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Spirit of the Word - Covenant Eschatology - Introductory Note - New Stuff
From The Saviour series article God Is Love by Preston Eby

KNOWING THE REAL JESUS

      A dear brother in Christ has penned these valuable words of admonition:
     "The opinions we form by hearing about people are usually found to be
     wrong after we have come to know them personally. This is also true
     concerning God. When you come to know Him, you will find Him very
     unlike the description given by theologians. You will come to know that
     much that they teach is only rubbish because it is contrary to the nature
     of God. It certainly was so with the Jewish theologians and doctors of
     the law. When Jesus came He smashed their theories to bits and tore
     the robes of their ecclesiasticism to ribbons. He ate with sinners, cast the
     devil out of the Syropheonician, let a sinful woman of the street wash
     His feet, forgave a thief, healed on the Sabbath, ate with unwashed
     hands, called the best religionists of His day liars, hypocrites, serpents,
     children of the devil, whited sepulchres, and a generation of snakes.
     They thought that they knew God, but they didn't. He was more pleased
     with the sincerely of sinners than with the ritualism of scribes and
     Pharisees. When you come to know Him, you will find that it is the
     same now as it was then.

     "Furthermore, to know Him who is truth empowers one to immediately
     recognize all that is error. The more you come to know Christ, the more
     you come to recognize the flagrant error of so much that is taught in the
     name of truth. If the doctrines that men try so hard to prove run
     contrary to the very nature of Christ, then know that all that is contrary
     to His gracious Spirit is error. For years without number the evangelicals
     in their missionary fervor have taught that all heathen men will be
     condemned forever to groan in eternal flames in unremitting torment
     because they did not accept Christ, their ignorance of His existence
     being no excuse whatever. I have no hesitation whatsoever in calling this
     a lie, because everything about it is contrary to the very nature of the
     blessed Christ I know. It is contrary to His love, contrary to His
     kindness and mercy, contrary to His foreknowledge, contrary to His
     immutable wisdom, and contrary to His great and all-inclusive
     redemption, of which it is stated that as in Adam all die, even so in
     Christ shall all be made alive.

     "I care not how many wonderful acts of God you see or bear witness to,
     you will always remain a spiritual baby, living for and lusting after
     outward things, until your spirit is awakened to grasp the eternal,
     immutable purposes of God. Sadly we confess that the Church system is
     filled today, as in the centuries past, with those shallow souls who praise
     the excitement, the revival meetings, physical hearings, baptisms,
     seminars, building programs and acts without number, but who know
     not God's ways. Tell such super-spirituals that God had a purpose in the
     fall of mankind and they will brand you as a fanatic or a false prophet
     from the pit. Tell them that it is God's purpose to reconcile ALL
     THINGS unto Himself and they will begin their name calling and put the
     worst possible interpretation upon all you say. If you preach that
     ninety-and-nine out of every hundred of God's creation will burn in
     torment eternally, they will admire you as a man of truth and
     understanding, but if you say that every knee shall bow and every
     tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
     Father, they will gaze upon your ignorance with the sympathetic
     understanding generally reserved for lunatics. Like Israel of old, they
     have seen God's acts, but have known none of His ways. Ever learning,
     but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth; they pride
     themselves in being hell-fire preachers and love to try to dangle people
     over the flame, hoping to scare them into becoming believers. Well did
     the Lord say, 'I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not
     spoken to them, yet they prophesied' (Jer. 23:21)" -The Page.

     A man who knows God can answer questions about God because he
     KNOWS God. I know my wife. We have lived together, sacrificed
     together, suffered together, laughed together, loved together, prayed
     together, and triumphed together for some twenty-eight years. I believe I
     know her fairly well. There are some things that if I were told that she
     did them, I would not believe it for one moment, though there be all
     manner of circumstantial evidence to support the claims. I would not
     believe it BECAUSE I KNOW HER. I know how she thinks, how she
     is; her nature, her character, her ways.

     I have served God all my life. I did not throw away my youth on filthy,
     disgusting and shameful practices. I have been preaching the Gospel of
     Christ practically full-time since I was fourteen years old. God kept me.
     He filled me with an intense hatred of evil, and an intense love for God.
     I love Him and have always wanted to walk with Him. I have been
     sitting at His feet for 45 years. To me the Christ has filled my life, and
     for me there is no life, no love, no power apart from Him. He has been
     to me, All. He is more to me now than ever, and I know Him. I know
     something of the power of His resurrection and I know something of the
     fellowship of His sufferings, and I have trod somewhat in His footsteps,
     and I love to speak His Name. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! The Name that
     charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease; 'Tis music in the sinner's
     ears, 'tis life, 'tis health, 'tis peace! Bless His name!

     I would never preach anything I cannot find plainly indicated in the Holy
     Scriptures. However, if there was not even one small passage in all the
     Word of God that clearly states that God will have all men to be saved,
     that He will reconcile all unto Himself, I would still, in my deepest heart,
     believe it to be the truth because I KNOW GOD. I know something of
     His ways. I know something of His nature. I know something of His
     character. I know something of His power. I know something of His
     purpose. "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you" (I
     Jn. 1:3). "That I may know Him!" cried Paul in the longing of his soul.
     "That I may know Him!" patriarchs and seers of all ages have prayed.
     "That I may know Him!" is the echo of my own longing heart. Yet I DO
     KNOW HIM in a measure. And I know that in all of His ways, in all of
     His intents, and in all of His doings GOD IS LOVE.
 
 

     Anyone who dares to proclaim the beautiful truth of the restoration of all
     men to God and pins people right down to the Word of God is
     immediately accused by the unthinking masses of teaching heresy, and is
     accused of teaching doctrines which give the sinner nothing to flee from,
     no reason for accepting salvation. Such thoughtlessness! These poor
     simple folks are merely admitting in this that they themselves have never
     yet had a revelation of the abounding love of God. They are but
     admitting their shame in upholding a false gospel which would attempt to
     scare men into God's Kingdom. It never has worked. It never will.
     Christ leads and draws through love. Sometimes love disciplines and
     breaks, but it does not play games by "scaring" people into God! Fear is
     not the instrument of God to bring men unto Himself.

     If fear of hell were a legitimate tool in turning men to God, we should
     expect to find that the community where the flames of hell were the
     stock argument of the preachers to woo men from sin would be noted
     for its spirituality and holiness of life. As one has written, "Witness,
     then, the Roman Catholic Church in its most prosperous times in the
     Dark Ages holding over its adherents a ceaseless threat of purgatory and
     hell, and fattening on the proceeds from the pockets of her poor hunted
     sheep. Was there such a striking scene of righteousness then, that a
     Luther should not be needed? Fear is the weapon of man and of law.
     Love is the all-conquering sceptre of God. 'God has not given us the
     spirit of fear, but of love and of power and of a sound mind.'

     "It is love, not fear, that has bound those of us who love the Lord as
     willing captives to His chariot wheels. Love that does not spoil but lures
     and conquers: love that, while it loves the sinner, hates his sin: love that
     disciplines with unstinting hand, that the chastened may, at last, be a
     partaker of His holiness. This love is the power that has overcome men
     so far, and that is destined to do its perfect work till God is all in all"
     -A. E. Saxby.

     And instead of preaching a false gospel to sinners, instead of holding up
     before them fancied horrors which they may escape, the true Gospel
     tells them of the unsearchable riches of Christ, of the glory of the
     Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the
     Holy Ghost. The sinner misses nothing by accepting Christ, nothing but
     the horrible fruit of unrighteousness, the terrible wages of sin. He does
     cease to be a degraded mortal under the curse of sin and death and
     becomes a child of God. Who wants to remain a faltering mortal when
     one can be translated into the highest realm of all infinity, when one may
     become the very same manner of being as the One who created the
     worlds?

     How men struggle and strive and suffer here to obtain ownership of a
     mere particle of this little speck of dust known as our sin-cursed earth!
     How they sacrifice for a mere shelter for these sin-sick bodies, which
     must soon be left behind! Friends, I own a world, maybe a whole galaxy
     of worlds! For my Lord and Saviour owns the universe. He is "heir of
     ALL THINGS" (Heb. 1:2). And we are "joint-heirs with Christ; if so be
     that we suffer with Him" (Rom. 8:17). Who wants to fritter away time
     and energy on this passing shadow which is earth, when such eternal
     and fadeless wealth and position and glory and power may be gained by
     merely coming into an experiential knowledge of THE ABOUNDING
     LOVE OF GOD?

     Oh, that all men might learn God's one and only everlasting Gospel, the
     Gospel of love - and then preach it! and BE IT! Love alone can draw
     A-L-L MEN to Calvary's crimson fountain. Only a Calvary love can
     transform a world gone mad, and revive a sleeping Church obsessed
     with her deliriums into a thing of beauty and praise and usefulness. And
     anyone who is lifting up to a lost and dying world anything or anyone
     other than Jesus and His wonderful love is simply living a wasted life.
     The Love of God must be lifted up IN US. The Sons of God are the
     Sons of Love, for GOD IS LOVE!

       GOD IS LOVE (2nd - 3rd) - BACK

Spirit of the Word - Covenant Eschatology - Introductory Note - New Stuff