens and the earth. The manifold wisdom of God is to be made known not just to people on earth, but “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies.” The Bible teaches that there are spiritual beings governing the universe – see Jn. 12.31, 2 Cor. 4.4, Eph. 6.12, Col. 1.13 and 16, and 2.15. This making known of God’s manifold wisdom in the spiritual world is through the church. That is, the revelation and accomplishment of the mystery of Christ, the church, saved by grace, including the Gentiles, shows to the spiritual rulers and authorities the wisdom of God. What is an offense to the Jews and foolishness to Greeks is the wisdom of God, and this is made known to the spiritual beings, too. Apparently Satan and his forces and God’s hierarchy did not know this mystery of the church. Imagine the shock of Satan and his forces and the amazement of God’s angels when they realized what God had accomplished with the crucifixion! This mystery was hidden from the ages. Then it was revealed by the cross and resurrection through the church. “Oh depth of riches of both God’s wisdom and knowledge. How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways!”

Eph. 5.32

At the end of his passage on the relationship between husbands and wives Paul writes, “’Because of this a man will leave father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will be one flesh.’ This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” It is obvious that this mystery goes back to Adam and Eve. It was God’s intention that the union of Adam and Eve should be not just a marriage between two people, but a picture of something. What they were to picture was a mystery until the Lord Jesus came. He began the revelation with the parable of the ten virgins in Mt. 25.1- 13 (Lk. 2.35-38). The five prudent got to be present at the wedding feast. He continues in Mt. 22.1-2. But what is the wedding feast?

In one of the more glorious passages of Scripture John writes,

Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him, for the marriage of the little Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready, and it was given to her that she might be clothed in fine linen, shining, clean, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And he said to me, “Write: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the little Lamb.” [Rev. 19.7-9]

The mystery is that the Lord Jesus is to have a wife, and the wife is to be the church, or, as I believe, the overcomers of the church. The Bible, Old Testament and New, is quite

clear that there will be rewards in the millennial kingdom of God and on into eternity (for example, see 1 Cor. 3.10-15). I believe the greatest of rewards will be to be a part of the bride or wife of Christ, to know the deepest intimacy with our Lord.

We began by saying that God intended for Adam and Eve to be a picture of something. Think about it. God said that it was not good for the man to be alone, so he decided to make a helper for him. He put Adam to sleep, opened his side, and took out a rib, with which he made Eve to be his wife. He put the Lord Jesus to sleep on the cross, opened his side by means of the soldier’s spear, and out of that side came the church to be his wife. Think of Isaac and Rebekah. Abraham did not want his only son to marry a girl from among the Canaanites, but from his kinsmen. He sent Eleazar to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son. He found Rebekah and took her back for Isaac. God did not want a girl from the world to be the wife of his Son, so he sent the Holy Spirit into the world to gather out of it a people for his name (Acts 15.14). That people, the church, was to be the bride of Christ. Paul says that the marriage of a man and woman is to be a picture of Christ and the church. That is a part of God’s plan that could be known only by the revelation of God, a mystery. God give us grace to attain to that greatest of rewards.

Eph. 6.19

In this verse Paul asks his readers to pray “for me, that a word may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the good news….” What is the mystery of the good news? It is all of these mysteries that are good news to us: the mystery of God, Christ, becoming a man, dying for us and being raised from the dead for our salvation from our sins; the mystery of Christ, the church, including the Gentiles; the promise of our resurrection and the transformation of our bodies into spiritual bodies not subject to the sufferings of our current material bodies; the bride of Christ and our possibility of gaining that greatest of rewards.

Col. 1.26-27

In this passage Paul writes of the church,

of which I was made a servant according to the stewardship of God given to me for you to fulfill the word of God, the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations, but now made known to his saints, to whom God wanted to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of the glory.

We see the matter of stewardship again. Paul is responsible for sharing this mystery with God’s people. And what is the mystery? It is not just that people can be saved from their sins and that the Gentiles are included in the church, the people of God, but that Christ lives in us. He becomes our very life. He is not someone outside us whom we know, but someone who lives within us. We are one with the Lord. As 1 Cor. 6.17 says, “The one being joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Here is the beginning of the bride of Christ. We are not just one flesh, as Gen. 2.24 and Eph. 5.31 say. We are one spirit with the Lord. The relationship with Christ is not fleshly, but spiritual. If we are faithful and obedient to him, we will have our place in the bride of Christ in his kingdom. That is the hope of glory! At this point it is a hope. In the kingdom it will be a reality. What more can we say?

Col. 2.2

Col. 2.2 tells us more about the mystery of God, which we have already considered under 1 Cor. 2.1. The mystery of God is Christ, and him crucified. Why is Christ as mystery? We saw that the Lord Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament, but who would ever have thought that God would send his divine Son to earth to become a man and give his life to make a way for sins to be forgiven and salvation, a spiritual salvation, not earthly, to be available? That is a mystery! The full revelation of him could not be known until he came to earth and lived his life, and even then it took the writing of the New Testament for that revelation to be completely set forth. Paul writes here in Col. 2.1-2,

For I want you to know how great a conflict I have for you and for those in Laodicea and for those who have not seen my face in flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been united in love, and into all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, into a full knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ….

Col. 1.15-20 leads into Col. 2.1-2 and is a major record of the “full knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ.” What does it tell us? Let us quote the passage: God

delivered us from the authority of the darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of the sins; who is image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, for by him were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities; all things were created through him and for him, and he himself is before all things and in him all things have held together. And he himself is the Head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself may become preeminent, for in him all the Fullness was pleased to dwell, through him to

reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him, whether the things on the earth or the things in the skies.

What can we add to this? Such is the Christ who lives in us, this mystery of God, and with whom we are one spirit.

Col. 4.3

Paul asked the Ephesians for prayer in Eph. 6.19. Now he asks the Colossians for prayer also, “praying also for us that God would open for us a door of the word, that we may speak the mystery of Christ, because of which I am in bonds, that I may make it clear as I ought to speak.” We have seen the mystery of Christ, the church. Paul wants to be able to get this message across even though he is in prison, and he wants to be able to make the message clear.

2 Thess. 2.7

In this verse we read about the mystery of lawlessness: “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” Now lawlessness is no mystery. Lawlessness has gone on from the time Adam and Eve ate the first bite of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Rom. 5.13 says that where there is no law sin is not imputed. The Jewish law had not yet been given at that time, of course, but when God gives a command it is law. There is also law in our hearts (Rom. 2.12-15). We know right from wrong. Cain killed Abel. So far as we know God had not said to them, “You shall not kill,” but it is inherit in us that murder is wrong. Yes, there has been lawlessness from almost the beginning.

So what is the mystery of lawlessness? We read in 2 Thess. 2.3, “No one should deceive you in any way, for the day of the Lord will not come unless there have come the apostasy and the man of lawlessness have been revealed, the son of destruction.” Then in vs. 7-8 we have,

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but is restrained, the one restraining at present until he be gone from the midst, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will take away by the breath of his mouth and will abolish by the appearance of his coming/presence.

The mystery of lawlessness is that at the end of this age there will come one, known as the antichrist, who will be the ultimate in lawlessness. The world is mostly ruled by law, though there is very much lawlessness, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work,

but at the end the antichrist will take all law into his own hands, be himself the law, be the very embodiment of lawlessness. He will even try to replace God, as 2 Thess. 2.4 says: the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction, “the one opposing and exalting himself above every so-called god or object of worship so as to sit down in the temple of God, setting forth himself that he is God.” He will be the full expression of the mystery of lawlessness.

For millennia men have tried to conquer the whole world. We know of the great empires of the past and of Hitler, and in our day communism aspires to rule the world. So far none have succeeded, but the antichrist will, and what he says will be law everywhere.

I do not want to go into a full discussion of the events of the end of this age, but let me just say that the antichrist will come to power is ways described in the book of Daniel and in Rev. 13. As I understand it, he will make a covenant with the Jews (a great irony: the Jews are supposed to live under the covenant made with God in the Old Testament), a covenant to last for seven years, but at the middle of that time, 3 ½ years, he will break the covenant, put an end to the Jewish worship, desolate their holy place (Dan. 9.27, Mt. 24.15, Mk. 13.14), and attack Jerusalem (Lk. 21.20). Two-thirds of the Jews will be killed (Zech. 13.8, see also 14.2). This period is the last 3 ½ years of the antichrist’s reign and are known as the great tribulation. But at the end of this ghastly period we will see what we quoted just above from 2 Thess. 2.8: The Lord Jesus will “take [him] away by the breath of his mouth and will abolish by the appearance of his coming/presence. John describes the same scene in Rev. 19.20, “And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who did the signs before him with which he deceived those receiving the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image. The two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone.” The mystery of lawlessness will be complete and the man of lawlessness will be no more. Praise to our God!

1 Tim. 3.9

Paul tells Timothy that deacons should be those “having the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.” The mystery of the faith. The world says that seeing is believing. The Jews thought that salvation came through keeping the law. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But God planted a seed in Gen. 15. He made a promise to Abraham and Abraham “believed I AM and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Later on the Jewish people, descended from Abraham, were given the law by Moses and they lived by that law, or were supposed to.

Centuries later the apostle Paul came along. He pointed out that faith came 430 years before the law was given”

Now to Abraham and his seed the promises were spoken. He does not say, “and the seeds,” as to many, but as to one, “and to your seed,” which is Christ. But I am saying this: a covenant having been ratified beforehand by God, a law having come after 430 years does not annul it, so as to make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is by law, it is no longer by promise, but God has granted it to Abraham through a promise.

There was an Old Testament prophet by the name of Habakkuk who wrote, “… the just will live by his faith.” Paul adopted this verse and used it in Rom. 1.17 and Gal. 3.11, and it appears in Heb. 10.38. Paul’s point is that people were saved by faith long before the law was given. I don’t know if I was told this or if I just got the idea from something I heard, but when I was a small child I thought the Jews in the Old Testament were saved by law and the Christians were saved by faith. Somewhere along the way it dawned on me that everyone who has ever been saved was saved by grace through faith. Abraham is proof: He “believed I AM and he counted it to him as righteousness” long before the law was given.

Paul also wrote “for we walk by faith, not by sight.” We are not only saved through faith, but we walk as Christians by faith. We do not see the future or the millennial kingdom or Heaven. These are promises, not seen realities (they are realities). We do not see God or the Lord Jesus or the Holy Spirit. We go through difficult times when God seems to be anywhere but with us, or when we wonder why God allows certain things into our lives. Sometimes some of us doubt our salvation. Some doubt God’s very existence.

Faith itself is something of a mystery. Why do people like us believe in a God we cannot see, talk to a God we do not hear audibly (some may have), praise and worship a God who lets us go through trials? Why? Why indeed? I do not know that I can answer that question fully, but somehow we believe that he has touched our hearts in some way and revealed himself to us. I remember vividly the morning I met the Lord. I was in a terrible period of my life when I did not know what to believe. I did not know if God even existed. I had no desire to live and was afraid to die. It was a Sunday morning. I was not in a church service for obvious reasons. I wasn’t attending services in those days. But I still wanted the Lord – if he was there. I was seeking him, reading a Christian book, trying to find some answers. Suddenly I just sensed something. It brought tears. I knew I had met the Lord. Don’t ask me to explain that. I cannot. But that very day the Lord began to open the Scriptures to me. I had a master’s degree in theology, but I didn’t know the Bible. He has been teaching me ever since.

I had no thought of writing the previous paragraph. It just came to me as I was writing. Such is the mystery of faith.

Paul says that deacons should have the mystery of faith. So should we all. He also says that faith is a spiritual gift (1 Cor. 12.9). He says that faith is “of the Son of God” (Gal. 2.20).

What is the mystery of faith? It is the question, Why do we have faith? 1 Tim. 3.16

“And confessedly, great is the mystery of —.” The Greek word that occurs here is eusebeia (pronounced you-SE-be-uh). It is very difficult to translate. The most common translation is “godliness.” Its base has to do with awe before the Almighty and the proper worship that grows out of that awe. I think the idea in 1 Tim. 3.16 is something like “a proper concept of God and a proper relationship with God, including proper worship.” Do you see why it is hard to translate? I don’t know an English word that means all that. Anyway, whatever it means, great is the mystery of it. Perhaps the mystery is, How does one translate it?!! In the absence of a good translation I will use the Greek word.

What is the mystery of eusebeia? It is all about the Lord Jesus as we read in 1 Tim. 3.16, “… who was manifested in flesh.” The Old Testament prophesies the Messiah, but not that the Son of God would become a man, taking on flesh. He was to come as a man, a man of great power who would deliver Israel. But the Lord Jesus came as an ordinary man, a carpenter’s son, not the son of David, though he was the son of David. He did not raise up any armies and lead them into battle. He went to a cross. But this apparent misguided fool who got himself killed was not just a son of David. He was God in the flesh. That is a part of the mystery, God in the flesh.

Who was “justified in spirit.” I have translated exactly as it appears in Greek. There is no “the,” as in “the spirit.” The ancient Greek manuscripts were written either in all capital or all lower case letters, that is, “SPIRIT” or “spirit,” so we cannot tell whether this word should be translated as “spirit” or “Spirit.” We must decide on other grounds. Rom. 1.4 reads that the Lord was “declared Son of God in power according to spirit of holiness by resurrection of dead….” We read in 1 Pt. 3.18 that the Lord was “put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit.” Again I have translated the Greek exactly. I think that all students of the Scriptures would agree that in Romans 1.4 the word should be “Spirit,” the Spirit of Holiness, the Holy Spirit. In 1 Pt. 3.18 we have no problem with the Lord

being put to death in flesh – it was his body that died and his human spirit certainly did not die (Eccl. 12.7), nor could it have died since he was sinless. So his human spirit could not be made alive. Therefore I believe that the verse should be translated, “… put to death in flesh but made alive by the Spirit. The dead body of the Lord returned to life by the work of the Holy Spirit.

I apologize for the complicated explanation, but I see no other way to do it. This is a very difficult passage to explain. We are dealing with the mystery of eusebeia. A part of the mystery is that the Lord Jesus would justified by the Holy Spirit, that is, shown to have been obedient to God in the course of his life as a man, taking the road to the cross. We cannot say what would have been the outcome if he had not obeyed his Father in taking that course, but we do know the outcome of his obedience – he was raised from the dead and exalted to the highest place – justified.

Who “was seen by angels, preached among Gentiles.” Is it a mystery that the Lord was seen by angels? I think not. They were with the Lord in Heaven from the time of their creation. An angel made the announcement to Mary that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear the Son of God. They observed his life on earth. This does not seem to be a mystery. So what is the mystery? I normally do my own digging and writing, but I read a passage in one of the commentaries I sometimes consult that seems to me to be excellent on this point, so I am going to quote it in full: the words “Seen and preached”

mark the difference in the communication of the Christian Revelation to angels – the rational creatures nearest to God – and to the Gentiles – farthest from God. “The revelation to Gentiles is mediate, by preaching…; the revelation to the higher orders of created intelligence is immediate, by vision.” It was as much a source of wonderment to the latter as to the former. See I Pet. 1.12. [“into which things angels long to look.”] The angels who greeted the Birth, (Lk. 2.13), who ministered at the temptations (Matt. iv. 11), Mark i. 13), strengthened Him is His agony (Luke xxii. 43), proclaimed His Resurrection and stood by at the Ascension, are only glimpses to us of “a cloud of witnesses” of whose presence Jesus was always conscious (Matt. xxvi. 53. [Newport J. D. White, The First and Second Epistles to Timothy, The Expositor’s Greek Testament]

It seems that the angels were not aware of the mysteries of God – “into which things angels long to look” – When they saw the events of eusebeia unfold they had the same sense of wonderment as the first Christians to whom these events were revealed. The preaching among Gentiles would have to do with the mystery of Christ, the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God.

Who “was trusted in the world.” We saw the mystery of the faith in 1 Tim 3.9. Why do we have faith? It is a mystery. Somehow God makes himself known to us. The emphasis in this statement seems to be on this world. We trust in a Being whom we cannot see in this world, whose existence we cannot prove. Why? The Lord Jesus was and is trusted by some in this world.

Who “was taken up in glory.” Who knew that a Being would descend from Heaven, live on this earth, then go back to Heaven? Jacob had a dream of this in Gen. 28.12, a ladder reaching from earth to Heaven, but he did not know want it meant. He saw angels ascending and descending on it. The Lord Jesus referred to it in Jn. 1.51: “Amen, amen I say to you [plural], you will see Heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus is the ladder to Heaven. He was not just an angel. He was the Son of God. See Eph. 4.8-10. The mystery revealed at the Ascension was that a man, THE MAN, would come down from Heaven and go back, making a way for all who would trust in him to take that same journey. Heb. 4.14 tells us that we have “a great High Priest having passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” Remember that Satan is the ruler of this world (Jn. 12.31), the “ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2.2). The air is the atmosphere around earth. Satan is the ruler of that. When the Lord Jesus died, was resurrected, and ascended back to Heaven, he went through the air (Acts 1.9-11) where Satan is ruler, but he could do nothing to stop the Lord. He is victorious over all and he made a way for his people to pass through the same air into Heaven while Satan watches helplessly. Such is our Savior!

There is a very interesting verse in Prov., 30.4:

Who has ascended up into the heavens and descended?

Who has gathered the wind in his fists?

Who has bound the waters in his garment?

Who has established all the ends of the earth?

What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if you know?

God is the one, and his Son’s name is Jesus.

What is the mystery of eusebeia? It is that the Son of God would be revealed in flesh, be justified by the Holy Spirit by resurrection, have his hidden plans revealed to angels, be preached to Gentiles, be trusted by people who cannot see him, and pass through the air to glory, taking with him a host of captives, captives of Satan whom he delivered from their sins (Eph. 4.8). Such is the mystery of eusebeia! Those who stand in awe of God, have a right relationship with him, and worship him properly (in spirit and in truth, Jn. 4.24)

will one day pass through the air to their heavenly home, there to be with their Lord forever. Eusebeia seems to cover all the mysteries of God.

Rev. 1.20

In Rev. 1.12-20 we read of John’s vision on the island of Patmos on the Lord’s day. In v. 16 he writes of the Lord Jesus, “… and having in his right hand seven stars…,” and in v. 20, “The mystery of the seven stars which you saw on my right and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are seven churches.” The mystery of the seven stars. I think the mystery of the seven stars is what the seven stars are. John writes here that they are the angels of the seven churches.

That seems clear, but students of the Bible are very divided on what the angels really are. The word for “angel,” in both Old and New Testaments, can also mean “messenger. “ In Hag. 1.13 the prophet himself is called “the messenger.” Many interpreters of the Scriptures believe that the angels in Rev. 1.16 and 20 could not be angels, but humans, leaders in the churches of some sort, either individuals or a group such as elders. I won’t go into all their reasons. It was a pain to me digging through it all so I won’t inflict it on you! But I will cite one reason. The letters to the seven churches in Rev. 2-3 are addressed to their angels. Why would God tell John to write letters to angels? And in Rev. 2.10 the angel to the church in Smyrna is told to be faithful to death, but angels can’t die. See what I mean?

My view is this: angels are angels. Many angels are referred to in Revelation and all of them are angels. Why would these angels in 1.16 and 20 not be angels? In Dan. 10 we are told the story of the vision which Daniel had that left him mourning for three weeks. Then a “man” appeared to him. He told Daniel that he had been sent to him three weeks before to reveal the meaning of his vision, but he had been opposed by “the prince of Persia” for those three weeks, but then Michael, an archangel and “the great prince who stands watch over” Israel, came and helped him and he was able to get to Daniel. The prince of Greece is also mentioned in this chapter. It is obvious that these beings were angels. We saw that there are spiritual beings governing the universe (see Jn. 12.31, 2 Cor. 4.4, Eph. 6.12, Col. 1.13 and 16, and 2.15), some good and some evil. Dan. 10 is an example.

The princes of Persia and of Greece were – are – Satan’s fallen angels who try to influence a nation. They do not control the nation. The Lord has his own angels doing battle with Satan’s as seen in Michael. Satan works by deceit, not by power. If he is able to deceive he has a measure of control, but there is opposition to his deceit. The Lord Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. His forces, including Christians, are to proclaim the truth and

try to bring people to the Lord. The susceptibility of people to being deceived is aided by their flesh, a self-centered fallen nature that we all have. We all know temptation and we all enjoy sin to some extent. Why some of us turn to the Lord is a bit of a mystery in itself. Most do not. At any rate there is a cosmic battle going on among spiritual forces.

If there could be angels in positions of authority over nations, why could there not be angels assigned by God to look out for churches? There are Satan’s angels trying to influence churches and there are God’s angels doing the same. You know that seven is a number of completeness in the Bible. The seven churches of Asia stand for the entire church. There is only one church, but there are many local expressions of the church. There is one angel for each of the seven churches in Rev. 2-3, so I would take it that each local church has an angel, but the New Testament knows nothing of one man being over a church. The New Testament churches had elders or overseers, not an elder or an overseer. Ti. 1.5 and 7 show that an elder and an overseer are the same, and we see the plurality of these in Acts 15.22 and 20.28, 1 Tim. 5.17, 1 Pt. 5.1, and Ja. 5.14.

Each of the seven churches in Asia had one angel, not one human. As for angels being unable to die (Rev. 2.10), it is obvious that the letters to the churches are to the churches, not to one angel. John begins in Rev. 1.4, “John to the seven churches which are in Asia….” The letters are to the churches. “To the angel” of each church recognizes that each church has an angel, but even the angel does not control the church, as seen by the battle between Michael and the prince of Persia, and the fact that five of the seven churches are reprimanded in these letters.

Back to the mystery. V. 13 says that the Lord was in the midst of seven golden lampstands. Rev. 1.16 says that the Lord had seven stars in his right hand, and in v. 20 the Lord himself says, “… the seven stars that you saw on my right….” The Greek word for “hand” appears in v. 16, but not in v. 20. And the stars were in his hand in v. 16 and on his right in v. 20. Also in v. 20 the Lord tells John that the seven lampstands are seven churches. It appears that in v. 16 the Lord had the seven stars in his hand and in v. 20, that the stars had taken their places among the lampstands on his right, discharging their duties.

So what is the mystery of the seven stars? It is that each church, I would say local church, has an angel assigned to it by the Lord to work on his behalf in keeping each church on track, but that these angels are opposed by demonic forces. There is a war going on the heavenlies (Eph. 6.12), the spiritual world:

Finally, be empowered in the Lord and in the might of his strength. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil,

for our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies. [“World forces” is one of my favorite Greek words: kosmokrats.]

We are a part of that spiritual war.

Rev. 10.7

In Rev. 10.7 we read, “… but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound the trumpet, and the mystery of God would be completed, as he had proclaimed the good news to his slaves the prophets.” Then Rev. 11.15-18:

And the seventh angel sounded the trumpet, and there was a great voice in Heaven saying, “The kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s and his Christ’s, and they will reign into the ages of the ages.” And the twenty-four elders sitting before God on their thrones fell onto their faces and worshipped God, saying, “We thank you, Lord God almighty, who is and who was, for you took your great power and reigned. And the Gentiles were angry, and your anger came and the time to judge the dead and to give the reward to your slaves the prophets and to the saints and to those who fear your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroyed the earth.

The mystery of God. We saw in 1 Cor. 2.1 and Col. 2.2 that the mystery of God is Christ and him crucified, and in 1 Cor. 4.1, the mysteries of God. Here in Rev. 10.7 we have the completion of the mystery of God, and that completion is glorious: “The kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s and his Christ’s, and they will reign into the ages of the ages.” This present evil age (Gal. 1.4) will be no more and we will know the millennial reign of Christ in righteousness and eternity, the ages of the ages, when more and more of the fullness of God will be revealed. The reign of Christ will never end:

For a Child is born to us, a Son is given to us, and the government will be on his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonder, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to order it and establish it with judgment and righteousness from that time forward and even forever. The zeal of I AM of hosts will accomplish this. [Is. 9.6-7]

The mystery of God, the hiddenness of the Messiah as a crucified man, the offense of the cross, will be completed, but his reign will never end. Hallelujah!

Rev. 17.5 and 7

And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls and he spoke with me saying, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, ²with whom the kings of the earth committed immorality, and those dwelling on the earth were made drunk from the wine of her immorality.” ³And he bore me away to a desert in spirit. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. ⁴And the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stone and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and the uncleannesses of her immorality, ⁵and on her forehead a name written, a mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of those who practice immorality and of the abominations of the earth. ⁶And I saw the woman drunk from the blood of the saints and from the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And I marveled when I saw this great marvel. ⁷And the angel said to me, “Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast carrying her, the one having the seven heads and the ten horns.”

“… And on her forehead a name written, a mystery, Babylon the Great.” And in v. 7: “I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast.”

The mystery of the woman and the beast deals with a rather long and involved story, so I will go through an exposition of Rev. 17.1-18.

17.¹And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls and he spoke with me saying, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, ²with whom the kings of the earth committed immorality, and those dwelling on the earth were made drunk from the wine of her immorality.”

In Rev. 13.1-7 we see that Antichrist appeared to John as a beast with seven heads and ten horns. We find the same symbols here. There is, however, the addition that a woman is sitting on the beast. The woman is called a great harlot, and she also sits on many waters, and she is to be judged. The beast here in Rev. 17 is Antichrist. Who is the woman?

The first answer is given to us in v. 5. She is “a mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of those who practice immorality and the abominations of the earth.” The woman is Babylon. But what does this mean, for Babylon is a city, not a woman?

The Bible might well be subtitled, A Tale of Two Cities. As the Bible unfolds, it becomes clear that two cities embody everything it is about. Those two cities are Jerusalem and Babylon. Jerusalem, the city of peace (salem = Hebrew shalom), represents all that is of God and that God intends to bring about. Babylon, the city of confusion, babble, stands for everything that is opposed to God, religious, secular, of any sort. The word “Babylon” means “Gate of God,” a false gate typified by the tower of Babel that would reach into Heaven (Gen. 11.4). It is inspired by Satan and secretly ruled by him, and sums up all that is of man without God. The history of man is the history of the struggle of these two cities for domination of the world. In the end, God will judge and destroy Babylon, and the new Jerusalem will be seen coming down out of Heaven from God. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Rev. 17 and 18 both deal with the destruction of Babylon, but the two chapters are concerned with two different aspects of Babylon. Chapter 18 deals with what we might call political or commercial or secular Babylon, but here in chapter 17 we are concerned with religious Babylon. The great harlot is man’s religion, secretly inspired by Satan, as opposed to what is revealed by God. It is man’s religion in any form, pagan, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant. God is not the God of religion. Religion is of Satan and of man. God is the God of a living relationship with himself through Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. Man will have a priesthood between himself and God. God desires a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19.6). Man will earn his salvation by his own works. He will deserve salvation. He will save himself. God saves only by grace through faith in the finished work of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Man will have religious rites he can observe and thus be counted acceptable to God regardless of his daily living. God has no rites, but desires a people who know him and walk with him continually, always seeking to do his will and to honor him by their lives and words. In Rev. 17, we see religious Babylon, and she is a harlot.

One of the great figures of the Bible dealing with the relationship between God and man is marriage. In the Old Testament we find that Israel is the wife of God. In the New, we see that the church is to be the bride of Christ. When Israel is unfaithful to God, she is called a harlot. We are told in James 4.4 that friendship with the world makes us spiritual adulteresses, those who are unfaithful to the Lord Jesus. The book of Hosea teaches that in the end, Israel’s harlotry will end and she will be the faithful wife of the God who will take her back in grace. And here in the book of Revelation, we will see that the story ends (really, begins!) with the new Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from God as a bride

adorned for her husband. Throughout eternity there will be purity of relationship between God and his people that is symbolized by a faithful marriage. But religious Babylon is a harlot.

Man’s religion claims to be of God, but embraces every evil. The kings of the earth commit immorality with her and those dwelling on the earth are made drunk from the wine of her immorality. Recall the letters to the seven churches in Rev. 2 and 3. We saw there in the letter to Ephesus and especially to Pergamum that physical immorality, temple prostitution, was often a part of pagan worship, and that in addition to this, God considers idolatry on the part of his people to be spiritual adultery against himself. It would be a rare Christian who would admit to idolatry, claiming that he did not bow down to an idol of wood or stone or metal, but God considers friendship with the world to be idolatry. Anything that holds the place of God in our lives, including self, is an idol, and thus anything that we put before him is an idol. The figure of the kings of the earth committing immorality with the harlot symbolizes the kings of the earth embracing religion, using it for their own purposes, and it symbolizes the harlot embracing the kings, using them for her purposes. This mixing of the secular and religious for mutual gain is spiritually immoral, and in fact, it also leads to physical immorality on the part of its adherents.

Not only were the kings of the earth committing immorality with the harlot, but “those dwelling on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.” Those dwelling on the earth are people who are not the Lord’s (Rev. 3.10, 8.13, 11.10, 13.8, 14, 17.2 and 8). His people are seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 2.6). The kings hold forth to their people a religious system that is opposed to God, and the people love it and embrace it, willingly deceived by it. They get drunk on it. Do not be drunk with wine, Paul wrote, but be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5.18). One can get spiritually drunk as well as physically drunk. False religion intoxicates and dulls the senses and deludes.

³And he bore me away to a desert in the Spirit. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

John was taken to a desert, the desert of this world without God. There he saw this woman, this harlot, sitting on the beast. This picture shows us that man’s religion is of the world, the desert, and it shows us the close cooperation between the political and commercial world and religion, each helping the other to advance their interests. The harlot is carried by the state, and the state holds forth the harlot as a religious support for its claims on people.

⁴And the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stone and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and the uncleannesses of her immorality,

Purple and scarlet are colors of royalty. These colors of her clothing along with the gold, precious stone and pearls show the wealth of this worldly religious system. The Lord Jesus had nowhere to lay his head, and he told his followers that if someone took their garments to give up their cloaks as well. Yet the religion symbolized by the harlot is wealthy, but with all her outward appearance of splendor, the cup of gold that she holds in her hand is full of abominations and immorality. Abomination in the Bible has to do with idolatry. Even though this religion claims to be of God, and may even claim to be Christian in some cases, it is full of idolatry. It professes to worship God, but in truth it worships anything except God. And her immorality is both spiritual and physical.

In the Scriptures, gold, silver, and precious stone as they relate to God’s people have to do with the development of godly character in ways that are symbolized by these objects of value. Gold and silver are refined by going through the fire, and precious stones are developed through long centuries in darkness under great pressure. Thus do the people of God gain the gold, silver, and precious stone of eternal spiritual value, but the harlot, spurning this costly way of the cross, instead displays the outward, material gold, precious stone, and pearls that will not survive this world. It is ironic. Both the true people of God and the harlot have these objects of great value, but with the one it is material opulence that is of no real and lasting value, while with the other, it is the preciousness of character developed by God that will last forever.

⁵and on her forehead a name written, a mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of those who practice immorality and of the abominations of the earth.

The harlot has this identification, “a mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of those who practice immorality and the abominations of the earth.” We have seen that Matt. 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8 speak of the mysteries of the kingdom of God, and truths about the kingdom are revealed in those chapters that had not been revealed before. Man would never have guessed these truths. They became known only as God revealed them. Christ is called God’s mystery in Col. 2.2. The inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God is called Christ’s mystery in Eph. 3.3-6. There are several other such mysteries in the New Testament. Here we find that the harlot is a mystery. She is a mystery, Babylon the great. That is, God is about to reveal something about religion that had not been known before. It is that religion, even when it claims to be Christian and outwardly does many works that appear good, is in fact a harlot. It is Babylon, the city that opposes God. It is the mother of those who practice immorality and idolatry. We may not always be able to

recognize the falsity of religion, but when John saw his vision, he saw her true name clearly stamped on her forehead.

⁶And I saw the woman drunk from the blood of the saints and from the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

Not only is this woman a harlot and an idolater, she is also what is behind the persecution of the people of God. If one studies the history of persecution, he will be amazed to find that in virtually all cases, it is religion that persecutes. Even if it is the state doing the persecuting, there is very often a religious motive. In the Old Testament, those in Israel faithful to God were persecuted by fellow-Israelites who were idolatrous, immoral, and unjust. The Lord Jesus, God himself in the flesh come to his people, was opposed by the leaders of the Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees, and was put to death by the people of God. The first persecution of Christians was done by Jews. The Roman persecutions of Jews and Christians was in part based on their refusal to worship the Roman gods and the emperor. The Catholics persecuted those faithful to God all through the history of that unscriptural system, putting many of them to death. Protestants cannot point any fingers, for they in turn persecuted Catholics in the name of Christ. Much blood has been shed by the people of God because they are the people of God, and in the end it will be seen that all of it can be traced to a woman drunk on this blood, a harlot who claims to represent God but who in fact stands against what is really of God in every way.

And I marveled when I saw this great marvel. ⁷And the angel said to me, “Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast carrying her, the one having the seven heads and the ten horns.

It is only natural that John would marvel upon seeing such a vision, a woman sitting “on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed immorality, and those dwelling on the earth were made drunk from the wine of her immorality,” and “sitting on a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.” What a sight! Yet the angel asked him why he marveled, and told him he would explain the mystery.

⁸The beast which you saw was and is not and is about to come up from the abyss and go to destruction, and those dwelling on the earth will marvel, whose name is not written in the scroll of life from the foundation of the world, seeing the beast that he was and is not and will come.

We saw in Rev. 13.3 that one of the heads of the beast had a mortal wound, but that the wound was healed, causing the whole earth to marvel. Now the angel explains more fully

that the beast, Antichrist, who is one of the heads, was and is not. That is, he lived in the past and died. But he is also about to come back: he will come back from the dead. He will come up out of the abyss, hades, the place of the dead, but in the end he will go to destruction, that is, not back to hades, but to eternal hell. But before he goes to destruction he will have a spectacular career beginning with those on the earth marveling at him because he came back from the dead. They will not believe in the resurrection of Christ because they cannot see him with their eyes and have no faith, but they will be deceived by this one back from the dead because they can see him. Seeing is believing, the world says. Believing is seeing, the Lord’s people say. Those dwelling on the earth, not seated with Christ in the heavenlies, not having their names written in the scroll of life (Ex. 32.32- 33, Ps. 69.28, Dan. 12.1, Phil. 4.3) from the foundation of the world, will marvel because this one has come back from the dead and they can see him with their own eyes.

⁹Here is the mind that has wisdom.

Does this statement apply to v. 8, to vs. 9-14, or to both? Probably to both, for it takes the wisdom from above (James 3.17) to understand the things of God, and these symbols are beyond the unaided human mind. As we study Revelation, and indeed all the Bible, and as we live in the world, let us pray for the wisdom from above that we may know the things of God and how to live by them. It is only the mind that has such wisdom that will understand the revelations in Revelation.

The seven heads are seven hills, where the woman sits on them. And they are seven kings.

These are the words that cause some Bible students to believe that Antichrist has to do with Rome, for Rome is the city built on seven hills. The prophecy of Daniel says that there will be four great Gentile empires ruling the known world, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and one other, which must, by historical fact, be the Roman. But it also indicates that at the time of the end, there will be another empire, something of a revival of the fourth, at least in character if not in exact geographical location. Since the fourth empire was the Roman, and this empire will know a revival at the end, and the beast has seven heads which are seven hills, it is logical that the city in question is Rome. Yet she is named here in Rev. 17.5 as Babylon.

Some believe that the literal physical city of Babylon in present-day Iraq is meant. Others believe that Rome is meant. Others would take the symbol as showing the spiritual character of the beast – he is Babylonian, opposed to God, wherever he is. It seems that the city of Rome is meant because of the reference to seven hills, and the thought would be that the spiritual system symbolized by Babylon and that began on earth in the

historical city of Babylon had had its center transferred to Rome when John saw his visions, and that would also be the case at the time of the end. There is no question that Rome was Babylonian in character during the time of the New Testament and of the early church, and of course, Rome was ruling the world when John saw his visions and was responsible for his exile on Patmos, so the city of Rome does seem to be in view.

But in all likelihood, the primary focus is on the spiritual character of the beast. John writes in 1 John 4.3 of the spirit of Antichrist which was already operating in the world when he wrote that epistle in the first century, and that spirit is everywhere in the world. But the spiritual character does have primary physical locations in the world. It began with Babylon, and it spread throughout the world, including Rome, and we believe that Rome is a part of the angel’s interpretation, but no matter what one may believe about the physical cities involved, there is no doubt that what Babylon symbolizes is involved in this vision seen by John.

The seven heads are also seven kings. There is no conflict between this statement and the view that the city referred to is Rome, for Rome had kings in John’s day, though they were called Caesars, emperors.

¹⁰Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain a short time.

Five of these kings, Roman emperors if we are right, had fallen, died, when John saw his vision. One was ruling in John’s day. One had not yet come to the throne. We do not know who these seven emperors were, and there were more than seven Roman emperors, but keep in mind that seven is a number of completeness in the Bible. Just as seven churches in Asia, which had many more than seven churches, represent the whole in completeness, and seven seals, trumpets, and bowls show the completeness of judgment, so these seven emperors embody all that was the Roman Empire. When the seventh came, he would remain for a short time.

¹¹And the beast who was and is not is also himself an eighth and is from the seven, and goes to destruction.

The beast, Antichrist, is an eighth emperor of this empire, but he is also of the seven, one of them come back to life. Five of the emperors lived and died before the time of John’s vision, one was reigning then, and we do not know when the seventh would come, whether near to John’s day or some time later. We do know that Antichrist, the eighth who is of the seven, will come at the end times. We need to note once again that the beast with seven heads and ten horns is separate from six of the heads (six, not seven, because

he is one of the seven come back) and the ten kings, yet he is also all of these emperors and kings. His evil is of such greatness that he embodies all that the others were and will be, so that he is both one of the heads and the little horn of Dan. 7, and also the beast that is made up of all of them. And he himself will go to destruction.

¹²And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom but they receive authority as kings for one hour with the beast.

The ten horns are ten kings who will also arise at the end times. They had not yet received a kingdom when John saw his vision, but we are clearly told that they would do so at the time of the beast, which is at the end. The duration of the “one hour” is not spelled out, but it would seem to indicate that it would not be for a lengthy time and that it would be determined by God, who is sovereign over all that will happen.

¹³These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast.

All of these ten kings will unite under the headship of the beast, joining in his purpose to rule the world and allowing him to use their power and authority for his purposes.

¹⁴These will make war with the little Lamb, and the little Lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him, called and chosen and faithful.”

The vision jumps ahead to the end by reporting that these kings, with the beast, will make war with the Lamb. We take this statement to refer to the battle of Armageddon when the kings of the earth, under Antichrist, will gather in Israel to destroy the Jewish people and oppose Christ at his return. John gives away the end of the story by telling us that the Lamb will overcome them! He also indicates that there will be those who are with him when he overcomes this army. They are called and chosen and faithful.

¹⁵And he said to me, “The waters which you saw on which the harlot sits are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.

Now the angel returns to what John saw in the first verse, the woman sitting on many waters. He explains that these waters are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. That is, just as the waters, rivers, lakes, oceans, are constantly in motion, never at rest but always tossing about, the ocean in particular, so are the nations, restless without the rest that is Christ. The woman sits on the nations. She is all the religions of the world accepted by man without God. The nations of the world support this false system that opposes God.

¹⁶And the ten horns which you saw and the beast, these will hate the harlot and they will make her desolate and naked and they will consume her flesh and they will burn her with fire.

The angel now tells John that the ten kings and the beast will hate the harlot and destroy her. We are told in 2 Thess. 2.4 that Antichrist will desecrate the Jewish Temple by setting himself up in the Temple as God, showing himself forth to be God. This is the abomination of desolation (Dan. 9.27, 11.31, 12.11, Mt. 24.15, Mk. 13.14). Up to this point, Antichrist will be allied with the religions of the world. He will even make a covenant with the Jews, as Dan. 9.27 tells us. No doubt many so-called Christian groups will work with him, even as many so-called Christian groups today support causes that are anathema to God. Antichrist will use the religions of the world for his own purposes, taking their help in gaining his position of world domination. But when he has consolidated his power and has no effective opposition, he will reveal his true character. Not only will he want to rule the world, but, under Satan’s inspiration, he will want to be worshipped as God. He will not only break his covenant with the Jews and desecrate their Temple, the abomination of desolation, the ultimate idolatry, but he will outlaw and destroy all other religions in the world. It will be illegal to be Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, and on and on. The only legal religion will be the worship of Antichrist. Thus the harlot, satanic, human, Babylonian religion that has for millenniums held itself forth as speaking for God, will come to her end, an end of desolation. The abomination of desolation desolates not only the Jewish Temple and Jewish hearts, but also all the other religions of the world.

It is of the essence of the character of Satan that while he lures people with promises of pleasure and happiness, his true end is to destroy his followers, and in the end he does so. So it will be with the beast. The very religious system that Satan uses to control virtually all the people of the world and that is unknowingly loyal to him, will in the end be destroyed by his agent, Antichrist.

¹⁷For God has given into their hearts to do his purpose and to do one purpose and to give their kingdom to the beast until the words of God reach perfect fulfillment.

It is quite important, though, that we see that this act of destroying the harlot, world religion, is not just the act of Satan and Antichrist. It is above all God’s act. God has ever intended to destroy Babylon, Satan and man opposed to him and his ways, even in religion, and in the end he will put it into the hearts of those with whom the harlot has been closely allied all through history for mutual benefit to hate her and destroy her. When she is no longer useful, she will be eliminated. And keep in mind that these are

people. Yes, it is world religion, but what is religion but people acting together? Satan, using Antichrist, will destroy his own people, yet it will over all be God’s judgment of evil. The kings think they are acting of their own volition, little realizing that they are helping to bring about God’s ultimate purpose. All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to purpose (Rom. 8.28). The concentrated evil of the world’s rulers in the last days will accomplish the will of God. In having one purpose and in giving their sovereignty to the beast, they will help cause the words of God to reach perfect fulfillment. “O the depth of the wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unfathomable are his judgments and untraceable his ways!”

¹⁸And the woman whom you saw is the great city which has a kingdom over the kings of the earth.”

The angel reiterates to John that the woman is the great city which has a kingdom, a spiritual, religious kingdom, over the kings of the earth. Again, Rome could be meant, for the Rome of John’s time ruled the known world both secularly and religiously and all the kings of that world were kings at the pleasure of Rome, or Babylon could be meant, literally or figuratively, as the symbol of all that opposes God.

Thus we see that God will use Antichrist to destroy religious Babylon as a natural concomitant of the abomination of desolation. Three factors have converged at this point that will bring on the end of this age in the Great Tribulation: Satan will have been cast down to earth and so will be in such a fury that he will use Antichrist to launch history’s greatest persecution of the people of God; Antichrist himself will be attempting to destroy all worship except that of himself and so will persecute the people of God who refuse to worship him, and this will be a carrying out of Satan’s fury; and God, seeing the ultimate abomination, the ultimate idolatry, the one that makes everything desolate, will pour out judgment on such evil and on the people who willingly follow it. There will be a time in which those on the earth will be caught in the middle of a cosmic crossfire, with Satan and Antichrist pouring out persecution on the earth and God pouring out judgment from above. “For there will then be great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor will be.” Thus will the end of this present evil age approach.

What is the mystery of the woman and the beast? It is the fact of the cooperation of all the secular evil of this world combined with false religion to gain their purposes, and God’s use of that very combination to gain his purpose, of putting an end to all of that and bring on a millennium of righteousness. And beyond that millennium an eternity of his higher purposes, an eternity with a people for his own possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex. 19.5-6), without sin or temptation, to carry out all that is in the mind of

our infinite Creator God, and to see the even greater revealing of the mysteries of God that we have no concept of in this age. May his name be praised!

Conclusion

So concludes our study of the mysteries in the New Testament; the hiddenness of God’s sovereignty in this age; the hardening in part of the Jewish heart; the mystery of God, Christ, and him crucified; the mystery of Christ, the church, including the Gentiles; the transformation of our mortal bodies into incorruptible, immortal spiritual bodies; the summing up of all things in Christ; the bride of Christ; the dwelling of Christ within us; lawlessness and the man of lawlessness, the antichrist; faith – why do we have faith; eusebeia, a proper concept of God and a proper relationship with God, including proper worship; the seven stars, angels working on behalf of the churches; Babylon the great, the woman and the beast.

And we have seen the stewardship of the mysteries. We are responsible for what we do with the knowledge of these mysteries. We will give an account to God.

Above all, we have seen that knowing all mysteries without love amounts to nothing. Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 8.1, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” We must have knowledge: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4.6), but knowledge without love just puffs us up and makes us proud. Perhaps we could say that love is the greatest mystery of all. Why would God love sinners such as we are? “God is love.” “Above all these things love, which is the bond of perfection” (Col. 3.14). “Now abide faith, hope, love, these three things, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13.13).

Copyright © 2021 by Tom Adcox. All rights reserved. You may share this work with others, provided you do not alter it and do not sell it or use it for any commercial purpose. “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10.8). Also you must include this notice if you share it or any part of it.

Scripture quotations from the Old Testament are the author’s updates of the American Standard Version. Quotations from the New Testament are the author’s translations.

“Mystery” in the New Testament

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