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The Daily Word of Righteousness
The Rest of God, #16
We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. (II Corinthians 5:8)
Christians often refer to Second Corinthians 5:8, claiming that when we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord. This assuredly was true for the Apostle Paul, but one wonders if such is the case with believers who are not following the Lord as Paul did.
Notice, in the following verse, that the emphasis is not on going to Heaven but on the Day of the Lord:
To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (I Corinthians 5:5)
We may have heard the above verse taught as meaning that if this Corinthian believer suffered enough his spirit might go to Heaven when he died. Perhaps we never have heard it taught as it is written—that the man's spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
The apostolic message had to do with the Day of the Lord, with the resurrection from the dead, with the coming of Christ in His Kingdom. If the reader will go back and study the writings of the New Testament, keeping in mind our statement that the Christian land of promise is not Heaven, he may be surprised by what he finds.
But what about the Lord's coming and the resurrection from the dead? Don't we go to Heaven when we are raised from the dead? And how about when we are caught up to meet Christ in the air? Don't we go to Heaven then? (We do not use the term "rapture." The "rapture" of the saints before the end-time tribulation is an unscriptural "revelation" brought forth in the last century. We do not give credence to it because it is unscriptural and destructive of the teaching of the Kingdom of God.)
Think for a moment. Is the purpose of the resurrection from the dead that we may enter the spiritual Heaven? Heaven is for the spirits, not the bodies, of people. The redeemed go to Heaven when they die—there to be with the Lord Jesus. But in the Day of Resurrection, the time of the ascension to meet the Lord in the air, they will return to the earth.
The purpose of the resurrection from the dead is to reunite us with our bodies so we are able to resume life on the earth. The resurrection is an act of redemption whose purpose is to restore what was lost in Eden. The ascension of the saints after the resurrection is that they may meet the Lord in the air and be with Him as He installs His Kingdom on the earth.
The purpose of the Day of the Lord is to establish the reign of Christ over the nations of the earth.
When the Lord returns He will receive His inheritance, which is the nations and the farthest reaches of the earth.
The Lord Jesus Christ (and His Body) is the Servant of the Lord, of the forty-second chapter of the Book of Isaiah. Christ will return to the earth in order to restore and glorify Israel and to establish justice among the nations of the earth.
To be continued.