The World and the Word

             The Advents and Judgments of Christ

When Jesus came as the Holy Spirit to His Church, He also brought judgment to it. Christ imparts His Holy Spirit to the hearts of His believers so that their souls and spirits will no longer sin. I John 3:9. But Christ did not remove the fleshly natures of believers which adheres to their bodies and can still cause them to sin. Romans 7:15-25. God enjoins believers to reject the temptations of the flesh and adhere to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to stay away from sin and evil. Romans 12:1-2. But when believers inevitably do sin, God has promised that He will wash them in the water that Jesus shed on the cross which the Holy Spirit will bring to them in spiritual form as they daily repent of those sins. John 13:1-15. Although no believer saved by grace can ever lose their salvation, Christ will sometimes severely punish His believers who deliberately sin; that is, practice evil. Such was the case with Ananias and his wife Sapphira when they deliberately lied to the Holy Spirit. Acts 5:1-11. Christ will also discipline His believers who fail to daily repent of their sins of weakness in order to correct them. Hebrews 12:3-13.

Christ has promised that He will never lose a single believer saved by His grace. John 17:12-24; John 10:27-30. For this reason, Christ will sanctify His entire Church by washing it all in the water of His Word. Ephesians 5:25-27. However, some living humans saved by grace will give in to their fleshly nature and fall back into a life of sin and even some deliberate evil. Lot was a good example. Christ will not immediately accept these backsliders into Heaven at the Rapture of the Church because they failed to daily repent of their sins and evils and forsake them. Unless one forsakes one's sins, one has not really repented. God turns evil sins into sins of weakness upon repentance because the sorrow and humility He sees engenders His compassion. God never forgives evil because it never repents. Matthew 12:31-32. According to Matthew 5:25-26, backsliders will be in opposition to Christ at the Rapture of the Church. Christ will cast these backsliders into the "prison," which is the bottomless pit, where they will suffer torment until they remember that they were saved by grace and fully repent. When they repent, Christ will bring them out of the bottomless pit, thoroughly wash them in the water of His Word, and restore them to His Church in Heaven. According to Matthew 18:32-35, backsliders who fail to exercise compassion and forgiveness will be tormented in the prison until they truly repent. According to Luke 12:45-48, backsliders will be tormented until they repent.

When Christ appears to the world; that is, mankind itself, He only appears in His physical form. When Christ appeared to His Church and the Old Testament saints saved by His grace after His resurrection, He appeared in His spiritual body; that is, a body in which He can be physical or spiritual as He wills. Luke 24:36-43. Christ abides with His Church in His spiritual form; that is, His Holy Spirit. John 14:18. God will give spiritual bodies to all believers saved by grace so that they can live with Him in Heaven forever. Philippians 3:20-21. But when God resurrects all of His repentant, living humans from the regions of the dead to be recreated to live on His new earth, He will provide them with only righteous bodies in His image like those He gave to Adam and Eve. I Corinthians 15:35-50.

At the Rapture of the Church, Christ will appear to the world in His physical form only, but He will appear to His Church in His spiritual body. Revelation 1:7; Acts 1:10-11. The unbelievers of the world will claim that the Rapture did not happen, but many others will believe that it happened because they will have seen it with their own eyes. The Tribulation period will soon follow the Rapture. Those living humans who continue to believe in Christ until they are either martyred or until the end of the Tribulation will be saved by grace. These will be the Tribulation saints. Matthew 24:7-13.

After the Rapture, God will remove the Holy Spirit's restraint of evil from the world. II Thessalonians 2:7. God will allow the world to be wholly given over to the complete influence of evil. God will do this to demonstrate to humanity all of the terrible horrors that evil will cause them when God is not present to protect them. Those horrors will be one of the factors that will cause all living humans confined to the regions of death to cry out to the Lamb for their salvation as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14.