The theme of this article is the oneness of the family of God, the elect of God, in the spirit realm and on the earth. At any given time the great majority of the saints are deceased and living in the spirit realm. Only a small fraction of the Church is on the earth. It is my point of view that we all are growing together, that what we are learning and what is happening to us is also true of them. To what extent this is true we will understand more clearly after we leave our body and enter the spirit realm.

I do not believe and I resist the idea that Christianity is primarily a set of beliefs. I endeavor in all that I preach and write to include only that which has a direct, practical bearing on the behavior of the believer. I would not speculate on the oneness of the dead and living saints unless I believed it had a direct, practical bearing on the behavior of the believers.

What possible effect would the concept of the oneness of the Church have on our daily behavior? I believe it will alter our behavior if we gain the impression that our death solves nothing as far as our relationship to Jesus Christ is concerned. God is working to conform us to the image of His Son and to bring us into untroubled rest in Himself. I do not believe this work ceases when we die. How could it?

I think the majority of Evangelical believers are looking to death to solve their problem of learning to relate to Jesus Christ and the demands He makes on us. In America at least the believers are often spiritually lazy, careless as to their discipleship, bemused with the enticements of the American culture. They are oriented more toward Disneyland than they are the things above.

The American gospel is soft. The believers are unaware, to a great extent, of the hardness that is required of those who would meet the daily demands of Jesus Christ. They are not denying themselves, taking up their cross, and following Jesus.

The hope is that at any moment there will be a "rapture" in which these lovers of the flesh will be caught up in their infancy to Heaven where they will have fun forever in the great Disneyland in the sky. This prevailing concept is totally unscriptural. It shall not happen.

This is the practical import of what I am teaching. Death will work no change in your relationship to Jesus Christ. If you are a spiritual infant here, carelessly following the Lord afar off, after you die you will be a spiritual infant, carelessly following the Lord afar off.

We need to understand clearly that our life in the spirit world will be a continuation of our life here. No real change will occur because of our physical death. Why should it? The problem of sin originated in the spirit realm around the Throne of God. Why should our entrance into the spirit realm make us any more or less susceptible to sin and self-will?

Oh, but we will not have a physical body to war against us. No? I think we will have the sensations of our body to deal with, with all of its love of sin and the world. Do you remember that the rich man wanted Lazarus to put some water on his tongue?

To be continued.