Jn 16,19-22

(125e) Thy kingdom come >> Manifestations of faith >> Joy is the result of partaking of the Holy Spirit >> Joy of the revelation of Jesus Christ – The book of Revelation talks about martyrs (Rev 6,9-11). The saints will be running for their lives; great difficulty and horrible circumstances will befall them and the world will rejoice at their death, especially when they kill the Two Witnesses (Rev 11,7-12). They celebrated and gave each other gifts, as though it were Christmas time. They thought they would create a new holiday and celebrate this day for centuries to come, but they didn't know that the end of the age had come upon them. The Two Witnesses rose from the dead, and with them all the people who died in faith since the beginning of time emerged from their graves and ascended to heaven. That is, the Two Witnesses rising from the dead mark the First Resurrection; they will be its first fruits (Rev 14-4). 1The 4-17 says, “We who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord,” referring to the Rapture. Jesus said that our sorrow will be turned to joy as when a woman is in travail and then gives birth to her child, she remembers her anguish no more for joy that a child has been born into the world. Jesus was talking to His disciples about what was about to happen to Him and them; watching their savior get crucified and then rise from the dead was like watching a woman in travail to give birth to a new life. This statement correlates with Revelation chapter twelve, where it talks about a woman in labor to describe the last days; the saints will mourn and weep, until their suffering gives way to the age of Millennium. See also: Woman in travail; Jn 16,20-22; 215d / Judgment during the Millennium; 1Pet 5-11; 213c

(208k) Salvation >> The salvation of God >> Personal relationship >> Being married to God >> Emotional relationship

Jn 16-19,20

(18h) Sin >> Twisted thinking >> Can’t distinguish between good and evil >> Jesus is evil

Jn 16,20-22

(24j) Sin >> Poverty (Forms of fear) >> World is envious of Jesus

(140a) Temple >> Temple made without hands >> Hiding place >> The doorway

(154e) Witness >> Validity of the Father >> God bears witness against the world >> Witness that the world is godless >> Witness that the world hates God

(188j) Die to self (Process of substitution) >> Separation from the old man >> Sorrow >> Grieving over your own loss >> Grieving over your loved ones -- These verses go with verses 5&6

(209f) Salvation >> The salvation of God >> Righteous saved with difficulty >> Righteous saved with hardship >> Righteous saved with grief – In a very short time the disciples would witness their savior being dragged to the whipping post and flogged to the end of His life, then crucified until dead at the insistence of the religious establishment. It was the bloodiest scene imaginable. Almost every drop of blood soaked the earth from deep wounds made by a merciless instrument of torture, a cat-o-nine tails. It is difficult to imagine His disciples witnessing such brutality against the person they so dearly loved, afraid for their own lives, some to point of being absent at His crucifixion. The Roman soldiers didn't arrest those present, because it was Jesus they wanted. The whole point of crucifixions was a public display of aggression meant to deter further rebellion against Roman authority. The Romans figured that if they killed the shepherd, the sheep would scatter, and this would have happened, except for one small detail: the resurrection! It placed the exclamation point on the movement He started, and it exponentially grew from there. Jesus couldn’t have raised a thousand people from the dead and had a greater impact on those who believed in Him, than by His own resurrection, because it proved that His Father was in charge. Signs, wonders and miracles that Jesus performed conveyed the message that He controlled the situation, but His resurrection conveyed that His Father was really in control, as Jesus to many times had told them.

(215d) Sovereignty >> God controls time >> God’s timing >> Fulfillment of God’s time >> Completion of a period of time – When Jesus said in Mat 24-21, “For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will,” He was talking about the tribulation of the saints, not of the world. There is a principle integrated into almost all of Jesus’ teachings. They mostly pertained to two eras: the event of His first coming and the event of His second coming. This passage is no different, and both eras have something else in common, the resurrection from the dead. At His first coming the resurrection obviously pertained to His own, and at His second coming it will pertain to the resurrection of His people, or in the case of those who are still alive and remain, the Rapture. When we compare this passage to some of the passages in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of Revelation, the similarities are startling. When He said, “You will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice,” it is reminiscent of Rev 11,10-12, “And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate; and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth. But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them. And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here.’ Then they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies watched them.” See also: Woman in travail; 225j

(225j) Kingdom of God >> Illustrating the kingdom >> Parables >> Parables about nurturing the people of God >> Parables about a woman in labor giving birth to a child – Verse 21 is a popular analogy of Jesus' second coming. The analogy compares a woman’s pain in childbirth to Jesus’ death. He may have had sorrow for a season along with His disciples, but their sorrow was turned to joy at His resurrection. We Christians have been reborn spiritually, but Jesus was reborn physically. We see this very concept repeated in Revelation chapter 11, which has interesting implications. You can read about them in the following articles: The Great Endtime Revival and Fall of Satan. See also: Woman in travail; Jn 16,25-27; 140d

Jn 16-20

(57e) Paradox >> Opposites >> World hates what God loves and God hates what the world loves

(164i) Works of the devil >> Manifestations of the devil >> The world is at enmity with God >> The world hates God

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Jn 16,23-28

(30l) Gift of God >> God favors you through your prayers – Jesus said we need only ask to receive whatever we want; however, He doesn’t answer our prayers according to our interpretation of His word. Rather, He expects us to pray and seek His face and make request of Him according to what He said, not according to what we think He said. Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive.” We must interpret His world properly before He will answer our prayers. We can’t literally ask Jesus for anything we want and expect Him to give it; rather, He is waiting for us to adopt His heart. He is waiting for us to come into conformity with Him, so when we do make request, we will be asking for things He wants to give us. If we dedicated our lives to God’s interests, we could pray and God would give us our heart’s desire. He is not obligated to give us things He doesn’t want us to have or things that would hurt us. We are His beloved; He has a vested interest in leading us into conformity with His Son.

(34b) Gift of God >> God’s generosity >> Believer owns everything >> Trinity belongs to us >> Father belongs to us – The disciples didn’t ask Jesus for a lot of material things, partly because they knew they would not get them; instead, they asked him questions about the word of God and the Kingdom that is to come. So when He told them that the Father would give them anything they asked in His name, Jesus knew the majority of their requests would be about His word. Jesus said in that day we won’t have to ask the Son for their needs, but could personally ask the Father. We might get a slightly different answer, like asking our mother a question and then asking our father the same question and getting two different answers. Sometimes those differences can be drastic, like faintly nudging a telescope while looking at a galaxy; we’ve just scooted thousands of light-years from our original position. Same thing with the answers between Jesus and His Father, they may be similar, yet slight deviations represent huge differences in scope. For example, we know what the Old Testament says, and we know what the New Testament says; similarly, we know what Jesus said to His disciples, but when the Holy Spirit speaks to us about the same things, it is not the same. The teaching of the Spirit is the revelation of God’s word, which is different from reading it off the page, being the difference between Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Mat 16,13-18). How different is the Father from Jesus and the Holy Spirit? When we get to heaven we will be able to actually talk to the Father Himself about these things, what an honor and a privilege!

(68h) Authority >> We have been given authority through prayer

(114k) Thy kingdom come >> Faith >> Working the grace of God >> Working God’s grace through Christ >> Jesus is the way to the Father -- Jesus said that we can ask the Father for anything in His name and He will give it for the simple reason that we are His children. However, Jesus was speaking to His disciples, suggesting that we attain a certain level of maturity before we personally make request of the Father, meaning Jesus was not talking to nominal Christians. He taught that we should live this life as we will live in heaven (Mat 6-10), where we will ask God for meaningful things; therefore, we should not ask God for a lot of dumb things in this life. Half the time we don’t get our prayers answered because we are praying against the will of God, which acts as a curse by the fact that we are denied, and it discourages our faith. However, it is probably more accurate to say that remaining ignorant of God is the actual curse. ‘I want a new car; God, I want a bigger house; I want, I want, I want.’ Meanwhile God has a will for us too, and He will not sacrifice it to please us. The Bible teaches that we can expect God to answer our prayers. In heaven God intends to give us everything, for then we will not ask amiss, suggesting why we don’t always receive our requests in this life (Jm 4-2,3).

(224d) Kingdom of God >> Illustrating the kingdom >> Description of heaven >> Describing the kingdom after he makes all things new >> Children of God resemble their Father – There is a time coming when Jesus will speak to us plainly about the Father, and we Christians think that time has come for Jesus to tell us plainly about the Father, because we are mature and have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. However, God is still not ready to tell us plainly about the Father, partly because of the fact that we are not ready, but mostly because that hour has not yet come. God is able to speak to us about the Father to a small degree, but a time is coming in heaven when Jesus will speak plainly about the Father whom we will see with our own eyes; then we will be ready to hear the word of God in earnest, but in this life and in the flesh we can go only so far in our understanding of Him, and then we simply run into a dead end. Our flesh is not able to comprehend the things of God; that is why He commands us to die to the flesh. God is eternal and He thinks in terms of eternity, this being the main reason people don’t want to serve Him, because they think in terms of the temporal mindset, and they are not interested in sacrificing this life for the sake of the Kingdom of God. We have a body that is destined to perish that keeps us from understanding God until we shed this carnal nature and take on an immortal body with a divine nature, but the Bible teaches that we already have the divine nature through the indwelling Holy Spirit (2Pet 1-4), but our flesh gets in the way of realizing all that the Spirit of God wants to teach us, so He is calling us to resist the evil passions and desires of our flesh to simulate having a body that doesn't contradict God on every level, instead agrees with Him, that we may glimpse heaven.

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Jn 16,23-27

(67k) Authority >> Jesus delegates authority >> Praying in Jesus’ name

Jn 16-23,24

(83b) Thy kingdom come >> Receiving from God through prayer >> Ask and it shall be given – Jesus promised that if we ask the Father for anything in His name He will give it. In that sense we can ask the Father for whatever we need in full assurance that we will receive it, because our faith is perfected, having all our questions answered. Later, other questions will arise, knowing we can ask. This is a cyclical process. There are times in our lives when we don’t get our prayers answered because we have too many unanswered questions, and these unanswered questions translate to unanswered prayer. He wants to answer our questions so He can answer our prayers that our joy may be complete and that He may be glorified in it. 

(125f) Thy kingdom come >> Manifestations of faith >> Joy is the result of partaking of the Holy Spirit >> Joy is the result of receiving from God – God has a pre-designated path for our feet that He arranged from eternity past, and He will not cancel it just because we are too immature to follow Him. The basic gospel is that God loves us because we love Jesus by keeping His commandments, which are to be born-again and love one another. Doing the works that God has prepared for us will purify our hearts and open our eyes to the vision that God has for our lives, but there is a catch-22. We must do the will of God for our eyes to be opened, though our eyes must be open to know the will of God. There are things we know, and we need to do them, which acts as an appeal to God to reveal what we don’t know, and by that understand His plan and purpose for our lives. There is a general will of God that is true for all, and there is a specific will designated for each person, called the trail of good works. We need to get on that trail and stay on it, which God's vision. On that trail we can pray and God will answer our prayers, because we are praying according to His will.

(206j) Salvation >> God makes promises on His terms >> Conditions to promises >> Conditions to getting your prayers answered – Here is one of those open promises seemingly free of conditions, but that is not the case, otherwise unbelievers could ask the Father for whatever they wanted and receive from Him too. If God does not listen to sinners (Psalm 109-7), then the condition of sainthood is appended to this promise. What does it take to tap into this promise? Must we be perfect? Not one is perfect; every saint sins; the evidence of sainthood is not perfection, but whether he grieves over his imperfections. Conversely, he might commit sin, but no saint practices sin. More specifically, there are plenty of saints who wrestle with bondage to certain sins and are desperately trying to overcome them, but there are no saints who revel in sin and are not remorseful of it. The first condition to tapping into this promise, then, is that we be Christians in the process of perfection, set apart from the world to do the Lord’s work. We must be striving to remain in a state of repentance steadily gaining victory over sin that so easily entangles us. We can never achieve perfection, so it is the striving for righteousness that God wants to see in us. This will influence our prayers so we will ask according to His will. 

(214h) Sovereignty >> God controls time >> God’s timing >> God’s time is soon >> Relatively soon – Jesus never put any time constraints on anything. Instead, He lived by the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6-10). God is never in a hurry, though He is cognizant of our temporal state; whatever we ask we will receive in due time. God wants us to be patient, because it is part of faith; God wants our faith to bear fruit and patience is one of those fruits. God has no greater joy than to see His people exercising their faith in Him. He didn’t say we would immediately receive our request, for being an eternal Spirit He said 2,000 years ago, “I am coming quickly” (Rev 3-11). Time is immaterial to Him, and He knows that we live in the realm of time, so He will hurry up and give us our request, still it might take Him 30 or 40 years. When we get to heaven, some of God’s plans for the near future will be fulfilled in their time, which could very easily be millions of years down the road; these are the ways of God; He is not in a hurry. We could put a fire under Him and tell Him to hurry-up, and maybe He will answer our prayers a little sooner. Instead of taking 20 or 30 years, it might take only 10 or 15. It all depends on what we are asking from Him.

Jn 16-24

(44h) Judgment >> Satan destroyed >> Transformed >> Completely full

Jn 16,25-27

(119e) Thy kingdom come >> Manifestations of faith >> Freedom >> Fences of freedom >> Freedom in Christ

(140d) Temple >> Temple made without hands >> Hiding place >> Living in the spiritual revelation of the word – Although Jesus said He would stop speaking to His disciples in figurative language and start speaking to them plainly of the Father, that never happened. According to the Scriptures, Jesus never preached to them again after this dissertation in the gospel of John. Not even after He rose from the dead did He teach them much about God. Therefore, when Jesus said He was ready to speak to them plainly, He was referring to a time after Pentecost, when He would return to His disciples in the form of the Holy Spirit; then He would tell them plainly about the Father. Once we hit a certain state of maturity in the things of God, we will be able to petition the Father on our own, and the Father Himself will get involved in our lives. This is a point of maturity that few people have reached, including this writer. It is something He has prepared for His endtime saints in order to survive those days. It is an experience and a spiritual realm that is yet to come to the Church. In the last days it will be a realm that we will all be required to experience in order to become invisible to our enemies, for God plans to deliver us supernaturally right under their noses. The Bible says that we are all going to wear a mark on our foreheads; it won’t be the mark of the beast, but the mark of God (Rev 7-2,3) that we will receive through the 144,000 Jewish witnesses. God will mark us with the Holy Spirit, and that mark will represent our relationship with the Father. It will be a countenance showing that we know God. See also: Woman in travail; Jn 16,19-22; 125e / Great Endtime Revival (Two periods: first century and last century); Act 2,16-21; 50b

Jn 16-26,27

(32h) Gift of God >> Father will honor you if you die to self >> Your obedience

(33m) Gift of God >> Believers are special to God >> We are beloved of God – Imagine walking to the throne of God, and after getting off our face ask God any question and He will answer us, and for the most part we will comprehend His answer. We can’t even do that to “important” people in this life, because they are usually too high-minded to answer our questions. Our knowledge of God will continue to widen throughout eternity; some questions we can answer among ourselves, but the tough ones we can take to God.

(83h) Thy kingdom come >> Jesus intercedes for us >> He represents us before the Father – For all eternity the Church will worship the Father through the Son, but we can also worship the Father directly. When we get to heaven, there will be many mysteries about the Father, and we will eventually understand most of them; but for now, the only way we know the Father is through Christ, and for that reason the only way we can worship the Father is through Christ. However, Jesus made an interesting statement in these verses as perhaps the only passage in the Bible teaching that we can directly request (worship) the Father, but this requires maturity. The infant of faith requests the Father through the Son by reading the Bible, believing all it says and living accordingly, but as we mature in the faith, we begin to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, and as we listen, follow and obey the Spirit of God who dwells in us, the Spirit whom Jesus sent in His place being the Spirit of the Father, as we obey Him, will lead us to the Father, and we can directly request Him, and He will answer us, based on our love and obedience to Christ. Therefore, to obey the Holy Spirit is to worship the Father. This level of obedience is the highest form of worship, because it originates deep within a relationship of prayer (1Jn 2-13).

(114b) Thy kingdom come >> Faith >> Working the grace of God >> Obeying the Holy Spirit >> Believing the Father by obeying the Son >> Obeying Jesus’ will – The word “believe” in the Bible is tantamount to obedience, but that doesn’t mean we can look up believe in a Bible dictionary and find the synonym obedience, for it is implicit within Scripture that believing and obedience are the same. To make this point Paul said that Abraham believed God and his faith was counted as righteousness, while James took it a step further and said that as a result of Abraham obeying the voice of God his faith was perfected (Jm 2-22). Abraham believed God well enough, but he also did what God told him. He believed with more than his mind; he also believed with his feet, and he went to a foreign land and did exactly what God said, and for this reason he is the father of our faith. When we look at this verse again, the Father loves us because we have patterned our lives around our belief that Jesus is the Son of God.

(129i) Thy kingdom come >> Manifestations of faith >> Unity >> love perfects unity >> God’s love

(208g) Salvation >> The salvation of God >> Personal relationship >> Being the friend of God >> Father & son relationship

(230k) Kingdom of God >> God’s kingdom is a living organism >> Mystery of godliness >> Solving the mystery of godliness >> The love of Christ is the mystery of godliness

(247a) Priorities >> God’s priorities >> God’s interests >> God is interested in His people >> God is interested in the Church

(206a) Conditions To Promises (Key verse)

(206e) Salvation >> God makes promises on His terms >> Conditions to promises >> Conditions to the love of God >> Conditions to the father’s love – Jesus said that the Father loves us because we love His Son. This concept is not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture. That word “because” is a conditional term. Isn’t God’s love unconditional? Apparently not! God loves us because of a vision He has of us that we love His Son. His vision will remain so long as the sinner is alive in his flesh, but the moment he dies without ever coming to the love of Christ, God’s vision will die with Him, and that is the very meaning of hell.