Where was Jesus going?
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Where was Jesus going
Next Part The Words of the Angels
Verses 4 and 5 read: 'You know the way to the place where I am going'. Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?'
Thomas, like many people today, did not understand what Jesus was saying. He was not particularly thick or stupid. Simply like us and every other member of Adam's race, he suffered from the darkness of the natural mind. Probably the other disciples did not understand what Jesus had said any better than Thomas did, but he at least was not afraid to show his ignorance and to ask Jesus what he meant. If Thomas did not understand what Jesus said without further explanation, it's unlikely that we will either!
Jesus explained that he was going to the Father, and that he was one with the Father. 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. ... Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?'
Having said that he was one with the Father, Jesus went on to speak about the Holy Spirit: 'And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you for ever -- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.' He immediately followed these words with the promise: 'I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.' Soon after this he said: 'My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.'
3 times in this chapter (14) Jesus said that he would come again:
verse 3 (the best known) 'I will come again, and take you to be with me.' verse 18: 'I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.' verse 23: 'My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.' These 3 statements cannot have different meanings from each other. In the third statement Jesus uses the word we, including the Father with himself. Several times also in this long discourse he speaks of the coming of the Holy Spirit. How many different comings are there? I believe these comings are all one and the same. The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was also the coming of the Father and the Son.
Let us reconsider verses 2 and 3: 'In my Father's house are many dwellings; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am'
In bodily form Jesus was going to leave his disciples, but he and his Father were going to come again and make their dwellings in them. The dwellings are not mansions up in the sky. They are his people. We are those dwellings!
Jesus said, 'Where I am there you will be also'. He did not say where I will be. For 3 years Jesus and his disciples were physically in the same place. Spiritually however they were not in the same place. He was above and they were below. From the moment they met him they knew that he was in a higher place than they were. What a wonderful promise this is when we see its true meaning. 'Where I am there you will be also'. How much better a glorious spiritual reality now, than some future physical mansion in the sky!
Mansions
The King James English Version of the Bible has the words: 'In my Father's house are many mansions.' Many hymns have been written and many sermons preached about beautiful mansions waiting for us in the skies. The original Greek word monee does not mean a mansion, but simply a dwelling or abode. It occurs again in verse 23: 'We will make our dwelling with him.' and nowhere else in the new Testament. The related verb meno meaning to remain or abide, occurs many times. Notably in the following chapter we read: 'Anyone who abides in me, and I in him, will produce much fruit.' The word dwelling is the most natural English translation of the word monee, but the word abode relates better to the thought of abiding in Christ.
The many mansions of our Father's house are not luxurious dwellings for us to live in hereafter. They are yourself and myself, the human dwellings where our Father has chosen to dwell here and now.
The Clouds
We will now turn to the theme of clouds. Five separate writers or speakers in the Bible, including Jesus, refer to clouds in connection with his coming . Three are clearly quoting the first who was the prophet Daniel.
Daniel said: 'In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.' (Daniel 7:13).
Jesus said: 'They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky' (Matthew 24:30).
Two angels said: 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven,' (Acts 1:11) after Jesus had ascended in a cloud.
Paul wrote: 'After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.' (1 Thes 4:17) John wrote: 'Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him' (Rev 1:7). Both Greek and Hebrew, like many other languages, have only one word where English has two for sky and heaven.
These 5 quotations invite the question, Why should clouds play such an important part in the coming of the Son of Man? After all they're just gaseous molecules of H20. These days you can fly up through them and way above them in aeroplanes. Can water vapour really play such an important part in the coming of Jesus?
Let's think a bit more about clouds. Clouds consist of pure heavenly water. They are formed by the heat of the sun causing water to evaporate from the sea or the land. Sea water that is salty and barren, or muddy water from the land, is drawn up from the earth and purified and transformed into a rarefied state in which it can exist in the heavenly realms. From there this pure water returns to the earth and gives life to everything on it.
What a perfect picture this is of God's work in us. By nature we are like sea water, salty, polluted and barren. God draws us up by the warmth of his love and purifies us and makes sit in heavenly places with Jesus. He transforms us into pure life-giving water. We then impart that life to those on the earth below.
Jesus is not coming in or with or on clouds of physical water vapour, but in and with his people. Jude (quoting Enoch) actually says, 'Behold the Lord comes in (or with) myriads of his saints.' And in Hebrews 12:1 we read: 'Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses ...' So coming with the clouds is the same as coming with the saints.
It is natural that in ancient times people thought of the clouds as the dwelling place of God. As in many other ways God allowed people to have partial and incomplete concepts of his nature. We live in a time of fuller revelation and understanding and must be willing to move forward. God does not live in physical clouds, but in what those clouds symbolise - his people.
Clouds in countries like England are not always popular. They give us cold and gloomy weather and spoil our holidays! In other countries and to farming communities they are life itself. They bring that vital rain without which nothing can grow. They cause the desert to blossom as the rose. They bring life and growth where there was only barrenness and death.
Again what a picture of the saints of God. Those that are like Jesus do what he did. They themselves live in heavenly places, but they bring life and health and blessing to those that live on the earth.
Every Eye will See Him
'Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him' (Rev 1:7).
Suppose again we take these words literally, how can we understand them? Will Jesus be simultaneously visible in ever part of the world? And will it be a cloudy day in every single country? Or will Jesus appear on television, as some have suggested, and thus be visible simultaneously all over the world?
Of course it is true that everything is possible with God. However, some things are consistent with his nature and with scripture and with reason, and other things are not. God could cause there to be clouds simultaneously over all the mountains, plains, deserts and seas of the world at the same time. Jesus could appear simultaneously in every part of the world with those clouds. Or he could appear in the clouds over one country, perhaps Israel, and have the world's press lined up to photograph the event. God could do any of those things, but this kind of interpretation does not fit with his revealed nature and purposes.
I believe the truth is better and greater. I believe he will come with the clouds and that every eye will see him; but I believe those who sit with him in heavenly places will be those clouds. When the sons of God have been transformed into his likeness, then those who want to see Jesus need only look at them.
When some Greeks came to Andrew and said, 'We want to see Jesus', and Andrew passed the request on, Jesus replied, 'I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds' (John 12:24). God is not content with just one son, but wants many more just like the first one.
One son was not enough for everyone to see. The firstborn son was the seed that had to fall into the ground and die, and produce a harvest of many more sons in his likeness. God was manifested in Jesus of Nazareth, the man of Galilee; but he also wants to be manifested in males and in females, in young and in old, in Europeans, Asians, Africans as well as Jews. He must be manifested in the clever and the simple, the strong and the weak, the educated and the illiterate and in the multitude of other variations that make up the human race.
This will be the manifestation of the sons of God of which Paul wrote to the Romans. The whole creation is groaning and travailing, not for a divine visitation from the sky, but for the manifestation of these sons of God.
Paul told the Ephesians that the many-coloured (literal meaning of Greek polupoikiloV) wisdom of God would be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places. There will be a rainbow in the clouds!
Next Part The Words of the Angels