If the only persons who are saved are the members of the Christian Church, God's elect have no one to love, to serve, to teach, to bring into the Presence of God. Then the holy city, the new Jerusalem, would be alone on the new earth. She would have no one to illumine. She would have been trained and perfected in holiness to live to herself.

If the only persons who are to be saved are the members of the Christian Church, then God has called us out from the world to be saved from wrath, not to bless mankind. The mass of earth's peoples would then be doomed to spend eternity in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur while the Church spends eternity reveling in its blessings. Of what use would the lessons we learn in this life be in such a situation?

Even in this life we soon come to observe that the church that lives to itself becomes a vipers' pit of gossip, criticism, and self-seeking. It is only as the love of God flows through the church to the peoples of the earth that there is life, freshness, love, joy, and righteousness. How much more will this be true throughout eternity?

We were not predestined to go to Heaven and live in mansions. We were predestined to glorify God in Christ in the sight of all God's creatures (Romans 8:29). We have been called to participate in the first resurrection from among the dead, that is, in the parousia. In order to participate in the first resurrection we must attain the inner, spiritual resurrection. The glorifying of the mortal body comes after, not before, the spiritual personality has attained eternal life (I Corinthians 15:26).

When we are baptized in water we are stating to Heaven and earth that our first personality has been assigned to the cross with the Lord Jesus Christ and our new, spiritual personality has been raised with Jesus. We have entered into His death and into His resurrection.

We take these two positions by faith. It is to this dual redemption that God has called us. God considers we have been crucified with Christ and have been raised with and in Christ. We are to count our crucifixion and resurrection as accomplished facts.

The death and resurrection are true in the visionary, prophetic sense when we are baptized in water; however, they have not yet been worked out in our experience. God refers to the things that do not exist as though they already were an established fact. This is how God works.

How do we respond to our two positions when they are not true in our time-bound experience on the earth but indeed are true in the timeless vision of God?

We respond by holding fast in faith and confidence to what God has declared to be true of us. We do not claim we already have been crucified and resurrected, falling into the error of saying a thing is so because the Scripture says it is so before we have experienced the Divine program. This would be to sit in Egypt and state we are in Canaan because God has promised we shall inherit Canaan.

To be continued.