A substantial portion of the texts of both the Old and New Testaments is an exhortation to righteous, holy, and obedient behavior. The New Testament passages that exhort us to holy living would be vain and misleading if upon the adoption of an attitude of reckoning, sin ceased to be an active force in the believer's life or God ceased regarding with concern the sin in His people.

If sin were not a problem with the saved peoples of the Christian churches, no doubt the letters of the Apostles would be quite different in content from what they are.

The fact is, a major part of the New Testament writings is devoted to exhorting the Christian people to overcome sin, to put sin from their lives because of and by means of their relationship with Christ. The penalty for not doing so is expressed as (spiritual) death—separation from Christ.

It appears, from what we can observe today, that a scriptural, workable, practical, effective process for the development of righteousness has not been widely understood nor used by the majority of the believers in Christ. By righteousness we mean doing the things pleasing to Christ, and not doing, in imagination, motive, word or deed, the things displeasing to Christ.

The things displeasing to Christ are the thoughts and actions of the flesh and of unclean spirits. We have not understood the provisions Christ has made for the development of righteous and holy behavior in us, and many have given up trying to overcome sin because of the seeming impossibility of doing so.

As we press forward through the last three feasts we will discover God indeed has included sufficient power and virtue in the Christian redemption to enable us to overcome the world, Satan, the lusts of our flesh, and our rebellious self-will and self-centeredness.

There are two aspects of the Day of the Lord, as far as the saints are concerned. The first aspect is the coming of the Lord to the individual saint in a personal fulfillment of the Blowing of Trumpets.

The second aspect is the appearing of the Lord in the clouds of heaven such that every eye can behold Him. According to our understanding of the Scriptures, there is no other coming.

The second aspect is fairly well understood by many Christians. The blessed hope of the Church is the appearing of Christ in the clouds of heaven to raise His victorious saints and witnesses from the bondage of physical death and to call them up to Himself in the sight of Antichrist and the nations of the earth.

The first aspect, that of the personal coming of the Lord to cleanse His saints, is not nearly as well known. The personal coming is, as we have stated, an individual experience that follows Pentecost.

The blowing of the trumpet announces the coming of the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. We lift up the everlasting doors of our heart and the Man of War enters and deals with His enemies:

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. (Psalms 24:7,8)

To be continued.