BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Those are exciting words, aren’t they? Yet when Jesus first said them in Nazareth people got offended. They weren’t ready to believe for Scripture to be fulfilled in their day. “We believe God moved in the past,” they said. “We believe He’ll move in the future. But we’re not going to start expecting Him to do supernatural things right now!” For many years, the contemporary Church took the same attitude. Preachers and congregations alike relegated the fulfillment of God’s plan to another generation or a different dispensation. But in recent years a wonderful change has been taking place. More and more believers have started expecting the Scripture to be fulfilled in our day. We’ve started expecting God to move among us now and change us into the image of Jesus, “from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18)! Why did it take so long for the Church as a whole to expect this? One reason is because for a long time people didn’t know anything about it. All they’d been taught was that if they believed on Jesus they’d go to heaven when they died. For years, that’s all preachers preached because they thought that was the sole purpose of the gospel. They thought the plan of Redemption was only designed to keep people out of hell. But that’s not the plan God had throughout the ages! He doesn’t just want to keep people out of hell. His plan is to have a family. He wants spiritual sons and daughters He can fellowship with on His own level who will do His will on earth as it’s done in heaven. He wants sons and daughters who will walk in His BLESSING and reign in this life just like He would if He was here in full manifestation. Only One Restriction That’s been God’s will from the very beginning. It’s what He had in His heart when He created Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden. As Genesis 1:27-28 says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion….” By making Adam in His image, God made Adam as much like Himself as it was possible for Adam to be. He clothed him in divine glory and breathed into his spirit His own zoe, eternal life. Adam looked like God, inside and out. He had the same power in his spirit that God had. He had authority on earth just as God had authority in heaven. God gave him dominion and put the rulership of earth into his hands. The only restriction God put on Adam was this: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Even after giving him that command, however, God let Adam choose. He let him decide whether or not he would obey. God didn’t force Adam to do anything because He didn’t want him to be a slave. He wanted him to be a son. He wanted him to serve God of his own free will and to only know good and never know evil. But Adam made the wrong choice. He sinned. He disobeyed God, bowed his knee to the devil, and opened the door to spiritual death. He lost THE BLESSING and the glory of God, brought the curse upon all mankind, and let the devil steal God’s family. How did God respond? He immediately went to work to get His family back! Right there in the Garden of Eden He said to the serpent, the devil, who had tempted Eve, “Because you have done this, you are cursed…. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel" (Genesis 3:14-15, "New King James Version"). From that moment on, God began working toward the day when He could once again have sons and daughters on earth who were made in His image and filled with His glory. That was His plan. It was His will, and because He never changes, even though it would cost Him a dear price He intended to see it come to pass. I’m telling you—the patience of God is something to behold! For thousands of years He worked…and worked…and worked on the plan of Redemption. All through the Old Testament He said through His prophets again and again, “There’s One coming who will pay the price to get My family back!” When at last the stage was set, the Spirit of God hovered over a young woman named Mary and caused Jesus to be conceived. 30 : BVOV

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