| E-MAIL SERVICE | Sign me up to receive the daily Word of Righteousness free via my E-mail address! ( ONLY AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH ) | |
| ARCHIVES | I want to check out the daily Words of Righteousness for any of the last fourteen days or from previous weeks. ( ENGLISH ONLY ) | |
| FEEDBACK | I have a question or comment about today's Word of Righteousness. ( ENGLISH AND SPANISH ONLY ) | |
| BOOK LIST | I would like to see the complete book list of the Words of Righteousness author Robert B. Thompson. (SOME SPANISH TITLES AVAILABLE ) |
The Daily Word of Righteousness
The Kingdom of Heaven, #2
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: (Hebrews 8:10)
Here is a concept that we think deserves the careful consideration of every believer in Christ.
It has been customary to view the Christian redemption as primarily forgiving people and transporting them to Paradise in the spirit realm. But this viewpoint is neither scriptural nor logical.
It is not scriptural because the new covenant is the writing of God's laws in our minds and in our hearts, not a transporting of God's Israel to Paradise in the spirit realm.
It is not logical because there is no reason to believe the passing of a personality from the physical realm into the spirit realm alters that personality.
The popular assumption that when we die and pass into the spirit realm we no longer will have a tendency toward sin and rebellion, that we will become ardent lovers of Christ, is not based on any passage of Scripture. It is important to remember that sin and rebellion began in the spirit realm, not in the physical realm. Physical death is the enemy of the saint, not the means of his perfecting (I Corinthians 15:26).
If the Kingdom of Heaven primarily is a state of being based on relationships, and if this state of being and set of relationships is impossible while we are walking in sin and rebellion, and if dying and passing into the spirit realm does not free us from sin and rebellion, then our physical death does not bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven.
To forgive a human being is a wonderful expression of God's merciful Nature. The Kingdom call goes forth and all kinds of people are brought in. But at the end of this present age the angels will cast out of the Kingdom all who have not entered the state of being, the kind of relationships with God and with people, that are of the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; (Matthew 13:41)
The Kingdom of Heaven is a new creation, and those who do not become a new creation in Christ are not of the Kingdom and cannot remain in the Kingdom. It is as straightforward as that. They simply are not dressed for the wedding!
If such is the case (and there is an abundance of Scripture in its support), the goal of the Christian redemption is not that we be forgiven and permitted to enter the spirit Paradise in an untransformed moral state. God will not allow any creature to bring sin and rebellion into His Presence.
The Kingdom of Heaven, the new Jerusalem, is a walled city. All that people on the outside can see is a massive wall. No sin or rebellion of any kind can pass inside the wall of the new Jerusalem, not by grace nor by mercy nor by any other means.
There is no Kingdom of Heaven apart from Christ-filled righteous people who, through the virtue of Christ, have overcome the world, self-seeking, and the lusts of the flesh.
To be continued.