God always holds the past, the present, and the future before Him in His mind. Therefore, a man of faith who comes to God may claim promises of the past or prophecies of the future as the provision for the present moment. God made promises concerning the future, and those promises, as well as His covenants of the past, are always before Him. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not a God of the dead, but of the living (Matthew 22:32). Before Him, all are alive. He sees our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. He sees all humanity—past, present, and future. He sees every promise that He has made.
Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Because He is an eternal manifestation of Jehovah, the God who is always manifested in the present, Jesus Christ can take anything of the past and make it real to us now. In Christ we are all the seed of Abraham and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29). We can reach back and take what Abraham had, and it can be real for us now. We can also reach forward to all of the promises that are binding upon the Kingdom for centuries to come, and we can have them now. This is a staggering truth. It upsets the significance of dispensational teaching which says that certain promises belonged only to people in the past while others belong in the future, but there are no promises available for the people of God today. This is not the way to believe. The day of miracles is not past. If there ever was a day of miracles, it is now; if there ever will be a day of miracles, it is now. Jesus Christ has to be the same yesterday, today, and forever. He has to be the eternal One.
To the sons of Israel, God said, “I am the Lord; I change not. Therefore you are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). We change, but He does not change. There has been no change in the counsel and purpose of God toward us. Revelation 13:8 clearly states that Jesus is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world (KJV). That is the accurate translation of the Greek: He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It is difficult for us to grasp that the promise which God gave in the past, way back at the foundation of the world, was valid from that time on, as though it had already been accomplished. It is difficult for us to understand that any promise He made for the future is valid for us today and that because of the timeless essence of God, it is possible for us to draw upon it. God is not limited by His own creation of time. Only man is limited by time, until by faith he throws off the shackles of time and reaches into the limitless timelessness of God.
Moffatt translated the name Jehovah as “the Eternal,” meaning that forever there is no change in Him. When Jesus told the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58), they immediately wanted to stone Him, because He was saying, in effect, “I am Jehovah. I am the great I AM.” When Moses faced the Lord in the burning bush, he asked, “Who shall I say sent me?” The reply was, “Tell them I AM THAT I AM sent you” (Exodus 3:13–14). Why did the Israelites need to hear that? They needed to know that He was the God of Abraham and He had not been dead for 450 years. He was God to them—right then, I AM THAT I AM—and He was going to manifest Himself in the present tense. He was not a historical God whom they should look back to and build a religion around. He was not a system of doctrines that would give them a shot in the arm and help them endure the unendurable until they reached the sweet by-and-by. He was a God who would help them under their bondage right then. He was Jehovah, I AM THAT I AM, who said, “I have come down to deliver My people because their cries have come up to Me” (Exodus 3:7–9).
God is telling us the same thing. He is to be Jehovah to us also. We must lose our sense of time. His promises are ours now, and we are going to have them. We must not think any differently.
Three passages of Scripture will make this truth explode in your heart. Matthew 8:1–17: And when he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And behold, there came to him a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he stretched forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou made clean. And straightway his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
And when he was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth in the house sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And he saith unto him, I will come and heal him. And the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having under myself soldiers: and I say to this one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. And when Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And the servant was healed in that hour.
And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she arose, and ministered unto him. And when even was come, they brought unto him many possessed with demons: and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick (now notice the point of emphasis): that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. Jesus did all these things according to Isaiah’s prophecy, that it might be fulfilled.
Isaiah 53:4–5 is the passage which Matthew referred to: Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah prophesied this in the past tense, as though it had already happened; but when did it actually happen? Jesus was not afflicted with stripes until right before the crucifixion, about 700 years later. Matthew wrote that Jesus healed all these people, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. When Jesus performed the miracles recorded in Matthew 8, the physical act of His sufferings had not yet taken place. He had not yet gone to the whipping post. He had not yet been crucified. Nevertheless, the miracles were being performed by the fact that He was to go to the whipping post, that He was to be crucified. Isaiah prophesied as if this had already happened.
Another reference to Isaiah’s prophecy is found in I Peter 2:24: who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. The crucifixion had already taken place when Peter wrote this, but he was speaking in the past tense of the miracles of healing, before they actually occurred. Isaiah prophesied Jesus’ crucifixion before it ever occurred, as though it had already happened. Why do we have this mix-up? It is very simple: God always holds the past, the present, and the future before Him in His mind. Therefore, the man of faith who comes to God may claim the promises of the past or the prophecies of the future as the provision for the present moment.
Do not believe it if someone tells you, “The day of miracles is past and we are not into the sweet-by-and-by yet—we are in this terrible time of nothingness now.” Any man of faith can reach back and he can reach forward to the promises of God and have them now. The promises are to be real now. In II Corinthians 1:20 Paul wrote that in Christ, all the promises of God have their yes and their amen. Everything which God has ever said, Jesus makes real to us now. God’s Word has its validity because our Lord Jesus Christ brings everything from eternity past to eternity future into our present.
Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. In the heart of God it was already accomplished. It is true that in the fulness of time His Word runs the course of its manifestation, but that makes little difference one way or the other to a man of faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3). God saw that if Abraham was faithful to the Word, through his seed—referring not to many, but to one, Christ—all the nations of the world would be blessed (Galatians 3:8, 16). Because he believed in the salvation that would come to the nations of the world through his seed, salvation became retroactive to Abraham himself. Because he believed the Word, God counted it to him for righteousness. Nineteen hundred years passed before it actually happened, and we live nineteen hundred years on the other side of it; but that does not make any difference. We can reach back to the promise just as Abraham reached forward to it.
We can reach into the Kingdom as Enoch did. When he saw the Lord coming with many thousands of His holy ones (Jude 14), he decided that he would like to be a part of that company; and so by faith he was translated (Hebrews 11:5). Any man can do this, any day, any hour—if he is a believer. The man of faith who comes to God may claim the promises of the past and the prophecies of the future as the provision for the present moment. You can drop the limitations of the past and the barriers of the future! You can bring God’s promises into the present!
Was Jesus able to heal all of those people in Matthew 8 because He was going to face the whip and the cross? The Scripture says that He healed the sick and cast out demons that it might be fulfilled which Isaiah spoke. Although Christ had not yet gone to the whipping post, the promise was given as though it had already been accomplished. That is how He healed. The time and the calendar of events were not the issue. From the moment God declares His intent and purpose, it is valid to any man who lives, whether he lives before the event, after the event, or during the event. If he is a man of faith, the fulfillment is valid for him. The Old Testament saints were not second-rate citizens of the Kingdom, even though they lived before Christ actually opened up the Kingdom. If a man had faith, he walked in it, just as we will walk in it if we have faith.
God’s provisions are wonderful. He is our blessed heavenly Father, our blessed Lord Jesus, our Lord Jehovah. He always holds the past, the present, and the future before Him in His mind. Because He does, the man of God who believes may claim the promises of the past or the prophecies of the future as his answer, as the provision of the present moment which enables him to fulfill God’s perfect will.