Life On The Highest Plane
Our Lord's Return - Actualized
Twenty centuries have passed since Christ Jesus said that He would return and the prophecies and promises regarding His second advent are still unfulfilled. The greater part of the professing Church have ceased to expect Him. In fact Christendom has set itself to the task of establishing the Kingdom without the King and scoffs at those who, believing that the Lord's promise will be fulfilled literally, still look for His return. Indeed this very scoffing is in itself a part of the fulfillment of prophecy regarding the last days.
2 Peter 3:2-4, "That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: ... Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts; ... And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."
Many preachers and teachers have applied "the blessed hope" of our Lord's return to the death of the believer, to the destruction of Jerusalem, to the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and to the gradual dissemination of the Gospel and the diffusion of Christianity over the whole earth. But the spiritually minded Christian believes that every prophecy regarding His second advent will be fulfilled as literally as were those of His first and waits for the coming of the Lord Himself from Heaven.
The return of the Lord Jesus Christ has a special relationship to three groups of people, to Israel, to the Church and to the Gentile nations. A comprehensive study of this subject in all its bearings will deeply repay every Christian. But in these studies we must confine ourselves to the bearing of Christ's return upon the redemption of the individual believer from sin and all its consequences, upon the reconciliation of all things unto God and upon the restoration to God of sovereignty over the universe.
The return of the Lord Jesus Christ will mean the consummation of the believer's identification with Christ. The believer will be identified with his Lord as regards place, personality and power. Where Christ is he will be; what Christ is he will become; what Christ does he will share.
Where Christ is the Christian will be. Christ promised this to His disciples. "Where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:3). He prayed that they might be with Him in glory. "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory" (John 17:24). Then He went back into the glory. The disciples remained on earth and He came to be with them through the indwelling Holy Spirit. But one day He is coming to take His own to be with Him.
Colossians 3:4, "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."
What Christ is the Christian will become for he shall become a partaker of Christ's glory. He shall be glorified together with Him in spirit and in body.
Romans 8:17, "And if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together."
1 Peter 5:1, 10, "The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed ... But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you."
The glorification of the Christian will involve the full redemption of his body which for the dead in Christ means resurrection and for the living means translation.
"The wages of sin is death" and there can be no final victory over sin that does not include victory over death. Death has laid claim all these ages to the bodies of God's saints, and still holds them captive in the grave. "But the sky not the grave is the goal of the Christian" and this will be proven when at the sound of the trump of God the graves of those asleep in Christ shall be opened and they shall be raised from the dead.
A few days ago I visited the cemetery on the hillside and saw there one tombstone in the form of a broken pillar. What a symbol it is of what every grave there means - a broken family circle! A broken thread of life that spelled manifold severed relationships! Will there ever be a reunion? Praise God there will be for those in Christ Jesus! The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the sure pledge of the resurrection of every believer. "Because I live ye shall live also." He has said and He will do. Through His resurrection He became "the first fruits of them that sleep" and thus made not only certain but essential the resurrection of every member of His body.
1 Thess. 4:16, "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first."
1 Corinthians 15:20-23, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. ... For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead ... For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ... But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 3)
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