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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Two Parables, #11
Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the LORD? That day will be darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness? (Amos 5:18-20—NIV)
The Jews are looking for Christ; but when Christ comes it will be Jesus and the victorious saints with Him. How will they respond to this surprise?
The Gentile Christians are looking for the same Christ, the same Messiah as the Jews, supposing He will carry them to Heaven to lay on their couch in a glorious mansion. How will they respond to their being unable to rise to meet Him in the air? How will they react when He stands in front of them and demands an accounting of their use of His gifts?
In Matthew we find these significant words:
Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather. (Matthew 24:28—NIV)
The carcass is the slain Lamb who will appear in the sky above us. The vultures are God's eagles who live by the body and blood of Christ.
The body and blood of Jesus Christ are the tree of life. They are the Divine Life by which the elect live. Those who truly belong to the Lord Jesus live by His body and blood just as Jesus lives by the Father.
To live by the body and blood of Christ is to look to Him for every decision we are faced with. Each day we have the choice of making decisions according to our flesh and carnal mind, or making decisions by looking to the Lord.
So much of life consists of decisions! We may be in the habit of going to church on Sunday and then making our decisions during the week according to our own feelings and desires.
But the true saint looks to the Lord constantly in every matter, great and small. He does not live according to his own thoughts. More and more as time goes by he thinks, speaks, and acts according to the Lord's will. Each day he presses further into the Lord. As he overcomes the forces that would pressure him to think and act according to the world, or the lusts of his flesh, or his self-will, he is given through the Holy Spirit the very Life of Jesus Christ to sustain him. This is how he lives—by the body and blood of Jesus, not merely in his physical body, brain, and soul.
When the Lord comes, Life will call to life. The slain Lamb will call to those who live by eating Him and drinking His blood. It is the Life of Jesus in them that will lift them to Him in the sky.
Those who are Christian in name, who have taken the "four steps of salvation," who attend church, who perhaps speak in tongues and are active in the various ministries of the church, but who do all this in terms of their own fleshly life and self-will, do not have this Life of Christ within them sufficiently to draw them from the surface of the earth.
To be continued.