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This world of ours is broken. The great distress that is upon all people, in all areas of life, are heading for therapeutics of unparalleled dimensions ! !
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed Me. He has sent Me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed."
Every last broken & bruised prisoner of sin liberated !
"Remember Him before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is crushed, before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel is broken at the well, before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it."
In the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, God summed up the sending of us all into the world.
The origin of our being is not traced to our physical birth in this world, but to the timeless Being of God. From "there" we were sent into this world, and from the earliest days of our consciousness, we have all intuitively yearned to get back home. Our spiritual God-kinship cries out to our creaturehood, "this world is not (your) home, you're just a-passing through."
Listen, hear the plaintive cry of all creation, "I wanna go home." It's at the core of the subjection of our creaturehood to vanity/futility/frustration. We wanna go home, but we can't get there, and we keep inventing ways to get back, and it's that compulsion that is at the root of sin....trying to do what only God can do. Only He can bring us back home.
Sin is always, first, a religious issue. Reading, especially The First Epistle of John in Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of The New Testament, one finds a wonderful insight uncovered by our brother's pursuit of the root meaning of the word conventionally translated as "commandment." The Greek word takes us beyond God's written legislation, to what's going on within us. Reading each place in that epistle where the conventional "commandment" appears, read instead, "...His implanted goal (impartation of the finished product within; inward directive of the end in view." We have within us, in most cases latently, but in the case of those whom Jesus has called into the first stages of a saving relationship with Himself the first awakening within us of "the imparted/implanted goal."
That goal, native to our being within the Being of God, is imparted to, implanted in us.
As soon as that goal, "Christ in you, the hope of glory," is awakened, you're on your way home... home being, the Father, and all His family together. But there's the sense also of a false imparted/implanted goal within our flesh, within our creaturehood, that leads us to making all kind of effort to get home, and therein is our sin. That flesh-impartation is contra-distinctive to the impartation within our spirit. You say, "But, brother John, is the drunkard, the murderer, the thief, the liar trying to get home?
Here's how the process goes: the trying leads to the futility that leads to resentful rebellion. "OK, God, you're demanding that I come home, and I've tried and tried and tried, but I can't find my way. You're unjust, and I'm going to treat you as the unjust god you are." Of course, most of this goes on in the depth of the subconscious mind.
The death of every revival, the death/distortion/final-failure of every spiritual movement occurs as the flesh goal comes in on the coattails of the Spirit goal, and men take it in hand to get home, and teach others how to get home. The end is just one more energy-of-the-flesh enterprise unique only with its particular distinctive. There's a cacophony of voices out there claiming to have found the secret to getting home. Each voice claims a more accurate way, and none of the others, by comparison, gets it quite as right. -John Gavazzoni
His nearness to the apostles makes his testimony most interesting. Irenaeus did not believe evil would last forever. In his treatise Against Heretics, he wrote in Book III, chap. 23, §6:”(1) Wherefore also He drove him (Adam) out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied him the tree of life, as some dare to assert, but because He pitied him and desired that he should not continue always a sinner, and that the sin which surrounded him should not be immortal, and the evil interminable and irremediable.
Theophilus, (160-181 A.D.) “Bishop of Antioch.”
God showed great kindness to man in this, that He did not suffer him to continue being in sin forever; but, as it were by a kind of banishment, cast him out of Paradise, in order that, having by punishment expiated within an appointed time the sin, and having been disciplined, he should afterward be recalled.
Clement of Alexandria, (190 A.D.)
Head of the catechetical school there. He speaks of having learned from a disciple of the Apostles. His wide and various learning, and his sympathetic spirit combine to give special weight to his teaching. All men are Christ’s, some by knowing Him, the rest not yet. He is the Savior, not of some (only) and of the rest not (i.e., He is actually Savior of all) for how is He Lord and Savior if He is not Lord and Savior of all?
But He is indeed Savior of those who believe…while of those who do not believe He is Lord, until having become able to confess Him, they obtain through Him the benefit appropriate and suitable (to their case). He by the Father’s will directs the salvation of all for all things have been ordered, both universally and in part, by the Lord of the universe; with a view to the salvation of the universe…But needful correction, by the goodness of the great overseeing Judge, through (by means of) the attendant angels, through various prior judgments, through the final (pantelous) judgment, compels even those who have become still more callous to repent.
The truth is, death for man is simply an end to, and separation from, some given form of life which he has lived in.
Death to God is separation from His world of light, by the destruction, through the lie of the serpent, of the divine life of light and love in us.
Death to sin, the exact converse of this, is the separation from the world of darkness, by the destruction, through the truth, of the dark life of unbelief and self-love.
The death wrought by the law is the end of, and separation from, our fallen carnal life of self-sufficiency; while what is commonly called death, namely the death of the body, is simply our separation from the outward world, in which we live, as partakers of its outward life, while we are in the body....
The word “destruction,” as used in Scripture, never means annihilation.
“The times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all is holy prophets…And He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto You: Whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21).
Peter’s statement speaks clearly of the times of the restitution of all things.
Restitution, according to the best English usage, means the act of restoring something that has been taken away or lost; the act of making good or rendering an equivalent as for loss or injury.
This is in exact harmony with the Greek work temuriak which means restoration.
Some will no doubt reply to this by stating, as some do, that Peter was not promising that God would restore everything but only those things of which the prophets had spoken.
The grammatical construction of this sentence declares the exact opposite to be the truth. Peter was actually saying that all the prophets from the beginning of the world had prophesied that there would be a restoration of all things and that the restoration would indeed be universal and would include all things.
Note
Notice that in the scripture quoted (Acts 3:21, King James Version) there is a comma after the word things. This comma indicates that the clause following : “which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began” – is what is known as a non-restrictive clause. A non-restrictive clause is one which can be omitted without changing or destroying the meaning of the principal clause or main statement. (See Mastering Effective English by Tressler-Lewis, Revised Edition, Pages 545-546.) It simply adds further information.
I would much rather face God on that day having been obedient to Him via the Holy Spirit Jesus provided to teach His own on a personal level, rather than living in the guesswork of men, who tend to listen to the subtle compromise/twist of scriptures to fit their own agendas. Matthew 4;
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