In the series titled “It is finished,” I point out Scripturally that Jesus taught His Gospel Truth, lived it and died in order to enable the salvation seeker to receive JUSTIFICATION (the removal of all PAST SINS), thereby making him/her RIGHTEOUS. As we are told, only the righteous will be saved, and there would not be many of them (1 Pet. 4:18). Personal righteousness, the Lord reminds us time and again, is absolutely essential for receiving eternal life (1 Pet. 3:12; 4:18; 1:15,16/Mat. 25:46).

Also, and equally as important, Christ’s death enabled man to receive the Holy Spirit which is the Godhead’s (Father and Son’s) POWER that is necessary for overcoming Satan’s temptations to sin (break God’s Law–1 Jn. 3:4). Through the Spirit’s power working from within, the saint is able to retain his/her justification and righteousness until the end of his/her life. In Matthew chapter 10 Jesus warns that the righteous will be hated and persecuted by the world, especially the religious world, and that only those who maintain their righteousness in the face of such persecution “… until the end shall (then) be saved” (vs 22) upon the return of Jesus “… at the LAST DAY” of this age (Jn. 6:39,40,44). Read Hope and Salvation, key word–Hope in which I prove Scripturally that until Christ’s return at the end of this world, no one is saved and born again. Rather, we have the HOPE of salvation. Whether or not we receive salvation depends on our obedience to God’s Law. Read Born Again, key word–Born.

It is ultimately important that you understand that Christ’s death does not save the believer. Rather, it opens the way for him/her to QUALIFY FOR SALVATION. As the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 5:10, once we have been RECONCILED TO GOD (justified), we CAN BE “SAVED BY HIS LIFE” IF HIS EARTHLY LIFE IS LIVED BY US DURING OUR EARTHLY LIVES. This is referred to as “walking as He walked” (1 Jn. 2:6) and “overcoming (Satan) as I (Jesus) overcame” him (Rev. 3:21).

This series takes us back in time to the days of the Old Testament prophets whose lives and work were directed by the Word Who became Jesus of Nazareth (Jn. 1:1-4,14). Read The God of the Old Testament, key word–Old. Understand this: What the prophets spoke and wrote they had heard from the God of the Old Testament, the same God who spoke the Ten Commandment Law from atop Mount Sinai and wrote it in stone with His finger. This was the same God Who cursed Law-breaking Israel by forcing them to obey the “law that was added” (Gal. 3:19) to the Ten Commandments with its rituals, animal sacrifice, etc. As punishment for rejecting His Ten Commandment Law, God forced Israel to obey that ADDED LAW until He (the Word) would come to earth to free true believers from the blood-soaked, ritual-dominated law that was “against” the Israelites and “contrary to them” (Col. 2:14).

At the Last Supper Jesus explained that, from that time until His return, His blood and His body would be the only sacrifice needed by His true saints in order to be forgiven of their PAST sins (through justification) and to have internal Holy Spirit power to REMAIN IN THAT RIGTHTEOUS/HOLY CONDITION until their death. It was the ADDED SACRIFICIAL LAW (the “law of Moses”–the “handwriting of ordinances”) that was nailed to Christ’s cross and done away with upon His death.

Contrary to church doctrine, Jesus did not come to destroy the Ten Commandment Law or the writings of the prophets (Mat. 5:17) which are eternal. For example, in the world to come with its new heavens and new earth, God’s people will still be observing the Lord’s seventh day Sabbath and will still be marking the first day of each month at the first sighting of His new moon (Isa. 66:22,23).

Word of advice: PROVE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER BEEN TAUGHT BY COMPARING IT TO GOD’S HOLY BIBLE. You will find that most of what you have heard in church is straight out of the mind of Satan and through the lips of his false prophets. It is for this reason that you must obey God’s command found in Second Corinthians 6:14-7:1. Note that only when you do that will He be your God and you will be His children. We are the temple of God only IF we obey His COMMANDMENTS and His WORDS (Jn. 14:15,23). Note that His Commandments (vs 15) and His Words (vs 23) are one and the same. Read what Jesus says about this Truth in Matthew 7:21-23 where He is telling people about Judgment Day.

Now we will turn to the focal passage (Jn. 4:34) and pick up the story with Jesus Who, having dealt with a woman at the Samaritan well, is speaking with His disciples who had returned from a nearby village with food for him. Knowing that He was hungry, they were saying to Him, “Rabbi, eat.” But rather than eating the food they had brought, He took the opportunity to teach them, and us, a valuable lesson. He said: “I have food to eat which you do not know about.” The disciples assumed that He was referring to food someone else had brought to Him. Knowing what they were saying to each other, Jesus said: “My food (meat) is to do the will of Him Who sent Me and TO FINISH HIS WORK. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvesting. He who reaps the produce receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. Concerning this, the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I SENT YOU TO REAP THAT FOR WHICH YOU HAVE NOT LABORED. OTHERS HAVE LABORED AND YOU HAVE BENEFITTED FROM THEIR LABORS” (vss 35-38).

The reason the Lord had me to write this series is to show Scripturally that, contrary to near universal church opinion, the Old Testament prophets and their writings are as important as the writings of the New Testament apostles in that they provide the foundation of their (the apostles’) ministry. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in Ephesians 2:20 where he tells us that the New Testament Church was founded on the writings of both the prophets and the apostles. As I have noted on several occasions, the apostles’ writings were not made available for general use until around 90-100 A.D., after all except John had been martyred. In other words, the apostles used the writings of the prophets as the foundational Truths upon which their ministries were based. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS CONSTITUTED THE FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES FOR THE MINISTRIES OF BOTH THE PROPHETS AND THE APOSTLES. As Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, He did not come to earth to destroy the Law or the writings of the prophets. Instead, He would use them as foundation stone upon which to build His New Testament Church.

In John 4:31-38 Jesus is giving us this message using the growing of wheat as an illustration. He is telling the disciples that they would be reaping the benefit of those who had done the hard work of preparing the spiritual soil, sowing the spiritual seeds (His Words), etc. that would produce the crop (saints) that the apostles would be gathering. So much for the “death of the Old Testament and its terrible Law” nonsense by which Satan and his messengers have destroyed the once-holy church and caused billions of people to fall away from the One Who gave His life for them. This tragedy is called the “falling away” (Gk.–apostasy) that Paul said would come just prior to Christ’s return at the end of the age (2 Thes. 2:3). Read about this now on-going apostasy using that word as the key.

I am most fortunate to have had the Lord directing my life in a way that prepared me for this ministry. I was born into a poor sharecropping family whose life’s work consisted of doing physically what the Old Testament prophets did spiritually–PREPARING THE SOIL, PLANTING THE SEEDS, FEEDING AND NURTURING THE PLANTS AND PREPARING THEM FOR HARVESTING. Like the apostles, we also harvested the crops. Unlike them we were not killed for doing so. Also, our seeds were physical while the prophets’ seeds (God’s Words) were spiritual. I will use the crop-growing activities of my youth to illustrate what Jesus was talking about when He said that others had labored hard and long so that the apostles would have a crop to gather. I will briefly show you what we did to prepare for raising a crop. The Lord used the illustration of growing wheat. Instead, I will use cotton. Just as God’s Word is the lifeblood for the true saint, cotton was the lifeblood of those in the American south. What I will describe took place beginning in March as we prepared the soil for the planting cotton seeds.

During my teen years I would come home from school, eat an early supper, then relieve my father who had been driving the tractor all day preparing the soil to receive the cotton seeds. I would then drive the tractor until around ten o’clock when he would relive me and work as long as he could stay awake. Then he would come home, sleep a few hours, then go back to the field while I went to school. This type of work was necessary in order to prepare the soil for planting which had to be done at exactly the right time. Having prepared the soil, we would plant the cotton seeds, fertilize them, chop the grass out of the plants, etc. and nurture them until they produced the finished product and reached the point of harvesting. Spiritually speaking, this is what Jesus was referring to by His Words concerning the work done by the prophets that had produced the “white harvest” the apostles were preparing to reap.

The purpose of this series is to show that the work of the ancient prophets was equally as important as the work of the ancient apostles in the harvest that is still taking place within God’s true church. Modern apostles are still harvesting the crop prepared for the ancient prophets. Therefore, let us never devalue the Old Testament and those who labored before us. Needless to say, it angers the Lord when religious people talk about the Law being “nailed to the cross” and being no longer a factor in the life of church people. My job is to tell the false church God’s Truth about the issue. As Jesus warned would be the case, the response from the religious community has not changed.

The Lord reminded me of a side issue that is important relative to the response from religious people and the size of His tiny congregation which numbers only a few thousand world-wide. There are several types of cotton that farmers can grow. Each type has its own unique characteristics. One type, called DPL, was the best in terms of quality. The problem was that its bolls were small and hard to pick, which made picking them rough on our hands. Needless to say, people preferred not to pick DPL cotton. DPL bolls produced less cotton than the bolls of other types of cotton, but the quality made it preferable relative to income. As the Lord showed me when I was preparing to write this lesson, the DPL type of cotton corresponds to His church–small, hard to enter, rejected, etc. However, it will be more profitable in the long run. For this reason, few become a part of God’s church as Jesus warned would be the case in Matthew 7:13,13 and 22:14. As He said, “the many” salvation seekers would choose to enter through Satan’s wide gate and walk his broad way to what they believe will be paradise. God’s tiny, mustard seed-sized church is the DPL of the spiritual world. L.J.