"What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles."

Gentle Readers,

 It is what we do- speak up-speak out -take a stand!

"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are."

Imagine that we can travel back to the beginning of our country. What would we see, or think, would you take a stand or take a seat? Most would take a seat! But I think better of you Gentle Reader! I believe that you would have stood up for your country (even in it's infancy) You would have poured the tea in Bostons Harbor (the reason I drink coffee to this day)!  Take a walk with me as we look back one more time, or perhaps the first time,  for some of you.
 

It’s 1775. The year 1787, with its novel constitution and separation of church and state is a long 12 years away. At the moment, you and your friends are just a bunch of outlaws.

You’ve heard the debates in Parliament over taxation and representation; you’ve seen British troops enforce royal supremacy at the point of a bayonet. Your king, George III, and Parliament have issued a declaration asserting their sovereignty in "all cases whatsoever" in the colonies. You are, at least in New England, a people under siege with British troops quartered in Boston. You’ve dumped tea into Boston’s harbor in a fit of rage and had your port closed.

Who will you turn to now for direction? There are no presidents or vice-presidents, no supreme court justices or public defenders to call on. There are a handful of young, radical lawyers, like the Adams cousins, John and Samuel, but they’re largely concentrated in cities, while you and most of your friends live in the country. In many colonies, including Massachusetts, there are not even elected governors or councilors—they have all been appointed by the British crown and are answerable to it.

Where you turn is where you have habitually turned for over a century: to the prophets of your society, your ministers.

The American Revolutionary era is known as the "Golden Age of Oratory." What school child has not heard or read Patrick Henry’s immortal words, "Give me liberty or give me death"? Who has not seen reenactments or heard summaries of Ben Franklin’s heroic appearance before a hostile British Parliament?

Yet often lost in this celebration of patriotic oratory is the key role preaching played in the Revolutionary movement.

A few broad statistics can help us appreciate more fully the unique power the sermon wielded in Revolutionary America.

Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!

The pulpits were Congregational and Baptist in New England; Presbyterian, Lutheran, and German Reformed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and Anglican and Methodist in the South. But no matter the denomination, colonial congregations heard sermons more than any other form of oratory. The colonial sermon was prophet, newspaper, video, Internet, community college, and social therapist all wrapped in one. Such was the range of its influence on all aspects of life that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.

Eighteenth-century America was a deeply religious culture that lived self-consciously "under the cope of heaven." In Sunday worship, and weekday (or "occasional") sermons, ministers drew the populace into a rhetorical world that was more compelling and immediate than the physical settlements surrounding them. Sermons taught not only the way to personal salvation in Christ but also the way to temporal and national prosperity for God’s chosen people.

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God’s. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist, to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God’s providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors. Colonial congregations saw themselves as the "New Israel," endowed with a sacred mission that destined them as lead actors in the last triumphant chapter in redemption history.

Thus colonial audiences learned to perceive themselves not as a ragtag settlement of religious exiles and eccentrics but as God’s special people, planted in the American wilderness to bring light to the Old World left behind. Europeans might ignore or revile them as "fanatics," but through the sermon, they knew better. Better to absorb the barbs of English ridicule than to forget their glorious commission.

For over a century, colonial congregations had turned to England for protection and culture. Despite religious differences separating many colonists from the Church of England, they shared a common identity as Englishmen, an identity that stood firm against all foes. But almost overnight, these loyalties were challenged by a series of British imperial laws. Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765 and running through the "Boston Massacre" of 1770, the Tea Act of 1773, and finally, martial law in Massachusetts, patriotic Americans perceived a British plot to deprive them of their fundamental English rights and their God-ordained liberties.

In the twentieth-century, taxation and representation are political and constitutional issues, having nothing to do with religion. But to eighteenth-century ears, attuned to lifetimes of preaching, the issues were inevitably religious as well, so colonists naturally turned to their ministers to learn God’s will about these troubling matters.

Tyranny Is "Idolatry"

When understood in its own times, the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event. This is especially true in New England, where the first blood was shed.

By 1775 the ranks of Harvard- and Yale-educated clergymen swelled to over 600 ministers, distributed throughout every town and village in New England. Clergymen surveyed the events swirling around them; by 1775 liberals and evangelicals, Congregationalists and Presbyterians, men and women—all saw in British actions grounds for armed resistance.

In fact, not only was it right for colonists to resist British "tyranny," it would actually be sinful not to pick up guns.

How did they come to this conclusion? They fastened on two arguments.

First, they focused on Parliament’s 1766 Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had sovereignty over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." For clergymen this phrase took on the air of blasphemy. These were fighting words not only because they violated principles of representative government but even more because they violated the logic of sola Scriptura ("Scripture alone") and God’s exclusive claim to sovereignty "in all cases whatsoever."

From the first colonial settlements, Americans—especially New England Americans—were accustomed to constraining all power and granting absolute authority to no mere human being.

For Reformed colonists, these ideas were tied up with their historic, covenant theology. At stake was the preservation of their identity as a covenant people. Not only did Parliament’s claims represent tyranny, they also represented idolatry. For colonists to honor those claims would be tantamount to forsaking God and abdicating their national covenant pledge to "have no other gods" before them.

In a classic sermon on the subject of resistance entitled A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Boston’s Jonathan Mayhew, a liberal (he favored Unitarianism), took as his text Romans 13:1–6, in which Paul enjoins Christians to "be subject unto the higher powers." The day he picked for this sermon was portentous—it came on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, when Anglican ministers routinely abhorred the Puritan revolution, and Puritans routinely kept silent. Mayhew would not keep silent.

For centuries, rulers had used this text to discourage resistance and riot. But circumstances had changed, and in the chilling climate of impending Anglo-American conflict, Mayhew asked if there were any limits to this law. He concluded that the law is binding only insofar as government honors its "moral and religious" obligations. When government fails to honor that obligation, or contract, then the duty of submission is likewise nullified. Submission, in other words, is not unlimited.

Rulers, he said, "have no authority from God to do mischief.… It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors God’s ministers." Far from being sinful, resistance to corrupt ministers and tyrannical rulers is a divine imperative. The greater sin lies in passively sacrificing the covenant for tyranny, that is, in failing to resist.

Who determines whether government is "moral and religious"? In the Revolutionary era, the answer was simple: the individual. There were no established institutions that would support violent revolution. Ultimate justification resided in the will of a people acting self-consciously as united individuals joined in a common cause. Where a government was found to be deficient in moral and spiritual terms, the individual conscience was freed to resist.

America: A New Heaven

Clergy in the Revolutionary era reminded people not only what they were fighting against, namely tyranny and idolatry, but also what they were fighting for: a new heaven and a new earth.

Many early American settlers arrived believing they were part of the New Israel, that they would be instruments for Christ’s triumphant return to earth. Interpretations varied on whether the last days would be marked by progressive revelations and triumphs (the "postmillennial" view), or whether they would be marked by sudden judgments and calamities (the "premillennial" view), or some combination thereof. But all agreed the present was portentous, and American colonists were going to play a direct role in the great things looming.

Wars, first with France and later with England, accelerated these millennial speculations. In fighting against England and George III, people felt they were at once fighting against the Antichrist in a climactic battle between good and evil, tyranny and freedom.

Freedom and liberty (like individual) were both political and religious terms. They helped not only preserve fundamental human rights but also sustain loyalty to Christ and to sola Scriptura. So closely intertwined were the political and religious connotations, it was virtually impossible for colonists to separate them.

In his 1776 sermon on The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness, Samuel Sherwood examined the prophecies in the Book of Revelation and concluded that American Christians were the "church in the wilderness," nurtured in a faraway hiding place and raised to battle and defeat Antichrist. He argued that the powers of Antichrist were "not confined to the boundaries of the Roman empire, nor strictly to the territory of the pope’s usurped authority." Rather, they extended to all enemies of Christ’s church and people. He concluded that England’s monarchy "appears to have many of the features and much of the temper and character of the image of the beast."

In only slightly more secular terms, the greatest pamphlet of the Revolutionary era invoked this millennial imagery. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was the runaway bestseller of the American Revolution. In time Paine would be unveiled as a wild-eyed deist, and worse, an atheist. But you couldn’t guess that from Common Sense. It read like a sermon. Paine knew his audience well, and he knew what biblical allusions would bring them to arms.

His sermonic pamphlet begins by berating George III as the "royal brute" of England, noting that monarchy, like aristocracy, had its origins among ruffians who enforced their "superiority" at the point of a sword. Then they masked this brute coercion with the trappings of refined culture and regal bearing. Nevertheless, "How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!" He then identifies the monarchy with tyranny, and tyranny with idolatry and blasphemy. Paine traces in elaborate detail Israel’s "national delusion" in requesting a king as did other nations, and God’s subsequent displeasure at a "form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven."

From scriptural precedent, Paine, the revivalist of revolt, concludes, "These portions of Scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the Scripture is false."

Paine then went on to echo ministerial visions of a new millennial age. With unmitigated confidence, Paine reiterated John Winthrop’s 17th-century Puritan vision of America as a "city upon a hill." But unlike Winthrop, Paine’s millennial city was modeled on republican principles (rather than hierarchical) and religious toleration (rather than state-enforced conformity). With words certain to thrill, he likened the colonists to a young tree on which small characters were carved, characters of liberty and freedom. In time this tree would grow huge, and with it, the characters boldly would proclaim the birth of a new adventure in freedom that would be seen throughout the world.

Many colonists were fearful that, if they failed, their leaders would be hung as traitors and the people enslaved in tyranny. But Paine exulted, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom.… How trifling, how ridiculous do the little paltry cavillings of a few weak or interested men appear when weighed against the business of a world."

With rhetoric like this, Paine fused the liberal Mayhew’s defense of resistance with an evangelical-like appeal to passion. It is not surprising that liberals and evangelicals united in "the business of a world."

Voice of Hope and Courage

No minister studied the rapidly unfolding events against scriptural teachings more closely than did Concord’s 32-year-old minister, William Emerson (grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson). For a long time, his world had been dominated by local concerns and salvation preaching. But all of this changed in March and April 1775, when all the members of his congregation were propelled into what he termed "the greatest events taking place in the present age."

By March, Emerson and other Concord patriots knew that British spies had infiltrated their town and informed General Thomas Gage of a hidden armory and munitions supplies stocked by the local "Sons of Liberty" (a secret society of radicals). Many believed Gage was planning a preemptive strike on these supplies, and they feared for their lives. At a muster of the Concord militia on March 13, Emerson preached a sermon on 2 Chronicles 13:12: "And behold, God himself is with us for our captain.… O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper" (KJV).

Never would he deliver a more momentous sermon. He had it within his means to promote or discourage an almost certainly violent call to arms. What was he to say? What was God’s will for his American people?

With obvious agitation, Emerson began his sermon with the somber note that recent intelligence warned of "an approaching storm of war and bloodshed." Many in attendance would soon be called upon for "real service." Were they ready? Real readiness, Emerson explained, depended not only on martial skill and weaponry but also on moral and spiritual resolve. To be successful, soldiers must believe in what they were fighting for, and they must trust in God’s power to uphold them. Otherwise they would scatter in fear before the superior British redcoats.

What were the men of Concord fighting for? In strident political terms that coupled the roles of prophet and statesman, Emerson argued for colonial resistance. For standing by their liberties and trusting only in God, the American people were "cruelly charged with rebellion and sedition." That charge, Emerson cried, was a lie put forward by plotters against American liberty. With all of the integrity of his sacred office behind him, Emerson took his stand before the Concord militia:

"For my own part, the more I reflect upon the movements of the British nation … the more satisfied I am that our military preparation here for our own defense is … justified in the eyes of the impartial world. Nay, for should we neglect to defend ourselves by military preparation, we never could answer it to God and to our own consciences of the rising [generations]."

The road ahead would be difficult, Emerson cautioned, but the outcome was one preordained from the beginning of time. Accordingly, the soldiers could go forth to war assured that "the Lord will cover your head in the day of battle and carry you on from victory to victory." In the end, he concluded, the whole world would know "that there is a God" in America.

On April 19, the mounting apprehensions became fact as 800 British troops marched on Lexington and Concord to destroy the patriot munitions. At Lexington, Gage’s troops were met by a small "army of observation," who were fired upon and sustained 17 casualties. From there the British troops marched to Concord. Before their arrival, the alarm had been sounded by patriot silversmith Paul Revere, and militiamen rushed to the common. William Emerson arrived first, and he was soon joined by "minutemen" from nearby towns. Again a shot was fired—the famed "shot heard ’round the world"—and in the ensuing exchange, three Americans and twelve British soldiers were killed or wounded. America’s colonial war for independence had begun.

Words like Emerson’s continued to sound for the next eight years, goading, consoling, and impelling colonists forward in the cause of independence. The pulpit served as the single most powerful voice to inspire the colonists.

For most American ministers and many in their congregations, the religious dimension of the war was precisely the point of revolution. Revolution and a new republican government would enable Americans to continue to realize their destiny as a "redeemer nation." If time would prove that self-defined mission tragically arrogant, it was not apparent to the participants themselves. With backs against the wall, and precious little to take confidence in, words like those of Mayhew’s, Emerson’s, and Paine’s were their only hope.

I'm a preacher first, last and always, called by God to stand up and tell you truths that some have never heard, truths that some have rejected, truths that can and will change lives. All the while I am a 'Prisoner for the Lord' Not in Jail but trapped by circumstances not of our own choosing but of God's. While Marti is still bed fast and I will not leave her side- but if she gets better- look out!!! 

Love,

Denis

Gentle Readers,

It seems almost anti-climatic to leave our wee study of Paul without so much as "by your leave"!

I hope that you realize (those of you that have read all 15 parts, small does of truth/sugar makes it go down a wee easier) that I barely scratched the surface of the theology of your Apostle and mine. Such a brilliant mind, and most of his deeper thought came as a ‘prisoner of the Lord" for us Gentiles! I thought and look through my extensive library and ran across this sermon which rather sums up so much of what I have tried to say in my own bumbling way. I do hope you’ll take the time to read it in it’s entirety.

The Bible and The Cross

"Through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His Cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon earth or things in the heavens." (Col.1:20).

The sphere of reconciliation is declared-- "all things...upon earth or things in the heavens." Describing the glory of Christ in creation the apostle declares-- "In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth." But when he tells of reconciliation, it is in the opposite order: "things on earth and things in the heavens." The creative order was that of heavens first-- the reconciling order, of earth first. It is not for us to discuss now as to whether this planet of ours is indeed the center of the universe. It is certain there are far reaching stretches of creation of which we know nothing. It is enough at the moment to recognize the fact that, for the purpose of our apprehension of the meaning of life we are compelled to deal with the universe as circling about the earth on which we live. Recognizing necessity, the apostle shows that reconciliation begins here and later affects the heavens. That which demands reconciliation is here, but that which is here exerts its influence to the utmost bound of the creation of God. Heb. 9:23 and context.

This conception of the world at once lifts it and our theme into highest dignity and vastest importance. If we can grasp it, it will deliver us from all mean thinking about our own lives, our own sin, our own redemption.

The sphere of reconciliation is first that of "things on earth." That is not, however, the phrase which startles us most, but "things in the heavens." This all-inclusive term has reference first to angels-- intelligence’s described elsewhere as "thrones, dominions, principalities, powers." These are included in the reconciliation Christ wrought on His cross.

The conception is a remarkable recognition of the cosmic unity of the universe. Man is seen at the center. Beyond are the far-reaching realms which he is incapable of understanding during his earth-life. At the center of all things Paul sees the CROSS. He declares that by that cross God reconciles all things (lit. "The all") unto Himself. Yet the phrase "things in the heavens" takes us one startling step further. The sphere of reconciliation is not only man,-- not only the created beings in the heavens above him,-- it is that of the very Being of God. Remember the words of the Psalmist-- "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." Omitting for a moment the fact that they have met and kissed, let us consider them separately. They all exist in the nature of God. If we reverently think of God as apart from the mystery of evil, we recognize the perfect harmony of these: mercy, the tenderness bending over in love: truth; which is uprightness, stable, and builds: righteousness, which is a straight line without deviation; peace, which is absolute safety. All these coexist in the nature of God.

The introduction into the universe of the principle of sin breaks up the harmony of these and there is the necessity of reconciling within the very being of God. He is a God of truth. In His universe a being violates truth. How is it possible for Him to bend in tenderness and love over such a one whose action threatens the stability of the universe? God is the God of righteousness of that which cannot deviate from absolute rectitude. The introduction into the presence of essential righteousness of that which contradicts it must make peace impossible. It is not by the caprice of a God who is a despot, but because of the necessity of the essential facts of His Being, that, the moment sin existed in the universe there was need for reconciliation, if mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, were to meet and kiss each other.

The consideration of the suggested sphere of reconciliation leads immediately to our second line of thought,-- that of the nature of reconciliation. This is expressed in the words "unto Himself," or more literally, with reference to Himself. Here again we begin on the lowest level-- "things on earth." What is the nature of the reconciliation necessary to the restoration of order? Fallen man misrepresents God, and "science governs nature." The results? Chaos, instead of cosmos. In the words of the prayer Jesus gave to His disciples, the supreme thing is that His name be hallowed, His kingdom come, His will be done on earth as in heaven. The reconciliation here is restoration to the government of God. The healing of the wound, the closing of the breach, the gathering into one of all that has been scattered. (Eph. 1:10).

What, then, is the reconciliation necessary for the heavens? Peter says "the angels desire to peer into the sufferings of Christ and the glory to follow." Bending over the world, they saw sin and suffering culminating in the experience of Christ. We must ever think of angels as finite; of all the principalities and powers, as limited. While loyal to the government of God, serving with perfect satisfaction, they watch the processes among men without foreknowledge of the issue. Their peering into these things was in the nature of inquiry. I am not suggesting there was even incipient rebellion in these high places. There was surely an expectation that there would be some explanation of the mystery of that which they recognize as a rupture in the nature of God, resulting from the presence of sin in the universe. Angels need an answer to their inquiry.

Again, reverently, we take a further step. Reconciliation, in order to completeness, must be such that, in the BEING of God there shall be possible the continued activity of Mercy and Truth, Righteousness and Peace, so that violence be done to none.

All this leads us finally to the consideration of the supply of the reconciliation which is revealed in His words, "Peace through the blood of His Cross." The Gnostic teachers were suggesting the necessity for the inter-mediation of angels. They were declaring the need for ascetic practices, urging voluntary humility, and even the worship of angels. Paul, recognizing the necessity for reconciliation, not merely as between man and God, but throughout the universe, in the heavens as well as the earth, declares that it is provided in "the blood of His Cross."

In this connection it is necessary to repeat a warning and utter a solemn protest against the idea that when we speak of the Cross, we refer only to a Roman gibbet, and to the death of a Man thereon. If He of the Cross were Man only, then all this writing of the Apostle is not only foolish, but vile dreaming, mirage, and nightmare; a delusion and a snare. On the other hand, if He of the Cross be the Image of the Invisible God, the original Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, the Firstborn out of the mystery of death into life, then in the presence of His Cross I begin to tremble, and yet to believe the declaration that through that Cross He reconciles all things (ta panta-- the universe) unto Himself upon the earth and in the heavens.

Through that Cross there is first the reconciliation of things upon the earth. This is established first by the creation of peace with God in the case of man, and then in the peace of God throughout the order over which redeemed man reigns. The process is a slow one as mortals count time. The travail is an agony, the conflict is unto death, but the victory is assured; and that victory is the reconciliation of all things upon the earth, first of man to God, and then of the whole creation to man in that peace of God which issues from the establishment of His throne, and the right relation thereto of all the kingdom.

Through that Cross also, there is the reconciliation of things in the heaven. We call to mind again the picture of angels desiring to look into these things. As they did so they became conscious of the profoundest depth of the mystery in the hour when Jesus died. It was the mystery of which we spoke before, that of the death of a pure and sinless and therefore deathless Being. Personally, I can have no doubt about the literal accuracy of the Bible story that in the hour of that death the sun darkened. My wonder sometimes is that it ever shone again. The angels saw in the mystery a revelation. They knew the person whom they saw die, and recognized that the death of the Christ must have some profound significance in the economy of God. Through the death of the Lord they beheld man reconciled to God. They saw salvation provided for the sinner in his losing from his sins. They saw the resultant cooperation of the saints as, conformed to His dying, they came to living knowledge of Himself, shared the power of His Resurrection, and entered into the fellowship of His sufferings. They saw these saints bearing through to lower reaches of God’s creation the renewing forces which had remade their own lives.

What effect, think you, had that working out into visibility of the passion and power of the love of God upon the watching angels? It was for them a new unveiling of God. In that Cross they saw Him as they had never seen Him. The essential Light of Deity shone whiter, for holiness was vindicated as never before. The essential Love of Deity shone redder, for compassion was manifested more perfectly. The essential Life of Deity was realized more fully, for all its values were revealed more absolutely. I can imagine that, as the Lord Jesus Christ died, and all the issues of His dying were revealed to them, angels borrowed the song of the Psalmist, and chanted to the measure of their own perfect music:

"Mercy and truth are met together;

Righteousness and peace have kissed each other."

Reverently we come to the last fact in our consideration of this supply of reconciliation. Over two hundred years ago John Leland, a Baptist minister of Massachusetts, preached a sermon which he entitled "The Jarrings of Heaven Reconciled by the Blood of the Cross," in which he attempted to set forth a picture of the high courts of heaven and of the conflict within the very nature of God as the result of the presence of sin in the universe. The sermon may accurately be described as highly imaginative, but that is not a condemnation. There are matters so high that we can never hope to reach them save by the exercise of imagination.

We speak of law and love, of truth and grace, of justice and mercy, and so long as sin does not exist there is no controversy between any of these. If there be no sin, law and love are never out of harmony with grace or each other; truth and grace go ever hand in hand; justice and mercy sing a common anthem. If the law be broken, what is love to do? If truth be violated, how can grace operate? In the presence of crime, how can justice and mercy meet? This is the problem of problems. It is not a problem as between God and man. It is not a problem as between God and the angels. It is a problem between God and Himself. It is answered in the Cross. "God was in Christ," from eternity, in the days of human manifestation, and surely also in the hour of the Cross. Thus, by the way of all the suffering consequent upon the conflict within His own nature, He found the way of reconciliation. By suffering wrought out into human history and in the sight of all the ages, through the Cross, He demonstrated that love meets law as it suffers and fulfills it; grace satisfies the demand of truth of meeting all the issues of its violating; and mercy can operate on the basis of justice, not because God has smitten and afflicted other than Himself, but because, in a mystery which baffles and bruises the intellect as it attempts to encompass it, God has gathered the whole into His own heart, and suffered to reconcile all things (the universe) unto Himself.

Thus, as Christ is the Centre, Source and Goal of the universe, His Cross is the centre, source and goal of reconciliation. The Ephesians letter is the complement of the Colossians. In that the Apostle teaches that through the Church the wisdom of God is manifested to principalities and powers in the heavenly places. Christ and His ransomed people are to exercise a ministry beyond that of today which is initial and preparatory, through all the coming ages. That ministry is to be that of an unveiling of the profoundest thing in the heart of God; the love which, operating through self-abandonment and sacrifice, ransomed, redeemed, and remade lost humanity. The angels will hear the music of love as they have never heard it, as the ransomed sing, "the old, old story of Jesus and His love." Sons of the morning are they, unfallen intelligences who have never known the misery of sin or its pollution; but they will hush their high anthems while the ransomed sing----

"He loved us, and gave Himself for us."

Thus for all the universe and for the ultimate ages, every proceeding in beauty from the Being of God, the Cross will abide the supreme revelation of God, through which all creation will come to an understanding of His holiness and His love, the deepest and truest thing of His being.

What a theme for imagination, which, nevertheless, is utterly incapable of encompassing all the glorious truth! We dream of the birth of ceaseless ages, of new creations, springing like fresh mornings from His wisdom and His might (ability); and as in unfailing procession they appear, Christ and His ransomed Church will sing to them the song of redemption, and while they know the might and majesty of God in the wonder of their life, they will only come to a true apprehension of His heart as we tell them that He loved us, and "loosed us from our sins by His blood."

"In the Cross of Christ I glory,

Towering o’er the wrecks of time.

All the light of sacred story

Gathers around it head sublime."

If by that Cross all things in the heavens are to be reconciled, and infinite peace is to follow, I dare trust it, notwithstanding all my sin and all my weakness. By the way of that Cross I am reconciled to God, and through it I find rest, infinite, eternal, undying. At last my rest shall be rest with the WHOLE CREATION, for the cosmic order will be restored through the mystery of God’s suffering as revealed in the Cross.

_____________________________________________________________

Rev. G. Campbell Morgan, D.D. The Cross and the Ages to Come, From "The Presbyterian"

June 1932, By Permission Scripture Studies Concern, 1050 East Grand Boulevard, Corona, California

Part 15 conclusion

 Our man in the Middle East

Gentle readers,

While volumes have been written about Paul the Apostle and I would like to go on for more days than you have on this earth expounding on how much we owe that man I feel that you have at least an idea of what the apostle is all about. 14 Books no mean feat even by today’s standards . I mean it’s been like pulling teeth to get my little effort out. But Paul not only reaches down to where we live (have you taken the time to read any of his work yet)? The last word that we want to consider is the best as far as I am concerned and that is

Reconciliation Greek

ajpokatallavssw Apokatallasso (ap-ok-at-al-las'-so) in the Greek

It seems to me that words must be very important for several reasons men can not live together in harmony unless they can depend on others to provide the things we need to survive. And for men to live together they must be able to communicate with each other. Before the advent of telephones, computers, email mail and others means of talking to one another, the only means available was writing. And it seemed good that the Lord God would provide a means to communicate with His Creation! Thus writing became most important and following on the heels of writing was the understanding of the written word.

Now all of this seems obvious were it not for the fact that more wars, disputes, arguments have started over one man misunderstanding another. Even in the 21st century we still find that men don’t truly understand one another . And even more so when it comes to Religion.

But unfortunately Even among the most well meaning people there seems to be a problem in understanding what God has said much less what He means when He writes to us for our understanding. God’s word can be compared to an onion once you peel off the first layer there is another and then another and another until you get down to the center. Now each layer is complete in itself but it does not become the center until one strips away each layer to reach the very center.

What does it mean to be reconciled?

To ask what reconciliation means strikes fear into any theologian or Bible

scholar who would dare to bring up the subject of reconciliation and even more so, since the doctrine of so many denominations, groups and creeds are based on teaching of some head, who while not holding the Scriptures as unable to speak for themselves and only if we were to listen to the man rather than to be a Berean and to "search the scriptures" to see if these things are so.

Our desire is to study the scripture and to let God’s word speak! Like Ezra of old we wish "to open the Book" and learn from it. Let us begin to see what God has said.

ROMANS 5: 10 "For if, when we were enemies, we were RECONCILEd to God by the death of his Son, much more, being RECONCILEd, we shall be saved by his life."

1co 7:11 "But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be RECONCILEd to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.’

2co 5:18 And all things are of God, who hath RECONCILED us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

2co 5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye RECONCILED to God.

Eph 2:16 And that he might RECONCILE both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:

Col 1:20 And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to RECONCILE all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

Col 1:21 And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in

your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he RECONCILED

For if, when we were enemies, we were RECONCILEd to God by the death of his Son, much more, being RECONCILEd, we shall be saved by his life.

Reconciliation is a change from enmity to friendship. It is mutual, i.e., it is a change wrought in both parties who have been at enmity. God rather than punnish one who has offended Him rather brings the person who has been an enemy to the place where with "no strings attached" can now become a friend- a best friend!

In Colossians 1:21,22, the word there used refers to a change wrought in the personal character of the sinner who ceases to be an enemy to God by wicked works, and yields up to him his full confidence and love.

In 2 Corinthians 5:20 the apostle beseeches the Corinthians to be "reconciled to God", i.e., to lay aside their enmity.

Romans 5:10 refers not to any change in our disposition toward God, but to God himself, as the party reconciled. Romans 5:11 teaches the same truth. From God we have received "the reconciliation" (RSV), i.e., he has conferred on us the token of his friendship. So also 2Cor. 5:18,19 speaks of a reconciliation originating with God, and consisting in the removal of his merited wrath. In Ephesians 2:16 it is clear that the apostle does not refer to the winning back of the sinner in love and loyalty to God, but to the restoration of God's forfeited favor. This is effected by his justice being satisfied, so that he can, in consistency with his own nature, be favorable toward sinners. Justice demands the punishment of sinners. The death of Christ satisfies justice, and so reconciles God to us. This reconciliation makes God our friend, and enables him to pardon and save us.

So it was given to the Apostle Paul, the theologian to bring to light the fact that it was God bringing us to Himself, for in fact Gentle Reader we would not, you would not come to God on your own. Let’s face it Gentle Readers, if left to ourselves we would never come to the Father on our own!

The picture that Paul wants us to understand is that in the Greek apokatallasso is to exchange hostility for friendship. In other words God wanted you to come back to the point where we could walk together as friends just as Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden in "the cool of the day" (Gen. 3:8 ). No longer do we have to fight, or war, or kill. Nor do we have to do anything to please God. You should also pay attention to the fact that it is only Paul and in his epistles that we learn about the fact that we have been Reconciled!

What do we have to do to get this great gift? It’s so easy that it becomes hard for many- accept! Just accept God at His word! God accepts us.

How that for a finish Gentle Reader?

That’s why I constantly tell you over and over that "You are accepted, you are valued, you are loved,

By God and Gentle Reader by me also!

Love,

Denis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part 14 The Words we use sometimes of time are confusing

Part 12

"Words are the voice of the heart." - Confucius

‘You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."

Denis

 Paul in Prison

Part 9 in the mini Series