“… and Jesus Christ whom You have sent …”
(John 17:3b, NKJV)
The verse from Rev. 14:6 that we are currently examining has an esoteric meaning at first – an angel who flies in the middle of heaven and preaches the eternal gospel. If we interpret the verse symbolically, as every part of the book of Revelation prescribes, it renders it more practical, as the angel as messenger is the corporate symbol of the Bride who speaks through the Holy Spirit, who, in the middle of the spiritual realm, proclaims a particular gospel about what exactly it means to know God, but also this: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3).
Unfortunately what we do here, as is often the case, is that we take just one part of a Bible verse and absolutize it. In this Scripture in John 17:3 we always interpret the “eternal life” – which is obviously the foundation of the “eternal gospel” – as equal to knowing God (ginōskō = deep, intimate community). And yes, this is an enormous truth! But “the second is like it” (Matt. 22:39): to have ginōskō with the Jesus Christ You have sent! We have to however remember that “He whom God has sent [= Jesus] speaks [= makes manifest] the [rhema] words of God …” (John 3:34). A while later, in John 6:57-58, Jesus makes it clear: “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
In the very important teaching of Day 1130-1132 we unpacked John 6 in exegetic terms, and explained that this whole chapter is concerned with the establishing of a new concept that Jesus is explaining to his followers – the wondrous mystery of the rhema words. Everything that John carefully constructs in a literary manner, weaving together different narratives, guides the reader to notice this. We can now see this information in a much wider universal light, through the indicative role that the rhema words in God’s plan play in the proclamation of the eternal kingdom, and His establishing of the kingdom of Christ. From verse 32 onwards follows an extensive conversation between Jesus and all of His followers, and the golden thread running throughout the conversation is what exactly this true “bread” is. Jesus sketches a clear contrast between the bread that He offers, and the Old Testament bread that they are familiar with from the time of Moses in the desert: “Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.’” (John 6:31-32).
What this bread from heaven is, is their identity, as the word “manna” derives from the phrase “what is it?” (BNB). WE DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT WE WILL BE AFTER THE APOKALUPSIS, REVELATION, UNVEILING. We are clearly still sealed. The physical sweet wafer which the Israelites had to eat in the desert is the representation of the rhema words of God. Jesus then starts to explain to them, in detail, that He, Jesus, is the Bread of Life; call it the “true bread,” the Fullness, the Logos, the Total Utterance. But He is already sensiting them to the fact that He is also the Christ, and consists of some manifold other pieces of manna, pieces of the whole Bread, the rhema words, the small utterances making up the Total Utterance! In this light, it is absolutely clear what Jesus notes in Matt. 4:4: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” And these words are rhema words! And take note: every word!
As Jesus came “down from heaven” (John 6:38), the rhema words also descend from the heavens, the spiritual realm, to the physical realm. In this conversation Jesus suddenly places great focus on another phrase, which seems inconsequential at first, namely ‘came down’: “This is the bread which comes down from heaven … I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” (John 6:50-51). Earlier in the conversation, in verse 38, He also explicitly used this phrase: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” To emphasise the importance of “came down,” He makes a clear distinction between the physical manna of the desert and spiritual manna. The former was eaten by the fathers in the desert, and yet they died. Of this bread (= manna) Jesus says in verse 50, they had to be able to partake and NOT die. And yet they died. What was missing? In verse 51 He spells it out: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
The phrase “came down” is exactly the same phrase that is used in Rev. 21:2 to describe the Bride’s transition from the spiritual realm to the physical realm.
In the teaching of Day 1349-1351 we argued that this spiritual bread, the manna from the heavens (or spiritual realm) is Christ (Gal. 3:16). This “life of Jesus” is planted within you as a spiritual seed, when you become born again, and must “be manifested in our body” (2 Cor. 4:10). In the (incorruptible) seed is a secret life through which the believer lives. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every [rhema] word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4). This increase of Jesus’s life IN the Christ is different for different people, and thus manifests the diversity of who Jesus is through the Christ, and through which He reconciles the entire earth with Himself. 2 Cor. 5:18-19 phrases it beautifully: “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself …”
It thus follows that the life which is in Jesus, now increases to the life that is in Christ, which we also need to become acquainted with, and internalise. In fact, as we mentioned above, we need to also ginōskō the Christ!
Rev. 1:2 makes clear that this book bears “witness to the word [= Logos] of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ,” in other words, it testifies of both Jesus and His Christ. Both have a particular testimony! Rev. 19:10 is correctly translated by Rotherham and ABP as “the witness of Jesus, is the spirit of the prophecy,” instead of the spirit of prophecy which is often used in common parlance. This necessarily implies that there is a very special relationship between the spirit of Christ and the specific words of this prophecy, and that the testimony of Jesus about His Christ was indeed prophetic, and is already a testimony. The spirit of Christ leads us to the true message and manifestation of this prophetic book in our individual lives. On account of this the rhema words descend with a particular goal from the heavens, the spiritual realm, to the physical realm, and impact it in an undeniable manner.
- Selah: Explain John 6’s manna image to someone.
- Read: Acts 25-28; Rom. 1-2
- Memorise: 1:6 (beautiful synchronicity!)
