Anatoly Yudenko. Christ Recognizes His Bride

July 14, 2013 · Anatoly Yudenko, Unregistered Pentecostals, Vestibule, Sermons, Council of Churches in Exile

Some believers attempt to assert that upon repentance before God, a person is always born from above.

Let us examine whether this is so, or to what extent it is so. It is written: faith comes from hearing the word of God—yes, that is completely true. More precisely, faith is born from hearing the word of God, or from reading it, which is the same thing. And since being born from above consists of two parts, or two states, two steps—birth from the word and birth from the Spirit—then in that case these people, even if they are right, are only half right. Faith is a tool for achieving the goal, but not the goal itself; our goal is to attain the kingdom with Christ in heaven. But it is utterly impossible to enter it and possess it without faith, just as it is written that without faith it is impossible to please God, much less to attain anything.

Thus, faith is the key to the promises of God, which is why it is said that one must be born of water (the word) and the Spirit. That is, one must first acquire faith, so that by this faith one may then acquire everything else that God has prepared for us, because everything is attained by faith—but only by active, working faith, not a sleeping or dead faith that reduces itself merely to “reasoning” that something, some power, probably exists. That is most likely not faith at all, but superstition. And so, these people say that at repentance, when faith is born, a person is fully born from above, and that at that moment all his sins are forgiven, he is adopted by God, and God Himself now lives in his heart as in a temple, and the person himself becomes a temple for God. How beautiful! Is it not? Yes, beautiful—so it will be later on—but in this act it is necessary to arrange everything in a definite order and not forget to dot all the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” as well. That is, to determine what comes after what. For instance, if one asks what is born from what—faith from repentance or repentance from faith—then, of course, we answer that faith produces repentance, and where there is no faith, there is no repentance. I mean faith in God alone. In that case, we would not put repentance first and then faith as its product. That would be incorrect and incomprehensible to others. And from repentance, in turn, comes the condition for the forgiveness of sins.

Faith is born from hearing the word of God, therefore one can say with confidence that from the moment of hearing the word of God, the process of a person’s regeneration has begun, and how long it lasts depends mainly on the person himself. I know of cases where this process lasted decades and yet ended successfully, and there are examples, even from Holy Scripture, when full birth from above occurred in a single moment. The incident in the house of Cornelius: as they listened to the word of God, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they began to speak in other tongues of the great works of God.

Everything depends on how deeply a person immerses himself in hearing the revelations of God and accepts them by faith.

Though the incident with Cornelius also did not happen out of nowhere. Before that, a rather deep work had been done in the salvation of these souls. It is enough to recall that God Himself testified about him thus: “Your prayers and your alms have come up as a memorial before God.”

And although he was not a Jew, being a Gentile, he accepted their faith and ardently loved it, which prompted him to perform works of mercy that did not go without fruit but were noted by God.

It must be said with certainty that not all natural Israelites were as zealous before God as this foreigner Cornelius. He took such great care not to miss the opportunity to hear Peter’s saving message that he gathered into his house not only his own household but, it is written, also his acquaintances.

And what is astonishing… all of them were baptized with the Holy Spirit and, naturally, received salvation, being adopted by God, obtaining full forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

This shows that Cornelius did not have just any kind of friends, but friends like himself: God-fearing, yet not yet knowing the fullness of salvation in Christ.

The second classic example occurred on the day of Pentecost, although chronologically it stands as the first. It did not simply enter the history of Christianity as a notable day of a historical event, but became the birthday of the Church of Christ. On that day, eternal life descended from heaven—no longer in human flesh, as it was in Christ Jesus, when He, being Spirit, took on human flesh and became in appearance as a man, so that in the flesh He might condemn sin—but descended as the Holy Spirit upon the apostles who were waiting for Him and upon all the others who were gathered in that upper room, where this greatest event—the birth of the Church—took place. They, too, had been prepared for this manifestation by Christ Jesus our Lord Himself. He taught them for three and a half years, and in the final days He particularly foretold to them: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” And He fulfilled His promise on the day of Pentecost, having previously warned them to wait for what had been promised. They believed this promise and waited; therefore they received what was promised—they believed and received.

Thus, they received faith from the word of God, and the Holy Spirit they received by this faith. You see how everything is interconnected and sequential.

In other words, faith was born from hearing the word of God, and the whole person himself, in turn, was born of the Holy Spirit into eternal life and became a partaker of Christ and an heir of His promise. Glory to Him!

Faith itself is not some frozen form of a particular dogma; it is an ever-growing driving force, working in a person according to the Creator’s will. And its beginning does not come from the New Testament or even from the Old, but much earlier, from the days of Abraham. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. The Apostle Paul very vividly lists the works of faith in the eleventh chapter of his letter to the Hebrews. Faith brings a person to God, and having come to God, the person again by faith receives from God various promises, including eternal life. Therefore, obtaining faith is the initial phase of being born from above. It is like a seed received by the soil, where the ear of grain is not yet visible, but the hope has already appeared that it will be. A certain time will pass, and it will appear, ripen, and bear fruit. From the invisible will come the visible. Yet all this will happen only if all the necessary conditions are created for it, and if the process stops, then nothing will happen. In order for light to appear in the beginning, God had to do something; He had to command, “Let there be light,” and light came to be.

Without faith, we would be completely severed, cut off from God. But now, having obtained faith, we have the possibility not only to visit Him periodically in prayer but to return to Him forever, accepting His conditions. By faith we have gained access to His grace.

And still, what does this look like in practice? How is the relationship between a person and God built? Perhaps it is really enough for a person to be born only from the word of God so that faith is born in him, and this will be quite enough for him to grow and develop afterward? Yes, he will grow and develop, but only if we firmly grasp that faith is not an end in itself but a means to reach the goal—and God has very many goals for us. And in order to grow, it is necessary by faith to know and receive the promises of God. For example, the most important promise of God for us, which comes immediately after being born from the word, is being born of the Spirit. These two births determine our salvation, and that is why Christ said to Nicodemus that without them we will not even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it.

And this is serious. Christ did not speak idle words, and He warned us about this, so that we would never do that either.

The Apostle Paul, understanding the depth and high significance of these words as God’s revelation, was concerned first of all to bring them to the hearts not only of the Christians in Ephesus but of all without exception, and he prayed to God about this, that Christ might dwell in the hearts of His followers by faith, because in this is everything for a Christian. He proclaims this in Ephesians 3:16-17: “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…” And if this happens, then the person will lack nothing, because He who is now in you possessed all the fullness of the Godhead bodily when He was in the body, and now by the Holy Spirit He dwells in you.

And also, it must be noted—and it is very important for everyone to know this so as not to fall into deception or any heresy—that being born of the Holy Spirit, or the baptism in the Holy Spirit, is one and the same action. And this is that single moment in the life of a Christian when God, by the Holy Spirit, takes up residence in his heart as in a temple, necessarily with the sign of speaking in other tongues, as a witness to the person being baptized and to others that from now on he is born from above, which consists of two components: being born from the word and being born of the Spirit of God.

And as a result, from that moment the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit the Comforter—call Him as you will—lives constantly within the person, in a redeemed temple cleansed and prepared by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Also, from that moment you may at all times, day and night, be filled with the Holy Spirit to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, returning to our opponents who assert that for a full birth from above, only one birth is sufficient—from the word, and that is the end of it. Such thinking is incorrect, because a person born from the word, that is, a person who has received faith born of the word, has become a possessor of the knowledge that God exists, and that this God is perfect love, and that He offers fallen people full amnesty, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life. But all this is found only in Jesus Christ and is received together with Him, if it is received. And if it is rejected, it is also rejected together with Him. Without Christ, none of these possibilities work. Either you receive Christ and all that is in Him, or you receive nothing if you are outside Christ. All the promises are in Christ. And in order to become an heir of God’s promises, it is necessary to receive Him into your heart—to be born of the Holy Spirit—to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, necessarily with the sign of other tongues; there is no other way.

Someone may say, “But there are very many quite decent Christians who do not go beyond being born from the word and are quite content with their position, and God, it seems, is also content and draws no one anywhere.” Yes, God does not force anyone anywhere. He only offers salvation to people, and they must make their own choice voluntarily. And as for those who spend their whole lives in the position of those who are drawing near but never actually draw near, these are exactly the kind of people to whom God will say, “You had Moses; you did not listen to him. You had Christ; you did not listen to Him either, though He taught you with His own lips. The disciples wrote down His teaching for other generations, and they did not listen to them, and you always demanded signs from heaven. So even if a dead man were to rise and tell you, you would not listen to him and would not believe.”

God does not reject those who draw near, I mean those who have not yet received the Holy Spirit, but on the contrary, He invites and says: come and know the truth, and the truth will make you free. But they do not want to. They become like those foolish virgins who loved the Lord, followed Him, labored much for Him, waited for Him, and did much for this. Sacrificing their time, they prepared for the meeting, took with them lamps, which are the word of God, in which there was oil, and proclaimed it among the nations.

But by the way it should be noted that the lamp is useful and valuable only when it is filled with oil to burn, otherwise it is useless.

I, reflecting on this, come to the conclusion that shortly before Christ’s coming for His own, a difficult time will come. Christians will fall asleep, the love of many will grow cold, a deep night will come, and this, in my view, is nothing other than the lamps beginning to go out, and by that time almost all Bibles will have been rewritten anew in a distorted form. And in the churches this distorted word of God will be taught. And especially from the New Testament all fundamental truths will be removed and distorted, and they will succeed in this to such an extent that the lamp of God’s word will begin to go out, so that it will be difficult and even impossible to find the path leading to meet the bridegroom. The thick darkness of sin will cover the world. And while all the virgins sleep, a substitution of God’s word will take place; it will happen unnoticed, and they will understand or be seized by it only when the cry rings out – the bridegroom is coming! Awakened by this cry, all the virgins will begin to trim their lamps, but it will turn out that while they slept, everything had burned out. The teaching of Christ will be so perverted and all divine values so emasculated that, upon awakening, Christians will fall into panic. They will hear that Christ is coming, but the path – the way to Him – will be lost. And in panic they will begin to look into it, will try to trim the lamp, but it goes out. And Christ is coming closer and closer, while they are in darkness with no way out.

And at that moment, half of them, five, will prove to have stored up oil in advance, which means they preserved it in their vessels. Besides having filled all their lamps with oil, they took care to take it also in their vessels, i.e. to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Remember how it is written that when He comes, the Spirit of Truth, He will remind you of what I have said to you and will declare to you things to come. So, when they see that those lamps no longer burn, because of the distortion of the truth, then these five, having Christ dwelling in their hearts through the Holy Spirit, by turning to Him will receive correct, undistorted answers; that is, Christ will remind them through the Holy Spirit of what He spoke to them before and will restore their lamps, which will have no need of oil. But as for those who at the right time neglected revelations from God and relied on the fact that it was enough for them that they had been born only of the word of God, and stopped there, neglected the baptism of the Holy Spirit, took no oil with them, did not want to be born of the Holy Spirit – about them it is said, and it is not I who speak, but Christ speaks, that they will not only not enter the marriage feast of Christ, but will not even see it, which is confirmed by Christ by the example of the five foolish virgins. While they go to seek what they have missed and lost, the doors will be shut, and afterward, when they come and begin to knock on the door, Christ will answer their knock; He will not hide from them, but will come out and speak very sad and strange words to them – I do not know you.

He will not recognize who they are, but will recognize His only bride, consisting of many tribes and peoples, having the seal of the Holy Spirit as the beginning of eternal life received at the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

July 13, 2013

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