Life On The Highest Plane
The Lord's Return - Actualized
When Christ, the King, reigns there will be national peace. Now the whole world is in a state of incipient war. "All Europe is armed to the teeth and the nations all watching each other with acute suspicion, and trembling with fear over the volcano of a suppressed Armageddon." [this was written in 1928.] The newspapers almost daily chronicle "rumors of war." But the coming of the Prince of Peace will end war.
Isaiah 2:4, "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow shares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
When Christ, the King, reigns there will be social reconstruction. The day of oppression, greed, selfishness, injustice will be ended because sin will be instantly detected, judged and punished. "When the Prince of Peace comes He will allay every disturbing element; hush the din caused by sin; put down every wrong; still every clamoring tongue; calm every raging sea of unrest; touch and heal every inflamed sore of society; unite into the harmony o accord every quarrelsome crowd; pilot every perplexed barque of humanity tossed on the sea of life, into the harbor of rest; heal every epileptical torture of suffering; adjust every turmoil of difference by His rule of equity, and harmonize all conflicting claims in the melting fire of His love."
Isaiah 26:9, "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness."
Psalm 72:3-4, 12-14, "The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness ... He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor ... For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. ... He shall spare the poor and the needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight."
When Christ the King reigns there will be material prosperity. Vast fortunes will not be massed in the hands of a few but each man shall have sufficient and shall live in contentment.
When Christ the King reigns there will be universal health and longevity. In the coming age under the Kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ mankind will be given a chance to attain to a perfection of personality, spiritual, intellectual and physical which is impossible for us to conceive of and the human race will enter upon a life of harmony and concord that the most optimistic cannot picture today.
When our Lord comes again it will mean redemption and renovation within His whole creation. Sin brought a curse upon the earth and upon the animal creation. Its destructive power and extensive reach are seen in the terrible disturbance caused within the divine harmony of creation. Everything in God's inanimate world is touched by death and decay and is robbed of its greatest utility and beauty by the blasting curse which sin brought.
So there is a minor key even in Nature. The whole creation is weighted by a burden that constrains it to groan; it is subjected to a slavery that compels it to cry out for emancipation. It waits with impatience for the manifestation of the sons of God which will usher in that glad day when it too will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
Romans 8:19-22, "For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God ... For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope. ... That the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."
But "in the day of the Lord" all these conditions will be changed. "The misery of Nature will become a jubilant." Even the life of the jungle will be lived in harmony. The earth will then yield her increase and the whole creation will sing its praises unto God, its Maker and Redeemer.
Finally, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ will effect the consummation of the restoration to God of sovereignty over His universe. Can such a victory ever be won until the usurping "prince of this world" is dispossessed and destroyed? There can be no millennium while satan remains in the heavenlies or on earth for it is impossible to be rid of his world-system until rid of him. Through His regenerating power the Holy Spirit can and does deliver the believer from the power of satan but He cannot deliver him from his presence. satan is still here and will be until the Lord returns.
Genesis records satan's victory and the rejection of God; Revelation records the dethronement of satan and the enthronement of Christ. "The seed of the woman" born in the manager cradle of Bethlehem and crucified on the Cross of Calvary must stand upon the Mount of Olivet before the bruising of the serpent's head is finally consummated and the perpetual curse pronounced upon satan is executed. When the Lord Jesus Christ returns satan will be bound and cast into the bottomless pit for one thousand years.
With the head of the world-system dethroned the triumphant Lord is restored to His rightful rule over the earth.
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 6)
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