OPEN MY EYES
By Preston Eby
When you uncover a thing you don’t have to bring it from some other place, you only need to remove the cover, because what is under it is already present. This book reveals to our wondering spirits that Jesus Christ doesn’t have to come crashing down through the clouds from outer space in order to be revealed! He is covered up, His glory is concealed in this world by a fleshly, religious mind; His grace and mercy are concealed by a harsh, legalistic mindset that thunders right out of mount Sinai, and is full of death; His love is concealed by false church doctrines of divine vindictiveness, judgment, damnation and eternal torture for billions in hell fire; His righteousness is concealed by human good works, self effort, and outward laws and regulations; His truth and purpose are concealed by natural, carnal understanding; His power is concealed by soulish religious exercises, rituals, ceremonies, programs and promotions. To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life! The Lord is the Spirit! The Lord, the Spirit, dwells within us! To uncover the real Christ has nothing to do with Christ coming from heaven, or us going to heaven — He must be UNCOVERED WITHIN US! "But... it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb (the old-order religious system), and called me by His grace, to reveal (unveil) His Son in me..." (Gal. 1:15-16).
The veil that hides Him is upon the mind. It is not something apart from us or away from us. The veil must be removed from where the Christ is concealed from us within ourselves, for we are the body of Christ, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. The Lord is not hidden in some far-off heaven somewhere, He has already come within us, for Christ is in us, except we be reprobates — counterfeits (II Cor. 13:5). Those who are walking with the Lord in the light of this new Day know that it is not Jesus coming down from heaven that shall reveal Him, but the uncovering of the full reality within ourselves of Him who is our life. The veil has been upon our minds, when we saw Him we looked through all the trappings of religion, the traditions, creeds, doctrines, forms, and concepts of men who know Him only after the flesh. But when you know Christ after the flesh, as He was two thousand years ago, you can never see Him as He is.
Every believer should seek that God would open his eyes to see the glorious Christ of God as He is. The sad truth is that the hope of the Christians in the church systems today is to again see Christ as He was. They cannot conceive that they can see Him, that they can look upon His face, unless they see the form of the man who walked the shores of Galilee. Like Thomas the doubter, they stubbornly refuse to believe that it is the Lord unless they can see the nail prints in His hands, thrust their hand into His side, and gaze intently into His piercing blue eyes. Not having this Jesus of Nazareth to see and know, they focus on the baby in the manger. But if you return to that every December 25, and make Him a baby again, you will never know Him as He is. Christmas is an invention of the carnal Babylonian religious system! Furthermore, it is a commercial season, sponsored and kept alive by the heaviest retail advertising campaigns of the year. The so-called "Christmas spirit" is created each year, not to honor Christ, but to sell merchandise! That is not the path that leads to sonship. It is the path that leads to spiritual foolishness and spiritual stalemate and infancy.
When Jesus trod the pathways of earth He called twelve men to be His disciples. They followed Him, heard His wonderful teaching, saw the mighty signs and wonders, and enjoyed communion with Him as no other man or woman on earth. Yet Jesus said to these men, "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him" (Mat. 11:27). Surely these men knew the Son! No, not at all! Not one of them knew the Son of God. "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father." These men knew Jesus, but they did not know the Son of God. Even in the days of His flesh He could only be known after the Spirit! To know Jesus after the flesh did not qualify as knowing Him at all. One could walk with Him, talk with Him, eat with Him, share His most intimate human experiences, and yet never know Him!
It was many years afterward that one of these disciples, John the beloved, was granted the revelation of Jesus Christ. Only then did John truly see Him as He is! Through the book of Revelation John has shared, in the limited measure any writing can convey reality, that revelation of Jesus Christ. What he really has communicated to us is the way, the manner, the process by which the revelation of Jesus Christ takes place. But it must become our very own personal experience just as it did to John. This revelation doesn’t come out of the manger, this revelation doesn’t come out from the shores of blue Galilee, this revelation doesn’t come from the resurrected One who appeared for forty days to His astonished disciples, this revelation doesn’t come from the pages of a book. A mere glimpse of this revelation came to Peter one day when Jesus asked, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" And Peter replied out of an illumination that burst forth from his spirit, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!" In that one brief moment the veil came off of Peter’s mind and he saw the man in front of him as He actually is. He glimpsed in that inspired moment the glory of His sonship in all that it means. It was A REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST!
After the Lord Jesus ascended into the heavens, He remained hidden behind the cloud that had received Him on the mount of Olives. When He came back in mighty spirit-power on the day of Pentecost to indwell His people on earth, He still, for the most part, has remained hidden behind the veil of the carnal mind, behind the selfhood of our natural life, and behind the traditions and forms of religion. But on Patmos, to John, there comes THE REVELATION to unveil Him! From this we understand that all that pertains to this writing of John is to reveal, to uncover Jesus Christ. All that has been hidden or obscured to our thinking, consciousness, understanding or experience of Him is to be plainly grasped and made a glorious and eternal reality. As the scenes depicted in the book are experienced truly and spiritually within our lives, Jesus Christ emerges within our reality demonstrating in and through us the fullness of His nature, character, love, wisdom, power and abilities. Understood as the revelation of Jesus Christ in and through His body, immediately the book is changed from a prophecy of apocalyptic end-time events, to a progressive unfolding of the very life, victory and triumph of Christ in His elect and unto creation! With the increasing light of the Holy Spirit of Truth shining upon its pages, we are entering into more and more of its hidden truths, howbeit, we have much yet to learn of the full and complete vision. But be assured that in very truth every scene within the book, of the woes, thunders, trumpets, earthquakes, conflicts, vials, beasts, etc., in all their sundry manifestations, serve but one purpose, and contribute but to one end, namely, to bring forth THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST IN ALL THE SONS OF GOD.
As this revelation comes to its magnificent conclusion in this great Day of the Lord, HE shall stand revealed, uncovered, seen, touched, experienced, expressed and manifested unto the unbounded heavens! "We don’t know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect His likeness, for we should see Him as He really is!" (I Jn. 3:2). Reality shall break through! And we shall be like Him! "Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (I Pet. 1:13). Paul writes of "waiting for the coming (revelation) of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall confirm you unto the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Cor. 1:7-9). There is a grace that is brought to us by the revelation of our Lord, it is a grace which will climax all the processings and travail, bringing us into the ultimate realm of His glory — the fullness of His abundant life. God is faithful! He is confirming unto the end all those blessed ones who have received the call to separation unto Him, to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, to be conformed to His image, to put on His mind, to be sons who reign with Him in His kingdom. He has confirmed you, precious called one, unto full redemption of the purchased possession — complete salvation in spirit, soul and body — the unveiling of HIS LIFE!