Enemies and Footstools

But to which of the angels has He ever said: “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”? Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? (Hebrews 01:13-14, NKJV).

This first chapter of Hebrews draws to a close with a quote from Psalm 110, the gloriously prophetic Messianic Psalm and a source of several other quotes later in this Book. It then ends with a final rhetorical question to nail down the argument of Christ's superiority to angels.

It is not angels who will rule the ages to come, but Christ. It is not angels whose enemies will be crushed but Christ's, and note, please, it is the Father who promises to do the crushing on behalf of the Son, whom He beckons to take His place at the Father's right hand. This is the position of shared sovereignty on the Throne of the Universe. 

And this divine bequest had been recorded by David a 1000 years before Jesus was born. It held much weight as an inspired confirmation of Messiah's Deity, making it impossible for anyone who accepted the Old Testament as the Word of God to view Christ on the same level as mere angels.

Nevertheless, the temptation for early Jewish Christians in the face of persecution from their countrymen was to retreat into the old, accepted ways, and to treat Christ not as coequal with God, but as an angel. Throughout the millennia of Hebrew tradition, angels were venerated, and the lure was to try to honor Christ, while seeming not to blaspheme by worshiping Him as God.

On the surface, it was theological hair-splitting that would enable these Jewish followers to have Christ and Judaism - to remain in the past while seeming to embrace the future. The writer of Hebrews would have none of that, as we shall see as we proceed, but here he is simply and effectively providing the capstone of his polemic that demanded that angels be put in their proper place - as created beings, not the preexistent, eternal Son of God.

The writer goes further and delineates the primary mission of the angels, which is to minister, or serve, those who will inherit salvation. 

Don't pass over this lightly. 

These powerful, immortal, superbly intelligent creatures are meant to be ministers to the only beings capable of receiving the inheritance of God, the salvation he bequeaths to His sons and daughters by faith in Christ. We are deemed, in fact, coheirs with Christ, since He became human in order to be our Savior and Brother, and to usher us into the Family of God. 

Messiah gave no such aid to angels. Those who fell with Satan have no chance of redemption. Their doom is sealed for all eternity.

The image of enemies and footstools is derived from a very ancient custom, perhaps from even before the Flood, of a conquering King placing his foot on the back of the neck of a vanquished ruler. This was seen as the ultimate declaration of victory for the one, and humiliating defeat for the other. It was usually a precursor to ignominious and public execution of the loser.

This is the fate decreed for all the enemies of God and His Messiah. On that day of final battle, Satan and His demons, along with all unbelieving mortals, will be utterly defeated and cast into the Lake of Fire in Outer Darkness, where they will remain in torment and agony forever.

There are no gray areas of nuanced salvation.

The metric is nakedly simple - you have either declared for Christ in this life and, through that faith, attain eternal life in the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Or you have died as a congenital sinner, without availing yourself of the only way of escape.

You will either rule and reign with Christ, or you will be one of those enemies made His footstool.

Acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior, Creator God and Gracious Redeemer, or suffer the judgment that will result in an eternal sentence of punishment.

There is no middle ground in Redemption.

He is Not Going Away

And: “You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain; And they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will fold them up, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will not fail.” (Hebrews 01:10-12, NKJV).

I do not know how many times I have heard some one say recently, "I just wish he/she/it would go away."

Different people at different times use this as an imagined antidote to discouragement, and it appears that, lately, discouragement is on the rise.

That's understandable. That's pretty much been always understandable throughout history. If you are not occasionally discouraged, you are either insane, not paying attention, or divine.

Discouragement is a venerable human tradition brought about by our innate animal courage being overwhelmed by exhausting circumstances. It is not cowardice, but it acts like it, robbing us of motivation, distorting our judgment, and undermining meaningful response. And by animal courage, I mean that thing that energizes an infant to emerge from the womb, makes a man struggle to breathe, and fights against physical death tooth and nail. 

Discouragement is the precursor to depression. It is a scheme of the Enemy that makes us focus on an imaginary unending negative future, while disregarding the only actual intersection we have with reality: the moment. It's a diabolically effective weapon, and there is only one real defense - Jesus and His teaching.

Everything that discourages is ephemeral and temporary to a Christian. What lasts is Christ and His promises. He is the one who laid the foundation of the earth. He is the everlasting Artist who stretched out the heavens in a glorious tapestry across the face of the Universe, fashioning the fabric of time and space in a brilliant declaration of His glory.

But these will perish, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak [He] will fold them up, And they will be changed. Yet He will remain, unchanging, steadfast. His years will not fail.

There is much comfort in this, if you will allow it to seep like a soothing heart-balm into your soul.

Christ in you, the hope of glory, is the only lasting antidote to discouragement.

His unmatched teaching provides the basis for all the experiences of life in this Fallen world, and at its practical foundation is taking one day at a time.

Give us this day our daily bread. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:11, 34, NKJV).

This makes perfect sense, because we do not know what the future holds. And that in itself is His mercy and kindness toward us.

And His promises and Person are the bedrock upon which we, as His children by faith, must stand, else we will fall.

This One whom the entire Book of Hebrews extolls as superior to everyone and everything is our soul's Anchor.

By focusing on Him rather than our circumstances, we can withstand the rains, winds, and floods of this life that are sure to come. By relying on Him to walk us through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we need fear no evil, for He is with us.

He continually offers Himself to us as a refuge, a strong tower, a mighty fortress, an everlasting hedge of protection.

Look, it comes down to one question: who is at the center of your life?

By default, it is ourselves.

But by His grace and mercy, and our faith, we can cease being the malfeasant, inept, usurper on the throne of our life, and allow Him to take His rightful place there.

When we do, He assures us that all things will work together for good.

He guarantees that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us.

In all three synoptic gospels he says these words verbatim: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."  (Mt 24:35; Mr 13:31; Lu 21:33)

And in Revelation, as in many other Scriptures, He declares: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8, NKJV).

He is not going away.

This is MY Son

For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”? But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” And of the angels He says: “Who makes His angels spirits And His ministers a flame of fire.” But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” (Hebrews 01:05-09, NKJV).

It is impossible to read the New Testament in its plain sense and not conclude that Jesus is God. I know some groups try very hard to deny the Deity of Christ, and attempt to justify their faulty conclusions from Scripture, but it is not logically possible.

Here, for instance, the Father Himself is declaring unmistakably that the Firstborn is to be worshiped, by angels, no less, and since only God is worthy of worship, it must mean that this Firstborn is God. But if that leaves you still unconvinced, the proclamation becomes even clearer a few words later, when the Father declares to the Son directly, "Your throne, O God…". 

Unequivocally, God the Father is calling His Son, God. Further, He is announcing the Son's right to rule His Kingdom. Don't miss that. He is granting the Son of Man sovereignty, and granting Him the Kingdom over which He is to rule.

The summary reason for this bestowal is the Son's immaculate and holy character, succinctly and brilliantly described as His having loved righteous and His having hated lawlessness. So much so that He voluntarily went to the Cross to establish the first, and abolish the second. The consequence? Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than your companions.

To be anointed with oil is to be publicly set apart for a holy and glorious purpose. Old Testament priests were anointed with oil when they assumed the mantle of the Levitical Priesthood. God sometimes anointed those men He ordained to be His prophets. Kind David was anointed by Samuel as heir to the Throne of His Father David. The very term Messiah is translated, the Anointed One. 

It is a symbolic affirmation of being selected by God for His purposes.

The phrase, oil of gladness, is a Hebraism signifying a soothing gift. Various plant oils were used in the ancient Middle East to soothe sun-ravaged skin, or to act as a barrier to irritations of the skin. It was both a protection and a comfort. Over time, the phrase came to be used as a synonym for being highly favored.

It is obvious then, that the Father is setting apart His Uniquely-begotten Son as more highly favored than other men, because of His superlative character, and His solemn work of redemption.

There is no question that Scripture portrays Christ as both the Pre-existent Second Person of the Triune Godhead, and the virgin-born, fully human, Son of Man. The Incarnation is both mystery and miracle made necessary by the depth of our depravity and the immeasurable cost of our redemption.

These profound truths align perfectly with the overriding purpose of the Book of Hebrews, which is the emphatic portrayal of the magnificence of the Savior.

Consider that when we mistakenly think that we contribute to our own salvation - that we can somehow satisfy God's righteous wrath against sin through some work on our part - we blaspheme the Son of God, and "trample Him under our feet." It is through faith in Him alone that we are accounted righteous; nothing else. There is no work of righteousness that we are capable of that could atone for our inherent fallenness. None.

Now while it is clear that we are not saved by good works, we are saved for good works - those purposes for each one of us prepared by God beforehand that we should walk in them.

I do not believe it is possible to overstate the goodness of our God.

I do not believe it is possible to exaggerate His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

He is, after all, the very definition of good and kind.

Every verse in Hebrews attest to these facts, and to the glorious majesty of His Son.

When the Firstborn God Returns

For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”? But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” And of the angels He says: “Who makes His angels spirits And His ministers a flame of fire.” But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” (Hebrews 01:05-09, NKJV).

Throughout the course of Church history, especially at its beginning, Christians were characterized as "worshipers of the dead God."

That is the world's misinterpretation, of course, and a gross distortion of the truth, but it is an interesting one. By focusing on the sacrifice of Christ, the world affirms its historicity. It was an event that happened in time and space, and people noticed, but not because Someone was killed in a tortuous and gruesome manner - that happens all the time even today - but because of the impact that that particular death had on a significant number of people. It clearly and permanently changed human hearts and minds, from the inside out. Narcissists became philanthropists; hedonists became self-controlled; reprobates became decent; deceivers became honest - all because sinners became saved and regenerated by the power of the gospel.

The evidence was irrefutable, so much so, that the ensconced civil and established religious authorities of that day, and since, have done their dogged best to undermine the impact. Through persecution, marginalization, libel, slander, extortion and repressive control, true Christianity's abolition was sought with diabolic persistence. Bibles were burned, churches broken up, saints martyred - all to no avail. When outright demolition failed, the world tried the next best thing: mockery.

"They worship a dead God! What kind of lunatics worship a dead God? They must be insane! Pay no attention to them!"

In the end, that strategy fails like all the others. It's hard to really mock people who don't regard themselves as important in themselves. Or more precisely, who don't look at themselves as entitled to being treated a certain way. That kind of person, when mocked, typically bears it with good humor, taking it in stride, knowing that the mockers are like scared children afraid of something they don't quite understand, but are convinced is somehow a threat.

This chauvinism regarding a dead God is particularly fascinating because it stops at the Cross, and does not proceed to the Empty Tomb. Its underlying intent is to dilute the Deity of Christ by decrying how ridiculous it is for God to die. The implicit statement is this: any god worth its salt can't die, so clearly Jesus Christ was no god, and therefore His followers are either woefully deluded, or willfully demented.

They miss the main point, obviously, that God became a Man to be able to suffer death. And he became a Man by being the Father's firstborn. The sense of this word in Greek (prototokos) is not solely chronological, as in the first to emerge from the womb, though it certainly can be used with that connotation. The word is also positional, in the sense that it denotes prominence and privilege. The firstborn son in ancient cultures typically succeeded the patriarch of the clan, and received a double portion of the inheritance. He became the controller and primary shareholder of the family estate and business. In short, he was accorded first rank among siblings.

In both senses then, it is a fitting description of the Only-begotten Son of God. It encapsulates His unique Humanity, while emphasizing His divine authority. And while some have used that designation to argue that Christ is not God because He was born, that argument is just vapor. Nobody is arguing He wasn't born. His virgin birth is an integral part of the miracle of redemptive history.

But note also the subtle summary of salvation in the highlighted verse, But when He again brings the firstborn into the world. He came once as the Suffering Servant, sent by the Father to die a substitutionary atoning death for our sins, but then He rose again and went out of the world. The Father will send Him once again into the world, not as Servant, but as Judge and King.

He will judge men as the Son of Man, and He will rule in absolute sovereign authority as the Son of God. And His Royalty will be of such eminence that not only man, but angels will worship Him.

Later in Hebrews we will learn that He became a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but when He returns He will be crowned with glory and honor that cannot be denied or escaped.

In fact, the really amazing aspect of Christ's intervention in human history is not just the fact He condescended to intervene, but the surprising way he did so. He was born as one of us, to die as one of us, so that we could live as one with Him.

There is no comparison between Christ and anyone else, except the Father.

He is supreme in every characteristic: humility, divinity, humanity, love, obedience, mercy, grace and power.

And one day, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Son

For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”? But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” And of the angels He says: “Who makes His angels spirits And His ministers a flame of fire.” But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” (Hebrews 01:05-09, NKJV).

There is something extremely moving about our Savior being the Son of God. It is ennobling to think that the Father considered our redemption so vitally important that He sent not just an Emissary, or a Servant, but the Uniquely-Begotten One (monogenes in Greek) to save us creatures from the penalty of sin.

Some have argued that the Eternal Second Person of the Trinity became the Son at the precise time appointed before the foundation of the world. Others have concluded that He was always, and eternally, the Son, since Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. While I tend to agree that the first position aligns more closely with all that Scripture reveals about Christ Jesus, in the end, what matters most to me is the fact of His Sonship.

Of course, to satisfy God's perfect justice, the payment for Adam's sin had to be made by a man, because Adam was a man. Since the wages of sin is death, and since every soul that sins must die, the only way for a man's death to be the propitiation for more than that man's own sin, is for a sinless Man to voluntarily die on behalf of sinful others. It had to be a Man to take away sin precisely because it was through a man's rebellion that sin entered the world, and death through sin.

That part of the equation is tragically brilliant and fitting. 

Further, since all men are conceived in sin by virtue of their being descendants of Adam, the "federal head of the human race", thus inheriting his fallen nature, a mere human could never qualify. The only perfect, sinless Man could not be born literally as a son of man genetically or existentially, but yet had to be born as a Man. Again, the divinely brilliant, surprising, and perfect solution is that the Savior would be born of a virgin under the Law. He would be the paradoxical Seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3, conceived not by a fallen man, but by the Holy Spirit of God.

Two age-old skeptical objections instantly arise. How can a virgin give birth? And, why are Adam's descendants held accountable for his long-ago rebellion?

The response to the first objection is simply this: why think it difficult for an Omnipotent Being to decree a Virgin Birth? He created all of reality by merely speaking it into existence. Sidestepping a couple of procreative laws does not seem to be that big of a deal. And logically, it makes little sense to insist that God, being God, think and act within the narrow confines of our paltry ideas of divine consistency. 

Now, if you disbelieve that God is Creator, I get your heartache. But then my question is why try to believe any part of God's redemptive plan at all, since it stands or falls on the literal existence of a First Man created in God's image who willfully rejected Him? Incidentally, this is also the answer to the second skeptical objection. For if God did not ordain that we were all represented in Adam, and thus guilty of original sin, then we could likewise not be represented in Christ, the sinless, propitiatory sacrifice who paid for our sin.

We'd be on our own, and as soon as we fell short of even one jot or tittle of God's moral law, we would be guilty of violating His absolute standard of perfection without hope of redemption. Picture a chain suspending us over the chasm of Hell. If one of the links is broken, it matters not at all how secure all the other links may be. The end result is that we fall screaming into the pit.

Do you see the mercy and grace and justice in all this?

But what makes the gift of grace in Jesus more spectacular still is that the prerequisite of being a sinless man could conceivably have been met by a holy angel incarnating as a human though a virgin birth. That man could then have been sacrificed on behalf of humanity, and again, speaking from a merely human perspective, the debt paid. But thinking along these lines is where we would go very wrong. For consider that it is not just the sacrifice, but our personally appropriating that sacrifice through faith that makes us righteous before God. We would then be required to have faith in an angel (some cults make this very mistake). And in gratitude for that sacrifice, the next natural step would be adoration and worship. But only God is worthy of worship. Do you see one of the problems? Angels are created beings unworthy of worship.

Secondly, from the very beginning God reveals that He is the only One mighty enough to save. Only He, the Uncreated One, the Uncaused First Cause, has the intrinsic power to take away the sin debt, forever. It is only the life of God Himself that is of sufficient value to offset the eternal debt of man's sin.

Only by God dying on the Cross could man be saved, and only by becoming fully Human would it be possible for Him to suffer death, and be the sinless Substitute that takes away the sin of the world.

Yet, the glory of all this goes further still by Scripture informing us that it was the Son of God - who is the express image of the Father, and in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily - who came to save by dying. His own Son lovingly became the payment of the Father's divine and perfect justice. 

His Son.

Please don't miss the meaning of that.

What relationship would a God who is love value more than that of Father and Son? What better way of informing us of His value (and ours!) than by having Him become the Uniquely-begotten Son? I submit that the very concept of father, son and family, as well as human love and marriage, were expressly ordained for this very purpose - to show the depth of the Father's love, the loving obedience of His Son, and the utter heinousness of sin.

I do not think it is possible to understate the importance of understanding what it took to enable us to escape the fires of Hell.

It took love beyond measure.

It took obedience beyond description.

It took humility beyond imagination.

It took a sacrifice beyond price.

It took The Son.

Unveiled

For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”? But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” And of the angels He says: “Who makes His angels spirits And His ministers a flame of fire.” But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” (Hebrews 01:05-09, NKJV).

Not surprisingly, the Book of Hebrews uses many allusions to the Hebrew Old Testament to present its overriding theme of the supremacy of Christ.

In continuing the specific argument regarding the inferiority of angels as compared to the Son, the writer cites seven Old Testament passages (Ps 2:7; 2Sa 7:14; De 32:43; Ps 97:7; 104:4; 45:6,7), sometimes with unexpected surgical precision, selecting only part of a phrase or sentence (2Sa 7:14; De 32:43).  The primary purpose is to reemphasize the Son's superiority, and also to demonstrate conclusively that there is nothing about the Messiah that was not first foreshadowed long before Jesus' Incarnation, and then exactly and uniquely fulfilled by His life and words. In addition, there is another, more subtle, teaching as well - that God's Word, every jot or tittle, noun, pronoun, verb and adverb can have prophetic or doctrinal significance. Therefore, the closer we get to the literal translation of the original languages, the more precise will be our interpretation and understanding.

The Apostle Paul, in Galatians 3:16, provides another interesting example of this premise, when he stipulates the exactness of the promises to Abraham in Ge 12:7, 13:15, and 24:7, regarding his singular descendant:

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ. (Galatians 3:16, NKJV).

These, and other profound teachings, are treasures hidden in Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit for the edification and encouragement of the saints in Christ; rewards for those who lovingly study and meditate upon His Word, as it is written:

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29, NKJV).

Does this mean that you need years of training in ancient languages to fully understand God's redemptive plan? Or that you cannot know fully what He requires of you, O' man?

No, because overwhelmingly, the main doctrines in the Bible concerning sin, salvation, Christ, the nations, Israel, and prophetic history are plainly understandable if you take a reliable translation in the plain sense in which it was intended. As declared long ago, "the main things are the plain things", so that "we are without excuse." And by reliable, I mean those translations made by believing scholars, who are willing to sign a written declaration of faith in Christ, and in the inerrancy of the original Scriptural texts. Modern translations that meet that criteria include the NKJV and the NASB. These attempt to be literal word-for-word translations, with the NIV of the mid-1980's   purporting to be an accurate thought-for-thought translation.

Other translations, particularly those comprised primarily of paraphrases (current human words substituted for God's words), while perhaps of devotional value, cannot be used for deep word studies, nor can they be considered as authoritative in terms of doctrine and prophecy. And certainly, these versions are disqualified for unveiling the hidden treasures mentioned above, as they are merely human transliterations of divine truth.

In fact, it is because of the proliferation of modern translations that skeptics argue that the Bible can't be considered other than man-made since "there are so many contradictory translations." While this is superficially true regarding less rigorous works, it is completely untrue as it pertains to those following the traditions of the "authorized versions", like the KJV, NKJV and NASB. 

Are there variant readings in the roughly 5000 oldest manuscripts of the New Testament? Yes. But in every case, these variations do not alter any of the foundational tenets of the faith, and (and this is very interesting), these variations serve as the major vehicle by which translators arrive statistically, through textual criticism and analysis, at the original words. This is so because the volume of manuscripts, some chronologically very close to the events recorded, enable scholars to analyze the variations with the understanding that no two copyists, separated geographically and/or historically, were likely to make the same error in the same place. 

Incidentally, compared to other ancient manuscripts, the Old and New Testaments have more, and older, ancient texts than any other ancient manuscript - exponentially more.

Returning tone of the main points here, it is this: Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7, NKJV). This is especially true regarding His Son, about whom all of the Old Testament pointed, and all of the New Testament revealed, including the focus passages above.

The Book of Hebrews is remarkable in its unveiling of the supreme excellence of Christ, virtually from its first verse onward. As such it paints a portrait of Messiah's magnificence, nobility, deity, integrity, power and faithfulness. It refutes any mistaken beliefs past, present or future about Him being other than coequal with God the Father, proclaiming emphatically that He is alike in essence, character, and nature, and differing only in redemptive role -  and that through loving filial subservience to the Father.

Perhaps nowhere else in Scripture do we find Him explicitly compared to angels or humans, with each incidence resulting in the resounding proclamation, as here, that He is as far above creaturehood of any kind, including vaunted angelic beings, as it is possible to get. He is Lord of All, unveiled in all His intrinsic glory and substance.

God, Creator, King, Lord, and Savior, to whom be glory and blessing and honor and strength forever and ever. Amen.

Lord of Lords

who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. (Hebrews 01:03-04, NKJV).

There is a Man sitting on the Throne of the Universe.

Soon He will return to establish His rule physically on this Planet, in the City of Jerusalem, from which He will reign over all the affairs of Earth and men.

There is no way that we would know these things without God having revealed them to us in His word, but reveal them He does, repeatedly, emphatically, unequivocally, and to believe them is an integral part of being Christian.

Logically, there is really no way around it. If you try to believe that He is Lord and Savior, but are unconvinced of His physical return, as many so-called Christians are, then you have "cherry picked" what you choose to believe about Him. Instead of taking God at His Word, you have set yourself up as the arbiter of what He meant, and what is just fanciful additions to, or interpretations of, Scripture.

Why believe any of it then? How do you know the things you have picked are the correct things? Or the only correct things?

The objective answer is, simply, that you can't. You are only guessing. And by guessing you are basing your eternal destiny on your own judgment.

Risky business.

But if your only source of information and belief is Scripture itself, then there are no dubious areas about the fundamental tenets of Christianity. You either believe what the Bible says about Jesus, who He is, where He came from, and what His purposes are, or you are a pretender.

I suspect it would be better to just disbelieve the whole package entirely, then to decide on your own what is or isn't necessary to avoid Hell. At least that way, the road to saving faith would be a straight shot, if you were fortunate enough to embark upon the journey, rather than some twisted, convoluted, self-devised maze of nuance and arrogance and confusion.

The New Testament clearly teaches that Christ is Lord of Lords and King of Kings. These are not just noble cliches, but actual titles that convey absolute sovereignty and rulership over all mankind. He has that right not only because He is the Executor of Creation, nor solely because He is God, but He is so also by virtue of having become human, in addition to the other indisputable claims of authority.

But more than that, He is not just Lord over the lives and deaths of men, but He has ultimate power over all spheres of existence, physical and nonphysical.

Some ancient Hebrews were quite amenable to worshiping not only God, but angels. That is true for many Jews and Gentiles today. And in fact, recent history has seen an increase in the human veneration of angels, but the fact of it is not new at all. It has been a mistake for a long, long time. A mistake that the writer of Hebrews is brilliantly arguing against here and elsewhere, and that other texts of Scripture clearly affirm.

Angels are created beings. They have no equivalence whatsoever with Deity. They are likened to spirits and flames, and stars, but they are not uncaused, nor eternal.

Though powerful and intelligent and immortal, only Satan and his fellow rebels, the demons, seek to be worshiped. The remaining two-thirds who did not join in Lucifer's attempted insurrection, do not, and will not ever countenance being worshiped.

Every incident in Scripture where a human encountered one of the holy angels and acted on the impulse to worship, the angels themselves forbid it.

The Apostle Paul writes that one day, we the redeemed of mankind will actually judge angels.

In fact, the very plan of human redemption is so marvelous and brilliant, that angels seek to learn and understand it more deeply.

The bottom line is that only God is worthy of worship. And Christ His Son is the Living Lord of Everything. There is none higher. There is no other name by which we must be saved.

His place of authority is His by nature, by power, and by inheritance.

When you consider the esteem that God holds for us, His mortal, and vilely rebellious human creatures, you cannot fail to understand the indefinable grace and mercy and love He bestows upon us.

That He would condescend to send His Son to become one of us for all eternity, so that we would have Him as King, is a fact of Scripture too glorious for mere words.

It says all that need be said of the love of God for sinners, and for our bent and twisted species as a whole.

Dead Man No More

Before I knew it, my entire household was around me. News travels fast over some kind of metaphysical network in a loving nuclear family.

"Dad! You're bleeding! Do you need me to call an ambulance?" my eldest daughter asked, business-like, focused, anticipating and prioritizing several thousand possible contingencies, and mentally formulating the necessary procedural steps to move the one alternative most likely chosen forward.

"Daddy!" her younger sister cried, crouching beside me on the ground next to the youngest and putting her hand to the wound.

"Ow!" I said. She jerked her hand away like she'd been burned.

"Sorry!"

"Is there anything leaking out besides blood?" I asked.

"You mean like brain-matter?"

"Yeah, basically."

She looked again, critically, objectively, able to put her initial emotional tsunami aside.

"No."

"OK then, no ambulance."

I met my wife's eyes at that moment. Years and years of knowing each other, living day-to-day with each other, raising our daughters, bearing each other's burdens, pains, triumphs, defeats, joys, sorrows, everything and anything was communicated in that split-second glance. It is an intimacy and understanding that only a long investment of time together can yield, augmented to an inconceivable depth by our shared faith in Christ.

"You should get checked out," she said with a calm that I knew she did not feel. Our daughters made room for her next to me, something she always, consciously, sacrificially, did for them, knowing how important, and short, time was between fathers and daughters. 

I am sure we made quite a tableau crouched there together in our front yard; four beautiful females of various ages and one crumpled and bleeding gnome.

"I have a hard head," I reminded her.

"Was it a cricket bat?" the youngest asked. It was a quote from one of our favorite shows.

"Just a rock thrown out by a dump truck," I answered, feeling less, well, crumpled with each passing second. I went through a list of possible bad symptoms in my head: no dizziness, no nausea, no headaches beyond the gash in my temple, no shock, the bleeding was subsiding as my wife compressed a cloth against it - I don't know where she obtained it. In short, I had just been knocked slightly unconscious for what seemed like years but was probably less than a couple of seconds. I'd been through worse in my younger days.

"Did you break the rock, Daddy?"

I smiled. It was what I always asked when one of them fell, or got hurt, in the course of life. It was my lame attempt to distract them momentarily from their pain, and enabled me to assess the seriousness of their injury. If they laughed or got annoyed, then I knew it was probably not life threatening.

"Dunno," I said. "It's over there by the hedge." I pointed where I knew it had landed, having seen it come to rest while disembodied. 

I thought that thought like such things crossed my mind daily. Should I question my sanity?

Nah.

"Can you stand?" my wife asked.

In answer, I lumbered upward, involuntarily groaning at the effort.

On two feet again, I adjusted my glasses, grimacing at how they now felt, misshapen on my rapidly swelling face.

I remembered my experience in full. Was it a dream? A vision? An actual, objective event?

I didn't know. I didn't care, because whatever it was, it increased my longing for Heaven and my love for my Lord, and my thankfulness for all His glorious gifts.

"You're just standing there," my eldest pointed out.

I looked at her, so utterly grateful for her presence, for the privilege of having her, and all her sisters, in my life.

I turned toward my wife and my tears began to flow, and she, of all the other billions of human beings in the world, knew precisely what I was feeling without me having to say a word; another of His amazing gifts.

And I was ushered inside, surrounded by the people who cared for me the most, and I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, now and forever, that I was loved.

And whenever my work on-planet was done, however long it took to complete, there was awaiting for me a Place and a Person, where, and in whom, nothing of value or goodness was lost.

Ever.

Dead Man on the Ground

There was no sense of transition. 

One instant one place, the next hovering telephone-pole high over the lilac bushes in the yard.

Disembodiment is hard to get used to, mostly because while I knew I wasn't attached to my physical form, it felt little different from when I was, except for the lack of aches and pains, and floating in the air and all.

Below me was me.

I looked kind of crumpled up and damaged lying on the ground practically underneath the kayak trailer in the driveway. There was blood oozing out of my one temple, and my ubiquitous eyeglasses were hanging askew from my ashen face, unbroken, but badly bent.

My glasses, that is. Not my face.

It was still daylight, and the last thing I recall doing as a captive of gravity was bending down to pick up a bagged newspaper near the street. It was a newspaper, incidentally, delivered weekly, un-asked for, and unread.

How it had become my undoing, I did not know.

Then, in answer to my confusion, time unwound backwards a bit as I floated, in no rush to touch down.

I witnessed crumpled me suddenly arise moving in reverse, dropping the paper I had attempted to pick up, and then moving away from it, again in reverse.

At the point where I had apparently decided to retrieve the paper in the first place, the 3-D HD real-life rewind stopped, and began to run forward.

The loud roaring of a large, overloaded dump truck from some landscape company rumbled toward me from the highway, arcing around the bend at the top of the hill near our house and barreling toward me like something out of a B-class action film.

On-planet me hardly seemed to notice. Immaterial me was a bit startled, which was strange in the extreme, not having any physical senses, but what do I know?

At precisely the moment I bent down to pick up the offending newspaper, a fist-sized, decorative, polished river stone used in expensive landscape edging bounced out of the careening truck's cargo bed and headed unerringly toward my head. It looked like a primitive projectile shot from a mechanical dinosaur.

I watched the rock, which at this point was traveling at almost the same velocity as the speeding truck, strike my temple as if I were reenacting the David and Goliath saga in reverse, and modernized.

In my version, Goliath, the truck, slung the stone at diminutive me, as David, and I went down like a felled gnome.

Floating me winced in pain. Physical me hit the gravel driveway in a bleeding crumpled lump.

The rest is visionary history.

I realized that the impending reentry into my physical shell was not going to be fun.

It was going to hurt, and I looked forward to it not at all.

Then I heard footsteps running toward me from the house, and a panicked cry from my youngest child.

"Daddy!" she screamed. "Are you OK?"

...And I opened my eyes from the ground, reawakening with a start that sent shockwaves through my brain.

"Ow!" I croaked weakly, as she knelt down next to me on the stones, trembling in fear.

I could see tears in her eyes even without my glasses.

"I'll be fine," I said, trying to smile. I can only imagine what a ghastly picture I presented.

I managed to hold her as she burst into sobs of relief.

"I thought you were dead, Daddy!"

"It's OK, Sweetheart. It's OK."

Dead Man at the Center of Existence

I had seen and walked through the outskirts of Heaven, and looked over the edge of its Balcony into time and space, and into the past and present of the Planet below, but nothing I had seen, or could imagine, prepared me for what I experienced next.

Not for the first time I asked myself: How do you describe the indescribable?

John, in Revelation, gives us a glimpse of the utter magnificence of the City of God as it comes down out of Heaven and appears in materiality, and his description provides a sense of its reality impinging for the first time upon our own. The terrible beauty of his words paint an almost incomprehensible image of grandeur and immensity; a single city half as big as the Moon, composed of precious stones and materials of such extravagant proportions as to leave us breathless.

Yet, I did not see the City as John saw it. I did not come that close.

But my experience was nonetheless transforming, for what my eyes did not see, my heart understood wordlessly, and I was overwhelmed with the conviction that here, in this place, in the very Center of Existence, everything was of such solidity, and of such substance, and of such eternality that everything else - everywhere else - was mere shadow. 

This was the essential glory from which everything else derived. 

From this moment on I will know what absolute certainty means.

From this moment on I will know what it truly means to be, for I have been shown the swirling, immeasurable depths of pure creative power, and have caught a glimpse of the consuming fires of the glory of our God.

And the most amazing realization of all, was that this raw, and wild, and raucously powerful strength, so untamed and infinitely uncontainable in any dimensional space, is that which is expressly embodied in the Person of my Lord Christ - for in Him is all this fullness of the Godhead. He is the image of this Glory.

That this One became a creature like us in order to share with us all that He is, to show us His intent and love for us, to be one with us, beholding His glory, is the greatest, most invisible, yet substantial, gift of all.

To be loved by such a One is unthinkably grand and magnificent and glorious.

And then, the vision of my heart was gone, and I stood for what I knew to be the last time on the Balcony of Heaven.

"He gave you all that you could withstand," my companion said. "Even the smallest bit more and you would have dissolved into vapor."

I nodded, not willing to speak.

I was not grieved, exactly, for I knew that my destiny was to live forever in this realm.

And I was not exactly impatient, for what is a few more passing years on-planet when all eternity was my ultimate reward?

But I was… wistful.

I did not want to leave, but I understood how little what I wanted at any particular moment had any real significance in comparison to His gracious eternal purposes for me.

Who was I to do more than just place absolutely everything in His hands?

Who was I to do anything other than absolutely, unquestioningly obey His loving will for me?

After all, I was, and had only ever been from birth, a Dead Man.

A Dead Man whom He had made alive.

Dead Man in the Sky

The physical Universe in all its vastness was before me. I saw it as if outside it looking in, and it was incomprehensibly big. 

There are no words for the scales of size and distance involved, and yet at the same time, it looked like a little thing from my perspective. Weird and glorious all at once.

"What would you like to see?" he asked me.

"Everything," I said.

"That would take forever," he answered, and smiled, "even in its current imperfect state."

That was the point of the Universe, I knew - a playground of materiality for God's children; a place of infinite variety, complexity and beauty - all for us.

It was easy to lose sight of that fact on-planet. From the surface looking out, our beautiful, but broken, Blue Marble seemed small and insignificant in comparison to the immense celestial sea in which it floated. But what does comparative size have to do with importance. Our world is like the egg of the Universe. It is the place from which redeemed life will reach out and populate the sky. That was His plan from the beginning.

"Our Father is extravagant in His preparations for Eternity," my companion told me. "You have no idea how much He values us or what He has in store for His children. He made all of this with us in mind, so that He could delight in our delight."

"There are no words," I said marveling at the magnificence before me.

"Precisely," he agreed.

"It's easy to imagine we don't mean much of anything, but we really mean everything, don't we?" I asked. 

He nodded.

I understood then that we had lost the assurance of our importance at the Fall of Man, and have been trying to get it back ever since - looking everywhere and believing just about anything except the truth. Not because He hid it from us, but because we rejected Him and therefore would not see.

It all made a kind of tragic sense, like a rebellious child refusing to believe in a parent's love because doing so would obliterate the child's illusion of being the center of his own existence. Returning that love would entail an acknowledgement that the child was not what he thought he wanted to be - his own god. Rebellion against God is the ultimate selfishness; the pinnacle of willful blindness.

"The Father wants each of us to have all this, but we can't without being in Him - the very source of Life itself. Unless we abide in Him, we can have no life. It's simple, actually," he said. "Even a child can understand it."

"Especially a child," I agreed.

A moment more of taking in what was before me brought something else to my understanding: if this gift of everything was made just for us, what must it say about the Maker and Giver?

"Exactly," he replied, reading my thoughts. "If it would take forever to explore and come to know Creation, how immeasurably more satisfying will it be to come to know the Creator as He truly is in Himself?"

In essence by being presented with the entire Universe, I was perceiving merely His footprint in the sands of time and space - the signpost pointing to the true destination: Him.

And in my mind, or perhaps echoing across all Creation itself, I heard that Voice say yet again what it all meant.

“AND THIS IS ETERNAL LIFE, THAT THEY MAY KNOW YOU, THE ONLY TRUE GOD, AND JESUS CHRIST WHOM YOU HAVE SENT."

"There is one more gift," my companion said. 

The Great Purge

who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. (Hebrews 01:03-04, NKJV).

Christ, alone, once for all and for all time, made Himself the expiatory sacrifice, the final payment, that cleansed forever our sins.

We were lepers. He made us clean, curing us of the incurably fatal disease that would slowly rot us to eternal death from the inside out.

He had no help, no supporting ritual or law, no backing, and received no mercy. Upon Him was heaped all God's righteous and unsparing wrath against evil and rebellious mankind. The judgment that we deserved, He voluntarily took upon Himself, and by doing so, made us clean for all eternity, if - and this is crucial - we, by faith, confess with our mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead.

The word, translated purged, depicts what happens when some defiling filth is completely obliterated, as if it were never there in the first place. This is important, because without that understanding it is possible to think that Christ's shed blood in payment for sin can somehow, and in some way, be undone. We can mistakenly and tragically believe that once saved, we can render Jesus' work on the Cross moot and ineffective.

That is blasphemy.

Think about it. How can we mere mortals, created beings, negate an act of God? If we, collectively and individually, are powerless against natural phenomena deemed acts of God, like earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, volcanoes and the like, how could we possibly attribute to ourselves the ability to undo the Crucifiction of Christ?

Granted, we human beings have a distorted species self-image. We think we are something. Even those of us who ironically believe that humanity is the scourge of the earth, do so because they operate under the illusion of human power. Their misguided notion is that humans control the destiny of the planet, despite the fact that all history indicates otherwise.

Here's what humanity willingly denies: God is in control. Even most Monotheists, excluding Biblical Christians, believe that humans actively impact ultimate destiny. This is absurd. It would be like a person standing on the shore of the sea as a tsunami approaches, thinking that they could stem the tide.

Now there are two mistakes that can be made regarding Divine Determinism (an academic label for God's absolute Sovereignty). The first is that nothing we do actually matters, and the second is its converse, we can do anything we want once saved.

The first proposition would only be true if God chose not to use human beings to further His divine purposes. This is clearly not the case. One of the miraculous competencies of God is that He carries out His plans in the midst of human free will, and He does so by orchestrating trillions of threads of activity in order to bring about the outcome He desires, and has purposed before time began. And He does so while still maintaining His gift to us of free moral agency. You try that for even a half-hour a see how far you get.

That He has condescended to allow us, His creatures, to participate in His foreordained outcomes is a gracious gift. Our prayers, our actions, our intentions have impact. Often, it is those very activities that bring about His results. And then He rewards us for them as if we did all the work. The Book of Esther brings this point home beautifully. Mordecai says to his niece, in effect, if you don't approach the King, God will raise up someone else to save His people, but it is likely that your entire life was orchestrated for such a time as this.

The second propositional error, that we have liberty to do whatever we want once saved because we are secure no matter what, is based on faulty logic. By definition, salvation involves regeneration, being made a new creation in Christ. We are changed existentially, meaning that we are no longer of the same nature we were before. The Bible describes this as our old nature having been crucified with Christ, with our new nature reborn in Him.

Our essential being is different as Christians. The thoughts and intents of our hearts are no longer the same. What was obscured before is made clear. What seemed natural before is now alien. That which was right in our own eyes, we now judge through His eyes, having His wisdom. And we are fundamentally different.

If we don't act according to our new nature, if we continue consciously, arrogantly, joyfully, pre-meditatively, practicing sin, then the evidence indicates that we are not changed, and are not His. If the old ways are our preferred ways, then simply put, we are not saved, and we have no reason to be assured of anything except damnation.

In other words, we have not been purged. We have rejected the only remedy for our incurable affliction, and we will die in our sin.

Christ did what He did on the Cross out of love. He was able to accomplish that work because of who He is, the magnificent, beneficent Savior. 

To reject Him is to reject life and embrace death.