A Deeper Revelation of Jesus Christ: The Secret to a Christ-Centered Life – Part 2 -Gene Edwards

I’m not saying it affects you at all, except that you see that all things are Christ. I’m not talking pantheistic here. Come on…our language here is so limited. He is the center of all things. He is the center of our gospel…and He is our Gospel. He is not only the center of our gospel; He’s the circumference of our gospel, and He’s the doctrine of our gospel. I want you to know something else. It will take away your obsession with theology.  Let me tell you a story. You may not have ever heard of Thomas Aquinas. He wrote something, about that long, called Summa Theologica. “The sum total of all theology.” Considered the greatest theologian of all time, he wrote on everything there was to write about. He’d start on a subject, and his mind was so titanic that he’d add a qualification. He’d qualify that qualification with a qualification, qualify that qualification with a qualification, qualify that qualification with a qualification, and then he’d continue his line on.

Here’s a story that you probably never heard about him if you have heard of Thomas Aquinas. In his old age, he had a revelation of this Lord, and he stopped writing. Someone said to him, “Do you reject what you have written? Is it wrong?” He said, “Not wrong, just unimportant,” and that’s the man whose theology is taught in every Catholic seminary in the world today and in every Protestant seminary in the world today. He’s the father of Protestant theology as much as he is Catholic theology. When you learn theology, you learn Thomas Aquinas. I wish they would remember what happened to him in his old age. You lose a distaste for these things that have so separated us from one another.

Now, let me pick on you premillennialists for a moment. Brother, did you know that no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to convince everybody in the world to be a premillennialist? That brings you to a choice. Doesn’t bring me to a choice; it brings you to a choice. A lot of publishing houses, seminaries, Bible schools, and churches won’t let you be part of them unless you’re premillennial. Brother, I think that’s a shame. Jesus Christ received me. That settles it. You got to receive me, too.

Well, are you premillennial? No. Why aren’t you premillennial? Because you want me to be so bad. I will never be a premillennialist, so you will understand that you have lost a brother in Christ, in fellowship. Now, I want to ask you, dear premillennialist, do you want to be a premillennialist or do you want to be a brother? Will you please be my brother? Unqualified? Would you accept me? Me, unlearned, untaught, ignorant, and blind. Would you please receive me as a brother? For I shall never take your view of millennialism. I’m going to be really stubborn because I represent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Christians who will never be premillennial.

Do you believe in falling from grace? Oh, dear child of God, please fall from grace. Do you believe once saved, always saved, no matter how badly you sin? Oh, dear child of God, go out and either believe that or sin; either one doesn’t matter to me. You believe in speaking in tongues. You don’t believe in speaking tongues. Will you receive me? I receive you. Will you give it up for Lent, friend? Please give it up so that we can be brothers. I don’t care what you believe, and I’ll tell you something else. Outside of those theological tenets we all believe: we believe in the virgin birth, we believe in the resurrection of the Lord and of the dead, we believe in His return…what am I leaving out here? We believe in the inspiration of Scripture. You want to make it verbal; we believe it in verbal. Any way you want to believe it, brother.

We believe those things. You know why we believe those things? There is a reason. There’s just one reason. Because we’re believers; that’s where we got the name. We believe; others don’t; we believe. I will tell you: if you ever see Him, you won’t care. You will care that you have seen Him. Well, Gene, tell me how. I want to know how. What are my five steps for having a revelation of Jesus Christ? Let me get real clear here with you, saint. I don’t have the foggiest idea. None. But I will tell you something wonderful. If you read the old classics, and you read the Christians even in the dark ages who got a glimpse of Him, even that far back, they will say to you, “These are the things that ought to be.” But don’t ask me how, because I cannot tell you how. Only the Holy Spirit can. I’ve read that again and again and again, and I want you to know that’s not my job. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. But I will tell you this: hearing about it doesn’t hurt. It won’t block, get in the way, or become a stumbling block to you.

Well, how do I get the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to me? I don’t have any idea. Well, what does it feel like, Gene? Go blow your nose. What does it look like, Gene? Oh, come on, saints. Are we going to turn this into something else we can merchandise? Dear child of God, I don’t know. Someone said to me, “Well, if someone’s not close to the Lord, is he less apt to have a revelation?” Oh, come on. Please. Will you lay this kind of thing down? I will first say to you that the revealing of Christ ought to be to a body of people. It will be when a body of people will see that all things in Scripture point to Him; all things exalt Him; all things are for Him. That all things of a spiritual nature are Christ. That all things are of His hand, that He is our gospel, that we haven’t got anything else to go chase, that we chase after Him.

But Gene, could we possibly be centered on the Lord and nothing else for an entire lifetime? What about all the crises? Or what about all these things the Bible tells us to do and all of those things? If we get even the slightest glimpse of our Lord, we know that even when we go through these things, they are centered on our Lord, or if they’re not, it doesn’t matter. That you have come to some sort of inexplicable rest in Him.

May God give us men who will minister the Lord Jesus Christ and a revelation of Him in all times. Let them take Paul as their standard. A brother, a very dear brother, we were having a retreat a few weeks ago. I was talking about problems in the church, and he said, “But Gene, don’t we have to be scriptural? This Bible tells us we’re supposed to do this, this, and this.” Or in other words, the Bible tells us to throw the rascal out. I responded to him: you do the scriptural thing last; what you do is you go to the cross. The first thing you do is suffer. The first thing you do is you experience pain. The first thing you do is your forebear. The first thing you put up with until you are in agony. Don’t you dare…when a problem in the house of God comes up, do something scriptural. That’s cruel.

Anybody can go get the Bible out and start doing something. Brother, where is your Lord? Where is the cross? Where’s the pain? And by the way, that’s a different view of Scripture. That is a sight of a Lord who was crucified before the foundation of the ages; that the cross is His very nature. I would really not want to be caught in a group of people who are biblical. Man, I don’t know of anything…I’m going to get…can’t you see that? Gene Edwards doesn’t believe people should be biblical. Man, listen. I’m afraid of “biblical-ists.” I want to be among “Christ-ists.” I want to be among people who first see Him before they do anything.

A few days ago, I was sitting in my living room with a dear brother. His name is Koshy. He has worked with Bakht Singh for much of his life; he was saved under his ministry. You may not know who Bakht Singh is. Bakht Singh may very well be the great Christian of our century… and it’s reasonable that you’ve never heard of him. He’s not an American…and he is truly a giant. So there’s no way you’d ever hear of him.

Bakht Singh was sitting with some brothers in a meeting. Brother Koshy told me this. A brother had committed adultery, and they were talking about what to do to him. They went on and on, and Brother Bakht Singh sat there and said nothing. At the very end, he said, “Brothers, how would you handle this if it were not these brothers, but if it were Bakht Singh?” They looked at him, startled, and one of the brothers began to cry. The other brothers understood, and they began to repent. See, they were going to do the biblical thing, until the scene shifted and they had bowels of compassion.