Of one thing we are certain. We shall stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and receive what we have practiced in our body whether it be good or bad.

While I was teaching the other night the Lord became very real to me. I was stressing the fact that in the Day of Resurrection we are going to face the consequences of the choices we have made; the manner in which we have lived our life as a Christian.

He seemed to say: "This is something My people need to know." I can't state the Lord was sorrowful, although that may have been part of it. Rather it was a kind of quiet insistence. Because the Lord was so real at that moment I feel certain that in the days to come He will see to it that His Body worldwide will be made aware of the fact that today we are building the structure with which we shall be clothed in the Day of the Lord.

We Christians are not to live to ourselves.

We are to live always and only to the Lord Jesus. He receives us in our foolishness, lust, and disobedience. He forgives our sins. But it is not possible that foolishness, lust, and disobedience can remain in His Body. Therefore day by day Christ changes us. He purges out from Himself, out from the members of His own Body, the foolishness, lust, and disobedience that are present when He receives us. He is transforming His Body by means of His own Divine virtue.

Such purging and renewal is redemption. This is the coming to us of the Kingdom of God. Salvation has little to do with going from earth to Heaven but a great deal to do with the coming of Heaven to earth.

The Christian redemption is the transforming of what we are, the cleansing of our personality from the love of the world, the love of sin, and the love and worship of our own self. It is not a preserving of what we are but a changing of what we are.

Are we being changed in order that we may be able to live acceptably in Heaven? No, we are being changed that we may live acceptably in Christ wherever we are.

The Divine redemption does not consist of the flight to Heaven of unchanged believers but of the entrance of the Life of God into the believers, changing their behavior so the will of God is done in the earth as it is in Heaven. The goal is fellowship with God wherever we are.

What does it mean to be "in Christ"?

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, . . . (II Corinthians 5:17,18)

The Christian salvation results in a new creation. That which is mortal and corruptible passes away. That which is of Christ enters in and grows to maturity. The new creation inherits all the good of the heavens and all the good of the earth. The new creation is an eternal part of God through Christ. This is the Kingdom of God. (from Change)