The Scourge Of Racism
E-Book Availability 4/12-26
Released January 5, 2024
Download Your Copy
Now In The Strong Man Store!
In the second, concluding part to this edited 2013 blog post, the faithful are given great reasons to be encouraged about our destination at the death of the body as well as inspired to praise the Lord Jesus Christ with all of the saints now in Heaven for the outworking benefits of His death, burial and resurrection that saves and sets His people free in thorough fulfillment of Matthew 16:16-18!
Originally Posted April 21, 2013
According to the apostle Peter, the Lord while disembodied did not just “chill out” in paradise, but also labored preaching. He preached the Gospel to a specific group of imprisoned disembodied spirits who were the lawless human beings that perished by God’s judgment in the global flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 7:17-24; 1 Peter 3:18-4:6). He also heralded to the saints in paradise that moving day had come and they were yet another step closer to permanent resurrection as a result of His finished work on Calvary and imminent, triumphant resurrection to immortal glory (Job 14:13-14)!
It was all so sudden; God’s long awaited Deliverer announced in the hearing of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15) and promised Messiah affirmed to Abraham (Genesis 22:18; Galatians 3:16) at that moment stood in the midst of the saints under the earth! No doubt all were joyful beyond measure to greet the Lord upon His arrival and hear the good news of His once and for all sacrifice providing eternal atonement for the sins they had committed while in the body; sins that had kept them from dwelling in the immediate presence of God in Heaven (Job 14:15-17; Romans 3:21-26; Hebrews 10:1-10).
Now, as a result of His successful mission Christ was proclaiming liberty from confinement in Hades and victory over Satan (Isaiah 61:1; Ephesians 1:7-10; Colossians 2:13-15). In so doing, He spoke of His impending resurrection not only with the promise theirs was yet to follow His own at a time to be announced by the Father (Acts 1:6-7), but that they would actually shortly be joining Him in His return to Heaven for coronation and glorification (nice as paradise was there, it cannot compare to standing in the glorious presence of the living God in Heaven)!
Therefore, when the moment came that He departed Hades to permanently re-enter His body instantaneously made alive and transformed from mortal to immortal, God permitted some of them whose bodies were buried around Jerusalem to be temporarily raised after Him in celebratory anticipation of the future! They arose from graves which had already been opened by the powerful earthquake that occurred at His death and entered into the city showing themselves to many (Matthew 27:51-53). After forty days on earth spent appearing to and instructing His disciples (John 20:11-18), the Lord Jesus purposely took them to the place of His ascension so they would see His departure to Heaven (Luke 24:50-51; Acts 1:9).
God permitted that they should also see two angels as they watched Him ascend (Acts 1:10-11). What they did not see in the spiritual realm was the joyful train of accompanying angels along with the disembodied spirits of the saints liberated from Hades and brought to God parading in triumphal procession to Heaven behind Christ as Savior, Victor and Conqueror-King fulfilling types and prophecy (Genesis 14:8-16; Psalm 68:17-20; Ephesians 4:7-10; Hebrews 2:10-18; Revelation 1:18); foreshadowing that yet to be fulfilled at His return to earth (Psalm 68:21-35)! It is customary for human kings returning home from faraway wars of conquest to be given gifts by their subjects and even resentful rebels as Psalm 68:18 notes.
However, being the Anointed One of God and as such, far superior in character to sinful, mortal men, the Lord Jesus actually gives gifts to mankind beginning with the Person of the Holy Spirit as foretold and which began to take place on Pentecost, ten days after His ascension and glorification (John 7:37-39, 14:16-17, 15:26-27, 16:5-15, 20:19-23; Acts 2:1-21, 38-39). He also gives His human followers gifted, led, controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve His purposes for the good of His own and all mankind (Ephesians 4:11-16)! I am deeply honored in the Lord to serve you as a watchman/prophet and teacher in the main and doing the work of an evangelist (Ezekiel 33:1-9; Romans 12:3-8; 2 Timothy 4:5) after His faithful servants since the 1st century as His victory gift giving campaign among men continues to the end--glory to His Name!
Thanks now, to the permanent, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and ascension into Heaven with all of the disembodied Old Testament saints, those who have believed on Him in this New Testament period follow behind (John 13:36-14:6). As the apostle Paul discusses in 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, if our earthly tent--(our present, mortal body) is destroyed (dies), we are comforted by the fact God has a building from Heaven (our resurrected, immortal body) to house us with.
We actually yearn deep in our souls to be in that body right now! However, we must wait for the appointed day assured by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit as God’s guarantee that it will come so that we even welcome temporary disembodiment confident that our spirits will ascend to be with Christ in Heaven. We are confident because as the apostle Paul also teaches, “we walk by faith, not by sight,” (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).
Angels are “ministering spirits” according to Scripture whose natural form as created by God is solely spirit (Psalm 104:4; Hebrews 1:7, 14, NKJV). But man was created by God to be housed in a body whether of composition from the dust of the earth as the first Adam or of eternal spirit as the Second Adam, Jesus Christ from Heaven who was made mortal to suffer death in saving fallen mankind and resurrected to immortal glory (Genesis 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:44b-50)! Therefore, it is unnatural for man to be disembodied, yet, God has permitted it as the temporary experience and consequence of sin (Genesis 2:16-17, 3:17-19; Romans 5:12; Hebrews 2:9, 9:27-28).
Nevertheless, even the unnatural condition of being disembodied God has made wonderful for those from creation that have looked to Him in faith. In this edited 2013 repost, marvel you saints at the awesome works of our God who has made comforting provision for us in between the death of the body and our soon coming resurrection to immortal glory all brought to light by the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 1:8-10)!
Originally Posted April 14, 2013
According to Luke’s Gospel account, just before His death on the cross, the Lord Jesus told the repentant thief crucified with Him, ‘“Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise,’” (Luke 23:43, NKJV). After awhile, the Son spoke directly and finally to His Father saying, ‘“Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit,’” then “breathed His last” (Luke 23:46, NKJV). Clearly, even a casual consideration of these two statements of Jesus on the cross indicates He was fully expecting to be alive on the same day He was to die on the cross. How can this be?
The resolution is that while Christ’s body did die on that cross, His eternally joined spirit and soul remained alive as do all human spirits and souls when the body dies! The human spirit and soul are a package deal though functionally different as seen at the creation of man and strongly implied in Scripture thereafter (Isaiah 42:5, 57:15-16; Mark 12:29-30, 14:34-38). Indeed, as the living Word of God, Christ absolutely knows the place of their division (Hebrews 4:12) and knew exactly what He was entrusting to the protection of His Father at the death of His body. As the Lord taught, ‘“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,’” (Matthew 22:31-32; Mark 12:26-27; Luke 20:37-38, NKJV).
Be clear at this point that though all human spirits (understood to include the soul in tandem and vice versa going forward) live in terms of existence after the body dies, only born again Christians enjoy the qualitatively superior “eternal life” of God through relationship with Him stemming from salvation by faith in Jesus Christ (John 1:12-13, 3:1-8, 14-15, 10:10, 11:25, 17:1-3, NKJV)! Otherwise, the wicked having died separated from God spiritually (Isaiah 59:1-2), remain in that condition and await a bodily resurrection to endure what is described as a “second death” in the lake of fire forever (Revelation 20:6, 11-15, NKJV). Consequently, let the saints heed the Lord (Matthew 10:27-31)!
The spirit of man separates from the body at death which renders it disembodied. So, where does it go? As noted in my blog, God Raises The Dead! under the category The Faith, the Lord Jesus Christ expressed a confidence toward God the Father through His forefather, king David, a thousand years in advance that He would not leave His soul in Sheol (the Old Testament term for the abode of the dead or disembodied called Hades in the New Testament) or let His body decay and would instead raise Him from the dead (Psalm 16:9b-11a; Acts 2:27-28a).
Always in absolute control of His creation, the holy God established that disembodied human spirits from fallen Adam should abide away from Him because of sin guilt and defilement until future divine disposition in a location that is in the bowels of the earth as understood by the often associated term “down” with the place of the disembodied (Numbers 16:28-34; 17:13-16; Matthew 11:23, NKJV). Truly, when the prophet Samuel was permitted of God to appear to king Saul he came “up” from the earth (1 Samuel 28:7-14, NKJV). Apparently, the teaching of the Rabbis in 1st century Israel that this place under the earth holding departed human spirits is divided according to divine will was correct.
The Lord did not challenge this thinking in His parable of the rich man and Lazarus found in Luke 16:19-31. In order to be meaningful for its hearers, a parable must have things in it that are familiar and relatable to them. In the parable warning of the consequence of being caught up in the riches of this life and ignoring the teaching of God’s Word containing His priorities, the Lord shows Hades divided at least in half--other portions of Scripture reveal a special place of lockdown for chained fallen angels as well (ex. 2 Peter 2:4). “Abraham’s bosom” figuratively representing a paradise of comfort and rest is where the beggar, Lazarus, ended up upon death while the rich man was tormented in flames. He saw “Abraham afar off” and learned they were separated by a “great gulf fixed” that neither could cross (Luke 16:22-26, NKJV).
That God would create a divide where condemned sinners suffer and His people are comforted and protected is plainly seen in the way He made such a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites during the plagues He brought on the land of Egypt in the Exodus (Exodus 8:20-23). In Samuel’s disembodied appearance to Saul, he seemed to be annoyed that he had been disturbed--not the attitude you would expect if his spirit and soul were in torment (1 Samuel 28:15-19). Truly, Saul and his sons would join Samuel like the rich man with Abraham in the same place of the disembodied, but each in separate accommodations according to God’s judgment! Thus, with joyful anticipation of a restful paradise for saved by faith disembodied spirits under the earth, our Lord comforts the thief on the cross.
The ability to think, reason and form opinions is a powerful ability we humans have from being made in the image and likeness of God. Created by Him with freewill, we are free to think whatever we want. The issue is, however, is what we are thinking lined up with reality and truth especially as set out objectively for us by our Creator? Atheists clearly see the reality and truth of God’s existence and deny it because they choose to think otherwise about the evidence. But for those of us that have been born again by the Spirit of God, we not only see the reality and truth of our God, but by His Word and revelation our eyes are opened to joyfully know these more deeply and learn that which is to be--His mind as it were (1 Corinthians 2:6-16)!
In the aftermath of declaring the spiritual reality and truth about the Eternal Sons Of God in the June 19, 2016 repost, the Lord has led me to repost this re-titled and edited 2013 blog that followed it. It serves as a prelude to addressing immortality from a biblical perspective. In it, we also see again the devastating consequence of culturally conditioning the faith to the point human thinking supplants God’s Word. For while titillating, flights of fancy, romantic ideas, wishes and subjective speculations in their error create heresy and rob believers (as they have done over the centuries) of the awe and child-like wonder available from the authentic glimpses of the unseen spiritual realm and future God has provided us in His Word. Why settle for false fantasy when the reality and truth are so good?
Originally Posted May 26, 2013
Faithful Christians know that we are not to impose our own ideas, views or desires onto Scripture or the faith. Even the apostles among themselves had to constantly guard against this in preserving the purity of their Scripture rooted message and the simplicity of Christ (Galatians 2:11-21). Nevertheless, with the rise of Christianity the religion of men after the passing of the 1st century apostles, as foretold, all manner of corrupt violence has been done since to God’s Word with the result that much wrong thinking and many false doctrines exist and persist among professing Christians along with their leaders in the churches to this hour (Acts 20:27-31; 2 Peter 2:1-3).
Examples of unbiblical thinking and ideas abound, but consider a few popular ones. As it concerns the impact of literature on Christian thinking, Dante may have written a fictional work showcasing Catholicism’s Purgatory and Hades as Satan’s current residence, but the Bible teaches neither idea. The television show Touched By An Angel starring Della Reese featured female angels, but where are they in the Bible? One of the most popular widespread cultural sentiments today not at all taught in the Bible puts anybody human opinion believes to be good in Heaven at their death. Related to that thinking is the unbiblical idea the dead in the afterlife can see earth activity.
I have heard even professing Christians say regarding departed loved ones: “I know he (or she) is looking down on us right now.” Where in the Bible is it taught that disembodied human spirits either in Heaven or Hades are permitted to view earth activity in real time? Concerning the afterlife too, not discouraged by solid Bible teaching to the contrary, many professing Christians solely out of mortal sentimentality and desire continue to insist they will reunite with loved ones and take up where they left off before death disembodied in Heaven and after at the resurrection to immortality forever! Such wrong human thinking and ideas will only continue to proliferate among professing Christians unless the guilty repent and turn back to the Bible as the final authority for spiritual reality and truth.
I fully empathize with the deep emotional ties we mortals have to our family and friends in this life. As finite mortals, the temptation to want eternity to be like our present is linked to what is familiar and excellent to us. For example, males find it hard to think of an eternity without females because of their mothers and intimate involvements with others. However, God’s Word is to be considered true because His perfect character permits Him to speak no other way (Numbers 23:19; Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Samuel 7:27-29; Psalm 119:160; Titus 1:1-2)! Thus, Scripture is clear that death ends life, all biological family and marital ties as we knew them physically in this mortal age forever (Job 7:6-10; Ecclesiastes 9:2-6; John 19:25-27; Romans 7:1-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39).
Indeed, for the Christian, the disconnect process from family begins in terms of priority at salvation when we take up with Christ (Psalm 45:10-11; Matthew 10:34-39; Luke 14:25-27; Romans 6:3-4) following His example (Mark 3:31-35). Sadly, many professing Christians do not believe Christ means what He says about the primacy of our relationship with Him. But He warned the otherwise thriving church of Ephesus He would take away their existence unless they returned again to Him as their “first love” (Revelation 2:1-7, NKJV). Some in days to come will deny the Lord clinging to their mortal families of this world and perish eternally (Mark 8:34-38; Revelation 14:9-11).
At the onset of the new eternal order God also gives His redeemed sons a permanent memory wipe of all the “former things” of this present creation to include the sinful, sorrowful and painful experiences we had even with family and friends during our mortal sojourn so that they will not interfere with our new glorious experiences in His presence forever (Isaiah 25:8, 65:17-19; Revelation 21:1-4, NKJV). The memory wipe is necessary too because though in perfect agreement with God’s righteous condemnation of the wicked to the lake of fire, how could we not grieve forever as emotive creatures knowing that people we cared about during our mortal lives are there (Malachi 4:1-3; Revelation 20:11-15, 21:8)?
Please note how Christ’s mortal family members (Mary, James and Jude) relate to Him as Lord, are not accorded any special standing nor do they appear to pursue it by right of family relationship in the aftermath of His resurrection and ascension in the canonical New Testament (Acts 1:12-26, 15:6-22; Galatians 1:18-19, 2:1-10; James 1:1; Jude 1). Only the transcendent spiritual relationships formed in and through the Holy Spirit of divine love with fellow faithful believers (including those from the family) in this present life will survive death intact and continue as we serve God together forever (John 3:3-7, 13:34-35, 14:15-17; Romans 5:5; 1 Corinthians 13:8-13; 2 Corinthians 5:16-17; Galatians 5:22-25; 1 John 3:14-15, 4:20-21; Revelation 22:1-3).
Rather than attempting to impose our wishes on Christianity and corrupting His Word to do so, God’s will is for us to accept His will, way and Word as it is written (1 Corinthians 4:6)! If we do, it will mean we think righteously, objectively and truthfully about things as well as hold to and teach sound doctrine as the Lord wills (John 7:24; 2 Timothy 1:13-14). As it concerns our unsaved family and friends presently, the truth about God’s total disconnect at death should move us to do all of the loving of, witnessing to and good deeds for them we are going to do now (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10; Ephesians 5:15-16; Colossians 3:17)!
Concerning after we die, remember Heaven currently is only a temporary stop for our disembodied spirits to await God’s promised resurrection to immortal glory. As exceedingly superior to our present, mortal experience as Heaven will be to us disembodied, Scripture promises exponentially greater, unending experiences still to unfold for us as the immortally embodied and glorified eternal sons of God (Ephesians 2:4-7; Revelation 21:5-7)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
Join The Strong Man Of God Resources Conversation!
Get Your Copy Of The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics Today!
Your purchase supports restoring men, families and communities through Strong Man Ministries!
Purchase It Now