By C. Eldon McNabb

Several of those who were close associates of Jesus, during His ministry, have given us a fairly comprehensive account of His wonderful works, and of His pure, life-giving doctrine.  Those miraculous works were, in large part, God’s way of confirming the doctrine which God had given to Him to deliver to us (Acts 2:22; Heb. 5:12 - 6:3).  In John 6:63, Jesus testified of His doctrine, saying, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Multiplied millions have believed on Jesus, because of the written records of those faithful disciples of Jesus, and many of them have given their lives as a result of their faith in Him.  What a tremendous impact for the accounts of a few on-lookers to have generated.

Yet, it seems as if it is the account of His words which gives Christians their greatest challenge.  Having believed on Jesus, we are asked to believe His words, and we are repeatedly tempted, as was Eve, to not believe, or perhaps to not fully accept what the writers of the New Testament have told us that He said.  We know that we believe in Jesus.  The question is, “Do we believe Jesus?”  I am sure that we all would return a resounding YES!!! 

We have nothing which Jesus wrote, and are totally dependent upon the writers of the New Testament for any information concerning what He did, and what He said, yet we believe.  I suppose that, if we believe what Matthew, and the others, said about what Jesus did, it would follow that we would automatically believe the things which they said that He said.  Well, just maybe.  It is up to you to decide whether you will believe what Jesus said, or what someone else is telling you.

In Matthew 23:1-3, Jesus said, “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.”  That is, they had usurped “Moses’ seat.”  Therefore we know that, before they ever had a king, there was actually an office, ordained of God, in the hierarchy of the nation of the children of Israel.  Most of us know that “God never changes.”  We should also know that, when Israel had Jesus killed they no longer had a covenant with God (Romans 7:1-4).  Jesus’ blood purchased a new covenant which Jesus made with “Spiritual Israel:” the new creatures in Christ Jesus.

After Peter finished Jesus’ work of building the Church, the brothers of Jesus, James and Jude, continued in the fulfillment of the promise to King David that one of his descendants would sit upon the Throne of David forever.

The prophecy of the coming of Shiloh (Genesis 49:10) was fulfilled in Jesus, and when Jude was gone, the scepter departed from Judah, even as Jesus prophesied in Matthew 21:43, saying to the “Chief Priests and Elders” of Israel, “The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”

The kingdom of God was not even theirs at that time, and was never restored to them.  In Acts 1, Jesus’ disciples asked Him if He intended to restore the kingdom to Israel at that time.  They were the Church, and therefore, the new nation of Spiritual Israel, but did not possess the kingdom.  The Seat of Moses was taken from the Chief priests and Elders, and was given to Peter for 7 years.  He was replaced by James, at whose death it was given to Jude.

When Jude died, we began the centuries-long wait for God to raise up a Gentile Anointed to “restore The Tabernacle of David which was broken down” (the Church), to set the stage for God to raise up a nation to whom He might give His Kingdom.  In 1903, God anointed A. J. Tomlinson to begin to restore the Church; in the fulfillment of Isaiah 52:1-2 and Eph. 4:14, “Awake thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”  Because of the work which he began, today we are continuing the work of preparing “A people for His name” (Acts 15:13-18).  I know that this is not a popular subject, but how can we deny it, when it is from the very lips of Jesus, and confirmed unto us by His brother James.  In Act 15:19-21, James declared plainly that he was sitting in Moses’ Seat.

Most of our “Christian” ministers today deny that the spiritual Israel is in possession of Moses’ Seat; especially those organizations which were developed by the dynamic efforts of A. J. Tomlinson.  Yet, I read Jude 11-13, where he said, “There are certain men who have crept in unawares, who despise dominion; ungodly men.  Woe unto them! for they have … perished in the gainsaying of Korah.”

So, Jesus Christ told us, in Matthew 11:13, “All the prophets and the Law prophesied.”  In Numbers 16, Moses prophesied of the ministers in Christian organizations today by giving us the account of Korah, who, with three of his cronies, and two-hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, rose up to defy Moses, and perished in an earthquake with all their families and their goods.

Jude, the last of the four men of God who sat in “Moses seat,” in the first century A.D., pointed out the fact that the same thing was happening in the Church at that time, saying, “These are spots in your feast of charity.”  That would not have been possible if there had not been an anointed man of God sitting in Moses’ Seat.

Peter also prophesied of them, saying, “There shall be false teachers among you, who shall bring in damnable heresies.  And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.”  Even now, thousands of them are fulfilling his words.

In Matthew 16:13-19, when Simon Peter answered Jesus, saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Jesus prophesied unto him, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, but my Father which is in heaven.  And I say also unto you that you are ‘Peter,’ and upon this rock I will build my church (He did not say, I am building); and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven.”

This statement requires that the Church must decide who may, or may not, be members of it.  (We certainly can not determine whose name can be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.)  When the true Church makes such a decision, God either adds them to, or removes them from, the Book of the Holy City which is written in Heaven (Rev. 22:19).  Then, after Jesus was raised up from the dead, He officially appointed Peter to sit in “Moses’ Seat,’ saying, “Feed my sheep.”  Peter knew what Jesus meant, and that is why he asked Jesus, “What shall this man (John) do?” 

According to many prophesies, that glorious Jewish Church came under siege by false teachers and was swallowed up in ancient Babylonian idolatry.  And today, God has begun to raise the Church up again, among the Gentiles, “to take out of them a people for His name.”  Glory to God Almighty, and His Son Jesus Christ!

Jesus’ parables reveal the mysteries of God.  Jesus said in Luke 4:11, “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables.”  The parables which Jesus told are simply stories which tell the actual events of the Old Testament allegories in a sort of stylized way (Matt. 13:34-35). 

For those who have ears to hear, I will show you how the Man of God today will have Twelve Apostles, just as Jesus did.  In John 20:30-31, John declared that all of the miracles of Jesus, which he wrote about, were signs.  Those miracles were not parables, but actual events, therefore, they are allegories; each element prophesying of “good things to come” for the Church of the Living God.

One day, a great multitude followed Jesus as He, and His disciples went up into a mountain, and sat together.  As Jesus took note of the multitude which had come to Him, He purposed to feed them, as only He could.  He said to Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?”  Philip replied that, “Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.”

Then Peter’s brother, Andrew, another of Jesus’ twelve, said to Jesus, “There is a lad here, which has five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?”

So Jesus told His disciples to have the people, about five thousand men, plus the women and children, to sit down, and “He took the loaves and gave thanks; then He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.”  When everyone had eaten to the full, Jesus said unto His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.  Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.” 

Let us note first that Jesus fed the people by sending the food by the Twelve.    Second, Jesus seems to be concerned that any of the leftovers should be lost.  And third, they filled twelve baskets with that which remained.

What an amazing miracle!  If it were only that, and therefore a sign, it would be enough.  However, it is more.  It is an allegory; showing the blessing of the pure, Apostle’s doctrine in the Jewish Church, and that God intends to raise up the Church again, “at the last day,” and make it “a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing,” under the guidance of a “faithful and wise servant,” and his twelve Gentile Apostles.

The five loaves represent the five gifts of the ministry.  Every minister in God’s Church will have one of those five gifts, as it is written, “Every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that.”

In Matthew 15, Jesus performed a similar miracle by feeding 4,000 men, plus the women and children, with seven loaves and a few little fishes, and they took up seven baskets full of the broken meat that was left.  In this case Jesus was prophesying, with that miracle, of the seven in Acts 6.  The offices of the Seven were specifically “deacons,” and they must be manifested again, among the Gentiles, In fulfillment of Samson’s locks of hair, and Job’s seven sons.

Paul said, in Romans 2, “Glory, honor, and peace to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.”  For about 1,900 years, the Gentiles have had the peace which comes by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, as well as the honor of being given the gifts of the ministry and the gifts of the Spirit.  Now, God is preparing The Church to be the glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, which He will present as a bride to Jesus when He comes.

The Glory of God was manifested in those early Apostles and prophets for a while, and then the glory faded.  In retrospect, it seems as if it was all lost.  Strangely enough, most modern ministers seem all too happy that it has been gone all of this time, and insist that it will not be restored.  However, as Jesus continued to elaborate on the meaning of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, He said in John 6:38-39, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.  And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.”

From the foundation of the world, God intended for the Church to be built among the Jews, then to fall away, and to be built again among the Gentiles “at the last day.”  Daniel 12:11-12, with 8:13-14, shows that Jesus will come at the end of a 1,335 day period which, God has shown me, shall begin in January, 2007.  It will be as it was the first time He came: “In the dispensation of the fullness of time” (Ephesians 1:10).  “For at the time appointed the end shall be” (Daniel 8:19).

God told us, in Daniel 2, that, right at the end of the grace age, He is going to raise up a nation, which He depicts by a stone which was carved out of “the mountain” (that is to say “the mountain of the Lord’s house), and which would “Smite the image in its feet,” and cause the world government to fall.  In verse 44, He said, “In the days of these (ten) kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.”

God has begun to raise up a Gentile people “for His name” (Acts 15:13-18).  In the next four years, that people: shall manifest the fruits of the Kingdom of God, and become “a nation, great, mighty, and populous” fulfilling the prophecy in Deut. 4:34 and 26:5.