Of Last Things: Part 3 – A Great Kingdom Reversal

So far we have read about the judgement of God that will bring to an end the present material and celestial orders. However, what will become of the new humanity that God is redeeming for Himself? The Bible never gives us a detailed account of God’s plans for the world to come, in fact it specifically tells us that we aren’t even able to comprehend those truths (1 Cor 2:9). That said it does give us several glimpses into that reality, at least in forms that we are able to apprehend, so as to comfort us as we go through afflictions in our present life. These glimpses strengthen the Christian’s resolve to persevere in the faith, knowing what lies ahead. These glimpses are of things promised to us by God Himself and therefore we can be certain that we will inherit those promises if we persevere in Christ.

The New Covenant and Antithesis: Part 3 – The Church as an Assembly of God’s Divine Council

A lot of these issues in worship stem from a misunderstanding of what the church of God really is. Some of it can be attributed to the Greek Word ekklesia translated as Church in the English language. The word church has institutional connotations and often represents a formal structure that gathers in a building or as a reference to the building itself. It doesn’t accurately represent what the apostles meant when they used ekklesia. Some have understood the term ekklesia to be a sum of two different words. The prefix ex meaning out of and the verb kaleo meaning to call. This they understand to mean called out ones. Now this could be a legitimate understanding of the term. However, when the apostles used the term ekklesia, it already had a colloquial usage in the Koine Greek of the time. Moreover, it is often used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, which the apostles used. Therefore, to understand this term, it is good to look into its colloquial usage and its usage in the Septuagint.

The Celestial Order – Part 3 : The Fall from High Places

The Bible speaks of a time prior to the fall of man, when Lucifer, a glorious angel rebelled against God. This rebellion can be considered the true original sin because it was through it that evil entered the cosmos. Corruption of the created order therefore did not begin with the material but rather the celestial. To understand the fall of Adam, one must first understand the fall of Lucifer and its consequences for the entire cosmos. This will also help us appreciate the magnitude of God’s plan of redemption which is far more than a mere legal transaction, it is cosmic in scale. Lucifer’s evil has corrupted this created order, but God has promised to create all things new, and He is redeeming His people so that they will not perish with this failing order, but be rulers again in His new creation.

The Celestial Order – Part 2

The visible world reflects many of these eternal and invisible realities. Since God is the Creator of both the material and the celestial (Col 1:16), His attributes are revealed in His creation. It is as if He has left His fingerprints on His work. This reflection of the invisible in the visible enables us to understand attributes of God and His nature (Rom 1:20). Sadly, humans have corrupted this revelation by causally liking material categories to divine categories rather than seeing them as mere reflections of the eternal. Men thus end up worshipping created things rather than the Creator (Rom 1:23). This is why it is critical to understand the supernatural themes revealed in the Scriptures. They exist to point us to something Greater and are not an end in and of themselves.