From the original rebellion in Heaven to the fiery judgment on Gog and Magog, the total guilt, tendency, and effects of sin will have been purged from the earth. All evildoers will have found their place in the Lake of Fire. The family of God will be so united in the fullness of His Glory that resistance to His will shall be unthinkable. Every creature, circumstance, and thing in the creation will be radiant with the Personality of Christ.

The concept of a priest is that of a person who represents God to people and people to God. We must have considerable experience as a believer before we can bring God's grace and Glory to another person. When we attempt to minister to another human being in the time of his or her deepest need we are as a "tinkling cymbal" if we never have had fiery trials ourselves.

When Paul exhorts us in Philippians to "rejoice in the Lord alway," and we understand he was a prisoner in Rome and being closely guarded at the time, we can take heart in the hour of our tribulation.

But our real problem as a priest arises when we approach God in order to render service directly to Him. Our God is so holy that the efforts of humans to please Him, no matter how sincere and conscientious, are often not perfectly acceptable.

We are so inadequate that we can only throw ourselves on His mercy. Thousands of years of travail have been necessary in order to bring forth God's kings and priests, the Body of Christ, the Temple of God, the Wife of the Lamb.

We would have no hope at all of becoming an eternal servant of the Lord if it were not for the redeeming blood of Christ. Through Him, and only through Him, we have boldness to enter the Presence of God and to present our needs before the Throne. Our access to the Throne in prayer, through the blood of Christ, marks the beginning of our acquaintance with the Father (Hebrews 4:16).

Calvary provided us with the price of our redemption, and with the living Substance of God that we must eat continually if we are to be created a servant of the Lord. The Substance of Christ is the Divine gold that must be refined in us by endless testing, night and day, day after day, year after year.

The ministries and gifts of the Church groan in travail as the burden of the Lord comes upon us, transforming us, guiding us, rebuking us. All the fiery furnaces of affliction and the desolate wildernesses to which we are subjected are the crucible in which the gold of God is refined.

Meanwhile, the Seed of Christ is growing in our heart as the Holy Spirit is invading and conquering the life processes in us. We are being created in the image of Christ. There is not one element of our being that is not of the greatest interest to God and that will not be subjected to the most intense scrutiny of the Godhead. We are being made the eternal priests of God Almighty and must be able to dwell in the consuming Fire forever.

To be continued.