What to remember
- Locked due to inactivity on Sep 25, '20 3:54am
Thread Topic: What to remember
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God's actions
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And God spoke also with actions. Genesis chapter 5 tells us of a godly man named Enoch, who "walked with God" (verse 24). The New Testament adds the information that he lived at a time when unbelieving people wanted to live independently of god. Enoch warned is contemporaries: "The Lord is going to return to this world!" God showed that he approved of Enoch's godly life by making an exception to the rule (first announced in the Garden of Eden) that all people must die. "He was no more, because God took him away" (verse 24) "By faith Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death" (Hebrews 11:5)
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God crowned Enoch's difficult ministry by taking him from this earth without seeing death. This miracle reassured the faith of the early believers (the descendants of Noah's son Shem) that there is another life awaiting God's people. There is another world besides the one we now inhabit. Martin Luther commented: "Enoch was taken from this world by God himself. This is the comfort that relieved the power of death for Old Testament believers."
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With his prophet Elijah, God repeated this miracle in an even more dramatic fashion. Elijah was God's spokesman during one of the darkest periods in Israel's history. Disgusting idolatry had such a grip on the nation God had called for himself that Elijah actually thought he was the only believer left. One day Elijah's difficult ministry came to a sudden end. At God's command, Elijah had anointed Elisha to succeed him as prophet. And then, as the two of them were walking along and talking together, "suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in whirlwind" (2 Kings 2:11)
Elijah was taken directly out of this world into the presence of God. Although on that occasion God did not speak a single word, can you hear what he is saying with his actions? "There is another world and another life besides this one!" -
God's prophecies
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On the pages of the Old Testament, God kept reminding his Old Testament believers that there is another world, and unseen world, on the other side of the cemetery. He did this not just though an occasional miracle or through the death notices he wrote for his people. Through his prophets, God described life in the new world. "You dead will live: their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead" (Isaiah 26:19).
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"I will raise the dead!"
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Israel's heathen neighbors had a much different idea of what happens after a person dies. For them the afterlife was a shadowy existence in a dark, depressing, murky underworld. "Don't you believe it," God told his Old Testament people through his prophets. "Your dead will rise to a new life in another world! Your dead will live!"
God did not then - just as he does not now - answer all the questions raised by the Bible teaching of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. When Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses died, did they know that they had not eased to exist? -
The Bible doesn't answer that question. Is an unborn child in her mother's womb alive? Why, yes. Does that unborn child know she's alive? No. After that child is born, is she alive? Yes, of course. Does a 3-month-old child know she's alive? No, not necessarily. That awareness does not come until later.
That's sort of how it is at the other end of life too. When you die, do you cease to exist? In other words, are you as a person gone forever? No, you're not. God's Old Testament people understood that just as well as you and I do. When you die, your body returns to dust, but your personality, your soul - the real you - continues to live on. Jesus told the penitent criminal: "Today you will be with me," (Luke 23:43) Listen to the prophet Daniel's majestic prophecy of the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day: "Multitudes who sleep on the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens" (Daniel 12:2,3) -
From this prophecy Old Testament believers learned that as God's people, they would be raised to life, where they will shine forever in heavenly brightness. The "multitudes" of the dead who will be raised to life on the Last Day will include every one of God's believing people, but not only his believers.
The all-knowing God is aware of the fact, however that throughout all history multiplied millions of people have attempted to dethrone him, to annihilate him. If God were to tolerate this, he would hot be God. "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne" (Psalm 89:14)
No government simply tolerates terrorist attempts to overthrow it. God's love is not spineless and flabby. It's strong; it's a love of integrity and justice. If people have spent all their lives trying to avoid God's fellowship, they're not suddenly going to seek that fellowship just because they have died. "Shame and everlasting contempt" is the real and horrible consequence of a life spent saying not to God. Such people will not be annihilated (Matthew 25:41) or simply discarded on some cosmic junk pile. They will retain the awful ability to experience God's eternal rejection. -
(Shoot, I forgot about this. And I lost the book, so I won't be posting in t for a bit.)
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(Found it. I'll get right on this.)
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"I will restore my creation to its original perfection!"
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To kindle in the hearts of his people a longing for the blessings awaiting them at the end of the world, God spoke several fascinating prophesies through the prophet Isaiah: "I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind" (Isaiah 65:17). "The LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine - the best of meats and the finest of wines. . . . He will swallow up death forever" (Isaiah 25:6,8).
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On the pages if the Old Testament, God promised his people that when he takes this planet apart permanently, he will restore heaven and earth to their original perfection. The world we live in now is only a pale reflection of of the beautiful and perfect world that a wise and loving Creator originally designed as the first home of Adam and Eve. Every evening the world's misery is served up to us in living color: poverty and famine and global warming, violence and wars and terrorist threats. And, lurking in the shadows, is the ultimate terrorist: death. The British author George Benard Shaw called death "thr ultimate statistic: one out of one dies." Death mocks all human strength , beauty, achievement, wealth, and honor. Death will come for us too.
God promised to change that, however, and he kept reminding his Old Testament people of this. He would restore his creation to its original perfection.
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