The Coming Salvation/Redemption

The New Testament speaks of an immediate salvation/redemption, in which we place our faith in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins; in which we choose to turn away from the world and be baptized, meaning we are entering the crucifixion of Christ and His resurrection. After this we are born again as the Spirit of God plants the Life of God as a seed in our personality.

The New Testament also sets forth clearly the concept that we have been sealed unto a salvation/redemption that is coming in the future. When we grasp what is coming, we experience a 180 degree shift in our thinking from the idea that being saved means we will go to Heaven to live forever to the idea that Christ is coming to put an end to the power of sin in our personality so we can practice righteous behavior upon the earth at Christ's appearing and His Kingdom A radical change in our viewpoint, but the true scriptural emphasis.

(8/13/2006) We started off this morning thinking about the goal of salvation, the end product of the Divine redemption. This is an awesome concept, and represents a radical change in the Christian viewpoint. If we are to believe the New Testament, we of today are not teaching the Gospel of the Kingdom but a humanly conceived plan to bring untransformed people to the spirit paradise when they die.

I prayed this morning to God that the Holy Spirit would enable me to portray clearly to God's people what I think I am seeing with the Lord.

We spent some time on John 3:16, a verse most Christians know—and then apply their own interpretation to it.

For God so loved the world He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Is that about what it says? Do you agree with this?

Now, here is how we interpret this verse ordinarily. See if you can see a relationship between our interpretation and what the verse actually says.

For God so loved the world He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not go to Hell but to Heaven when he or she dies.

Now compare:

Whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Whoever believes in Him should not go to Hell but to Heaven when he or she dies.

Do you see anything about Hell, Heaven, or dying in John 3:16? Neither do I.

What, then, does it mean? It means the believer will not be destroyed in the Day of Judgment but receive immortality in his body and enter his or her role in the Kingdom of God.

One might say, "But these basically are the same outcome."

Hardly that. One is a change of destination by believing in Christ. The other is a transformation of personality, particularly in the body, by believing in Christ.

A change of location rather than a change in what we ourselves are in personality.

Why bother with such a distinction? Because how we view the program of salvation/redemption directly affects our daily life.

If we view salvation as being a ticket to Heaven when we die, we may not exercise the diligence necessary for the program of redemption to work in us. This especially is true if we believe Jesus did it all for us and we will go to Paradise when we die regardless of the consistency of our diligence in serving Christ.

However, if we view salvation as a program that enables us to pass from death to life each day of our discipleship so that we will be qualified to receive immortality in the Day of Christ, then we will not be in a waiting mode. We actively will be cooperating with the Holy Spirit as He guides us each day in putting to death the deeds of our sinful nature in preparation for the transformation of our body into immortality at the coming of the Lord.

If we understand and believe what I have just written we can see how desperately important it is for the believers in America to wake up, turn away from their worldly, halfhearted "Christian" life, and begin to serve Christ as though their eternal life depends on it—which it does!

When I became a Christian, in 1944, I was in the Marine Corps. I was taught the customary Scofield stance, that we are saved by grace so we can go to Heaven when we die. Later I became aware of the doctrine of the pre-tribulation "rapture." Scofield plus the rapture are a formula for disaster.

I think the Lord has opened up the scriptures to me over the last fifty years so I can see what actually is written in the New Testament.

One major emphasis of the Apostle Paul (something you seldom hear preached) is his desire for the redemption of his physical body. Now, we might mention Paul's groaning for the redemption of his body, but thanks to the current teaching, we would misunderstand why he wanted his body to be redeemed.

Since we are Gentiles, we do not understand Paul's desire to be righteous. He was a Pharisee, an Orthodox. Paul wanted to be righteous so his behavior would be pleasing to God.

In the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans, Paul tells us of his grief because he wanted to obey God's laws but could not do so because of the power of sin in his flesh.

Paul wanted to be redeemed so he could behave righteously. I was not taught that in the beginning. I was taught that God was overlooking my unrighteous behavior so I could go to Heaven to live in Paradise. I was taught just the opposite of the emphasis of the Apostle Paul.

I was taught, when I first received Christ, by devout Marine believers, just the opposite of the emphasis of the Apostle Paul!

This fundamental misunderstanding arose probably because I am a Gentile being taught by Gentiles. I was presented with residence in Heaven as the goal, not righteous behavior. In fact, I was taught that righteous behavior was not an issue because Christ died so we don't have to behave righteously. Can you imagine the enormity of this error—an error that persists, I am afraid, to the present hour. Scofield's notes are still being sold in Bible books stores, where the proprietors, apparently have little interest in the truth of what they are selling—just as long as the money comes in, I guess.

Gentile confusion! But let us look at this problem from another angle.

The philosophy of Gnosticism has been influencing Christian thinking from the first century. The root concept of Gnosticism is that matter is evil and spirit is good.

This, brothers and sisters, is not a Christian concept.

The result of this viewpoint, that matter is evil and spirit is good, has led to the notion that we are saved in order to go to Heaven. The scriptural truth is, redemption includes the filling of our mortal body with eternal life in the Day of Christ.

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is physical death.

We will not be raised from the dead so we can to to Heaven, to the spirit world of the Gnostics. We will be raised from the dead so we can live once again on the earth. This is the true Gospel of the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth.

The end product of salvation/redemption is people who can be raised physically from the dead and then clothed with a house from Heaven. The house from Heaven will eternalize our mortal body—make it immortal. This is why the doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture as an escape from trouble is so illogical. According to the fourth chapter of the Book of Thessalonians we will be made immortal, raised from the dead, before we are caught up to meet the Commander in Chief in the air. How then could Antichrist or the Great Tribulation harm us after we have been clothed with immortality? What mythology is taught today in place of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God!

Man is spirit, soul, and physical body. When we lose our physical body through physical death, we no longer will be "man."

But will we have a heavenly body? Not so. Our heavenly body, which we are forming now by our decisions, indeed is in Heaven before the throne of God. In the Day of Christ, our heavenly body will clothe our resurrected mortal body, making it immortal.

When we die we will be a conscious spirit and will be placed where we belong, in terms of our closeness to Jesus Christ. God does not approve of mixtures, so thoroughly godly spirits will be placed with thoroughly godly spirits, and so on down the line.

We will not be made "alive," in the sense of once more becoming "man," until the Lord returns and our body is raised from the dead and then clothed with the house from Heaven.

One important aspect of this picture is the fact, as we have said before, that God is the one who redeems us from the enemy. We are brought back to God's possession, not our own possession. Our body is the eternal temple of the Spirit of God. Thus God has a vital interest in what happens to our physical body.

God wants our body to be a house, a resting place, for the fullness of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is our destiny if we will cooperate with what the Spirit is enabling us to do today.

God wants to redeem from the enemy the possession He has purchased with the blood of the cross. The program of redemption includes removing the guilt of our sin; removing our sinful nature, the compulsion to sin; transforming our character in the moral image of Christ; clothing our resurrected mortal body with the robe or righteousness and eternal life which has been fashioned in Heaven as we have chosen to serve Christ instead of our flesh; and finally the filling of our immortalized body with the fullness of God.

There is a window open today. The Kingdom of God comes to mankind in stages. At any given stage the faithful will press in and gain the redemption offered at that moment, that window.

The window opened today is ready for Spirit-filled people to press toward the redemption of their body. We must confess and turn away from all worldliness, lust, and self-will as the Spirit of God guides and enables us. We must prepare ourselves for the immortalizing of our physical body, of the eternal Temple of God.

The faithful are pressing in today. The faithful will be qualified to return with the Lord Jesus Christ and help with the installing of the Kingdom of God on the earth.

The spiritually lazy among us will have no robe from Heaven in that day. They will not be given eternal life. They will "perish" (John 3:16) in that they will be found "naked," their flesh and bone raised at the voice of Jesus Christ, but no glorious house from Heaven to clothe their nakedness.

They will have no spiritual life, because whatever eternal life they did have has long since drained away as they have neglected daily prayer, daily Bible reading, meeting with fervent disciples on a regular basis, and have not sought to find out God's will for their life.

Thus they have no spiritual life in their personality. Their resurrected flesh and bones will find them in the same condition as when they died.

They have no house of eternal life from Heaven with which to be clothed.

They shall be placed in a situation, along with others of their kind, wherever Jesus Christ decides, whether in the deepest flames, or outer darkness, or in whatever other domains there may be.

As far as the Kingdom of God is concerned, as far as the new earth is concerned, as far as their loved ones are concerned, as far as love, joy, peace, the laughter of little children is concerned, as far as the delights of all the good things God has provided for the righteous and yet shall provide for the righteous, they have perished!

I have bolded some of my statements, which I am not accustomed to doing. It is like yelling at people. I have done this because I believe Christ of late has revealed to me that my message is to the American people, to warn them of their spiritual, and consequently physical, danger.

Previously I had pictured that whatever truth Christ has given me was for the Body of Christ throughout the world. Like John Wesley, I had flattered myself that the world is my parish.

But I cannot deny the strong impression that I am speaking primarily to American people. Thus the bolding.

The Lord be with you and your loved ones.

Pastor Thompson