Commentary on the Book of Job part sixty nine

                                        Job 28:1-28

In Acts 2:1-4, the Holy Spirit baptized the Church with the power to preach the gospel and spread Christianity to the whole world. The Church had already received the Holy Spirit to complete their salvation by grace. John 20:22. Therefore, the "cloven tongues like as of fire" that also appeared to them had to symbolize God's lesser form of salvation for the rest of humanity by the use of His consuming fire.

John the Baptist further explained God's lesser form of salvation by the use of His consuming fire in Luke 3:17. John taught that God "will thoroughly purge His floor." This phrase symbolizes the fact that God will completely cleanse all of His creations from all evil that has corrupted it. God will "gather the wheat into His garner." This phrase symbolizes the fact that God will recover every living soul that He ever created by separating all of them from the influence of evil, some by His grace and all others by the use of His consuming fire. But the "chaff" which God will separate from the "wheat" is totally useless and symbolizes the dead and totally evil part of man's nature which God will cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 21:8. Revelation 22:11-12 also recounts that God will absolutely separate all of His good creations from all that is totally evil in the end of the world.

In John 1:29, when John the Baptist first saw Jesus arrive on the scene, he declared that the Lamb of God was He "which taketh away the sin of the world," not living humans whom He created. John's phrase meant that Jesus would remove the sin and evil from all living humans, not the living humans themselves. Jesus agreed with John in John 12:47-48. Jesus cannot judge living humans to any form of eternal separation from Him because He came to save all of them. Revelation 20:5. But the Word of God will judge those who reject Christ in the end of the world because they are dead and totally evil. Revelation 20:11-15. In these verses, Christ prophesied that in the end of the world, He will effect an absolute separation of all of His living images of Himself in all humans from all of their total evil which resides in their total rejection of Him. Jesus provided a similar prophecy in John 5:28-29.

The Apostle Paul agreed with Jesus in Acts 24:15. In a general resurrection in the end of the world, the just will be resurrected in Revelation 20:5. The unjust will be judged by the Word of God in Revelation 20:11-15. In his prophecy, Paul could not have meant any of the resurrections of those saved by grace because no unjust persons are raised in any of these resurrections.