We might have expected the chief priests of Israel to fall on their faces repentantly in sackcloth and ashes after learning the News from the Roman detail appointed to secure the tomb where Jesus was laid, to the effect that superhuman beings had appeared and raided the tomb in open defiance of Roman law and might, while the crucified corpse walked out alive in shattering light! Why in Heaven’s name didn’t those chief priests instantly collapse, reduced to remorse and anguish, mourning the staggering revelation that, after all, they had indeed murdered their own Messiah! (Lk. 27:62-66, 28:11-15) For now they knew without question that God Himself and not mere human power had sprung their death trap! Or did they not recognize the truth because their concept of Israel’s God was so mangled that they fully expected if Jesus were actually the Messiah, then God’s vengeance upon them would surely have been wreaked in some more obviously destructive way than “merely” by resurrecting their victim? In other words, did such mercy seem so inconceivable an attribute of the God they thought they were worshipping that they completely mistook his real identity and character when he actually did “bare his mighty arm” and, lo!, superabundant, overwhelming favor materialized before their eyes? Something on this order, it seems to me, must be invoked to explain their incorrigible blindness and recalcitrant viciousness. They got calloused by degrees until they were, at length, casehardened against the most stupendous sign God ever gave Israel! [11/30/97]
Christ Jesus, the risen Lord, gives time a new lease on life. Rather than eclipsing time by the advent of a mythical “eternity” (aidiotes), a word appearing in neither the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint–much less in the Hebrew!) or the New Testament, God’s Messiah liberates His creation from the signs of decay by which we commonly mark time’s effects on created things. It is time cleansed of corruption that will characterize the impending ages of the cosmos. [12/21/97]
Tongues of fire at Pentecost are symbolic of God’s witness to faith as an “acceptable sacrifice,” as in many O.T. instances of fire falling from heaven to consume a sacrifice offered in faith. That coming–“falling“!–of the Holy Spirit was God’s own testimony to the acceptability of trust in Jesus as Jehovah’s Salvation. [01/15/98]
The difference between the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the resurrection of others mentioned in Scripture (the son of the widow of Nain in Elisha’s day, the servant of the centurion, the widow’s son, Lazarus, the resurrections of some saints after Jesus’ Resurrection, et al) is that Jesus’ own was followed by glorification at his ascension, while that of the others was not. So we should distinguish these events carefully. At the “general” resurrection to come, before Messiah’s judgment of all nations, Scripture seems to indicate that none are glorified. But after the Judgment the lost will be thrown into the Lake of Fire and the saved will be glorified for agelong life. [01/31/98]
The Premial Atonement 