The Stairway to Heaven

Friends, I have a special quest writer today on our Blog-I think you will be greatly blessed by the Scripture Revelation. Dan

The Stairway to Heaven

By Daniel Kolenda

The Gospel of John is distinctly and wonderfully different from its three synoptic counterparts.  Some have speculated that John wrote his Gospel long after Mathew, Mark, and Luke and as such, John was not only able to read what the others had written, but he also had many years to reflect on his own experiences in light of what had been recorded.  As an old man, under the divine unction of the Holy Spirit, John was convinced that there were still some essential things that needed to be said. So he set out to tell the rest of the story in his own words.

John is an unashamedly biased reporter who writes with irresistible persuasion. He openly states his objective in chapter 20, verse 31, when he says, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”  Everything in John’s Gospel is strategically incorporated to convince the reader that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, because John knew that through this knowledge we could receive eternal life.

It is incredible that while John omits the story of Jesus’ nativity, baptism, temptation, and transfiguration, he uses nine verses in the opening chapter to tell us a seemingly insignificant story about a young man named Nathanael.  But a closer look will reveal that this otherwise untold account is a profound and luminous thesis from which John’s exceptionally convincing argument will springboard in the following chapters of his Gospel.

The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, “Follow Me.” 

Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. 

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”  Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 

Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” 

Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”

Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.”  

Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 

And He said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

John 1:43-51 nasb

In order to understand what is happening here, I am going to ask a series of key questions about the text, and from it a wonderful revelation will emerge.

What’s going on with the fig tree?

The fig tree may seem like an oddly reoccurring theme here, but the cultural context reveals that there is more than meets the eye. In the rabbinic tradition, a fig tree is often used as a metaphor of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament).  Nathanael may have been sitting under it literally or figuratively, but either way it seems clear that he was studying the Scriptures.  When Jesus said that he saw Nathanael under the “fig tree,” He was indicating that He saw Nathanael reading the Torah, which leads us to the second question.

What is it that Nathanael was studying in the Torah?

Of course, in Nathanael’s day, there were no chapter and verse distinctions that we have in our modern Bibles, but I believe it would have been somewhere around chapter 28 of Genesis.  He would have been reading about his ancient ancestor, Jacob (whose name means deceiver) who stole his brother’s birthright, defrauded his elderly father, and escaped with his life.  He would have read how Jacob reached Bethel where he rested for the night.  There Jacob laid his head upon a pillow of stone and had a dream.  “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!” (Genesis 28:12 amp).

You will notice that before Nathanael met Jesus, he was a hardened skeptic who asked in reference to Jesus, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  But somewhere between verses 46 and 49, he dramatically converted to a convinced believer who declared to Jesus, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel” (John 1:49 nasb). And this incredible transformation seems to have happened almost instantly, which leads us to ask a third question.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Nathanael was clearly dumbfounded by Jesus’ astonishing depth of prophetic insight. 

First, Jesus had demonstrated that He knew that Nathanael had been studying the scriptures before Philip called him, which it seems was hidden knowledge. 

Second, Jesus knew exactly what Nathanael had been studying and alluded to it when He called Nathanael “…an Israelite indeed” (a descendant of Jacob, the “deceiver,” whom Nathanael had just been reading about) “in whom is no guile [or deceit].” 

And third, by this same statement, Jesus proved that He knew not only THAT Nathanael had been studying the Torah AND exactly WHAT he had been studying in the Torah, but the clincher was when Nathanael realized that Jesus saw something no one could possibly see…the very heart itself.

This demonstration so moved Nathanael that he declared his faith in Jesus, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.”  And that is when Jesus made the most incredible statement of all – it was the punch line of John’s story. “Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these” (v. 50). 

And then Jesus alluded back to the scripture that Nathanael had been reading about Jacob and made a clear reference to the story of Jacob’s ladder: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you shall see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man”  (John 1:51 nasb).

In essence, Jesus said, “Nathanael, are you impressed that I read your mail?  Are you impressed that I knew you were reading about Jacob’s ladder?  Oh, Nathanael, I’ve got something better for you. Wait until you see that I AM Jacob’s ladder!”

Jesus declared Himself to be more than a prophet, more than a Rabbi, more than a political deliverer, and more than a King.  He declared Himself to be the bridge between Heaven and earth, the link between God and man, the portal that God has opened on earth, giving us direct access to heavenly realms.

This is only the first of many such revelations about the identity of Jesus that John includes in this book.  For instance, Jesus says:

• I am the living bread that came down out of heaven  (John 6:51).
• I am the light of the world (John 8:12).
• I am the door (John 10:7).
• I am the good shepherd (John 10:11).
• I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25).
• I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6).
• I am the true vine (John 15:1).
• He even said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58 nasb).

John seems to be shouting to us what Philip shouted to Nathanael: “We’ve found Him…the One Moses and the prophets wrote about…the One who solves all the riddles, the One who answers all the questions!”

We’ve found Him:

The Way, the Truth, the Life,

The Bread of Life,

The Light of the World,

The Door,

The Good Shepherd,

The Resurrection,

The Vine,

The Great I AM! 

He is the Passover Lamb.

He is the Ark of Noah’s salvation. 

He is the brass serpent lifted up in the wilderness.

He is the rock of Horeb. 

He is the city of refuge. 

He is the veil in the tabernacle and the tabernacle itself. 

He is the unleavened bread and the manna from Heaven.

He is our Melchezideck. 

He is our kinsman-redeemer.

He is our High Priest.

He is the tree of life. 

He is the stairway to Heaven.

He is the second Adam. 

He is Isaac going to get a bride. 

He is the warrior standing before Joshua with a drawn sword.

He is Jonah three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 

 He is in every way the fullest and most complete fulfillment and source of

every promise,

every type,

every shadow,

every epiphany,

and every theophony.

He’s the end of all theology.

He’s the reason for every genealogy. 

He’s at the heart of every prophecy. 

His coming has split history in two and has changed absolutely everything!

  

Daniel Kolenda is a missionary evangelist who has led more than 14 million people to Christ.  As the successor to evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, Kolenda is the President and CEO of Christ for all Nations (CFAN), a ministry that has conducted some of the largest evangelistic events in history.  He also hosts a syndicated television program that airs in 118 countries.

Join Kolenda on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/EvangelistKolenda and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DanielKolenda.