My dad died earlier this year. I wasn't there the day he died, but I was able to see him just a couple days earlier and sit with him in his hospital room overlooking the water while the sun came up. I'm very grateful I was able to say goodbye: not everyone gets to do that.
Dad was characterized by 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18. He talked about the Lord's coming every time he got a chance. My mother tells me that when my grandfather died, Dad took us kids through that passage and explained that our granddad wasn't gone for good: the Lord was going to bring him back with Him. I don't remember that, but I'm glad he did it.
I am certain the Lord's return will come in two distinct phases: He will come for us (1 Corinthians 15:51ff, 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18) before He comes with us (Jude 1:14–15, Revelation 19:11ff). Not everyone agrees on that, but it seems evident to me that the Lord's coming is taught in Scripture in a way that the only way to reconcile all the pieces is to have a two-part event.
Notice that's not very different from His coming the first time. It's clear from Acts 1:6ff that the disciples assumed the Lord would fulfill all prophecy in His first advent. They were looking for a physical, earthly kingdom centered in Jerusalem – and as John MacArthur points out, this was after He had spent six weeks teaching them about the Kingdom (Acts 1:3) – and apparently thought they were on the verge of that.
I have to believe that their question about the Kingdom wasn't rooted in ignorance about the true nature of the Kingdom: I have to believe the Lord's teaching them for 40 days would have addressed that. So they were correct in their expectations, but not about the timing.
My point is that the disciples were clearly not expecting the Lord's departure and promise of a second coming (Acts 1:9ff). They saw only one Advent in the prophets. When we look back on the Old Testament after the Ascension, it's almost obvious that the prophets were predicting things that couldn't happen all in one go. They predicted Christ as both the conquering Savior and the suffering Redeemer. Those things weren't to happen at the same time.
We admit that the Lord has fulfilled those prophecies in a spiritual sense, but it's pretty weak soup to try and read Psalm 2 as a spiritual conquest. It is a physical conquest.
We're not in Psalm 2:6ff, we're in Psalm 110:1.
In other words, we expect Psalm 110:2ff and Psalm 2:1ff will happen literally, bodily, and visibly.
Maybe I'm belaboring the point here. Just like the disciples didn't expect the Lord to leave and come back to fulfill all those other prophecies, a lot of Christians think He is coming back for us and with us in a single event. But I think Darby, Kelly, et al. were correct in understanding that there are actually two events.
It's early April, we had a snow storm last a little over a week ago, but we're now seeing early signs of spring. The grass is starting to look more green than brown, the standing water around our garden is starting to dry up, and the buds on the willow trees are starting to look fat. Spring turkey season opens next week, and the firewood is almost used up: time to get moving on next year's supply! There are fences to mend and trees to tend and all sorts of other tasks and chores to get a start on.
And I have one more apple tree to plant before spring gets truly underway.
In other words, the seasons are still coming in their appointed order (Genesis 8:21–22). God's wisdom and divinity are still on display (Romans 1:18), and there's still a whole lot of work and blessing for me here. But at the same time, I am called to live in the expectation that it will all end abruptly when He comes back for us.
That shouldn't surprise us: God doesn't stay where He belongs. He doesn't mind His own business. He keeps inserting Himself where He isn't wanted. How thankful that should make us!
I spent many years thinking that an expectation of the Lord's coming should diminish the world around us in our eyes. When I realized how wrong that was, I spent a few more years enjoying the Lord's blessings in this world, learning to appreciate the God who richly provides all things for our enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17) . There is a ditch on both sides of the road: we can't lose sight of the Lord's coming to change everything in a moment, and we can't lose sight of the witness in this creation to the Lord's wisdom and divinity.
So to come back to my initial point: my dad taught us that our granddad wasn't gone forever, the Lord was going to bring him back. And now I can say that same thing about him too: he's not gone forever, the Lord is going to bring him back when He comes for us.
7 comments:
NicW STOP WITH THIS NONSENSE! You seriously are testing our patience.. A man writes an article about his father's death and the hope of the rapture and the best you can respond with is sea monsters and trees falling on golf courses. 'Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.' 1Cor 15:33,34
Thank you Mark for sharing a beautiful testimony of your father.
NicW - your posts
discredits our witness to the truth and our Lord.
Thank you Mark!
Your ministry is greatly appreciated!
Maranatha!!!
I've been putting effort into staying on top of the comments, deleting whatever seems like it needs deleting.
I stepped away to plant that last apple tree and came back to three comments. One has been deleted.
Thanks Robert and Susan for chiming in.
@NicW - I will keep deleting what's off-topic. I've already asked politely. I will respect comments that disagree when they're on topic, but I won't allow my reputation and that of the others here to be tarnished by association with nonsense.
-mark
In chaptere vi, and vii. the prophet gets the word of the Lord respecting the judgment that will fall on the people. It is foretold to him how the Lord will deal with them, and how grievous is their course in His mind. It is thus the servant is rightly or duly impressed with man's evil. He only knows it rightly when the Lord has spoken to him His mind about it. Now in chapter viii. the prophet is made in visions to be an eye-witness of the varied abominations committed at Jerusalem. The Man in glory puts forth His hand, and "took me by a lock of mine head," and he was brought to Jerusalem. The discipline of a servant who is called upon to announce judgment is very peculiar and personally severe. He must not only know the mind of God respecting the evil, but he must be well and clearly instructed in the manner and way of the evil against which the judgment is leveled. Yet he must be entirely apart from complicity with it. First, verse 6, he is called to "lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north. and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry." Secondly, verse 7, "he brought me to the door of the court... and he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall round about." The secret evil is disclosed. This terrible state of things had occurred through ancients of the people, who were leavened by the most pernicious opinions. "The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth." In verse 14 is the third abomination.
Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz." It is not only the mind and opinions that are polluted, but the affections: every element of the nation was defiled and idolatrous.
In verse 16 is the fourth. "And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east."
To the prophet these four secret and inveterate abominations are disclosed, and in chapter ix. he is shewn the execution of the judgment.
Jbs vol 13 p50-51
A ditch on either side … it’s the Pharisees and Sadducees all over again.
Strength In Weakness
"For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:8, 9).
It is a natural thought, the first thought perhaps even for a godly soul, to desire an answer of the Lord inbthe removal of that which is trying and painful. We know His great compassion--that He cares for His own that He feels for them and with them; and we are prone to gather from this that He must appear speedily for us when any blow, humiliation, or sorrow comes upon us, especially that which would seem to make His glory be questioned and thwarted in various ways.
And this is plainly so in Paul's case before us. The enemy was taking full advantage of this thorn in the Apostle's flesh to lower him and his work. We are disposed to expect an immediate answer from the Lord in the way of the removal of the trial. It was so with the Apostle himself. He cried to the Lord about it; he besought Him thrice that it might depart from him. But he mistook the Lord. It was not in order that He hear the Lord heard him. But the Apostle had this great truth to learn: the Lord's way of answering is - much better than our way of beseeching.
Even were it the Apostle Paul a man with such an amazing knowledge of what was most suitable to God and most to be desired by His children even he had to learn that he was not the Lord - an Apostle had to learn that the Lord's ways are above his ways. I believe that this desire of an answer from the Lord coming at once in the way of meeting us in our difficulty and sorrow, is rather one that was taught, and that God acted upon in His ways of old, in dealing with His ancient people Israel. When they were in any difficulty or trial, they cried to the Lord, and He heard and delivered them out of their troubles. But it is not necessarily so now. It is not always in removing the distress that our Father acts. This is not the characteristic way now with Christians.
I do not say that He does not deliver in many a case; for He pities the weakness of His children, and does not lay the same burden upon all. But there is something more blessed than the mere setting aside of the trial, and that is, the power of divine grace which enters into it, and lifts us above it; the distress, it may be, continuing, the sorrow going on, the thorn unremoved, but ourselves raised above it all. And I believe that this heavenly way of meeting sorrow and trouble, is especially the one in which our Father triumphs in His dealings with the Church.
It is a higher thing, the lifting us in spirit above, even while the sorrow may still be adhering to us. Perhaps there is sharp trial, difficulty, and that which is heart-breaking, even in the Church of God itself. The Apostle must know this in a way that seemed to frustrate all his desires for the blessing of the Church. For the thorn given him was something that made him to be scorned in the eyes of others., and that was an immense trial to himself and to everyone that loved him - appearing to be a hindrance even to the work of the Lord through him.
- H.H. Snell
https://positiontoperson.wordpress.com/2023/04/12/strength-in-weakness/
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