The World and the Word

                                                The Wheat and the Chaff

In Matthew 13:52, Jesus taught His disciples that anyone who seeks to learn more about the kingdom of Heaven will be like a man who owns a house that contains both an old and a new treasure that he brings out to use. By His symbolic language, Jesus meant anyone who owns and reads the Old and New Testaments, the written Word of God, in order to use that which he learns for spiritual and creative purposes. God wrote the Old Testament to inform humans that they have a spiritual death inside them, injected into them by the Devil, that causes them to sin and that they cannot get rid of that spiritual death on their own. But the Old Testament also informs humans that they each possess a good and living soul and spirit that God gave them, and if they conform their lives to express their faith and do the good works that God put into their living souls and spirits, then in the general resurrection in the end of the world, God will provide them with a much better recreation than for those who do evil. Daniel 12:1-2; Isaiah 66:10-24; Ecclesiastes 12:13-14; Genesis 1:27; Genesis 3:7-11; Genesis 3:20-21.

God wrote the New Testament to inform all humans that He would sacrifice Himself in their place to remove all their sins and spiritual deaths in order to save them from eternal spiritual death, some by His grace and all others in a general resurrection in the end of the world. John 5:24; John 5:28-29; John 11:25; John 12:47-48; I Corinthians 15:22.

When Jesus died on the cross, He took the place of every lost sinner subject to eternal spiritual death which is totally evil, and since evil causes sin and sin causes evil, then Jesus also had to take the sins of all mankind on Himself on the cross. Romans 5:12; Romans 5:18. But Jesus also died on the cross as a perfectly righteous, sinless human. II Corinthians 5:21. This means that Hell had no right to hold the Spirit of Jesus when He descended there. Since Christ rose immaculate from the dead, then He had to have left the sins and spiritual deaths of all humans who are subject to the regions of death behind Him when He rose from the dead. God provided a prophecy in Revelation 5:11-14 that He will cause all living humans confined there to return to the faith that He put into them that the Lamb holds the power to resurrect their living souls and spirits from the regions of eternal death. Christ also holds the power to use His shed blood and water to wash away all the sins of humans saved by grace and annul their spiritual deaths the moment they repent and believe. John 5:24.

When Jesus rose from the dead, He gained all power over all of the regions of the dead because He gained the power to eliminate spiritual death itself. Revelation 1:17-18; II Timothy 1:10. Whosoever holds the power makes the rules. Jesus changed the eternal deaths of all humans to temporary deaths by His resurrection from the dead. This condition means that Christ has the right to use His consuming fire, which is His wrath against evil, in the end of the world to separate the spiritual deaths of all humans confined within the regions of the dead from their spiritual lives that He created. I Corinthians 3:11-15; II Thessalonians 1:7-9; Jude 7; Luke 3:16-17; Revelation 20:14; Revelation 3:17-18. Revelation 3:17 clearly teaches that the members of the church of Laodicea were not saved by grace, but verse 18 nevertheless teaches that God will use His consuming fire to separate their gold, symbolic of their spiritual lives, from their spiritual deaths. All humans saved by grace or God's consuming fire will have to return to the faith that God put into their living souls and spirits of their own free will that Christ alone holds the power to save them. Romans 12:3. Satan believes that God's gift of free will to humans will eternally ruin them, but God will prove that the great power of His Love will cause all humans to return to faith in Him of their own free will. I Corinthians 13:8.

Sooner or later, every human will learn that his treasure, which symbolizes his living spirit, will be redeemed by God's Word in both the Old and New Testaments. Genesis 3:20-21; Genesis 8:20-21; Psalm 50:23; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 15:22.