The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Basic Story of Life, #13

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 8:10-12)

There are three aspects of the new covenant: God placing the Divine law in our mind and writing it in our heart; our coming to know the Lord; and God forgetting our sins.

Mercy and the forgetting of our sins have been emphasized in evangelical teaching to the virtual exclusion of the first two aspects of the new covenant.

The thousand-year period and the new heaven and earth reign of Christ are the "times of restitution [restoration] of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began." As we understand the Scriptures, during the thousand-year Kingdom Age there will take place a work of reconciling people to God—both God's own people and also the saved nations of the earth.

God's own people:

For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. (Isaiah 54:7,8)

The nations of the earth:

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:3)

In the closing days of the present age two images will come to fullness of stature in the earth. The fullness of the image of Christ will come forth in the victorious saints. The fullness of the image of Satan will come forth in those who resist the lordship of Christ whether or not those people confess faith in Christ. Remember, it was the leaders of Israel, of God's chosen nation, who were moved by satanic envy to murder the Lord Jesus.

These two images, Christ and Antichrist, will come into a final, climactic confrontation. Then the power of the almighty God in Christ shall flame forth from Christ and from His saints and overcome Antichrist. This is the Battle of Armageddon. The victory of Armageddon will usher in the thousand-year Kingdom Age, the Day of Atonement (Day of Reconciliation), the Year of Jubilee for earth's peoples. The Millennium, the thousand-year period, is an important time with major opportunities for the restoration of all things.

The Scriptures teach us that the wheat and the tares will grow side by side and come to maturity side by side. Then will come the time of harvest, the hour of judgment, the separating of the precious from the vile. The tares, the image of Satan, will be taken out of the Kingdom of God, gathered in bundles, and burned. But the wheat will shine forth in the righteousness of their Father's Kingdom.

To be continued.