Transcription
You're going to be you. Still, you're going to look like you, but you're going to be restored. And you are going to be returned to the family of God as a son of God. That's being born again, going back into the family. That is the gospel of Christ.
And so, so many people are missing the story. They're preaching the hellfire, and they're preaching what they believe is the testimony, which is, "I used to do bad things, and then I got born again, and now I don't." That's not the testimony. The testimony is, mankind is condemned with the dragon. We were once with the Father. Our purpose was fellowship with the Father, but because of sin, we became indentured to the swineherd, and we are now enemies of God. We are enemies of God.
But my name is Timothy Elbrino, and you are watching End Times Productions.
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See, the gospel of Christ is not about saving us from hell and delivering us into heaven. The gospel of Christ is about redeeming, reconciling, and restoring mankind to the family of God. That is what the gospel of Christ is. And all of these words are different. When you talk about the word redemption, to redeem something means to purchase it back, to get it back. And why do we have to be redeemed? Because of sin. Because when Adam sinned, all of us were condemned because of his sin. We're also condemned because of our own sins, but those are two different things.
See, we wear a body of sin because of Adam. Adam, in his fallen condition, was divorced from the family of God, and we inherit the corruption through Adam's sin, and death, and entropy, and degeneration. We inherit it from Adam. And because of Adam's sin, Adam and his offspring were condemned with the dragon and his angels. So we are born. The human condition is one of condemnation, degeneration, and condemnation. We degenerate, we die, and we are condemned with the enemies of God. That is part of the story of the prodigal son, because the prodigal son becomes indentured to the swineherd. Who is the swineherd? He's an archetype of Satan.
So when we are born into the world, we are born into a—we are born as indentured servants, slaves to the swineherd. And because we are slaves to the swineherd, legally so, because we chose to rebel against God, to throw our lot in with His enemies. That was what happened in the garden. That was about allegiance. The garden of Eden, and they chose to listen to the enemy of God and to heed his voice over the voice of their Father. And so, what was the result? They would be condemned with him. Condemned, condemned with the dragon and his angels, right?
And so the devil has this legal hold over mankind. He's the chief of sinners, Satan. And all sinners, all the reprobate, belong to him and are condemned with him. Belong to him in the sense that they're going to be condemned with him, right? So that's where the word redemption comes in. Because in this fallen state, in the state of condemnation, we had to be purchased, bought back from the swineherd. Somebody had to pay our debt. See, that's what being an indentured servant means. When you would enter into indentured servitude, it meant that you had a debt, and you couldn't pay it off, and you had to work for your master until you could pay your debt off. But see, our problem is that we are unable to pay our debt off. And so we needed a kinsman-redeemer to pay it for us. And that's called redemption.
Remember the song of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation? "You purchased men for God by your blood. You purchased men for God." That is redemption. We're redeemed from the swineherd. Why are we redeemed? So that we might be reconciled. See, redemption happens through the cross of Christ. He paid with his blood. He paid for our sin. And I want to remind everybody that Jesus had the power to forgive sins before He was crucified. Remember when they lowered the paraplegic into the house, and Jesus said to him, "Your sins are forgiven"? And the Pharisees and the Sadducees were incensed. "How can you say his sins are forgiven? Only God can forgive sins." And what did He say to them? "So that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins." He looked at the man, He said, "Take up your bed and walk." And the man, the paraplegic, was healed. He stood up and took up his bed.
How is it that Christ had the power to forgive sins before He went to the cross? Because there are two kinds of sin: your sins that you've committed personally, your offenses, and the sin of Adam. Your sins could be forgiven through sacrifices and so forth. In the Hebrew system, your sins could be forgiven by the appropriate sacrifice of animals and so forth. It was still blood. It was still a blood sacrifice. But the sin of Adam, the original sin of mankind, the one that caused us to become indentured to the swineherd, we could not—we had no power to be forgiven from that sin. It took a son of Adam to walk perfectly before the Father and to offer up himself as the sacrifice and as the recompense for our sin, to take upon himself the penalty of Adam's sin and to crucify it and redeem us by doing so, redeem us from the dragon and condemnation with the dragon.
So we're redeemed so that we might be reconciled. And what does the word reconciliation mean? Brought back into fellowship, brought back into friendship. And what does the New Testament teach us? That we are enemies of God, or we were once enemies of God. Enemies of God. And our fate is going to be His fate. But the gift of God, the Son of God, came as a kinsman-redeemer to redeem us from the swineherd, from condemnation with the dragon, and through His sacrifice, reconcile us to the Father so that we might be restored to everything that was lost in Adam. Everything that was lost in Adam is regained and restored through the second Adam, the Son of God, through Jesus of Nazareth.
So the gospel is much more extraordinary than we've ever thought. We're redeemed so that we might be reconciled, so that we might be restored back into fellowship in the divine family, back into the family of God, restored to the genetic blueprint of Adam, and all those abilities that are inherent in the human species but are deadened because of degeneration are going to return and be rectified. Our biology, our physiology is going to be rectified at the resurrection. So the resurrection is about transforming us, resetting us back to the blueprint of our original progenitor, of Adam, our father.
So we're not only going to be restored to the family of God, reconciled, brought back into fellowship, but our biology is going to be rectified. We have this misconception that the Kingdom of Heaven is this spiritual place, this intangible, ethereal place, the spiritual dimension. That's how a lot of Christians talk about it. But the question is, is that really a biblical concept? And I think that the idea, the notion that heaven is an ethereal spiritual place, it resonates more with Gnosticism than it does with Christianity, with biblical Christianity, at least with the ancient Hebrew perspective. Because in the Gnostic tradition, the material world is evil, and it's—and Gnostics would conceptualize a world that was a spiritual world that was pure and good, and the physical and the material was evil and corrupt. But that's a false dichotomy. The spiritual and the physical are two sides of the same coin. We are physical and spiritual beings. And it's not that we have a physical person and a spiritual person. I'm not a divided person. I am one person, a whole person, who is a physical person with a spiritual component that is part and parcel to my biology. In other words, I'm not just inhabiting flesh. I'm not—the real me is not just inhabiting flesh. The real me is composed of my flesh. It's a facet of who I am. And I know that because there's something called the resurrection.
And the resurrection is the hope of the gospel. And the resurrection makes no sense at all if we're just driving around these meat sacks for a little while, and then we get rid of them and we become these ethereal beings. If that's the case, then what is the purpose of the resurrection? Because at the resurrection, our bodies are resurrected. We are going to be who we are right now. We're going to be just like the resurrected Christ, who still bore the marks of the crucifixion. He was Jesus of Nazareth in every way, the same Jesus that the disciples knew. He wasn't an ethereal version of Jesus or a spiritual version of Jesus. He was a physical version of Jesus. He was the same guy, but in a resurrected condition. And that's why when He appeared to the disciples, they were afraid. They thought He was a ghost. And what did He say to them? This is so many people pass over this and they don't realize what's going on. What did Jesus say to them? He said, "Touch me. See that I am flesh and blood. Touch me. Touch my hands." They touched Him. And then He said, to further prove His corporal reality, His physical reality, He said, "Do you have anything to eat?" And they had fish and bread, and they gave it to Him, and it says He ate it in their midst. That was to demonstrate that He was a human being. He was the same human being with whom they had sat before He was crucified, and He was eating and He was drinking with them.
So what is the resurrection? First of all, we must recognize that going to heaven is not the hope of the believer. That is an unbiblical concept. The hope of the believer is the resurrection. And Paul says that if Christ had not been raised from the dead, then we are to be pitied among men. We are to be most pitied, because our hope hinges on the resurrection. What is the resurrection? The resurrection is the restoration of mankind to the blueprint of Adam. So when we are resurrected, we are going to be resurrected with our DNA. We're going to be who we are now, but our genetic code is going to be completely purified, restored to the unadulterated blueprint of Adam, the genetic blueprint of Adam. And we're not all going to look like that, and we're all going to retain the genetic trademarks that make us who we are, but without the mutations. We will become at the resurrection more human than we are right now. It's a full circle back to where we started.
And this is, of course, the parable of the prodigal son. And the parable of the prodigal son really is the summation of everything that we've been talking about. And we're all familiar with the parable of the prodigal son. There are five characters in that story: there's the Father, there's the older son, there's the younger son, there's the servants in the Father's house, and there's the swineherd. And the story, as the story goes, is the parable of Jesus that Jesus told. The older son and the younger son were co-inheritors of the Father's estate. They shared the Father's estate. Why? They were siblings. But there was an older sibling and a younger sibling. And the younger sibling said to his Father, "Give me my inheritance so I can go spend it now. Give it to me now." And the Father gave him his inheritance. And of course, we know that the son went and spent his inheritance on wild living and prostitutes and whatever wild living, drinking, and whatever. And a great famine struck the land, and he became destitute. He spent all of his money. He became destitute. And he became indentured to a swineherd because he no longer had money, and he had to go work for a swineherd to try and work off his debt. And during this famine, and during this famine, he was so destitute, he was so depraved, that he had to eat the slop of pigs. So he cared for the pigs, and he had to eat what they were eating. He was the lowest of the low. He hit rock bottom. He was eating the slop of pigs. And that is representative of our enslavement to sin and to Satan. That's what that represents. That represents our condemnation with the dragon. We're indentured to the swineherd. We're indentured to Satan because of sin.
And the prodigal son, it dawns on him that even the servants in my Father's house are living better than this. So I'm going to go back to my Father, and I'm going to plead with Him. "Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Just receive me back as a lowly servant. I'm just—I've forfeited my sonship because I went and squandered my inheritance. So I'm not asking to be a son, just make me a servant. The least of your servants is better than being indentured to the swineherd." So he went back to his Father.
So before I progress, see, this is a depiction of a person receiving the gospel of Christ. Receiving the gospel of Christ isn't saying a prayer. It's recognizing your depravity. This is what happens. The first thing that happens is repentance. This is what the prodigal son did. He recognized the depravity of his condition. "Look at me, I'm filthy. I've wasted my inheritance. I'm eating the slop of pigs. I need to go back to the Father's house, if only to be received as a lowly servant." This is repentance. He recognized his depravity and repented in his heart and determined he would go back to his Father.
And so he went back to his Father. And the prodigal son expected his Father to be—to be bristling with anger. And instead, to his surprise, he found the Father waiting for him at the door. The Father was waiting for him to return, looking out over the landscape, eagerly waiting for his son to return. And when He saw him, He ran out to meet him. And rather than being bristling with anger like the son thought, the Father was brimming with joy. And He fell on his son, embracing and kissed his neck, and said to his servants, "Quick, quick, bring new clothes, bring new sandals."
So they brought him new clothes and put new clothes on him, and they shod his feet with sandals. The new clothes that are placed on the son, remember this is a parable of Jesus. The new clothes that he's draped with is representative of the resurrection and the righteousness of Christ. The sandals that are brought to shod his feet are representative of sonship, because in the ancient world, during the Roman times when Jesus was saying this, was telling the people this parable, in the Roman Empire, it was a mark of a slave in many cases that they did not wear shoes, they went barefoot. And so by the Father saying, "Bring sandals to put on his feet," that's a signal that he's being received not as a servant, but as a son. And then the final symbol of sonship was a ring that was put on his finger. That's the seal of the Father's house. He's being brought back into fellowship with the Father in His house, not as a servant, but as a son, even though he had squandered his inheritance.
And so the Father brings him in, and He tells His servants, "Let's have a feast. Let's celebrate. Kill the fattened calf." And so they began to celebrate. And the older son, who was out in the fields, heard all this commotion coming from the house. And he called a servant and said, "Hey, what's going on?" And he told him, "Your younger brother has returned, and the Father, your Father, has thrown him a feast." And the older son is incensed. Remember, they were co-inheritors of the Father's estate. The older brother is incensed, and he goes to talk to the Father, and he says, "I have been loyal to You. I've been with You this whole time. I never left. I never squandered my inheritance. And yet You've never thrown me a feast. You've never even allowed us to kill a goat and celebrate with my friends. Why are You doing this for my younger brother who squandered his inheritance and basically slapped You in the face?"
And the Father's reply is the heart of the gospel. He says, "Because this brother of yours was lost and is found. He was dead and is alive again." And that is the heart of the gospel. Remember when Jesus says that the good shepherd leaves the 99, or whatever it is, and to go in and get the one, to go and get the prodigal son? What does He mean? Us. We are the prodigal son. We are the prodigal son. Because that prodigal son is representative, is symbolic of Adam. Adam is the younger brother who squanders his inheritance, who becomes indentured to the swineherd. That's Adam. Who is his older brother? It's the other sons of God, His elder siblings, who did not squander their inheritance. Now, of course, we know that a faction of them were in a state of rebellion, and those—that's the swineherd. And Adam's lot was thrown in with them because of sin. He was condemned with them. But the older siblings in that story, with whom we share a co-inheritance of the kingdom, that's the elder race.
So the gospel of Christ is perfectly portrayed in the parable of the prodigal son. Remember, on the eve of His crucifixion, when He's sitting with His disciples, and Jesus says to them, "In my Father's house are many rooms, and I'm going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will also come back and get you so that you may be where I am." And one of the disciples said to Him, "We don't know where You're going. How do we get there? We don't know where You're going." He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through Me." Jesus, in that occasion, on the eve of His crucifixion, was invoking the parable of the prodigal son that He had told to His disciples previously. He was invoking that parable.
Remember the parable of the prodigal son? You are the prodigal son, and I am going to bring you back to the Father's house. That's the gospel of Christ: redeemed from the swineherd, reconciled to the Father, and restored to sonship in the family of God. And that happens through the resurrection. Remember when Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again. You can't even see the Kingdom of Heaven"? See, we've misinterpreted that. We think that being born again is some kind of an emotional experience, or it's a reorientation of our morals. It's a moral thing. "I used to drink. I used to sleep around. I used to take drugs. But then I got saved, and I got born again, and I don't do those things anymore." See, what we're doing unintentionally is we're belittling what it means to be born again. To be born again means that you are literally born again. In other words, the resurrection. To be born again is the resurrection. You are remade in the likeness of Adam, restored to the blueprint, the original blueprint. You're going to be you. Still, you're going to look like you, but you're going to be restored. And you are going to be returned to the family of God as a son of God. That's being born again, going back into the family. That is the gospel of Christ.
And so, so many people are missing the story. They're preaching the hellfire, and they're preaching what they believe is the testimony, which is, "I used to do bad things, and then I got born again, and now I don't." That's not the testimony. The testimony is, mankind is condemned with the dragon. We were once with the Father. Our purpose was fellowship with the Father, but because of sin, we became indentured to the swineherd, and we are now enemies of God. We are enemies of God. But the gift of God, the Son of God, has made a way of reconciliation to go back into the family. That's the gospel. Yes, if you reject the gift of God, then you will be condemned with the dragon and suffer His fate. But the good news of the gospel is, hey, we can go back into the family through Christ, who has made a way. And that is why the old—the ancient church referred to the gospel and to their fellowship as "the Way," because Jesus was the way back to the Father, back to fellowship and friendship with the Father. That's what it meant. He is the way back in to the family.
See, that's the culmination of the gospel, not we go to heaven. No, it's much more remarkable and extraordinary than that. We're going back into the family, and we're being restored to the blueprint of Adam, and all those capabilities inherent in the human species are going to be restored. And we're going to be with the Son of God in the family of God, and with our elder siblings. And there's nothing more—there's nothing better than being restored to your original purpose. Not only to the Son of God came to redeem us and take us back into the family of God, He had to pay for our sin, for the sin of Adam, with suffering. He had to be broken and whipped and take upon himself the suffering and the sin of mankind, and the suffering that we deserved as a result of the penalty of our sin. He took it upon Himself. That's why the apostle writes, "By His stripes we are healed."
And you see, we interpret that as, "By His stripes, oh, we're healed of cancer, we're healed of heart disease, we're healed of whatever." No, that's not what it means. It means by His stripes, the whipping that He took, the abuse, the suffering that He went through, the crucifixion, because of that, we who are in Christ are healed in the sense that we are reconciled and restored. We're going to be restored to what we were. Healed in the grandest sense, not your temporary condition, because even if you have cancer and you're healed, you're still going to die. That's the healing that that verse is referencing. It's not your temporary affliction. It's the resurrection. By His stripes, you are going to be reconciled to God, resurrected to the blueprint of Adam, and brought into the family, made whole again, restored. That's what those stripes accomplished, not some temporary alleviation of a temporal affliction, but an eternal restoration of your condition, reset to the blueprint of Adam, brought back into the family.
So the gospel of Christ, unfortunately, is only being preached by degrees. The whole story has yet to really be brought forth and expounded to mankind since the early church, who I believe, and it's evident in the New Testament, that the apostles were rocked by the gospel. They understood. And if you read the Gospels, you're going to see that the theme, the primary theme of the New Testament is the resurrection. That's the primary thing. The whole New Testament, the epistles, all the writings of the apostles hinge on the resurrection, because that's the culmination of our story: divorced from the family, destitute, indentured, redeemed, reconciled, and restored.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul says, that you're going to sit until the day you die, why? Because you are wearing a body of sin. That's the reason why the resurrection is necessary. So that's why Jesus said, "You can't even see the Kingdom of Heaven, let alone enter, without being born again." You have to be resurrected if you are going to go into the Kingdom. You are not a son until the resurrection. And we know that because Jesus, when replying to—I forget if it was the Pharisee, I believe the Pharisees, who were trying to perplex Him with this parable of a woman who had multiple husbands while she was alive, and they said, "When she dies, because she had all these husbands, whose wife is she going to be in heaven?" Basically. And Jesus says, "No, you don't understand. You know, they neither married, the sons of God neither married nor given in marriage." Right? But He says that, basically paraphrasing, "You're going to be like the angels, being sons of the resurrection." So you're not a son of God again until you're reborn at the resurrection.
And it is the power of the resurrection that makes you a son of God again, like Adam was. Adam did not have a physical father in the same way. When we are born again through the resurrection, our new birth is effectuated not by flesh and blood, but through the power of God, literally resurrected and reset. That is the power of God. It's not through the will of the flesh, it's not through the birth canal, it's not water and blood, it's the Spirit of God. We're being born again and reset. That is the entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. And that is why everything hinges on the resurrection. And I believe that Christians need to return to the resurrection and need to hinge the gospel on the resurrection, because the resurrection of Jesus was the validation that what He said was true. It was the validation. And that's how the apostles preached the resurrection of Christ.
And just as He is, He was resurrected. If you believe in Him, that's what baptism is, by the way. Baptism isn't just a confession of faith. Baptism is an affirmation of the gospel of Christ, which says that I, in my sinful state, am putting my hope in Christ, and I am identifying with His death. That's going under the water. I'm identifying with His death. I'm putting my hope in Christ and believing that He was raised from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father, so that when I die, I too may be raised with Him and be as He is, a son of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. And that is the hope of the gospel. That is the meaning of baptism. And we—I believe that Christians need to return to these fundamental principles that we've gotten so far away from. And because that's the power of the gospel. That is the power of the gospel.
When you understand the story, because that's what the biblical narrative is. It is a story, and it's laid out before us. And we have so many Christians have become bored with the gospel because they think they've understood it, they've comprehended. And I'm telling you that we have not truly comprehended the glory and the gravity of the gospel of Christ.
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