(tm) The world to be reconciled to God

But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. (Numbers 14:21)

We learn from the above verse that God, being provoked by the unbelief of Israel in the wilderness, swore by Himself that He would fill the whole earth with His Glory. The filling of the earth with the Glory and praise of God appears many times throughout the Old Testament, as various prophets gave voice to the burden of the Word of the Lord. This particularly is true of the Psalms.

Let all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. (Psalms 33:8)

Be still, and know I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalms 46:10)

God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. (Psalms 47:8)

According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness. (Psalms 48:10)

The Sixty-seventh Psalm is devoted to the coming rule of God throughout the earth. This rule will be accomplished during the day of reconciliation, as administered through the Lord Jesus Christ and the Body of Christ.

God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah. That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. (Psalms 67:1-7)

It is abundantly clear in the Scripture that God will bless the earth through Christ—Head and Body. First, the blood and Spirit of Christ will work redemption in the Church until the Church itself has been reconciled to God in deed, in word, and in thought.

Then, through the Church, God will reconcile the earth to Himself. This is the kingdom-wide fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. The reconciliation will have been completed by the end of the thousand-year Kingdom Age. After that, the final judgment will take place as the nations rebel, the Divine fire falls, the universe disappears with a terrific noise, and the white throne of judgment appears.

The fruit of the program of reconciliation will be carried over into the new heaven and earth reign of Christ. Christ then will behold the fruit of the travail of His soul and will be satisfied. The work that has been accomplished will prosper in God’s hand forever, age without end.

The enormous fruit and strength gained by the members of the Body of Christ as the result of the work of Divine reconciliation will proceed from and is dependent on the willingness of each member of the Body to deny himself and die the death that the Holy Spirit directs for him or her as an individual.

God’s way is to bring forth life from death. Christ Himself is our example, divesting Himself of His Divine Glory and going to the cross. Because of His willingness to die the death that the Father required, Christ has been given all authority and all power in Heaven and on the earth.

Now it is our turn. Will we believe Christ and be willing to "fall into the ground and die"? Are we willing to lose our life? Are we willing to love not our life to the death?

To save one’s life is to lose it. If we lose our life for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s, exceedingly great fruitfulness and strength will proceed from us.

The high priest, as we have stated, reconciled to the Lord the Most Holy Place, the Tabernacle of the Congregation, and the Altar of Burnt Offering. The threefold application of blood reveals to us that the blood of the Lamb will purify the Kingdom of God, commencing in the Presence of God in Heaven and proceeding downward through the hearts of the saints and out through the earth until the heavens and earth have been reconciled to the Father.

It was therefore necessary the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: (Hebrews 9:23,24)

All the iniquities of the children of Israel were put on the head of the living goat and it was led away into the wilderness. All their transgressions were born away to "a land not inhabited." Here is one of the clearest pictures in the Scripture of the fact that our sins are not only forgiven through Christ but also removed from us by the Lord.

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:21,22)

Christ did not come from Heaven only to forgive those of earth who would accept His forgiveness. He came to do that but also to remove from the believers all the tendencies and effects of sin,—and finally to judge and destroy all sin from the earth.

The Book of I John deals with sin in the Christian discipleship.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9)

Here are the two aspects of the atonement—the forgiveness and the cleansing, the dead goat and the living goat.

There are two major historical works indicated here: (1) Calvary, which has to do with the forgiving of the guilt of sin and the destroying of the authority of the devil over mankind; and (2) the next appearing of the avenging Christ, which has to do with the cleansing of the Church and the world from all unrighteousness.

We have spoken, during our discussion of the second death and resurrection, of the deliverance of the Christian from the guilt and power of sin. In the third death and resurrection, that which we have termed conquest, the Christian is to endure the self-denial necessary to bring the blessings of forgiveness and deliverance to other people.

The third area of redemption will not have been completed until the world has been reconciled to God.

We are not teaching that all people ultimately will be saved. There will be some who will not receive Christ as Savior and Lord. These will enter everlasting torment in which there can be no redemption forever.

We have stated before that redemption is past, present, and future. Past redemption has to do with the forgiveness of our sins on the cross of Calvary. Present redemption has to do with accepting the atonement and with washing the robes of our conduct and making them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Future redemption has to do with receiving our glorified bodies and with the judgment and removal of sin from the earth. Future redemption will commence with the appearing of the Lord Jesus from Heaven, although the authority and power of judgment and deliverance are being issued now to a warlike remnant, a firstfruits of the Church. All these acts of redemption are the spiritual fulfillment of Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, the Day of Atonement.

The next coming of Christ will bring to those who look for Him a redemption free from every trace of the guilt, tendencies, and effects of sin.

If we would be prepared for such a glorious, sin-free salvation, we must be in the process of purifying ourselves now. Our time of preparation is described in the following verse:

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. (I John 3:3)

Another important area of fulfillment of the Day of Atonement is that of the end-time redemption of the Jewish people. The reconciliation of the Jews with their Christ will take place during the dark days of the rule of Antichrist. The Body of Christ will be the instrument the Lord will employ to restore Christ to His own racial family, the Jews.

Asenath, the Egyptian bride of Joseph, is a type of the Wife of the Lamb—she who is being drawn out from all races today, even from the Jewish race. The Bride will be part of Christ, just as Asenath was part of Joseph, when He reveals Himself to the nation of Israel.

In order for us to understand how salvation can come suddenly to a group of people, such as the Jews, we first must realize Christ possesses and can exercise the authority and power to forgive, cleanse, and deliver any person whom He will. Our salvation is not by our works but by the grace and election of the Lord. We do not choose Him, He chooses us.

Notice how the Lord can forgive sin at His pleasure:

And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. (Matthew 9:2)

And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. (Luke 7:48)

Christ reaches down and saves those whom the Father has given to Him. Of course, when He speaks to us we must obey. If we do not obey we run the risk of being among those who are rebels against the Lord and who will be consumed by the fire of eternal judgment.

The concept that Christ can reach down and deliver whom He will is important to our understanding if we are to grasp the whole plan of God. We witness the sovereignty of Christ exercised in the case of Lot, who was delivered from Sodom at the last minute. In this instance, as so often is true, another human being (Abraham) was involved in the exercise of God’s sovereign delivering actions.

We can observe the ability of Christ to reach down and save from darkness in the incident of Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul was forgiven and commissioned to be an apostle before he had had much time to examine the alternatives. We are not saved by works of righteousness we have done, as Paul understood and taught so clearly, but according to the purpose and calling of God.

Paul describes how God in the end-time, after leaving them in blindness to His salvation for so many hundreds of years, will reach down and redeem the people who are Jewish by natural birth. This is a very important fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. It is a sovereign act of reconciliation.

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Romans 11:25-27)

Do you see the sovereignty of Christ in the preceding passage? The Deliverer shall come and He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. There are no "ifs" involved here. He shall take away their sins.

And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. (Zechariah 3:4)

Christ always retains the power to redeem, to give eternal life, to as many as God has given Him. He saves whom He will, when He will, by the means He chooses. The faith to believe in Christ is the gift of God to us. The desire to repent is the gift of God to us. The thirst for righteousness is the gift of God to us.

Often Christ invites people to share with Him in prayer and in other forms of service as He goes about saving those whom He has chosen.

We have seen that in the end-time Christ will demolish all the works of the kingdom of darkness. He will crush Satan under the feet of the Church.

The most important issue now is that the members of the Body of Christ wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb. We Christians must confess our sins and receive the Divine pardon and cleansing, as expressed in I John 1:9.

Next, the members of the Body of Christ must submit to the death of self-denial. After we, by the blood of the Lamb, the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the fiery trials we must undergo, gain some measure of victory over the world, a further reconciliation to God is yet needed. We must become perfectly and completely reconciled to the will of God. Our will must become one with His will.

Those who ride with Christ in the Day of the Lord must be clothed in the sparkling white linen of righteous conduct. Also, the army of saints are living dead-men. They have been crucified with Christ and now Christ is living in them.

When Abraham climbed Mount Moriah with Isaac at his side he was a living dead-man, a living sacrifice.

The hundred-year-old patriarch walked with firm step having a steady hand on his staff. His path was straight as an arrow toward the stone altar on which he was to slay his only son. Two thousand years later, Abraham’s Redeemer, the Lord Jesus, went straight as an arrow toward Gethsemane and the cross of Calvary, Himself a living dead-man.

Back to What comes after Pentecost?