Who Is Your Teacher?

Allow me to ask you a question today if you will. Whose teachings are you following? If you give me the name of some man then I can tell you that you are in error. If you give me the name of a woman then I can tell you that you are error. So am I saying that nobody in the history of the body of Christ, since the apostles, has taught anything true? Of course not! What I am saying is that there is a very foundational principle to the new covenant that must be in place, and stay in place, in the life of every single believer who hopes to attain unto eternal life. Jeremiah spoke loud and clear on this new testament principle: “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33,34). There it is; under the old covenant only certain people were in touch with the Spirit of God, such as prophets, priests, judges, etc. The change that Jeremiah spoke of here is what Isaiah had already prophesied of: “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children” (Isa. 54:13). Jesus came to make a way for men to be one with he and his father, and to be able through that oneness to do what Jeremiah said; meaning to “know the Lord” personally (Jn. 17:22-24; Mat. 11:28,29). He wasn’t talking about knowing the Lord only through the initial conversion experience of being baptized with the Spirit (I Cor. 12:13). That is the beginning, but the experience of being baptized with the holy Ghost is initially the equal of a baby being born, and ‘knowing’ the comfort and sheltering of its parents. A newborn baby however does NOT ‘know’ its parents. If someone else who seems comforting was to come along and snatch a newborn, it would not know the difference. That is why Jesus made the following statement: “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn. 8:31,32). Nobody “knows the truth” just by being filled with the holy Ghost initially, any more than a baby knows its parents in any detail at all. It is as Jesus said, “continuing in his word,” that qualifies us to be a true follower of him, and to know his truth. Very few in fact have done that either because the modern traditions of Christianity have turned God’s people AWAY FROM the leading and teaching of the very holy Spirit that they have received, even as the traditions of men in the time of Jesus had turned God’s people away from the very law that was the covenant that they were in with God (Mat. 15:3,9). The key to following Jesus’ instructions on continuing in his word is knowing WHAT the word of God is: “He that hath an ear, let him hear WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH unto the [congregations]” (Rev. 2:7).

As Jesus said, it is “what the SPIRIT says” that is the word of God. David spoke of the word of God on this wise: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psm. 119:105). To see again what the word of God is, here is the new testament companion scripture to that: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). Yes friend, it is the Spirit of God that is leading the way on that path that David spoke of; and those who continue to “hear what the Spirit is saying” are those who are being led thereby and “continuing in [his] word.” It also is without refute that any TRUE revelation of the Spirit can and must be backed up by a consistent flow of scriptural confirmation. That is how Jesus and the apostles preached, and you can see that in the Bible quite clearly. So that brings me back to the beginning of this article, and I will make my initial point by letting the beloved apostle of Jesus make the point for me: “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (I Jn. 2:27). But wait just a minute here; what was John doing here? Oh yeah, he was teaching! But note what it was that he was teaching. He was teaching that we must be taught by God’s Spirit! You see, he was there when Jesus had told him and the other eleven apostles the following: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (Jn. 14:26). Oh yeah, he recorded those words in fact, didn’t he? And he recorded these words of Jesus as well: “Howbeit when the Spirit of truth is come, [it] will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16:13). He heard very clearly when Jesus told Peter that his true people would be founded on the solid rock of having himself revealed to them by the Spirit of God (Mat. 16:13-18). But most of all, after receiving the holy Ghost at Pentecost, John followed the instructions of Jesus and DID continue to depend on the Spirit to “guide [him] into all truth.” It’s no wonder that the beloved apostle wrote so much about the love of God! Because truly continually experiencing and understanding the love of God is the absolute pinnacle of all knowledge. And this apostle, who was around longer than any other, not only wrote about what the Spirit of God DOES teach, that being the love of God; but he also warned the people much against the ‘antichrist’ teachers who promised a “deeper light’ of knowledge which had nothing to do with the pure and holy love of God. John also knew that if he could get God’s people to seek diligently to know the Lord by means of his Spirit, that they would listen to him, because he knew that what he was teaching was OF THE SPIRIT! And that is the confidence of any true minister of the real Gospel of Christ, and that is why a true minister will continually exhort all who will hear to FULLY DEPEND on seeking God daily to know what his Spirit is saying. For in that and that alone is where the freedom is at which Jesus spoke of that accompanies those who truly “know the truth.” Amen.