We say it every week in our Sunday worship service. “He ascended into heaven; and is seated on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from where He shall come to judge
the living and the dead!”
This is what we profess to believe as Christians in what is
called The Apostles Creed.This portion of the Creed always takes me back to the 110th
Psalm, verse 1”The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, Till I
make Your enemies Your footstool."
The” Lord saying to the Lord” is God the Father speaking to
God the Son (Jesus) and telling Him to sit at His right hand (the position of
authority) where Jesus is right now and will remain until God makes the enemies
of Jesus His “footstool.”
In other words, Jesus will return when God’s enemies are
stuffed into a hassock! Kind of a weird picture isn’t it? What is meant by “footstool?”
I believe it is a metaphor for a place of rest and theonly true place of rest
is Jesus.
So this Psalm speaks of conversion of unbelievers (enemies)
to the footstool, the resting place of Jesus! When the last person(enemy) has
been converted , the end will come. This coincides with what Jesus said in Mt
24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as
a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
This is comforting in one respect. God will not lose any! He
knows those who are His. (2 Tim 2:19) but on the other hand it’s a little
discomforting because it tells of a time
when people will flat out refuse the saving grace of God. There comes a time when conversion to Christ
will cease! A spiritual stupor (apostasy) will fall upon the world. 2Th 2:3
puts it this way: Let no one deceive you
by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first,”
This “falling away” should not restrain us from preaching
the Gospel! 2Ti 4:2 reminds us to remain faithful in preaching the Gospel even
though no one will receive it! Preach
the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with
all longsuffering and teaching. 3 For
the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to
their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for
themselves teachers; 4 and they will
turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 5 But you be watchful in all things, endure
afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
This “spiritual stupor” of the end times is difficult for us
who have received the saving grace to understand. How can God (who desires all
to come to repentance (2 Pet 3:9) allow this to happen?
Short answer is God will have mercy on whom He will have
mercy! (Ro 9:15)
This dulling of spiritual hearing is nothing new with God,
He has done it before if for no other reason to show us that He is capable of
doing it, and will do it on the largest scale ever near the end! He does it when large scale resisting of the
Holy Spirit is evident! For instance:
He hardened the heart of Pharaoh.
He dulled the hearts of the Israelites in the wilderness: De
29:4 "Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see
and ears to hear, to this very day.
Iaaiah, Jeremiah, and
Exekiel preached to deaf ears:
Isa 6:9 And He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep
on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.'
10 "Make the
heart of this people dull, And their ears heavy, And shut their eyes; Lest they
see with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed."
Jer 5:21 'Hear this now, O foolish people, Without
understanding, Who have eyes and see not, And who have ears and hear not:
Eze 12:2 "Son of
man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which has eyes to see but
does not see, and ears to hear but does not hear; for they are a rebellious
house.
Stephen spoke of this resistance to the converting work of
the Holy Spirit in Ac 7:51 "You
stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy
Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.
Paul spoke of this “spiritual stupor in Ro 11:8, “ Just as
it is written: "God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they
should not see And ears that they should not hear, To this very day."
And in 2Co 4:3,4 we
see the work of Satan in this apostasy as he seeks to oppose the gospel: “ But
even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded,
who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is
the image of God, should shine on them.
This “God-allowed” apostasy is brought on by people who give
heed to Satan and his workers rather than giving heed to Jesus and His workers
(the church)
1Ti 4:1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times
some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines
of demons,
2 speaking lies in
hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,
This final apostasy is on the way, and it ought to be frightening to you and I! But we in the church are
not to lose heart. We are to be like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, faithfully
proclaiming the Word of God and trusting God for the results.
So we preach and live the gospel, confident that none will
be lost, and assured that the end will not come until the final soul is
converted and stuffed into the holy hassock!
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