Chose Your Resurrection

For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment. (John 5:26-29)

I keep coming back to a question here about why Jesus says not to marvel at this. But when I go back a little ways in the context I see a previous place where He talks about works that will make us marvel (v.20). As I look at these two references I believe I may be seeing the outlines of a chiastic structure in the text with is very common, particularly in New Testament writings. There are a number of parallel thoughts connected with these two that tell me that likely the climax is somewhere maybe halfway between them. As far as I can determine at this point that is likely to be somewhere around verse 24.

In addition to this, another thing that caught my attention here was this reference to the two resurrections that are going to take place that will involve every person who has ever lived on this earth at any time in history. Whether a person chooses to believe it or not, we will all find ourselves involved in one or the other of these resurrections, and which one we participate in will also reveal what our future is going to be for all eternity.

It is not an arbitrary determination by God that decides which resurrection we will come up in and how our eternal future plays out. It is simply a consequence of the internal choices and the cumulative effect that those choices are making on our characters that is the factor that determines our eternal destiny. We are totally responsible for where we end up on the day of Judgment and Jesus talks about that in this passage. Everyone is going to hear His voice and come up from the dead. But some will hear it first and participate in the first resurrection which is certainly the preferred way to rise as noted in the book of Revelation.

This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years. (Revelation 20:5-6)

Today there is great confusion about this thousand years that is fast approaching and that is mentioned different times throughout prophecy. But that should be no surprise, for Satan is a master deceiver and will leave no attempt untried to keep us in ignorance about the true nature of final events predicted in the Bible. He spreads his lies about God in order to prevent us from being prepared for eternity by believing his lying interpretations of Scripture so that when the truth is finally seen clearly it will be too late to respond to grace. There are all sorts of false ideas that play into the popular beliefs about this time of the millenium as it is sometimes called, but it is very important that we not only understand the truth about it from the Bible's perspective but also realize why it is important to know that truth.

One of the most dangerous deceptions being spread among Christians today is the idea that it doesn't really matter if we obey God's commands and instructions because people will be given another chance to repent after certain events alert them that their last chance is now approaching. There are all sorts of theories about a supposed rapture, a time of seven years of tribulation (which is based on serious distortions of prophetic time-lines) and various related scenarios of end-time events. But most of these are calculated to cause sinners to relax their attention about the warnings being given to this earth of the nearness of the end and the kind of preparation we need.

If Satan can keep us relaxed and reluctant to respond to the pleadings of a loving God who is seeking to turn us away from our sins and heal us from the deadly virus of selfishness and fear, then without our even knowing it our hearts will become so calloused and hardened through that very resistance that we will not be able to hear the sweet voice of Jesus at the first resurrection and will find ourselves remaining in death until the next resurrection when it will be far too late to enter into the bliss of heaven with our Saviour for eternity. And those who are still alive and not taken with Jesus when He returns will soon join the dead who are awaiting the second resurrection because the glory of Jesus during His second coming will literally scare the life out of them.

One point of confusion that derails the thinking of millions of Christians are the references to reigning with Christ for a thousand years. They make the fatal mistake of basing their time-lines and belief systems on the idea that the saved people of God will need someone else to rule over if this is to happen the way they imagine it. Therefore, it is concluded that this thousand years must be something that takes place on this earth where the wicked are subjected to the dominance and political control of the righteous in an earthly government structure imposed through force by Jesus on the whole world.

As these scenarios progress based on these false premises, ideas then proliferate about how all of this might play out. An intensely popular video series has projected all sorts of ideas based on these false theories and very few people are willing to investigate the real truth of the Bible and question what popular theologians have proposed along these lines. Thus millions may be lost because they place their confidence in someone else's version of end-time events instead of listening carefully to the words of Jesus and the prophets through which He has sent His messages of hope and warning.

The more carefully I have considered these coming events in the light of Scriptures the more convinced I am that this thousand year period has a very special purpose for developing and finishing the work that was begun in the hearts and lives of all those who chose to listen to the voice of Jesus in their hearts and submitted their lives in obedience to that voice. Only those who have chosen to submit their will and lives to the authority of Jesus, whether they consciously knew who He was or whether it was only through their conscience, but only those who were willing to obey Him instead of following their own natural desires will be available for God to finish shaping into the full stature of the body of Christ.

This period of a thousand years is going to take place for the saved in heaven where the final period of maturing and development of perfection is going to take place in their lives. Meanwhile back on earth, Satan will find himself deprived of any living human beings to tempt or harass because all of them will have died or been taken to heaven at the second coming of Jesus. This will result in the most supreme discomfort for Satan and his demons, because the distraction of being able to tempt and destroy God's children for 6,000 years has kept their minds off their own situations and the final destruction that is awaiting them. (see Rev. 20:1-3, Matt. 25:41)

These parallel circumstances of the saved being cultivated into the perfect habitation for God to dwell in and the lost all sleeping in death until the second resurrection (Rev. 20:5) is radically different than the movie thriller versions being propagated around the world today. The battle between good and evil is extremely different in nature than most people make it out to be primarily because most people make the mistake of believing that God will pit force and fear against the force and fear employed by the prince of darkness. The whole Star Wars scenario and its emphasis on force is one of the themes that has brought confusion and reflected our confusion about this. The real problem is the false ideas that most people have about how God relates to His opponents.

Again, it is our assumptions about God's motives and methods of operation that lead us to very distorted ideas about last-day events and how they are going to play out or the true meaning of prophecies that foretell these events. If we do not start with a correct understanding of how God feels about sinners and the methods He employs to motivate us to choose to be saved, then everything from there on is totally going to be serious distorted and will not reflect truth as it is in Jesus.

My attention was just drawn to the words of Jesus a little later in this chapter that addresses this very problem. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? (John 5:44) Popular theologians and movie producers are usually more intent on seeking recognition and popularity from the mainstream (glory) than they are on humbling themselves to seek the wisdom that comes from above to those who submit themselves to the ways of God. The dark, distorted views of how God feels about us and how He is going to resolve the sin problem come from an unwillingness to believe that love really is enough to overcome evil. We struggle to bring ourselves to imagine that what appears to us to be weakness can ever overcome the enormous power that appears to threaten righteousness from the forces of evil.

As a result of this flawed thinking it is too easy to interject our own imaginings and scenarios about end-time events and weave into them pictures of a God resorting to using the weapons of darkness to overcome that darkness. But this is a fatal mistake and accomplishes just what Satan set out to do from the very beginning – to paint God in dark pictures of fear and tyranny and threatening destruction to accomplish His will in the universe. Satan has ever sought to cause us to view God as one altogether like himself, One who treats people like Satan treats people and thus prevents people from coming to trust or love God because of these lying reports about His character.

In my study I have come to realize that because God respects everyone's freedom to choose that He is going to allow the lost to stay out of the picture for a thousand years while all those who have chosen to accept the real truth about Him will be nurtured and healed and matured in a safe environment far from the devil's reach. This will happen in an environment where they can learn the full truth about God and about reality and develop close, intimate bonds with each other. That this will take a full one thousand years to finish is a testament to the enormity of the effects of sin and what it has done to deface the image of God in humanity. But this truth is also consistent with the ways of love that will never force or coerce anyone against their will but patiently nurtures and cultivates the spirit of each person to draw them out into greater expressions of joy and love and loyalty as they are restored back into the image of God as displayed in Christ Jesus.

In this passage in John, Jesus says that the Father has given Him full authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. To me that means in part that Jesus, by becoming a human and experiencing life like we experience it, has earned the legitimacy and respect of all involved to be able to determine who is safe to be saved and salvaged and who will wait until the second resurrection of judgment. After this second resurrection will occur a time of unprecedented reunions as every person who has ever lived throughout all of history will have opportunity to see everyone else in person, all alive at the same time. This will be the period of time known as the Day of Judgment but is not necessarily a literal day in time as we think of a day. I believe that this period of time may even last considerably longer than many suppose, for it will be enough time to once and for ever settle the issues of who is right and who is wrong in the great dispute between Christ and Lucifer now turned Satan. This will be the final day of reckoning, the time when every witness in God's trial will be testifying by the history of their life and choices as to who's version of truth they have chosen to believe.

Those who have sided with Satan's accusations that God is not as loving as He says He is and have clung to these lies in the face of evidence from God offered to them in various ways will face the judgment unprotected by the grace and healing of Jesus in their hearts. They will then have to experience the glory of God without being internally prepared to endure it. On the other hand, all those who have initially chosen to respond to God's promptings of love and offers of grace in this time of probation on earth, on that day will have finished their maturing process during the thousand years of close fellowship with Christ and with all the rest of His saved children. They will then be ready to be fully exposed to and inhabited by the powerful glory of a full revelation of the character of the Father.

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (John 5:24)

This may well be the central climax of this chapter. If we listen to the testimony of Jesus about what God is really like and believe the truth about the Father that Jesus came to reveal, then we have already entered into eternal life and have escaped the fate of those who refuse to believe that truth about God. For to enter into judgment while believing lies about God in our heart sets us up to experience death, just as surely as a resistor in a circuit suffers destruction when the voltage is increased beyond its capacity to handle. That is why it is so critical that we allow the Holy Spirit to remove all sin and resistance to the truth about God from our hearts, so that when the full revelation of God's character is finally exposed that we will become brilliant stars in the firmament of heaven instead of smoldering corpses like ruined resistors that can't survive the extreme high voltage that we have been warned is going to come. (Dan. 12:3, Isa. 66:24)

Father, dwell in my heart today and help me to fully let go of all unbelief in what You are showing me about who You really are. Each day I find myself amazed as Your Spirit reveals yet more truth and glory about Your character to my mind and heart. Cleanse me of all resistance to Your love and fill me with the spirit of obedience that motivated Jesus when He demonstrated Your character while here on earth. Transform me into Your image that You originally designed for me to reflect. Do all of this for Your name's sake, for Your glory and to attract others to want to participate in Your glorious plan of salvation.

Worms and Fire

I am not leaving off my study of the book of John necessarily. However, I have diverted my attention temporarily to take some time to explore another set of threads in the Bible due to a comment I received recently asking me to look into some important verses. As a result I am spending some extended time exploring those themes and finding some wonderful insights in the process.

If you are interested in following along with me I am posting those thoughts on one of my other blogs. I seriously thought about transferring them over to this site but then decided to just leave them there where I started them so it wouldn't interfere too much with the line of thought I have been following here. So for now I am just keeping this blog in suspense but plan to come back soon and pick up where I left off.

Truth About Judgment

For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. (John 5:22-23)

As I read the devotional from Oswald Chambers for today, I was alerted to something I had not noticed before concerning judgment. It really helped open my eyes to an important truth lurking in these verses and that has been emerging more into my awareness over the past few years. But I have never seen it quite so clearly as I have today.

I have been noticing recently the fact that the great war going on in the universe between good and evil revolves centrally about the issue of the Son of God, Jesus Christ and what all created beings believe about Him and His authority. It was this very issue that first initiated the seed of sin as it was originally conceived in the mind and heart of Lucifer, the covering cherub assigned to hover over the throne of the great God of the universe. Christ, the Son of God, from evidence gleaned here and there throughout the Bible, seems to have been involved similarly around the throne and well may have been a companion to Lucifer. He may have seemed so similar in appearance and function to Lucifer that it might have been possible for Lucifer to mistakenly come to assume that Christ was not necessarily equal with God the Father but was more like himself as a created being.

When the Godhead went into secret planning sessions in preparation for creating this world and were designing a race of beings to uniquely reflect the image and likeness of God, Lucifer began to be jealous of the fact that Christ was taken into the secret discussions while he was excluded. He wondered why Christ was allowed to participate in that level of confidence while Lucifer, the highest created being and the most intelligent and beautiful of any angel in the entire universe, was not allowed into those secret councils. As a result he allowed jealously to remain and grow and deepen into resentment and for the first time ever selfishness became a dangerous element that began to sour, contaminate and infect the heart of perfect beings.

Up to that point in time there was no one in the entire universe that had ever questioned the perfect love of God or the perfect arrangement and function of all creation that God had placed into existence. But even in the midst of perfection throughout the universe it was necessary for faith to exist. We sometimes assume that if we lived in a more perfect world that we would not need to exercise faith because everything would be plain. But that is not so true. The angels of God actually lived in faith long before sin ever came into existence – they just didn't realize how important that faith was or ever stopped to analyze just what it was; they simply lived a life of perfect faith which is just implicit trust in the heart of a perfectly loving God whom they believed would always take care of them and provide for all of their needs.

When Lucifer began to allow doubts about God's goodness to linger in his heart and mind and when those doubts began to formulate into concepts and ideas and strengthen like noxious weeds inside of him, he also began to resist the convicting Spirit of God that warned him of the danger of his new urges and selfish feelings. As he began to resist internally more and more that quiet conviction, in turn he gave more room for these strange notions to coalesce and deepen. As a result, sin began to take on all the counterfeit aspects of deception and his brilliant mind began to invent perversions of true reality. To justify his feelings and growing deceptions, Lucifer had to continue to fabricate more and more compelling ideas about why he believed he was right and that Christ was the real problem with God's government. Finally God had to be more open in His warnings to the angels and to Lucifer that the path they were starting to follow would only lead them to disaster and ruin.

Of course, another problem was that there had never been such a thing as death or pain or disaster before, these things had never existed. So warnings in that context may not have had the same impact as they potentially can have on those of us who are all too familiar with pain and death. But that does not mean that the angels could be excused for not responding properly to warnings from God. For it is not the presence of fear based on personal knowledge of sin that is the motivation we need to stay in alignment with God as many suppose; it is a choice to trust the heart of the Father and choose to believe His words and declarations even when we cannot understand how it all is going to work out. That is the nature of true faith and it was just as necessary for the angels then as it is for us today.

Because the central issue that initiated the beginnings of sin in Lucifer's heart revolved around disputing the inherent authority of Christ the Son of God, that issue continues to be at the center of the dispute and will be up to the last moments of the final Day of Judgment that will expose the complete truth about both the Father and the Son. Thus, judgment is really all about exposing the truth about Jesus Christ as well as about the Father, not mainly about exposing all the sins and faults of those who have rebelled against God. Those are just evidence as to the credibility of the witnesses.

The very term judgment has been so mistakenly used in our thinking for ideas about forcefully imposing arbitrary punishments on people who commit bad actions against others that we have pretty much completely lost sight of the real purpose and nature of God's judgment. This has been slowly emerging into my attention over the past few years and it has caused me to become very excited as I am beginning to see what true judgment is really all about. As Revelation 14:7 plainly states, "Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters."

It is now becoming more and more clear to me that God's judgment is all about correcting the lies about God and about the Son of God that have plagued the universe ever since the inception of sin and the rebellion of Lucifer became a full-blown war in heaven. The real battle has always been over the authority of Christ to exercise the full prerogatives of God in the universe and this has been the point of contention repeatedly every time the war becomes evident. This is the issue that Jesus is addressing in these verses and is one of the issues that lies at the root of much of our own sin problems.

Is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, qualified to reveal the correct truth about the Father and how the Father relates to all created beings? Is Jesus Christ actually God or is He a created being? Does Jesus have both the inherent authority and the received authority from the acknowledged Supreme Authority of all the universe to govern and determine and expose the real truth about both God and about sin and all those who have chosen to embrace the lies of sin?

I would like to go ahead and quote the devotional for today that I mentioned at the beginning, but now from the context that I have just laid out here (with added emphasis of my own) and then make a few final comments.

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. 1 Peter 4:17.

The Christian worker must never forget that salvation is God’s thought, not man’s; therefore it is an unfathomable abyss. Salvation is the great thought of God, not an experience. Experience is only a gateway by which salvation comes into our conscious life. Never preach the experience; preach the great thought of God behind. When we preach we are not proclaiming how man can be saved from hell and be made moral and pure; we are conveying good news about God.

In the teachings of Jesus Christ the element of judgment is always brought out, it is the sign of God’s love. Never sympathize with a soul who finds it difficult to get to God; God is not to blame. It is not for us to find out the reason why it is difficult, but so to present the truth of God that the Spirit of God will show what is wrong. The great sterling test in preaching is that it brings everyone to judgment. The Spirit of God locates each one to himself.

If Jesus ever gave us a command He could not enable us to fulfill, He would be a liar; and if we make our inability a barrier to obedience, it means we are telling God there is something He has not taken into account. Every element of self-reliance must be slain by the power of God. Complete weakness and dependence will always be the occasion for the Spirit of God to manifest His power.

Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. May 5

This affirms what I have been discovering for a number of years now – that the real truth about God and His potent love is the real issue of judgment. True judgment is not primarily a rehashing of all of our sins and faults or our failures to ask for forgiveness. Judgment and salvation is mainly about revealing the actual truth, both about God and His perfect, unconditional love for His created beings and about the fact that Jesus Christ is actually and incontrovertibly one and the same as God the Father and as such is a perfect expression of the character of the Father.

From this perspective of the true meaning of judgment, it suddenly crashed into my awareness this morning what this text really means that was quoted at the beginning of this devotional. Of course judgment needs to begin at the house of God! And it will begin with the people who finally allow God to reveal Himself through them by dwelling in them. Where else should the revelation of the real truth about God – the true meaning of judgment – begin? God intends to reveal to the entire universe the true nature of His own character by reproducing His perfect love and what He looks like under the pressure of surrounding sin and antagonism, first in the life of Jesus when He lived here on earth and finally in the lives of a special group of people in the last days of this earth's history.

Judgment – the revelation of what God is really like and how He relates to others – will happen when those who claim to be filled with His Spirit begin to allow that Spirit to totally control everything they do and say and think and feel. When that begins to happen they will collectively start to live the life that Jesus lived and will fulfill the prophetic words of Jesus Himself, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. (John 14:12)

Father, prepare and shape and transform my own heart and life to be part of that group of people who will expose and bring about real judgment – the revelation of Your perfect character and love to the world in the face of any and all opposition and resistance. Cleanse me of all of my resistance to You and demonstrate the incredible power of Your grace to change this sinner into a saint – all for Your name and for Your reputation's sake, Amen.

Believing the Father

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (John 5:24)

I just noticed this unique statement about believing in the Father as well as the Son. Maybe it is not so unique because it is mentioned elsewhere, but it is not emphasized to the degree that maybe it should be in the thinking of many people.

We tend to put more weight on believing in Jesus than we do in finding out the real truth about the Father. And I suspect that this just might be the way Satan wants it to be. For considering many of the horrendous ideas about God that most people have mingled all through their thinking and belief systems, most people's beliefs about Jesus look very good by comparison.

But this is precisely one of the reasons why Jesus came to this earth in the first place – to reveal the truth about the heart of the Father and that the Head of the Godhead, the Father of all light and truth and goodness and love is no different in the slightest iota from how Jesus feels toward us or how He relates to sinners.

Most Christians have far less trouble believing that Jesus is good and that He cares about them than they do in believing that God the Father is equally loving and caring and kind and gracious. Satan has effectively managed to segregate our ideas about Jesus and the Father to a great extent, and much of that has taken place at a deeper level than most of us are even conscious of to a great degree. This has been Satan's scheme from the very beginning, to cause a rift in the thinking of intelligent beings all throughout the universe, to insinuate doubt and drive a wedge between our ideas of God the Father and Christ the Son in the minds of all. He has also led us to believe that justice and mercy are opposites, that grace and kindness are somehow incompatible with straight truth and righteousness and fairness.

Satan has largely accomplished, through the vehicle of religion in particular, that which he started out to do since the very inception of sin in his mind – to cause doubts in the minds of as many as possible as to the real truths about reality, either in our ideas of the character and authority of the Son of God or through false beliefs about the character and intentions of God the Father.

In heaven where it was much more obvious that the Father was all-powerful and the supreme ruler of the universe, Lucifer focused on discrediting the reputation of the Son and managed to effectively convince one third of the angels of God to embrace his assertions about the illegitimacy of the Son. In many ways he has continued that campaign on earth, but in some ways he has tweaked it to include many more lying reports about the Father. Because it is not nearly so clear to humans that God the Father is the one in ultimate control over the entire universe as it is to angels, Satan has been able to use myriads of lies to confuse and darken the hearts of most people to cause them to view the great God of the universe as one who is bent on harming them every chance He can get.

I firmly believe that this discourse by Jesus is a direct attack against the fundamental lies of Satan that were initiated from the very beginning of the controversy between Himself and Lucifer – Satan's original name in heaven. One of the main assertions that Lucifer had put forward was that Christ did not have the same authority as the Father God and thus he implied that it was Christ that was trying to exalt Himself to be equal with God, not Lucifer as is revealed in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

Satan the accuser has long sought to project his own evil characteristics onto the reputation of God or of Christ all throughout the long history of rebellion. He managed to convince nearly half of the angels in heaven of his slanderous assertions and enticed them to join him in his attempt to overthrow the kingdom of Christ in heaven. Then later on this earth he continued his massive campaign of deception quite effectively by inducing Adam and Eve to buy into his lying assertions about God's intentions towards them and deceived them into turning over their authority to him along with that of every succeeding human being ever to be born on this planet.

As a result of that coup d'etat by Satan and his subsequent claim to legitimate authority over this earth, the controversy was ramped up to a new level and God introduced an even broader plan to counteract the counterfeit system of governance that Satan insisted was better than government under the Son. The foundation of Satan's government is selfishness itself and Satan managed to inculcate this principle of selfishness into the very fabric of every human being born with the embedded lies of evil which were introduced into our gene pool by the introduction of sin. God had to come back with a plan to salvage the human race in such a way as to not legitimize any of the lies of Satan about God but to vindicate the real truth about the character of God that had come into serious question in the minds of many.

So what is becoming evident to me in this verse is the point that Jesus and God the Father have no difference whatsoever between them as far as their attitude and feelings and intentions toward their created children. Satan has long sought to promote his lies that somehow there were differences between the Father and the Son, and he has sought to insinuate those claims from every angle possible. But Jesus and the Father both have been working quietly behind the scenes and at other times rather openly to discredit the lies of Satan and to undo the enormous damage caused by sin all throughout the universe and especially here on this dark planet.

The jealousy and animosity of Lucifer – now known as Satan – has only amplified throughout the succeeding ages since he first began his rebellion in heaven. Most of his animosity and hatred has been directed toward the Son of God and he has done everything he can think of to discredit the authority of the Son. But instead of resorting to the methods of Satan by indulging in force or self-vindication or any arbitrary means to suppress the rebellion and the lies being spread about them, the Father and the Son have chosen the long, painful but more perfect path of allowing this rebellion to play out to its fullest extent possible; they have chosen to let evil be exposed in the face of perfect, selfless love and to allow all involved to clearly see the stark difference between living life based on selfishness compared to life based on perfect love.