In the Gentile Church

Once, in 1939, while Bro. Kent was preaching in Cleveland, Tennessee, Bro. Tomlinson, moved by the Holy Spirit, approached Bro. Kent.  He put his hand to Bro. Kent’s mouth and said “Mouth, preach this word.  Mouth, preach this word.”  Again, just a short time before his death, Bro. Tomlinson boldly appointed Brother Kent over “Perfection” in the church, in addition to his work over the Church Markers Association.

From the death of A. J. Tomlinson, in 1943, until February 13, 1957, Bishop Kent labored in that work; all the while inspiring others around him in the word of the Lord.  He was also greatly effective in the development of the work of evangelism in the Church during that time.

The stage was being set.  Opposition was directed against the fundamental principals of God’s Church, and it had a devastating effect.  It was not merely the man which the enemy was after; it was the precept of prophetic fulfillment in general, and the office of the General Overseer in particular.  The rejection of that office was made at the General Assembly in 1948.  Then, at the General Assembly in 1956, their victory became complete when Milton Tomlinson openly declared his submission to the General Assembly.

So, for all intents and purposes, the office of General Overseer was vacant.  It was necessary only that Bishop Kent should step into that position and declare a reformation.  He did so, and a few faithful, zealous men and women followed him.

For seven years Brother Kent labored in that office, fulfilling prophecy, and glorifying God before the public with every means available to him.  Notably, in 1963, Bro Kent led the only protest which was raised against the atheistic attack against religious freedom in America. I had the pleasure of being a part of that noble group who marched in front of the White House to protest that infamous ruling against prayer and Bible reading in our schools.

During that time, Bishop Kent fulfilled several prophecies.  Particularly, in the Spirit and Power of John the Revelator, he “read” (explained) for us “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.”  The prophecy of the reading of that book is in Isaiah 29:11-12, 17-18.  God said, “The vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed.”  The educated man: A. J. Tomlinson could not “read” it, but the uneducated man: Grady R. Kent did read it.  An ignorant and unlearned man wrote the book (Acts 4:13), and an unlearned man was required by prophecy to “read” for us its meaning.  Bishop Kent, who had only a third grade education, was that man.

In Rev. 10:11, the angel told John, “Thou must prophesy again.”  Those words carried the same intent as when God said, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”  In the case of Elijah, the Angel told the priest Zechariah that his son, John the Baptist would “go forth in the spirit and power of Elias.”  Jesus testified that that was exactly what had happened (Matt. 11:14; Matt. 17:10-12).  In the same fashion, it was necessary that a man come in the spirit and power of John the Revelator, in order to connect the Church of God at this end of the Grace Age with the Church of God in the first century A.D.

Only in the spirit and power of John the Revelator could anyone be able to explain that book which The Lamb had opened after His ascension and revealed unto John (Rev. 5:1-10).

What about the fact that Brother Kent is dead now?  The allegory of Elijah and Elisha foreshadow the fact that when Brother Kent died, the spirit and power of John and Elisha would come upon the prophet who would finish the work and fulfill the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:45-47 and Matthew 17:10-12, and restore God’s Church to what it was in the middle of the first century.  Jesus is coming soon, and He will find that man feeding His household with meat in due season when He arrives.

The responsibility now rests upon us to recognize that man as he fulfillls his volume of the prophetic word.  It is written, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.”

One of the greatest errors promoted among Christians today is the denial of God choosing a man to lead His people.  Did not God say by Malachi, “I am the Lord, I change not.”  Whether we believe it or not, God will continue to do what He has always done, and raise up a man and anoint him to finish “all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”  Then “He will send Jesus Christ” the King (Acts 3:19-21).

In Rev. 22:8-10, the angel told John the Revelator not to worship him, because he was “of [his] brethren the prophets,” and told him to “Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.”  Once the book of Revelation was opened and handed to the prophet, it was to stay open until it is all fulfilled.

A Prophet must come in the spirit and power of John, to reveal those things to us, and explain the dark sayings of the book.  It is in this manner that God will establish the necessary continuity between the early Jewish Church and this last-days Gentile Church.

From A. J. Tomlinson, until now, God has supplied us with a series of churches, and ministers as signs pointing us to the coming conclusion of the Grace Age, and the appearing of our Lord and King (Isaiah 8:18).  Without them, we would have no way to ascertain the time of our Lord’s appearing.  Some preachers, with much aplomb, declare that there are to be no signs of the coming of Jesus, but those signs are all around us.  One of the greatest of those signs has been the rise and the works of the Churches of God in the twentieth century.

Many who should be pointing those signs out to us are as blind leading the blind.  In a similar situation in Jesus’ day, He rebuked some, saying, “Woe unto you, lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of Knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered” (Luke 11:52).

What our spiritual leaders need to be telling those who are trusting in them is to “Not forsake the assembling of [yourselves] together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching (Heb 10:25). If your minister cannot yet see the day approaching, you need to speak to him about it, and together begin to try to find someone who does.

Spiritually Called “the Son”

Another thing which it was necessary for someone in the spirit and power of John to do is to fulfill the law of raising up seed to the dead, by a near kinsman. ^[10] Proverbs 30:1-4, shows clearly that this law was to be fulfilled in relation to Jesus Christ.  Concerning the Son of God, He said, “What is His name, and what is His son’s name, if thou canst tell?”

Obviously Jesus will have no natural son, but He will have a son, a fact to which Isaiah testified, saying, “He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.  And He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.  Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed” (Isaiah 53:8-10; John 19:25-30).

Only someone in the Spirit and Power of John the Revelator, the brother of Jesus (John 19:25-27), could open the Revelation of Jesus Christ, when “the time is at hand,” and bring forth the one of whom we could say is “spiritually called” that son of which Solomon prophesied.  The book is now open in fulfillment of Isaiah 29:11-12, and 18, and the Elect can know how and when it was fulfilled.    

In Jer. 31:19-20, God used Ephraim to prophecy of that “son,” saying, “Ephraim is my dear son.”  Again, in Hosea 7:8, “Ephraim hath mixed himself among the people.”  That is, it will be a Gentile who fulfills that prophecy, and be adopted unto that legacy.

For Jesus to have a particular person who is spiritually called His “son,” He must first have a person who is spiritually called His brother. That is why, when Jesus was on the cross, He made John His brother (John 19:25-27). He already had four brothers, and at least three of them believed on Him after the resurrection.  So, Mary did not need another son, nor did John need a mother.  He needed a different kind of brother; one that could raise up unto him a spiritual seed at the proper time.  So Jesus spoke it into existence by His words, and in due time, sent the Spirit and Power of John to rest upon Grady R. Kent.

Jesus allowed John to be exiled to the Isle of Patmos, where he gave him “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” by the disposition of angels (Rev. 1:1).  He did not give it to him for the benefit of the Jewish Church, because they were gone.  He gave it to him for us, and it came to us “as the words of a book that is sealed.”  Therefore, it was necessary for someone to come to us in the spirit and power of its writer, to open it up for us.

The ministry of the spirit and power of John the Revelator was to span two millennia.  That is why we are told that the Angel (Messenger) in Rev. 10:1-2 had one foot on the sea and the other on the earth.  The Sea represents the fifth millennium, and the Earth represents the sixth, just as it does in chapter thirteen.  That is why we are told that, in the creation, on the fifth day the waters brought forth life, and on the sixth day, the earth brought forth life.

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” preached by Bishop Kent, was the seed which brought forth that “son.”  That son is the Prophet in Rev. 10:7, who takes the book out of the Angel’s hand, and eats it up.  He is the “one like the Son of Man,” in Dan. 7:13, who “came to the Ancient of Days (Jesus), and they brought him near before Him.”  To him was given the seventh, the last trumpet of Revelation 10:7 and 11:15.

Bishop Kent knew his own identity, and declared, “We are living in the days of the voice of the fifth angel;” thereby implying that he was the fifth Anointed of the prophetic “seven” who would be anointed of God over The Church, in the Grace Age.  In the course of that work, he fulfilled his part of the allegory of “the generations of Isaac” (Gen. 25:19-26).  He brought forth two men who were to be the sixth and the seventh of those who would be Anointed leaders of God’s Church during the Grace Age.  One of them would be blessed, and the other, because of his sins and iniquities, would be rejected.