Discovering the New and True You In Christ … Based on Revelation 12:11 by Leonard John Ransil
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to declaring and preparing for the establishment of the reign of CHRIST JESUS on earth, as it is in Heaven. How? By equipping His victorious Saints for the work of the ministry with the revelation of their testimony and identity in Christ through the finished work of His divine exchange with each believer.
This revelation, that Jesus gave directly to Paul, shows how good Father-God really is.
This is the Theology of the Second Reformation, known as the Grace Revolution, now happening Worldwide.
Special thanks to Dr. Robert Cornwall, Dr. Neil Anderson, Pastor Joseph Prince and Apostle John Bowers without whose teaching and example this book could never have been assembled and to Laura Hudson whose tireless transcribing efforts greatly enhanced this work and most especially to my wife Elaine who has supported me in this twenty-four year project, begun in 1992 and revised in 2016, as well as in all my other ministry endeavors, beginning in 1972.
Copyright © 2023 by Leonard John Ransil M.Ed.
Fifth Edition – Available on Amazon on Kindle and in print and here, on my Blog: totalgrace.net
All Rights Reserved. Small portions may be excerpted for personal use only.
Why the guitar? There are also 33 Grace-based Scripture songs on this site that flow from the revelation of every reborn believer’s true identity in Christ Jesus. Click the tab “Songs of Grace” on the very first page of this site. Enjoy discovering who YOU actually are – from Father-God’s perspective! You will be overjoyed!
Lenny
CONTENTS of Every Christian’s Testimony – Discovering the New and True You In Christ
Introduction (See below)
Chapter
1 Greeting, Seeing and Worshiping the One, True, and Only God
2 Standing on the Authority of the Bible as the Living, Inerrant and Enduring Word of God
3 Celebrating God’s Rejection and Elimination of My Former Self in the First Adam
4 My Regeneration by Identification and Transformation through Abiding in the Finished Work of Jesus
5 The Result of Father God’s Resurrection Power Applied to Me through Identification with Jesus
6 Declaration of My Total Dependence on God, My Everything
7 Abiding in Jesus, My Life, My Destiny and My Reward – My All in All
8 Benefitting from the Reality and Blessings of the Blood Covenant by Resting in the Finished work of the Cross
9 Dead to My Former Self, Alive in Jesus, and Free to Serve You, Father God, Instead of Sin
10 Sealed and Secure in Christ Jesus, I Am Becoming Who I Am in Him by Yielding to the Holy Spirit Who Manifests Christ’s Likeness through Me
11 Maintaining Ascendancy Over My Outer Man through the Sanctifying Power of the Holy Spirit
12 Renewing My Mind with the Revelation of Father-God’s Total Forgiveness of All of Mankind’s Sins
13 Walking in the Mind of Christ to be His Ambassador on Earth
14 Resisting and Overcoming All Darkness by Faith in Jesus’ Cross and Triumph
15 Walking in the Armor of God by Being Clothed in and One with Christ Jesus
16 Enforcing Christ’s Victory with the Sword of the Spirit from My Position in Christ, Who is My Testimony and My Life
17 Extending God’s Reign by Sharing His Blessings and Good News with the World
18 Declarations of Dependence on the Person and Ministry of the Holy Spirit
BONUS Lists and Charts
What Has Happened Spiritually to Every Believer Reborn In Christ
How Does God See You?
Pre-Cross life of Jesus under Law // Post-Cross, Jesus’ Gospel to Paul
New Covenant Benefits in Ephesians 1:3 to 3:12
A Christian’s Personal SPIRITUAL Timeline
Appendix A This is a collection of all my notes which are also placed
into the Footnote section. These explanatory notes are indicated
by the symbol “*” in the main text.
Appendix B This is an orderly collection of all the scripture references used throughout Every Christian’s Testimony
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION: Part One (of two)
THEME VERSE: “And they overcame him (Satan) by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11
From the moment you were conceived, Satan has been out to steal, kill and destroy you. But fortunately for you, believer, before the foundation of the world, God chose you to be holy and blameless before Him in love by being one with Christ Jesus, according to Ephesians 1:4. How? By being reborn by grace through faith into God’s unseen Kingdom through the sacrificial blood of God’s precious Lamb, Christ Jesus. But Revelation 12:11 gives two other parts of the finished work of the cross that are also necessary to know and apply if we believers are to experience victory over Darkness and the world system and our flesh that the devil uses against us on a daily basis in the seen realm.
There is a war being waged for your soul. Yes, Satan would sift you like wheat. Luke 22:31
But be at peace for I am God. In Me (Jesus), there is no defeat. (One verse of a song by Leonard J. Ransil.)
Notice that I said experience victory on a daily basis. Having the victory legally (thanks to Jesus’ substitutionary death) does not mean that you will experience it automatically on earth anymore than having a rich uncle’s inheritance deposited in your bank account is the same as experiencing its benefits. Both must be “drawn upon” i.e. received by faith – believing in another person’s promise (his will or “testament”) and accepting his terms – to access and enjoy the benefits.
But what if you didn’t even know that you had an uncle who was very rich and that he had recently died? Your ignorance or skepticism might cause you to ignore or even reject a lawyer’s letter advising you of a huge inheritance. Or suppose you accepted the inheritance but chose to live in the servant’s quarters above the garage on the estate that your uncle willed to you because you were unwilling or felt unworthy to live in a mansion, adopt an appropriate lifestyle and carry on the business affairs of a man you had never even met?
Do you think your generous uncle would be pleased or impressed with your stubbornness or false humility – especially if your decision adversely affected the quality of life of his relatives (your family), friends, neighbors and business partners that he intended you to help?
God, your Father (assuming that you are born again and are, therefore, His beloved child), desires to be far more benevolent to you than any rich uncle could possibly be. He is the Lord of the Universe and is motivated by unselfish (agape) love to share the benefits of His Kingdom with everyone, including you. Jesus said that He came to offer you His abundant life – as He defines it. Father-God wants you and all His children to mature and to reign with Him over all creation as His stewards and ambassadors of His Kingdom. Why, then, is there so much confusion, doubt, resistance – even rebellion – toward our fantastic Father-God? I’m glad you asked! That question leads us to the heart of the Big Picture – the way God thinks.
All too often, we Christians muddle around with a few pieces of the God’s master plan which, like a jig-saw puzzle, remains a mystery because we fail to put in play all of the pieces of Jesus’ finished work of His post-cross Gospel, which Jesus revealed directly to Paul (as distinct from the four pre-cross Gospels). Or if we do ask the Holy Spirit to lead us into a revelation of Jesus’ whole Gospel of the New Covenant, we don’t bother to ask Him how all the many pieces fit together and apply to oneself, thinking “it’s my life so I’ll do my best to figure it out as I go along.”
Or, just as bad, we might rely on “experts” who we assume are fully informed but who are also ignorant of God’s Big Picture. They keep jamming the same pieces of the four pre-cross Gospels together, getting themselves and others frustrated – if not burned out or cynical – in the process. We wonder why the Body of Christ, which God intends to be a strong, purposeful, effective and radiant Bride who is in love with Jesus, often looks more like a weak, worn-out wash woman, just gettin’ by – seemingly no better off than unsaved sinners. If Paul came back to assess the church today, would he be happy with what he sees?
How could Paul say with a straight face that “we are more than conquerors”[i] while going through all the tribulation and persecution he endured? How could he say “I have learned to be content in any and every situation”[ii] when even fellow believers were attacking him? Did Jesus reveal some “mysteries” to Paul that have largely been ignored or forgotten by the church over the centuries? (Check out Ephesians 3:3-7 and Colossians 1:26-27, for example.)
How could Paul take all that abuse and adversity and bounce back up for more when many Christians today get depressed or disillusioned and are ready to give up over even minor difficulties? It’s because he witnessed in the “third heaven” life transforming “visions” and “super-abundant revelations from the Lord,” and “inexpressible things” that “a man is not permitted to speak.”[iii] Apparently, his natural mind was renewed by these and other experiences from the Lord that enabled Paul both to understand and to minister effectively the unique message that God gave him which he referred to as “my Gospel,” “all the counsel of God,” “the word of Christ” and “the testimony in its proper time.”[iv]
What visions did Paul see and write about? Did he see Jesus calm the storm or heal the demon-possessed man or cure the blind and the lame or forgive sin and raise the dead and many other miracles the other apostles had witnessed, pre-cross? No. Instead, he saw visions and revelations of something that was superior to all these individual testimonies. Paul came to understand the culmination of the finished work of the cross as embodied in the resurrected, ascended, and glorified Redeemer, Christ Jesus.
This “finished work of Jesus’ divine exchange” is the testimony of every reborn believer because he or she is in Christ – by definition. This unseen reality is the second part needed for daily victory over Darkness listed in Revelation12:11. It is Jesus’ revelation, given uniquely to Paul, of our being placed “in Christ” (the unseen reality that he cited over seventy times in his writings). This revelation is the basis of the mystery kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints”[v] And who are the saints? Anyone who is set apart in Christ by being reborn of God Himself by grace through faith. It is these inexpressible things – the unseen realities of the New Covenant – that consumed Paul’s preaching and writing for the remainder of his life on earth. And it is his inspired explanation of Jesus’ “will and testament” revelations, which peppered his writings, that this book gathers into a cohesive, personalized prayer to help edify and equip the saints for the work of His ministry through us, as us.[vi]
By revelation in the Spirit, Paul knew he was called specifically by God to share all that Jesus accomplished at Calvary – “the mystery of Christ.” God gave him the grace “… to preach the whole Gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ among the nations and to bring to light for everyone the partnership of the mystery having been hidden from eternity in God….”[vii] That partnership called for the “nations to be joint-heirs, and a joint-body and joint-sharers of His (God’s) promise in Christ through the Gospel.”[viii] Paul’s revelation was extraordinary in every sense of the term – even to Jesus’ closest disciples. In fact, Peter alerted his readers that Paul’s writings (which Peter considered to be part of the scriptures) were “hard to understand.”[ix] This was because Jesus’ Gospel to Paul revealed many new aspects of the unseen realm of the Spirit that are hidden to our natural mind. And when Peter’s behavior in Antioch contradicted Jesus’ Gospel message of the unity of all believers in Christ, Paul publicly rebuked him.[x]
Paul was compelled to live in and expound on the many riches Christ bequeathed to us, His joint-heirs, as part of a totally new Blood Covenant. This mystery of salvation for all mankind, through the gift of grace through faith (rather than by our works), was a major paradigm shift for Jews and non-Jews alike. This New Covenant of total grace replaced the Mosaic Covenant which was based on man’s efforts and given only to the Israelites. It was conditional, bilateral and temporary. It was replaced with the unconditional, unilateral and everlasting New Covenant, made between Father-God and Christ Jesus on behalf of all mankind. It is free gift, automatically received by anyone who is reborn of God by grace through faith in the crucified, buried, risen, ascended and glorified Lamb of God, according to Romans 10:9-13
What a revolutionary idea! Through rebirth, believers are no longer lost and isolated individuals in Adam but now united with Father-God through and in Christ Jesus, the Lord of Hosts! Paul enthusiastically declared “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old (spiritual) things have passed away. Behold the new has come.”[xi] He could write this because he experienced this unseen reality himself. He was privileged to see and then write about the completion in the heavenlies of what is still in process on earth – the full righteousness and sanctification of the saints in Christ through His divine exchange with all reborn believers, as part of Jesus’ finished work.
Even Jesus himself could not fully reveal this profound mystery to his twelve disciples before the cross[xii] because those spiritually dead men could not understand or receive it. Why? Because their spirits were of Darkness – in Adam sinners by nature – and they each had to be reborn to be able to even begin to grasp the afterglow of what Paul shared with them, post-cross. This radical Gospel was founded and grounded on the “superabundant revelations” of who Christ Jesus now is and who we now are as a result of being one with and in Him in God. This is the fulfillment of Jesus’ last will and testament request before His death.[xiii]
Paul’s understanding of these deep things of God in Christ emboldened him to declare and defend the purity of this revealed mystery, despite all manner of trial and hardship constantly coming at him from the world system, the flesh, hostile Jewish believers and, of course, Satan himself. The glow of this revelation eventually impacted the other Apostles in varying degrees.[xiv] Whole groups of pagans who heard “Paul’s Gospel” gave up their life styles and even their lives for the sake of this monumentally Good News. And this, coincidentally, is the third part of victorious living stated in Revelation 12:11: “and they (the martyrs) did not love their life, even unto death.” Paul’s understanding of Whose he was and, therefore, who he was in Christ, trumped everything else – including the root of all fear, the fear of death. By consciously abiding in Christ as one already seated With Him in heavenly places, he knew he was a regenerated spirit-being in the unseen realm, above Satan and all circumstances. I suspect that John heard this revelation from Paul in Antioch and it helped him persevere when (according to tradition) he was being boiled in oil and later exiled.
INTRODUCTION: Part TWO will be published next Sunday, February 19, 2023 – or if you can’t wait, get the whole Kindle edition for only 99 cents at Amazon.com What a deal!! There is also a print version.
[i] See Romans 8:37.
[ii] See Philippians 4:12.
[iii] See 2 Corinthians 12:1-7.
[iv] Romans 16:25-27, Acts 20:27 and Timothy 2:6-7a. “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel, and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery having been kept unvoiced during eternal times, but now made plain, and by prophetic Scriptures, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known for obedience of faith to all the nations: to the only wise God through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever. Amen.” “For I did not keep back from declaring to you all the counsel of God.” “Jesus Christ having given Himself as a ransom on behalf of all, the testimony to be given in its proper time to which I was appointed as a herald and Apostle….” Also see 2 Timothy 2:8. Finally, in Galatians 1:11-12, Paul insisted that “…the Gospel that I preached was not man-made nor did I receive it from any man nor was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”
Also, Paul was adamant about the validity and purity of the Gospel he preached. “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel different from the one that we preached to you let him be eternally condemned. As we have already said, so now say again: If we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel different from the one that you accepted, let him be eternally condemned” (Galatians 1:8-9).
It is Paul’s revelation of the Gospel that this book majors on because Paul supernaturally received and demonstrated an understanding and application of the heart of the whole Gospel from the risen Christ Jesus that was superior to the other Apostles. (For example, no other Apostle insists that Christ is in us and that we are in Christ in the heavenlies – before death.)
In saying that, I do not wish to re-ignite the controversy in 1 Corinthians 1:11-13. Paul admonished the Corinthians for following a particular messenger rather than the message. Yet Paul repeatedly emphasized his credentials to underscore the importance of accepting his specific message. See, for example, 1 Corinthians 2:4-7 and 15-16. But predictably, he pointed back to Christ as central in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23 when he said “So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” Amen!
[v] See Ephesians 1:26.
[vi] See Ephesians 4:12.
[vii] See Ephesians 8:9.
[viii] See Ephesians 3:6.
[ix] See 2 Peter 3:16. It must also have been hard for those who read Peter’s second letter to understand that God gave them “precious promises, so that through these (promises) you may be partakers of divine nature….” 2 Peter 1:4. Yet it is all part of our “inheritance” in Christ, Jesus.
[x] Personally, I suspect it was because Peter knew Jesus after the flesh for three years; Paul lived out of the likely experience of seeing the glorified Christ in the third heaven – deduced from 2 Corinthians 5:12:1-6, which happened in 42 AD, 14 years before he wrote this book.
[xi] Galatians 2:20.
[xii] See John 16:12-15.
[xiii] See John 17:21 and 23.
[xiv] See 2 Peter 3:15-16
life, that is, Jesus himself.