The Patience Building Process Of Salvation
Hi Mike, Since our last email dialog, I feel as if I’ve been on some kind of Spiritual cross- country cycle – through so many terrains of experience and struggle – far better than the stagnant despair my life was becoming. I thank you for all of your encouragement and prayers – they have been of comfort to me. (I see now I would rather struggle toward my salvation, than live by my flesh and be comfortable) — fixing my mind on my heavenly home. Though I see many wonderful Truths (enough to make church of no use to me now) in the Scriptures and my mind is set on wanting to know Christ more and the doctrines of Christ only, I feel that I am still blind. For example, I read your paper on the law of Moses vs. the law of Spirit and it is all parable – I WANT to see it, but no matter how many times I read it, I just can’t understand a single word. The Corinthian letters make more sense to me than Romans….. And many things I come across on your site, I feel great affliction as I read – not because I ‘feel’ offended, but because it seems too overwhelming – and so I take this as God saying He is not ready for me to have it – that I can’t digest it. My grandfather (a mature man of Christ that guided me Spiritually for a few years of my life and eventually recommended your site) told me that “we want to know everything and grow quickly, but that’s just not the way it works.” My flesh gets impatient. I want to have revelation and understanding, but some days, the Word can just be frustrating. Alas – Your constant reminder that in patience and endurance we possess our souls is exactly the Truth my walk has needed.
[ That … project I was telling you about has and continues to cause me great affliction. I have made a couple decisions (only by Christ) that I had been needing to make. I realized… I was wanting to be a manpleaser. It was so foolish, me trying to mix carnality with Christ. And in letting that go, it hurt, but it has also enabled me to grow. But thank you, Christ has been adjusting me to do that which is commendable and not just permissible – through a dragging process – both in my life and in the journey of this work. I am getting closer to a mind that desires my art to be a work of Christ and not a work of me.] I went walking yesterday – and I thought to myself what I WANT – this nagging feeling in me that seems to be there all the time…. and I said I wanted Love. I imagine how I can share the Love that is the Love of Christ. Not to share out of obligation or duty, but out of that very Love which was given to me then as I was walking… the Love I see throughout my life – in the struggles I face and in the Love that puts others before self… the Love I have received from you and the staff… the Love evident in God’s Justice. On the walk, it became more clear to me that Paul spread the Gospel of Christ (among others)… and he wasn’t spreading it in the sense that many try spreading the Gospel today – the soul- WINNING stuff. It is a natural outpouring of the called – to want and to need to share. Thank you, Mike, for your paper ‘Strong Delusion’. It is something that I know I will read the rest of my earthly life (both as you have organized it and the Truths in the whole of Scripture) – because it speaks to me so powerfully, and it challenges me and invigorates me. I know I am only at the very beginning of my journey, but tonight and yesterday, I am excited again. I look forward to what is to come, despite the fact that it will be very hard. It’s amazing to me that God still works in me to humble me – just when I FEEL that I am beyond Him and too sinful and too defiant…. it is in those times that God is STILL working. And Christ comforts me with my occasional fellowship with you and people in the forum. Before I close, I have a question that entered my mind tonight that has never entered it before… the Scriptures say that many are called, but few are chosen… and the chosen (the overcomers in Christ) will reign with Him in the Lake of Fire to bring then the rest of the world. That’s the basics, right? Well, tonight I wondered, “If we will all be in Christ someday, then what is the purpose of the “few chosen”? Why will there be different types of splendor? I don’t think I’ve ever really understood the second death/ Lake of Fire. Sometimes I feel like I read that it is worse, and sometimes I feel like I read that it is the same as the fire that the elect go through (you know, “it’s all a matter of timing”). But I do know the Scriptures say that the First Resurrection is the blessed resurrection. I think you wrote in one of your papers that the Creation groans for these few to be revealed. I don’t know… I hope you can offer some guidance… all in all an “I’m lost” question. Thank you for your prayers and sincerity— N____
Hi N____,
This is all very encouraging to hear. It all reveals that you are in the process of being purged and purified by God’s Word. Believe me when I say that part of that “patience in which you possess your soul” is to realize and acknowledge that it is in love that God does not reveal more to us than we have first been prepared to receive.
Joh 16:12 I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
The reformation and “change also of the law” is a perfect example of how true these words are. It is in God’s love and mercy that He holds back what we cannot yet receive. However, “seek and ye shall find” are words which have the words ‘process’ and ‘patience’ written all over them. It takes time to seek, and it takes patience to find the “hidden treasure,” the truths of God’s Word in God’s ‘field’ which ‘field’ we are. God has planted His Word is us:
Mat 13:24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
Mat 13:25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
When you come to see that the parables are all about “the mysteries of the kingdom of God,” and when you come to accept that “the kingdom of God is within you,” then you will know that every placement of that seed, that word of God: 1) caught away by the wicked one, 2) received into stony places, 3) among the thorns, and finally 4) received in good ground, are all part of a process within and not different groups of people without. This is a parable about “the mysteries of the kingdom of God… which is within you.”
Mat 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
Mat 13:20 But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;
Mat 13:21 Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.
Mat 13:22 He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
Mat 13:23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth [it]; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
We all go through all of those steps in this process. That is what you are telling me in this email. I am 60 years old. I have gone through them all, and I am still struggling with them all within me. As time does its preordained work, the struggle is less and the resolve is stronger to submit the flesh to the spirit. So take heart. God is bringing forth a manchild who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron. This ‘manchild’ must first be prepared to show the same mercy he has been shown. Only after coming to see our own need for mercy will we be prepared to show that same mercy to others.
Rom 11:30 For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Rom 11:31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
As for the degree of punishment experienced in the second death, here is the formula for all judgments of God:
2Co 11:15 Therefore [it is] no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
Rev 20:12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is [the book] of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
Rev 20:13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
There is another element which is part of God’s righteous judgment:
Luk 12:47 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not [himself], neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
Luk 12:48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.
So you see, the lake of fire is not a “one size fits all” judgment. Those who come up in the great white throne judgment will be everyone from aborted children to Mao Tse Tung, who is alleged to have killed 60 million of his own people. So the ‘lake of fire’ is a very discriminating, customized and personalized judgment which will mete out exactly what is needed to fit the crime and to accomplish God’s goal of bringing all mankind to Himself.
The fact that Joseph kept Simeon in prison, thinking that he might die the next day, while sending Simeon’s brothers back home, is an example of just how discriminating the lake of fire is. It was Simeon and Levi who had murdered all the men of Shechem (Gen 34), and they were without doubt voting to kill Joseph when Reuben and Judah talked the other brothers into selling Joseph into Egypt. The fact that Joseph was kept in a pit symbolizes his deliverance from death itself.
I hope that all of this, too, encourages you to be patient. Let God’s spirit do its work in you and to “endure to the end.” Look at the very next verse in Luke 12:
Luk 12:49 I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? [in the lives of God’s elect]
Lest one think the first resurrection is no different than the second, different only by timing, read:
1Co 15:41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
Enough folks have voiced the opinion that if all men are going to be judged and saved, whether in this eon or the future, why bother ‘enduring to the end’, ‘overcoming’, ‘keeping the faith’, etc. now. Won’t the Great White Throne judgment do just as well? The differing in glory is part of the reason. “… Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife” of Revelation 21:9 shows in the verses afterward the glory of that new Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, which we are striving to be. Those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s book of life are not allowed in. The brighter our ‘star’, the more glory we show to God even as Christ is the brightness of God’s glory
Heb 1:3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.
The light in this great city comes from the Lamb (vs. 23), and as we are told in John 14:3 “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” then how blessed we will be to be among those in that ‘blessed and holy first resurrection.’
Mike
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