“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63, NKJ)
In 2 Cor 3:14-17 the handling of the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is aptly explained: “But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
The first part, which says: “their minds were blinded”, clearly indicates that they could not hear the voice of God (Heb 3:15; 4:17). People who do not hear the voice of God, in other words who do not read the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, have a veil that covers their minds from what the Word truly says. It does not matter how many theological degrees they have in biblical exegesis – they CANNOT understand it. But the simplest person, even a child (Ps 8:2; Matt 11:25; 21:16) can understand if the Holy Spirit takes the veil away! Because of this Peter and John could, in Acts 4, as uneducated and simple men, but “filled with the Holy Spirit” (verse 8), address the nation, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees (verse 1), the rulers, elders and scribes (verse 5), Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, John and Alexander and all the family of the high priest (verse 6), the “rulers of the people and the elders of Israel (verse 8)! And then verse 13 testifies: “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marvelled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”
Clearly these two simple and uneducated men knew the Man on the tree, Jesus, the Word made flesh, and thus the covering up of Him in the Old Testament was removed. Thus they could freely speak to everyone and teach the learned, because they had the revelation. Revelation knowledge means that all the coverings that have covered up Jesus as Word – from His birth (Luke 2:7), to His death (Luke 24:12) – have been removed. The veil of death has been removed!
Lazarus, who was also raised from the dead, like Jesus, came from the tomb “bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Loose him, and let him go.’” (John 11:44). But not Jesus! John 20:5-7: “And he (the disciple), stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.”
- Sela: Ask God to remove all the veils of dogma from your mind.
- Read: 1 Sam 15; Ps 137; Luke 12
- Memorise: 1 Sam 15:23 (a very important word)
- Going deeper: Read chapter 17 in Juan Ortiz’s God is closer than you think.
