Articles
Logos and Rhema: The Spiritual Environment
The scripture says, “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17 KJV) So you can better understand this, here are some other translations:
God’s Word – “So faith comes from hearing the message and the message that is heard is what Christ spoke.”
Amplified and Phillips – Say basically the same as God’s Word translation
New Century – “So faith comes from hearing the good news and people hear the good news when someone tells them about Christ.”
New Life and Message – both say essentially the same as the New Century
New Living – “So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.”
Young’s – “So then the faith [is] by a report, and the report through a saying of God.”
For example, suppose we read or hear Matthew 6:26 which says, “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?” Now suppose you get lost in the wilderness and you are reminded of this word of God. The proper response is that you would trust in this and be fed somehow while you were lost in the wilderness. The Logos is the written word and the Rhema is the spoken word. You may be walking in the wilderness and hear the spoken word in your consciousness and take courage. Someone of the Copeland’s heritage said he put faith in the word of healing in the scriptures and discovered that the more he meditated on it the more he believed it. This will work with any biblical concept. The more we know the word the more we experience it. This is not so difficult to understand.
I do not speak Spanish, yet when I am with Spanish speaking friends I end up speaking Spanish and adopting their variation and inflection used on English words, so there is nothing unusual about assimilating the things of God and putting trust or faith in them when they are heard. Jesus said, “Be careful what you are hearing. The measure [of thought and study] you give [to the truth you hear] will be the measure [of virtue and knowledge] that comes back to you and more [besides] will be given to you who hear.” (Mark 4:24 Amplified) With the Logos and the Rhema working hand in hand you will never need a crystal ball to discern your next step. “Thy word is a lamp unto our feet.” (Psalms 119:105)
While the Logos is easy to understand because it is the written word of God, the Rhema takes some handling in order to know when God is speaking. (1John 1:1-2) “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.” (John 10:27 KJV) John says in John 16:13 in the Living Bible: “When the Holy Spirit, who is truth comes He shall guide you into all truth for He will not be presenting His own ideas but will be passing on to you what He has heard. He will tell you about the future.”
We need the Word of God from the scriptures. And we need the Word of God spoken to us by the Holy Spirit. And we need the Word of God spoken through others. Job says, “Behold behemoth, which is chief of the ways of God: Behold he drinks up a river and hastens not; he trusts that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.” (Job 40:23) God alone, great as He is, cannot give us all of Himself through the Rhema or even through the Logos because He has designed to do it through His Body. Therefore, we need the members of the body of Christ who walk in integrity, uprightness and transparency to speak God’s word into our lives. Only then combined with what we hear by being a sheep and what we hear through the Holy Spirit can we be full and running over.
Let me explain. Goats go through the fence, over the fence, under the fence or around the fence, but sheep stay in the fence of protection. Sheep go “Bah” which stands for Beside the Almighty of Heaven but goats go “Nah” which means “I’m not available.” Sheep do God’s thing and goats do their own thing. You may be familiar with the reality that God planted a garden. The word garden can mean that which has a protective fence or hedge about it. We should thank God for being fenced in and hedged about.
Only by putting our lives in God’s hands and our mind nailed to His post do we hear His voice. Psalms 119:45 says, “I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.” If our heart is not that of a sheep, but self-willed we will not hear God speaking to us on a regular basis. Be sure of this: “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout all the earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards Him.” (2Chronicles 16:9)
It does not matter whether we skip church to watch our favorite pole dancer or cheated on our mate instead of spending time with the Lord. It does not matter if we idled away our time instead of redeeming it or stared at the girl in the window instead of at the future. The apostle Paul said, “This one thing I do forgetting those things which are past.” Paul said in Philippians 3:13-14, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” The past is past. We must forget the past in order to press forward.
Hebrews 10:19-22 says, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil that is to say his flesh; and having a high priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Is the washing with the water of the Word of God? Ephesians 5:26)
If you haven’t taken the word of God in either the Logos or Rhema form and applied the blood to your past you cannot say this out of a pure heart. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
God says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
If you are reading the scriptures you are already on the road to discovering your personal purpose. God showed me my purpose but it was not independent of the scriptures. If you think your purpose is to work in a slaughter house you better read Isaiah 66:3. If you think you will be felling trees for a living you better read Isaiah 14:7 and Isaiah 14:8. Thomas Edison discovered a thousand ways not to make a light bulb before he discovered how to make a light bulb. Perhaps God wants you to work with animals but to discover that he made you to be a veterinarian might mean He doesn’t want you to sell hot dogs!
Remember the Rhema word must agree with the Logos. That is the spoken word or still small voice in your inner being or consciousness must agree with the written word of God. Isaiah 8:20b says, “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is not light in them.” Psalms 119:130a says, “The entrance of thy words giveth light.” Light means revelation.
Do you have faith that animals go to Heaven? Ecclesiastes 3:21 asks, “Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?” It answers the question in Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 which says, “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies so dies the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust and all turn to dust again.”
Before I proclaimed that animals go to Heaven, I had to make sure that I was not the initiator of such a thought. When I turned to Romans Chapter 8, I discovered in verse 20-21, “Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.”
The Logos says in Revelation 4:3, “And he (Jesus Christ) that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” In the film “Close Encounters of the God Kind” in the section Heaven Part II, Reverend Jesse Duplantis says after his trip to heaven, “I looked and saw mountains, trees, and flowers and giant trees along the River of Life.” Paul describes the earth along with the creation on it. Jesse describes Heaven with the same thing. But they are not alone. John the Revelator describes the one on the throne clearly attached to this part of the creation not the things which are made. They are the things which will be removed. Hebrews 12:27 says, “And this word, yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” The creatures and the whole creation are waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Romans 8:19 (KJV) says, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God.”
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Jesse claimed an encounter in Heaven with Paul where Paul said, “What are they saying about my gospel?” In Romans 2:10 Paul says, “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel,” but Jesus and Paul were not alone either in seeing the picture on the jasper. In Revelation we see that all the New Jerusalem had this light from the jasper stone which implies that all creation is very much aware that they will be in Heaven. Light (revelation) came from the jasper stone which symbolizes the creation. Revelation 21:18 tells us, “And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.”
Theologians teach that gold symbolizes the Divine nature and the jasper wall tells us that those who look out from the New Jerusalem see the creation every where they look out. Revelation 21:19a says, “The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper.” The word garnished from the Greek tells us that all the other stones were simply decorations but the first was jasper. All of the twelve apostles were utilizing the jasper principle as their foundation. The Greek word for foundation is “themelios” which means sub-structure. Christ is the only foundation that anyone can lay. The animals are more enlightened than most people are both before and behind.
Revelation 4:6b says, “In the midst of the throne, and round about the throne were four animals full of eyes before and behind.” Most people who have taken the time to meditate and get some light on this scripture believe these four animals represent all of the animal kingdom. If you have never seen picture jasper also called landscape jasper visit your online rock shops. The initial sub-structure is like unto the jasper (picture these animals along with plants and trees and rivers and great mountains). There is even one mountain that fills the earth. (Daniel 2:34) No one on the throne or in the Kingdom was in the dark about these things. Are you my beloved?
In Isaiah 55:11-13, God says, “So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For you shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”
