Revelations

28 June 2020

Dear Phyllis,

My times with Jesus every morning continue to be unusual. This is probably the most productive moment of my life. Every morning Jesus takes me into His treasure house and shows me things that cannot be seen outside. As I have frequently said, there is a fundamental difference between soul ad spirit. The spirit is as much different from the soul as the soul is different from the body. Every one understands the relationship between the soul and the body.. The body is simply the vessel or vehicle that the soul lives in. When the soul leaves the body what you have left is a corpse. The soul is the vessel that the spirit lives in. They are as different as water is from air. Fish and birds are different. The environment that they live in is different. The soul lives in the material world and the spirit lives in the spirit world. The greatest enemy of the spirit is the mind. The soul is comprised by the intellect, emotions, and the will. The mind is the intellect. And the intellect can assume two postures – it can be the teacher or the student. By nature the mind want to stand at the white board with the marker in hand as the teacher. But if we can only persuade the mind to sit down as a quiet student and listen that enables the Holy Spirit to share with us things that cannot be understood by the natural mind (1 Cor. 2:14,15).

Recently I have been stuck in Revelation. I read it over and over and each time it gets richer. The other morning I was going over chapter 1 again. I saw John on the island of Patmos and hearing a voice behind him speaking. When he turned around to see who (what) was speaking he saw Seven Candle sticks that were Seven Churches. That was a disappointment. Why in the world did he see seven churches? Because this is the manifestation of God during this age. For 33 years God was manifest in the flesh in Christ, but now, for the past 2,000 years, God has lived on this planet in the flesh of His believers. But then John saw the Son of Man standing in the midst of the Seven Churches. That's better. If that is Jesus I can believe that. That makes more sense. But the first thing John noticed about Jesus was that He was clothed with a garment. I asked the Holy Spirit why John saw Jesus in a garment. He said, “Because that is what Jesus wore”.

In 1960 Joe Carroll was in Chicago speaking at Mid-America Keswick Conference. A lady came up to him and asked if it was cold in Japan. He said, “Yes, it is very cold”. She asked if his wife would like a fur coat. “Yes, that would be very nice. She would appreciate that very much”. She gave him a fur coat that he threw in his suit case to take home. When Mable saw that coat that gasped, “This is a mink coat!” Mable took that mink coat to a furrier in Tokyo to have it appraised and he said, “I will give you $3,000 for it right now”. In todays money that would probably be somewhere between $30,000 to $50,000. When Joe learned that his wife had that kind of an expensive fur coat he said, “You must never wear that thing in public. If any one saw you wearing a $3,000 mink coat we would be finished”. In 1962 they had the World speed skating championship in Karuizawa. People came from all over the world to see this Olympic event. The Olympic officials were staying at the Hoshino hotel and because we were friends with the Hoshinos they gave us tickets to the box seats that were the most expensive seats in the stadium. One day I went with Joe and Mable to the skating championship games and we sat with the elites of Japan. All three of us looked like wood cutters that had just come out of the woods, bundled up with whatever warm clothes we had. Mable had on a ragged cotton coat and a scarf over her head that looked like the cleaning lady in the eki (train station). The ritzy people sitting around us looked at us like they were embarrassed to have us sitting there. Joe turned to me and said, “You wouldn't believe Mable has a $3,000 mink coat on under that cotton one.” There wasn't a woman in the stadium that wouldn't kill to have a coat like that. If Mable had taken her cotton coat off, women would be crowding around to have heir picture taken with her.

When Jesus came here He wore a garment. That is why when John saw the Son of Man standing in the midst of the Seven Churches the first thing he saw was Jesus wearing a garment. But what a garment! The garment that He wore was a poor carpenter from Nazareth. Who would believe under that garment was the Son of God who created the world. But apart from the garment John saw four things about Jesus – His hair, His eyes, His belt, and His feet.

His hair was white which stands for wisdom. His eyes were a flame of fire which is what His enemies are going to see when they stand before Him in judgment. His girdle (belt) stand for the authority that He had both to forgive sin on this earth and as Lord of nature. And His feet were like fine brass. In Moses's Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple the Brass Altar was where the sacrifices for the forgiveness for sin were burned. The fact that Jesus' feet looked like brass means that He has our sins under His feet

When the Holy Spirit showed me what John saw when he saw Jesus standing in the midst of the Seven Churches with a garment on, the first thing that came to my mind was the priest garment. Jesus is, of course, our High Priest (Heb. 5:9,10). The High Priest wore a special garment. The Holy Spirit has made quite an issue of the priest garment in telling us so much about it when He told Moses to make the Tabernacle. We have the details of the priest garment in Ex. 28:1-30. One of the main features of the priest garment is the Breast Plate that he wore upon his heart. On the Breast Plate there were 12 stones.

These 12 stones have always been a mystery to me. We not only see them here is Exodus but they also appear I specific detail in the wall of the New Jerusalem. In Rev. 21:18-20. For years I have seen that these stones are important and have tried to study them but I never could make any sense of them. The other morning I asked the Holy Spirit, “What do these stones mean? Why are they important?” The Holy Spirit answered me in one word - “Gems” They are jewels. That is why they are important. The Lord's people are His jewels. In Malachi 3:17 the Lord said, “They shall be Mine, in the day when I make up my jewels”. They are gems to Him. Oh, me, this turned the lights on! Yes they are. God's people are jewels to Him. They are gems. That is why the priest has a Breast Plate with 12 jewels on it and why he bears their names on his shoulders. Oh, the teaching here is tremendous. Christians here may not look like much to us but to God they are His jewels. Oh my goodness! This blows my mind. How can it be? Jesus came here and He bought some of the most worthless items on the planet with His Blood. I can't believe it. He included me in the mix. I am nothing but one huge minus. I am the epidemy of a looser. I see nothing in me worth salvaging. The only appropriate place I see where I belong is in the garbage can. And Jesus reached in to that garbage can to pull me out. He paid for me with His Blood. (What a bad deal!) And now He calls me a jewel that He wears upon His heart and remembers me before God carrying me on His shoulders. If this isn't a mystery I don't know what is.

Oh, Phyllis, it's true! It's true! It's true! All that the Lord has told us about Himself and us in His Word is true. Gomen, but this is more than I can handle. What will it be when we awake with His likeness in the next world? If what we see in this world is so staggering, that it is almost unbelievable, how are we going to handle it in heaven?

I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you, but all I have to say is, it's sure good to meet with Jesus every morning, to sit and listen what the Spirit has to share with me. It's all there if we only have ears to listen. I'm sure you have your own story to tell.

Hoping to see you soon (in heaven), bill