Wednesday, January 29, 2020

The World and the Word

                                         The Word

God has predetermined that He will purge all evil from his creations and recreate it all to again be righteous, including all humans. Revelation 21:5. In other words, God will make everything all right in the end. But eternity has no end. This fact can only mean that the end which exists when God returns all of His creations to righteousness, and all of the contingencies of history to certainties, must both be happening in eternity at the same time. This fact accounts for Jesus' description of His eternal being in Revelation 22:13. Jesus already exists in the beginning which encompasses infinite contingencies, but He also already exists in the end when He makes everything all right and all contingencies end. This truth accounts for Jesus' statement in John 17:4 when He proclaims that He has already finished His Father's work when He had not as yet been brought to the cross. This truth accounts for Jesus' statement in John 19:30 when He had not yet risen from the dead. This truth accounts for God's assurance to His Church that He has already given it an eternal seat in heaven at the same time as it passes through its history of contingencies. Ephesians 1:3.

God has determined that the history of the earth should pass through seven dispensations, or ages, before He returns it all to righteousness in the end. The infinite possibilities of history made it inevitable that evil would enter into God's creations. But the infinite and eternal power of God's Almighty Love made it inevitable that He would make everything all right in the end. God tested the choices that humans would make in every age. Man always failed His tests, but God always succeeded in bringing mankind closer to His final age of righteousness. When one age ends, then another must always begin. This is the process of eternity as it passes through history. But an eternal God holds the almighty power to transcend history and bring everything that He created back to the certainty of righteousness which ends all contingencies.

But this fact does not mean that God will annul all possibilities which attach to free will and the historical process that results because these constitute a part of His creations. But then how will God continue an historical process after He has burned up the heavens and the earth and has created them to transcend all possibilities with the absolute certainty of an eternal righteousness? II Peter 3:10-13.

The answer to this question may be found in Ecclesiastes 3:14-15. Perhaps, when God dissolves the old heavens and earth to recreate righteous ones, He will also recreate a new heavens and a new earth with a new historical process. Evil will inevitably enter into this new historical process, but God will also rescue all His living humans from that fall for Him to recreate. Perhaps, God will create the same humans that He did before, but because of infinite possibilities, they each will make some of the same, but also some different choices than they made before, so that this new historical process will be different from the one before. The exception to this rule will be all humans saved by grace whom God has promised will remain with Him in heaven unchanged forever. John 12:25. If this process were endless, then eternity would also consist of a new beginning which always follows an end. Revelation 22:13.

The history of this earth begins in contingency and ends in certainty. This means that many of the prophecies in the Bible will relate to either the beginning or the end. Some of the most important messages in the Bible relate to either the beginning or the end. The most important message in the Bible relates the story of how God intervened in history to make everything all right in the end. The prophecies in the historical process in the Bible relates to how the contingencies became the certainties. Prophecies are possible because, no matter what humans choose to do, God can make certainties happen.

No comments:

Post a Comment