Is God Revealing MYSTERIES?

Is God Revealing Mysteries?

Is God revealing mysteries to you? I got an interesting comment when I noped this video of Catherine Crick. In this clip, Ms. Crick is insisting that to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture is to limit God.

So we're not limited to the Bible and only just read the Bible and that's it.

Instead, God wants to expand upon what is written and give more revelation to his church, especially through Catherine who says he is doing a new thing. He's doing a new thing. He's doing a new thing.

If you don't like that, it's because you have a religious spirit. Religious spirit doesn't like that. Now this is the part of the clip that inspired the comment we're about to break down. But God wants to bring more.

God wants to bring meat. God wants to bring mysteries. God wants to bring secrets of the kingdom.

The commenter says, there's several scriptures about God revealing mysteries. The Bible couldn't even contain all that God has to reveal. But you lack the revelation, you won't understand. Ouch. The Bible never instructs us to pay attention to new revelation outside of itself once it has been written and the canon is closed.

Rather, it always points us back to itself as the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving faith, knowledge, and obedience. The whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for his own glory and man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly stated or by necessary inference contained in the holy scriptures.

Nothing is ever to be added to the scripture either by new revelation of the spirit or by human traditions. What the scripture says about itself in this regard is that It directs us to itself and says, are more fully confirmed, a more solid proof than any spectacular experience, and more to be believed than seeing someone rise from the dead.

Nothing is to be added or taken away from it. So what of these several scriptures about God revealing mysteries? When the New Testament talks about mysteries being revealed, it's talking about formerly hidden things that have now been revealed in the coming of the Christ and the giving of the gospel.

Consider Romans 16, 25, and 26. Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith.

You can see in this text that the preaching of Jesus Christ is used synonymously with the revelation of the mystery. The mystery of the gospel is now manifested and it is contained in the scriptures. The same thing is true of Paul's use of the word mystery in Ephesians.

By revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief. By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets, in the Spirit.

To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. We see here again that it is the mystery of the gospel formerly hidden but now revealed and it is not talking about you receiving some sort of Gnostic download of revelation unknown to anyone else, even if it aligns with scripture.

It must align with the word.

People who twist scripture can make anything align with scripture. Consider finally Colossians 1, 26 and 27. Paul says that he was made a minister so that he might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from past ages and generations but has now been manifested to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Again, Paul is using mystery to refer to what was partially hidden in previous revelation contained in the Old Testament but is now manifested in the person of Christ and the New Testament scriptures and is freely available to all nations.

What's helpful to understand is that Paul is using this language intentionally to contrast with the contemporary pagan understanding of mystery, which was secret insights reserved for a spiritual elite and which were sometimes acquired by giving money, or as they would say today, sowing a seed.

See the understanding of mystery and revelation and secrets of Catherine Crick's five-fold church, this commenter, and many others actually very closely resembles the paganism found in the Roman Empire in Paul's day and has actually nothing to do with the biblical use of the term.

And that is a major NOPE.

My, my, is everybody in the world lying? Please, Lord, give me a sign, a sign.