Gary L. Huffman

“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19)

In 1971, this study started for me when traveled from Seattle to Akron, Ohio with a Christian musical group called ‘‘The New Men.’’ We had a free night, so we went to a Billy Graham movie at a neighboring town. The couple at the door handing out flyers for the movie was friendly. We talked to them afterwards thinking we would tell them about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (as we would often do). Well, they said they had the Baptism, but did we know that there was something more after that? We were shocked! We thought we had it all and were out to tell the world, but then we heard that there was a third experience (salvation, baptism, and “the third stage”). They called it the ‘‘Feast of Tabernacles.’’

They invited us to their home and we heard many interesting things that night that I will never forget. Some was off the track of truth, but some was right on. This started me on the Bible study which I will share with you throughout this book. There will be concepts that may challenge some of your old established beliefs (dare I call them pet doctrines?) If the truth be told (and I aim to do that), Church pulpits and hymns have taught these doctrines for hundreds of years. However, you may still find some of what I will share here surprising.  Please reserve judgment until you have read the entire study. Something that concerns you or is unclear in one chapter will likely become clearer in the next.  While I don’t claim to know everything about sanctification and glorification – for we see through a glass dimly – I have learned a great deal in my Christian experience and in persistent study in the Word of God.  I pray the insights shared here inspire and influence you toward greater holiness and a closer walk with our Lord.  I pray you come to understand the glory that awaits.

Humanity was not originally designed to live apart from the manifested presence of God. But something deferred God’s ultimate plan for His people (both Israel and the Church) for perhaps 6,000 years so far. However, God has a strategy to bring humankind back into His glorious presence. All Christians know a good portion of that plan; however, what they have learned is rather paltry when compared to the whole body of truth. For sure, they know that plan begins with justification – the work of Christ reconciling the world to Himself – but is that where the story ends? Is the requirement only believing in the cross to take away our sins, with the promise we go to heaven after we die?  Hardly.  Indeed, it is a poor facsimile of the promises concerning what lies in store for those who believe. So, it is this full story we attempt to answer in The Revealing.

Note that much of the book connects the dots between scores of passages in the Bible.  That’s intentional of course.  We are focused on what the Word of God teaches about the manifestation of the glory ahead for the children of God.  So, to begin, here are the essential points I seek to establish with my co-author Doug Woodward:

• God has revealed a pattern for His Plan to restore and complete the Church.
• The fulfillment of God’s Plan primarily consists of revealing His Glory in and through the Church to a dying world.
• This Plan includes revealing Jesus as the Messiah to Israel through His Glorious Body – the Church, which is itself, the “revealing.”
• Understanding God’s plan in depth, in its fullness, will motivate the Church to unity and maturity, to face the difficult days ahead.

However, as another important word of preface, I must make clear that the subject we discuss in this book has often been distorted into harmful admonitions, if not outright heresies.  While the subject, rightly presented, stands at the pinnacle of the Bible’s message to the Body of Christ, there have been well meaning teachers like George H. Warnock, associated with “the Latter Rain Movement” that taught the truth of Israel’s feasts in good faith, but wound up going down the wrong path.  Some of his best teaching has influenced me positively and is reflected in our study.  As such, I believe we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Nevertheless, we must not overlook how the teaching in The Revealing has been, and could be again, misinterpreted.

Here is what I think Warnock got wrong: he taught that the typology of the Feast of Tabernacles, aka the “manifestation of the sons of God,” applied only to a small group and perhaps only one individual. Such “individualist” teaching comprises one of the most aberrant traits of a cult.  That is indeed heresy – we can’t find that teaching anywhere in the Bible.[1]  To expound on this further: here is a concise summary of the matter from Theopedia, in its article addressing the false teaching of the “Manifest Sons of God” (which was a defining belief in the Latter Rain movement):

• An elite group of believers will be revealed in the end times to pre­pare the world for the millennial reign of Christ.
• These believers will become a literal incarnation of Christ on earth and, while still living, will obtain immortal spiritual bodies;
• With these new bodies they will be invincible, able to change their appearance, to speak any language, and to teleport;
• They will have the ability to perform signs, healings, and miracles greater than those of the Apostles;
• They will complete the Great Commission by (causing) the great­est revival of history, converting the majority of the world to Christ.

These affirmations stretch every aspect of what the Bible teaches about the manifestation of the sons of God.  However, it is our premise that Chris­tians need to have their understanding of the glorification of God’s children stretched a bit, but within the bounds of biblical teaching, of course.

[1] The teaching that an elite group of believers will be changed and get the world ready for the Second Coming of Christ, is a very dangerous deception. These teachings have “manifested” in the modern movements such as the Third Wave/New Apostolic Reformation, Dominionism, Kingdom Now, and The Seven Mountains Movement.

I hold that the prayer of Jesus in John 17 (which Warnock misinter­preted), will be answered only when there is complete unity in the Body of Christ.  Understanding “the Mystery” of the Body of Christ will in fact be the antidote to the fallacious teaching characteristic of those apostasies that we see too often, frequently emerging from Pentecostalism, where excesses have too often surfaced.

To conclude this preface, please know that The Feast of Tabernacles (as the consummate work of God’s grace, building on justification and extending through sanctification) will be, instead, a corporate, inclusive event as the Body of Christ comes together in the wake of coming tribulations, persecutions, and even martyrdom.  I hope our teaching in this book corrects such errors as discussed above while disclosing, among many other key truths, the relevance of the feasts of Israel for the Church at the end of this age. This is especially so for the feast we know as Tabernacles, where I began my remarks.

Gary L. Huffman