Interpreting Matthew by Watchman Nee & Herbert L. Fader

Author:Watchman Nee & Herbert L. Fader
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780935008715
Publisher: Christian Fellowship Pub.
Published: 1989-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

Peter is noted in Acts 2.22 and 10.38 as mentioning how the Lord did mighty works and wonders and signs while on earth. When

Christ performed these miracles on earth He demonstrated the power

of the kingdom. It is as much as reiterated in those few words of

Hebrews 6.5 that read: “the powers of the age to come.” What is the age to come? It is the future age, the kingdom age. Thus the powers

of the age to come reflect the power of the kingdom. Due to rejection

of the Lord by the Jews, the kingdom is not able to manifest its full

power in this present age. It can only demonstrate “patience” (see

Rev. 1.9). So that people who receive grace today are not at all the same as people who received grace in the day of the Gospels. At that

time their spirit and soul and their body all received grace, for the kingdom and power and glory were all the Lord’s in full

manifestation while He was here on earth. But today, in the time of

the Lord’s rejection, we are spiritually blessed but we may not be bodily blessed. It is possible for some people today to receive

physical healing as well as spiritual life. But it is equally possible for some others to receive spiritual life without having sickness healed.

The miracles noted in the Gospels were universal, while the miracles

of today are individual and exceptional. For what is recounted in the

Gospels are things which were done at a time when the power of the

kingdom was especially being manifested due to the physical

presence of the Lord on the earth. This is not to suggest, of course,

that now there is not the power of the kingdom, because the Book of

Hebrews says we may taste the powers of the age to come today. But

a taste is not a full meal; yet neither is it going hungry. There is power, and we have a taste of it; but it is a fore taste only, and thus it cannot be universally experienced. Nonetheless, as the age to come is

approaching, we are able to taste more of its power.

Division

Four

8.1-9.35

149

8.2-4 Matthew 5 speaks of “the poor in spirit . . .”; Matthew 8

tells of “a leper…” The former shows us what men ought to be,

while the latter exposes what men actually are.

Leprosy in the Scriptures is a type of sin (see Lev. 13, 14).

Leviticus 13 tells of the uncleanness of leprosy, and Leviticus 14

relates the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing. In all of

recorded Old Testament Jewish history right up to this very moment

in Matthew’s narrative, there is no record of any Jewish leper having

ever been cleansed. Miriam, the sister of Moses, had indeed had

leprosy for a brief moment of time under God’s judgment of her, but

she was not a leper in the constitutional sense; and, of course,

Naaman the Syrian general was not a Jew. Apart from these two,

who were miraculously cleansed, there is no case in the Old

Testament record of a leper having been cleansed by himself in the

natural process.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.