801 - Les Feldick Bible Study - Lesson 3 Part 1 Book 67 - But Now! (Christ is Risen!) - Part 1

https://lesfeldickbiblestudy.com Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 3 * PART 1 * BOOK 67 BUT NOW! (Christ is risen!) – Part 1 I Corinthians 15:20 Again, we want to thank every one of you out there for your prayers and your letters. As I’ve said over and over on this program, our mail time is just an afternoon of one thrill after another. We want to also thank everyone for their financial help. Okay, we’re still on the “But God’s and the But Now’s.” Let’s turn to I Corinthians chapter 15 verse 20, and its “But now.” I guess the main reason I’m doing this the way I am is because I hope this will give you an inkling of how you can study on your own. Just go through the Scriptures and find one of these. Find a But now or a But then or a But God, and you can just open up a Bible study all your own. All right, I Corinthians 15, it’s the great resurrection chapter. There’s probably more taught on resurrection in this one chapter than all the rest of the Bible put together. Now, we came through the earlier verses in this chapter that we always use for the Gospel of Salvation, “How that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day.” Then, the chapter continues on more or less proving the resurrection of Christ. Now, for those of you under my teaching, the resurrection is so commonplace that you don’t think anything different. That just as sure as He died, He rose from the dead. But that’s not true even across Christendom and certainly not across the rest of the world. Even in Israel - you want to remember that there was only a small portion of Jews who believed in the resurrection. You go back in the Old Testament and there’s very little mention of resurrection. Job speaks of it, definitely. But where it really comes to the surface is when Paul got in trouble, you remember, with the Jewish multitude, and he had to find a quick way out of his dilemma. So, he said, “I’m a Pharisee of the Pharisees and hope for the resurrection!” And wow! He had a religious fight, not between them and him, but between them and them! Why? Because you see, the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection. The Pharisees did. So Paul was pretty cool on that one, as we’d say today. It just sort of gave him an escape. So you see, when we say the resurrection has to be emphasized, don’t think that everybody believes in the resurrection. No, they don’t. A lot of even modern theologians don’t believe in a visible, physical resurrection. They just believe that Christ resurrected spiritually. But you see, our Bible makes it so plain that He was raised from the dead bodily. Bodily! And that becomes our hope for life after death. All right, now as he comes through the 15th chapter of Corinthians, I’m going to work toward verse 20. Now, remember what we’ve been talking about the last several tapings. We’re going to look at who wrote it. To whom was it written? What are the circumstances? What went before? What goes after? Remember? All right, now it is obvious Paul wrote it. And who’s he writing to? The Gentile believers at Corinth. Consequently, it becomes appropriate for us today. He is again making a point, as I’ve already said, that Christ indeed arose from the dead. All right, now again, to this group of Corinthians, Paul is going to make sure that they understand that Christ literally, physically, and visibly arose from the dead. All right, we’re at verse 5. I Corinthians 15:5 “And that he was seen of Cephas, (That’s the other name for Peter.) then of the twelve:” In other words, after He came back from his ascent, you remember, He appeared unto all of them. Even ol’ doubting Thomas put his hand in the wounds in Christ’s hands and said, “I believe.” I Corinthians 15:6 “After that, (after the Twelve had witnessed) he was seen of over five hundred brethren at once; (Now, that means it was believing Jews who had witnessed His resurrection body.) of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some have fallen asleep.” Lately, in my Oklahoma classes, I’ve been stressing the literal time of Scripture. Too often, I think people read the Bible without realizing, well…when was this all written? Well, you see, Paul began his ministry to the Gentiles in about 40 AD. Then from 40 AD to 58 AD, his work had to be progressed by fellow gifted men. There were no printed letters from the Apostle until about 58 AD. For eighteen years he was establishing churches throughout the Gentile world, which was for them was predominately Turkey and Greece and so forth, but without the benefit of anything written. That’s why I Corinthians 12 and 14 emphasize the gift of prophesying. It didn’t mean the gift of telling the future like Isaiah and Daniel did, but it was speaking forth the Word of God, because they had no written letters of Paul. #LesFeldick #BibleStudy #Bible