Full Facts And Partial Revelations

OR

Old Testament Concepts and New Testament Enlargements

The misconceptions that resulted in damnation for most Jewish teachers in ages past are still kept alive and acttive by too many today. There are hosts of people who are glad enough to talk about God as Sovereign, so long as the exercise of His Kingship does not encroach upon their privvate aspirations and so long as He carefully conforms to their personal wishes. But, regardless of what we think or wish, God is absolutely independent, free and in complette control now, as surely as He ever was or ever will be. Even when He alone existed, He was not more independent than He is now and when every knee in creaturehood is bowed at last before Him, He will not be more surely King than He is now. His right and ability to move as He chose with untrammelled freedom never had a beginning and will never be limited or terminated by any thing or person, except as He sets temporary bounds upon Himself. That is not to say that men, angels or devils are irresponsible robots or helpless victims of fatalistic or arbitrary movements of callous force or changeless laws. In His exercise of absolute authority, God has delegated limited rights and areas of designated liberty to all creatures who are capable of reasoning or choosing on the basis of rational decisions. By His foreknowledge Jehovah foresaw every choice that men or devils would ever make, within the scope of the limited freedom He would grant to each, so the Lord is never caught by surprise and never is dependent upon human decisions as having any power to change or regulate His plans. While the plans or choices He allows us to make have definite bearing on the guilt or credit we accumulate, they have no influence upon God's freedom or unchangeable plans.

The point we hope to consider and clarify, for some at least, in this article has to do with the fact that, though God has always been absolutely and eternally free, THOUGH HIS FREEDOM AND CONTROL CCOVERS ALL THERE IS OR EVER WILL BE OF TIME, OF SPACE OR EXISTENCE, HE HAS NOT EVEN YET REVEALED TO ANY BEINGS OUTSIDE THE GODHEAD ALL THE DETAILS OF HOW HE USES OR WILL USE HIS FREEDOM AND POWER, EITHER IN HIS WORKS OF MERCY OR OF JUDGMENT.

Two strongly emphasized samples of gradual revelations of eternally established plans are found in the contrasts between what is found in the Old Testament and what is revealed in the New about His intention to amalgamate components of all nations, as equal participants in His Kingdom and Churches, and the realities about life and immortality, which came to light only by the Gospel. For proof of this, see what the Holy Spirit says specifically by Paul in Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Timothy, as well as in Hebrews, 1 John and the Revelation. Regarding the previously-unclear mystery about the components of the Kingdom and Churches, see: Ephesians 1:3-10, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;; Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather togetther in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him." Ephesians 2:4-7, "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us. Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." Colossians 1:21-23, "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yeet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister." and 26-29, "Even the mystery which hath been hid fromm ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the GGentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily."

We remember how the Lord Jesus chided His apostles for being slow and foolish, because they knew so little about the truth which runs through the whole Old Testament aboout the Messiah, His life, His sufferings, His death and His resurrection; (See Luke 24:25-27, & 44-48); but He never derided them about not knowing God's plan about the amalgamation of all races in the Church. In fact, He seemed almost to be surprissed Himself when He saw the first fruits of this part of The Father's plan, in the Syrophenician woman arid the centurion shown in Mark 7:24-30 and Matthew 8:5-13.

Regarding the fact that the Old Testament is not intended to be used as a basis for reliable teaching about the details of life beyond this world, see the plain statement of 2 Timothy 1:9 & 10, "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviouur Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." Oh, there were glimmerings in the Old Testament about continuing existence, such as we see in the creation story, where there is succh a clear distinction made between the account of how animals, birds and fishes were all formed wholly of qualities that were inherent in the earth or water; but man was a blended combination of all that was in other physical creatures and all the components of Godhood. David got a glimpse of realities not revealed to others, when he humblly repented of his vile sinfulness and submitted himself to Divine discipline, so that he could say of his baby that had just died, "While the child was yet alive, II fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him bback again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." 2 Samuel 12:22 & 23. God revealed a bit of this to Moses, when he argued against going back to Egypt and the Lord identified Himself as the, "I AM," the self-sufficient, independent, never changing One, the One Who, at that moment was "The God of Abraham, The God of Isaac, and The God of Jacob." That message had persuasive meaning to Moses, but no one else saw its full and obvious significance, until The Lord Jesus pointed it out to the Sadducees, who sinfully argued from the relative silence and vain speculations of Old Testament guessers to try to prove the nonexistence of angels and other spirits, including disembodied humans. (See Acts 23:8) For refreshing of mind between Jesus' clear revelation and the Sadducees' darkening doctrines, please read the parallel records of Matthew 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27 and Luke 20:27-40, and note things about the Lord's criticism of those who would hold people to the limited views of these darkened scholars of the Old Testament. He said that they greatly erred, (Mk. 12:27). He told them that they were ignorant of both the Scriptures and the power of God. (Matt. 22:29; Mark 12:24).

He said that the marriage relationship is for this life only and that all who shall enter the world about which the scoffers spoke so derisively do not marry, do not die again, are equal to the angels and are the recognized sons of God and beneficiaries of the resurrection. Then He cited God's Words to Moses about His being then the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as further proof of their personal existence and on-going relationship to God and as part of God's guarantee of future and fuller glory in the new age and worlds, beyond the resurrection of their bodies. In their present state they are aware of Jehovah as their God, they are His sons, They shall not die or be separated from the Lord any more and shall be given their bodies again at the general resurrection, of which the New Testament speaks so frequently and clearly, as in Matthew 25:31-46; John 5:28 & 29; Acts 24:15; 1 Cor. 15:42-57; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 2 Cor. 4:13-18, and Rev. 20:12-15. Some unlawfully set aside that other revealing picture which Christ gave and has preserved for us in Luke 16:19-31, on the grounds that they feel free to call the story of the rich man and Lazarus a parable and then they go on, without any scriptural authorization or parallel, to interpret it as referring to the temporal fate of the Jews and Gentiles. Even if they could prove that it is a parable, which they cannot do, they have no license to ignore the fact that every other parable which Christ gave had an actual, literal reality as its basis. He used real fields, real sheep, reeal shepherds, real leaven and flour, real birds and flowers, real kings and armies, real buildings and houses, real nets, fish, pearls, scribes, trees, money, children, slaves and masters as symbols in His parables, so how can anyone claim that he did not do the same, when He spoke of real men here, as well as of real comfort, real torment, real memory and real hopelessness for a lost sinner. This is a very significant part of fuller and clearer revelation, which Christ gave about the blessed and terrible realities to which conscious and responsible beings will go in the worlds beyond the gate of death.

Why do the so-called Jehovah's Witnesses, who talk so much about their version of The Kingdom of God, the deluded followers of Herbert W. Armstrong and the growing number of break-away defecters from other groups, as well as ex-Adventists like Robert Brinsmead, all hold to the theory of conditional immortality, with all the horrifying ideas that are concurrent with it? The reasons for their doing so are not exactly the same in every case, but the basic evils that are inseparable from their concepts about death, including the death of Christ, and the limitations of God's rights are all essentially the same. If God made the majority of the, human race, including all that ever dies or will die as infants and imbeciles, just to exterminate them, then humanity is the least useful commodity He ever created. Other elements of the physical Universe die, disintegrate, go back to some form of reconstructive energy or matter. Even the wholee substance of all the vast, physical worlds will be melted or dissolved and recast into new Heavens and a new Earth, but men go up in polluting smoke forever, if these theorists are right. Worse than that are what is said in this connection about Christ. I have both heard and read their statements in which they said plainly, and with no apparent fear, that Christ Jesus had no or conscious identity or existence from the moment that His chin dropped in death upon His chest, until God resurrected (or literally re-created) Him three days later. Some of them still claim to acknowledge that Christ was of the same essence as God, the Father, that His claims of equality were true and justified; but proceed to tell us that all there was or is in Godhood is subject to annihilation, so far as personality and conscious existence are conccerned. This in spite of the fact that Christ repeatedly predicted that He would raise His Own body (this temple — John 2:19) again from its state of death. This anticipated miracle He promised prophetically in John 10:14-18 as proof of His personal power and authority, the authority He had and has as the Good Shepherd and sovereign Owner and Leader of His sheep. How can one who has no conscious or personal exisstence keep such an appointment and raise his own non-existent person from the state of being dead as a doornail? If, on the other hand, His whole Person entered the place of separation from His Father, if the Father refused to recognize Him, if He suffered the hardest reality of Hell, the anguish of being cursed by His Father and then enndured the extra shock of being separated from His body for three days, then He literally took our curse and absorbed in His infinite Being the full equivalent of the eternal separation that we deserved. The shock and torture of being treated by the Father as if He were sin itself incarnate: (See 2 Cor. 5:2), the gathering up and pouring out upon Christ's sin-abhorring soul all the contempt and shame that devils, men and God could inflict upon Him, in that one condensation of eternal punishment was the satisfying climax to all He had absorbed since in eternity past, when He first identified Himself with all for whom He died in substitutionary suffering.

Christ did not bring to light through the Gospel a grim and terrifying spectacle of how Godhood could be reduced to a little bundle of mangled, insensitive, helpless flesh and bones; a ghastly remnaant of cursed ruination, as all that was then in existence of the eternal and altogether lovely Son of God. He came to add to the partial revelations of the Old Testament the new and wonderful revelations of perfect Godhood sinlessly and sovereignly living in a body of limitations, and common needs, a body subject to all the gravitational pulls of earth and all the strain of responding to a will that was always in perfect conformity to the wishes and standards of God. He came to show in Himself, in the outshining of His glory on the mount of transfiguration and in the appeaarances during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension, the bodily splendors that will be the permanent properties of all His people in our ultimate state of eternal perfection. Angels and human visitors from Heaven had shown, from time to time, something of the realities of life in the bodiless state, in which God, The Father; the pre-incarnate Christ; the Holy Spirit and the myriad hosts of angels and liberated believers lived together beyond the range of our normal view; but only in Christ could we see the pattern for our eternal fulness and fitness. The present state of the heavenly hosts of angels and disembodied humans is so much better than the best we can imagine here that John repeatedly feared to identify them or mistook those whom he saw of them as objects of worship. (See Rev. 7:13-17; 19:9 & 10; and 22:8 & 9 as samples). But even the God-like state of the angels and heavenly saints is not the ultimate hope of either Paul or John. For Paul it would be "very far better" than the best he knew on earth, (See Phil. 1:22-23), but he looked beyond that much better state of being unclothed, that state to which Peter referred, when he wrote about putting off the tabernacle of his body, to the ultimate state the symbol of full victory, when he will be clothed upon and mortality shall be swallowed up of life. These were the stages of progressive and indescribable glory about which Peter says the angels desired to look, but concerning which the Old Testament prophets saw so little that we dare not treat their true, but partial and vague references as if they represented the message we are to believe or give. The Old Testament showed God as supreme, free and absolute and the Nation of Israel as the sphere of His special works of discriminating mercy and favour. The New Testament shows Jehovah's absolute independence expressed in holy purposes of grace and righteous and eternal rule over endless defiance and sinning, but it also enlarges the earthly area from little Palestine and from a favoured Nation, to the innumerable and multiracial host of the spiritual Kingdom and its break down groups of believers from all nations, in local churches. The good and bad nations of the Old Testament were perpetual objects of interest and divergent works; but both were constant previews of the two classes which Christ described as coming to the one last place of separation, from whence He says they will go away in contrasting attitudes and states, to opposite directions and destinies, for purposes which will be so fully justified that all will be left wwithout a word to speak against His decrees, but all will confess His deity and Tightness in all He does and says.

 

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