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Apostolic Foundations - Apostolic Perception: Eternity Therefore, we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18) There is a danger that we will dismiss this as a kind of biblical rhetoric, a kind of fanciful manner of speaking peculiar to Paul, and nod with a kind of acquiescence that it has a sweet sound to it, but completely lose what is being said. The foundation of the apostolic mindset, however, is a true apprehension of the things that are eternal, not in anticipation of a future enjoyment, but of a present appropriation, and that is what makes the church peculiar. We have no idea how important the subject of eternity is. To lose the meaning of this word is to lose everything, and it will condemn the church to being mundane and ordinary, institutional and mechanical, a weariness of the flesh, instead of a joy and a power. In other words, the absence of eternity in the consciousness of the church disfigures and nullifies it as being church. We are going to have to contend for this reality, because the world is not hospitable to it. Paul not only found this eternal dimension, he also dwelt in it, and yet that did not condemn him to irrelevancy. On the contrary, it made him all the more relevant, and so will it make us also. In the above portion of Scripture, we find two references to the word eternal. Eternity was something that had become so powerfully real to Paul that it affected his present considerations, and had practical consequences for his living. "This momentary, light affliction" has got to be a statement of a man who has either tossed every kind of reasonable criterion and rationality to the wind (Paul was a man who had been shipwrecked, beaten with rods, left for dead, stoned, reviled, persecuted and defamed, etc.), or he has some kind of standard and measure of things of which we know nothing. Apostolic seeing perceives things that others do not see, and measures by a measure that others do not understand. It sees redemptive suffering in this lifetime as being merely momentary and light. The church must come to this seeing, for this seeing is apostolic reality and truth. What Paul is, is what the church must be. Paul never did dwell on his sufferings in some kind of morbid way, but dismisses them as being momentary and light, and he can do so only on the basis of one thing, namely, the ability to glimpse the eternal weight of glory. This is not a luxury that we can consider ‘having’ or ‘not having.’ This is an utter, apostolic requirement for anyone who has serious intentions with God. The fact that we have not yet experienced suffering indicates where we have been until now, namely, exercising some lesser kind of faith¾if it is a faith at all¾that has not excited the world’s hatred against us. I am talking about the most practical ‘nuts and bolts’ reality that will keep us as an apostolic people—for surely we are on a collision course with suffering. If we will not see the eternal and the eternal weight of glory, then what is a light affliction shall be for us great. What is momentary shall be long and continuous. Everything depends on our actual knowing of the eternal. We may know that eternity is there, and distant, and something that we will obtain after this life, but we have not brought the eternal dimension into the present now, and for that reason we have grievously erred, and to that degree we are not apostolic. Seeing the Unseen God’s provision for bearing the things that must come in this life is looking upon the things that are eternal, unseen and invisible. The issue of seeing is crucial, and I know it is going to take a conscious and concerted effort to bring us to this kind of seeing. Everything presently conspires against it. The world wants to fill our eyes with all of its voluptuous images. Everything is clamoring for the attention of our senses. We are continually bidden to look down upon things. It takes an apostolic determination to break that, to close out the things that are visible, and to focus and dwell upon the things that are invisible and eternal. It will produce a remarkable thing in us, namely, a growing indifference to the things that are of the world. Paul did not look at the things that are seen. He wrested his eyeballs away from the visible, sensual things that would have been a gratification for his soulish, physical life. By his insistence not to see the things that were visible, God gave him to see the things that were invisible and eternal. To be called to this kind of seeing is another name for suffering. The things that are seen give us assurance and confidence, but to turn our eyes onto the things that are invisible and eternal will produce a wrench in us. It is going to require an exertion and a moral energy to divert our eyes from the sensual things that are ever and always before us, and to learn to direct and fix them on the things which are invisible and eternal. To make that the basis for all our seeing is at the heart of apostolic! Do we see this world as under judgment? Do we see it as soon to pass away? Or are we overwhelmed and intimidated by the things that are visible? If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4) We need to adjust our whole mind-set and attitude. We may ‘believe’ in eternity, but we have agreed with the world that it does not become relevant until after this life. In other words, it becomes applicable when this life has ended. To have this attitude guarantees we will not be found disagreeable or controversial to the world. The world wants to relegate eternity to a future consideration that has no present application. Eternity is, however, not another kind of time frame; it is not merely endless time or a quantitative thing, but profoundly and foremost a qualitative thing. That qualitative thing is available now¾ it is eternity now. When we begin to see all our moments set in the context of eternity, we will bring to those moments an intensity, a care, a solemnity, and a seriousness that we would not otherwise have had. Heaven is reality, and it is coming down to earth. It is that new City whose Founder and Builder is God, and God has called us to the apostolic task of bringing eternity into time. The Eternal Mindset The book of Revelation begins by John speaking of the things that shall shortly come to pass. There is a certain immediacy and urgency in his apostolic writing, and yet it is almost two thousand years later, and it has not yet happened. He was not deceived, but rather writing and speaking from a mindset that God intends characteristically to be true of saints in every generation. We need to develop a sense for the things that are ‘at hand,’ the things that are imminent and about to come into time, for example, the appearing of the Lord, the establishing of His millennial Kingdom, and the apocalyptic conclusion of the ages. We have not impressed the world or communicated to it the sense of the urgency of that which lies beyond death. In fact, we cannot begin to do it if we ourselves are not presently in that dimension. We can, therefore, only communicate eternity as a technical and theological truth. We know that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one and the father of lies. Lying is everywhere about us and in the very air that we breathe, and the greatest lie is the renunciation and rejection of eternity. Even the thought of it does not come into the consciousness of men. Men are living their lives in the world as if this life is the total purpose for being, and we have allowed them to get away with it. If we as believers subscribe to eternity by giving assent to the doctrine of eternity, the reality of which comes to us after death, then we have given ourselves over to the lie. Church is church when its very existence, presence and character are a refutation of the lie, because it shows that the issue of eternity and the things that are ultimate and that pertain to God are in fact the true questions of life. Church is church when it lives as if it believes that. We need to come to the world as people who are presently in that dimension, where the things that are eternal are brought into our daily, mundane and ordinary considerations. When we do, then those things no longer become mundane and ordinary. Everything becomes charged with that which is eternal. When you stand before a people, it is not just a delivery of a message, but an issue of life or death. Things are hanging in the balance that will affect both time and eternity. The consequences, therefore, are momentous. Everything is charged with a meaning beyond that which one can define. Eternity has been brought into the now, and it is the whole dimension in which God Himself dwells. That is why Paul can speak about the eternal weight of glory, because that is where the realm of glory is to be glimpsed and sensed. An Apostolic Distinctive This is intrinsic to that which is apostolic, and this is one of the ways to tell the true from the false. The false apostles give the correct statements, but lack the sense of the eternal in what they are about and communicate. They are men of time, and you do not get the sense of that which lies beyond time. They have not been in that realm, and so they cannot communicate it. It is not part of their conscious being. I do not think that the full understanding of eternity can be obtained in a day, but is rather something that is fashioned over a process of time. Paul is the quintessential apostle, and these are intrinsic and central elements of apostolicity¾the apostolic mind-set. It is going to take a willful and calculated chosen policy of beginning to turn our sight and attention from the things that are before us to the things that cannot be seen. We need to make the realm of the invisible and eternal our realm, and the foundation of all our being. It must become the normative condition for all of our seeing. When we find ourselves in a culture or society, how affected and impressed are we by it? Do we see beyond and into the eternal? That seeing changes everything. Paul is timeless, and when he said he was a citizen of heaven, it was not a little fortuitous, glib phrase, but a statement of fact. That is where he had his effectual being, and where we must have ours also. To be apostolic is to be heavenly, nothing more and nothing less. We are not to be the parrots of glib phrases that other men have spoken. It is going to take a calculated shifting from our whole sensual and earthly orbit to break the power of it, and to bring us into another dimension where the weight of glory is. Once there, we need to live and move and have our being in it. We will be another kind of people. We will not be the victims of sin—we cannot be. Those are the symptoms of the fact that we are in the wrong place. For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven … (2 Corinthians 5:1–2) Apostolic ‘knowing’ is something that is registered in our guts by which we long and groan. Do we so feel the weight of our mortality that our spirit yearns to be freed of this box and to come into what shall be the ultimate thing given by God, by which we shall be eternally clothed? Right now, so long as we must endure our mortal bodies, we endure them with groans, and not with hair blowers, pampering and perfuming, and not with fashions and fads. Our body is just a necessary contrivance and convenience that houses our spirit, but we groan so long as we are boxed in, waiting to be clothed with that which is eternal. This is ultimate sanity, and we need to come into it. I am not disparaging the body¾Paul does not either, but there is something that is expressed here as a longing and groan that is at the heart of apostolic. It can only be expressed by one who has crossed that threshold and who is in the eternal realm—and knows it. We are far too much at home in the body. We are too much body conscious—how we appear, how we clothe it, how we feed it, how it looks—and do not realize to what degree body consciousness robs us from true reality in God. The whole world is calculated to conform us to its values. So long as we are in the realm that is temporal and earthly, we shall be its victims. If we only gaze at the things that are seen, and do not fix our eyes on the things that are invisible and eternal, we shall be swept into things that pertain to fashion and fads. If we dress ourselves in the fashionable, impressive and colorful, we have a body consciousness. No one will ever fault us, but it will rob us of a consciousness of God in the realm that is eternal. To be absent from the body, even in our attention and consciousness, to that degree, is to be present with the Lord. It is an apostolic principle against which the world is fighting like a mad dog to keep us from. Strangers in the World To live, move and have our effectual being in eternity will make us become strange and somewhat peculiar to all those who are outside of us. We are somehow continually looking upward, seeing things that do not occupy their attention. We will find ourselves becoming increasingly ‘pilgrims’ and ‘sojourners’ in the world, looking for a City not made with hands. This is not biblical poetry, but the normative intention of God for all true saints and foundational to the faith. We are those who are always looking for something that is not in view, but our very anticipation of it actually brings it to pass. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! (2 Peter 3:11–12) The ‘Day of God’ or the ‘Day of the Lord’s appearing’ is not a fixed chronological event. It does not take place of itself independent of our condition, but rather it is our very condition that brings Him. We can hasten the Day of the Lord’s appearing by being the kind of people we ought to be, that is to say, looking for and hastening the coming of the Day of God. This is not some esoteric subject, but utter reality. The issue of eternity is the issue of His coming, and the establishment of His Kingdom. When Paul spoke to the Greek philosophers about a God who has appointed a Day in which He shall judge all nations by Him whom He has raised from the dead, it was as natural to him as breathing. He was not at all embarrassed to step from philosophy to theology in the same breath. For Paul it was not a matter of going from the secular to the sacred. It was all sacred, all eternal, all heavenly, and all real: a Day of Judgment and God as Judge. They were not just religious thoughts, but the very foundations of all reality. Paul dwelt in this eternal dimension, and brought it to bear on all of his earthly considerations. Eternity is the issue of Heaven or Hell, and we are going to be remarkably ill equipped to speak of either unless the consciousness of eternity affects our every waking hour. We need to squint our eyes just a little in order to sense the massive deception in which the whole world is lying. I see it especially in my own Jewish people. They are brilliantly intellectual, remarkable in their careers and professions, from physics to computers, sociologists, historians, businessmen, financiers; but they are completely mindless with regard to eternity. It is a category that has no weight for them. It is a vapor, an idle thing, but Paul let the philosophers of Greece know that the whole purpose of human existence is to seek after God. It sounds so embarrassing, so simplistic and intellectually dull, yet it is the very purpose for all of our being. We are to establish in this lifetime a relationship with God that will affect all eternity. The Apostolic Task Why do we not speak with that same simplicity, that same urgency and that same absoluteness? Perhaps we do not believe it as absolutely as Paul did, nor do we live as if we believe it. We are simply not that occupied with the things that are eternal, and therefore we are unable to persuade men. We need to press mankind to come to terms with eternity, even though they will accuse us of being dogmatic, narrow-minded and intolerant, and yet that will be enough to intimidate many of us to silence. There is nothing more embarrassing and intimidating to the modern Christian than to be considered narrow and dogmatic. It did not, however, intimidate Paul. Eternity is not a narrow concept, and the world needs to be disturbed by people who cannot contain themselves, who are beyond the issue of taste, politeness and good manners, who burn with the reality of eternity, and who take every opportunity to express the things that are Divine. Our absoluteness is the very height of offense to a world that is relativistic and pluralistic. They do not want to be told that there is anything that is absolute, that there are only two eternal alternatives, but they need to be told, not by people who bring the correct doctrine, but by those who come with a burning conviction. Do we really believe God has fixed a Day in which He will judge the world in righteousness? Our apostolic task is to bring an unwanted and unwelcome message to an indifferent world, and it is a message we can only bring in the same proportion that we can demonstrate it. It is not enough to be ‘correct.’ We have to come to them, as it were, from the eternal place. The Meaning of Eternity Paul wrote to Timothy, Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called ... (1 Timothy 6:12a) It is evident that Paul is not speaking of some future time, but now! It is something given by the life of God—a particular kind of wisdom, a mindset and a perception. Whosoever believes on Him, shall have eternal life, not just future, but now. It is a very peculiar state of being, a dimension that is concurrent with time, and indeed, it is a dimension that needs to be contended for, if we will enter into His life. "Contend for the faith that was once given to the saints" is more than just an injunction to embrace their doctrines, but an invitation to come into a certain dimension of being. It is not going to make you ethereal and irrelevant. You are not going to become dreamy or visionary, for if eternity is anything, it is the very essence of that which is real. Eternity needs to be brought into time, and the church is the only agency on earth given by God through whom that can happen. But it is an apostolic church that lives, and moves, and has its being in the eternal dimension, and who abides in Him, who inhabits eternity. Our problem is that we secretly covet the world’s admiration. We want to succeed on the world’s terms, if not academically, then theologically. We find ways to be polite, and to address our Christian convictions in a manner by which the world can receive them. We have lost the apostolic view, which was intended to confront the world in its entire framework of thought, for the whole of non-Christian thought is a lie, for it has not reckoned on eternity. It has not brought the invisible things into its consideration, and therefore all of its other considerations are amiss. The world needs to be confronted by the things that are eternal. Paul himself demonstrated this on Mars Hill. He struck at the very heart of the world and its lies. It is remarkable that he came down that hill alive, when he could just as easily have been the object of men stopping their ears and rushing upon him with teeth gnashing. Are we eager to preach Christ and Him crucified, Him risen, the soon coming King and Judge? We cannot divide these realities. Paul was determined not to know anything but Christ and Him crucified¾and it takes a determination! Everything in the world, the flesh, and the Devil conspires against it. It wants to diminish this truth, and put it in mere religious and doctrinal categories, but we are enjoined to preach this gospel to every creature, namely, … He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead. (Acts 17:31) God has furnished proof to all men by setting a ‘Paul’ before them, who not only proclaims the doctrine of resurrection and judgment, but is himself a demonstration of the resurrection life, a taste of the power of the ages to come. The issue of resurrection is already the issue of eternity, for it is the life to come. And when a man stands before unbelieving Greeks and speaks to them penetratingly out of that life, then God has furnished proof to those men. Eternity as Resurrection Life There is an entry into the eternal dimension through the reality of resurrection life. Merely approving the doctrine is not enough, we need to live and move and have our being in Jesus Christ, or our words about an imminent judgment are without value. There can be no preaching of the resurrection, or of eternal judgment unless the entire framework of our life is changed. Do we really want to see all men everywhere repent? They need to see the eternity that is already in us, and they shall be eternally condemned except that they receive Him in whose Name we come. We are moving to a final and ultimate confrontation with the philosophical spirit of the world. Something timeless and eternal must be presented to men by an apostolic church, a people who have laid hold of that which is eternal, and are not just awaiting some future state. They are already appropriating it, and bringing it into their present consideration. The issue of the resurrection in us is the issue of eternity for them. God is desirous of an apostolic mind-set, for these are the foundations of the church¾not the issues of the mechanics of church government, however important that might be in itself. A church without the eternal dimension, however correct it may be in every other form, is not an apostolic or authentic church. This is a position far beyond correct doctrine. Something must come again into the atmosphere of God’s corporate people, a sense of urgency that we ourselves cannot calculate or establish. We must be purveyors of a sense of imminence, and of the things that shall shortly come to pass. We must bring the eternal sense of things, and the eternal stakes of heaven or hell, because we have already sensed the eternal weight of glory as being so presently real to us now. The rejection, the abuse, the reproach, and the persecution that will come to us for bearing an unwelcome word to a world that does not want to hear, is for us, only a momentary and light affliction. But it will be true only to the degree we see that which is invisible. True Biblical Faith The giants of the faith of Hebrews 11 were all eternally minded. What was the foundation and root of their overcoming faith? Why is Abraham called ‘the father of faith’? We have to fight for the meaning of these great, biblical words. Even the word ‘faith’ itself has suffered terrible assault in this recent Charismatic generation, and so I am glad that God gives us definitive statements: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:1–6) I am going to show that the reward God offers here is essentially not in this life, but in the life to come. True faith is a faith that does not expect its reward in this life, but afterwards. The men of old gained approval by their faith, but they did not obtain the promise. For example, By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after (emphasis mine) receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. (v 8 kjv) The word after is a critical, key word in the definition of biblical faith. In other words, there is something very peculiar about biblical faith, which does not expect or look for its reward, answer, consummation, fulfillment or gratification now, but after. This is totally contrary to the tenor of the world that looks for its gratification now. It is a conflict of two wisdoms, one is based on instant, immediate gratification now, and the other is predicated upon that which comes after. Everything that is natural, human, soulish, fleshly and carnal, expects, deserves and wants its gratification now. In a word, true faith calls us to a posture that is contrary to that which is ‘natural.’ That is why we need to be weaned from natural gratification, and to find our orientation and being in that which is ‘other-worldly’ and beyond this life. We need to become citizens of heaven. All of these categories are contrary to the way that man is constituted naturally. That is why man would rather predicate his life on reason rather than on faith. Faith is unseen, but man wants to see, to be gratified; man wants now. Abraham, the great father of faith, was not only called to go out but also called to go into. There is a conjunction between those two words. Israel was brought out of Egypt in order to be brought into the Land of Promise. Abraham was to go into a place he was to receive after for an inheritance. The words ‘inheritance’ and ‘heir’ are a theme that is repeated throughout the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Inheritance implies something that comes after, usually after a death. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. (v 9) This is the foundation of Abrahamic faith, not only for Abraham, but also for those who dwelt with him. Isaac and Jacob, and all of the saints of old, had this as their foundation. They had the immovable confidence that they would be the heirs of promise. Everything is predicated on what was spoken by God. Verse 13 says that, "All these died in faith, without receiving the promises." This is not some typographical error, but the deepest meaning of the word ‘faith.’ The promises were not to be realized in their own lifetime. They all died, without exception, not having received the promises. Not one of them received the reward of their life of faith and sacrifice in this life, but received it as an inheritance after. I do not think any of them were bitterly disappointed. They knew better than to expect it in this present life, but they were assured of the reward, the promise and the inheritance. This life, therefore, was distinguished by a walk of faith as pilgrims and strangers, who embraced the hope and inheritance, though it was afar off. Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldees to the Land of Promise, but when he was in it, which is to say, when he was in the right place, it was strange and foreign to him. He was uncomfortable, because it was not yet the time to inherit it. The time comes only after—after this life, in the resurrection that enters us into the eternal fulfillment of the promise. That means the whole premium of biblical faith rests on the assurance of resurrection. Abraham was expecting an eternal inheritance, which is why Paul could say that if there was no resurrection for us, then we of all men are most to be pitied. The ‘faith’ as it has been promulgated to us today is almost invariably situated in the now. It says, "You will receive health, you will receive a boyfriend, a girlfriend, an apartment, a job, a Cadillac—now." The emphasis is on now. It has a payoff now, or else you are out of the faith! For the great fathers of the faith, it was an inheritance to which they are heirs after. Even though they were physically in the Land of Promise, it was not yet the fulfillment for them. If we are comfortable in this present world, we are not yet in the only true faith. To recite certain verses, and expect their material fulfillment, does not mean that we are in the faith. We are in the faith of Abraham when, like him, we are strangers and aliens, not only in the world, but also in the Land of Promise. We need to look for the coming of the Lord, to long for His appearing, the coming of that whole millennial and future fulfillment that is eternal. That is why eternity needs to come into our consciousness now. The remarkable paradox is that to be preoccupied with the things that are future and eternal would make you believe there would be little effect and consequence now. In fact, what does the world say, "If you are heavenly minded (eternally minded) you are of no earthly good." That is a lie, because the opposite is true, "Except you are heavenly minded, except you are eternally minded, you are of no earthly good." Every value that the world celebrates as right and true is unmistakably a lie. What the earth needs is not more earth, but more heaven. Eternity must come into time, the holy into the profane, the sacred into the everyday, by people who are already walking in heaven as if it is the very foundation of their life and being. That is the only true faith. A promise is something spoken by God, despite every appearance to the contrary for its fulfillment, predicated entirely upon His honor, the truth of His Word, and His ability to fulfill it. Can you die with confidence believing that you will receive the promise, though you have not seen it in your lifetime? Can you believe it with such a quality of conviction that it affects, not only how you live, but also how you die? That is to say, we do not go around disappointed, dejected, or sullen. This gives us a much more realistic understanding of what the purpose for this present life is as well as the nature of the payoff in the life to come. The thing that God gives in power to loose us from the seduction of this present world is the assurance of the thing that comes after, namely, a City whose Maker and Builder is God. I have heard people say, "If Paul only had faith, he would not have suffered all he did, and that he suffered because he had an ‘inadequate’ faith, and did not know that Jesus had already ‘done it all,’ and that all the sufferings were brought on him by himself; and that he did not have the faith to know his Kingdom privileges, and therefore he suffered." That statement reveals just how warped our understanding is of what constitutes biblical faith. Everything seems to suggest that we are not to expect the fulfillment now. Can we live like that? Have school and college prepared us to live with deferring a gratification and fulfillment now in the expectation that it will come after? Are we so confident that there is going to be a resurrection from the dead? And that we will not die disappointed if the promise does not come now, because we are superbly assured it will come after? It is worth waiting for, and it will affect not only how we die, but also how we live. We know we are in this faith by how we live now. The Promises of God All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. (v 13) The promise has got to do with the establishment of specific statements God has made to the patriarchal fathers of the faith, for example, to David, that upon His throne would be seated a descendant from his loins who would rule over the house of Israel forever. We need to come into a Hebraic mentality that was reflected in the disciples who were with Jesus in His resurrection, when He spoke to them for forty days on the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. They asked Jesus, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6b). We have lost the sense of eternity in exact proportion to our having lost or never understood the issue of the Kingdom as a theocratic reality. The Kingdom has ever and always been the political rule of God in the earth; the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. That may not mean much to us as ‘modern’ believers, but it has meant a great deal to generations of Jews who lived and waited for the fulfillment of that promise. Abraham’s looking for a City whose Builder and Maker is God is synonymous with looking for and hastening the coming theocratic Kingdom. The issue of God’s Kingdom in terms of His ruling over His creation is the issue of God’s glory. It is all the more to His glory that this rule will take place in the literal Land of Promise, and in the capital of that Land, Jerusalem, the city of peace, on the holy hill of Zion. If we do not have this perspective when we read these verses in the book of Hebrews, then our understanding will have a certain subjective meaning, but it is not the full meaning. To desire Jesus, and to long for His appearing, are not to be understood as an emotional palpitation of the heart. It is the Lord coming to be vindicated in the very place where He was publicly humiliated, and where they put a sign up over His head in three languages, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" as a mock, and gave Him a crown of thorns. In that place alone, He will establish His rule over His creation. To love God is to love Him in the sense of desiring to see the fulfillment of all that is rightly His, and which has been so long denied Him. Abraham understood this. It was the gospel that was preached to him, which contained a promise of a restoration that would establish God’s glory, and be revealed through His rule over a creation that has long rejected Him, and distorted and destroyed the image of God in man. This is the hope and the promise, for which fulfillment men waited, but did not receive it in their lifetime. These all died not having received the promise. How can we purport to be looking for Jesus and wanting to be with Him, and yet not have a concern or awareness of what it will be that eternally glorifies Him? I am uncomfortable with fascination for Jesus and a ‘love’ of Him in His own person that somehow does not take into consideration the things that eternally glorify Him. That is why both things are mentioned in the same chapter. All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. (v 13) The ‘them’ is plural as against seeing ‘Him’ who is invisible, something singular. Both things are true. It is not the pitting of one against the other, and I am appealing to you to see the issue of the Lord and His coming in the context of what His coming means, namely, the issue of His glory forever. The issues are worked out and enacted in the Last Days. And when they are completed, history is completed, and we move out of the dispensation of history and the times of the Gentiles, and into the millennial and eternal realm, which is to say, the thing that comes after. That is why it is only they who endure to the end who will be saved. Many are not enduring because they do not see the end, they do not expect the end, and they do not desire the end. They have not seen the faith in the eschatological, apocalyptic and theocratic setting, the very thing that God intends we should all see as being normative. That is what the word ‘promise’ refers to. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth. This changes our whole status, and our whole earthly tenure will be radically altered if we really embrace this view. How many Christians see themselves, desire to be, or are seen by others as being pilgrims, strangers and sojourners in the earth? This must be an inevitable consequence of the embracing of this view in truth. ‘Pilgrim’ and ‘stranger’ suggest that one is not likely to be popular. One will never be comfortable in the world. You will be chafed by it, you can never succeed in it, or be at home in it. You are always looking for something beyond and other. It is a prickly feeling to be strange, because everything in modern society is trying to win you to feel like others, to be accepted and approved. But to feel odd and strange, and never able comfortably to fit in, is not something that is gratifying for the flesh. The drift and main theme of our modern evangelism is this world and this present life orientated, for the benefits one receives. I can hardly imagine that anyone who is ‘saved’ on that basis is saved on a foundation that will enable them to endure and overcome until the end. It may well be that the whole carnal character of the church, and the tremendous fall-out rate, has something to do with the kind of message that people are hearing from their inception into the things of God. It is not centered in an eternal view of the kind that Paul had. Have you noticed how some minister is called to initiate the sessions of Congress by opening in prayer? There is a kind of dalliance between the world and the church by which we sanctify and endorse this present world. We do not challenge its assumptions, or bringing to the attention of the world that its time is limited, and that God has established a Day in which He will judge all men; that this world is under judgment, and that God is not slack concerning His promise that the Day of the Lord will come, but He is not willing that any should perish. In not voicing that message, and condescending to bring a ‘religious’ dimension to the secular world (for which we get tax-deductible benefit), we reinforce the world in its lie. We allow them to go on without any consciousness of eternity or the eternal issues of heaven and hell. We ourselves are not that persuaded of heaven, and therefore we are not equally able to persuade men of hell. If eternity is only a category and not a passionate conviction, then we have no message for the world. And if the church is not evangelistic in the apostolic sense, then how is it the church? One of the principal functions of the church is to proclaim the gospel of this Kingdom. That includes proclaiming the message of judgment, but few of us have a stomach for being ‘strange’ and being looked upon differently, not only in the world, but even by other Christians. Our True Dwelling Place When God gathers up His elect, He will gather them up "from the four corners of heaven." That does not mean we are going to be in another stratosphere. Both will be situated on terra firma, but both will be dwelling in two radically and diametrically opposed places. One will dwell in the earth, they will look down for their gratification now¾earthlings. The others are those who dwell in heaven while they are yet in the earth. They are looking for the City whose builder is God. Their eye is suffused with the things that are unseen and eternal. Jesus had a conversation once with a ruler of the Jews, a man by the name of Nicodemus, the epitome of Jewish, religious ability, morality and ethics. If there was no God, then what Nicodemus represented was the perfect answer for human ideals. But there was another Man in whom he was in conversation, who represented something altogether ‘other’ than what Nicodemus was. He was the Man from heaven, Jesus the Christ. Nicodemus sensed something about Jesus that exploded all of his religious categories. And though he could not understand Him, he was probing to find out, lest he missed it: "Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." (John 3:2b) It was the earthly man asking earthly questions, and he received heavenly answers from the heavenly place by a heavenly Man, "And no one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven, even the Son of Man who is in heaven." (John 3:13) In other words, Jesus is letting Nicodemus know, that although they may be physically in Jerusalem, He was Himself in heaven. Jesus was explaining to him what reality really is. Are we bewildered? That means that we are more identified with Nicodemus than we are with Jesus. How can a Man be standing in Jerusalem, and say that He is in heaven. If we do not yet understand that, then we have not yet attained to biblical faith. Faith takes the ordinary and mundane and brings to it the quality of eternity now. It makes the profane sacred, and it brings eternity into time. It is for the absence of this that mankind is freaking out. Mankind was created in God’s image to live in the dimension that I am now describing. We were created to live in righteousness, truth, love and reality, but the world is so removed from God and His categories and dimensions that it has become stunted, and thinks that everything of consequence is in this present world. It is a contorted and restricted living that is not a true living at all. The ministry of the church is to demonstrate the message of a Kingdom of God that is at hand, "Look, here it is! Look at the reality. Look at a people who are completely free from intimidation, fear, anxiety and distress!" Just seeing our peace would be shattering for those who are unglued by what is happening in the world. "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3b), and then, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (John 3:5) We may well ask what relationship Jesus’ answers had to Nicodemus’ questions, and the answer is nothing, and it does not have to. We are not obliged to give earthly answers to earthly questions, but only heavenly answers, even if it leaves men bewildered! The Afflictions of the Saints As we have said, Paul saw the eternal weight of glory that made his present afflictions both momentary and light. Here is a seeing that affects the present in a very tangible and substantial way. This is an end-time provision of God, lest we become cowards, and be made fearful, or be compromised in the faith for the fear of pain and suffering. There are saints who actually went with rejoicing to the stake to be burned alive. They saw it as the logic, the conclusion, and the verification of their true faith. They rejoiced that their life had to end this way, and now they were assured of the crown. They were already rejoicing in the anticipation of the reward that they hardly felt the flames. This is the faith to which we are called. It is a calling to be focused on the things that are invisible and eternal. It is a choice that we make every day, every hour and every moment. Where do we allow our eyes to rest and to dwell? Eyes are the organs of the senses; they want so much to be gratified; they want to see and look like something different. But it is sensual, earthly, carnal, and devilish absorption. God’s call is to look up, and to see the things that are invisible and eternal. The eternal weight of glory, which is to say, the eternal reward, is ours in the measure of our willingness to enter into the sufferings of Christ. Redemptive sufferings precede the glory, and the glory will be to the degree that we bear the sufferings. In fact, if we intend to have this apostolic mindset and view, we are making ourselves candidates for suffering in one form or another. We will be a marked people before the principalities and powers of the air, and they will test us, and God will allow the testings. He employs the Devil’s devices for the good. If the Devil inflicts suffering upon the saints because they are entertaining apostolic and eternal things, then the greater the glory and the character that is shaped and worked by the bearing of it. The patience and the long-suffering that are wrought in us are only possible "for the joy that is set before us." God is not calling us to some kind of masochism, where we bravely suffer for the sake of suffering, but we bear it because we anticipate the glory that is to come. The greater the suffering, the greater the weight of glory. The Eternal Mindset The utter conviction of the centrality and significance of eternity is central to the apostolic and Abrahamic faith, which means that this present life is only preparatory and transient. It is a whole reversal of values, and the things the world has sought to induct us into. In fact, if we talk about this life as preparation, and that suffering is a necessary ingredient in that preparation, and that the reward and the full significance for our being comes in the life to come, then we will be viewed as being medieval. Yet this is the biblical faith. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. (v 15) Paul means not only the country, but also the values of the country and the things that are celebrated in this present world. We have got to fight for this eternal view because it is daily threatened and contended against. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. (v 16) We are chastened in this life for the life to come, because in the life to come there is no chastening work, in my opinion, at all. It is in this life that this preparation is performed, Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards (my emphasis) it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble; and make straight paths for your feet … . (Hebrews 12:10–13a) Notice the practical implication now because you believe that for then. … so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. (v 13b–17) The intention of the Holy Spirit in these words is entirely eschatological. The whole gist and meaning, using Esau as an example, is to bring us into the alertness and awareness, that the preparation of this life is for the eternal, and that this is the inheritance that comes after. Esau was unable to deny himself a meal. In fact, he thought he would die if he did not get that meal. He was so rooted in immediate gratification that he could not even defer and set back for a later time the gratification that he had to have now. The whole purpose of discipline or chastisement, which is to say, the painful dealings of God against our flesh, is to break the power of the need to be gratified now. The definition of a son is one who can defer his gratification for the reward that comes after. You do not need to receive a pat on the back after you have preached, "Well done, that was a great message!" A lot of us will collapse at this point, and compromise our message, even fishing for the compliments and the acknowledgments of men. Only a son can give total obedience to delivering the word without in any way modulating it so as to receive the gratification of applause and affirmation. If you want to see God and obtain His holiness, then this is the way. Look at Chapter 10 of Hebrews. Paul is talking about the suffering of saints and about the great conflict of sufferings, But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of suffering, partly, by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners, and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one. (vv 32–34) These saints, of whom Paul is referring, took joyfully the seizure of their property. It is one thing to bear it with a kind of resignation, but how can you rejoice for the loss? Only on one basis, namely, they knew in themselves that they had in heaven a better and abiding possession in exact proportion to what was lost. They knew it in themselves as a conviction, which is a knowing that is beyond mere doctrinal acknowledgment, and the proof of their knowing was that they took the seizure joyfully. Their joy was the statement of their faith in the most acute moment of being stripped. They were a people free from fear and intimidation, and the issue of security and possession. We can know whether eternity is just an abstraction or the deepest reality by our reaction to being stripped of our earthly goods. The latter evidences itself in a joyful surrendering. There is a difference between bearing something with a brave kind of resignation, as opposed to counting it all joy. Joy cannot be feigned. It is a heavenly quality, not some kind of human happiness. They knew in themselves, really knew, that they had a better and abiding possession in heaven beyond the proportion they lost. A faith that is not eschatological, that does not expect heavenly reward, and that does not look upon eternity as the greater and enduring reality, is not biblical faith. Jesus Himself died with these words on His mouth, "My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?" He was stripped of everything—in hope of the joy that was set before Him. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. (vv 35–36) In other words, they did not receive, nor did they expect to receive, the promise until after they had done the will of God. That is a strange thing to consider. It means they did not receive in this life the thing for which they gave themselves totally to God. They did not receive the thing for which they were striving in God. If we are to be joined with them in the same quality of faith, then we will need to radically reconsider what we are presently about. It means we can serve God tirelessly and totally, without having to have our reward in this life. The world and its rewards do not move us. We cannot be wooed and seduced by honorary doctorates. There is so much religious ambition, where men have to succeed now, have to be rewarded now, have to be acknowledged now, now, now. We do not see the hidden saints, who can serve God without being recognized and known by men. We need rather to be joined with the saints that have gone before us instead of looking for the reward that men can bestow presently. With every reward that is presently bestowed by men, there is an appropriate compromise in our integrity, in the quality of our faith, and in the quality of our witness and service to God. The true children of God do not move to the cues of men. They do not respond according to the things that make for religious success now. They look to something that is eternal and has a greater reward, and therefore they allow God to ruthlessly deal with them, removing any impulse that wants to be recognized by men now, that wants success now. They, and we, will receive our reward at the same time Abraham receives it, namely, in the Day of eternity—at the Lord’s coming. For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. (v 37) How then Should We Live Now? Jesus’ coming will usher in the Day of eternity and the reward. It was written two thousand years ago, but the Lord has not come, and yet how could Paul say, "in a little while"? Was Paul guilty of exaggeration? For Paul it was little, in the same way that his afflictions were both momentary and light. It was little because he already anticipated eternity at the door. It was not an issue of chronology, but an issue of God’s character. He who promised will come. It is an issue of the God who promises. Here comes the punch-line, Now (emphasis mine) the just shall live by faith. (v 38 kjv) Having just spoken about what comes after—the inheritance, eternity and the reward—Paul brings the subject to the immediate, "Now the just shall live by faith." In other words, "Now the just shall live by this eschatological faith." Will the Lord find this kind of faith upon the earth when He returns? It is the faith of His coming, the faith of His appearing, the faith of His Kingdom, and the faith of the fulfillment of all these promises—and He asks us to live by it now. How do we live now that is really living and not just ‘getting by’? How do we live joyfully now, because anything other than that is not living? Everything that Paul said comes to bear now, and that is what I love about God. This is the paradox of the faith. Having spoken all of those things about afterwards, He comes to now. And now is not now, except in the light of what comes after. Now is only now because of what comes after. Now can be lived as now dynamically because of what comes after. Now would not be now without the promise and the reward, and He who made it. Now is only now because God is God. Now we can live by faith in the anticipation and confidence of the recompense of the reward that comes after. It gives us the incentive to serve God now, and which also eclipses every present reward: But just as it is written, "Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9) There is a crown to be won and a treasure that is being laid up. The key to apostolic lifestyle and living, and prophetic seeing and being, and of courage and overcoming now is because of what comes after. This alone is the faith once and for all given to the saints for which we need earnestly to contend! Faith is a mode of living that has taken into its deepest consciousness the eschatological, apocalyptic expectation of the end of the age in its theocratic promise, and that transforms, therefore, our quality of life now. We are moving toward a consummation and a hope. What we are now, and how we walk now, are altogether related to what we anticipate for the future. Furthermore, we have a foretaste now of the power and the glory of the age to come by the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a token, a down payment, and a foretaste of the powers of the age to come. One of the terrible things wrong with the Charismatic and allied movements is that they have not seen the Holy Spirit in His eschatological context. They have seen the Holy Spirit only as a present phenomenon, as if it is the whole thing already that has been poured out on all flesh, when it is hardly more than a sprinkling. The baptism has been seen as something to renew our denominations, and to bring a degree of titillation and excitement into an otherwise dull Christian life. It amazes me that God’s fist did not come down on the whole Charismatic thing and blot it out in a moment. It borders on being sacrilegious, a misuse of the Spirit, and likely even a misappropriation, because it does not see Him in the context of God’s intention, being only a token, a down payment and a foretaste of the powers of the age to come. God wants to whet our appetites in anticipation of the thing that is future, enduring and eternal. Eternal Reward The concept of eternal reward is virtually absent from the consideration of modern Christendom. It was foremost, though, in the consideration of the apostolic generation. Paul strove to obtain the reward, and therefore it is not something to be despised, but rather we should earnestly seek to restore this understanding. It is a remarkably glorious theme that has been historically lost to us, and yet is central to the whole faith. The principalities and powers of the air profoundly resist this subject, because to lay hold of the issues of eternity opens up a whole dimension of release in the church that makes it a qualitatively different proposition, both in the world and toward the powers of this world. Are we awaiting the Lord’s coming as a piece of doctrinal correctness, as an inevitable historical necessity, as something that will be for us an escape from a tribulation that we do not want to bear? Or is He someone who is coming to give us the reward appropriate to our service and sacrifice? It makes a great deal of difference, because it determines and influences how we live now. What will sustain us in a time of persecution? How will we stand under it and not collapse? How will we bear that remarkable oppression if we do not have an expectation of a reward? The reward is God’s ‘nuts and bolts,’ end-time provision for enduring and overcoming. I do not believe that any believer can really overcome, except that he has this as a lively and powerful incentive in truth in his heart and spirit. Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. (Revelation 22:12) The rewards, our place in the heavenlies, and our relationship with the Lord in the millennial Kingdom in ruling and reigning with Him, are proportionate to the quality and kind of our labor and service in this life. The fact that some will rule over two cities, some over five, some over ten and some will not rule over any, shows that there are degrees of reward. Ruling and reigning with Christ is the right to perform righteous judgments. Judgment is not a judicial application of the Law, but bringing the wisdom of God to bear into a situation that needs it. We come to that place of stature and maturity to exercise those judgments out of the character and stature obtained in this life. Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. (1 Corinthians 3:8) Each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire; and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built upon it remains, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire. (1 Corinthians 8:13–15) The issue of eternal distinction is totally individual, and completely a matter of our own desire. It is what you yourself have accomplished, or done in this life, by the grace of God that is given, in proportion to our willingness to undertake and perform the works of God. Not every work is God’s work. Merely because it is religious, ‘spiritual,’ or because we are fulfilling a need, does not mean that that work will earn for us honor, reward, or distinction. We may well come to experience that many of our works will be burned up, being hay, wood and stubble, rather than gold, silver or precious gems. The reward will be based on what is accomplished in this life in works that pass the fire. Only that which passes through the fire¾because fire tests the works¾qualifies for eternal reward. The works of God are those that have their inception in Him, and are performed in the power of His life, by motives that are pure, and that seek His purposes only, and His glory. There are works to be performed, and if we do His works, we can expect retaliation and consequence against ourselves in a world that will become totally antichrist in the Last Days. Any significant work for God is the very kind of thing that is likely to bring upon our head a counter reprisal. Only the expectation of reward for that work is the incentive that is likely to perform it. Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 6:1) It suggests that we can lose our reward, due to impure motives. If we want to be seen, recognized and honored by men in the doing, we therefore lose the corresponding eternal reward. It is the hope of that reward that will enable us to perform a work, even when people do not acknowledge it, or are not grateful for it. This is a complete reversal of the incentives that most men require in this life. They do because they want to be seen of men, recognized, and celebrated. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11–12) The joy of it is experienced now, in the moment of the shame and rejection. That is a living faith, because you anticipate the reward in such a way that it is a present factor in your joy. If our faith does not eventuate in joy in the moment that we suffer disgrace, reproach and rejection, for Christ’s sake, then we have not the true faith. If we have just an academic faith or a doctrinal thing, then we will be quite glum. The anticipation of the future thing, that is both enduring and eternal, and a reward that does not fade away, does not rust, does not corrupt, and cannot be stolen, is designed by God to be the most powerful, cogent motive for our present service. God intends it to be an enormous factor in our present overcoming life. This was a factor for Moses in his own overcoming, and his own separation from Egypt: By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin; considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11:24–26) Paul said that we would all stand at the judgment seat of Christ, not to determine the issue of our salvation, but to determine the issue of our reward. It is there that our works are tested to see whether they can survive the fire of God’s evaluation and judgment. When we say the phrase ‘good works,’ we automatically recoil, because we think that somehow it is threatening the gospel of grace. Salvation is a gift of God by grace, but what we do with the grace, having obtained it as a gift, determines our eternal place and eternal reward. Works is only a bad word when we think that we can labor for our salvation. Something should come from our faith, something visible, something productive, and this is what God weighs, evaluates and rewards in the Day of His coming. The Mystery of Rewards Neither will we all rise at the same time. Some of us will rise with the first resurrection of a first fruits kind, that is to say, those who will rule and reign with Him in His millennial Kingdom. Others will sleep through the Millennium, and only rise with the general resurrection of the dead that is described in Revelation Chapter 20, where the books will be opened, including the Book of life, to see if their names are written in it. Some of us will not be equipped to rule and reign with Christ, because we have ignored, or forsaken, or have had no stomach for this kind of responsibility, though we could have obtained it in this life. Those Christians, who have been content to sit passively in fellowships their entire Christian life, because they were assured that they were "going to heaven," may well be profoundly disappointed. I would not want to miss the first resurrection, and that is why Paul is continually exhorting the saints to be found blameless in the Day of the Lord’s appearing. We have an eternal incentive to obtain a distinctive reward of the high calling in Christ Jesus. Apparently it is not for everyone; for it says that the rest shall sleep: And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or the image, and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. (Revelation 20:4–5) It is a remarkable reward for a remarkable service in a remarkable time of Last Days’ oppression and persecution, where the greater number evidently could not stand in a faith that could resist succumbing to the mark of the Beast. The ‘beheaded’ are a people who will prefer to perish rather than take the mark, of which we are warned, that if we take it, we will be cast into the lake of fire with the Devil. God’s judgment is severe over this one thing. I can almost hear the kinds of rationalizing that will come out of Christians as that time comes, "Well, I have got to live. I have got to buy and sell. What about my children? I have got responsibilities." There will be every kind of justification to succumb to a system by which our physical security will be assured. The other and wiser alternative is to take the risks of living independent of that in such a way, that if God will not provide, we would rather perish than survive on that other basis. For those who are willing for that kind of faith, God has a special reward, namely, the privilege of ruling and reigning with Him for a thousand years¾while all the rest sleep. In fact, taking the mark of the Beast does not happen in a final moment, but rather our daily choices make that taking inevitable. Hairstyle, earrings in the ear for men, music, soul sensations, and other kinds of things that Christians allow themselves, and think them harmless, are already a statement, a mark and an identification with the spirit of the world in all its rebellion, anger and defiance. What you wear conveys something, and we do it because we cannot deny ourselves the enjoyment and sensual or soulish benefit that comes to us by those things. A man once asked me what he could do to really serve the Lord with distinction. He wanted to go all the way. I told him that he could start with cutting his hair, and when he heard that, he shuddered and wept. There is something about the luxury of running our fingers through our curls and locks, and feeling the length of them, that has a resonance of something soulish. For others it may not be hair, but something else. It may not be sinful in itself, but it is already the unconscious taking of a mark, already an identification. Homosexuals and that whole pop and rock culture were some of the first to wear earrings in modern times. You yourself do not have to be a homosexual, but the earrings identify you as standing for that. If it even bears a resonance of being identified with the world, then avoid it. I would rather err by a radical separation from the thing that has the appearance of being in the worldly realm than to take the risk of unconsciously identifying with it. We should not assume we are so ‘spiritual’ that we can wear earrings, enjoy certain hairstyles and fashionable clothing, or listen to rock music. It is already a seduction and a lie to think that it will not affect us because of our ‘higher’ spirituality. I would rather be called a legalist than take the risk of compromising, which will make me more and more partial to the spirit of the world. I believe and intuit that the mark of the Beast is already taking place invisibly, but indelibly. We are either taking the mark of the Beast, or the mark of the Father, and when the light comes, that is to say, the Day of the Lord, it will reveal by its light which mark we have consistently chosen. When our subsistence and life depend on whether we can buy or sell by taking the mark, then be assured, we will buy and sell. We will do it because we live for the keeping of our body and soul together. Jesus Himself condemned as wicked those stewards who did not bring an increase to the talents that were given them. There is an enormous emphasis on freedom of will to do and to serve. Men can bury their talent, or they can multiply it, and there will be a proportionate reward, or a judgment, for the failure to bring increase. The church is not the church until it brings these perspectives into its present consideration. If we are not looking for that City and that reward, then of necessity we are going to be victims of seduction—especially in the religious realm. The First Resurrection Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years. (Revelation 20:6) The wording in these verses could not be clearer. The word ‘first’ implies that there is another resurrection to follow, and those that did not resurrect at the first resurrection are ‘the rest of the dead,’ whose resurrection is of another kind, and at a later time—nor will there be the same reward. Here we see the character of those who preferred martyrdom to physical survival. They became blessed, holy and priestly before their resurrection. It is clear that not every saint is blessed, holy and priestly. This is the resurrection that Paul strove to obtain, and which we also need to strive for. We have missed the greatest incentive to be distinctive in this life, because if we are going to be blessed, holy and priestly eternally, then we need to be blessed, holy and priestly here. We cannot attain to this character without knowing the Cross in truth. We are not going to be blessed, holy and priestly, and at the same time give ourselves to the gratification of the flesh. It is going to take a disciplined and submitted life, and one that is submitted to other brethren. It is a life that will receive correction and not balk and react in resentment when it comes. There is every human reluctance to walk in the light as He is in the light. We can be cowards and refuse to heed the Scripture that says, "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed." We would rather struggle with the private, secret sin, and never overcome it. By confessing it before a brother, we break the power of the sin. Only then is it brought into the light. If we would take eternity into our consideration, we would find the courage to do it. Our choosing to live cowardly in this life will result in having to stand outside the gate of that Kingdom. It is not only the liars and gross sinners that are kept from that Kingdom, but also the cowardly. There is a whole dimension of things that need to come into our spirit and consciousness, our conduct and life, if we are going to be apostolically authentic. We cannot persuade men, knowing the terror of God, if we do not know the reward of eternity. If this remains in the realm of abstraction and something that we can lightly consider or disregard, then we are condemning ourselves to an inevitable collapse under Last Days’ oppression. We will be robbed of eternal reward. The Day of Judgment is final. There is no occasion in the realm of eternity to change our character, our disposition, or place. Every single aspect of that issue is decided in this life. Those who rise in the first resurrection are they, whom Jesus referred to when He said to Nathaniel, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." (John 1:51b) They will have glorified bodies, and will move through fixed things, just as Jesus did in His glorified body, in their administration of the Kingdom. It is their privilege, and their reward is to be co-administrators with the Lord. This is not government as we traditionally know it., but rather a heavenly and divine rule, the goodness and wisdom of God teaching men how to live in righteousness, mediated in the meekness of the character of the Lamb. There is no higher honor than to rule and reign with Christ in His theocratic Kingdom. We do not have an earthly model of what this theocratic rule will mean. It was Jesus’ reward, for which a throne was prepared for Him. God not only raised Him from the dead, but raised Him up on high, to a place of rule, where it says that all authority has been given Him both in heaven and in earth. And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:11–15) Just from a simple reading of that text, I would have to say that those who were not qualified to rise with the blessed, holy and priestly saints had to wait a thousand years. They missed the initiation of God’s Kingdom, and any participation in it. The clear and literal deduction must include a number of those who were saved, but who lived lives without any significant distinction that would have earned them the reward of a first resurrection, and were therefore to be judged with all the other dead. They did not rise with the first resurrection, otherwise there would be no need to consult the Lamb’s Book of Life. Those who rise in the first resurrection, and because of that rising, reveal the approval and acceptance of being found in Christ. Their walk, conduct, character and works qualify them for the resurrection. If we do not rise, then we have not qualified. We were not found worthy for that first resurrection. Paul said that he strove to obtain that resurrection. It is not automatic, but rather a ‘being found worthy.’ Those who are mature, those who are overcomers, those who have the character of Christ, who are in Christ, and who can hear His trump, will rise. Those who are not in Christ, who are immature, untested, unqualified and unworthy, will sleep for a thousand years. Those whose names are found in the Lamb’s Book of Life are going to be saved out of hell, and from being thrown into the Lake of Fire with all the rest of the dead, but I would not want to wait to see if my name was written. There is a possibility that it might have been written, and has since been blotted out. It was so paramount for Paul to qualify for that first resurrection. And we will never be blessed, holy or priestly—the qualifications for the first resurrection—unless we have the kind of determination that Paul had, namely, to be found worthy of that first resurrection. And the nations were enraged, and Thy wrath came, and the time came for the dead to be judged, and the time to give their reward to Thy bond-servants the prophets and to the saints and to those who fear Thy name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth. (Revelation 11:18) Here is the judgment of God, destroying those who destroy, but giving reward both small and great. There is reward at every level, and at every grade, proportionate to the work and the investment. To be without reward will be an eternal shame. The Judgment Seat of Christ For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds. (Matthew 16:27) And I will kill her children with pestilence; and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each of you according to your deeds. (Revelation 2:23) It is out of the mouth of the Lord Himself, showing again that it is an individual matter. For we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10–11) Here we see one of the principal incentives to walk in a particular way in this life with regard to our body, our mouth, our feet, our hands and our minds. What do we give our minds to? What kind of thoughts do we allow that we think we have the luxury to contemplate, even though no one else hears them or sees them? It is still done in our body. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. (Romans 14:10) If we know that we are going to stand before God and give account, then we should not ourselves be disposed to be judgmental. That is the meaning of the Scripture that says, "Do not judge." Those who judge themselves need not be judged of God. We need to be ruthless with ourselves and really examine our hearts and ask the Lord for illumination and light, and want to see the truth of our condition, and to be broken for it, and repent for it now. We will not have to stand before Him then with our shabby lives. He who overcomes shall thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before his angels. (Revelation 3:5) In other words, names will be blotted out of the Lamb’s Book of Life. This is a jolt to the ‘eternal security’ doctrine that many in the church have thought for themselves, but helps to explain the slack attitude that is to be found in churches around the world, where there is an unwillingness for the sacrifice required for overcoming or obtaining a priestly stature in God, and thinking that somehow we will have the same heaven, the same resurrection, and the same reward as everyone else. The Scriptures show that God gives reward proportionate to the quality of character and service performed and obtained in this life. We may well find that when we stand before Him, who is Truth, that there might be another eternal verdict different from what we had naively expected, and in that moment and from thenceforth, there is no alteration or remedy¾it is eternally fixed. The Millennial Kingdom We would be discussing this subject in a vacuum unless we have come to an agreement about one principal thing, namely, that the whole issue of eternal reward is set in one particular context: the millennial Kingdom. The establishment of this Kingdom will be thrilling beyond all measure. It will not be some rudimentary filing of papers, or bureaucracy, but the creative setting forth and establishing of a Kingdom of righteousness for the first time in creation. The law of the Lord shall go out from Jerusalem to the nations, and the nations shall learn righteousness. It will take, therefore, men and women who are skilled in the issues of righteousness, and who know how to bring benevolent influence to those who are hearing of it for a first time. They will be doing that, in my opinion, in their glorified bodies, ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, and being directed to cities and to fellowships that have been springing forth on the earth under Israel’s influence and witness as the evangelistic nation. There is remarkably little in Scripture that describes what this Kingdom will be. The greatest description of Israel’s millennial glory is probably in the book of Isaiah, and certain of the other prophets. For example, she will be named by a new name. Her people will be called the ministers of the Lord. Nations will come to her. She will be a diadem and crown in the hand of the Lord. The language is lavish to describe what this nation will be in the Millennium, so what then will the Millennium itself be? Restored Israel is not the administrator of that Kingdom, but the subject of it. The risen glorified church administers the Kingdom. It is the church who rule and reign with Christ. Israel will be the subjects of the Kingdom as much as they were under King David. This time they will be subjects under the Greater King David (Jesus), who will be their Prince and Ruler forever. They will make known the Kingdom in the same sense that the church today promulgates the gospel of the Kingdom, but the actual administration, the governing, the establishment of this rule of God in the earth is reserved as a privilege for a church of a particular kind. She has established her claim and credential to be co-rulers, and to rule and reign by virtue of her sacrifice, character and conduct in the earth. Our earthly tenure is to be trained for this rule, and to demonstrate our ability and qualification for that millennial and eternal privilege. To take this one thing to heart would transform everything. Every force in hell militates against this understanding, and wants to keep the church in its present lackluster, uninspired and matter-of-fact condition, because if it remains like that, it is not likely to rise in the first resurrection. It will not respond to the trumpet of God, and to the voice of the Lord, for it did not respond to His voice in this life. Those who rise with Christ are those who are in Christ. The Devil wants to rob us of an incentive that would make all the difference eternally. He does not want to see the Kingdom come because the establishment of that Kingdom means the end of his false, usurping rule. By the time that the early church had become Catholic and universal, virtually all references to the millennial Kingdom had been removed. To this day, the Catholic Church sees itself as the Kingdom. Catholicism is amillenial, that is to say, it does not anticipate a Kingdom to come, but sees itself as the Kingdom come, and the capital of that Kingdom is Rome, not Jerusalem. Though there has been a Protestant Reformation, it was not a thorough and total reformation, and this issue had never been touched by church fathers like Calvin and Luther. It is a strange phenomenon that these great giants of the faith were eschatologically ignorant. They would no doubt have thought that the Protestant Reformation was the coming to the end of the age of human history; that the Pope was the Antichrist, and that the Protestants represented the new Kingdom. There was, therefore, no need for a ‘coming’ Millennium. The expectation of a ‘Kingdom come,’ a literal, political rule of God over His creation, is actually the promise for which the great saints of old sacrificed, suffered and died. They were heirs to the promise, namely, the promise of their Kingdom, which was also their glory and honor. The church needs rightly to see that, because unless it does, we cannot talk about eternal reward. All eternal reward is millennial reward, and participation in that millennial Kingdom. If we cannot conceive of that Kingdom, and have no anticipation for it, and think of it only as an abstraction, and do not have a faith to believe for it, then the talk of reward is altogether vain. That ancient cry of the church, "Come, Lord Jesus" was "Thy Kingdom come," for when He comes, He comes as King. It should also be our hope, as it was for the early church, and it would, therefore, be an incentive to be found blameless and worthy at the Day of His coming. It sounds far fetched and fanciful, and the tendency of most believers is to disregard it and say, "Well if it is going to happen, it is going to happen. Why do I have to take this into my consideration now?" That attitude assures us we will not be there at that first resurrection, but have to sleep a thousand years, and rise with the unregenerate dead, and stand before the Judge in a fearful moment, to see whether our names are indeed even in the Book of Life. If they are found, we will be without any distinction or reward. The thing that marks the church as being peculiar is that it takes the future into its present consideration. It does not merely acknowledge that something is going to happen eternally, but takes the eternal thing into its present thought, which, in turn, brings that eternal thing to a quicker conclusion, and makes the preparation for it more likely. The only judgment that those who are alive at His coming face, then, is an assessment of their works, because that will determine whether they will rule over five cities or ten. Are we building with hay, wood and stubble, or gold, silver and precious stones? What we have built with is determined by our motivation. Is our motivation success, or popularity, or is it faithful obedience, to be unknown, unsung, unheralded, and just to serve the Lord in the things to which we have been called, and for which we have been given talent, and to grow in that, so that we might hear, "Well done faithful servant."? In whatever small thing we labored, we labored in it authentically and truly. Our motives were pure; it was unto the Lord. We did it as good stewards, multiplying what little it was, with which we began, and that work will stand the test of the fire. It is built on a true foundation that no man can lay. The work that is founded on this foundation will be of the same character and kind, because the work will not be out of our energy, but out of divine inspiration in the fulfillment of His will. It will be accomplished out of His energy and ability, which is to say, His resurrection life. Only that is a true work. When we do something out of our own human energy, even though we do it for the Lord, it is totally unacceptable to Him. Everything must be of Him, through Him in order that it might be glory unto Him forever. The whole key is being dead and hidden with Christ in God. It is a humiliation to be dead, and if we are not willing for that risk, we cannot expect that our works will endure. The Invisible Cloud of Witnesses Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1) In the trying moments that are future, when there will be real conflict, it is a great assurance and comfort to know that the saints who have preceded us, in this very same precious faith, are waiting for us to come to the finish line. They have not yet received their reward, because they are not yet made perfect without us. They are present in an invisible cloud, and exert from that place a positive influence to help us on, and through, to the conclusion of the race that is set before us. They are a vital ingredient of a very particular kind for the purpose of facilitating the conclusion of the age through us. We are in a continuum with all of the saints who have preceded us, and who were of this faith, and we are moving toward a glorious conclusion. To see ourselves in that faith, now and presently, and in that context, is true seeing. We are in something together that links the past with the eternal future. We are in time, looking to that end, which end is soon to be upon us. We are moving toward something to which they have already sacrificed and given themselves, but will not be obtained independent of us. They are waiting for the fulfillment, and we are the Last Days’ actors. Entering His Rest In the book of Hebrews, Paul gives an illustration or type from the Old Testament of those who failed to enter into the rest, that goes back to Israel in the wilderness. Everyone who came out of Egypt, and into the wilderness, came under the blood of the lamb, and passed through the waters of baptism into Moses. That whole generation, except for two, rotted in the wilderness. They failed to enter into the rest that God had prepared. God has made them a type and an example for us, upon whom the ends of the age have come. It is a very sober warning, for it is apparent that we can come under the blood of the Lamb, and pass through the waters of baptism, and yet these are no assurance that we will enter the Land of Promise. The Land of Promise is a type or symbol of the Kingdom of God, for that is where the Kingdom, its crown and throne are established. They were forbidden, however, to enter because of their lack of faith. In other words, they did not have the anticipation or desire. And all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! And why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?" (Numbers 14:2-3). They actually despised the Land of Promise in the same way that we can despise the eternal reward. We can nod our heads and say, "Yes, I believe in eternal reward."¾ but we do it in such a way that it is not taken to heart. We do not long for that distinction, reward and privilege. It is the same as despising it, and counting it of little consequence. Moses pleaded with God not to blot out the nation for their lack of faith and murmuring, even though they did not want to contemplate the difficulty of what coming into that Land would require. Those who enter are they who share the humiliation and suffering of the Lord. Going through the wilderness into the Land of Promise, and fighting all of the Canaanite cities, and overcoming them, is not a picnic, but a struggle and a suffering. It is one, however, that we will not make unless we will believe the Land is an exceedingly great reward. The people of Israel did not think it sufficient compensation for the sacrifice they knew they would be required to make. They preferred rather to go back to Egypt, and be under bondage again, than to take the risks of having to work their way through a wilderness to enter a Land of Promise. But my servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it (Numbers 14:24). I do not believe that it means the literal, physical descendants of Caleb, but those who are of like mind, heart, and spirit with him. He wanted the entire reward. Those who are casual are not of the seed of Caleb, and will not share in the reward. This is something we freely choose. Shallowness and complacency are not something we are victims of by virtue of our temperament. We can desire a fervent spirit and a wholeheartedness toward God. Indeed, if we are not wholehearted, we need not think we will be fitted to rule and reign with Christ. We may not be eternally lost, but we disqualify ourselves. Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years (Hebrews 3:8-9). Israel provoked the Lord because they despised the excellent Land, and were not willing for the sacrifice to enter it. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, "They always go astray in their heart; and they did not know My ways"; as I swore in My wrath, "They shall not enter My rest." Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God (Hebrews 3:10-12). In other words, take care lest you also be half-hearted, lest you also be unwilling to obtain the full measure. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end (v 14). That is to say, we have become partakers of His Kingdom and reign, but only if we hold fast, and not give up to live a less demanding quality of life. And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. (vv 18–19) Believing is more than doctrine. They did not have a heart for that which God was making available. They did not embrace the faith as it was presented to them. Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. (Hebrews 4:1) If God did that with Israel, then how do we think that we will be exempt from suffering the same kind of eternal penalty, if we also despise the Land of Promise? The word promise almost always points to the coming of His Kingdom. These all died not having received the promise, that is to say, the promise of His Kingdom and its glory. ‘To come short of it’ does not mean that you lose your salvation, but it is the reward that is lost. You come short of what might have been your eternal joy as a reward. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. (v 2) They heard the report of the spies, but they did not hear it with faith; it did not, therefore, profit them. We can hear something, and be just as guilty, if it is not mixed with faith. There is something required from us. God preaches the word, but the word is without profit unless something comes out from us to receive it, and take it to heart, and to turn it into something. Faith is not faith in the sense of a compendium of doctrines that constitute ‘the faith,’ but a disposition of spirit that wants to activate and realize the thing that is being spoken. The Israelites of that time had no intention, or desire, to walk it out, or see it fulfilled. God therefore condemns them, because it was something in which they failed, not something in which God failed. He gave them everything: The Land of Promise was there. The good report was given. The word was preached, but they failed and refused to receive the word so as to do it, and therefore His anger was kindled against them. His warning to us is, Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. (Hebrews 4:1) For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, "As I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest," although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. (v 3) They were an unsanctified people that came out of Egypt. They did not have a pure or whole heart as had Caleb. Being brought out of bondage does not give you entry into the Promised Land. They could not believe for the future that lay beyond the Jordan, that was spoken of as a promise, and described as a goodly Land. It is exactly the same with God’s people today, that is to say, we have neither a millennial or eternal expectation. We have no sense of that future or desire for it. We are rooted in the present. We can believe for the ‘manna’ that comes down now, but we cannot believe for the thing that is future, distant or eternal. The failure to believe was the disqualification for entering the Land, and it will be exactly the same for us. Not to believe for eternity is to be excluded from it. In their grumbling, the Israelites showed something that revealed where they in fact were, and where we in fact are, for exactly the same reason. And all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! And why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?" (Numbers 14:2–3) In other words, "Let us go back to Egypt for security, garlic and leeks, sensual delight and gratification." Those who refused to enter were occupied only with their own well-being, security and gratification. Those who were willing for the sacrifice of going through the wilderness to enter the Promised Land were occupied with the glory of God. The ‘Kingdom come’ is the issue of God’s glory, and if we are preoccupied with our own security, comfort and gratification, we will prefer Egypt, though we might not say it in so many words. The thing that preoccupied Caleb and Joshua, as against the multitude of Israel, was decidedly different in its motive. One was for the gratification of the flesh and self, and the other was the glory of God. The coming into the Promised Land was not for the benefit that would accrue to them, but the glory that would accrue to God. Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1Corinthians 6:9–10) Paul is speaking to the Corinthian church. They were already marked by moral failure in a really vile way, and he is making clear to them, that if they are going to be characterized by unrighteousness and fornication, they will not inherit the Kingdom of God. It is not an admonition to unbelievers, who are already in a place of deception. Believers need to know that they can be just as deceived to think that they will have automatic inheritance in the Kingdom. Excommunication Excommunication from fellowship does not mean anything today. We can flit from fellowship to fellowship without a question being asked. To be expelled and excommunicated in apostolic times was to be totally cut off from the fellowship of the saints. It was such a feared penalty, because it was a preview of what expulsion from the Kingdom would mean eternally. Outer darkness is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. You may be saved out of a fire of hell, but you are cut off from an eternal fellowship with the saints of God and the overcomers of God. In His mercy, God has installed in this life something of what that eternal penalty will be, namely, excommunication. If your sin is worthy of excommunication, you are also a candidate for expulsion from the Kingdom of God. There is a remarkable responsibility for the church in effecting issues of eternity in this present life by whether they recognize a repentance that will enable men’s sins to be forgiven, or that they need to be retained, because if they are retained here, they are retained in heaven. If they are excommunicated here, then they are excommunicated there. The church has always been the agent God intended to determine where men would occupy themselves in eternity. If God excluded an entire Israel from entering for their unbelief, then how will He fall short of excluding believers, for the same reason, to their eternal lament? In the moment of eternity, we will find out that what we dismissed or despised is actually true, and now, we have forfeited something eternally, and it cannot be remedied. We are fixed permanently in the outer darkness, not only without reward, but also without fellowship of a kind that would have made eternity a joy. "Exhort one another daily, lest any one of you falls short" is the exhortation of God. We will not be to each other what we need to be unless we see this in the eternal context. The Apocalyptic View and the ‘Blessed Hope’ of the Church God has intended for the church in every generation to have the dynamic of apocalyptic expectancy as normative to true church. Apocalyptic expectancy was to resonate in the church. It was to be a dynamic of expecting and waiting characteristic of the church in every generation. The issue is not chronology, but the faithfulness of the God who promised His return. The church does not have a vivid sense that we are moving toward ‘an end,’ which in fact will be a new beginning. The apocalyptic mindset is the belief that the power of evil or Satan, who is now in control of this temporal and hopelessly evil age of human, is soon to be overcome, and his evil rule ended by the direct intervention of God. Right now, though, the righteous are afflicted by his demonic and human agents. There is something about demonic influence that people do not want to consider, or at best, they might want to consider it in terms of certain individuals who need deliverance, but they do not want to view life and reality in the world as being under the influence of Satan. The Scriptures tell us that the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One. The only end for such a world is his being unseated in a final defeat, and a casting out, and God Himself coming to establish a Kingdom of His own righteousness. This is too utterly supernatural for the consideration of most rational Christians. What is even more offensive is that the capital of that Kingdom is in a place where many would not have ever desired for it to be, namely, Jerusalem, in a restored Israel. Everything that God does is calculated to offend human sensibility. He knows exactly where men are vulnerable, and He always appoints things that are scandalous for human consideration. The most offensive of messages to communicate is to tell those who dwell on the earth that their time is soon up; that this world is under judgment; that its end is near; that there is a coming fire and that they had better know now the Coming King. In the Day of His coming, it will be too late to make His acquaintance, for He is coming as Judge not Savior. Everything that men do in the world suggests perpetuity, not an end. We bear, therefore, an unwelcome message where men will again put their fingers in their ears. Furthermore, if we preach it in apostolic power and anointing, men will rush upon us with teeth bared. In fact, any gospel that is not apocalyptic is not the gospel. It has been denuded and robbed; a vital content and dynamic has been lost. There is something about the apocalyptic view that brought, to the early church, a particular urgency, an expectation and a hope. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good works. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. (Titus 2:11–15) This is another one of those great, apostolic summations of the faith. It seems almost to be a paradox to have an anticipation of a cosmic event, namely, the Lord’s appearing, and the coming of another Kingdom. And while we are waiting, we do not ‘mark time,’ but are zealous for good works, because that has also an eternal application. For example, denying worldly lusts. There is an ethic. To have this view brings certain requirements in this present life. We are living in a transitory time, loaded with great purposes, but it is lived in the expectation of this great conclusion to the age. The final witness of the church in all the increasing darkness is that it will be an increasing light. It is God’s final mercy, that if anyone yet wants to be saved from eternal darkness, there are here and there, sprinkled over the earth, centers of light to which they could come. If they refuse that witness, they are refusing a last grace of God being offered to a dying world. The church has, therefore, all the more obligation to live blamelessly and without reproach. There is something about eternity, and the anticipation and hope that comes, that the enemy wants bitterly to resist, because it brings a dimension of a dynamic into the church that threatens the vested interests of the powers of darkness. The apocalyptic faith is the one that expects a termination of this world and the establishment of another. It is this other that will go on eternally, and this is the cosmic triumph of God against the powers of darkness, who have historically ruled or misruled over His creation. The Lord’s coming marks their final defeat, the establishment of His Kingdom in glory, and the vindication of His patient saints, who have endured the wrath of the opposing forces of darkness in their final fury. It brings the restoration of Israel in the fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to her, the tabernacle of David is restored, and the rule of God goes out to the nations. It is a whole scenario, a whole climactic conclusion that is more or less lost to the church, even while we think we have it. Merely to talk about the coming of the Lord as a doctrinal truth, or an escape from grim times of tribulation, is not to hold the faith as a blessed hope. "The present age" implies that there is another coming. Denying worldly lusts does not mean avoiding sexual orgies. A lust is any desire that has not its origin from above, which is to say, God Himself is not the Author of it. By that definition, a lust could be anything as innocuous as a merchandising catalog. If you are moved by it, rather than by God, then it is a lust that has its origin from below. We are to deny it, and that will be painful, because any denial is painful. There is a power in merchandise that is seductive, and that seeks to pull us into its vortex. There is something about the opulence, variety and stimulation that comes from merchandise to robs us of the eternal perspective. There is even a way in which we ‘legitimize’ desire and lust, but it will captivate the soul. We become familiar to seeing it, and to others approving it, or using it, or wearing it, until by gradations, there is a way in which the world has an increasing influence upon our life and the dulling of our spirits. To live soberly is also to live with a careful eye about what you allow yourself, that would have an injurious effect upon your spirit. Even the way in which food is exhibited in a supermarket is established by psychologists and experts, so as to arrange the shelves to meet the eye of the casual shopper, and to induce him to take items that he would never himself have purchased. Even the very volume of things does something to your carnal desire and appetite¾to have one of those. God has given us the blessed hope to sustain us when the pressures of merchandise come upon us. It is a hope of a particular kind that sustained and animated the saints of old as well as the early church. Abraham had this hope, though he was four thousand years away from the event, and it sustained him. The principalities and powers of the air cannot abide anyone anticipating another kingdom other than their own. If we become eschatologically-minded and apocalyptically-minded, and anticipate an end, a new future, and an eternal reign different from this world, we become a people marked by the powers of darkness. We will find ourselves more than likely stripped of our goods, or at least experiencing some form of opposition. Only such a people can have true joy. If we are stripped, we can praise God, for it could not have happened without the Lord’s permission, and in heaven there is a yet greater and enduring substance and reward. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13) It begins with the word now. Biblical hope¾not human optimism¾has to do with an expectancy for the future, and something which is beyond that which is now and presently seen. If it does not have a consequence that is immediate and present, it is not hope. That is the uniqueness of the faith, namely, that the things that are distant and future have an immediate and practical consequence now. There is an ‘abounding’ that is connected with hope that is not obtainable except by it. The very nature of the faith is to abound. Anything less than abounding is abnormal and substandard, and we need to be dissatisfied with anything less. Joy comes from heaven. It is with God, and cannot be obtained in the world, and the only way to have it is to abound in hope, that we might enjoy both peace and joy. In other words, we can only come to authentic joy by abounding in hope—and on no other basis. Hope is the anticipation of something future. Hope is the desire for and belief that one day you are going to appropriate that which is yet invisible and distant. We cannot be holy or perfect without hope. Hope is the ingredient by which we believe we are going to be made perfect in Him. One of the things to look for in men who purport to be apostles is whether they have hope. True hope is active, palpitating, vital and alive. No matter what the circumstance, no matter what the present discouragement, their hope affects their now. Hope is the element by which one remains steadfast and immovable. The absence of hope guarantees the degradation of men. Men without hope in the world are condemned to the things that are vile. They see everything as pointless and meaningless, because they have no hope. Scoffers in the Last Days It is our lust, much more than we know, and not our intellect, that determines our theology. Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." (2 Peter 3:3–4) Though we subscribe to the correct doctrines inwardly, there is a way that we can ‘mock’ or ‘scoff’ without actually mouthing the question, "Where is the promise of His coming?" I would say that this is the condition of the majority of those who call themselves Christians. We give credal assent to the truth of the doctrine of the Lord’s Second Coming, but we do not expect it, or look forward to it. It is not a palpable hope, especially if we would like to see this world continue. We have a nice place, security and comfort, and if there are any problems, we have a certain optimism that they will improve. We are not looking for another reality, and our views of the faith tend to be generated out of our lifestyle rather than the issues of truth. We have a tendency to embrace the things that reinforce or comfort us in the mode of life that we have chosen. The views of men are very much determined by how they choose to live. The scoffers that Peter is talking about are not the scoffers in the world, but in the church. If you want to keep your theology pure and your doctrines right, then check your lifestyle. What is there in it that would compromise you? What is there that you want to see perpetuated that would be threatened by an end? If you want your lifestyle to continue, you are not going to embrace with enthusiasm an apocalyptic view that says there is an end. You will find a way either to nullify that expectancy, or you will give only a cerebral, outward and ceremonial acknowledgment of it, but in your heart you are subscribing to another faith. The issue of voluntary poverty as a lifestyle may well be a necessity. Paul said that he was poor, and yet made many rich. Jesus had not a place to lay His head, and there is this conjunction between apostolic authority and poverty. There is a way, though, that Satan will take this and pervert it, for example, the whole tradition of monastic priests, who voluntarily take upon themselves the vow of poverty. This is a religious distortion of what I am talking about. There may have been some authentic men among them, but I am talking about something else. Even though we are able to live a standard of life that our income can afford, do our faith and expectancy of the things to come justify that lifestyle? Can we voluntarily reduce it, and simplify it, in keeping with the view to which we subscribe as being in harmony with that view? Can we hold that view, and still live a lifestyle that contradicts it without it affecting the truth of that view? A lifestyle of excess and self-indulgence is incompatible with the apocalyptic view. Discipline is not forced upon us, but something we voluntarily take upon ourselves. Why should we give ourselves to the values established by the gods of this world, seeing that they are soon to be unseated and defeated in the Lord’s own coming? This view calls us to a kind of seriousness about how we presently live. It is a call to blamelessness, all the more in a world that is fast becoming so sinful and corrupted that to be blameless will mark you before men. It makes you a candidate for their reprisal because you are not ‘one of the boys,’ and your very sinlessness invokes their anger and retaliation against you. Daniel refused to eat at the king’s table. That table would have been a sumptuous, elaborate and lavish extravagance, as well as a sensual delight. If he had eaten at that table, as the false prophets ate from the table of Jezebel, would he have been able to be the instrument of God in that generation and to receive a revelation of the mysteries of God? The book of Daniel begins, significantly, with his refusal to eat from that table. It is more than the issue of eating, though that is not exempt, but the whole issue of lifestyle, if we are going to take a posture that is in opposition to a world that is under judgment. While everyone else is striving to obtain the things that boost their lifestyle, can we impose upon ourselves a voluntary discipline, and a simplifying of our lifestyle in resisting what is offered to us, even as legitimate? Are we saying in our hearts, "This is not really important; this is just interesting and academic"? In other words, our hearts are scoffing at the content. There are audible scoffers and inward scoffers, and we might be surprised to be found among them, and even more surprised to find that the reason we are inwardly scoffing and inwardly rejecting is a consequence of a lifestyle that we have chosen and do not want to relinquish. In looking for the blessed hope of the glorious appearing of the great God, there was an actual blessedness and a dimension of things that came into the daily life of the church that enabled it to look past its suffering and rejection. There was an expectation of something that was to come, and was soon. It was imminent, and soon to take place. It was at the door, and the Lord would come, vindicate, and also judge. If we were to be ruthlessly honest today, we simply do not have the blessed hope, and we have transmuted the blessed hope into a rapture-escape. That is not the biblical hope. What makes scoffers scoff? An attitude of contempt and disdain, mocking and cynicism is due to walking after our own lusts. Scoffing is a consequence of their lusts, not their intellect, or their objective examination of Scripture. That which constitutes hope for one becomes derision and contempt for another based on how they walk in this life. If we want to have an apostolic view of the Scriptures, and a right expectation of the things that are future, we need to deny worldly lusts. The only power that can successfully meet and break the power of lust is the power of future hope, and an eternal expectation that is more than a doctrinal condescension. We are exhorted to hold fast the confession of our faith, of the things that will come after. Apocalyptic Scenario Apocalypse means the breaking in of God into time and history in judgment. It brings history to an end and ushers in the everlasting age. The world is hopelessly evil, and will become degenerately worse until there is no hope for its redemptive recovery. Then will the judgment come as the final, consummating event, the coming of God in His glory. It will be a sudden appearing, a divine penetration of heaven into earth. Why is the Lord’s coming not a lively expectation now? Why did that which the early church hoped for not materialize? Why is it that two thousand years later the hope of His coming has not yet materialized? Was the early church believing a fiction, an exaggerated view, that came into the faith as a kind of a hangover from Jewish apocalyptic expectancy about their own restoration and kingdom? An apocalyptic scenario is distasteful. Who wants to contemplate an end and destruction where the earth melts with a fervent heat, and the stars fall out of their place? A cataclysmic shaking of creation itself is not something that the flesh wants to consider, but it is a necessary ingredient in the whole apocalyptic picture. There is a final devastation and shaking, and the only thing that will make one capable of bearing such a view is the joy that follows, because out of it comes a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells. A new heaven and a new earth are only made necessary because the old earth and the old heavens, that is to say, the heavenlies, are caught up in the final devastation of God’s judgment by which even the heavens are purified. It is not so much that things are going to be obliterated and replaced, but rather that one category is going to come and supersede and transfigure the other, and will therefore change bo