ScottA
Well-Known Member
Communication is a difficult thing. I did not say or mean, not "while on earth." Indeed, "we who are alive and remain" are "on earth" and "remain"--not until we "are bodily saved", for we are already His body and saved--but rather until dust "returns to dust, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." And I am not making "small changes in the words", but quoting and explaining them.You're small changes in the words enable you to go off from what the Bible means to something else. The Bible says He brings us to God while on earth. We are not taken to God in heaven. Reconciling us to God on earth spiritually is the gospel message on earth. Not taking us already to God in heaven. The heavenly places we now sit in is within His kingdom, which is now within our own hearts on earth. We will not sit in those thrones of heaven until we are bodily saved in the first resurrection. The Spirit of Christ is the heavenly place wherever He is, whether in heaven or on earth. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. The kingdom of God is now on earth within the purified hearts of His people and can be seen through our converted manner of life and the miracles of healings, etc...in the name of Jesus.
What you are saying is that there are Christians such as yourself who have been killed physically like Jesus on the cross and been 'taken to' God in heaven. I am not mocking here because you seem to be teaching it. Are you now as one of the elders sitting in the throneroom? Or are you now as one of the killed saints at the altar waiting for the rest of us to be killed likewise? Or are we supposed to also wake up and realize 'in our own time' like you, that we've been physically killed already and taken to God in heaven?
By saying you have been put to death in the flesh like Jesus, I believe you do one of two things. That Jesus did not really die physically on the cross but only spiritually, because you say you both have died the same death in the flesh, and yet you have only spiritually died and not really physically. Or you have died like Him physically and so have resurrected like Him and are taken to God with Him. Sort of like the man-child in Rev 11.
You also seem to be preaching Calvin prechosen and presaved in Christ before coming into the world. We are preknown by God's omniscience but not prechosen and saved as by fates decreed of God. We all must be saved to live with God forever, but no one must be saved because God fated him to it by name from the foundation of the world. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world by prophecy if man sinned, but His book if life is not written from the foundation of the world. Wea re only written in His book when we do choose Him rather than the devil.
And no, I am not saying there are a select number of "Christians such as myself who have been killed physically like Jesus on the cross and been taken to God in heaven." But rather just what you have also said of Jesus bringing the kingdom of God to us on earth--except, the timing is not exactly as most believe, but is rather meant in two ways: 1) That the actual timing, like the Lamb slain, was rather "before the foundation of the world"; and 2) Only perceived from the "created" perspective of this world, "each one in his own order." Which I would not bother to point out or elaborate upon, except that it is the key to the promise of "all truth" by the Holy Spirit and the fulfillment of "the sounding of the seventh angel." Which is not to say that "Jesus did not die physically on the cross but only spiritually"--but rather to point out that what is "physical" is mere "dust" and an "image" "created"--yes, by the spiritual power of God, for revelation. So, yes spiritual, but no I have not said that it was "not physical", but have properly defined what "physical" actually is and always has been according to God rather than men.
Calvin like Paul, was a stone along the path, building upon the foundation that was laid, speaking broken language to those with one foot on the land and the other on the sea, that men might begin to understand. Neither was it wrong for Jesus to say "before the foundation of the world" while in the world, for this is the way it is written, that the things of God which are without chronology of time, should be revealed to "each in his own order."
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