The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Royal Priesthood, #22

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)

The world is waiting to see the good works that will be demonstrated by the saints when they are in the rest of God.

Having your conversation [behavior] honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation [when God comes to judge the world]. (I Peter 2:12)

All the ends of the earth will come to the Church when the Church is filled with the Glory of the Lord.

And the Gentiles [nations] shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. (Isaiah 60:3)

Righteousness and praise shall appear to the nations through the Church.

For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11)

Notice the following passage:

For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. And the Gentiles [nations] shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. (Isaiah 62:1,2)

One translator, in his haste to show that God's people will never be righteous except by imputation (legally ascribed righteousness), inserted the adjective "imputed" before the word "righteousness" in Isaiah 62:1. The insertion of "imputed," signifying an ascribed righteousness, is neither found in the Hebrew text nor is it even logical. How can the nations behold an imputed righteousness or walk by the light of an ascribed righteousness? So great is the blindness that rests on Christian thinking!

The Lord Jesus described how some people will enter into the Kingdom of God, and some into the Lake of Fire, when He returns to the earth.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: (Matthew 25:31,32)

The present writer is not certain whether the sheep and goat judgment will take place with living nations of people at the return of the Lord, or whether the sheep and goat judgment is part of the White Throne judgment that will occur at the termination of the thousand-year Kingdom Age.

If the sheep and goat separation is to take place at the return of the Lord, this would mean that at the beginning of the thousand-year period some people would enter eternal life and some would go into the Lake of Fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: (Matthew 25:34)

To be continued.