Physical Death Is the Last Enemy To Be Overcome, the Other Enemies of Our Soul Must Be Overcome First.

We Christians hope for the resurrection and glorification of our body when the Lord appears. However, physical death is the last enemy to be abolished. Every other enemy must be overcome first.

We are given to eat of the tree of life only as we overcome sin through the Lord Jesus Christ. God will have no immortal sinners on His hands. God introduced physical death so He would not have to assign Adam and Eve to eternal punishment, like a fallen angel.

It is God's love that made the material creation subject to corruption, decay, physical death, in the hope He one day could set it free by giving it His Holy Spirit in abundance. But such liberty cannot take place until first the sons of God have gone through the earth as an army and have judged and removed sin from the creation.

We Will Be Required to Fight If We Are to Enter the Future Salvation.

For hundreds of years Canaan, the land of promise, has been viewed as a type, or symbol, of Heaven. We have thought that to go across Jordan was to die physically and Heaven was the land of promise. Hymns have been composed with this in mind.

However, Canaan is not a type of Heaven but of the rest of God, that is, of our inheritance in the Lord. Our inheritance includes rest in the Father's will, fellowship with God and Christ, and the nations and farthest reaches of the earth. All these are the inheritance of Christ and His coheirs.

Unfortunately our land of promise, our own personality and the earth and its peoples, are bound by Satan.

We are going to have to fight our way into the land just as Israel did.

God did all the fighting when Israel left Egypt. God did not do all the fighting (although He helped) when Israel entered Canaan.

Jesus Christ did all the fighting on the cross of Calvary to redeem us from the guilt of sin. But we, as the Lord leads us, are going to have to fight every inch of the way in order to possess our land of promise.

Our enemy is formidable, an experienced warrior, wise, and utterly determined not to be dispossessed.

If you think you are going to flop into your inheritance by claiming "grace" you do not understand the Kingdom of God. You are going to have to fight your way in. The Kingdom cannot be taken by the fearful, disobedient, and unbelieving.

Christ will divide the spoil with the strong.

We Must Accept the Program of Judgment and Deliverance When It Is Presented to Us.

Perhaps the reader will agree with us that God's Word teaches that in the last days sin will be removed from the Kingdom, and finally from the nations of the earth. The sin will be judged and cast out by the power of the Spirit of God. The role of the human being in this process is to receive Christ and then cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the work of redemption.

What may trouble the reader is when and where all this is to take place.

As to where, it seems evident that much of it will take place on the earth. We have suggested also that in some manner of which we cannot be certain, judgment and deliverance will take place in the spirit realm.

To be continued.