The conflict continues through the Church-age with the witness of the Spirit and the believer; John 15:26 – 16:1.

Title: The conflict continues through the Church-age with the witness of the Spirit and the believer; John 15:26 - 16:1.

 

John 15:26 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me,

 

John 15:27 and you will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

 

We have two witnesses presented here, God the Holy Spirit and the individual believer. The Law states that two witnesses are needed to execute judgment.

 

Deut 17:6-7

 

On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

 

After TLJC departs He leaves behind two more witnesses. During the incarnation the two witnesses were Himself and the Father.

 

John 8:17 "Even in your law it has been written, that the testimony of two men is true.

 

John 8:18 "I am He who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me."

 

A witness is one who has seen and must bear testimony of the things that he has seen when called to the stand to do so. What did you see?

 

The Spirit of truth has seen and He bears witness through the gospel all over the world and in the hearts of those who are positive He delivers that truth to wherever it is needed.

 

 “witness” - marture,w[martureo] = to witness, to testify, to bear record.

 

We will have a lot more to say about God the Holy Spirit and His ministries as we get into chapter 16.

 

Note as we finish this chapter:

 

The plan of God goes on through the ministries of the Holy Spirit and the individual positive believer despite the antagonism and opposition to the Son and the Father and the grace plan.

 

These two ministries have been purging evil from certain pockets of the world at certain times during the Church-age all throughout the CA.

 

Dietrich Bonheoffer took the church underground during Nazi rule in Germany. He was actually safe in America but went back to Germany to strengthen the Church and to protect as many Jews as he could. Patrick took the gospel to Ireland. John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English in the 14th century and began the protestant reformation against Roman heresy. There are hundreds of historical examples and thousands of examples not in history books but will be in the NJMH.

 

And so the conflict continues and no man can stop it. Only God will stop it. In the midst of the conflict the positive believer can have a huge impact or he can be a casualty.

 

Christ introduced the conflict in John 15:18 and chapter 16 continues the conflict introduction in the upper roomGethsemane discourse.

 

Chapter 16 continues the study of the angelic conflict from the standpoint of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in verses 1-15, and the ministry of God the Son in verses 16-33. The Lord Jesus Christ is anticipating the coming of the Church Age, the dispensation in which He is glorified at the right hand of the Father, absent from the earth, the dispensation in which the intensification of the angelic conflict begins.

 

So why has the angelic conflict intensified?

 

The victory of our Lord on the cross followed by His resurrection, ascension, and session forced the KOD to shift strategies.

 

The conflict began between angels and God prior to man’s creation and based on God’s decisions it shifts gears at various times. It changed when God brought darkness to the earth after the angelic fall, and again when He restored the earth and created man and again at the fall of man and again at the creation of the new racial species, the Jew, and again at the formation of Israel as a client nation under Moses, and again at the destruction of the first temple, and again at the birth of Christ, and again at the resurrection and ascension of Christ.

 

Man did not start the conflict and man cannot end it. God allowed the start of it long ago and only God can end it.

 

Man did not start the conflict, nor can he end it, however, man was created in order to resolve the angelic conflict.

 

Man’s fall caused a change—the promise of the saviour. And from the fall of man until the ascension of Jesus Christ the Lord Jesus Himself was the primary target in the angelic conflict.

 

But once Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father and the cross is an historical reality it is no longer possible for Satan to target Christ in order to stop His ministry and His victory.

 

Consequently we now have believers on the earth as the target of Satan and a victorious Man sitting at the right hand of God and so strategy was adjusted.

 

Until the ascension the line of Christ and the person of Christ were the target in the angelic conflict.

 

Satan attempted to stop Him from being born beginning with the murder of Abel and continuing with the infiltration of the human race with angelic DNA (or whatever they have). Up to the birth of Christ satan has attempted to stop His prophesied line and after His birth there was many attempts on His life, starting with the order by Herod to murder all male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem.

 

Once Christ is glorified at the right hand of the Father the angelic conflict becomes intensified in the Church Age. It’s one thing to have one man as a target or one genetic line as a target but now there are millions that are the target.

 

map These are not individual churches, but these are Christian communities with several churches each.

 

Direct persecution was the first form of attack, financial, social, political, and even physical, but it failed miserably, as you can see from one century to the next, and so a new strategy was born and that was inner deception through false doctrine, emotionalism, arrogance, pride, competition, approbation lust, etc. Something that satan had been doing in the past, but never with so many people. He’s been deceiving the world since the beginning but now he had to figure a way to deceive a huge amount of people to not worship God but to think that they were. In other words, the deception had to be really good this time for there were so many to deceive and good deception means closeness to the original.

 

He had to come up with a counterfeit Christianity, which is what he did when he saw that direct persecution wasn’t working.

 

Constantine accepted Christianity, or so he said, and then immediately said that through his acceptance of Christ he was able to defeat his enemies on the battlefield. I wonder how many stopped to think that Christ Himself said that “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.” No doubt the lack of persecution that occurred after Constantine helped spread the gospel to farther reaches of the Roman Empire, but it also centralized the Church as a government like organization which is a Petri dish for corruption. God doesn’t need the acceptance of emperors. Look how far it spread under intense persecution.

 

Every believer is now a target, and because of this God has made special provision for every believer in the Church Age just as He made provision for Christ before and during His incarnation.

 

Verses 1-15, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine of the mystery of the Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age. It is called a mystery not because it should be obscure today but because nothing concerning the Church Age was revealed in Old Testament times. Now that the Church Age has begun we have the canon of scripture unfolding Bible doctrine with regard to the Church Age. So the doctrine of the mystery deals with doctrine pertaining to the Church Age—not hidden from us but hidden in the past, hidden from people who could not teach or proclaim this information.

 

God’s reason for the doctrine of the mystery is quite obvious: it was designed to keep Satan from being clued in on the Church Age until the intensification of that stage of the conflict would actually begin.

 

Even when Christ introduced the mystery doctrine in the upper room, satan was persona non grata; he was kicked out!

 

John 13:27 And after the morsel, Satan then entered into him. Jesus therefore  said to him, "What you do, do quickly."

 

Satan never heard the mystery before the Church began at Pentecost. God gave us an advantage when the AC was intensified and satan could not understand how certain believers were holding up so well under the increased pressure. It would not be until Paul started to teach that satan would gradually get filled in on what God had provided for His Church. There was nothing he could have done about it anyway, but God shows us here that He is always for us and never against us.

 

John 16:1 "These things I have spoken to you, that you may be kept from stumbling.

 

Verse 1 - the purpose of the briefing. We have throughout the two discourses (Upper room and Gethsemane) the phrase, “These things” - this is the doctrinal content of the previous chapter and the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ the night before He was betrayed and the night before His crucifixion.

 

“These things” is a constant reference to what Jesus Christ has just taught. He has just taught the antagonism of cosmos diabolicus, the seven reasons why the world hates the believer.

 

Regardless of what we may think and how we may be treated by segments of the world, the world has a permanent antagonism toward us because the ruler of the world, Satan, is antagonistic toward us. This antagonism is deceptive antagonism for it often comes in the form of false doctrine and intolerance.

 

 “stumbling” - skandali,zw[skandalizo] = to put a snare or a trap or a stumbling block in the way, to cause someone to experience anger or shock because of what has been said or done.

 

The stumbling block is a theme throughout the OT and NT. In fact Christ becomes a stumbling block to those who reject Him, however the context of this verse is the stumbling blocks to the believer in the form of designed traps made by satan and the KOD in his cosmos.

 

The believer has been designed to be shock proof. Through doctrine he is to expect what has suddenly come upon him after some initial adjustments, 1PE 4:12.

 

However, satan needs people to execute the traps. Those who willingly fall into this service of the fallen angel will be judged, MAT 18:7.

 

Matt 18:7 "Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

 

The traps, snares, stumbling blocks, and hindrances that are in the world are inevitable and God alone will judge the one by which they come. Leave them alone to the Supreme Court of Heaven.

 

Theologians may struggle or argue when attempting to define evil and the evil character of satan, but no one has difficulty recognizing evil when they are engulfed by it