My Thursday Night Thoughts

I view the 1,000 years in Rev. 20 in a symbolic way, as representing a long period of time - our day and age - from 70 AD to His second coming. Satan is bound in that the crucifixion dealt a death blow to him where he could no longer deceive the nations (Gentiles) from coming into the fold. The first resurrection is all believers who have died and live bodilessly with Christ during this age. The rest of the dead (the lost) come to life bodily at the resurrections.

When people have asked me, “Why do you interpret the ‘thousand years’ in Revelation 20 in a figurative way?” I say, Because the only place in the Bible where it is mentioned is in the most figurative book of the Bible; and to get the resurrections to work with other books of the Bible that are not figurative, it must be taken figuratively. Christ spoke of the resurrections as happening together, not separated by a thousand years (John 5:28, 29).

A Christian man once told me that he didn’t believe in predestination. I thought to myself, the very word is used three times in the Bible (Rom. 8:30; Eph. 1:5, 11). So he obviously meant to say, that he didn’t believe in how some people interpret it. But how else can the word be interpreted? The word means: to mark out or determine beforehand. And it is used in the context of “whom he did foreknow” and “before the foundation of the world.”

How was the atonement of Christ applied to believers? It is because of substitution that justification occurs by faith. Since saving faith and justification are blood bought accomplishments of the cross to take care of unbelief and unrighteousness (by imputation, not infusion); the “application” of this substitutionary work occurs at conversion. In eternity it was planned, at Calvary it was accomplished, and at conversion it was applied.

By now I have done enough blogs where people who know me (but really don’t know me) are seeing for the first time that there is a lot more to me then they thought. These are the kinds of things I like to talk about with my friends. You would think I could have these kinds of conversations with members of a good local church. But sadly, this isn’t the heart beat of the average Christian. Instead: the weather, the ball game, etc.

I think every believer has a certain vulnerability towards a particular sin. With some it might be gluttony. With others it could be lust or greed. Everyone has a weak spot. And a lot of times these sins are done in secret, where we fool ourselves into thinking God will look lightly on them. But they are grievous to Him and borne with a heavy price. It is when these sins become visible, where others see it, that it hurts our testimony. Oh, the pain of a believers sin!

A subject which I have been much intrigued with, is trying to find a right balance between novelty and tradition. What I mean by tradition, is what respected Bible teachers have taught in the past. We benefit from those of the past whom the Holy Spirit has taught also.  Yet on the other hand, they didn’t learn everything there is to know. So we venture into novelty, with the fear that we could enter into heresy, knowing the Scriptures are our final determinator. 

To sum up what I have been talking about, some may accuse me of relating a story to what is real. I mean, could we be compared to fictitious characters in a story book to God’s reality? It would depend upon how we define reality. Everything in our universe had a beginning and is dependent upon God for its existence. God is the only thing that never had a beginning and depends on nothing for His existence. So He is a reality far beyond us. In a sense, He is the only REAL thing there is!

Is it a sin for God to purpose sin? God hasn’t broken any of His laws, nor can He be judged by His creation. The facts are, that things must occur according to His foreknowledge; and His foreknowledge originated within Himself. He certainly didn’t get His knowledge from His creation. But in order for a Divine Author to be considered wrong, there would have to be a greater law giver than Himself. Since there isn’t. Then it isn’t a sin.

God has full knowledge of what evil is. Does this make Him evil? No! His self-originated foreknowledge mandates evil to play a huge part in the outworking of future foreknown things. By an act of His will He has allowed every thought of His foreknowledge to take place. It is one thing to say that an author has evil characters within his good book; but quite another thing to say that an author wrote a bad book.

“For God is not the author of confusion...” “... neither tempteth he any man” 1 Cor. 14:33; Jam. 1:13). Here God isn’t the author of confusion, nor tempteth He any man WITHIN HIS CREATION. But when I use “author” to speak of God outside creation, I have a different usage in mind than how it is used in these verses. An author isn’t evil by writing evil into his story of what must be, but would be evil by writing himself in as being evil to the characters within his story.

What God is, and how we perceive Him to be, are two different things. We all have limited and distorted understandings of Him. The errors will lie in human imbalances of love without hate, mercy without justice - fairness, only from our perspectives. Some will reject a wrathful God; or a God that allows horrible things to happen; or a God who fashions all things. We will no doubt need a glorified body to see Him as He is.